Sony continues to change the game of photography with the recent introduction of the Alpha 9 III camera, equipped with the world’s first full-frame global shutter image sensor, now available in the Philippines.
This impressive camera boasts top-of-the-line, innovative features that will open up a new world of possibilities for both beginner and professional photographers alike to capture that decisive moment. Hence, the Sony Alpha 9 III is quickly becoming a go-to camera for some photographers, including Sony Alpha Professional Jiggie Alejandrino and independent documentary photographer Martin San Diego.
Changing the game of photography with the world’s first full-frame global shutter image sensor
Sony has established a new dimension of camera performance with the world’s first global shutter full-frame stacked 24.6 megapixel CMOS image sensor, with the capability of shooting continuous bursts of up to 120fps with AF/AE tracking and a maximum shutter speed of 1/80000 second, combined with the latest image processing engine BIONZ XR®.
These features capture fast-moving subjects with absolutely no image distortion and preserve split-second moments all in stunning detail, which are only possible through the sensor’s global shutter system. Unlike a regular rolling shutter system, the Alpha 9 III’s global shutter system exposes all pixels simultaneously, eliminating flicker in single images or flash bonding.
“My favorite feature of the Alpha 9 III camera is the global shutter. Aside from the fact that it allows me to capture bursts of up to 120FPS, [the global shutter] changes the way flash photography is used, as it makes carrying huge flash units to projects obsolete,” Jiggie shared about the benefits of the camera in his work.
Along with the global shutter system, the camera’s designated AI processing unit uses Real-time Recognition AF (autofocus) to recognize a wide variety of subjects with high precision. By combining the camera’s high-speed performance with the sensor’s highly accurate subject recognition performance, it is possible to easily photograph decisive scenes and moments that cannot be captured with the naked eye.
The Alpha 9 III is also equipped with the newly installed Pre-Capture function that allows the user to go back up to 1 second and record the moment before pressing the shutter.
“The pre-capture feature is a dream for photojournalists and sports photographers. Paired with flawless autofocus and blazing frame rates of up to 120 fps, missed shots are now a thing of the past,” Martin exclaimed, underlining the camera’s ability to capture every moment in the eyes of the photographer. “The imaging technology in this camera is as transparent as ever, there’s almost nothing between you and the moments you want to be captured. Plus there’s just this unique confidence when you hold this camera. You just know it won’t fail on you.”
Capture the action even for videos
The Alpha 9 III camera with its global shutter image sensor can also capture videos with no distortion. The Alpha 9 III captures 4K movies at up to 120p, and at 60p with full pixel readout and 6K oversampling.
The AI processing unit in the Alpha 9 III camera supports movies with accurate subject form and movement recognition, providing a significant improvement in human eye recognition performance with Real-time Recognition AF and Real-time Tracking, automatically recognizing, tracking, and focusing on the eyes of a specified subject.
The Alpha 9 III also has the image creation process S-Cinetone™, making human skin and subjects stand out beautifully by creating natural highlights.
Streamlined for pros with the camera’s advanced operability and flexibility
Sony has listened to the voices of professional photographers and created operability and reliability that supports professional image makers with an improved, ergonomic design and a compatible VG-C5 vertical grip (sold separately) for long shooting sessions.
New features for the Alpha 9 III include a playback image filter that allows the user to efficiently select many images using high-speed continuous shooting and a function menu that can be used even during image playback, strongly supporting professional workflows from shooting to delivery.
For both Jiggie and Martin, the Alpha 9 III has truly redefined their work by closing the gap between capturing and image editing. As shown by some of the country’s top players in the photography industry, the Alpha 9 III is a perfect partner for those looking to upgrade their photography game, enhancing their passions to the next level.
“This camera is made for the future,” Jiggie shared, emphasizing how the Alpha 9 III is a camera that his fellow photographers in the industry must look forward to. “I can imagine this will be the must-have camera for the Paris Olympics this year,” Martin added.
Availability
The Alpha 9 III is now available in the Philippines with an SRP of PHP349,599. To learn more about the Alpha 9 III, visit https://bit.ly/SonyA9III.
Last week, thanks to the Final Fantasy VIIRebirth demo, some old video game discourse returned and overtook social media: The use of yellow paint to mark certain in-game objects or ledges. All it took was a now-viral tweet of Cloud climbing some yellow rocks in the new demo and a comment about how yellow paint was a “virus” and, bam, the debate is raging all over again. Like a comet returning for another scheduled pass by Earth, the yellow paint topic has once again predictably appeared, leading to endless takes, jokes, threads, opinions, and arguments. Why is this topic so incredibly capable of sucking in everyone around it for days or weeks on end? Well, it’s not really because of the paint, but everything the yellow splotches represent. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Welcome back to the Connected States, the project that involves me living in a van for a year, driving around and telling stories. After going live last week I was absolutely overwhelmed by the positive response. I received so many tips, well-wishes, and offers of help that I haven’t been able to respond to them all yet. It was truly moving,
Former NASA Astronaut Leland Melvin on the “Overview Effect”
When we last left off I was in Iowa City, Iowa, which is not a very creative name for a city, so I moved on. By that point, though I’d left myself very little time. I needed to be in Detroit by 9:30am the next day so I could finally do my TSA Pre-check interview, and Detroit was 490 miles away. I drove until I got very tired, whereupon I pulled into yet another Walmart parking lot and slept for 2.5 hours, and then kept going. My dad had recommended The Burning Room, a book by Michael Connelly, so I downloaded it on Audible and that did a good job of keeping me alert.
Photo: Brent Rose
The real reason I was heading to Michigan was to see one of my oldest and best friends get married. David and I go back to 7th grade, but many of the guests would be people we had gone to high school with. It’s still a pretty tight-knit crew, as, for various reasons, many of us had left our small California town for Brooklyn during the last decade, and so we’d formed a sort of “I miss real burritos” support group. Anyway, the wedding would be a couple hours north but first we decided to explore Detroit proper a little. We met up with David’s old roommate Blair who grew up in the area and had since returned, prodigal son style.
If I had to pick one word to describe Detroit it would be “powder keg,” which is two words, so I would have lost that game. But that’s what it is. There is so much potential energy in that city, and it’s just waiting for something to set it off. It’s also volatile as hell. I’ve never seen a place that had been so obviously fucked by a single industry. Big auto burned these people, and these people are pissed.
Photo: Brent Rose
Much of what you see on the news is true. There are rows upon rows of abandoned houses. Some houses—and not just a couple—have been burned to the ground. Everywhere you go you see desperate people. But Detroit is on the cusp of major changes. Real estate is so cheap that a lot of rich, white tech-industry type folks are buying up massive amounts of property, just because it’s cheap and they can. The artists have already moved in, and just like in any other city, once the artists move in they yuppies aren’t far behind.
Photo: Brent Rose
And so you see the original Detroiters in a hard spot. They want Detroit to keep its identity and so change is fearsome, but they also realize that what the city needs more than anything is jobs. And so there’s a precarious acceptance of the new wave pushing in. Tech is being welcomed in, as long as it doesn’t overstep its bounds. But it will. It always does. And I don’t know what the aftermath to that will be.
Photo: Brent Rose
What I found to be most inspiring, though, is the creative response Detroit has had to all of this change. Take, for example, Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project on the East Side, which has been around for 29 years now. It takes found objects, rubble, and abandoned houses and transforms them into something beautiful and inspiring.
