Sony announced it will hold its long-awaited PlayStation 5 unveiling event at 4 p.m. ET on June 4.
Sony’s invite says the company will discuss “the future of gaming” and will focus on some of the games that will be released alongside the PlayStation 5 later this year.
“The games coming to PS5 represent the best in the industry from innovative studios that span the globe,” Sony Interactive Entertainment chief Jim Ryan said in a blog post accompanying the announcement. He added that the stream will be just the first unveiling, and promised more updates in the coming weeks.
Sony’s event comes just weeks after Microsoft held its own virtual event, where it showcased some of the games coming to the Xbox Series X this holiday season. Sony has been slower than Microsoft to provide updates on its next-gen console but did showcase a controversial new DualSense controller design last month.
Still, Sony’s slow pace could suggest a build-up to this key event, Piers Harding-Rolls, the games research director of Ampere Analysis, suggests.
“I’m expecting this event to focus on areas where Sony is traditionally strong: games development expertise and, with what I hope will be the full reveal of the PS5, product design,” Harding-Rolls said in a statement. “We’re now well into the phase where console early adopters expect to know more about the games that will be available at launch, so this event and Microsoft’s upcoming streams are crucial to build consumer anticipation.”
However, he added that other details like the PS5’s price point still might have to wait.
“The COVID-19 crisis and the economic situation means that choosing when to confirm the pricing is more of a challenge, and, in the current climate, it probably makes sense to wait longer before the reveal,” Harding-Rolls added.
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.