On the eve of The Last of Us Part 2's long-awaited release on PC, Reality Check is here to grade its realism. Psychologist Dr. Audrey Tang returns to break down the biggest moments of Naughty Dog's sequel and grade its depiction of trauma, fear, and sweet, sweet revenge. Spoilers for TLOU2's story within, of course.

"I think the narrative is really what makes this game stand out. It's hugely compelling. It dives very deep into human behaviors鈥攊t's not just 'shoot shoot shoot,'" Dr. Tang said. Watch the full video to see Dr. Tang's reaction to Ellie and Dina's relationship, that one especially brutal scene involving a golf club, and Naughty Dog's questionable deployment of flashbacks.

We hope you're enjoying Reality Check. If this is your first episode, you've got a nice little backlog to work through in this YouTube playist, including a paleontologist's take on Monster Hunter Wilds, Dr. Tang's view on The Sims, and parkour experts reacting to Assassn's Creed throughout the years.

"Dark Outlaw Games have been working away in the shadows for a while, and when we've got something to talk about we'll step out into the light," Blundell said in an interview with Jeff Gerstmann. "But the story for me is about the game, not about the studio. So the reason why we're not doing a fanfare or shouting about it from the rooftops is, let's get something, right?

"It's such a privilege to be able to do it with Sony as a new first-party studio. Sony doesn't set up first-party studios all the time. To have that privilege is humbling, it's really nice. I'm really excited."

Blundell said Dark Outlaw has been "staffing up [and] keeping it kind of low key" to this point, but declined to say anything specific about the studio's current status, much less what it's working on. "We're getting the team to jell, getting the ideas clicking鈥擨'm a programmer at heart, so let's test those assumptions: Is it working, is it working? You're trying to hit that escape velocity."

Blundell has a long list of credits to his name, beginning鈥攋ust as he said鈥攁s a programmer on Starlancer in 2000. But he's best known for a long run on Call of Duty at Treyarch: He served as producer on Call of Duty 3 and Black Ops, directed two Zombies maps for Black Ops 2, and directed both the campaign and Zombies modes for Black Ops 3. He left Treyarch in 2020 after 13 years at the studio, saying his time at the studio "has been nothing short of awesome."

This isn't Blundell's first comeback: In 2021 he launched a new studio alongside fellow Call of Duty veteran Dave Anthony in 2021 called Deviation Games. Interestingly, that studio's first project was being developed in partnership with Sony, but Blundell left Deviation just over a year later, in September 2022, and the studio closed in 2024 without releasing a game.

Apparently that unhappy outcome hasn't diminished his enthusiasm. "It's very exciting," Blundell said in the interview. "I love the fact that still at this point in my career, I'm given these opportunities. It's always that desire to鈥攁gain, you want to put that one extra disc on the wall, if you will, and can we bring something to an audience and excite them and get some new IPs ... that makes me jump out of bed every morning."

The video, which has since been taken down under a copyright claim, featured Aloy responding to questions from Raghoebardajal and showing off a segment of gameplay, after which the character described everything that happened in the clip. OpenAI's Whisper is used for the voice-to-text, OpenAI and Llama handle the conversation and decision-making, and the facial animations come from Sony's own internal Mockingbird system.

The system seen in the video is running on PC, but Raghoebardajal says they've been able to get Whisper and Mockingbird running on consoles (presumably PS5) "with relatively little overhead."

"Nothing is scripted," Raghoebardajal says in the video. "You can ask her anything, and she'll answer [as] Aloy."

It's not great, to be blunt. The interaction is stilted and awkward, and it's all very uncanny valley: It's very clearly a machine spouting off text-to-voice search results, and there's nothing organic or "natural" about it. Which is probably to be expected: Raghoebardajal says the initial demo was "just a quick, fun prototyping project," while the version seen in this video was bolstered by a few weeks of extra work for closed-door demonstrations at the Sony Technology Exchange Fair. The presentation is "just a glimpse of what is possible," Raghoebardajal says, and nowhere near a final product, or even meant for public consumption.

Despite those caveats, the reactions to the video on YouTube are not hugely positive. "Creepy," "ghastly," "rancid," and "cursed" are amongst the adjectives used to describe the video; one user begged Sony to "please work on literally anything else," while a couple others want to know鈥攜ou can probably see this coming鈥攚hy Sony is horsing around with this instead of making the Bloodborne remaster.

Not all of the complaints are entirely serious, of course, although the person noting the grim irony of doing an AI demo in a game in which AI was responsible for the annihilation of humanity makes a fair point. But there are also concerns expressed about the long-term impact of this sort of work on game development, particularly with regard to the role that voice actors will play in future productions.

Sony is far from unique in working on this sort of thing. Ubisoft and Inworld AI showed off their own AI-powered NPC creations at GDC in 2024, for instance, and Nvidia is working on "Co-Playable Character" technology in partnership with other developers including Krafton鈥攏ot exactly the same thing, but broadly similar in the sense that it's AI stuff being shoehorned into videogames.

None of it has added up to much at this point, and as anyone who futzed with config files to improve the godawful NPC pathfinding in the original Baldur's Gate can tell you, there's definitely a place for better AI in videogames. But the rise of AI in game development has a potentially dark underbelly and there's a growing feeling of inevitability to it: I don't think AI will ever replicate the genuine human performances we've enjoyed in games like Baldur's Gate 3 or Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, but it's also presumably a whole lot cheaper (you don't have to pay a machine and they never need time off) and sooner or later that's going to start figuring into the conversation.

I've reached out to Sony for comment on the video and will update if I receive a reply.

In December Sony released a new PlayStation ad featuring a callback to Bloodborne, along with the text "it's about persistence". This implied to me and other weirdos that our persistent begging for a Bloodborne PC port鈥攐r at the very least, a 60fps patch for the game running on PS5鈥攎ight soon be gratified. Presumably an actual human or group of humans made that ad, and understood what it might suggest to Bloodborne fans.

Then, earlier this month, came news that Sony had bullied the creator of a Bloodborne 60fps mod for PS5 with a DMCA takedown notification. Granted, that's unpromising material for any rumour mill, but this is how desperate we've become. The reasoning went: perhaps Sony's sudden focus on this mod鈥攚hich has existed since 2021鈥攑ointed to an imminent official solution that might involve the exchange of money between Sony and its customers, who have wasted no opportunity to make it clear that a Bloodborne PC port and/or remaster is something they would pay for. Not only that, but probably in numbers that would easily eclipse those enjoyed by, say, a remaster of the water-treading open world adventure Horizon Zero Dawn.

