According to Insider, Sony is charging a $10 upgrade fee to bring cross-generational games from a PS4 to a PS5. From the report: When new game consoles launch nowadays, a variety of games on that new console are also available on the previous generation of consoles. The next major PlayStation 5 exclusive game, for instance, is also headed to the PlayStation 4: "Horizon Forbidden West" launches in early 2022, and millions of players will get it on the last generation console. [..] Unfortunately, when PlayStation 4 owners do finally find and purchase a PlayStation 5, those cross-generational games don't automatically make the leap with them. Instead, Sony intends to charge $10 apiece for that upgrade -- and that's only after fans criticized Sony for an even stranger policy.

"Thursday was to be a celebration of 'Horizon Forbidden West' and the amazing team at Guerrilla working to deliver it on February 18, 2022," PlayStation leader Jim Ryan said in an update on a Sony blog post earlier this month. "However, it's abundantly clear that the offerings we confirmed in our pre-order kickoff missed the mark." Ryan was referring to a previously announced pre-order announcement for "Horizon Forbidden West" that revealed the only way to get both the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game was to order an $80 "digital deluxe" edition -- a $20 increase over the base level $60 price of a PS4 video game.

Sony had previously announced that any PlayStation 5 games in the "launch window" would only need to be purchased on one console to own both the PS4 and PS5 versions. "Horizon Forbidden West" has been delayed repeatedly, which pushed it out of the ambiguous "launch window" Sony set for the PlayStation 5 (which launched in November 2020). When PlayStation fans cited this, Sony caved. Moreover, Ryan laid out a clear upgrade path for the future -- albeit one that's still open to scrutiny. "Moving forward, PlayStation first-party exclusive cross-gen titles (newly releasing on PS4 & PS5) -- both digital and physical -- will offer a $10 USD digital upgrade option from PS4 to PS5," Ryan said. "This will apply to the next 'God of War' and 'Gran Turismo 7,' and any other exclusive cross-gen PS4 & PS5 title published by Sony Interactive Entertainment." Microsoft's policy, on the other hand, states that if you owned a game on a previous Xbox console, you own it on the current consoles. If there's a newer version of that game for your newer console, that's the version you get when you buy and download the game.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Take-Two Interactive has sued several programmers and enthusiasts said to be behind the popular re3 and reVC Grand Theft Auto fan projects. The lawsuit says that after the company filed a DMCA takedown notice to remove the projects from Github, the defendants filed a bad faith counter notice to have the content reinstated, thus triggering this copyright infringement lawsuit. "Defendants' source code projects, known as re3 and reVC, purport to have created a set of software files (which Defendants claim they 'reverse engineered' from the original Game software) that allow members of the public to play the Games on various hardware devices, but with so-called 'enhancements' and 'modifications' added by Defendants," the complaint reads (PDF). "Perhaps most notably, Defendants claim that their derivative GTA source code enables players to install and run the Games on multiple game platforms, including those on which the Games never have been released, such as the PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch." According to Take-Two, the defendants' conduct is willful and deliberate since they are well aware that they do not have the necessary rights to copy, adapt or distribute derivative GTA source code or the audiovisual elements of the games. The gaming giant adds that [defendant Angelo Papenhoff] publicly expressed concern that Take-Two would find out about the 're3' and 'reVC' projects.
[...]
Take-Two says that by willfully and maliciously copying, adapting and distributing its source code and other content, all of the defendants have infringed its exclusive rights under copyright law. As a result, the company is entitled to damages in amounts to be determined at trial or, alternatively, a maximum statutory damages award of $150,000 for each infringed work. Additionally, the gaming company says that by submitting bad faith DMCA counternotices to have the projects restored to Github, three of the defendants made misrepresentations under U.S.C. 512(f). Finally, Take-Two is seeking temporary, preliminary, and permanent injunctive relief to restrain the defendants from continuing their allegedly infringing activities. The company wants all infringing source code and games removed from the Internet and wants the defendants to hand over all materials that infringe its rights. Take-Two also wants a full accounting of "any and all sales or downloads of products or services" that infringe its rights.

