Yesterday, Larian Studios announced Baldur’s Gate III will come to PS5 the same day the PC version leaves Early Access. It sounded like an exclusivity agreement might be keeping it off Xbox, but the devs say that’s not the case. So what’s the hold-up? Getting the co-op RPG’s splitscreen action to work on the weaker Xbox Series S.
Larian revealed the August 31 launch date for the PS5 console port in a new trailer during Sony’s latest State of Play that, among other things, showcased actor J.K. Simmons voicing newly revealed villain General Ketheric Thorm. It’s normal for Sony-promoted teases to leave out competitors’ platforms, but when fans didn’t see an Xbox release date on Larian’s website either, they began to wonder.
Today, the studio clarified what’s going on, stating that an Xbox version will arrive if and when Larian can get splitscreen gameplay working across both Series S and Series X:
We’re seeing a lot of varied interpretations of what that means, so we wanted to clarify further. We’ve had an Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate III in development for some time now. We’ve run into some technical issues in developing the Xbox port that have stopped us feeling 100% confident in announcing it until we’re certain we’ve found the right solutions—specifically, we’ve been unable to get splitscreen co-op to work to the same standard on both Xbox Series X and S, which is a requirement for us to ship.
There’s no platform exclusivity preventing us from releasing BG3 on Xbox day and date, should that be a technical possibility. If and when we do announce further platforms, we want to make sure each version lives up to our standards and expectations.
It’s an especially interesting wrinkle considering players have long speculated about the trade-offs and challenges involved in developing games for the similarly-specced PS5 and Xbox Series X that must also accommodate the less powerful Series S. Splitscreen can be an especially taxing feature, and was notably dropped from Halo Infinite last year as 343 Industries tried to salvage the online shooter’s live-service ambitions.
Baldur’s Gate III’s minimum PC specs already require an Nvidia GTX 970 graphics card at minimum, with a GeForce RTX 2060 recommended. While not likely to push PC players’ hardware the way recent blockbusters such as the Dead Space remake or The Callisto Protocol have, it’s still more than what your average isometric RPG fan probably has on hand. The console port could potentially be a big boon then to those who don’t already have a higher-end gaming PC, or the funds to upgrade. That said, for now it seems like the $250 Series S might be getting in the way.
Do you ever wish you could reacquire the games you once had? And not just copies of the same ones, but the very discs or cartridges you used? Well, the Named Cassette Museum in Tokyo is making that very thing a reality for many gamers: reuniting those who once wrote their names, addresses, or other personal identifying information on Famicom cassettes (and those from other consoles) with their old games.
For Junji Seki, the director of the Named Cassette Museum, collecting Famicom cassettes started out as a hobby. But whereas many collectors might not be too thrilled about discovering a potentially valuable game with someone’s name scrawled on it, Seki saw a different kind of value: Reuniting folks with the very cartridges that they once lost and learning the story behind them. Seki started the museum in 2015, all to document the history of these individual Famicom cassettes and to bring some happiness into the lives of gamers who had long lost (and likely given up hope of finding) their old games.
The museum has a few requirements if you spot a cassette you think was once yours: You must let the director deliver the game by hand, you must buy it (for a price of your choice), and you must let the museum document the story on its website to learn a bit about the history, how the cassette might’ve been lost, and any particular memories of the game.
It’s not just personal stories. In a translated interview with Mirai-idea.jp, Seki says that , personally marked-up games tell a story about the time they were acquired and used. “If you look at [a] cassette“that says ‘110 yen,’ it’s probably when the 3 percent consumption tax was introduced” in 1989. Seki is also interested in deciphering what certain handwriting might mean, why certain letters are capitalized and others aren’t.
Seki doesn’t just collect games either. As the president of game studio Happymeal, he’s also a developer. And the experience of the Named Cassette Museum directly inspires the games he makes. One such game, Ise-Shima Mystery Guide: Fake Black Pearl (which received a Japan-only release on the Nintendo Switch) is “a reproduction of the atmosphere of the Famicom era,” according to a translation from Seki.
As someone who once had many physical games that are now long lost to time, the idea of once again getting to see or hold such relics of days gone is pretty exciting; collecting old games can become a pricey endeavor, but when it tells the story of the gamer who once enjoyed the worlds contained inside the plastic and the tech, well it’s hard to put a price on that. And when you consider the wide expanse of streaming and on-demand gaming services like Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, efforts to save our physical connections with games we love and grew up with are even more important.
Via Axios’ newsletter, a series of court documents have been filed over the last couple of weeks detailing some of the legal skirmishes currently playing out between Microsoft, who want to complete the blockbuster deal, and Sony, who are one of a number of companies and organisations who absolutely do not want this to happen.
These particular filings are about Sony’s attempts to fight the proposed sale, and that as part of their defence Microsoft is entitled to “discovery”, which is basically just letting them get hold of a load of documents and emails from certain Sony executives. Both companies have been haggling over the number of executives this will include and the scope of the discovery for ages, but things took a turn earlier this month when Microsoft accused Sony of first stalling, and then not providing all the information they might need:
Sony Interactive Entertainment (“SIE”)—whose gaming business has dwarfed Xbox’s for 20 years—is not an ordinary third party in this action. At great expense and over an extended period, SIE has deployed delegations of executives, large teams of outside lawyers, and highpriced economists to persuade regulators here and around the world to block Microsoft Corp.’s
(“Microsoft’s”) proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard King. SIE’s efforts are paying off: The FTC’s complaint in this action is chock-full of allegations about the effects the deal will have on SIE’s business. This case is as much about SIE as it is about Xbox and Activision. Timely discovery from SIE is therefore critical to Microsoft’s defense.
Though SIE’s motion for an extension of time complains about the breadth of the subpoena and the length of the extensions already granted for it to respond to that subpoena, Microsoft already told SIE it would consent to a fourth extension of time to negotiate issues related to the scope of the subpoena’s requests. But Microsoft believes that court intervention is required now on one issue: whether SIE will collect and produce documents from certain custodians.