Photo: Brent Rose
Photo: Brent Rose
[More from the Heidelberg Project]
Photo: Brent Rose
[Gabby in front of the MBAD African Bead Museum]
The same could be said of MBAD African Bead Museum. Not only does this shop, inside of a highly decorated but otherwise unassuming house, have the most amazing collection of beads I’ve ever seen, but it serves as a conduit for the community. There I spoke with a woman named Gabby, of the Detroit Poetry Society, whose greeting for everyone was “Peace,” a sort of mantra she hoped would come true. She talked of the changes she’s seen, and of the importance of finding common ground among all people, which isn’t so unlike the goal of Connected States.
Photo: Brent Rose
Photo: Brent Rose
The area around the MBAD Museum hosts an incredible array of open-air art, similar to the Heidelberg Project, but this is mostly made by the artist Olayami Dabls, who owns the museum as well. It’s at once breathtaking and heartbreaking.
Photo: Brent Rose
[Wedding backdrop]
But Michigan isn’t just Detroit. We left the city for Saginaw, a couple hours north, where my friend Leila, the bride, grew up. I kept my van (Ashley, “The Beast”) parked either at her parents beautiful home, where the wedding took place, or in the hotel parking lot where some other weddings guests were staying. The wedding was a three-day Bangladeshi affair, but I stayed for five. I think I needed the peace and quiet, and I’ll forever be grateful for the hospitality Leila’s family showed me.
Photo: Brent Rose
[Late night hangs in the van with some of my favorite people in the world.]
I have to say, taking the van to a wedding is kind of the best. This is the third one I’ve brought it to, and aside from the fact that you don’t have to pay for a potentially expensive hotel room, you can park it pretty much wherever you want and set up camp. It ended up being a sweet spot for after-partying, but it served an even more useful purpose.
Just before the wedding was set to begin, the sky opened up and the rain came pouring down in buckets. This was just before the groom’s family and friends were supposed to parade to the house and strike a deal to gain entry (a really fun tradition). There were dozens of us standing in a field and getting absolutely soaked. So we piled into the van. Not everyone, of course, but we managed to get 14 people in there, including the groom, who stayed dry for the 15 or so minutes before the storm passed. It was clutch. I even broadcast my first Periscope video from the middle of the chaos.
Saginaw hosted another first for me. The bride’s family had an old Sea-Doo jet ski in the garage, and we busted it out on the small lake there. We tied a rope to the back of it and I pulled my trusty surfboard out of the trunk, a 5’ 8” Rusty DWART made with Varial foam. Making the transition from prone to standing was extremely tricky. You have to get dragged on your belly fast enough so the board starts planing. Then you wedge your back foot against the traction pad, and slide your front knee up underneath you. Then you need to take the rope with your back hand, so you’re reaching across your body, and use your front hand to stabilize the nose of the board as you pop up.
It took about six tries before I got it, but once I did, it was unbelievably satisfying. I’ve never gone anywhere near that fast on a surfboard, and the lake was so glassy it was like carving through a mirror. Also, falling really hurts at that speed. I had a good bellyflop dismount and it felt like the entire lake punched me in the gut.
Leaving Saginaw, I stopped to get an oil change, and then I just sat there for an hour, unsure of which way to go. This was the first time this trip that I could really pick any direction I wanted. I’d originally thought I’d head back through Detroit and spend some time with friends and family in Chicago, but people kept speaking with reverence of the Upper Peninsula (“the UP”) of Michigan. So I put the question to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. It was time to see if the social experiment part of this project had any legs.
Within half an hour I had almost 50 responses, most of them saying to go north, citing reasons like they’ve seen Chicago a million times, and they wanted something less explored. I took this all in. I knew there would be better opportunities for tech stories in Detroit and Chicago, but I’d probably be passing through that way in the early fall anyway… Screw it, I’m going north!
A gentleman named Ben pointed me toward the Traverse City Film Festival, which is Michael Moore’s baby. I got word that the opening night party would be that night, so I quickly reached out to them, said I was with Gizmodo, and could I have press credentials. Five minutes later I was set and driving thataway.
Photo: Brent Rose
[Top of the Park Place Hotel, with an abomination of a “Manhattan”]
Nick didn’t live in TC, but he had a friend there named Phil who he linked me up with. Phil recommended I check out the Park Place Hotel which would provide a view of the whole town. It was beautiful up there, but I ordered a Manhattan and it was served on the rocks, so the whole place should probably be burnt to the ground. I did meet a lovely woman named Wendy who was there with her whole family. She’d lived in Traverse City most of her life, and made me feel very welcome.
From there, Phil advised me to check out a Cider House. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the best cider I’ve ever had in my life. It was so perfectly balanced and it didn’t have any of that cloying sweetness. The lavender and elderberry were especially good. Really nice and dry. I spoke to Karen who runs and/or owns the place (forgive me for being unsure, but I was drinking cider), who told me all about their organic process. I highly recommend quaffing it out if you can find it.
Photo: Brent Rose
Photo: Brent Rose
[These people randomly came up to me and insisted on taking a photo together.]
From there I found the the Traverse City Film Festival party. An open-air deal that took over two city blocks. It was there that I finally met Phil, who was there with his friends. We gorged on the local foods on offer, which were absolutely amazing. The whole food scene in Traverse City is insane. I’ve never seen a U.S. town so small with so much good grub. Definitely a foodie haven. We spend the rest of the party listening to the lyrical stylings of Rick Chyme, which I really enjoyed.
Photo: Brent Rose
[Rick Chyme on the mic]
It turned out that Phil’s girlfriend Emily is good friends with Karen, so we ended up after-partying in the closed-up pub. The after-after party was in the van, where Phil, Rick, and I ended up lounging as I made maple old fashioneds and sazeracs.
Photo: Brent Rose
In the morning, Phil came through and showed me the project he’s been working on, a book for the 50th anniversary of the Super Bowl. The foreword was by Dwight Clark, so I was sold. I flipped through the book and said I’d get one for my dad for Christmas, which is true. You can check it out here. Plug alert over.
Photo: Brent Rose
Basically, I couldn’t imagine a better beginning to the social experiment element of this trip. The very first try found me good people, good food, good cider, and good times in a place I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Truly incredible.
Today I’ll be continuing north to the Upper Peninsula. Maybe to Pictured Rocks, which I hear is incredible. Giz’s Andrew Liszewski made me promise I’d eat some fudge in Mackinac, and well, a promise is a promise. If you’ve got good people or places or things up north, let me know, would you? I hope to be updating from the road more regularly, so I hope you’ll follow along. You can find more photos from this leg in a gallery at ConnectedStates.com. Thanks for reading.
-Brent Rose 7.30.15 Traverse City, MI
Photo: Brent Rose
Connected States is a new series from Brent Rose in collaboration with Gizmodo about living a truly mobile life. Brent will be traveling the U.S. in a high-tech van, telling stories from the road. New episodes will appear every week on Gizmodo, with more content being released in between. He is currently soliciting ideas for places to go, things to see, and people to talk to. Follow him on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and ConnectedStates.com
All photos in this entry were taken with a Sony A7s. The video was shot with a GoPro Hero4 Black, and the Instagram shots came from my LG G4.
Were you bummed Final Fantasy VII Rebirth didn’t make an appearance? Well you’re not alone. Good news, though! On February 6, 2024, we’ll be treated to yet another State of Play showing, this time with a closer look at the upcoming second chapter of the Final Fantasy VII remake project.
And that wraps everything we saw at tonight’s State of Play. Which games are you most excited about?