I'm not suggesting any of this is rational, by the way. It was only last month that former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida provided the most clearcut reason yet for Sony's inaction on Bloodborne, even if his reason was also just speculation. He put forward the theory that creator Hidetaka Miyazaki is interested in a remaster or sequel, but only if he can do it himself. The problem being that he's too busy with a bunch of other things.

Still, at this point it's rubbing salt in the wound whenever Sony dares remind us that it published Bloodborne (it also owns the IP). It's also rubbing salt in the wound whenever the company announces basically any other game, but triply so鈥攓uadruply so鈥攚hen it announces a first-party remaster that is not Bloodborne.

Look at the fully-fledged remasters (as distinct from title updates that improve performance) already received during the PS5 generation:

So imagine the cosmic scale of salty woundedness when Sony announces Days Gone Remastered today, which will release day one on PC. As far as I know, not a single soul on this dear dying planet has asked for a Days Gone remaster.

I'm not bagging Days Gone. It has its fans, I assume, but Sony itself isn't among its most ardent admirers since it turned down a sequel. I played it. I have the trophies to show for it on my PS4, at least, though I have no recollection of doing so. It's an open world game about a guy on a motorbike. It has zombies and some neat horde tech. From memory it had that faintly annoying Sony prestige vibe to it. You know what I mean: The Last of Us is a post-apocalyptic zombie game, but seriously. God of War is a game about an angry violent demigod, but seriously. Days Gone is also a post-apocalyptic zombie game, and also seriously.

It's not Bloodborne, that's for sure. Sony's recent habit of remastering games that don't really need remastering is a pragmatic business move during a tumultuous time for the blockbuster end of the games industry. Even if I think remastering Horizon Zero Dawn is ridiculous as a creative decision, I wouldn't argue against the business logic.

The problem is that these remaster projects for niche and/or middling games are always going to be overshadowed by The Bloodborne Problem. Every time Sony announces a remaster and PC release for a first-party PlayStation game, it fails to be Bloodborne. And every time it fails to be Bloodborne, it frustrates the people who simply want to play a modern classic without frame pacing issues that make it look like a stop motion film in fast-forward.

Sony: speak to us about Bloodborne. Don't be cryptic about it, either. Don't cheekily allude to "persistence". Just lay it all out. We're adults here, albeit desperate ones. What initially felt like a smart tease has lately come to feel like a joke. How about this: you talk to us about Bloodborne, and I'll play your lil' Days Gone again.

To be fair to Sony and Arrowhead, it was communicated from the start that such a requirement was meant to be implemented eventually, and at the time, the stakes didn't seem all that high. Many players pointed to the galling exclusion of gamers in countries that can access Steam but not PSN as a reason to resist the imposition, but Sony has largely surrendered its PSN on PC ambitions while still weirdly excluding those countries in Helldivers 2 and its other releases, and players in the global north don't seem too bothered these days.

Let's call a spade a spade: Much of the backlash was because Sony's requirement was annoying, and the supposed "player protection" justification felt insulting when the move was clearly meant to force more users into Sony's PSN ecosystem. Having to juggle online services you wouldn't use if you didn't have to, another company insisting on having your email and other personal information, is always annoying.

But this weekend we saw first-hand that the issue goes much further than that, and PC gamers' capacity for acting annoying when we get annoyed helped us dodge a bullet. Sony's PlayStation Network was completely knocked out for 24 hours, and the company refuses to offer an explanation for what happened. If Sony had held firm on a PSN sign-in for Helldivers 2, it would have been just as borked on PC as it was on console. Ditto for if Sony had retained its log-in requirement for singleplayer games: You could effectively play God of War Ragnarok offline after creating or logging into a PSN account (unless you opted for a handy mod), but just like installing a PS5 disc drive, a PSN outage would have prevented first-time setup of something that simply does not require an internet connection.

Sony does not seem to understand the PC audience. I'd wager it's only being dragged to the platform kicking and screaming by the continued healthy growth of PC gaming and relative stagnation of consoles. But the demands and delays Sony subjects its PC players to smack of condescension to me: A company that believes it is operating from a place of strength, gracing PC gamers with the essential PlayStation exclusives we've been bereft of for so long.

The truth is that Sony has to win us over. There are too many good games on PC to acquiesce to being shackled to a service whose founding principle is charging players extra to go online with games, internet connections, and consoles they've already paid for. One that, 14 years ago, suffered one of the greatest cybersecurity disasters of the 21st century so far. We don't even know what happened to the PlayStation Network between February 7 and 8 yet or how thoroughly it may have been compromised鈥擲ony still won't say. But after reporting on this absolute cluster as it happened, it's clear to me that mandatory sign-ins to extraneous "services" like the PlayStation Network aren't just an annoyance. They are an odious imposition to be avoided at all cost, with genuine risks to the consumer.

At 6 PM CT on February 8, Ask PlayStation tweeted that PSN's services had been restored, and apologized for the inconvenience. Later that night, Ask PlayStation tweeted, "Network services have fully recovered from an operational issue. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the community for their patience. All PlayStation Plus members will automatically receive an additional five days of service."

Ok, but what happened? Sony failed to offer any official update or communication about the outage from when PSN first went down late on February 7, to when it came back online on the night of February 8. Absent any word or explanation, many commenters?鈥攎yself included?鈥攃an't help but remember the disastrous PSN hack of 2011. Rumors abound that this was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against Sony. Longtime developer and video maker Modern Vintage Gamer argued that some of the client-side behavior exhibited by PSN during the outage lends the DDoS theory credence.

It remains to be seen if Sony will offer an official explanation for what happened?鈥攚ere I a PlayStation customer, I would rather have that peace of mind than any compensation for the downtime. Both would be preferable though, to be clear. Meanwhile, Capcom has tweeted that it is considering offering an extended window of play for the Monster Hunter Wilds beta, which was impacted by the downtime. It's unclear if PC players might benefit from this potential extension as well, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. We'll just have to be content with not paying an extra subscription to game online on top of just paying for the games, console, and internet access, then having the service go down anyway.

Sony's only official comment on the matter has been a tweet from the Ask PlayStation support account that reads, "We are aware some users might be currently experiencing issues with PSN," with a link to a network service status page that reports outages in the following services:

• Account Management
• Gaming and Social
• PlayStation Video
• PlayStation Store
• PlayStation Direct

A community note on the Ask PlayStation tweet points out that it fails to capture the full extent of the outage: "some" users as opposed to, apparently, literally every user. The community note also alleges that this may be the result of a DDoS attack, citing Sony support messages shared elsewhere on social media, but that explanation has yet to be confirmed. A pinned moderator comment on the PlayStation subreddit's megathread on the issue notes that there are a number of users spreading "incorrect service information, rumors, and outright lies" in the absence of a full accounting from Sony.

