I spend a lot of time putzing around my PlayStation 5: deleting games here, downloading them there, looking for old saves, and trying to talk to friends. It’s made me appreciate every new firmware update, no matter how small or niche the improvements it makes are. And earlier this month, Sony delivered a bunch of satisfying tweaks.
Players got a preview of March’s big 7.0 firmware upgrade back in February, revealing Discord integration, new save data transfer options, and more. It recently went live, and it’s a far cry from the usual opaque “improves system performance” updates. It’s not as big a deal as the PS5 finally getting folders, and there are still plenty of other new features I’d love to see, but it’s another milestone in the platform’s continued improvement.
Use Discord to voice chat with Xbox friends
Screenshot: Discord
Cross-play has been great for bringing people across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC together, but actually trying to communicate with them was still a drag. Discord integration fixes that, and lets you easily start up conversations with anyone and feed the audio through your console.
Plus, it doesn’t even have to be game-specific. Someone playing Rocket League? Another person watching Mandalorian? No problem! Discord is actually great for just chilling together while everyone does their own thing.
Capture gameplay using your voice
It sounds silly, but you can now use the microphone on the DualSense controller to ask the PS5 to record gameplay. Perfect for capturing gameplay in the thick of battle or a tense competition when you don’t want to lose control while toggling over manually. Now if only there was text-to-speech to type out the social media posts sharing my highlights.
Update your DualSense wirelessly
There’s nothing worse than trying to play a game and seeing that your controller needs to get a firmware update. Previously, this required plugging it into the PS5. Now, you can download and install it wirelessly. It was the smallest of inconveniences, and thankfully it’s now gone.
Get variable refresh rates on 1440p monitors
Variable Refresh Rate support came to PS5 last year. It helps the framerate flow more smoothly and makes the graphics look crisper. With the lastest patch, it’ll also work with 1440p monitors, a niche but practical halfway point between 1080p and 4K. I don’t play my PS5 on one of these displays, but I’d be pleasantly surprised if I did.
Receive notifications for save data in the cloud
Image: Sony
Like a lot of PS5 owners, I have a huge library of PS4 games, and save data from all of them backed up in the cloud. Unlike Xbox Series X/S, however, the PS5 doesn’t automatically pull that save data over. But now, it does something almost as good: send a notification prompt when you install a game that supports your existing PS4 data (like a PS5 game where you can transfer saves). Clicking on the prompt will automatically start the transfer, rather than having to go rummaging through a bunch menus.
Join games directly from the party chat
Another button-prompt shortcut, it’s now possible to meet up with friends in-game directly from the party chat menu. It’s a nice time saver considering how often you migh group up to play the same thing, and your friends or clan mates probably already got started before you.
See what your friends are playing more easily
This feature is still somewhat incomplete, but it’s still a step in the right direction. Like with Steam, it’s now easier to see which friends own a game you have or are actively playing it. A small section with that info sits under each game tile on the PS5 home screen. My only quibble is that you have to click through to see which friends own it, and it only tells you someone plays that game if they are online in the middle of an active session. Baby steps.
Request to watch a friend’s game directly from their profile
I rarely use the share screen feature, usually because if I’m online with friends we’re probably already playing something together. Still, it’s another nice shortcut to be able to quickly watch what someone’s playing directly from their profile, skipping another bit of the PS5’s tedious and often esoteric menu scrolling.
Filter games when adding them to a folder
Image: Sony
Alright, game folders are my favorite new feature the PS5 has gotten since launch, and they just got easier to make. When they first went live, you had to scroll through your entire library adding stuff as you went. Now you can filter it by various categories, making the whole organizational process much, much faster. Will I ever play 99 percent of games I stick in the PS5’s folders? Not a chance. But I like doing it all the same. It helps me relax and feel less guilty about my backlog.
It’s possible we’ll get another batch of PS5 tweaks later in the year. “We are always thinking about the features that our fans might want to see and ways to make their gaming experiences on PS5 more fun, social, and connected,” Sony Product Management VP Hiromi Wakai said in a recent interview. “We keep a very long list of features and think carefully about how we prioritize our time and resources to deliver the ones that will make the most meaningful impact on our players’ experience.”
Hopefully PS5 background themes aren’t too far away.
While Japanese games of varying genres are enjoying success these days, the 2000s and 2010s weren’t as kind, especially in Western markets. Since then, there’s been a lot of speculation as to why Japanese games struggled during these years, often from westerners themselves, with some pointing to key game design trends. But recent comments from Final Fantasy’s creator Hironobu Sakaguchi suggest that the decline of unique console hardware, exclusives, and cultural differences is the likely cause.