In response, Sony said that they hadn’t supplied all the information Microsoft were requesting because they were being asked for way too much, including things like access to internal performance reviews, something Sony say “is obvious harassment”, and that “even in employment cases courts require a specific showing of relevance before requiring production of personnel files.”
Judge D. Michael Chappell has agreed with Sony, saying the company “has demonstrated good cause for the requested relief” and agreeing that the scope and depth of Microsoft’s requests had gone too far.
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All of which is only mildly interesting, I know, but I bring this up mostly so we can just link to both Microsoft and Sony’s motions, which are full of some incredible self-owns, like Microsoft saying PlayStation’s success “has dwarfed Xbox’s for 20 years”, along with some very funny wordage in Sony’s filing, like the way they say Microsoft’s subpoena was, like, “truly massive”.
Easily the most anticipated title on this list, Starfield is notable for two reasons: It’s gaming’s next big sci-fi RPG epic and its the next evolution in Bethesda’s open-world formula. Bethesda is no stranger to science fiction, having a number of Fallout games under its belt. But from everything we know about Starfield right now, it’s aiming for an unprecedented scale, featuring over 1,000 worlds for you to explore.
Though we haven’t seen a whole lot of Starfield gameplay, the reveal last summer showed a bit of what we can expect. Here’s your hype fuel for Starfield before its expected release this year:
“Hard science fiction” setting with 1,000 explorable planets
A mix of “handcrafted content” and procedurally-generated environments
The classic Bethesda mix of first-person combat, exploration, and roleplaying
Bethesda
It’s hard not to get excited about a game like this. While the commonly voiced concern that such a high number of planets may mean we’re in for some serious “quantity over quality” is a fair one, I’d argue that’s always been the case with Bethesda games: Unprecedented scale, unprecedented jank. Despite all of that, Bethesda games of this sort usually cohere to form a unified experience that’s hard to get anywhere else. The question for Starfield will be: Do enough aspects of this epic space sim work well enough to create an intense level of immersion for, oh I dunno, hundreds of hours? I mean, I still don’t feel like I saw everything in Fallout 3 and 4.
One of the most interesting developments in the emulation and coding scenes in recent years has been the increasing trend in taking classic old video games and completely reverse-engineering their code.
We’ve seen fans do this for everything from Mario 64 toOcarina of Time to Grand Theft Auto, all with varying degrees of legal opposition. The reasons for doing this are multitude; there’s the challenge of the reverse-engineering itself, of course, but also the benefits it brings, mainly in the form of being able to create genuine PC versions of classic console games, rather than relying on emulation.
What’s the difference? As we’ve explained previously, emulation relies on your computer pretending it’s an old console to run a game coded to run on that console. A reverse-engineered port is able to be built for the PC (or other platforms!) from the ground up, allowing for the seamless insertion of stuff like widescreen support and even (in the case of polygonal games) graphical tweaks like ReShade.
The latest game to receive this treatment is The Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past, first released in 1991 on the Super Nintendo and then re-released a number of times since on everything from the Game Boy Advance to Nintendo Switch Online.
As Nintendo Lifereport, a team of 20, led by xander-haj, managed the feat after working their way through 70-80,000 lines of code, and in the process “key enhancements have been added, such as faster transition times, speedier text, widescreen support, pixel shaders, and a more detailed overworld map. Perhaps most significantly, a secondary item slot has been added, allowing users to quickly switch between two items on the fly without having to go into the inventory screen to pick them out one by one.”
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Here’s footage of the original game (running in an emulator on PC) compared to this new PC “port”:
zelda 3 emulation vs pc port
Neat! This is now the part of the post where we point out that, legally, this is still a very weird grey area. Reverse engineering itself isn’t illegal, but the use of a company’s assets can be, and these projects are a mix of both. Only they’re also not; the creators or reverse-engineered games like this simply provide the underyling code and ask you to get the assets from a ROM yourself. This game’s description, for example, says “You need a copy of the ROM to extract game resources (levels, images). Then once that’s done, the ROM is no longer needed.”
Nintendo would argue that doesn’t matter, the creators would argue it’s an important distinction, and until we start getting some definitive rulings in disputes like this I’m going to have to keep typing this out at the end of every post about it!
Things haven’t been going great for Xbox recently. Microsoft is facing stiff resistance in its attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard. It released hardly any big exclusive blockbusters last year. And it just cut over 10,000 jobs last week, including many senior developers at Halo Infinite studio 343 Industries. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer tried to remain upbeat and do damage control on each of these points and more in a new interview with IGN.
“Every year is critical,” he said. “I don’t find this year to be more or less critical. I feel good about our momentum. Obviously, we’re going through some adjustments right now that are painful, but I think necessary, but it’s really to set us up and the teams for long-term success.”
This week captured both the peril and promise facing Xbox right now. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a drop in net-income of 12 percent for the most recent fiscal quarter compared to the prior year. Xbox gaming hardware and software were down by similar percentages, and Microsoft said nothing about how many new subscribers its Game Pass service had gained since it crossed the 25 million mark exactly a year ago.
Then on Wednesday Microsoft provided a sleek and streamlined look at its upcoming games in a Developer Direct livestream copied right from the Nintendo playbook. Forza Motorsport was seemingly quietly delayed to the second half of the year, but looked like a beautiful and impressive racing sim showpiece. Arkane’s co-op sandbox vampire shooter Redfall got a May 2 release date. Real-time strategy spin-off Minecraft Legends will hit in April. And to cap things off Tango Gameworks, maker of The Evil Within, shadow-dropped Hi-Fi Rush on Game Pass, a colorful rhythm-action game from left field that’s already become the first undisputed gaming hit of 2023.
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“2022 was too light on games,” Spencer confessed in his IGN interview. 2023 shouldn’t be thanks to Redfall and Starfield, Bethesda’s much-anticipated answer to the question, “What if Skyrim but space?” But both of those games were technically supposed to come out last year. Meanwhile, Hi-Fi Rush, like Obsidian’s Pentiment before it, is shaping up to be a critically acclaimed Game Pass release that still might be too small to move the needle on Xbox’s larger fortunes.