CD Projekt is working on a first expansion of Cyberpunk 2077, Chief Executive Adam Kicinski said after the Polish video games maker reported a first-half beat on its net profit. From a report: Cyberpunk 2077, featuring Hollywood star Keanu Reeves, was one of last year's most anticipated games, but after a bug-ridden start it was kept off Sony's (6758.T) PlayStation Store for six months, only returning in June. CD Projekt did not give an update on how many units of Cyberpunk it had sold in the first half of 2021, but company officials told a conference call that the game was the leading source of revenue in the period. Along with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk drove CD Projekt's revenue 29% higher in the first half of the year to 470.6 million zlotys ($124 million).

CD Projekt said its net profit was 105 million zlotys, which was 28% lower compared to last year but above the 71 million expected by analysts. The planned Cyberpunk expansion would involve a charge to gamers, similar to the ones released for The Witcher, board member Michal Nowakowski said during Wednesday's call. "When we talk about expansions then we talk about bigger things," he said, while declining to give a specific timing for its release.

Duckstation, an emulator that allows users to run Playstation games, was recently made available for installation onto the latest generation of Xbox consoles. From a report: It's time to jog those nostalgia muscles, as the emulator will not only be able to play your PS1 favorites but also scale those games up to native 4K resolution at 60fps. In addition to the 4K treatment, Duckstation will let gamers improve the overall look of the emulation experience in a couple of other ways.

Turning this on disables dithering, an effect that was built into the original Playstation hardware. Dithering in layman's terms was basically a function to improve depth of color by underpinning graphics with a series of lines or dots, which were then blurred by the system's video encoders. Turning this on helps improve graphic capabilities by smoothing out the blocky textures on 3D objects. The original low-poly graphics of the PS1 would often look cruder as they enlarged, so this function basically smoothes out those clunky compositions.

Netflix is testing out its first stab at mobile gaming within its own app at no extra cost, bringing two pre-existing Stranger Things games to its Android app -- but only in Poland. From a report: The two games available in Poland -- Stranger Things: 1984 and Stranger Things 3 -- have been available for years off Netflix's app, having been released through a licensing partnership in 2017 and 2019 to coincide with the second and third seasons of the hit retro-supernatural show. Last month, Netflix confirmed it plans to expand into video games, starting with ad-free games for mobile devices like phones and tablets available on its existing service at no added cost to subscribers. With broad ambitions to ultimately widen even to console games for Xbox and PlayStation, it represents its biggest expansion into a new kind of entertainment since Netflix started streaming in 2007 and released its first original show in 2012.

South Korea is ending a law it announced in 2011 that blocked young gamers from accessing game websites after midnight. "South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, as well as the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, say that they're ending the law to respect children's rights and encourage at-home education," reports Engadget. "The country aims to abolish the law by the end of the year when it revises its Youth Protection Act." From the report: The news doesn't mean underage gamers are entirely off the hook, though. Instead, excessive gaming will be managed by the country's "choice permit" system, which lets parents and guardians arrange approved play times. Still, that sounds more permissive than China's gaming curfew, which bans players under 18 from playing between 10PM and 8AM. Additionally, they're limited to 90 minutes of game time during weekdays, and three hours on weekends and holidays.

As Kotaku reports, the shutdown law was originally meant to curb PC gaming, but it also affected consoles. Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live ended up restricting their accounts to adults. That's why Minecraft is now an R-rated game in the country. "In the changing media environment, the ability of children to decide for themselves and protect themselves has become important more than anything," Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said, according to The Korea Times. "We will work with related ministries to systematically support media and game-use education at schools, homes, and in society so that young people can develop these abilities, and continue to make efforts to create a sound gaming environment and various leisure activities for children."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC, written by Sam Shead: German technology and engineering group Bosch, which is the world's largest car-parts supplier, believes semiconductor supply chains in the automotive industry are no longer fit for purpose as the global chip shortage rages on. Harald Kroeger, a member of the Bosch management board, told CNBC's Annette Weisbach in an exclusive interview Monday that supply chains have buckled in the last year as demand for chips in everything from cars to PlayStation 5s and electric toothbrushes has surged worldwide. Coinciding with the surge in demand, several key semiconductor manufacturing sites were forced to halt production, Kroeger said.

