Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II has set a new launch sales record with 4 million units sold in its first three days on store shelves.
The Last of Us Part II’s record makes it the “fastest-selling first-party PlayStation 4 exclusive ever,” Sony senior vice president of PlayStation marketing Eric Lempel said in a blog post on Friday. Naughty Dog, which developed the game, is a wholly owned Sony development house.
“We are so immensely grateful to the millions of fans around the world that have played The Last of Us Part II and shared their experiences with us over the last week,” Naughty Dog vice president Neil Druckmann said in a statement. “We set out to tell a new kind of story, one that deals with difficult themes and would challenge you in unexpected ways. Hearing how the experience has resonated with so many of you and witnessing the type of thoughtful discussions it has sparked has been so incredible.”
The Last of Us Part II took the top spot from Marvel’s Spider-Man, which snagged 3.3 million unit sales during its first three days of availability in 2018.
The Last of Us Part II, which launched on the PlayStation 4 last Friday, was one of the most anticipated launches of the year, thanks to its wildly successful debut on the PlayStation 3 in 2013. The second release also earned rave reviews from critics, including Digital Trends Gaming Section Editor Lisa Marie Segarra. Segarra called the game “a dark masterpiece” and said it “will go down as a classic game that people talk about for years to come, not unlike the first iteration.” She gave the game five out of five stars.
Friday, Druckmann told the Kinda Funny Gamecast in an interview that Naughty Dog has “no plans” to release The Last of Us Part II DLC. Naughty Dog released a popular expansion to the game called The Last of Us: Left Behind in 2014. Druckmann did not, however, reference rumors that a multiplayer version of The Last of Us may be in the works for an eventual launch on the PlayStation 5.
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.