Sony surprised the gaming world by making a PlayStation 5 announcement at CES 2020, sharing the first look at the PlayStation 5 logo.
It’s exactly what you would expect. The logo looks similar to the PS4 logo. Sony has kept its PlayStation branding extremely consistent across generations, so any major change for the PS5 would have been a strange move.
This news follows Microsoft’s reveal of the Xbox Series X at The Game Awards 2019. The Xbox Series X reveal was relatively in-depth, showing off the look of the console and controller, and providing basic performance specifications.
CES 2020 also saw a minor tidbit of new Xbox Series X news. AMD’s press conference revealed the rear of the new Xbox console, including its ports. We now know the Xbox Series X will have two HDMI ports, two USB-C ports, optical audio, and an Ethernet port.
Interestingly, this means we saw more of the Xbox Series X at CES 2020 than we did of the PlayStation 5, despite Sony’s reveal of the PS5 logo. We know now what Microsoft’s console looks like front and back, its performance target, its port configuration, and what the gamepad will look like.
While several leaks claims to show PlayStation 5 development kits, Sony has stayed silent about the console’s details. That may seem odd given what Microsoft has revealed so far, but on the contrary, a major PlayStation reveal at CES 2020 would have been out of character for Sony. The company prefers to reserve its best announcements for its own events. We’ll likely have to wait for Sony to hold a private press conference to see any new information of substance.
2020 is shaping up to be a landmark year for console gaming. Microsoft and Sony will both release their new consoles, and both are expected to provide a huge upgrade over their predecessors. Yet rumors also suggest they’ll be backwards compatible, so gamers will still be able to play classic favorites without dragging out an older console.
We also expect to see a massive library of exciting new games in 2020, including the first games for the next-gen consoles. Check out our most anticipated games of 2020 for more details.
This is a developing story. Stay tuned for additional updates.
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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.