In February, a winter storm in Texas caused blackouts at NXP Semiconductors, which is a major provider of automotive and mobile phone chips. In March, there was a fire at a semiconductor plant in Japan operated by Renesas, one of the car industry's biggest chip suppliers. In August, factories in Malaysia have been abandoned as national lockdowns were introduced to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Volkswagen and BMW cut their production as they struggled to get the chips they needed to build their cars. These companies and semiconductor suppliers should now be looking to figure out how the chip supply chain can be improved, Kroeger said.

"As a team, we need to sit together and ask, for the future operating system is there a better way to have longer lead times," he said. "I think what we need is more stock on some parts [of the supply chain] because some of those semiconductors need six months to be produced. You cannot run on a system [where] every two weeks you get an order. That doesn't work." Semiconductor supply chain issues have been quietly managed by the automotive in the past but now is a time for change, according to Kroeger, who believes demand is only going to increase with the rise of electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles. "Every car that gets smarter needs more semiconductors," Kroeger said. Electric cars need very powerful and efficient semiconductors in order to to get more range out of each kilowatt hour of battery, he added. Kroeger said he expects the chip shortage to extend "way into 2022" adding that he hopes demand remains stable. "We need to ramp up supplies so we can fulfill that demand," he said.

"A newly-enhanced edition of the original Quake has been officially revealed by Bethesda at QuakeCon 2021," reports GamesRadar+ The updated edition of the classic 1996 first-person shooter is out right now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Nintendo Switch.

There's updated visuals, online and local multiplayer, and new content available in the enhanced edition of Quake. Two expansions for the original game — The Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity — are included in all purchases, as are the Dimensions of the Past and the brand new Dimension of the Machine expansions, the latter two of which are developed by Wolfenstein studio MachineGames.
"Those who own Quake on Steam or from the official Bethesda.net store can access the update for free," reports Ars Technica: The multi-platform release could be seen as positive news after Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda, a move that generated worries about Microsoft/Bethesda exclusivity moving forward. For those who don't mind waiting, Limited Run Games will offer physical disc and card releases for the PS4 and Switch, respectively, including a pricey limited edition that comes in a box that looks like the in-game nail-gun ammo...

According to a press release, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of the game will run at full 4K and 120 fps once a future update goes live.

Playdate, the portable, one-bit gaming system with an analog crank as a primary control option, won't be shipping to those who preordered the console anytime soon. According to CNET, "shipping has been delayed to some point in 2022." From the report: There's only one place you will be able to get yourself a Playdate. You'll need to head straight to the Playdate website, and be ready to pay $179 for the console. This price is for just the console, and not its Stereo Dock accessory or Pen, which can be ordered separately. The only accessory available right now is a $30 cover, which is only available in a bright purple. The prices and availability for these other accessories have not yet been announced.

To avoid a PlayStation 5-style hunt for availability, the Playdate will not sell out. Instead, the ship date will be bumped incrementally back to match the company's ability to acquire the parts necessary to assemble the consoles. At the time this was last updated, shipping has been delayed to some point in 2022. Oddly enough, there is no set launch date for this console just yet. The Playdate is supposed to be shipping the first 20,000 units at some point in 2021. It's likely Panic will be giving more information on a shipping date in one of its video updates like the one we saw in June.

The PlayStation 5 just crossed a significant milestone. Sony has revealed that it has sold 10 million PS5 consoles as of July 18th, eight months after the system's November 12th debut. From a report: The company considered that no mean feat between the pandemic and ongoing chip shortages that reportedly held sales back. It's now Sony's fastest-selling console to date, outpacing the PS4 by nearly a month. Sales have slowed down since launch. Sony racked up 4.5 million PS5 sales in 2020, but sold 3.3 million in the first quarter of 2021 -- it took another four months to add 2.2 million to the tally. That's not surprising between supply constraints and the usual mid-year slump, but you might not see sales climb until the holidays. PlayStation chief Jim Ryan told GamesIndustry.biz in an interview that it was "too early to tell" which markets were the hottest given widespread demand, but pointed out that China was a pleasant surprise. The company sold out its PS5 launch stock "very, very quickly" despite a local market focused on mobile games and the free-to-play model.