By the late 1990s, Japanese games like Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Trigger, or Castlevania had become must-play experiences for their inspired stories, excellent technical presentation, and engaging gameplay. But the following two decades were a different story. Anticipated entries like Final Fantasy XIII failed to reach sales expectations with the rise of Western RPGs such as TK (and many felt that train came off the rails starting with 2001’s Final Fantasy X). Newer attempts at franchises like Sakaguchi’s Blue Dragon on Xbox 360 in 2006 were met with lukewarm reception at best. Meanwhile, Western-made games like Mass Effect had become the new gaming sensations. While some may point to declining interests in traditional, linear forms of storytelling in games as a likely reason, Hironobu Sakaguchi suspects that dramatic changes in the hardware used to play games presented a tough road for Japanese devs to follow.
Sakaguchi: ‘Consoles like the NES and PlayStation were very specific hardware’
Speaking to IGN along with Castlevania senior producer Koji Igarashi, Sakaguchi discussed why he feels Japanese games were of “higher quality” for systems with ‘“specific hardware”’ like the NES or PSX. The answer, as many students of video game history might suspect, has to do with those very consoles. With specific hardware configurations produced by Japanese manufacturers, devs at the time had to become experts in how to best utilize these devices, and there was no language barrier to gaining these skill sets. Sakaguchi said:
“[Specific, Japanese-made consoles] made it easier for Japanese developers to master the hardware, as we could ask Nintendo or Sony directly in Japanese. This is why—I realize it might be impolite to say this—Japanese games were of a higher quality at the time. As a result, Japanese games were regarded as more fun, but when the hardware became easier to develop for, things quickly changed.”
Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi added that the “long history of PC culture” in the West was better adapted to the hardware trends that would follow in the 2000s, a trend which continues to this day. The PS5 and Xbox Series consoles more closely match PC hardware than dedicated gaming boxes perhaps ever have. That change wasn’t easy.
Igarashi describes the journey as a tough growing pain. “Japanese developers could no longer rely on their speciality as console developers,” he said, “and had to master PC development.”
While some may be quick to point out, perhaps, that the PS3’s unique and troublesomeCell Broadband Engine certainly fits the criteria of “specific hardware,” it was maybe too specific. Though Sony made incredible promises for its performance (and odd commercials), its unique architecture was a chore for developers around the world, leading Sony to pivot away from it for the PS4. But the 2000s and 2010s were also a time where Japanese games, particularly Final Fantasy, made the switch to multi-platform releases. Devil May Cry 4 was another notable series that made the jump to other platforms. This shattered the trend of focusing on a specific set of hardware constraints. And at the time it didn’t really go over too well. It seems natural now to expect a Final Fantasy to appear on multiple consoles, but the announcement of XIII coming to Xbox 360 was quite the surprise in the 2000s.
Sakaguchi believes that where we play our games also makes a difference
Sakaguchi also said that the “cultural differences” between Japan and the West make meaningful differences in what kinds of games are made. “In the West,” Sakaguchi said, “children often get their own room from a very young age, whilst in Japan the whole family sleeps together in the same room.” He continued, “such small cultural differences can be felt through the games we make today […] I believe that cherishing my Japanese cultural background is what attracts people towards my games in the first place.”
While I for one can say that my private bedroom probably enhanced my experience of Final Fantasy VII, Sakaguchi’s comments concerning focused mastery of specific hardware likely explained why such epic experiences often felt so unique to the platforms I was playing them on. Or maybe that’s just the nostalgia talking.
Bethesda announced that Starfield will be coming to Xbox Series X|S and PC on September 6, 2023. Microsoft will be showing off a preview at the Starfield Direct on June 11, 2023.
The Nintendo GameCube was a weird little console, one that had all kinds of wacky add-ons and peripherals released for it over the years, from LAN adapters to Game Boy Links to bongo drums. One thing I never knew about until today, however, were the company’s plans for an official LCD screen.
Via Go Nintendo, Adam Doree has uploaded an uncut video of a presentation Nintendo made at E3 2002, featuring Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata and Bill Trinen. In this video, after the crew had spent ages talking about Wind Waker and Metroid Prime, Iwata reveals that they have one last surprise to discuss: a first-party LCD screen, designed to attach to the top of the console and make it even more portable than it already was (the GameCube, famously, included a carrying handle on the back). I’ve set the video to autoplay at the beginning of the discussion about the screen:
I never knew this! Sure other companies have stepped into this vacuum over the years, releasing various screens of varying quality, but it would have been very cool to get an official Nintendo monitor.
