Will Media Molecule be closed as the Senior Producer leaves?

Media Molecule has no plans to close the studio at the moment. While Suzy Wallace follows the studio’s co-founder Mark Healey in leaving the studio for pastures new, and live support and updates are winding down for their latest title Dreams, the studio is merely changing direction.

According to current Studio Director Siobhan Reddy, the studio is working on a new project that is “exciting but too early for us to talk about.” More information on this is expected at a later date.

In the meantime, Wallace has become Development Director at Firesprite on a “new, exciting project” according to a LinkedIn post (thanks @sami_odyssey). Firesprite has multiple projects in progress right now, including three new games. These are a “blockbuster” action-adventure game, a AAA quality “ground-breaking next generation PvP shooter project with a Games as a Service focus,” and a AAA “dark, story-driven next-generation ‘Narrative Adventure’ with genre-defining goals.” It’s unknown which of these will be the project on which Wallace is working.

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PlayStation one of few gaming companies to lose Twitter verified checkmark

At the time of this writing, Nintendo and Xbox Twitter accounts all display a gold checkmark, making PlayStation the only console manufacturer and one of few gaming companies left out of the cool kids’ club. It’s unclear how PlayStation France managed to escape unscathed (unless the company immediately paid for verification, which isn’t exactly cheap for businesses). Interestingly, Sony’s corporate Twitter profile displays a gold checkmark.

The new changes at Twitter have been implemented quite haphazardly. The website has revoked verification badges on a whim before and has gone as far as revoking checkmarks from former government officials including Hillary Clinton.

When Twitter Blue originally rolled out, owner Elon Musk scrambled to shut down impersonators who targeted companies like Nintendo and Rockstar Games by making fake announcements with verified profiles.

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FTC’s response to lawmakers regarding Microsoft Activision deal

Several videos circulating on Twitter show multiple lawmakers quizzing Khan about siding with Sony despite its dominant position, in response to which Khan said that as a matter of policy, the FTC obtains feedback from market players who are likely to be impacted by mergers and acquisitions irrespective of their size.

Khan said that she’s not in a position to go into specifics about the deal because a decision has yet to be made, but argued that the FTC makes its own independent judgments based on law and facts.

On one occasion, Khan was quizzed about the FTC coordinating with foreign regulators to block U.S. companies from mergers and acquisitions, to which Khan said that the FTC liaises with counterparts in other countries but denied that it’s to the detriment of U.S. companies.

U.K. regulator Competition and Markets Authority will be the first to reach a decision regarding Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard on April 26th.

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New PlayStation game prices on Steam in various regions

This price increase for Sony’s games on Steam was first spotted by a user on ResetEra, who noted that the price for Returnal and Sackboy had been raised. We checked SteamDB further and discovered that these aren’t the only PlayStation games impacted on the platform, with the majority of these increases occurring recently from April 14 to April 19. Apart from the games already mentioned, these titles also include Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Days Gone, and God of War.

How much the price has been increased generally depends on the age of the game. Older games like God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn are on the lower end of the range (indicated below), whereas newer titles like Returnal are in the higher range. But in general, here are the new price points for these PlayStation games on Steam in various regions:

• Argentina: 4199-5999 Pesos to 8499-9999 Pesos
• Canada: $59.99-69.99 CAD to $64.99-79.99 CAD
• Chile: 32000-39500 CLP to 35000-42000 CLP
• China: 279-379 RMB to 345-414 RMB
• Colombia: 159000-194000 Pesos to 184000-219000 Pesos
• Japan: 4900-6490 Yen to 6490-7590 Yen
• South Korea: 45880-58800 Won to 52800-62800 Won

Sony has not yet announced these price increases in any official blog post, like the company did for the PS5 price increase for select regions back in August 2022. It’s unclear if these increased prices will impact other PC retailers like Green Man Gaming or if other regions will be impacted beyond these seven countries.

