Sony is Set to Release More Games for PC

Sony’s full year corporate report was published over the weekend. Due to the global pandemic Sony estimates a ¥68.2 billion loss (£484 million) in revenue. Despite this Sony's gaming sales have done well. The PlayStation business now generates more sales and operating income than any other part of Sony:

Sony has announced that they want to gain a growth in active users and this means expanding more into other territories: 

"Targeted outcomes include growth in active users, stronger retention and a shorter cash conversion cycle, from which expanded cash flow can be expected. We will explore expanding our 1st party titles to the PC platform, in order to promote further growth in our profitability."

The company also stated that it's largest competition is the PC gaming market.

"Competition from online PC games and players from other industries is expected to continue to intensify. The fundamental growth strategy will be to innovate and evolve the PlayStation Platform. To this end, SIE intends to make proactive investments to reinforce content IP, and work to raise brand value, foster communities and user engagement, while enhancing DTC services that get closer to users." 

Exclusives are still at the heart of Sony's interest but it is possible that we will see titles like Spider-Man and God of War probably hitting the PC to gain a further revenue boost from non PSN gamers.

PS5 Games at 60fps

Both Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Spider-Man: Miles Morales will have two different modes, one running in 4k at 30 frames per second and the other mode running in “lower resolution” at 60 frames per second at 4k instead of 8k.

In game customisation is huge now. Tailoring the games to the players desires. Game play over graphics, best modes to stream and even a whole host of options for those with additional barriers when it comes to gaming. The Last of Us Part 2, had a colossal amount of options. Some of which I found incredibly useful when collectable hunting with my shoddy eyesight. 

Hopefully it is something we will see even more of in the future. 

Vanilla Control Will Not Upgrade to Next Gen

505 Games has stated that to upgrade Control for Next Gen is too difficult so they are releasing Control Ultimate Edition, which will have all of the DLC along with the base game for £30. Wonderful news if you haven't already bought the game. This will be up-scaled for the next gen consoles but owners of the original game will not get the upgrade and therefore be stuck with it on the current consoles.

“We spent several months exploring all of our launch options for Control Ultimate Edition and no decision was taken lightly,” the publisher wrote. “While it is challenging bringing any game to next gen platforms, we quickly realised it was even more difficult to upgrade our current user base to next gen with full parity across platforms with our year-old game.”

"Every avenue we pursued, there was some form of blocker and those blockers meant that at least one group of players ended up being left out of the upgrade for various reasons. As of today, we can’t offer an upgrade to everyone, and leaving any one group out feels unfair. We understand that is not what you want to hear."

This news does not bode well for other companies up-scaling their games for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. It also reveals that the power is in the hands of the developers. Companies like Ubisoft have shown their dedication to up-scaling games. If you've played Far Cry 4 or their older titles on a PS4 Pro, they look almost as good as modern games, so let us hope that this is the case with most big names in the business. 

It would be a shame if they all started releasing "Ultimate Editions" in order for us to get the new and beautiful experience. 

There Will Be No Delays...

 

There has been no light shed yet on what the PS5 will cost or its exact release date. In a new interview Sony with executive Eric Lempel stated that despite the Covid-19 Pandemic, the company hasn’t changed it's plans to launch the console in November.

“We will launch this year – that will happen – and from my end we will absolutely make sure that we will bring all of the magic and all of the excitement of launches that we have had in the past,” Sony Interactive Entertainment’s SVP of marketing explained. “We are still committed to doing that. It’s more challenging than ever, but our gamers expect a lot from us.”

Even though Microsoft have delayed the launch of Halo Infinite they also have stated that their console will not be held back and has a launch date of November. 

Let us hope we see both the Xbox Series X and the PS5 launch within November.

PS4 Hardware Useful on PS5

PS4 DualShock 4 controllers will connect to the PS5, and owners will be able to use them for backwards compatible PS4 titles. PS5 games, however, will require the new DualSense controller.

Also, a lot of the additional controllers PS4 owners have collected over the years will transfer over to the PS5. Licensed racing wheel, arcade sticks, and flight sticks will work for both PS4 and PS5 games on the new console. The PlayStation 4 camera will work for PS5 virtual reality games, but it will require a new adaptor to use.

Black PS5?

Originally posted over on ResetEra, a Sony marketing pamphlet shows what seems like a black and red PS5 console and controller.

Whether or not this is legitimate remains to be seen, but the black and red PS5 as well as the pamphlet look believable. Of course we will see special variants as time goes on, but this is the first glimpse at a possible alternate scheme for the next gen console.

PS5 Backwards Compatibility

Backwards compatibility is one of the most sought after features for the PS5. Sony has revealed that the console will be backwards compatible with a host of PS4 games but could not confirm any further details..

There is still hope! According to a new Sony patent discovered by Twitter user Renka_schedule, there might still be some hope in playing PS1, PS2 and PS3 games on the PS5.

