The next generation of home console gaming is right over the horizon and two of the big three are gearing up for brand-new console releases. A new report gives us insight into the strategy for one of them, as anonymous Sony officials spoke about which companies are competitors to the PlayStation and which games are the focus for next-gen console.
The Wall Street Journal spoke with a couple unnamed Sony officials, who broke down a part of the software strategy for the next-gen the PlayStation 5. When it comes to supporting large game publishers and smaller games, the officials made some interesting statements. The report says Sony’s thinking is that gamers buy consoles to play “high-quality games” only available on the platform and not “smaller games also available on smartphones,” so the emphasis will be on building stronger relationships with bigger publishers.
The comment could be off-putting to some gamers simply because it focuses on two extremes and leaves out the small to midtier publishers and developers that make up the majority of any game console’s software library. This comment comes with the news that Sony won’t be showcasing independent game developers during the Tokyo Game Show in September. Sony has dominated this current generation of home consoles, but that only translates so much when it asks gamers to buy into the PlayStation 5 or whatever the official name of its next console ends up being.
Major AAA games are high-profile draws but most of them will be available on competitors’ platforms. Platform exclusives will be key and lesser-known developers are being treated as key differentiators in the gameplan for Xbox thus far. Microsoft has secured a collection of studios like Obsidian, Ninja Theory, and inXile, and will likely be cultivating relationships with developers that have even lower profiles. If Sony is planning to front-load with big publishers, gamers looking for variety outside of titles like Call of Duty, Ghost Recon, or Madden may end up finding better bounty elsewhere.
There’s still a lot of time between now and when the next-gen PlayStation releases. The PS4 still has plenty of life with games like Ghost of Tsushima and The Last of Us 2 still on the way. Those games and a handful of others will potentially be rolling out the red carpet for the PS5 with ports to the new console, but even PlayStation’s strongest exclusive games can’t carry the load alone.
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.