Many websites -- including banking pages, brokerages, and gaming services -- have been affected by what looks to be a major internet outage. From a report: As website owners and companies that run services that provide the backbone of the web scramble to solve the issue, consumers have been left unable to access services like Ally Bank, Fidelity, Sony's PlayStation Network, Airbnb, and more. Several airline sites are also having issues: Delta, British Airways, and Southwest's sites are all having major issues. At the moment, it's unclear what's causing the outage, though DownDetector reports that both AWS and Akamai, a pair of content delivery networks that host much of the internet, are both experiencing issues. Akamai's status page reports that the company is currently investigating an issue with its DNS service. Cloudflare's CEO has chimed in to say that its service isn't to blame.

Tencent has announced plans to buy British video game company Sumo Group for $1.27 billion. The Verge reports: The Chinese tech giant already has an 8.75-percent stake in the developer, as Gamesindustry.biz reports, and the offer represents a 43-percent premium on Sumo's current valuation. Based in Sheffield, England, Sumo's well-regarded core studio Sumo Digital has carried out contract work for many of the biggest names in gaming. It developed Sony's PlayStation 5 launch title Sackboy: A Big Adventure and was the primary studio behind Microsoft's Crackdown 3 for Xbox consoles and PC. In 2017 Sumo released Snake Pass for multiple platforms, its first foray into original IP.

"The three founders of Sumo, who work in the business, Paul Porter, Darren Mills and I are passionate about what we do and are fully committed to continuing in our roles," says Sumo CEO Carl Cavers in a statement. "The opportunity to work with Tencent is one we just couldn't miss. It would bring another dimension to Sumo, presenting opportunities for us to truly stamp our mark on this amazing industry, in ways which have previously been out-of-reach." Cavers says Tencent has "demonstrated its commitment to backingâ Sumo's client work, as well as its own original IP, so things are unlikely to change too quickly. The buyout does, however, give Tencent yet another foothold in the international gaming industry, following prominent investments in companies like Epic, Riot, Activision, and Ubisoft. "Tencent intends to bring its expertise and resources to accelerate the growth of Sumo both in the UK and abroad, supporting Sumo in the market for top-notch creative talent, and the UK as a hub for game innovation," says Tencent's chief strategy officer James Mitchell. "We believe the proposed transaction benefits all stakeholders, delivers compelling value for Sumo shareholders, while enhancing the Sumo business for the future."

Earlier this week, Netflix announced that it is planning an expansion into video games and has hired a former EA and Facebook executive to lead the effort. Now, according to a recent datamine, the streaming giant may be forming a partnership with PlayStation to bring some of the biggest PlayStation brands to Netflix. IGN reports: Reported by VGC, dataminer Steve Moser appears to have uncovered PlayStation brand imagery and content in the Netflix app code. Moser shared the information via a tweet, including images of both the Ghost of Tsushima box art and some PS5 controllers. It's unclear exactly what this means for Netflix, but if there is a burgeoning partnership between Netflix and PlayStation, it could see Ghost of Tsushima content come to the streaming service in some form.

Moser suggests that the gaming section of Netflix currently has the codename 'Shark', and the placement of PlayStation IP within that suggests a collaborative approach. This wouldn't be the first major deal between Sony and Netflix, as the two companies agreed a deal earlier this year that means movies from Sony Pictures Entertainment will come to Netflix first after their theatrical run. [...] Given that many first-party PlayStation games are narrative-driven adventure games with a focus on cinematic stories, it makes sense to try and adopt games like Ghost of Tsushima and the last of us into movies and TV. Whilst PlayStation already has a games streaming service, PlayStation Now, it could also potentially be looking to push gaming content beyond the PlayStation console ecosystem, as Microsoft has done with Xbox Game Pass.

