We Really Might Get 'BeamNG' On PS5 Before 'GTA 6'

As great as console driving games like "Gran Turismo" or "Forza" may be, crash damage physics isn't really their forte. Instead, "BeamNG.drive" has been the gold standard for satisfyingly crunchy collisions, but it's only been playable on PC. That exclusivity comes to an end soon because, according to a PlayStation Blog post by BeamNG CEO Thomas Fischer, the game is coming to PlayStation 5 sometime later this year. Yes, depending when exactly in 2026 it drops, we really might get gaming's best car crash simulator on PS5 before "Grand Theft Auto VI."

For those unfamiliar, "BeamNG" first came out all the way back in 2015 and is billed as a driving sim but its real claim to fame is what Fischer himself describes as "an uncompromising real-time soft-body physics engine." Translation: cars deform, break apart, and even catch fire realistically when they hit things. Pair that with open-world maps and simulated traffic, and it's basically the dream game for anyone who derives dopamine from watching IIHS crash test videos on YouTube late at night.

To give you an idea of what it's like, here's a compilation of crashes on "BeamNG":

Oh, good, you're back from that two-hour YouTube rabbit hole. The secret sauce of "BeamNG's" hyper-real, hyper-crunchy crashes is its real physics-based simulation. "Vehicle behavior is never scripted," writes Fischer, and the physics engine itself runs at a refresh rate of 2 kHz, or 2,000 recalculations per second. "No two crashes feel alike," and damage affects how cars drive, too. Hit a curb hard, and the alignment will be out of whack.

Likely because of this focus on destruction, "BeamNG" does not use licensed, real-world cars, but instead includes "a thousand detailed vehicle configurations" of generic stand-ins à la "Burnout" or, yes, "Grand Theft Auto." Of course, PC players have worked around this via unofficial mods, but it's highly unlikely these will be supported on console.

However, the breadth of vehicle types is vast. Passenger cars of every shape, caliber, and vintage are available, of course, but there are also buses, off-road buggies, race cars, and conspicuously long and destructible limos for you to play with. They're all customizable down to drivetrain layouts, ride height, and tire pressures, and there's even heavy machinery available to aid you on your journey of creative vehicular destruction. As a mechanically sadistic human who refuses to use Windows past 5 p.m. (and has not done so since 2022), color me excited.

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