Spencer remained vague when asked how successful these games were or their impact on Game Pass, whose growth has reportedly stalled on console. “I think that the creative diversity expands for us when we have different ways for people to kind of pay for the games that they’re playing, and the subscription definitely helps there,” he said.
Hi-Fi Rush, Redfall, Starfield, and a new The Elder Scrolls Online expansion due out in June are also all from Bethesda, which Microsoft finished acquiring in 2021. The older Microsoft first-party game studios have either remained relatively quiet in recent years while working on their next big projects, or, in the case of 343 Industries, were recently hit with a surprising number of layoffs.
Following news of the cuts last week, rumors and speculation began to swirl that 343 Industries—which shipped a well-received Halo Infinite single-player campaign in 2021, but struggled with seasonal updates for the multiplayer component in the months since—was being benched. The studio put out a brief statement over the weekend saying Halo was here to stay and that it would continue developing it.
Image: Bethesda / Microsoft
Spencer doubled down on that in his interview with IGN, but provided little insight into the reasoning behind the layoffs or what its plans were for the franchise moving forward. “What we’re doing now is we want to make sure that leadership team is set up with the flexibility to build the plan that they need to go build,” he said. “And Halo will remain critically important to what Xbox is doing, and 343 is critically important to the success of Halo.”
Where Halo Infinite’s previously touted “10-year” plan fits into that, however, remains unclear. “They’ve got some other things, some rumored, some announced, that they’ll be working on,” Spencer said. And on the future of the series as a whole he simply said, “I expect that we’ll be continuing to support and grow Halo for as long as the Xbox is a platform for people to play.” It’s hard to imagine Nintendo talking about Mario with a similar-sounding lack of conviction.
It’s possible Microsoft’s continued struggles with some of its internal projects is partly why it’s so focused on looking outside the company for help. Currently that means trying to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion and fighting off an antitrust lawsuit by the Federal trade Commission in the process. Microsoft had originally promised the deal to get Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush would be wrapped up before the end of summer 2023. That deadline’s coming up quickly, even as the company continues offering compromises, like reportedly giving Sony the option to continue paying to have Activision’s games on its rival Game Pass subscription service, PS Plus.
Spencer told IGN he remains bullish on closing the deal, despite claiming to have known nothing about the logistics of doing so when he started a year ago. “Given a year ago, for me, I didn’t know anything about the process of doing an acquisition like this,” he said. “The fact that I have more insight, more knowledge about what it means to work with the different regulatory boards, I’m more confident now than I was a year ago, simply based on the information I have and the discussions that we’ve been having.”
Warhammer 40K: Darktide released on PC late last year, a dark and chunky take on Left 4 Dead set in Games Workshop’s grim, distant future. It was OK! Had its problems, but was OK. Those problems have persisted into 2023, though, and so the developers are shelving an Xbox version of the game while they get to work fixing them.
In a statement released earlier today, Fatshark say they set out to “create a highly engaging and stable game with a level of depth that keeps you playing for weeks, not hours”, but “fell short of meeting those expectations”.
As a result, they’re not only delaying “seasonal content” for the PC version, but will be delaying the release of the game on Xbox Series X|S as well.
OPEN LETTER ΤΟ OUR PLAYERS
We take enormous pride in our ability at Fatshark to deliver a game that millions can enjoy. This was what we set out to do with Warhammer 40,000: Darktide to create a highly engaging and stable game with a level of depth that keeps you playing for weeks, not hours.
We fell short of meeting those expectations.
Over the next few months, our sole focus is to address the feedback that many of you have. In particular, we will focus on delivering a complete crafting system, a more rewarding progression loop, and continue to work on game stability and performance optimization.
This also means that we will delay our seasonal content rollout and the Xbox Series XIS launch. We will also suspend the upcoming releases of premium cosmetics. We just couldn’t continue down this path, knowing that we have not addressed many feedback areas in the game today.
Thank you for playing and providing feedback. We really appreciate it. It has and will continue to help shape the game we love.
Martin Wahlund CEO & Co-Founder of Fatshark
I didn’t think the PC version was that bad! Sure it had problems, but online games from smaller teams like this often do. Then again smaller teams often don’t have the resources to do everything at once, so if this is what they want to do with what they’ve got then this is what they’re going to to do with what they’ve got!
A few hours ago, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer sent out a company-wide email to all full-time employees under Microsoft’s gaming divisions. A copy of the email was shared with Kotaku by a current Xbox employee, we have confirmed its authenticity, and the full text has been transcribed below:
This has been a difficult week across Microsoft, and here, inside our teams. Now that many of the 1:1 and team conversations have happened, I want to take a moment to reiterate the message that you heard from your leaders.
This is a challenging moment in our business, and this week’s actions were painful choices. The Gaming Leadership Team had to make decisions that we felt set us up for the long-term success of our products and business, but the individual results of those decisions are real. I know that hurts. Thank you for supporting our colleagues as they process these changes.
Over the coming weeks we will have many opportunities to connect and answer your questions, including the Monthly Gaming Update next week for teams who attend that meeting, and I am in close contact with teams at ZeniMax to provide support. The GLT and I are committed to being as transparent as we can. Moving forward with ambiguity is challenging, but I am confident that together, we will get through this difficult moment in time.
Xbox has a long history of success thanks to the work you do in service of players, creators, and each other. Your work is so deeply appreciated and valued in these times of change and is integral to our business momentum. I am confident in our future and proud to be part of this team, but also conscious that this is a challenging time and I want to thank you for everything you do here.
Phil
On January 18, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees across the company. These layoffs included gaming studios such as 343 Industries, The Coalition, ZeniMax Media, and Bethesda Game Studios. Xbox has struggled to release first-party titles last year, and is under tremendous pressure to ship flashy blockbuster titles such as Starfield. Some of the people who have lost their jobs include senior talent, and occurred a year after the publisher scourged up the pocket change to purchase Activision Blizzard for $70 billion. Kotaku has reached out to Microsoft for a statement, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
“This feels like something you send out on obligation,” wrote a current employee at Xbox over text messages to Kotaku. “I seriously doubt any of those monthly gaming updates or other meetings are going to do anything to make anyone feel better.”
