When does the Golden Week sale begin on the PlayStation Store?

Sony is yet to make an official announcement about the Golden Week sale but the discounts are expected to go live on the Playstation Store later today, April 25. The sale traditionally covers the Golden Week event in Japan, which runs between April 29 and May 5 this year.

The Golden Week sale, as spotted by Reddit, currently includes 425 games, bundles, and DLC items, although this list could grow by the time the sale goes live. Just some of the games and franchises included in the sale are:

• Ace Attorney
• Atelier
• Bloodborne
• Danganronpa
• Dead Rising
• Devil May Cry
• Dragon Ball
• Dragon Quest
• Dynasty Warriors
• Final Fantasy
• Kingdom Hearts
• Lost Judgment
• Mega Man
• Monster Hunter
• Naruto
• NieR
• Ni No Kuni
• Nioh
• One Piece
• Persona
• Resident Evil
• Star Ocean
• Street Fighter
• Yakuza

With the Spring Sale due to end soon, Sony is expected to reveal a full list of discounts later today.

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This date is shared between all platforms, including Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam or EA App, which hopefully won’t clog the download servers too badly. This will give players about two days before the game officially comes out on April 28, 2023.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor download size for PS5

As reported yesterday, the download size for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor for PS5 is expectedly massive. Players will need to make sure they have at least 147 GB of free space on the console’s hard drive.

That’s somewhat less than the 155 GB of space required for the PC version of the game, but it’s not by much. To put this file size into context, God of War Ragnarok is only 80 GB, so we imagine that the texture files and character models for Jedi: Survivor must be ridiculously large.

On top of that, since the game version for the download is listed as 1.000.001, there will likely be a day-one patch that players will need to get as well.

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PS5 sold over 620,000 units in March 2023

As for actual figures, since those prior comparisons are admittedly nebulous, the PSP set a unit record of 620,000 back in March 2005. (Yep, you have to go back that far in the record books.) This stat was pointed out by Twitter user Welfare_JBP, and can be verified by ZDNet back in 2005. So, the number of PS5 consoles sold for March 2023 is at least as large as that.

According to Piscatella, the PS5 was almost solely responsible for lifting overall hardware spending in March 2023. In one tweet in a long thread explaining the latest report from Circana, he says that the PS5 is “the best-selling hardware platform in units and dollars for both March as well as 2023 years-to-date.”

Per usual, gamepads racked up the largest percentage of accessory sales in March 2023 too, with the PS5 DualSense Edge controller coming out on top. The Resident Evil 4 remake topped out the sales chart for the month, while Hogwarts Legacy remains the best-seller for the year so far.

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PS5 sales lifting up game hardware market in multiple regions

With the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X/S sales declining, it’s the PS5 that’s doing the heavy lifting when it comes to video game hardware sales in several markets. Just yesterday, we reported that PS5 saw a 500 percent sales boost in Europe, and today, Piscatella has revealed that PS5 lifted hardware spending during the month of March 2023 in the U.S.

PS5 is now the best-selling hardware in the U.S. both in March and in 2023 to date.

Sony previously told investors that it expected the PS5 to surpass PS4 in sales once the console’s supply situation improved. Looking at data from various markets following the end of the shortage, it’s evident that the company was spot on.

Elsewhere, Piscatella revealed that Resident Evil 4 Remake is now the third best-selling game of 2023 in the U.S. after Hogwarts Legacy and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, respectively.

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PS5 scalpers selling consoles for lower than their retail price

As spotted by Redditors and TheGamer, Facebook Marketplace has quite a few listings from sellers who are evidently scalpers, selling PS5s for as low as $400. A similar situation is unfolding on eBay, where sellers are willing to part with PS5s for less than $500.

Some Redditors have pointed out that PS5’s God of War Ragnarok bundles, which retail for over $500, are being sold for under the standard disc console’s MSRP. This is particularly interesting to note because Sony shipped quite a few Ragnarok bundles to coincide with the game’s release and it was around the same time that supply began to substantially improve. Perhaps, some scalpers miscalculated their moves but we can’t say we feel sorry for them.

Despite the savings being offered here, we advise purchasing consoles with an actual receipt from your local retailer for warranty purposes.