That said, these price increases are in line with predictions made by an analyst in January who stated that “gamers are likely to see prices go up across the board in 2023.”

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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 Firmware 23.01-07.20.00 Patch Notes

• We’ve improved system software performance and stability.
• We’ve improved the messages and usability on some screens.
• We’ve updated the DualSense Edge wireless controller device software to improve stability.

The usual copy-and-pasted “improved system software performance and stability” appears, as expected, but it is joined by two other details.

First, the messaging system has been improved. It should now be easier to use on certain screens. Secondly, the new DualSense Edge controller has received its own update to “improve stability.”

The 1.15 GB size may have led some users to think that there’s something more to this update, but from the initial patch notes, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

For those who have been having stability issues with either the PS5 console or DualSense Edge controller, hopefully this update helps.

It’s not only PlayStation hardware that is receiving updates, as Horizon Forbidden West got a patch that readies it for the launch of the Burning Shores expansion and also adds some great accessibility features.

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The patent outlines a new system that would run players’ messages through an ‘Emotion Analytics Server,’ detecting negative language and transforming it into positive messages. According to the patent, this would even include voice chat, with the system seemingly assessing the tone and content of a player’s message, before altering it to appear more pleasant.

The patent discusses “user emotion profiles” that are specified by players, and while details are kept vague, it seems that PS5 players would be able to note the type of communication they wanted to hear. For instance, if a player didn’t want to hear any negative in-game voice chat, the new system would moderate all communication in order to ensure this didn’t happen. The patent notes that this would help improve players’ mental health.

The patent was filed back in 2021, though has only recently been publicized via Gamesual. This means that Sony has been considering this system for at least two years now, though it has yet to put it into practice.

It’s unclear how exactly this would be implemented. Would voice chat simply be censored to remove the negative language, or would Sony seek to somehow alter communications between players? It’s certainly a strange patent, but if it makes players’ happier, then we’d be curious to see it in action.

In other Sony news, the company is currently preparing for a major cloud gaming push. It also recently called a regulator “irrational” for its stance on the Microsoft and Activision deal.

The post PlayStation Patent Aims to Make Toxic Gamers Seem Happier appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Sony has created the Future Technology Group for cloud gaming

Sony is recruiting for 22 roles to “develop and deliver the strategic vision for cloud game streaming at PlayStation” at the Future Technology Group (FTG) according to job listings spotted by The Verge. The main aim of FTG is to “lead the charge in the cloud gaming revolution” and put “console-quality video games on any device”.

The job listings also suggest that Sony is no longer working with Microsoft to develop its cloud technology. Instead, the company seems to be creating a new hybrid cloud infrastructure with Amazon Web Services.

Sony has been working with cloud technology for a while. A cloud gaming patent from Sony was discovered at the start of this year, while PlayStation’s Haven Studios has been looking to create a new cloud-based game development system. There may even be a new PlayStation cloud gaming handheld device in the works if recent rumors are to be believed, but it will likely be a while before we see the fruits of this latest cloud gaming push.

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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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Kuo believes VR headsets will not be a “star product” for the foreseeable future

In addition to his critical update that Sony has cut PSVR 2 production, Kuo does not share a positive outlook on AR and VR headsets for the near future in his latest Medium article. The Meta Quest Pro only shipped around 300,000 units during its product lifecycle, while Pico, a biggest AR/VR headset company in China, had shipments in 2022 that were more than 40% lower than expected.

These figures, Kuo concludes, mean that AR/VR headsets like PSVR 2 are not “the next star product in consumer electronics in the foreseeable future.” He believes Apple is one of the last hopes that this position might change, but he still thinks that the market may overestimate these headsets over the next few years, in terms of their overall contribution to companies that supply components for them.

In late March, the International Data Corporation also believed that PSVR 2 sales will flop and recommended that Sony cut the price of the headset sooner than later.

Meanwhile, Sony has created a new patent that will improve the posture of players, likely for those using gaming headsets.

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