PlayStation is gearing up for its 30th anniversary on December 3 with some free gifts for fans, including new trials, never-before-released soundtracks, and even board games.
The company introduced these upcoming releases as part of its anniversary celebration, and it says there will be more to come. For now, though, we’ve got a mix of nostalgic and modern to look forward to.
PlayStation kicked off its announcement with My First GT, a different kind of free trial for Gran Turismo players on PlayStation 5 and 4 that’s coming this holiday season. It’s an attempt to get newcomers into Gran Turismo 7 with a best-of compilation of cars, tracks, and races.
One of the more surprising announcements refers to Shapes of Play, which are physical products made up of iconic PlayStation shapes. One is Shapes of Play: Battle, which is an actual board game where you line up the shapes on the board to win against your friends. Create reimagines the shapes as magnetic blocks that you can play around with, and Recharge is broadly described as a way to “recharge between games, especially after that tough boss battle.” From what we can tell, that means you get four stress balls and a storage box.
These toys will cost you, though. Create is going for a whopping $80, while Battle and Recharge will cost $45 and $35, respectively. They’re all up for preorder and will release on December 9.
Elsewhere, PlayStation will be releasing soundtracks for older games on Spotify for the first time. God of War, God of War 2, and God of War: Ghost of Sparta will be there, along with Twisted Metal, Starhawk, and Unit 13. They’ll be uploaded each month starting in October. The company also has a PlayStation 30th Anniversary playlist on Spotify now that’s full of song. But to be honest, I’m not sure what a lot of them have to do with PlayStation, though there are some great tracks here.
We’re also getting free online multiplayer weekends for EA Sports FC 24, NBA 2K25, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 from September 21-22, along with esports tournaments for a number of sports and fighting games.
This is all just the start of the celebration, and it doesn’t even include the release of Astro Bot on Friday, which is already shaping up to be one of the best games of the year thanks in part to the joy it takes in PlayStation nostalgia. Digital Trends gave it four-and-a-half stars and called it a “triumphant and expertly designed return to PlayStation’s more playful days.”
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.