Sony has introduced PlayStation Stars, a free rewards and loyalty program for PS4 and PS5 players.
According to a blog post published Thursday, PlayStation Stars will launch later this year and will allow players to earn rewards for completing various campaigns and activities. One of the campaigns Sony revealed is the Monthly Check-In, which only requires you to play any game to receive a reward. Meanwhile, other campaigns give more specific tasks, such as earning specific trophies and winning tournaments. Another campaign calls on players to compete to be the first to reach platinum in a blockbuster game — in other words, 100% the game — in their local time zone to receive a reward.
While joining PlayStation Stars is free, All PlayStation Stars members will get a chance to earn loyalty points that can be redeemed for PlayStation Network wallet funds and “select PlayStation Store products”. Those with a PlayStation Plus subscription can even earn points for any purchase they make in the PlayStation Store.
Another type of reward that members will get is digital collectibles, which are 3D rendered representations of PlayStation characters and past PlayStation consoles. You may think they’re NFTs from reading the words “digital collectibles,” but Gracie Chen, PlayStation’s vice president of network advertising, loyalty, and licensed merchandise told The Washington Post otherwise.“It’s definitely not NFTs. Definitely not. You can’t trade them or sell them. It is not leveraging any blockchain technologies and definitely not NFTs,” Chen said.
A specific launch date is not confirmed, but PlayStation Stars will start regional testing before launching later this year.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.