The tech workers’ union CODE-CWA put out a statement on January 19, stating that their representatives have been in contact with Microsoft. The company “recognizes its obligation to bargain over any proposed layoffs of CWA members at ZeniMax.” The ZeniMax union intends to negotiate on “alternatives to layoffs.”
Square Enix’s Forspoken is asking for a LOT of RAMImage: Square Enix
Over the past few years, the minimum amount of RAM you’d need to play the latest games on PC has been somewhere around the 8-16GB ballpark. Unless, that is, you’re talking about some very weird outliers, both of which are also games from, or appearing on, the PlayStation 5.
Last month we learned that Returnal, a game released in April 2021 on the PS5, would be coming out on the PC in 2023 with recommended specs “asking for an eye-watering 32 gigabytes of ram”. 32GB! What the fuck! While that was just the recommended amount—the minimum is a still-hefty 16GB—it certainly stood out not just for the sheer amount needed, but the fact that it didn’t really seem like the kind of game that, let’s be real, would need that much compared to its peers. But having come from the PS5, most people simply wrote it off as a consequence of the game’s development having been a weird, console-first quirk and got on with their lives.
Image: Square Enix
Now, though, the Square Enix-published Forspoken—a game also coming to the PlayStation 5 but with a PC version hitting alongside it at launch—is doing much the same thing. It has 16GB of RAM as a minimum (just to run at 720p! On a PC!), with 24GB recommended and 32GB required if you want to run the game at Ultra settings. Returnal being a port of a PS5 game was one thing, but Forspoken has been developed with a PC version launching alongside the console edition, so it doesn’t have that excuse.
This is too much RAM! I bought a brand new gaming PC in 2020 and it came with 16GB of RAM, which at the time was fine, maybe even slightly excessive, because games were only ever asking for 8GB (2022’s Modern Warfare II, just for comparison’s sake, asks for 16GB to run at Ultra 4K). To have leapt to the point where certain PlayStation-related games (and almost no others!) are asking for 16GB as a minimum is wild, and I’m sorry Returnal and Forspoken, but neither of you are going to make me go out and buy new hardware just to play.
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Sony has done a pretty good job lately of bringing its games to PC, with everything from Horizon to God of War doing well enough to make ports a fundamental part of PlayStation’s release business going forwards (The Last Of Us, for example, is coming in March). Those have all been games released on the PS4, though, and so came with relatively reasonable specs; if this is the amount of RAM needed to bring PS5 games to the PC (and I’m not saying it definitively is, just that this is now a pattern), then Sony’s future ports might not enjoy such smooth sailing.
While we’re on the subject of Forspoken, a demo was recently released, and fan feedback has resulted in some changes being made to the game:
What do you mean you don’t know what this is? Isn’t it obvious?Image: Impact Acoustics / Kotaku / LUMIKK555 (Shutterstock)
2022 was the year I decided to get serious about my retrogaming setup. I was tired of having a 104lb CRT dominating half my computer desk and a PlayStation 2, MiSTer, and whatever other consoles I was currently interested in always in peripheral vision. After a bit of thought I concluded that the TV and all the consoles would be better off on a wheeled cart. A retro cart, if you would. It could live in my closet, or be wheeled out to wherever seemed fun. So I started speccing that out.
The best form factor ended up having two lower shelves—for the consoles, a smaller TATE-friendly/PAL-compatible PVM-1354Q CRT a friend had recently sold me, and bookshelf speakers—with the big-ass 29” TV up on the third, top tier. Both CRTs could accept RGB or YPbPr/component video…which to standardize on? Component seemed easier for a couple reasons, so I went with that. Then I just needed a switcher to not only flip between MiSTer, PS2, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, Wii, and Xbox, but to route any of those sources to either of the two screens.
That’s six in, two out. I wanted optical audio switching, too, for MiSTer, Xbox, and possibly PS2. Combined, those requirements take us far beyond the feature set of any basic switcher you’ll find on Amazon or Ali these days. Thus I turned to the bright, shining past of the mid-aughts, when component video adoption peaked and specialty A/V products catered to the more esoteric YPbPr-wrangling needs of the era’s home theater enthusiasts.
A few promising candidates surfaced. One high-end mid-2000s switcher was very fancy indeed and could actually transcode between analog and optical audio (wow!). But ultimately I was won over by the still-fancy but slightly more modest Impact Acoustics Deluxe Component Video / Digital Audio 6 In / 2 Out Matrix Switch, aka the “40697″. You can see it above. Not only can it route those six inputs to either screen, it can output to both screens simultaneously…the same source, or two different sources. Oh dear, am I blushing?
After a week or two I managed to snag a NOS (new old stock) one on eBay, and it proved just as performant as hoped: Any console on any display is now just a button-push away. The cart project is still in progress as I seek a working Xbox, look into appropriate Wii hax, and transition to a new display up top (kinda wishing I had gone with RGB now, actually!) but I’ve already been enjoying having all my beloved old games in a single, self-contained, no-compromises tower of power. Even got a beanbag! Hell yeah.
PlayStation expanded beyond the console in 2022.Illustration: Angelica Alzona
The decision-makers behind Sony’s console juggernaut spent a lot of 2022 putting down railway for 2023 and beyond, dumping money and time into growing the PlayStation brand beyond the funky-looking device in your entertainment center. The company wants the PlayStation name to be ubiquitous, and that has meant expanding not just in the form of video game acquisitions and new services, but bringing the PlayStation line into new mediums and markets. So, while Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarök bookended the PlayStation 5’s 2022 on the video game side, the brand was busy throughout the year.
Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg brought Nathan Drake and Sully (or people going by those names) to the big screen in 2022.Photo: Sony Pictures
PlayStation becomes a movie and TV brand
PlayStation Productions, Sony’s film and television subsidiary dedicated to putting out adaptations based on the company’s video games, released its first project this year in the form of the Uncharted movie. Featuring Spider-Man star Tom Holland as a vague amalgamation of Nolan North’s original interpretation of Nathan Drake and his own version of Peter Parker if he was slightly more stoic, the film also has Mark Wahlberg as a character who shares his name (and little else) with Nate’s father figure, Victor “Sully” Sullivan. The movie is, at best, aggressively fine. It took a critical beating, but did rake in over $401 million globally at the box office. Sony has plans to make Naughty Dog’s cinematic action game series into a full-blown movie franchise.