At the time of writing, I can still access streaming services like Netflix and Hulu on my PS4, but I am logged out of PSN and unable to access updates or other services. This issue is also highlighting other PSN dependencies I wouldn't normally consider. Day one updates and DRM checks introduce extra difficulties when trying to game offline, even if you still purchase physical media. User @graham_brn on Twitter has demonstrated how the PS5 Pro's sold-separately disc drive requires a PSN connection for first time setup with the console, potentially locking you out of your physical library entirely should the drive somehow unpair or need to be replaced.

Sony is understandably in crisis mode at the moment, and this outage has fallen on the weekend to boot, but the company's lack of communication definitely isn't helping the environment of panic, confusion, and misinformation among PlayStation customers. We'll know more as Sony works to resolve the issue and finally provide an explanation, but my mind immediately goes to the 23-day PlayStation Network hack and outage back in 2011. Here's hoping this current crisis isn't anywhere near as severe as that legendary cybersecurity boondoggle.

So, let's have a moment of silence for Sony's last Japanese manufacturing plant producing a number of optical media formats. Closed this month, the factory in Tagajo, Miyagi Prefecture didn't just make ancient formats like MiniDV cassettes and MiniDiscs, but also specifically recordable blu-rays too (though production of other types of blu-rays will continue). Hang on, what's that sound? It's Verbatim and I-O Data rocking up with assurances that optical media isn't dead, promising to continue to supply a steadily shrinking though definitely alive and kicking consumer base (via Tom's Hardware).

Verbatim's statement about its collaboration with I-O data says that together the two companies will provide a stable supply of optical discs to the Japanese market specifically. However, there's not yet an equivalent statement on Verbatim's English-language newsroom leaving optical media's future in other parts of the world looking a little unclear.

But fear not, as there's little indication the supply of optical media is about to dry up in the US and Europe. For one thing, Tom's Hardware dug up some evidence of Verbatim's ongoing commitment to blu-ray support by highlighting the company's Slimline Blu-ray Writer unveiled at this year's CES.

As storage media, discs still have a lot to offer. Besides holding onto favourites dashed from online streaming libraries, blu-rays are capable of a surprising amount of longevity too. For instance, this technical breakdown from the Canadian Conservation Institute lists the longevity of recordable and erasable blu-rays as anywhere between 20 and 50 years. That's nowhere near as long-lasting as, say, carving complaints about dodgy copper into clay, but it's certainly more practical. I'd be remiss not to at least mention M-DISC's blu-rays and DVDs promising "1,000 years or more" of data storage though, uh, that's a claim that is difficult to substantiate.

For comparison's sake, the moving parts of a HDD offer a number of potential points of failure, with something likely to stop working in devices between three and five years old according to less than generous estimates from data protection company Arcserve. Add to that this story from last year about researchers at the University of Shanghai developing a disc that can store up to 200 TB, and optical media is definitely not out for the count yet.

I mean, okay, blu-rays aren't going to cure my increasing existential dread鈥攂ut they will ensure I've got some banging movies to watch in the Mad Max future my anxiety keeps insisting will happen. Millennium Actress, anyone? Games, with their many online updates, present a completely different post-apocalyptic preservation ball game. So, while I'm still holding onto many PS3 and PS4 discs, chances are I'd still need an internet connection or at least a whole other blu-ray's worth of downloaded patches to make any of them playable.

"Hold off on buying until they get a couple of stabilization patches out because holy hell," says Lumi Kl?vstad. "To say this is "rough" is an understatement. Lighting doesn't load in some cutscenes, those same scenes run at seconds-per-frame, audio desync issues up the wazoo, freezing, stuttering, and just about every other performance issue I can think of."

A player going by the handle of, erm, Xtreme Hot Diarrhea says it's "crashing every 10 minutes" and keeps claiming there's a problem with their settings being too high for their GPU, or old display drivers. "My PC: NVIDIA RTX 4090 (Newest Driver 572.16), I7 13700KF, DDR 5 32GB 6000MHz."

There are just over two thousand reviews thus far split between positive and negative, so some players aren't running into these technical issues, though it does seem that the folk with higher-end cards like 4080s and 4090s are running into the most problems. Players are also reporting that the game goes on the fritz when you fiddle with graphical settings in-game, while others are encountering a repeated problem with crashing in cutscenes.

PC Gamer has a few copies on the team, and our results are mixed too. "Seems to run pretty smoothly for me but it just hard locked and crashed to desktop 10 minutes in," says senior editor Robin Valentine on a 3080. "It demanded a driver update for me too when I booted it, though it still crashed and said my drivers weren't up to date."

"It crashed because I hadn't updated my drivers, did an update and it opened ok," says video editor Dave Jones. But both add that the game's being doing some otherwise impressive stuff, and outside of these moments has been running OK, so hopefully a few hotfixes can handle the majority of issues.

At the time of writing Spider-Man 2 has in fact just received its first hotfix, which targets "device hang crashes that could occur while playing the game with ray-tracing enabled." That could have been what PCG was running into, so we'll see if that nixes the general issues that Nixxes' work has so far been running into. But if you've been thinking of dropping the cash on Spidey's latest adventure, good luck but maybe give it a week or two.

Sony announced on the PlayStation Blog today, on the eve of the launch of Spider-Man 2 for PC, that the PlayStation Network account requirement for that game will in fact be optional, not mandatory. That will also be the case for the upcoming The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, as well as the previously released God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. If you don't don't want to bother with setting up and using a PSN account, you'll no longer have to.

So, you may ask, why would you? Simply put, for the stuff. Sony cited "added benefits like trophies and friend management" for those who sign up for PSN accounts, but we already have that through Steam so it's not likely to move the needle much. So it's also adding "in-game content unlocks" for PSN account holders. Here's what you'll get:

• Marvel鈥檚 Spider-Man 2: Early unlock suits: the Spider-Man 2099 Black Suit and the Miles Morales 2099 Suit
• God of War Ragnarok: Gain access to the Armor of the Black Bear set for Kratos at the first Lost Items chest in the Realm Between Realms (previously only accessible in a New Game+ run) and a resource bundle (500 Hacksilver and 250 XP)
• The Last of Us Part II Remastered: +50 points to activate bonus features and unlock extras, Jordan鈥檚 Jacket from Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet as a skin for Ellie
• Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered: Gain access to Nora Valiant outfit

"Game creators at PlayStation Studios will continue to work on bringing more benefits to players who sign up for a PlayStation Network account," Sony said.

