Will There be a New Everybody’s Golf

One series that has stuck with me over all of the iterations of PlayStation dating all the way back to 1997 is Hot Shots Golf, which is what is was known as in North America, and for the rest of the world it was known as Everybody's Golf. In 2017, the series fully embraced the Everybody’s Golf moniker worldwide. The series always walked the tight rope between arcade golfer and realism with plenty of deep mechanics under the surface if you wanted to get invested. Change your clubs, balls, spin on the ball, draw, fade, weather conditions and the list goes on.

The team behind Everybody’s Golf, Clap Hanz, has been relatively silent since the 2017 PS4 release. They added in PSVR support a few years later and in 2021 released Clap Hanz Golf on Apple Arcade, which was their first game since 1997 to be released outside of the Sony ecosystem, but on the whole, it’s been over 5 years since their last premium release. This fits in with the cadence of the studio as they typically release a main game once every 5-6 years with Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational in 2013 and Out of Bounds in 2008

Sometimes I feel like I am beating the same drum over and over when it comes to talking about what classic franchises might be coming to PlayStation 5. As previously mentioned, Sony has said publicly that they plan to have 10 live service games by 2025.

Everybody's Golf for PS4 was already taking plenty of steps into the live service direction with online tournaments, character customization (that was quite good), free roaming and shops. My only issue with all of those elements is that the main hub was messy and confusing. There were too many people in the hub and it was hard to tell who was NPC and who wasn't.

If Everybody's Golf organized all of these elements better, it would be a perfect fit for one of Sony’s live service games by 2025. It could also fit perfectly as a free to play title. According to Famitsu in 2017 the total series sales since 1997 was over 14 million, meaning the risk of losing lots of sales is low.

The free to play implementation seems simple enough with one course, one set of clubs and one ball and if you want to unlock more, then you need to play a lot or pay to unlock additional items. As customization was a big part of the game, you could add cosmetics to the battle pass but call it something like fairway pass. Even if it’s not one of their 10 games they mentioned, odds are strong that we will see a new Hot Shots Golf likely in the coming years and I can’t wait to hit the course again.