Buzz! on PS5? Why it never came, and what's closest in 2026

Thirteen games, more than ten million copies, and then nothing. No PS4 version, no PS5 version, and the studio behind it is gone. This is what happened, what you can still play in 2026, and which games get closest to the buzzer feeling.

The short answer

• Buzz! on PS4 or PS5? Does not exist. The last game came out in October 2010 for the PS3.
• Online? The PS3 servers, and with them MyBuzz! and the downloadable quizzes, went offline on 2 August 2013.
• The makers? Relentless Software closed in 2016. Some of them went on to make It's Quiz Time.
• Still playable? Yes, offline on a PS2 or PS3 with the buzzers, or on a PSP, all second-hand.

Play a round first

What Buzz! was

Buzz! started in 2005 with The Music Quiz on the PlayStation 2, developed by the British studio Relentless Software and published by Sony. The idea: a TV quiz show in your living room, complete with a studio set, an audience and a host, Buzz, voiced in the English versions by Jason Donovan. You did not play with a controller but with the buzzers: a red button to buzz in and four coloured buttons for the answers, four buzzers on one cable. Quiz TV (2008) brought wireless buzzers; with a second set, many entries let eight people play at once.

Between 2005 and 2010 thirteen main titles appeared, from The Big Quiz and The Sports Quiz to Quiz World and The Ultimate Music Quiz, plus five Buzz! Junior games for kids. The PS3 games also had MyBuzz!: a website where you built your own quizzes and downloaded other people's. All told, more than ten million copies were sold. If one series made "quizzing on the PlayStation" a thing, it is this one.

How it ended

1. October 2010: The Ultimate Music Quiz comes out on the PS3. It turns out to be the last Buzz!.
2. February 2011: Relentless lays off staff and shifts to smaller, digital games.
3. 2 August 2013: Sony switches off the online features of Quiz TV, Quiz World, Brain of the World and The Ultimate Music Quiz. MyBuzz! and the quiz downloads go with them.
4. 2016: Relentless Software closes for good.
5. 2017: Sony tries once more with Knowledge is Power, a quiz show where phones replace the buzzers. That game has since been pulled from the store too; how that went is in Knowledge is Power quietly died.

Sources: the Wikipedia pages on the Buzz! series and Relentless Software, and the server shutdown notice on PlayStationTrophies.

Can you still play Buzz! in 2026?

Yes, and that is the good news in this story: Buzz! had no companion app that could be pulled from a store. What you need is a PlayStation 2 or 3, a Buzz! game on disc and a set of buzzers (or a PSP, which plays without buzzers), and all of that can be found second-hand. Everything that was offline still works exactly as it did in 2008. Three things to know:

• No PS4 or PS5. The games were never ported, and we could not find a PS4 or PS5 game that uses the buzzers.
• Online is gone. No MyBuzz!, no custom quizzes, no new questions. What is on the disc is what you get, and those questions are fifteen years old by now.
• Buzzers are the bottleneck. Four buzzers per set; for eight players you need two sets, and not every entry supports that.

What comes closest in 2026

Nobody reinvented the buzzers, but the phone replaced them. These are the games that get closest to the Buzz! feeling, compared honestly:

• It's Quiz Time (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, 2017): made by Snap Finger Click, a studio of former Relentless people from the Buzz! team. Up to eight players with their phone as buzzer, an AI host, tens of thousands of questions. The closest thing to the original, with one caveat: it runs through an app on your phone, and exactly such an app is what eventually killed Knowledge is Power.
• Trivial Pursuit Live! 2 (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch): the board game as a TV quiz, with controllers instead of buzzers.
• Trivia Murder Party 2, part of The Jackbox Party Pack 6: a quiz with a horror twist, players through the browser on their phones. Jackbox is bought per pack.
• Kwishetwel, without a console: a quiz show in the browser on your TV, laptop or projector. Everyone scans a QR code and plays on their own phone, with a ticking timer. No app, no account for players, no four-buzzer limit. Whoever gets it wrong spins the penalty wheel. From Basic, a quiz host reads the questions of the ready-made quizzes aloud. Building your own questions, like MyBuzz! back in the day, is part of the Ultimate plan.

In all fairness: the feel of a real red button under your thumb is something none of these bring back, and neither is Buzz himself. They do get close: It's Quiz Time has an AI host, and on Kwishetwel the round cards, standings and the final play out in a TV studio with quizmaster Wim, while from the Basic plan a voice reads the questions and answers of the ready-made quizzes aloud. If it is the buzzers you miss, rescue a PS3 and a set of buzzers from eBay. If it is the quiz night you miss, you are back in business in a few minutes.

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