Two weeks ago, news broke that actor Kaitlyn Dever was joining the cast for the second season of HBO’s The Last Of Us TV series—which is still floating along without a release date, with “some time in 2025” the best anybody in TV land can guess. But despite that mild ambiguity, Dever’s casting kicked off a small firestorm of speculation, because it was revealed that she’d be playing a character named Abby Anderson when she joined the Emmy-winning video-game adaptation’s second season—which means The Last Of Us is almost certainly diving whole hog into the story of 2020’s The Last Of Us Part II. And that means things are about to get … messy.
The Last of Us’s Lamar Johnson On Learning Sign Language For The Show
[Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for 2020 video gameThe Last Of Us Part II—and, likely, for at least some of the plot elements of the still-filming second season of HBO’s The Last Of UsTV show.]
Because while the critical consensus on Part II has mostly calmed down in the four years since its release—give or take some moderate consternation lately at the fact that Sony has already rolled out a “remastered” version of the hardly retro game, out last week–the game was something of a lightning rod when it first came out. Some of that wasn’t developer Naughty Dog’s fault. (A high-profile leak from the game’s development, showcasing several cutscenes and character models, fired up the kinds of chuds who get angry when female video-game characters aren’t “feminine” enough, to pick one of the more vitriolic examples.) But some of it was in direct to response to the game’s big narrative swings, which were, depending on who you asked, either “bold” or “super-aggressive and kind of manipulative.”
Many of which, we have to assume, will now be inherited by its TV adaptation: Excepting its critically heralded third episode, Craig Mazin’s adaptation of the first game into the show’s first season was almost overwhelmingly faithful–down to the season’s final scene almost exactly mimicking both the dialogue, and the staging, of the game’s famous ending. With game series creative director Neil Druckmann on board for the second season, as he was for the first, it would be shocking to see the series diverge more than a few inches from established canon.
What does that all mean? A few things—all of which could make The Last Of Us’ second season a very weird run of TV.
The Pedro Pascal “issue”
Pedro Pascal, Bella RamsayPhoto: Liane Hentscher/HBO
Anyone hoping to avoid spoilers for either the game series, or the show’s next season, should hop off this train now, because there’s really no way to talk about either without addressing the fungus-encrusted elephant in the room: protagonist Joel Miller’s sudden death, an hour or so into The Last Of Us Part II.
Pedro Pascal, who plays Joel on the show, has, understandably, hedged a bit when asked about this plot element–because how could he not? (Nobody wants the HBO Spoiler Squad on their ass.) But The Last Of Us Part II really doesn’t function as a story without it: Joel’s sudden death, at the hands of a group of survivors who come to the almost ludicrously idyllic community where he and Ellie (Bella Ramsay) have been living out their post-apocalypse, is rooted in both the aftermath of the first game and the narrative obsessions of the second. Everything The Last Of Us Part II wants to say about humanity–and it wants to say a lot—grows out of that early moment of sudden, shocking brutality, one moment of horrifying trauma birthed directly from another.
This was controversial, to say the least, in the games, where Joel was a beloved character played by well-liked voice actor Troy Baker. Applying it to a rising/risen star like Pascal—who did so much work to build a beautiful, broken human out of some fairly stock parts with his performance as Joel in the show’s first season–might be even more disruptive. Pascal and Ramsay both came up through Game Of Thrones, of course, so neither is unfamiliar with being on a series that jettisoned its “star” at a critical early point. But seeing the show’s most marketable star go the way of Logan Roy one episode into its new season is still likely to leave fans a bit discombobulated.
The absolute brutality of Ellie Williams
Bella RamsayPhoto: Liane Hentscher/HBO
If the above paragraphs didn’t clue you in, The Last Of Us Part II is an aggressively grim game. Even its genuine moments of love or levity come with the unavoidable knowledge that something truly awful is right around the corner—and rarely in the form of something as simple as a rampaging fungus monster. That goes doubly true for the character of Ellie, who came of age in the first game/season—and who spends the second game having her last few shreds of innocence sliced off of her piece by piece.
And really, we’re looking forward to seeing what Ramsay, who was excellent in the first season, will do with this material, as Ellie becomes harder and harder, and harder and harder to root for, the further into her need for vengeance she descends. But it’s going to be a lot for audiences, even by the standards of HBO: We’ll be curious to see if the TV show stays true to the moment that would, in a less ugly narrative, be Ellie’s rock bottom—i.e., the confrontation with Mel, for game players—or if it’ll back away from quite that level of character-alienating horror. But either way, we’ll likely depart the show’s second season with very little idea of who, if anyone, we want to see getting what they want out of this broken and miserable world.
A question of perspective
Pedro Pascal, Bella RamsayPhoto: Liane Hentscher/HBO
There’s also a question of structure to be addressed here, requiring us to spoil The Last Of Us Part II’s other big twist: the fact that only about half of the game is played from Ellie’s perspective, with the game rewinding at a major turning point to show what its three violent days in Seattle have been like for Joel’s killer, Abby.
On the one hand, this might actually be easier for the TV show to handle than the game; one of The Last Of Us franchise’s big tricks is adapting techniques from film and media, where they’re less familiar, to the medium of games, and this kind of perspective flip is far closer to old hat for television. That being said, the parts of the game where you play as Abby constitute a huge portion of the game, introducing new characters, stories, motivations, and problems, all to drill in for players that she’s just as much a person, a “protagonist,” as Ellie herself. A 24-hour-long video game can take that kind of time to make its points—a nine-hour TV series, not so much. It’s key to Druckmann’s vision of The Last Of Us Part II that Abby feel as “real” to the player/viewer as Joel or Ellie did. Building that kind of identification, without feeling repetitive or digressive, is going to be a fascinating struggle for the show to handle in a fraction of the time.
Is there room for another “Long, Long Time”?
Nick Offerman, Murray BartlettPhoto: Liane Hentscher/HBO
As we noted above, the first season of The Last Of Us deviated from the game’s plot in only one serious regard—and was rewarded powerfully for it, with critics and viewers alike holding up that digression point, “Long, Long Time” as a series highlight. With Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett moving mountains to flesh out characters who were, in the game, an asshole and a corpse, respectively, the episode served as a necessary antidote to the grimness of the rest of the season, reminding viewers that there was still the possibility of life, even for “the last of us.”
Mazin, and writer Peter Hoar, could fit that material into the series in part because they were adapting a largely episodic narrative: The first Last Of Us plays out as a series of vignettes as much as it is a more cohesive story, and it was fairly simple to swap out the running and shooting of the game’s “Bill’s Town” segment for something with considerably more heart. Just as importantly, it demonstrated at least some justification for the entire show, dialing into quieter, more human moments, at a distance from Joel and Ellie’s story.
The Last Of Us Part II is a much tighter narrative ship, though, with a big chunk of its power coming from the way it buries you in first Ellie and then Abby’s head. And so it remains to be seen where Mazin and his team can find room for a bit of light to shine through. (Even if you zoom out of the Ellie-Abby conflict, the game’s background plot is about a brutal inter-clan war waged between military despots on the one hand and transphobic religious zealots on the other; there’s not a lot of room for gentler shading there.) We suspect that the Abby material will have to stand in for that kind of digression, but her story is so married and mirrored to Ellie’s that it’ll be difficult to get meaningful breathing room out of it.
All that being said: It’s worth stepping back and remembering that we’re talking about a TV show that hasn’t even been filmed at this point, let alone aired. Speculation can only go so far before it just becomes fortune-telling and just as useful. But The Last Of Us’ nature as an adaptation—and one especially beholden to its source material—invites these kinds of questions. The Last Of Us Part II landed like a bomb in 2020, detonating video-game discourse for months around it. We can only imagine what its adaptation to television will do when it arrives some time next year.