Whether any of the above will be any good remains to be seen, but Sony is making deals to put PlayStation characters on more screens and subscription services. The company has clearly decided that PlayStation games aren’t enough, and that they can instead be the origin point for an expanded universe that ties into the games its first-party studios are putting out. Speaking of…
Sony and Naughty Dog released The Last of Us a third time with its PS5 remake.Screenshot: Naughty Dog / Kotaku
PlayStation movies and TV get re-released tie-ins
Putting an Uncharted movie in theaters and a Last of Us show on TVs is one piece of Sony’s new business model, but the company is also pairing these live-action adaptations with re-releases of the source material. Just a week before the Uncharted film launched, Sony released the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, which brought both Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy to PlayStation 5, a console they were readily playable on through backward compatibility. Oddly enough, this only included the last two games in the series, rather than the three games that preceded them. But it was an Uncharted product that people could buy after seeing the movie, or even before, as it included a free ticket to the film.
The Last of Us Part I, a remake of the 2013 original, launched in September to both praise for the source material and the technical upgrade the release brought to it, as well as a slew of criticism surrounding its $70 price point. The remake carried a cloud over it after a Bloomberg report exposed internal politics at Sony surrounding the project, which began under a PlayStation support studio before gradually becoming a Naughty Dog product. The whole situation stinks to high heaven, but it did conveniently fit into Sony’s business model of making its games into an extended universe. Now, there will be a (near) full-price Last of Us game on store shelves when the HBO show premieres on January 15.
God of War came to PC this year, but its sequel only came to consoles.Screenshot: Sony Santa Monica / Kotaku
PlayStation continues to expand beyond consoles and to PC
Both of these re-releases were part of a PlayStation initiative to get more of its games on PC. Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves brought the series (again, just the last two games, rather than any of the foundational ones that came before) to PC for the first time in October, and The Last of Us Part I will bring Joel and Ellie’s story to a computer near you in March. But it wasn’t just Naughty Dog’s games that got PC love, as God of War, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and Marvel’s Spider-Man and its Miles Morales spin-off also launched on PC in 2022.
All that being said, we still have yet to see PlayStation release its first-party games on both its consoles and PC simultaneously. God of War launched four years late on PC this year, but its sequel, Ragnarök, only came to PS4 and PS5 in 2022. It’s been heartening to see Sony make more strides in the space, but hopefully in 2023 we see a more immediate commitment to bringing its games to those who play on PC.
Sony paid a lot of money for Bungie, but Destiny 2 will remain multiplatform.Image: Bungie
Outside of the AAA space, Sony also acquired Savage Game Studios, whose founders previously worked on mobile hits like Angry Birds and Clash of Clans, in an attempt to kickstart a new mobile gaming division. The studio is apparently at work on a new project for phones and tablets based on an established PlayStation IP.
The PlayStation VR2 will launch next year, but won’t be usable with old PSVR games.Image: Sony
PlayStation VR2 seems like an upgrade, but with caveats
Sony kicked off 2022 by announcing its second virtual reality headset, aptly named the PlayStation VR2. It sounds like a meaningful upgrade from the original PlayStation VR headset Sony released in 2016, with an impressive-sounding OLED, 4K resolution display, dedicated controllers so you won’t have to use your old PlayStation Move wands anymore, and a single-cord setup that will make using the whole thing more manageable. However, as news has come out about the device, things have gotten a bit more troubling.
The most egregious drawback Sony has confirmed is that original PlayStation VR games won’t be compatible with the PSVR2 headset. Senior Vice President of Platform Experience Hideaki Nishino said on the PlayStation Podcast that this is because “PSVR2 is designed to deliver a truly next generation VR experience,” citing much of the new headset’s tech as being incompatible with old PSVR games. Regardless of whatever explanation Sony has to offer, it’s a bummer that the PlayStation 5 seemed to be developed with more future-proofing in mind and now we’re dealing with backward compatibility issues again. So if you want to keep playing your old PSVR games, don’t throw your old headset out.
PlayStation Plus now has tiers, and whether you’ll get much value on them depends on where you live.Image: Sony
PlayStation Plus launches new tiers with new problems
PlayStation Plus, Sony’s long-running subscription service for playing games online and collecting a vast array of “free” games, saw a revamp this year that put it more in-line with Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass. It doesn’t seem like it’s gotten the same resounding love as its direct competitor, though. PlayStation Plus now has multiple tiers, which each have different included features and perks.
The cheapest is Essential, which is basically just what PlayStation Plus has been for years: online play, sales, cloud storage, and a few free games each month. The second tier is called PlayStation Plus Extra, which includes all of the above, as well as an on-demand library of PlayStation 4 and 5 games. The most expensive tier is PlayStation Plus Premium, which adds a streaming library of classic games from across all the PlayStation consoles, and even the PlayStation Portable.
The PlayStation 5 is two years old now, but the console is still relatively difficult to find due to supply chain issues that are expected to last well into 2023, if not longer. But as we get further away from the original launch and demand starts to calm down, it’s become marginally easier to track down and buy a PS5 of your own. Brick-and-mortar stores are still hit or miss, but Kotaku had a bit more luck finding the box on digital storefronts. So hopefully by the time Spider-Man 2 launches next year, those still looking for a PlayStation 5 won’t face a massive ordeal.
The PlayStation 4 is nine years old and still got most of Sony’s big games in 2022.Image: Sony
The PlayStation 4 hangs on a little bit longer
That being said, Sony still wasn’t quite ready to let go of the PlayStation 4 in 2023. The company’s biggest games this year, Horizon Forbidden West, Gran Turismo 7, and God of War Ragnarök, all launched simultaneously on the PS4 and PS5 and were pretty alright experiences on the last-gen console. You know, if you’re cool with your PS4 sounding like it’s ready to take off on a flight across the Atlantic.