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The PS5 is having a blowout in Q1 2023

As suggested by GamesIndustry.biz, the reason for this surge in European PS5 sales is due to severe stock shortages for Sony’s console in 2022.

For Q1 2023, the PS5 has a 369% year-on-year rise in sales, while the Switch is down by 18% and the Xbox Series X|S is down by 10%. For clarity, these figures does not include UK console data, as they only compile data from France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal.

This isn’t too much of a surprise since we reported that PS5 sales in Europe were ‘comfortably’ beating Switch and Xbox in February, while the console also set a new sales record for the same month in the US.

As a bonus, 1.5 million accessories were sold across Europe, a rise of 13% over the year before, and the best-selling product remains the PS5 DualSense controller.

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Third-party PlayStation exclusives apparently hurt consumers

The letter regurgitates Microsoft’s oft-repeated complaints about Sony’s dominance, which doesn’t come as a surprise because the Xbox maker has allegedly been “discussing” Sony’s market position with lawmakers. In fact, the letter references Activision Blizzard executive Lulu Cheng Meservey, who has been openly critical of Sony’s attempts to block the Microsoft Activision deal.

“For more than 20 years, Sony has utterly dominated the gaming console market, as that market has been defined by the Federal Trade Commission,” Cramer wrote. “I am concerned Sony’s dominance of that market, and its efforts to perpetuate its current position imperils an important economic development opportunity for North Dakota.”

Cramer has given Sony a deadline of May 1 to provide unredacted copies of documents pertaining to third-party exclusivity deals, its acquisition of Bungie, and correspondence with the FTC regarding Microsoft Activision deal.

It is our understanding that Sony does not have to comply with the request.

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PS5 UK 2023 sales have almost doubled

Sales of the PS5 console for the first three months of 2023 have increased by more than 180% according to data from GSD and GfK (thanks GamesIndustry.biz). As well as accounting for more than half of console sales in the UK during this period, the PS5 helped the UK’s overall hardware sales increase by 24.2% too. This is solely because the console is now fully available in the UK and no longer suffers from supply issues. Supply improvements also helped the PS5 set a new monthly sales record in February 2023.

On the contrary, Nintendo Switch sales decreased by more than 25%, although it is still the second best-selling console in the UK for 2023 so far. Nintendo Switch sales are expected to increase again over the coming months thanks to the new Super Mario movie and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The Xbox Series X|S sales decreased by 18% for the same period of time although the Xbox Wireless Controller in Carbon Black was the best-selling hardware accessory.

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PS5 vs Xbox Series X comparisons have a “high level” of social conversations

Sony has been arguing that should Microsoft acquire Activision Blizzard and its properties, it would have no incentive to ensure that Call of Duty games fully utilize PS5-exclusive features like DualSense haptics. It further argues that Microsoft could release an inferior version of Call of Duty on PS5.

“Within a week of releasing Modern Warfare II, Digital Foundry, a leading analyst, compared performance on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S,” Sony wrote. “Studies show that these types of comparisons are highly influential. The level of social conversation surrounding consoles and games is extremely high.”

Sony added that Call of Duty can’t be compared to Minecraft because the latter has “blocky” graphics, which means that it can’t be used to showcase a console’s technical capabilities.

The CMA will make its final decision on the proposed Microsoft Activision merger this month.

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Could a temperature changing PS5 controller become a reality?

We’re firmly in the camp of “never say never” but patents hardly ever come to fruition. Nevertheless, it’s interest to see that Sony’s still fiddling with an idea that first cropped up in 2012.

Back then, Sony filed a patent that would make the PS3 Move motion controller (remember those?) become hot and cold depending on what’s happening in the game. Now, a newly-published patent, spotted by Exputer, suggests that Sony’s modified its original idea.

The new patent discusses a controller that contains a sensor with deformable elastic that “detects user’s contact with or deforming action of the elastic member, and outputs an electric signal based on the detected contact or deforming action in question.”

The controller would use gel-like flexible materials to “enrich haptic experiences.” So imagine picking up a block of ice in a game for whatever reason, and the controller triggering a response that makes it feel a bit cold to the touch.

What do our readers think of this one? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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