Despite The Game Awards officially capping off the end of video game news for 2023, we’ve still got stories to share, from GTA 6 controversies to the inglorious end of E3. Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.
What’s Coming Out Beyond Pokémon: The Indigo Disk | The Week In Games
The drama-filled saga behind one of Steam’s most-anticipated games of 2023 just took its weirdest turn yet. The Day Before maker Fntastic announced it will cease operations less than a week after accusations of swindling players with a massive bait-and-switch when it came to the true nature of its The Last of Us-looking survival game. – Ethan Gach Read More
Valve has a message to all you folks (myself included) who love huffing your Steam Deck exhaust fumes: Stop it. Please.
Have you ever taken a break from playing your Steam Deck to sample the complex fragrances emanating from its exhaust vent? If so, you aren’t alone. Since the release of the handheld PC, many owners have reported that they can’t stop sniffing the fumes that waft out of the Steam Deck during play. It’s become a bit of a meme among Steam Deck owners, with folks often posting online how much they enjoy the distinctive aroma. I’m one of those sickos, sticking my nose right above the exhaust and taking a big whiff each time I play. But someone finally asked Valve about this, and it turns out the company wants you all to knock it off. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
A Florida man is calling on Rockstar Games to pay him $2 million for showing literally one second of a character who looks like him in the reveal trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6. Lawrence Sullivan, AKA “Florida Joker,” accused the studio of stealing his likeness in his latest TikTok video. But a Red Dead Redemption 2 voice actor wasn’t having it. – Ethan Gach Read More
Remember when finding and capturing a Legendary Pokémon felt special? You would stumble upon these powerful creatures whose stories were woven into the world’s history. The Mewtwo encounter in the original Pokémon Red and Blue is an incredible endgame payoff for a story that’s unfolding in the background the whole time. When you finally find it in the Cerulean Cave during the postgame, you understand how significant it is to stand in front of this all-powerful monster. However, in the time since, the series has increasingly broken its own lore to come up with silly excuses for why these god-like entities are available to be caught in subsequent games, and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s Indigo Disk DLC seems to be the latest to continue the trend. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
‘Tis the season, once again, for Rockstar Games to drop another massive (and free) Grand Theft Auto Onlineupdate. And this time, not only has the company added a whole new chop shop business, but it’s also added drift races, new cars, and animals, too. Yes, it took a decade and three console generations, but finally, GTA Online will have animals running around its massive map. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Everything going on with failed Steam zombie shooter The Day Before continues to shock and amaze. The latest wild development is studio Fntastic’s response to the entire self-inflicted debacle: “shit happens.” – Ethan Gach Read More
Image: ESA / Kotaku / Frederic J. Brown (Getty Images)
E3, the video game conference that’s taken place annually in Los Angeles since 1995, is officially dead. After several years of struggles and rumors of its demise, its end was confirmed in The Washington Post’s exclusive interview with president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Stanley Pierre-Louis. – Alyssa Mercante Read More
Today, Sony and Insomniac confirmed that the PlayStation-5-exclusive open-world superhero action game, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, will receive a big, free update in “Early 2024” that will add highly requested features. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
The Last of Us Online is dead. Naughty Dog announced today that the multiplayer spin-off of the hit series is no longer in development, citing concerns about managing ongoing content for a live-service game while still trying to produce the single-player blockbusters the PlayStation studio is famous for.
How Alan Wake 2 Builds Upon The ‘Remedy-Verse’
“We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we’ve been calling The Last of Us Online,” Naughty Dog wrote in a December 14 update. “There’s no easy way to say this: We’ve made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game.”
The studio said that as production on the project ramped up, it became clear that “we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games.” The choices were apparently between becoming a “solely live-service games studio” in the mold of modern day Bungie, which makes Destiny 2, or “continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.”
The Last Of Us Online, which many many fans previously referred to as Factions after the multiplayer mode from the original 2013 PlayStation 3 game, was first announced during Summer Game Fest 2022. The spin-off was billed as the studio’s “biggest online experience” ever, and as large as any of its single-player games.
But Naughty Dog never showed the game beyond vague statements and concept art. Then in May of this year, Bloomberg reported that the production team on the game had be scaled back following negative feedback from an internal review by Bungie, which Sony acquired last year. At the time, the studio posted a statement on Twitter saying that while things were progressing well, the game required more time. By October, however, Kotaku reported that the project had been “put on ice” amid some internal reshuffling and dozens of contracted developers being laid off.
The Last of Us Online was one of a number of new multiplayer projects in development across Sony’s studios as the PlayStation 5 maker invested in a massive shift toward more live-service games. In November, Sony revealed during an earnings call that half of the roughly dozen online games it was working on would be delayed past 2025.
In the meantime, Naughty Dog is still working on a “brand-new single-player game” it plans to reveal sometime in the future.
We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we’ve been calling The Last of Us Online. There’s no easy way to say this: We’ve made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game.
We know this news will be tough for many, especially our dedicated The Last of Us Factions community, who have been following our multiplayer ambitions ardently. We’re equally crushed at the studio as we were looking forward to putting it in your hands. We wanted to share with you some background of how we came to this decision.
The multiplayer team has been in pre-production with this game since we were working on The Last of Us Part II – crafting an experience we felt was unique and had tremendous potential. As the multiplayer team iterated on their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystalized, the gameplay got more refined and satisfying, and we were enthusiastic about the direction in which we were headed.
In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear. To release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games. So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.
We are immensely proud of everyone at the studio that touched this project. The learnings and investments in technology from this game will carry into how we develop our projects and will be invaluable in the direction we are headed as a studio. We have more than one ambitious, brand new single player game that we’re working on here at Naughty Dog, and we cannot wait to share more about what comes next when we’re ready.
Until then, we’re incredibly thankful to our community for your support throughout the years.
Today, Sony and Insomniac confirmed that the PlayStation-5-exclusive open-world superhero action game, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, will receive a big, free update in “Early 2024” that will add highly requested features.
Spider-Man 2’s New Web Wings Make It Feel Like A Proper Sequel
Spider-Man 2 on PlayStation 5 is a very good game. One of the best of 2023! It features fantastic web-swinging, an even bigger New York to explore, new characters, and some wonderful side missions, too. But when it launched in October it was missing some features and options that players really wanted, including New Game+. Insomniac did suggest, before the game’s launch, that an update adding all this (and more) would be out before the end of 2023. We now know, though, that those plans have shifted ever so slightly.
On December 13, Insomniac Games announced that Spider-Man 2‘s next big update was being worked on, but it required “more testing” to “ensure the quality is up to [Insomniac’s] standards.” As such, the studio is aiming for an “Early 2024” release for the update, with a full list of what will be included coming closer to release.
Insomniac teased that this update isn’t just adding New Game+, but even more fan-requested features, including the ability to change the time of day in the city, swap tendril colors when using symbiote powers, and replay specific missions. And the studio says this isn’t even all of what it has planned to add to Spider-Man 2 on PS5 next year.
“We can’t wait to share more with you in the future,” Insomniac said. “In the meantime, we appreciate your patience as our team works to finish our next update for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2!”
While some fans might be disappointed that the update has slipped into next year, that’s only a few weeks away at this point, and I’d rather the people working on this game get some time off for the holidays instead of crunching to get an update out. Spider-Man 2 is fantastic already. I can wait a few more weeks to change the time of day.