It measured just five inches across, with a 4:3 ratio, and a resolution of just 320×240. Which sounds bad by 2023 standards but this was 2002, so for the time they weren’t terrible, as you can see in the footage above, where Mario Sunshine looks just fine! It’s also interesting hearing Iwata say it was peripherals like this that specifically convinced Nintendo to install digital output—itself a forgotten but amazing aspect of the hardware—for the GameCube.
Iwata even reveals that he had met with Sega’s Yuji Naka—in happier times—about Phantasy Star Online, and the pair discussed whether they could take that title and “make it a portable game” to make the most of this screen. None of which ever came to pass, of course, but it’s still neat imagining a GameCube era where you could have grabbed your console by its handle, taken it to a friends house and played Mario Kart Double Dash on your own little official Nintendo screen.
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Just because I’m only learning about this today doesn’t mean there isn’t other stuff out there about the screen; here’s a 2002 write-up on IGN about how nice it looked, for example, while its listing on Console Variations speculates that the high cost of LCD screens at the time made it too expensive to release. The video below, meanwhile, has a good linger on footage of the screen alongside some speakers, part of the most 2002 gaming setup imaginable.
E3 2002 – Nintendo Booth Footage
UPDATE: Thanks to Spindash on Twitter, there’s more! Satoru Iwata quietly revealed years later that the monitor had secret, glasses-free 3D capabilities that Nintendo “kept secret”, along with the trivia that the Phantasy Star Online figures visible in some of the display units ended up getting stolen off the showroom floor!
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.
Microsoft President Brad SmithPhoto: Valeria Mongelli / Bloomberg (Getty Images)
Earlier today, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Xbox boss Phil Spencer talked briefly to the media about its ongoing attempt to consume Activision Blizzard King, continuing once again to act like the larger spat is mostly about Call of Duty. At one point, Smith said he was carrying a contract with him that would keepCall of Duty on PlayStation after the sale goes through, claiming that it all came down to Sony actually signing the thing. Conveniently, he was ignoring that the hold-up on the contract was happening because, y’know, the deal itself–which could potentially have an industry-wide impact that far outstrips Call of Duty.
For those of you just tuning in, Microsoft has spent the last 12 months trying to buy Activision Blizzard for the astoundingly large amount of $69 billion. However, almost since the moment the deal was announced, regulators and governments around the world, as well as rival companies like Sony, have voiced opposition to the deal. These entities don’t want the deal to go through because it could give Xbox too much power over the industry by owning many of the biggest brands in gaming, such as Starfield and Minecraft (among other issues). And Microsoft has spent the last year jumping from courtroom to courtroom and country to country, trying to convince everyone that one massive corporation buying up another massive corporation is totally good for the industry and not horrible at all. It also keeps trying to get Sony to sign a deal on Call of Duty as a part of these efforts.
So today—as part of this ongoing worldwide tour of courtrooms and regulatory councils—Microsoft execs were in Brussels, Belgium as part of a behind-closed-doors hearing with the European Commission, which (like many other groups) has concerns about the Activision deal. After that hearing, Smith and Spencer held a brief media…briefing (heh) and mostly went over the same things they’ve said before about how Sony is already dominating the game industry and how Microsoft needs Activision Blizzard to compete. All of these arguments were trotted out while also pointing out that Nintendo had just signed a 10-year deal with the company to bring Call of Duty to Switch, a deal that’s come across as Microsoft trying to prove it won’t keep some of its biggest franchises to itself should the deal go through. And if it’s willing to put forth a decade-long deal on Call of Duty, the thinking goes, Microsoft is clearly not trying to build a monopoly through this deal.
It was during this part of the briefing, as reported by GameIndustry.biz, that Smith revealed that he was actually carrying the contract for a similar deal that would keep Call of Duty on PlayStation consoles. It was in an envelope in his pocket.
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“We haven’t agreed on a deal with Sony, but I hope we will,” Smith said, “I hope today is a day that will advance our industry and regulation in a responsible way. Sony can spend all its energy trying to block this deal, which will reduce competition and slow the evolution of the market. Or they can sit down with us, and hammer out a deal.”
Of course, bringing the actual contract with you on your trip to Europe is clearly just a way to dramatically remind people that Sony isn’t playing ball and is pushing back against the proposed Activision deal over concerns that it could lose access to Call of Duty, a series Sony in the past has called “essential.” And to be clear: Even after signing that deal, Sony could still lose Call of Duty after the initial decade if Xbox doesn’t offer up another, similar contract in 2033. ( It’s also just weird to bring it with you, beyond using it as a prop, unless Smith thought Sony was going to rush the stage at that moment and sign…) And it’s also another example of Microsoft acting like everyone is concerned about Call of Duty just because Sony seems to be focused mostly on that part of the deal.