It's quite a change from a year ago, when Sony went to war with Helldivers 2 players over that game's belated PSN requirement鈥攁 war it ultimately lost, but not before destroying untold amounts of goodwill amongst the player base. It also removed the PC version of Ghost of Tsushima from sale in nearly 200 countries that don't have PSN access in May 2024, even though an account is only required for its co-op multiplayer mode. It was all bafflingly hard-headed, and Sony's justification that a PSN account requirement was necessary "so that anybody can enjoy the game[s] safely" really didn't fly, especially since most of the games impacted are singleplayer.

PC gamers, meanwhile, seem determined to make the whole thing as much of a headache as possible for Sony: Just days after God of War Ragnarok launched on Steam, for instance, someone whipped up a mod enabling players to bypass the PSN login requirement entirely.

If there's one thing I've learned from life, it's that sometimes you have to take a step back and ask yourself, is this really worth the hassle? And, importantly, that it's okay if you decide the answer is "no." Honestly, I'm a little surprised it took Sony this long to figure it out, but I think it's a smart move: A PSN requirement for PC games is superfluous by just about any measure but if you're determined to run with it, you might as well do it in a way that's more likely to generate good PR than bad.

This is, understandably, causing a great deal of headscratching鈥攚ith Sony doubling down on a move that has proven historically unpopular and, from a consumer standpoint, seemingly without a proper objective in mind. Horizon Forbidden West has already been available for the better part of a year, and it's not as if it'll contribute to PSN user numbers in any meaningful way鈥攕o why close the curtains now?

While I've reached out to Sony for comment, and will update this article if I receive a response, I can make some educated guesses. To be clear鈥擨'm not attempting to justify Sony's decision here, I think it's weird and short-sighted, but I am also cursed with the burden of knowledge and will share what I can to illuminate the situation.

While I'd like to sweep in with a theory that explains everything, the truth of the matter is this whole thing's bound to be complicated and multifaceted. I'll deal with the obvious first鈥攕ome of the countries involved are just straight-up dictatorships, and are thus boycotted. For example, North Korea's on the list.

This isn't even a new move. Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine has seen much of the gaming industry refusing to do business with the country. With physical goods, this makes a lot of sense鈥攚artime and governmental corruption makes for easily-pilfered inventory and inconsistent shipping issues鈥攂ut, as studies mentioned in the article I just linked, digital piracy can be just as prevalent. Typically, it's just more trouble than it's worth.

But what about the other countries present? Speaking bluntly, Sony is a company, and it's not going to make all of its decisions out of the goodness of its heart. Exchange rates are a huge factor. Put simply, games are 'cheaper' in other countries if your own country's currency is worth more.

This is a problem for any publisher making decisions like 'how much should a game cost' because of basic economics. If you want to sell anything, you need to balance cost with, well, making sure people can actually afford it. You might need to charge the equivalent of a month's salary to turn a profit鈥攂ut at that point, no-one's gonna bother. For example, in 2023, players from Argentina and Turkey were hit with massive price hikes when Steam decided to stop converting currencies in their territories, as well as 25 other countries.

But why, you ask, is that a problem for digital goods? Generating keys doesn't cost anything, and you've already made the game, so it's in a publisher's best interest to get as many customers as possible鈥攅ven if they're paying a pittance. Lemme introduce you to the concept of the grey market or, as you probably know them, key resellers.

Grey markets (as opposed to black markets) are, put simply, a consequence of how humans work. If a product is cheap in one country, why not buy and sell it in a country where it's more expensive? Why not indeed, say the key sellers, who have been doing this sort of thing for a while, sometimes through less-than-scrupulous means.

This isn't even particularly seedy on the fact of it鈥攁 little underhanded, maybe, but it's sometimes an accepted part of doing business. Back in 2019, Valve actually got in trouble for region-locking certain games, with the EU commissioner stating that "consumers should not be prevented from shopping around between Member States to find the best available deal."

All of this to say鈥攊t's a massive headache, and it's entirely possible that Sony has simply had enough of dealing with it, thus limiting its scope to countries it knows it won't have a hard time with. It's still a confusing and somewhat anti-consumer decision, don't get me wrong (that's why I've asked Sony directly). But it's not entirely mystifying or without precedent.

In a recent interview with Kinda Funny Games, Shuhei Yoshida, who recently left PlayStation after a sterling 31 years through a series of high-ranking roles, has stated that he thinks Sony knew the risks鈥攁nd there were plenty.

"I was responsible for allocating resources to what kind of games [we'd] make. If the company was considering that [live service way], it probably wouldn't have made sense to stop making great single-player games and to put money into these service games." Which, Yoshida emphasises, is exactly why they didn't. "What they did after [Hermen Hulst] took over is the company and Sony allocated a lot more resources [to live service games].

"I don't think they said to Hermen to stop making single-player games, they said 'oh yeah, these games are great, just continue doing that, and we'll give you additional resources to work on these service games and try it.'"

As for the pitfalls? Yoshida doesn't think anyone at the company was ignorant of the risks: "I'm sure they knew it's risky. The chance of a game being successful in this hugely competitive genre would be small鈥攈owever, the company, knowing that risk, gave Hermen those resources and chance to try it 鈥� in my mind, [the way they did it] was great, and I'm hoping some of those games become successful."

In fairness, some of them definitely did鈥攍ike Helldivers 2, even if it wasn't made by one of Sony's internal studios and took eight years to make. "And lucky Helldivers 2 did so well鈥攏o-one expected [that], right? You cannot plan a success in this industry. That's the most fun part."

Still, Yoshida says that the whole live service diceroll is far from how he would've handled it. "Probably, if I was in the position of Hermen, I would've tried to resist that direction," he says, before joking: "Maybe that's one of the reasons they removed me."

You've got to wonder, then, if Yoshida had stuck around in that role, whether we'd be seeing Sony rush into the live service foibles that left us all collectively groaning and saying enough, enough already. Mind, Marvel Rivals has been a hit, so maybe there's just enough gold in them rivers to see companies panning well into 2025.

FromSoftware is now established as one of the greatest AAA studios of our time, producing classic after classic under the inscrutable eye of director (and now company president) Hidetaka Miyazaki. Most of these games have found their way to PC. But the PlayStation 4 exclusive Bloodborne, which many including myself consider FromSoftware's masterpiece, remains locked to that platform.