This story is part of our new Future of Gaming series, a three-site look at gaming’s most pioneering technologies, players, and makers.
Time will tell if those “PS5 Pro” rumors have any truth behind them. But until then, discussion about a hypothetical PS5 upgrade is a good opportunity to flesh out what we’d even want from such a machine in the first place.
So we turned to you, dear readers, to discover what would compel you to spend another couple-hundred bucks on an upgrade to Sony’s current console.
As suspected, the desire for an upgrade to the PS5 isn’t universal. Many of you said there was no need for one, regardless of whatever bells and whistles it might offer. Meanwhile, others made it clear that if such a thing were to exist, then it ought to deliver very clear performance standards. Other desires drifted into the “probably never gonna happen” category, especially those concerning backwards compatibility for games that pre-date the PS4.
Let’s dig into what you had to say about a possible “PS5 Pro.”
Gaming’s biggest night has come and gone, and perhaps the biggest surprise of all was just how little time devs were given to thank their family, fans, and recently deceased colleagues during their acceptance speeches. But before that, we finally got our first in-depth look at Rockstar’s GTA 6, the most anticipated game in a decade. Here’s your cheat sheet to the week’s biggest news.
Rockstar Games has confirmed that, at least at launch, the company’s long-awaited open-world crime sim, Grand Theft Auto VI, will launch on Xbox Series X/S and PS5 only, with no mention of a PC version. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is often heralded as one of the best adventure games of the past 25 years. With the nefarious Ganon once again scheming to conquer the land, it’s up to Link to traverse through time, space, and yet another aggravating water temple to save the Kingdom of Hyrule. While the epic for the N64 is celebrating a major birthday this year, inspiring tribute mash-up videos and social media celebrations, another classic Zelda title is quietly celebrating a major milestone of its own. – Jen Glennon Read More
The Day Before kicked off 2023 as one of the most wishlisted games on Steam. Now, after endless controversies, the self-proclaimed open-world survival-horror MMO styled after The Last of Us is finally in Steam Early Access, and it’s getting panned. The first players to lay hands on the much-hyped zombie shooter are sharing footage of game-breaking glitches and leaving thousands of negative reviews. – Ethan Gach Read More
Overwatch 2 season eight begins today, December 5, but Blizzard showed off its new skins, events, and latest tank hero, Mauga, before kick-off. And the sentiment from players about the skins for season eight has been mixed—Baptiste’s formal wear is a standout, but it’s sandwiched between some real stinkers and an unremarkable Mythic Skin. But one cosmetic has stood out for all the wrong reasons: Mercy’s Year of the Dragon event skin. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
2023’s The Game Awards just wrapped. Did you watch it? Well, no worries if you missed it (or had something better to do) as we’ve rounded up every major game trailer and world premiere you could want to watch in a single sitting. So if you’re looking to check out a new trailer or catch up on all the games that were announced this year, you’re in the right place. – Claire Jackson Read More
A seven-second TikTok reverberated across the internet over the weekend, after it claimed to show the “first look” at in-game footage of a city in Grand Theft Auto VI, the open-world blockbuster whose official trailer is just a day away. Frantic speculation about whether the footage was real or not ensued, including unverified rumors that the leak involved a Rockstar Games developer’s own kid. – Ethan Gach Read More
While Sony acquired Destiny 2 maker Bungie for $3.6 billion in 2022, it repeatedly claimed the creator of Halo and other hits would remain an “independent subsidiary.” Now IGN reports that if Bungie’s sci-fi MMO keeps failing revenue targets, Sony could dissolve its existing board of directors and take full control of the roughly 1,100 person studio. – Ethan Gach Read More
After a long and tumultuous road, Cyberpunk 2077 appears to be getting its final major update today. The sprawling patch includes a new ridable metro system and more romance options, as well as a host of other tweaks, changes, and additions. Unless it ends up breaking something big in the game, consider patch 2.1 Night City’s last overhaul until Cyberpunk 2 arrives a decade or so from now. – Ethan Gach Read More
Gamers are a passionate bunch, and we’re no exception. These are the week’s most interesting perspectives on the wild, wonderful, and sometimes weird world of video game news.
The Top 10 Most-Played Games On Steam Deck: August 2023 Edition
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, the new animated series based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels, is out on Netflix. The eight-episode series reunites the voice cast of the 2010 live-action movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and is a hilarious blend of the series’ quick wit and well-measured pop culture references. All of this sounds like a recipe for success, right? Well, it’s a little more complicated. Read More
Ubisoft’s new The Divisiongame isn’t even out yet, as it’s still in beta testing and won’t launch officially until 2024. But after trying the beta, I already want one feature from the upcoming game to become standard in every video game I play in the future. Read More
OpenAI is the research organization behind ChatGPT, the AI-generated chatbot that took the internet by storm last year for its capacity to have really weird conversations with tech journalists. It’s at the center of Microsoft’s big bet on generative AI tools transforming the world, gaming, and more, and it’s now at risk of imploding after its CEO, Sam Altman, was mysteriously ousted by the OpenAI board of directors and Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear was desperately recruited to replace him. Here’s all you really need to know about OpenAI to appreciate what a clusterfuck the last few days have been. Read More
How much time has to pass before it becomes acceptable to remaster or even remake a game? 10 years? 15 years? What about three-ish years? Is that enough time between the original and the remaster? Well, that’s what’s happening early next year as Naughty Dog is remastering 2020’s The Last of Us Part II.Read More
Image: Kotaku / Asier Romero / Luis Molinero (Shutterstock)
Whenever a new blockbuster first-person shooter drops, gamers limber up so they can once again argue over how multiplayer matches get made and the algorithmic systems that determine who plays against whom and when. The recent release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is no exception—not long after its multiplayer servers booted on November 10, players began flocking to Reddit, X (Twitter), and everywhere in between to complain about the quality (or perceived lack thereof) of Activision’s matchmaking. But, as with so many issues in the gaming industry, there’s a serious lack of nuance and true understanding at play here. Read More
Remember when it took us seven years to get a new The Last of Us game? Remember when there was even a question about whether or not we’d ever get a sequel to Naughty Dog’s post-apocalyptic action game because the ending was so intentionally ambiguous and thought-provoking?
Now, it seems we can’t go a year without being reminded that Sony thinks as many people should experience this series as possible, while folks associated with the HBO adaptation praise the game in ways that border on the absurd. Now, we’re getting a remaster of The Last of Us Part II, and it feels like we’re reaching peak Last of Us fatigue. Read More
EXCLUSIVE: Getting a leg-up here on our Thanksgiving stretch preview, Apple Studios production of Ridley Scott’s Napoleonwill invade the global box office via Sony this Wednesday, in what’s shaping up to be a $46M WW global start.
Split up for the Wednesday-Sunday stretch, that’s $22M 5-day domestic, and $24M overseas.
Note, it’s not the only wide release over the holiday: There’s Disney’s animated movie Wish, which we’ll tell you more about early next week and there’s the second weekend of everything that’s bowing today: Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Trolls Band Together, Thanksgiving and Next Goal Wins.
Napoleon, starring Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix, is on a 45 day-theatrical window, we hear, before it hits Apple TV+.
Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani in House of Gucci
Fabio Lovino/MGM
We’re told the comp here both domestic and stateside is Scott’s House of Gucci which launched over the 2021 5-day Thanksgiving holiday worldwide when Covid was still top of mind for moviegoers. That Lady Gaga-Adam Driver-Al Pacino-Jared Leto movie in unadjusted for inflation overseas grosses did $12.8M and another $22M in U.S./Canada for a $34.1M global start. Big territories for House of Gucci were Scott’s homeland of the UK ($3.4M opening), France ($1.9M), followed by Mexico at a near $1M.