In fact, at one point during the briefing, Smith literally said that the “number one concern that people have expressed about this acquisition is that Call of Duty will be less available to people.”
That’s a wild thing to say! And it just ignores all the other valid issues people and governments have with this deal, like how it could make the industry smaller and more susceptible to collapse, how it could position Game Pass as a more powerful force that could begin to hurt studios that don’t make deals with Xbox, or just the basic reality that—historically speaking— corporate mergers are awful for consumers.
In other news involving this seemingly-never ending saga, Microsoft also confirmed it had signed a 10-year deal with NVIDIA to allow GeForce NOW players to stream Xbox PC games and Activision PC games, including the all-important CoD, if the deal is approved and happens. This, along with the Nintendo deal, is clearly being promoted heavily by Microsoft, right before today’s hearing, as evidence that the company is not going to lockdown Call of Duty or other Activision Blizzard games to one platform or service.
Spencer even tweeted about the deal, adding that the company is “committed to bringing more games to more people – however they chose to play.” Well, unless you want to play Bethesda’s next big RPG, Starfield, on a PS5. Then uh…tough luck!
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.
It’s the best-selling home video game console of all time. So yeah, the PlayStation 2 has some good games. But which of them are the best?
We’ve put this list (which is not in any kind of order or ranking) together based on a couple of considerations. Firstly, the list includes our own personal favorites from the time, of course. But also, given the fact we’ve got some perspective on the PS2 now, we wanted to acknowledge some special games that defined the PS2 experience, the kinds of games that we maybe only ever got because of the combination of the console’s place in time and its market dominance.
Before we begin, though, please remember to spare us your sob stories. If your favourite PS2 game isn’t here, chin up. Just because we didn’t dig a game—or didn’t think it was good or weird enough to make a list called THE BEST, or felt it was more deserving of going on another platform’s list (Rez, Resident Evil 4, etc)—doesn’t make your own feelings on it somehow invalid!
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.”
Hi, welcome, let’s take a break from industry news and global doom and talk about a rap video and very, very expensive PlayStation Portable handheld.
Producer, rapper and anime enthusiast Pharrell Williams was, a very long time ago, slightly notable for owning a 14-karat gold Blackberry (I told you it was a very long time ago). In 2008, to keep the theme going, he bought a PSP and “commissioned a 14K gold PSP casing to replace the stock plastic”.
This shinier, much heavier PSP (coming in at 660g vs a stock PSP’s 280g) wasn’t designed to just carry around in his pockets; to complement the extravagance of the handheld itself—which wasn’t jewellery, he was still using it to play games on—Pharrell also had a custom Goyard case made up.
Why am I telling you this now, in 2023? Partly because I only just found out about it, and thought the idea of Pharrell Williams owning a golden PlayStation Portable is about the most “Last Days Of Rome” act of pre-GFC extravagance I can think of sharing on this website in a feature that’s all about video game history.
Reserve the next gen Samsung device All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.
I’m also telling you this in 2023 because that very same PSP just turned up in a new Drake video, after the Canadian rapper spent a few million bucks buying some of Pharrell’s old stuff—mostly jewellery—at auction. The PSP is visible just a few seconds in, gets waved at the screen around 0:50 and gets very close to the camera at 1:29:
Drake – Jumbotron Shit Poppin (Official Music Video)
If you’d like to see more pics of the PSP, here’s the auction listing (on Pharrell’s own auction site), which shows that it sold last year for $19,375
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.
Reserve the next gen Samsung device All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.
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:
Thirsty Suitors is a cross between Scott Pilgrim’s battles with evil exes, stylish arcade skateboarding, and cooking segments all portrayed through a South Asian cultural lens. Outerloop Games’ RPG stars Jala as she returns to an old town with old flames, and frames their reconciliation through turn-based battles where the simple act of talking to each other is pumped up to ridiculous levels. There’s even a stage in which Jala enters a dream world where her exes appear as powerful, distorted versions of their own self-concept. Think Persona 5 but with fewer criminals. Jala explores her old town on a skateboard (more Jet Set Radio than Tony Hawk), and when she’s home with her family, she cooks with her mother in over-the-top, campy fashion. Thirsty Suitors portrays all of its storylines in this way, but there’s a grounded humanity at its core that will be exciting to see when the game launches on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch.
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!