The calls for a remaster have been around so long and are so frequent that it's now one of those go-to gaming memes: The runup to any major showcase will always have someone rumouring Bloodborne, while the tiniest hint that Sony remembers the game exists is seized-upon by feverish fans. And now the outgoing Shuhei Yoshida, who's just retired from PlayStation after 31 years in senior roles including president of SCE Worldwide Studios, has proffered his own theory about why it's so elusive.

In an interview with Kinda Funny Games (timestamp, and first spotted by Kotaku), Yoshida is asked about Bloodborne's future. "Bloodborne has always been the most asked thing, and people wonder why we haven鈥檛 really done anything like an update or remaster which should be easy," says Yoshida. "Sony鈥檚 known for doing so many remasters, right? And people get frustrated."

Erm.. yeah? So where's the Bloodborne remaster or a sequel to one of the best-received first-party games Sony's ever had?

"I have only my personal theory to that situation," says Yoshida. "I left first-party [Sony], so I don鈥檛 know what鈥檚 going on, but my theory is because I remember Miyazaki really, really loved Bloodborne, you know what he created and so I think he is interested, but he鈥檚 so successful and he鈥檚 so busy so he cannot do it himself, but he doesn鈥檛 want anyone else to touch it. So that鈥檚 my theory, and the PlayStation team respects his wish."

Yoshida's at pains to emphasise that this is "my guess, my theory" and "I'm not revealing any secrets to be clear." Then, like the fleeting glimpses of hope scattered through Yharnam, the topic is gone.

One of PlayStation 5's launch titles was Demon's Souls, which was handled by internal Sony studio Bluepoint rather than FromSoftware, which did later lead to rumours (of course!) that it would be moving onto Bloodborne. Obviously that's not the case, and Yoshida's theory on the matter is rather concerning for Bloodborne maniacs: Do we want more Miyazaki-directed new games, or for his team to spend time remaking an old one?

OK silly question. But there are reasons for hope. Last year PC Gamer got to sit down with the man himself, and got the closest thing yet to a straight answer. "I know for a fact these guys want a Bloodborne PC port," Miyazaki said, pointing to FromSoftware colleagues. "If I say I want one, I'll get in trouble as well. But it's nothing I'm opposed to.

"Obviously, as one of the creators of Bloodborne, my personal, pure honest opinion is I'd love more players to be able to enjoy it. Especially as a game that is now coming of age, one of those games of the past that gets lost on older hardware鈥擨 think any game like that, it'd be nice to have an opportunity for more players to be able to experience that and relive this relic of the past. So as far as I'm concerned, that's definitely not something I'd be opposed to."

In the graveyard of live service games Concord may just be the biggest headstone, and that seems to have focused some minds over at PlayStation. Previously the noises coming from Sony were all about the importance of live service games to its future strategy, and it had announced plans to launch more than 10 live service games by the 2025 fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2026.

Now? Not so much. A new Bloomberg report reveals that "following a recent review" PlayStation has canceled two unannounced live service games in development at subsidiaries Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games. Bend is best-known for Days Gone and, back in the day, Syphon Filter, while Bluepoint mainly handles high-profile remakes like Demon's Souls.

It's reported that the Bluepoint game was a live service God of War game, which really does drive home how absurd things got there for a moment. I can't think of a worse fit for a live service title than a singleplayer hack-and-slash action game that is laser-focused on its central character (and latterly his son), and you do wonder why anyone ever thought it would be a good idea. Maybe I'm wrong and it would've been amazing, we'll never know, but I somehow doubt it.

"Bend and Bluepoint are highly accomplished teams who are valued members of the PlayStation Studios family, and we are working closely with each studio to determine what are the next projects," a Sony spokesperson told Bloomberg. Neither studio is at risk as a result of the cancellations, though the company did not comment on whether there would be lay offs.

Live service as a genre is irresistible to major publishers because there's just so much money to be had, and success can lead to a golden goose like Fortnite. Sony has had some success with 2024's Helldivers 2, and obviously now owns live service specialist Bungie, but it's also previously cancelled other projects (such as Spider-Man and Twisted Metal live service titles) and the experience of something like Concord must be the corporate equivalent of a slap in the face with a wet fish. Perhaps the live service gold rush is finally slowing down, even if it will never stop.

There was me thinking this was the era of gaming handhelds, then PenBar posts this massive, 3D printed retro gaming laptop that looks like it could take my old DVD player in a fistfight. Still, it's a gorgeous little passion project that deserves some attention, so here's the BBook AI Original Edition鈥攜es, it's really called that鈥攊n all its glory (via TechSpot).

At over 31 mm thick and with a 17-inch panel, the BBook AI Original Edition is chonky as all heck. It weighs around 9.5lb/4.3kg, which is even heavier than some of the mightiest RTX 40-series gaming laptops of today. It even outweighs the new Gigabyte Aorus 17X and the abhorrent MSI Titan 18 HX, a pair of notorious gaming laptops requiring a crane just to move rooms. The real question is, what could this thing possibly be packing to warrant that level of poundage?

Well, you're looking at a full-sized keyboard and a 4K IPS panel, though the screen is locked to a 60 Hz refresh rate. Otherwise, you're getting exactly the same hardware as the standard PlayStation 5. Granted it's a few pounds lighter than the original PlayStation even with the screen attached, though there's one more slight drawback that keeps it from being portable. The BBook AI's designer has opted to do away with a battery altogether, which sort of negates the point of it being a laptop if you ask me.

Aside from that, it's said this thing kicks up a fuss when running at full power. With a hairdryer-matching 71.3 decibels of noise it's not going to be great for a quiet gaming session while your significant other is asleep.

The BBook AI isn't available to purchase, but its suggested price is in the region of $2,748. A bit expensive for a laptop of its performance caliber, then, but there's of course the artisan mod premium on top of the components and materials. That said most of the best gaming laptops do at least come with a battery, even if it is generally unlikely that you'll get more than an hour of gaming out of it.

While AI has been shown to be very good at plagiarism, there's a wild gulf between stealing voices or mangling art and actually making a functioning, competently designed game with any innovative qualities, but that won't stop 'ideas guys' or executives from pushing a future where publishers are able to cut out the creatives.

Speaking with the BBC for the PlayStation's 30th anniversary, Hulst's prediction attempts to placate both sides鈥攖he people extremely worried about AI's impact on creative industries, and the folks selling the dream of an AI future鈥攂ut it sounds just as hard to swallow as the predictions from executives who've been fully AI-pilled.