After yesterday's industry-wide discussion of the cost of being visible on Sony's PlayStation Store, Kotaku has heard from multiple independent developers and publishers expressing similar frustrations and fury. From a report: There were two main responses to our article yesterday highlighting one independent developer's frustrations with working with Sony to sell games on the PlayStation store. The first was a confusing number of people convinced that this was somehow part of an underground conspiracy to destroy Sony. The second was many indie game developers and publishers getting in touch to say that, yes, wow, Sony are far harder to work with and sell games through than anywhere else.

It's not possible to rationalize with the former group. We had confirmed hard figures on Sony's fees for getting any visibility on the PlayStation's in-built store, so we reported them. The conspiracy, disappointingly, ends there. However, the information about just how much worse it is for indies to work with Sony than Microsoft or Nintendo keeps piling in. "Oh yeah, so there's Nintendo who supports you," one such response begins. "[Then] Microsoft who supports you and [then] there is Sony who supports its own AAA machine and gives a fuck about everyone else."

As Bloomberg reported in April, Sony shows extraordinary caution even with the games it makes itself, with an obsessive focus on blockbuster success. According to that article, the Japanese corporation is moving away from developing smaller in-house games, so fixated are they on only the largest games. It seems this lack of interest in smaller titles extends to third-party developers attempting to sell their games on the system. "Sony does not understand what indie means," an independent publisher tells me under the condition of anonymity, via Twitter DMs. "Not at all. For them indie is something in the lower million budgets."

"Every Sony PlayStation 3 ID out there was compromised, provoking bans of legit players on the network," Threatpost is reporting, calling it "just the latest in a shocking spike in attacks on unsuspecting gamers."

tlhIngan (Slashdot user #30,335) shares Threatpost's report: Sony reportedly left a folder with every PS3 console ID online unsecured, and it was discovered and reported by a Spanish YouTuber with the handle "The WizWiki" in mid-April... Now, several weeks later, players on PlayStation Network message boards are complaining that they can't sign on and are receiving the error message 8071006. After enabling two-factor authentication (2FA), one player was able to sign back in without issue, according to posts on the PS3 subreddit, which includes a link to instructions on how to opt into 2FA on the PS3.

It appears threat actors have started using the stolen PS3 console IDs for malicious purposes, causing the legitimate players to get banned... Sony has not responded to Threatpost's request for comment or confirmed a connection between the PS3 ID breach and player reports of being locked out of the platform...

Sony is hardly the only gaming company leaking data like a sieve. A report from January found a half a million credentials stolen from the Top 25 gaming companies on caches of breached data for sale in criminal marketplaces. In June, the "Battle of the Galaxy" mobile game leaked 6 million gamer profiles, and attackers are working out how to use gaming platforms like Steam to host or deliver malware.

Sony will allow "Cyberpunk 2077" to be sold on its online PlayStation store starting June 21, the game's creators at CD Projekt Red said today. From a report: Sales of the buggy would-be blockbuster have been hit hard since Sony delisted the game shortly after its launch. Many fans had high hopes that the game would meet the level of quality of CDPR's last adventure, "The Witcher 3." A reappearance may signal the game is in a viable condition to play.

After years of work, Epic Games is launching early access for game developers for Unreal Engine 5, the latest version of the company's tools for making games with highly realistic 3D animations. VentureBeat reports: Unreal Engine 5, which will officially ship in 2022, is the company's crowning technical achievement. The early access build will let game developers start testing features and prototyping their upcoming games. Epic isn't saying how long this took or how many employees are working on it, but it's a safe bet that a large chunk of those devs are involved in Unreal Engine 5. It's been seven years since the last engine shipped. Unreal Engine 5 will deliver the freedom, fidelity, and flexibility to create next-generation games that will blow players' minds, said Nick Penwarden, the vice president of engineering, in an interview with GamesBeat. He said it will be effortless for game developers to use groundbreaking new features such as Nanite and Lumen, which provide a generational leap in visual fidelity. The new World Partition system enables the creation of expansive worlds with scalable content.