But looking forward, it seems 2023 will be the year Sony really starts to leave the old system behind. That’s a respectable ten years of service since its original 2013 launch, and PlayStation Studios now seem squarely focused on the PS5. Spider-Man 2, the VR spinoff Horizon Call of the Mountain, and Insomniac’s take on Wolverine were all announced as PS5 exclusive, so hopefully as this transition takes root, the PS5 becomes more readily available next year.
If you’re reading this ahead of buying someone a new Xbox, or you already have and are getting ready to wrap it, stop! I highly recommend setting it up ahead of time, completing most of the above suggestions before you give the shiny new console to its intended recipient—especially if that recipient is a kid who will likely want to play games, not wade through menus and wait for updates to install. So at the very least, update the console and install a few games, so they can open it up, plug it in, and start playing right away!
A new console is a great gift, but an even better gift is a new console filled with games that are already set up and ready to play.
Once you’ve got your Xbox all hooked up, installed some fun new games, got your controller updated, and your TV settings sorted, it’s time to stop reading this article and go play some video games. Well, unless you wanna dig around the comments first, as I assume a few readers might have some extra tips and tricks of their own. Either way, enjoy your new Xbox!
Oh yeah? Then why, when Kotaku called several brick-and-mortar stores just a few days before Christmas this year were we told inventory for both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles was either very limited or completely gone?
The truth of the matter is, while it has become somewhat easier to get your hands on new-gen consoles, doing so still requires diligence and patience—unless you want the smaller, cuter Series S, or can wait for shipping. Otherwise, much like last year, if you were hoping to walk in and out of a store with a brand-spanking-new console in hand, you’re likely out of luck.
Inventory In Brick-And-Mortar Stores Is Unreliable
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You might be tempted to call up your local physical retailer like Best Buy or GameStop with the goal of buying a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X in the store. That’s certainly a possibility, though it depends on the console you’re going for.
A GameStop associate at a Manhattan, New York location told Kotaku over the phone that Sony’s system is “rarely” in stock and when it is on the store shelves, it’s gone within the week. The Xbox Series X is “a little more common,” the associate said, but the same inventory issue arises: When it is available, it’s sold out in just a few days’ time. This situation is repeated at other physical stores, including Best Buy and Walmart, with store associates at both retailers telling Kotaku in brief phone interviews that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are “occasionally” in stock but quickly sell out.
Surprisingly, things are a little different at Target. An employee at a Manhattan store said that the PlayStation 5 was actually sitting on the shelves “right now,” but folks looking to buy one couldn’t just walk in, take one to the counter, and check out. Instead, you have to do an in-store pick-up through the company’s website and, if inventory was available, then you could walk in with money and walk out with a PlayStation 5. In an eye-popping twist, the Xbox Series X was immediately available. The employee said, if I really wanted to, I could go buy Microsoft’s console this instant. They were quick to point out, though, that all system purchases—especially on the PlayStation 5—were limited to one per person due to “security concerns.” Yikes.
Online Retailers Are A Bit Better, But Not By Much
If brick-and-mortar stores are unreliable in terms of physical inventory, you may have a better chance at buying a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X online and shipping it to your home. All the major retailers typically have both consoles in stock and if they aren’t available by themselves, you can usually get it bundled with a game or subscription. There are some exceptions here, of course. GameStop, for example, is completely sold out of individualPlayStation 5s and Xbox Series Xs online right now. As is Best Buy on the PlayStation 5, though you can order the Xbox Series X if you have an account.
It’s always finicky ordering something from Walmart, as the company tends to partner with third-party sellers to complete transactions. But, as I’m checking the company’s website right now, PlayStation 5s and Xbox Series Xs are mostly available to purchase online—though the prices for these consoles seem to vary wildly. Target is similarly strange, withbothsystems either being “discontinued for shipping” or relegated to in-store pick-up only—if they are even available at all, of course. One quick note here, though: You could also order the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X directly from Sony and Microsoft’s official websites, and they appear to be in stock. Shipping here seems to be comparable to other major retailers as well, with orders placed now arriving just a few days after Christmas. Not bad.
Hey, You Could Always Just Get An Xbox Series S
It’s just so cute, even when zoomed in.Image: Microsoft
You may have noticed I skipped one whole console: the Xbox Series S. That’s because, as I wrote earlier, Microsoft’s cheaper, smaller system is almost always available. Several associates across the brick-and-mortar stores told Kotaku over the phone that they had “plenty” of Xbox Series S’s sitting on their shelves at the moment. And while I was browsing around multiple online retailers, including Microsoft’s own website, the slimmer sister to the behemoth shoebox Xbox Series X was ready to be ordered.
Sure, it’s not the monster powerhouse that is the Xbox Series X. It can’t output native “true 4K” and only has four teraflops of processing power when compared to the bigger sister’s 12. And yeah, you do only get 512 GB of internal storage instead of 1 TB. But what the system lacks in power is made up by its impressive form factor and accessible price point. If you’re willing to make those minor trade-offs, then the Xbox Series S is an excellent way to get into this current generation of console gaming.
Another year is in the books, y’all. We made it through. The entertainment and technology industries are still getting battered by both the ongoing pandemic and semiconductor shortages, but it does appear that things are smoothing over a little. Maybe this time next year, the forecast of getting a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will be significantly better. At the very least, we don’t have to worry much about bots anymore.
A group of seven lawmakers are sending a letter to the world’s biggest video game companies tomorrow, asking each of them what steps they’re taking to combat “harassment and extremism” in online video games.
As Axios reports, the seven Democratic representatives—including Lori Trahan (Massachusetts), Katie Porter (California) and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon—have all co-signed a letter, which is looking to “better understand the processes you have in place to handle player reports of harassment and extremism encounters in your online games, and ask for consideration of safety measures pertaining to anti-harassment and anti-extremism”.
Unsurprisingly, the list includes companies like Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty, Overwatch), Microsoft (Xbox), Sony (PlayStation), Roblox, Take-Two Interactive (Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K), Riot Games (League of Legends, Valorant), Epic (Fortnite) and Electronic Arts (Battlefield, FIFA & Madden).