"I suspect there will be a dual demand in gaming: one for AI-driven innovative experiences and another for handcrafted, thoughtful content," he told the Beeb.

But aside from the folks who actually have an investment in AI, who's actually going to demand an AI-driven game? Even among the players who don't see AI as an existential threat to the people working in the industry, or who simply don't care, there's no tangible benefit for them. And given the current limits of AI, why would they ever pick a game created without the human touch over one created by teams that have some kind of creative intent? Aside from morbid curiosity, anyway.

There's arguably one advantage, though: specifically, in games that aren't just driven by AI at the development stage, but continue to use AI to evolve and adapt to the whims of their players. We don't even need to guess at what these games would look like, because Oasis already exists. This AI game prototype is literally just Minecraft, but a version that uses AI to adapt to your inputs, and which can do things like spit out a new map based on an image you upload.

It's wonky, performs terribly, and while it serves as an interesting and at times genuinely impressive tech demo, it once again showcases AI's inability to actually create anything new. "Imagine what AI experiences could look like if everyone had the power to create them," AI company Decart teased, right after it just showed the world a worse version of Minecraft.

The future Decart envisions is one where you can just say you want something to happen, and the AI engine will make it happen, but it's not going to create these things from scratch: it has to pinch it from somewhere, and for obvious copyright reasons this library would need to be limited to pre-approved assets or data shared by companies or individuals who are down for having their creations used in this fashion.

Oasis also doesn't really give us a convincing answer to the question of how games made like this will be able to provide more than just fleeting diversions. Even big sandboxes full of procedural elements like Minecraft are designed by teams of creative humans who make things with specific goals in mind. So even in games where you set your own objectives, they're fun because very talented people worked long and hard to create bespoke mechanics, art, and toys for you to play around with. While being able to just decide "I want something to happen" might sound like an exciting prospect, there's no game there. It's just a novel sideshow we'll likely get bored of quickly before we go back to more curated experiences crafted by developers.

But none of this is to say that AI does not have the potential to provide a lot of value to games. Hulst follows his prediction up with a more reasonable thought: "Striking the right balance between leveraging AI and preserving the human touch will be crucial." The critical part is the choice of the word "leveraging".

There's obviously a place for AI in game development鈥攁 lot of bottlenecks and graft that could be lessened, freeing up developers to invest more time in polish and spending less time crunching. A tool that assists rather than taking over. But there's a vast difference between that and "AI-driven innovative experiences".

The simple fact that plenty of influential people are pushing for it means that we will likely start to see AI-created games cropping up from major publishers eventually, but the prediction that there will be any demand for it, or that these games will actually be able to innovate rather than simply plagiarising, seems incredibly premature.

Each featured game is accompanied by text encapsulating one of its themes: Metal Gear Solid 3 is "about honor", for example, and The Last of Us is "about love". God of War is "about family", while Spider-Man is "about sacrifice". And so what: it's just a trailer celebrating a platform's 30th anniversary, and won't be very interesting to anyone except people who love PlayStation and advertising.

But then Sony lobs a bomb, bringing the trailer to a close with footage of Bloodborne and the text "it's about persistence".

Here's the trailer:

It probably goes without saying, but just in case: Bloodborne is arguably From Software's most beloved RPG and it's been stuck on the PS4 since 2015. It hasn't received any meaningful updates for either the PS4 Pro or PS5, meaning its distracting performance issues endure. Fans have evolved from wanting a simple title update unlocking the game's frame rate (just like Dark Souls 3 had) to wanting a full-blown remake.

That's not to mention the game's no-show on PC, which would make a lot of business sense for Sony, who owns the IP. Whether you love Bloodborne or not, you can probably understand why people get so angry when, for example, a reissue for Horizon Zero Dawn is announced, while Bloodborne languishes.

So an acknowledgement of Bloodborne's existence by Sony is a big deal among Bloodborne devotees, especially when the concept of "persistence" is invoked. Sure, the game itself may require "persistence", but Bloodborne's fanbase has been nothing but persistent in its quest to get Sony to either fix or reissue the game.

That's not all: Bloodborne鈥攜es, the 2015 PS4 game鈥攚ill undergo maintenance on December 3, temporarily bringing it offline. December 3 is also the exact date of the PlayStation's release 30 years ago. As someone in this reddit thread rightfully points out, "this happens at around the same time every damn year". But that's not much fun, is it?

The trailer is probably better proof that something is afoot, but I'm sceptical. I have to be; I need to keep myself safe. But it's hard not to take these two not-very-promising hints to mean something could happen. Whether that means a PC release, or just a PS5 polish-up, I'm not sure, but lacking the former, at least Bloodborne emulation is making leaps and bounds at the moment.

But Yoshida's real legacy for PlayStation is the senior roles he's held since the early 2000s, first as vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, then senior vice president of SCE Worldwide Studios USA鈥攁nd from 2008, president of SCE Worldwide Studios. Over this time Sony enjoyed the colossal success of the PlayStation 2 and dominated the console market for a spell, before the leaner times of PlayStation 3. But it was with PlayStation 4 that Yoshida became a more public-facing figure for the brand.

The highlight? It has to be PlayStation's response to the disastrous reveal of Xbox One in 2013. Microsoft had made a mess of the console's announcement, and people especially hated that Xbox One would stop you sharing your physical games with friends. Sony's savage response to this was 21 seconds long, and arguably the greatest gaming roast of all time.

Yoshida stepped down as president of SIE Worldwide Studios in 2019, and has since then focused on nurturing smaller titles for the platform as the head of Indies Initiative. To mark his departure he's been interviewed on the PlayStation podcast, and is charming as ever. "It鈥檚 like announcing the launch date of a new game," chuckles Yoshida, "[something] I haven鈥檛 done for a long time."

Yoshida says "I鈥檝e been with PlayStation from the beginning, and this is my 31st year with PlayStation. And when I hit 30 years, I was thinking, hmm, it may be about time for me to move on. You know, the company鈥檚 been doing great. I love PS5, I love the games that are coming out on this platform. And we have new generations of management who I respect and admire. And I鈥檓 so excited for the future of PlayStation.

"So you know, PlayStation is in really good hands. I thought, okay, this is my time."

Elsewhere Yoshida reflects on joining Ken Kutaragi's team in February 1993, when they were still building the first PlayStation console. "Ken鈥檚 team had only engineers," says Yoshida. "Everyone was engineers. And I was the first non-technical person to join the team at the company." Sony Computer Entertainment would be founded in November that year, and Yoshida remembers the thrill of bringing a genuinely disruptive product into the console marketplace. "We were so excited about the innovation that Ken鈥檚 team was bringing in, like 3D graphics, real-time technology, and CD-ROM with lots of data that we can put in with a low cost of manufacturing. And so we had really high hopes, high ambitions.