This patent suggests that Sony can use a virtual machine to emulate these consoles through the cloud. Specifically, it talks about how:

 "a large number of game titles across PS1/PS2/PS3 and various generations of game consoles can be stored and used via the cloud gaming library." "these games can be run on a virtual machine that mimics the operating system associated with each game console."

While this may just be a patent, it could be promising news.

Spider-Man Box Art

Today was the reveal of the Spider-Man Miles Morales box art. Many PS fans in the VP community are hyped for this release more than any other. Hopefully this slow drip feed will keep everyone excited until the biog day comes.

PS5 Launch List and Trailer Links

It has been a few days due to some technical issues. Since the PS5 reveal my access to the PC has been limited. But there is much content coming in terms of showcases, news and Plat Runner articles. 

If for some reason you are still in the dark almost a week later, or you fancy seeing the reveal trailers again. Here they are in no particular order:

Deathloop

Horizon: Forbidden West

Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Resident Evil 8: Village

Gran Turismo 7

Godfall

Pragmata

Oddworld: Soulstorm

Demon's Souls

Grand Theft Auto 5 enhanced

Project Athia

Solar Ash

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Sackboy: A Big Adventure

NBA 2K21

Destruction AllStars

Stray

Goodbye Volcano High

Returnal

Bugsnax

Hitman 3

Ghostwire: Tokyo

Jett: The Far Shore

Kena: Bridge of the Spirits

Little Devil Inside

Astro's Playroom

Spider-Man with Miles Morales

The new Spider-Man sequel was announced at the PS5 Reveal Event. See the trailer below. 

Hitman 3

Hitman 3 is coming to PlayStation 5.

The “dramatic conclusion” of the trilogy see the reveal trailer below.

PlayStation 4 Must be Compatible With PlayStation 5

Sony has told developers that new games coming out for the PlayStation 4 must be compatible with the upcoming PlayStation 5 console. The new rule this compatibility will be from the 13th of June on wards.  However all PS4 games released or submitted before this period have been advised to be patched or remastered for the PS5.

Hopefully the PS5 announcement event on the 4th of June will shed more light on the subject.

The PS5 is still set to launch in the 2020 holidays and Sony have reassured gamers that despite Covid 19 there will be no price changes. 

PS5 Deep Dive

For those of you that didn't watch the PS5 Deep Dive video with the consoles Lead System Architect Mark Cerny or tuned out early on as you (like me) hoped to see footage, here are the PS5's specs:

CPU: 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.5GHz (variable frequency)

GPU: 10.28 TFLOPs, 36 CUs at 2.23GHz (variable frequency)

GPU Architecture: Custom RDNA 2

Memory/Interface: 16GB GDDR6/256-bit

Memory Bandwidth: 448GB/s

Internal Storage: Custom 825GB SSD

IO Throughput: 5.5GB/s (Raw), Typical 8-9GB/s (Compressed)

Expandable Storage: NVMe SSD Slot

External Storage: USB HDD Support

Optical Drive: 4K UHD Blu-ray Drive

The countdown and music was a nice touch.

If you are like me and somewhat technically ignorant, the main gist of the talk was as follows:

The loading time and processing power will be one-hundred times faster than the PS4.

In theory all PS4 games will be backwards compatible in time but the top 100 titles should be on release, however this will be done on a case by case basis.

All PS4 titles will be graphically boosted, much like PS4-PS4 Pro, but the difference will be pretty extreme compared to the original game.

Every aspect of the console will be far superior to anything the current consoles have to offer.

Overall in some areas the Xbox-X outstrips the PS5 specs, but as they are so similar, there is much to look forward to. We are entering the next generation and hopefully it will blow our minds. 

PS4 is Ahead of the Console Race

God of War by Atlantisframe

In October I turned away from the Xbox after nearly ten years of owning one. I wasn't keen on losing the few hundred games in my online library or starting a fresh but Playstation was just too tempting. Most people I was speaking to on Instagram played on the PS4 and also there was so many juicy exclusives with a photo mode. I traded in my console, a small collection of games and sold an old Pokemon game through my friend on ebay. 

That was the day I made the exchange for my PS4 Pro from CEX. It was also the day my gaming time doubled...

Spider-Man by Aj Gaming Captures

It was no surprise to me to learn that the new sales figures suggest that the PS4 is significantly widening the gap on the Xbox One. There are so many tantalising exclusives, four titles you will see represented in shots by two talented virtual photographers throughout this article. 

At a recent financial briefing, AMD said that their sales for both consoles was around 150 million units. By the end of 2019 it is estimated that 109 million PS4 units have been sold. Therefore it can be assumed that the sales for the Xbox would be around 41 million. Of course Microsoft have released no figures, but this is understandable when you are at such the tail end of the competition.

Uncharted 4 by Atlantisframe

Console sales are far from the only revenue the companies get but it is still a good indicator of how much both companies are achieving.

The future is bright for Sony. With titles like Last of Us 2, Godfall and Ghosts of Tsushima, it is no wonder the PS5 is looking so strong. 

Last of Us by Aj Gaming Captures

(Statistics sourced via Push Square)