Those are all massive international companies, most of them with thousands of employees spread out all over the world, and responsible for some of the planet’s most popular and enduring online games. To want to grill them, when so many of them are based in the US—or at least most popular in the US—is a pretty obvious move!
Hilariously, though, whoever put the list together of which companies to target has clearly just gone down a list of “most popular games”, not “biggest companies”, because among those titans of industry are Innersloth, the developers of Among Us.
Among Us may be a huge hit, but Innersloth are also a tiny team. How tiny? This tiny:
Among Us Wins Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards 2020
Innsersloth’s webiste says the studio currently has 20 employees. I don’t know how much they’re going to be able to explain when their game has you playing as a cute little astronaut, doesn’t have voice chat and only lets players communicate via a menu of pre-written lines.
But then nobody has to legally reply to the letter at all, it’s just a letter, so maybe they can just reply “sorry, think this is meant for Xbox!” and get on with their day.
Neon White was one of 2022’s most pleasant surprised when it landed earlier this year, somehow managing to combine old-school shooters with speed-running, a card game, and Persona’s social links. Now, having been out since June on other platforms, PlayStation owners will finally be able to play the game.
Having originally released on PC and Switch, Neon White is out on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on December 13. And while the PS4 version is going to be a fairly straight port, the PS5 edition will be taking advantage of the superior hardware to run at a constant 120hz, and use the SSD drives to speed up load times (which will make a big difference when you need to restart a level for the 97th time).
Most interestingly, though, and in a move that will set the PS5 version apart from all the others, is that it’ll be using the console’s adaptive triggers. As director Ben Esposito says on the PlayStation Blog:
Neon White also makes use of PS5’s adaptive triggers to make each Soul Card feel unique when you fire them as well as when you discard. Controller Haptics provide an extra level of feedback on top of that. You’ll feel it when you’re moving faster on water and you’ll get a subtle confirmation when you successfully snipe a distant demon. Our goal wasn’t just to make you feel cool, but for you to develop a sixth sense. To turn you into a speedrunning freak.
I’ve spent the past few days trying to figure out why this bizarre concoction of elements clicks, and I think I have it. Last summer, during Neon White’s initial marketing push, Esposito told me, “The energy that powers this game is teen energy. This is what I would have thought was the coolest thing ever when I was a teenager inspired by, like, Y2K era-anime and The Matrix and all this stuff.” Now that the game’s actually in my hands, this ethos is plainly evident—right down to the anime-inspired intro.
The organisers of the Smash World Tour have today announced that they are being shut down after Nintendo, “without any warning”, told them they could “no longer operate”.
The Tour, which is run by a third party (since Nintendo has been so traditionally bad at this), had grown over the years to become one of the biggest in the esports and fighting game scene. As the SWT team say:
In 2022 alone, we connected over 6,400 live events worldwide, with over 325,000 in-person entrants, making the Smash World Tour (SWT, or the Tour) the largest esports tour in history, for any game title. The Championships would also have had the largest prize pool in Smash history at over $250,000. The 2023 Smash World Tour planned to have a prize pool of over $350,000.
While this will be a disappointment to SWT’s organisers, fans and players, it has also placed the team in a huge financial hole, since so many bookings and plans for the events had already been made. As they say in the cancellation announcement:
We don’t know where everything will land quite yet with contracts, sponsor obligations, etc — in short, we will be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars due to Nintendo’s actions. That being said, we are taking steps to remedy many issues that have arisen from canceling the upcoming Smash World Tour Championships — Especially for the players. Please keep an eye out in the coming days for help with travel arrangements. Given the timeline that we were forced into, we had to publish this statement before we could iron out all of the details. All attendees will be issued full refunds.
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The move blindsided the SWT team who had believed, after years of friction, they were starting to make some progress with Nintendo:
In November 2021, after the Panda Cup was first announced, Nintendo contacted us to jump on a call with a few folks on their team, including a representative from their legal team. We truly thought we might be getting shut down given the fact that they now had a licensed competing circuit and partner in Panda.
Once we joined the call, we were very surprised to hear just the opposite.
Nintendo reached out to us to let us know that they had been watching us build over the years, and wanted to see if we were interested in working with them and pursuing a license as well. They made it clear that Panda’s partnership was not exclusive, and they said it had “not gone unnoticed” that we had not infringed on their IP regarding game modifications and had represented Nintendo’s values well. They made it clear that game modifications were their primary concern in regards to “coming down on events”, which also made sense to us given their enforcement over the past few years in that regard.
That lengthy conversation changed our perspective on Nintendo at a macro level; it was incredibly refreshing to talk to multiple senior team members and clear the air on a lot of miscommunications and misgivings in the years prior. We explained why so many in the community were hesitant to reach out to Nintendo to work together, and we truly believed Nintendo was taking a hard look at their relationship with the community, and ways to get involved in a positive manner.
Guess not! In addition to Nintendo now stipulating that tournaments could only run with an official license—something SWT had not been successful applying for—the team also allege that Panda went around undermining them to the organisers of individual events (the World Tour would have been an umbrella linking these together), and that while Nintendo continued saying nice things to their faces, Panda had told these grassroost organisers that the Smash World Tour was definitely getting shut down, which made them reluctant to come onboard.
You can read the full announcement here, which goes into a lot more detail, and closes with an appeal “that Nintendo reconsiders how it is currently proceeding with their relationship with the Smash community, as well as its partners”.
The Xbox Series S is one of my favorite purchases. It’s the little machine that could, a less powerful version of a next-gen console, that somehow is able to run everything anyway. Today you can get one for under $200, the cheapest it’s ever been—even cheaper than last week’s cheapest ever. You know, if you don’t mind being part of the evils of corporate America.
I know this reads like one of those posts where Kotaku gets a giant wad of cash for every purchase, but honestly, I’m writing this up because it’s so damned cheap. The catch is you need to buy it through Amazon, and Amazon is awful.