"However, we were not known in the videogame industry. And there were other electronics companies, big companies that tried to enter the videogame industry and, you know, didn鈥檛 do well. So at the beginning before the launch of PlayStation, I think we were not taken very seriously from the industry, to be honest."

Consumers, on the other hand, couldn't wait to get their hands on PlayStation, and one of the major factors in its success was the third party licensing: Its success is unimaginable without launch titles like Ridge Racer and Tekken, nevermind later classics like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy 7, and Metal Gear Solid.

Yoshida is at one stage asked about his best memories at PlayStation. "One time [that] stood out for me in my memory as something really, really special was when Journey got the Game of the Year Award," says Yoshida. "Journey was distributed through PlayStation Network. It was a digital-only, small game. You can finish playing the game within like three hours.

"But that game 鈥� [won] Game of the Year against all these AAA titles, I think for the first time in the industry 鈥� the creator Jenova Chen did a talk at the summit, and he talked about a letter he received from a girl who lost her father and she thought about her father and she was able to move on in her life.

"The whole audience stood up and the whole room was filled with happiness and an amazing feeling that this small game could have such a big impact on people鈥檚 lives."

You can tell he's loved the job: "When I was managing, working with big studios, making AAA games was great." Yoshida says he stumbled into his most recent role because he was always finding indie titles at events and would "take a photo with the developer, trying to help promote these games 鈥� that鈥檚 what I was doing almost as a hobby. So when I got this job where I could spend 100% of my time helping indies, it was like a dream job."

It is obviously a form of madness trying to guess the personality of corporate executives, but Yoshida has always struck me as an extremely nice man, and in every picture or presentation seems to have a mischievous glint in his eye. He'll officially retire from Sony in January 2025. And then, finally, all those Microsoft executives can stop having nightmares about one smiling Japanese man, and his retail copy of Killzone.

"We are still in the process of learning," Totoki said through a translator in response to a question about Sony's live service pursuits. "And with regard to new IP, of course you don't know the result until you actually try it. So, probably, we need to have a lot of gates, including user testing and internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates, we need to bring them forward. We should have done those gates much earlier than we did [for Concord].

"And also, we have a siloed organization, so going beyond the boundaries of that organization in terms of development and also sales鈥擨 think that could have been much smoother."

Answering another question about Concord, Totoki reiterated that more "gates" would've allowed Sony to determine "whether [Concord] would be accepted by users or not" and said that a need for more information is the company's main takeaway from its big live service misadventure.

Looking back, there's no doubt that getting Concord into the public hands earlier would've been wise: its gameplay was first shown to the public just months before it launched, leaving little time for the playtests to reveal that, actually, people were not drawn to this particular hero shooter concoction.

But if there are general rules like 'solicit feedback early' that lead to multiplayer success, they're elusive. Sony also published Helldivers 2 this year for the same price as Concord, and it was an enormous success. That game wasn't quite as much of an unknown quantity when it launched鈥攚e listed it in our 2023 "Most Wanted" list of anticipated PC games鈥攂ut it was still a surprise hit for a lot of its players, and wasn't preceded by a bunch of public betas. So it can't be said that lengthy listening periods are always essential, and who knows whether putting Concord in front of players earlier would've led to a successful pivot. We know now that any pivot would've been worth trying, but only in hindsight. (I kind of liked Concord myself.)

You've got to tell investors something, though, especially after spending the kind of money Sony spent on Concord. We don't have an exact figure, but aside from the game's budget, Sony acquired the studio mid-development and, after Concord bombed, promptly closed it instead of pointing that staff at something new.

During a different part of the investors call, Totoki said that Sony's strength is in singleplayer games, which "have a higher predictability of becoming hits" thanks to the company's "proven IP." He added, however, that Sony will also continue to release live service games "that pursue upside while taking on a certain amount of risk upon release."

It's a lot of risk, if Concord is anything to go by, but maybe a lot of upside鈥攑ardon the corpo speak鈥攊f you look at Helldivers 2, the fastest-selling PlayStation game ever. Sony really couldn't have had more perfectly opposed game releases this year.

"We have learned a lot," Totoki said. "The way to face the issues regarding PC, for instance, the PlayStation accounts that we have offered鈥攂y offering them, for instance, sometimes that tends to invite pushback. But for the live service games, in order to maintain order of the gaming, so that anybody can enjoy the game safely, we need to create [an] environment conducive to that, [and] of course enjoying the game freely.

"Having some restrictions鈥擺we] may not call it a rule鈥攂ut to ask the users and gamers to follow the manner and [that] balance is very important. We have to continue to seek the best way to achieve this."

The quote was translated from Japanese to English on the fly (by a human translator, to be clear) and is a little rough, but the point is clear enough: Sony wants to maintain some kind of control over its games, and the PSN requirement is seen as a way to do that. And maybe it is, but it's also tremendously unpopular with PC gamers.

The most obvious example of that is Helldivers 2, which launched without a PSN requirement because of "technical issues" and enjoyed tremendous success until May, when Sony announced that the PSN-free "grace period" was over. The blowback was furious, to the point that Sony was forced to back down, although not after first trying to power through it, and doing untold damage to the goodwill Helldivers 2 had enjoyed up to that point.

Any thought Sony might drop the idea completely went out the window very quickly, though. Just weeks after the Helldivers 2 blowup, Ghost of Tsushima's PC port was delisted on Steam in nearly 200 countries because of a PSN requirement for its newly-added multiplayer mode; shortly after that, Sony confirmed that God of War Ragnarok would also require a PSN login. In October, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered came to Steam with the same requirement attached.

That makes Totoki's comments a little tough to swallow at face value. He talked about live service games specifically, and fair enough: "If you want to use our servers, you have to play by our rules" is a reasonable ask. But God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Zero Dawn are singleplayer games鈥攕o what's the need for a PSN account there?

PlayStation Network accounts are free to set up and once that's done and your accounts are linked you shouldn't have to think about it again, so it's not the most onerous task ever. But it is a hassle, and I can readily understand (and share) the sentiment that we have enough of that to deal with already. Some publishers seem to recognize that fact鈥擨 think of BioWare vocally making the point that Dragon Age: The Veilguard can be played entirely offline, with no linked accounts required鈥攂ut Sony is clearly going hard in the other direction.