Developers can also download the new sample project, Valley of the Ancient, to start exploring the new features of UE5. Captured on an Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, Valley of the Ancient is a rich and practical example of how the new features included with Unreal Engine 5 early access can be used, and is the result of internal stress-testing. The demo features a woman named Echo in a deserted mountain area. The team from Quixel, which Epic acquired in 2019, went out to Moab in Utah to scan tons of rock formations, using drones and cameras. And the artists who created the demo populated the scene with Megascans assets, as opposed to using anything procedural or traditional animation tools. "We are targeting 30FPS on next-generation console hardware" at 4K output with the demo, said Penwarden. "We expect people to be targeting 60 frames per second. It's really a choice of the the gaming content itself, what you want to target, and UE5 is absolutely capable of powering 60 frames per second experiences. We chose to, in this case, absolutely maximize visual quality. And so we targeted 30fps. But we're absolutely going to support 60 frames per second experiences."

You can view a demo of Unreal Engine 5 running on both the PS5 and Xbox Series X here on YouTube.

Sony Group warned a group of analysts the PlayStation 5 will remain in short supply through 2022, suggesting the company will be constrained in its ability to boost sales targets for its latest games console. From a report: While reporting financial results in late April, the Japanese conglomerate said it had sold 7.8 million units of the console through March 31, and it is aiming to sell at least 14.8 million units in the current fiscal year. That would keep it on pace to match the trajectory of the popular PlayStation 4, which has sold in excess of 115.9 million units to date. In a briefing after those results, Sony told analysts it is challenging to keep up with strong demand. The PS5 has been difficult to find in stock since its release in November, in part because of shortages in components such as semiconductors, and the company hasn't given an official estimate for when it expects supply to normalize. "I don't think demand is calming down this year and even if we secure a lot more devices and produce many more units of the PlayStation 5 next year, our supply wouldn't be able to catch up with demand," Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki said at the briefing, according to several people who attended and asked not to be named as it wasn't public.

Sony Interactive Entertainment and Discord will connect the communication service to PlayStation Network early next year, now that Sony has taken an ownership stake in Discord's latest round of capital-raising. Polygon reports: SIE president and CEO Jim Ryan didn't list specifics for how PlayStation and Discord will work together. "Our goal is to bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile starting early next year," Ryan said, "allowing friends, groups, and communities to hang out, have fun, and communicate more easily while playing games together." Sony's investment in Discord was made "to bring these experiences to life for our players," he said. Ryan said both companies are already at work on Discord/PSN integration. "Empowering players to create communities and enjoy shared gaming experiences is at the heart of what we do," Ryan said.

It's no secret that Sony held back PS4 cross-platform play for years, but new confidential documents and emails reveal just how much Sony was against letting people play the same games with their friends on other platforms. From a report: Sony initially blocked cross-platform play for both Rocket League and Minecraft, despite Nintendo and Microsoft both enabling players to play across Xbox and Switch. The issue really blew up when Sony blocked Fortnite crossplay in 2018, and players were angry. It now appears that Sony may have been holding out to offset potential revenue losses. In the months leading up to Sony's decision to block Fortnite crossplay in 2018, Epic Games had pleaded with Sony to enable crossplay, emails in the Epic Games v. Apple case reveal. "I can't think of a scenario where Epic doesn't get what we want -- that possibility went out the door when Fortnite became the biggest game on PlayStation," said Joe Kreiner, Epic's vice president of business development.

Kreiner proposed, "We announce crossplay in conjunction with Sony. Epic goes out of its way to make Sony look like heroes." Epic even offered to brand its E3 presence with PlayStation or add unique characters, exclusive to PS Plus subscribers, to sweeten the deal. "Let's make this a huge win for us all. Epic's not changing it's mind on the issue, so let's just agree on it now," said Kreiner. Sony didn't agree. Gio Corsi, Sony's senior director of developer relations at the time, dismissed the idea of crossplay, noting that "cross-platform play is not a slam dunk no matter the size of the title" -- a clear reference to Epic's flex about Fortnite's dominance on PlayStation. "As you know, many companies are exploring this idea and not a single one can explain how cross-console play improves the PlayStation business," said Corsi. But as of August 2019, it appears that Sony may have found a worthy argument: a way to potentially siphon off money from its competitors in exchange for access to PlayStation players.