Napoleon will invade 85% of offshore territories with major territories Belgium, France and the UK going on Nov. 22; Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Netherlands on Nov. 23; and Spain on Nov. 24. China opens on Dec. 1 along with Japan. South Korea will go on Dec. 6.
Stateside, previews begin Tuesday at 3PM in 2,700 sites for the movie which also stars Vanessa Kirby as Napoleon’s wife Josephine. Pic will expand to 3,300 by Wednesday and will screen in Imax, PLFs and select locations in 70MM. Napoleon is currently trending with older guys over 35, followed by males 17-34 and then women over 35. Rotten Tomatoes for Napoleon stand at 67% fresh.
Paramount Pictures /Courtesy Everett Collection
Killers of the Flower Moon, which repped streamer Apple’s foray into wide theatrical releases with Paramount,had a $44M global debut and a $23.2M domestic opening over 3-days back in October in the thick of the actors’ strike. RT critics score notched 93% certified fresh. While the cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemmons and Lily Gladstone put in facetime at the Cannes Film Festival World premiere, it’s only now that they’re fully out there after an entire summer and fall off with the SAG-AFTRA standoff with AMPTP over. The current running total stateside on Killers of the Flower Moon is $61.6M and $138.8M worldwide.
A big difference to look out for in grosses between the two Apple movies is that Killers of the Flower Moon is 3 1/2 hours long, which crimps the number of showtimes, while Napoleon clocks in at 2 hours and 38 minutes. It won’t come as a shock if the latter grosses more.
Sony’s forthcoming smaller PlayStation 5 will make the disc drive swappable, allowing owners to remove or connect it as they wish. However, a new leak of the upcoming slim redesign points to an internet connection being required for the Blu-Ray player’s initial setup, igniting fears it will one day become an obsolete solution for playing old PS5 discs.
Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger
The surprise requirement was discovered through a new leak of the PS5 slim’s box as retailers begin stocking the console for its November launch. Shared with Call of Duty news account CharlieIntel, the images show a disclaimer on the box that reads, “Internet connection required to pair Disc Drive and PS5 console upon setup.”
As the requirement began circulating online, it struck some as unusual and pernicious. “Uhhhh…if this is the case, that is highly concerning and very strange,” tweeted Digital Foundry’s John Linneman. “Hardware connectivity shouldn’t be determined by a server that may not always be available.”
It’s not immediately clear if the internet connection requirement will truly be a one-time thing needed only the first time the console and disc drive are paired, or if it might be necessary every time the drive is taken off and reattached. One concern is that the requirement could make new PS5s unable to read discs at some point far in the future, if the servers utilized by Sony for the pairing are eventually taken offline. If so, it would be another big blow to video game preservation as the medium goes all-digital.
It’s possible that the requirement is just the company complying with an archaic bit of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act intended to prevent piracy. As pointed out byLost in Cult CEO Jon Doyle and others, Section 1201 of the law makes it illegal to “circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work.”
That includes optical drive firmware, and it’s long been a thorn in the side of right to repair advocates. As Wired reported back in 2020, the language has led a lot of older consoles to end up in landfills rather than get resold or re-gifted. Section 1201 was re-examined by the U.S. Copyright office in 2021. While some protections for repair were expanded, it stopped short of adding a full exemption.
Update 11/10/2023 4:31: PS5 slims are now out in the wild, including its detachable disc drive. So how exactly does the DRM work? Well in addition to needing to sync it to the console online first before it can be used, it apparently has to be reconnected to the internet everytime the PS5’s database is rebuilt, something players do from time to time to keep the system working well or because an update or reset demands it.
As the preservation account “Does it play” wrote, “In this scenario, once the service you need to connect to is gone, you can no longer use the disc drive.”
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, a 2003 PlayStation 2 superhero game that was in development by 5,000 Ft. Studios for the PlayStation 2 before getting canceled, has resurfaced after 20 years with a new playable build.
The game preservation group Hidden Palace managed to release a playable version of Daredevil: The Man Without Fear on October 31 via member Casuallynoted, who apparently obtained the build from an anonymous developer of 5,000 Ft. It’s a late prototype with a fair amount of bugs, including possible crashes after the first chapter and getting stuck behind walls. That said, it still features the bones of what 5,000 Ft. Studios and publisher Encore Inc. were working on in collaboration with Sony during the early aughts.
The brainchild of 5,000 Ft. Studios, a Nevada-based developer whose previous credits only included two Army Men ports from 2001, Daredevil: The Man Without Fear started out as a simple project before ballooning in scope. Originally known as Daredevil: The Video Game before adopting the same name as author Frank Miller’s 1993 comic, Daredevil was prototyped as a series of “vignettes” showcasing pivotal moments in the blind crimefighter’s history.
However, as the Lost Media Wiki explains, Marvel’s imminent Daredevil movie project led 5,000 Ft. to rework the concept into an open-world adventure, now also slated for the Xbox and PC. Tensions arose when Sony had very specific requests for new types of gameplay to add to the game, while Marvel wanted it to hew more closely to the upcoming Daredevil movie.
More trouble struck when the developers tried to adapt the then-popular RenderWare engine to the project’s changing needs. After running into serious issues there, they reduced the project’s scope from open-world adventure back to linear brawler. Problems continued as “internal strife” at the studio caused it to miss its February 2003 release. A new date was set for summer, but staff departures and continuing bickering between Sony and Marvel put the final nails in the Daredevil game’s coffin. 5,000 Ft. Studios itself closed in 2012.
Now, though, thanks to an anonymous developer reportedly connected to 5,000 Ft. Studios, a near-final build of the canceled PlayStation 2 game has been released onto the internet via the game preservation group Hidden Palace.
Hidden Palace
Although it wound up getting canceled due to creative differences between Marvel and Sony, based on the video it looks pretty tight. It recalls early-aughts 3D superhero gems such as The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man,with a bit of Tomb Raider mixed in, too.
The game apparently tells an original story based on the 1999 Elektra Lives Again comic and starring Daredevil’s arch-enemy The Kingpin. It’s a shame, then, that it was canceled just before completion. As The Hidden Palace notes, only the Game Boy Advance ever ended up getting a Daredevil game. The much less ambitious Daredevil: The Man Without Fear for Game Boy Advance arrived just in time for the Mark Steven Johnson-directed live-action film.
As Hidden Palace reports, the newly released build of Daredevil: The Man Without Fear is playable, but with several bugs and game-breaking glitches since it’s unfinished. It’s nice that this finally snuck out 20 years later, though still a bummer the project never got to live up to its potential. With the success of Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man series, and the Wolverine game on the horizon, maybe Daredevil will get another shot at video game redemption.
On the frontline of the console wars, it’s difficult to find perspective. Whether you’ve already chosen a side and are deep in the trenches, or you’re just trying to figure out if an Xbox Series X (see on Amazon) or PS5 (see on Amazon) makes a better Christmas gift this year, you’d be hard pressed to find a measured, bipartisan take on the internet. Instead, the seemingly endless battle between Microsoft and Sony is littered with fanboys using Starfield ass mods to “dunk” on each other and CEOs arguing over console exclusives and their perceived value.
Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger
I’m not a console warrior, nor am I a specs girl. I don’t care about framerates or ray tracing all that much; I’m not fussed about the power of processors. I grew up playing PlayStation until my high school boyfriend introduced me to Halo 2, then I bought an Xbox 360 so I could play Halo 3. I currently own a Series S and a PS5, both of which are jammed into a too-small entertainment console in my living room. But there is a distinct delineation between what kind of game I play on each device, and it’s worth discussing: I use my Series S for my competitive shooters, and my PS5 for almost everything else.
Image: 343 Industries
The Xbox comp game
I spend a lot of time playing Overwatch 2 on my Series S, but I also use its rather small storage for Warzone, Apex Legends, and Halo Infinite. These are my core four shooters that I regularly rotate between—I never play those first three on my PS5, even with the console’s extra storage space making it a lot easier to keep (and update) huge games like Call of Duty. There are a few reasons why.
As I mentioned, I got an Xbox so I could play Halo 3, which means I cut my teeth in the FPS world using the heftier Xbox controllers. As such, my hands became molded to them, my fingers grew comfortable with their curves. Even with slight variations in their design since the 360 days (like the controversial d-pad change that removed the disc in the Xbox One controller, or the extra button added with the Series X/S model), Microsoft’s controller has felt ergonomically superior for years.
The setup of the triggers and the joysticks, the way it rumbles, even the sheer heft of its plastic has always made Xbox controllers a more comfortable fit when compared to PlayStation’s DualShock and DualSense, whose symmetrical joysticks give me hand cramps. The size of the PlayStation controllers’ triggers also baffle me, and have historically made my attempts to play anything like Fortnite or Call of Duty rather miserable.
My custom Xbox controller I use every night. Photo: Microsoft / Alyssa Mercante / Kotaku
Then there’s the social aspect—I find it a lot easier to invite people to parties and chirp enemy players on Xbox’s interface. As Twitch streamer Jynxzi often shows during his play sessions, it’s easy in games like Rainbow Six Siege and Overwatch 2 to find a player in your match, navigate to their profile, and send them a friend request or, in Jynxzi’s case, an unhinged voice memo. I use this feature often to reach out to players in Overwatch comp who aren’t talking and (mostly) politely request that they swap a character or heal more when playing as Moira. I don’t find those features as simple on PlayStation.
Of course, my Xbox preference would not exist were it not for Halo 3, the sole reason why I’m a shooter player in the first place. And Halo’s exclusivity to Xbox consoles is a large reason why those same consoles remain my preference for my daily competitive game session. When I have a few bad rounds in Overwatch, I can seamlessly swap to playing some lighthearted matches in Halo Infinite. Everything is right there, at my fingertips.
But aside from Starfield, an Xbox-exclusive RPG that sucked up a good chunk of my time before proving a bore, if there’s a narrative-focused game, I’m playing it on my PS5.
Image: Insomniac Games
The PlayStation prestige
There’s two major reasons why the PS5 is my go-to console for big-budget campaigns: Sony (often exclusively) releases some of the best single player games, and the DualSense’s features make my gaming experience so much better.
The controller’s groundbreaking haptic feedback system does a lot of impressive stuff. It offers different firing modes based on how far down you pull the trigger in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and adds an extra layer to Prowler Stash puzzles in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 by requiring you to apply different pressure on each side. And it feels great when it’s not offering more depth and just, literally, vibing—like when I swing through New York City as Miles Morales or ward off scaries in Alan Wake II. Swiping on the touch pad at its center adds even more layers to a gaming experience, and there’s nothing that delights me more than when a phone call emanates from the built-in speaker. And because Sony knows how powerful its DualSense is, all of the studios working on first-party games make the most of it.
Those first-party titles are, by and large, some of the most polished modern gaming experiences you can get. Whether it’s God of War: Ragnarök or Horizon Forbidden West, Sony’s games are akin to Hollywood blockbusters or fine-tuned supercars—they’re written like ancient epics, acted by icons, and so often without the jankiness that can scar new releases. Whether or not that makes them demonstrably better than other games is not the conversation here, but it is undeniable that they feel like they’re worth $70, especially when you have all the power of the DualSense in your palms.
Of course, the PS5’s storage size is a key element—though I may not care about frames per second, I do love that I can have Skyrim, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, and Alan Wake II stored on there and regularly updated without having to uninstall anything.
Without realizing it, I’ve trained myself to boot up my PS5 when I’m in the mood for a lengthy, relaxed night of gaming that involves scouring worlds for hard-to-find objects or taking on daunting bosses, or power up my Xbox Series S when I want to shoot shit and yell into my headset. The consoles have become intrinsically linked with those different play styles, to such an extreme that, when I tried to play last year’s Call of Duty Modern Warfare II on PS5, I almost immediately shut it off and swapped back to Warzone on my Series S instead.
If you have both consoles, when do you play each and why?
Paddington in Peru will hit U.S. cinemas on Jan. 17, 2025 MLK Weekend, but will debut in the UK about two months prior in Nov. 8, 2024.
Deadline told you first during Cannes that Sony snapped up U.S., Canada and key international including Latin American for Studiocanal and Heyday Films’ threequel.
In the Dougal Wilson directed picture, Paddington heads to Peru to visit his beloved Aunt Lucy, who now resides at the Home for Retired Bears. With the Brown Family in tow, a thrilling adventure ensues when a mystery plunges them into an unexpected journey through the Amazon rainforest and to the mountain peaks of Peru. Screenplay is by Mark Burton, Jon Foster and James Lamont. Story by Paul King, Simon Farnaby and Mark Burton. Paddington in Peru is based on the children’s stories by British author Michael Bond. Paddington is produced by David Heyman and Rosie Alison. EPs are Paul King, Anna Marsh, Ron Halpern, Dan MacRae, Tim Wellspring, Jeffrey Clifford and Naoya Kinoshita. Pic stars Hugh Bonneville, Emily Mortimer, Antonio Banderas, Olivia Colman, Julie Walters, Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin, Jim Broadbent and Carla Tous with both Ben Whishaw and Imelda Staunton returning as the respective voices of Paddington and Aunt Lucy.
Studiocanal developed the movie and is fully financing and releasing in in the UK, France, Germany, Benelux, Poland, Australia and New Zealand as well as through partners in China and Japan. The film is produced by Heyday Films.
A start of production photo dropped today with announcements on social:
Sony, which has a long history with live-action kids movies, i.e., Lyle Lyle Crocodile and Goosebumps, always wanted in on the bear franchise. When the North American rights for Paddington 2 came up in a $30 million-plus auction, Sony was one of the bidders with Warner Bros, though that sequel ultimately went to Heyday’s Harry Potter studio. Through two movies worldwide, Paddington has reaped over a half-billion at the box office with the franchise counting such BAFTA nominations as Best British Film and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Earlier this week, Sony officially revealed the smaller and sleeker PlayStation 5 “slim.” Sure, the console looks a hell of a lot thinner than its gargantuan predecessor, but the PS5 slim’s white void-ass production shot doesn’t do gamers any favors in guesstimating exactly how much space they’d save by purchasing the new console when it launches in November. Luckily, a helpful Reddit user made a mock side-by-side comparison of the PS5 and the PS5 slim to better illustrate just how small it is.
Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger
Prior to NatureCertain’s very helpful post, all prospective PS5 slim owners had to go off of on regarding the new console’s size was, Sony’s announcement blog post, which, toward its butt-end, divulged that the digital-only and disc drive versions are respectively 358 × 96 × 216mm and 358 × 80 × 216mm. But gamers are visual learners, Sony. Would it have been so hard to provide some sort of visual aid comparing the PS5 slim to the OG for scale?