So, you know, having $40 on your Amazon account is the same as having $40 in your bank account that you’d have spent on Amazon anyway. In fact, the next $40-worth of stuff you buy from Amazon will feel like it’s free! It doesn’t matter that you put the money there yourself, it’ll still feel like a free thing when you order, and the checkout says it’s covered. We’re so stupid.
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However, you do end up getting a really awesome console, while giving Microsoft, that already sells it at a loss, far less money. Sure, you’ll end up spending a fortune more on expanded storage for it, because the S comes with a ludicrous 364GB free on its puny SSD. And yeah, you’re going to pay a monthly tithe to Game Pass for there to be any point in owning it. And then you’ll need that second controller…
Capitalism is evil! But we still want games consoles, and this is the cheapest way you’re going to get a brand new one. Now, who wants to give me a job in advertorial?
Image: Warner Bros. / Devolver Digital / Bandai Namco / Innersloth / Kotaku / Mia Stendal / Bibadash (Shutterstock)
On an average day, my friends might ask me how my job is going. I’ll smile, tell them “It’s going great,” and then launch into a story about one of the most fucked up things they’ve ever heard of. And now I get to give the recap to you.
Spooky season is upon us, but the chronically online gamers at Kotaku know that terrifying shit is happening in our space all the time. It’s not just the games that are occasionally horrifying—it’s also how the industry grinds humans into dust, how giant corporations are increasingly looking to put the screws to the average consumer, and how abuse of power comes as no surprise.
Some of the spookiest gaming news stories this year are sad. Some of them are funny. Others will make you want to pull your hair out over the general state of the world. But hey, me too! Let’s be scared and [some other unidentifiable emotion] together!
I’m sorry, player, I’m afraid I can’t let you play this game.Image: Blizzard / Kotaku
Right now there’s a Halloween event running for Overwatch 2, but a fair amount of players are facing a different kind of terror: A previously known server error with the code “LC-208” appears to be disproportiantely hitting players after the most recent update.
While server and connection errors often happen for online games, “Overwatch 2 Console Error LC-208” is currently plaguing a large number of players on console, preventing them from connecting to servers and playing the game. Blizzard has its own steps for working around this issue, as it’s been around since the launch of the game, though not in such numbers. Until Blizzard issues a broader statement or additional fix, players have been discovering quirky, unexplainable ways to fix it, involving signing in on PC first or loading into the game’s firing range and quitting before hitting matchmaking, though these aren’t necessarily bullet-proof prescriptions.
Kotaku has reached out to Blizzard for comment but didn’t hear back prior to publication.
Since yesterday’s Halloween update, search results on Twitter, Reddit, and even Overwatch 2’s own forums have started turning up countless reports of players not being able to enter the game. The problem, given the error code’s info, seems to hit console players only. Anecdotally it seems to be hitting PS4 and PS5 players the most, though many Xbox players are reportedly facing the error as well.
A main thread for the LC-208 issue in Blizzard’s official forums, with nearly 300 replies and over 2,500 views, starts with “LC-208’d after the Halloween event update. Never had an issue with this before. Can’t get into the game.” “I tried everything to fix the Login Error LC-208” Twitter user Phish (no, not the band) says. “I have signed out of my battle net account, restarted my [router], restarted my game, used a different wireless connection, tried using ethernet, and redownloaded the game and I am still getting LC-208.”
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They’re not alone, as countless tweets and Reddit threads read similarly. Some have found non-optimal workarounds. Twitter user hatsune niiku reports bypassing the LC-208 error on console by entering the game’s firing range on PC, closing the game, and then logging in on console. “Worked for me just now,” they say.
Sadly, not everyone has a gaming PC at the ready to try this out, nor is it an actual fix for the problem. Blizzard recommends the following steps for solving LC-208 error. Hopefully it will work out for you:
If your console account is linked with your Battle.net account, you need to have a BattleTag. If you have a BattleTag but your accounts are not linked, follow the connection steps linked below to resolve the error.
Note: If your Battle.net account is connected to your console account, disconnecting it and reconnecting can resolve the error.
1. Check your network configuration to find any issues with your firewall, router, or port settings.
2. Reset your network devices to make sure your router hasn’t become flooded with data.
3. If you’re using a wireless connection, optimize your internet connection to rule out a connection issue.
4. Run your console’s built-in connection test (Playstation 4) (Xbox One) (Nintendo Switch).
5. Use your console’s internet browser to run a Looking Glass test. This will help determine if the problem is between your console and our servers.
If you’ve held off on building up a digital library of games, the original Red Dead Redemption is here to remind you that you might not be missing out after all. Rockstar’s 2010 open world Western was just removed from PS Now/Plus after six years. And as the industry moves to include more subscription and streaming services, it’s not likely to get any better.
As first spotted by Twitter news account @videotech_, the original Red Dead Redemption evaporated from Sony’s PlayStation streaming titles under PS Plus. First included in 2016 as part of the formerly-named PS Now service, Red Dead is notable for having never received a remaster, despite the celebration it and its zombified expansion earned. Sony’s streaming service remained the only way to play the game on PlayStation consoles after the PS3. Gamers will now have to hunt down a disc for a compatible Xbox console or dive into the waters of emulation to enjoy John Marston’s debut story.
Playing the original Red Dead Redemption via backwards compatibility on Xbox is perhaps the most direct and best way to play it currently. The game received an enhanced update on Microsoft’s console a few years ago, upping the resolution to 4K on Xbox Series X and 1440p on Series S. That said, hopefully you’ve got access to a good physical copy if you don’t want the digital version, which is still only available in Xbox’s storefront (who could blame you at this point?). With an initial release date of 2010, scratches might be the least of your concern given how susceptible aging DVDs are to disc rot.
GTA Series Videos
For those willing to roll up their sleeves with a totally legal copy of the game, RPCS3 offers a path to emulating the experience on PC. For everyone else, this is a reminder that hanging onto the games you like is sometimes worth it. While we’d like to hope these digital services we pay into every month will keep these games accessible, today iss a reminder that such hopes can be dashed real fast.
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It’s almost as if these services are more about ongoing profit streams than legacy preservation. Hmm.