One shortcoming of NatureCertain’s 3D mock-up is that it omitted a side-by-side comparison of the PS5 slim with its disc-less predecessor, as well as an image of the upcoming console with its vertical stand attached for scale. That reminds me: If you were wanting to prop your PS5 slim up in the cool and correct upright position, it’ll cost you another $30 because Sony is selling the vertical stand separately. Sheesh.
A teaser for a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake coming to PlayStation 5 nearly stole the show at Sony’s September 2021 showcase. But reports surfaced last year that the project was already in trouble. Now Star Wars fans have noticed that Sony recently deleted tweets about the game and has hidden the trailer from its official YouTube channel.
Unboxing The Baldur’s Gate 3 Collector’s Edition
Word that the teaser trailer had been removed from PlayStation’s channel first began to spread on September 28 on the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit. Twitter user Crusader3456 later shared a thread showing that Sony’s tweets about the teaser from the original 2021 PlayStation Showcase had also been deleted. The only official mention left appears to be a single tweet promoting multiple games from the livestream.
Screenshot: Sony / Kotaku
It’s possible the highly anticipated KOTOR remake is still alive and this is just some weirdness on the part of Sony’s social media department. It also might be the case that the project, which debuted as a PS5 exclusive, has all but been canceled amid ongoing development issues and massive budget cuts at parent publisher Embracer. Sony and Embracer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bloomberg reported in July 2022 that the developers has spent a significant amount of time and resources on a proof-of-concept demo that failed to past muster at a review meeting. Several senior leads were let go from the project, and the following month development on the KOTOR remake shifted to Saber Interactive in Europe (Aspyr is based in Texas).
Fast-forward a year, and parent company Embracer is instituting cuts across its sprawling portfolio, including canceling games and shutting down entire studios like Volition, after reportedly losing out on a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia. Aspyr also announced in June that it would bail on shipping a promised DLC pack for its Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 remaster on Switch. A fan is now suing.
A successful remake of KOTOR would be a lynchpin project for any publisher, especially as new Star Wars shows flood Disney+ every year. It would also be an incredibly ambitious and challenging endeavor for even the best studio. It’s not yet clear if Embracer has given up hope on the project. Fans certainly still haven’t.
The head of PlayStation is stepping down, Sony announced in a press release today. Jim Ryan, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s CEO, is retiring after just four years on the job. The massive shakeup in leadership comes as the PlayStation 5 breaks sales records and as Sony has doubled-down on prestige blockbuster games like The Last of Us Part 1 and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger
“After 30 years, I have made the decision to retire from SIE in March 2024,” Ryan said in a statement. “I’ve relished the opportunity to have a job I love in a very special company, working with great people and incredible partners. But I’ve found it increasingly difficult to reconcile living in Europe and working in North America.”
Ryan will officially leave the position in April, 2024. Hiroki Totoki, Sony Group Corporation President, COO and CFO, will help with the transition and take on the role of interim CEO of PlayStation once Ryan leaves, and will help with the search for his successor. The news was first reported by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier.
A 30-year veteran of Sony, Ryan was promoted to the top PlayStation job in 2019 after a re-organization saw head of CEO of Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, step down, and President of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, transition into a more background role working with indie game developers.
As head of PlayStation, Ryan oversaw the launch of the PS5, which despite pandemic-era shortages, is now on pace to break sales records thanks to an ongoing lineup of first-party exclusive blockbusters like Horizon Forbidden Westand God of War Ragnarök. His tenure also included the launch of PS VR2, as well as a major pivot by the subscription service PS Plus to more directly compete with Xbox Game Pass’ Netflix-like library of games.
Sony Group Corporation and Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) today announced that SIE President and CEO Jim Ryan has made the decision to retire in March 2024 after almost thirty years with the PlayStation business. To support Mr. Ryan in his transition, Sony Group Corporation President, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki will assume the role of Chairman of SIE effective October 2023. Effective April 1, 2024, Mr. Totoki will be appointed Interim CEO of SIE while he continues his current role at Sony Group Corporation. Mr. Totoki will work closely with Sony Group Corporation Chairman and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida and the management team of SIE to help define the next chapter of PlayStation’s future, including the succession of the SIE CEO role.
Jim Ryan joined Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Europe-based legal entity, Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe (SIEE) — which was then Sony Computer Entertainment Europe — in 1994. Since then, he has held a number of senior positions at the company including President of SIEE, Head of Global Sales and Marketing at SIE and Deputy President of SIE since January 2018, before being appointed SIE President and CEO.
Comment from Kenichiro Yoshida
“Jim Ryan has been an inspirational leader throughout his entire period with us, but never more so than in overseeing the launch of PlayStation 5 in the midst of the global COVID pandemic. That extraordinary achievement made by the entire SIE team has been steadily built on and PlayStation 5 is on track to become SIE’s most successful console yet. I’m immensely grateful to Jim for all his achievements. Respecting Jim’s decision to finish his long career at Sony leaves me with an important decision regarding his succession given the significance of the Game & Network Services business. We have discussed intensively and have determined the new management structure. We aim to achieve Sony Group’s further evolution and growth through bringing even greater success to the Game & Network Services Business.”
Comment from Jim Ryan
“After 30 years, I have made the decision to retire from SIE in March 2024. I’ve relished the opportunity to have a job I love in a very special company, working with great people and incredible partners. But I’ve found it increasingly difficult to reconcile living in Europe and working in North America. I will leave having been privileged to work on products that have touched millions of lives across the world; PlayStation will always be part of my life, and I feel more optimistic than ever about the future of SIE. I want to thank Yoshida-san for placing so much trust in me and being an incredibly sensitive and supportive leader.”
Comment from Hiroki Totoki
“I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Jim Ryan for his outstanding achievements and contributions over his 30-year career at Sony, including the great success of launching the PlayStation 5. The PlayStation business managed by SIE is an essential part of Sony Group’s entire business portfolio. I will work with Jim and the senior management team closely to ensure our continued success and further growth. I am also looking forward to creating the exciting future of PlayStation and the game industry together with everyone at SIE and its business partners.”
Emily Ratajkowski’s podcast has silently ceased operation.
This week, Sony Group booted out “High Low with EmRata” — the same week the company cut a “significant percentage” of its podcast division.
The model’s podcast has been on the air for less than a year. Following its November 2022 premiere, “High Low with EmRata” released three episodes per week on topics “about everything from politics, philosophy and feminism to sex, TikTok and relationships,” as per the podcast description.
According to sources — who requested to remain anonymous — the podcast struggled to sell advertising as brands wanted to gain U.S. consumers, despite its popularity amongst international listeners.
The sources added that Ratajkowski will seek a new company to produce her show, as per Bloomberg.
This is the third time Sony has cut podcast jobs in the past two years. A Sony spokesperson told Bloomberg that the new layoffs involved a “significant percentage of the division.”
“Like many in the industry, we are further streamlining our structure as we continue to shift our creative strategy and focus on building big audiences across a select group of ongoing shows and our subscription business,” the spokesperson shared in a statement to the outlet.
Meanwhile, a Sony Music Entertainment spokesperson added that “the changes did include people from our creative team,” including their Somethin’ Else team — the producer behind “High Low with EmRata”.
![PS5 Slim Disc Drive Comes With Bizarre Online Requirements [Update]](https://reportwire.org/wp-content/uploads/https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fill,h_675,pg_1,q_80,w_1200/33cc344d5c9aedb308480bad5b7555eb.jpg)