Maybe that's the right strategy for a mega publisher. I remember being pretty pissed off myself when I had to sign up for this new "Steam" thing just so I could play Half Life 2, and we all know how that turned out. There are also signs that gamers are getting used to it, or are at least getting tired of fighting about it. God of War: Ragnarok ate a big pile of negative reviews when it launched on Steam but has since climbed to a "very positive" overall rating, and while Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered isn't faring quite as well, it also came to the party with a number of bugs and crash issues. Sony wasn't able to enforce its will on Helldivers 2, but in the big picture I think there's a good chance gamers will throw in the towel long before Sony does.

The minimum specs for the remaster are higher than the recommended specs for the original, demanding a minimum 16GB RAM, and GPUs several generations younger. If you're running a long-in-the-tooth PC then you're probably better off just sticking to the older version. Alas, the only way to buy the older version is to buy it as part of a bundle which is $10 pricier ($49.99 in total) than buying the remaster standalone ($39.99). And no, don't go scouring third-party key sellers: Sony has basically wiped the standalone original edition of Horizon Zero Dawn off the face of the earth.

What makes an annoyance worse is that the original, non-remastered Horizon Zero Dawn is Steam Deck verified, whereas Horizon Forbidden West is "unsupported", from which you can infer with decent confidence that the remastered Horizon Zero Dawn will also not be supported (the Steam page currently says that its Steam Deck support is "Unknown"). That doesn't mean Forbidden West isn't playable on Deck: our friends at Tom's Guide got it working.

Anyway, gripes aside here are the Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered system requirements:

Andy noted that the original would be delisted back in October, presumably in keeping with Sony's recent requirement of a PSN account for PC games. The announcement in October was also met with some scepticism about the value of a Zero Dawn remaster just four years after the PC release, which was already an upgrade over the original console games, since it's a pretty good looking game already (albeit in my view stylistically bland, but that's subjective). Anyway, until Sony remasters or remakes Bloodborne for PC, every Sony PC port will likely be met by derision in some quarters. Because Bloodborne is all that matters, is what I'm saying.

Word of the change came from Bridget O'Neill, formerly the senior director of Creative Studios at Bungie, now the senior director of Creative at PlayStation Studios, who said on LinkedIn (via Game Developer) that her team "is joining PlayStation Studios to build the foundation for a creative team that can support all PlayStation live service games."

"This opportunity to share our experience working on Bungie titles with other studios that are building live service games is so exciting," O'Neill wrote.

"Live service is hard and comes with a unique set of challenges, so with PlayStation and Bungie working together we will be able to give a huge jumpstart on development for new games as they enter this super competitive market."

Despite the move, O'Neill said the team will also continue working on Destiny 2 and Marathon.

In some ways, the change has been a long time coming. Sony's acquisition of Bungie in 2022 was driven in part by a desire for "the expertise and technology that Bungie has developed in the live game services space," which Sony wanted to incorporate in its own studios. Bungie's influence was subsequently seen in the decision to delay, and eventually cancel, a Last of Us multiplayer game after Bungie, which had been asked to give the game a look-see, expressed doubts about its viability.

But the bloom's been off Bungie's rose for a while now. PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki expressed irritation with Bungie leadership earlier this year, saying he wanted to see more "accountability" for development budgets and schedules, and when Bungie announced the layoff of 220 employees in July, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons announced that another 155 employees, representing about 12% of the studio's employees, would be moved to Sony. Another "incubation project" at Bungie is also being spun off into a new PlayStation studio, separate from Bungie.

Apart from all that, though, I think it's fair to say that PlayStation could probably use an experienced guiding hand for its live service games. After shooting itself in the foot by refusing to back off on a PlayStation Network requirement for Helldivers 2 until the maximum possible damage was done, it absolutely clanged it with Concord, an online shooter that may have been the most DOA videogame of all time.

Despite its catastrophic failure, a Concord comeback could be in the works, and if so that makes the timing of the announcement interesting鈥攂ringing it back as a videogame people actually find appealing might be just the sort of thing O'Neill and her team could help with.

As with the 2022 port of Insomniac's first Spider-Man game, the PC specialists at Sony support studio Nixxes are helping out with the sequel. "We are excited to continue this collaboration and bring Marvel's Spider-Man 2 to PC with a suite of enhanced features, including enhanced ray-tracing options, to take full advantage of a variety of setups and configurations," Nixxes' Julian Huijbregts said in a press release.

The PC port will include the full game as well as a number of features the PlayStation Blog lists as post-release updates, including New Game+, more suits, time of day options, and screen reader and audio description accessibility features. The digital deluxe edition will also include yet more suits, photo mode options, and some free skill points to jumpstart your first couple hours of play.

Spider-Man 2 stars both Peter Parker and Miles Morales going up against a whole range of Spidey baddies, including Venom. It was a big hit on PlayStation 5 last year, but its budget, at a reported $300+ million, also spurred a conversation about the out-of-control costs of AAA game development. That topic certainly hasn't gone away: just this week, in fact, former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden said that the games industry entirely relying on blockbusters is "a death sentence" as costs continue to rise and limit the opportunities for creative risks.

Perhaps those rising costs are a reason we're seeing this PC port arrive more quickly than some prior ones from Sony's exclusive library. Here's a quick tally of how long the wait has been for its last few big games:

As a remake, The Last of Us Part 1 is a bit of an outlier there (it also was a mess, unlike the other Sony ports which have been reliably good bar a few issues here and there). But the other games have tended to be about a two year wait, while Spider-Man 2 is swinging well under that line. I wouldn't be surprised to see Sony bring that average down to just a year-ish as it continues bringing more and more games to PC with an eye towards recouping their huge development budgets. Works for us.

As reported by EuroNews, PlayStation has recently been embroiled in a legal bout with Datel, who have been selling software that allows players to cheat at videogames. The software in question gave players infinite boosts in MotorStorm, but it also鈥攊n a less cheaty fashion鈥攁llowed them to control it using motion controls, which seems pretty benign to me.

The case made it to the highest court in the EU, the Court of Justice, and has been thoroughly dismissed in Datel's favour. Despite Sony's argument that the software "latches on 鈥� like a parasite" to the console, the judges maintain that the software involved merely impacts its RAM rather than the program itself, so it's all fair play:

"The Directive on the legal protection of computer programs does not allow the holder of that protection to prohibit the marketing by a third party of software which merely changes variables transferred temporarily 鈥� The directive protects only the intellectual creation as it is reflected in the text of the computer program鈥檚 source code and object code."

In other words, the EU is completely fine with selling cheats, mods, and other software that only impact a game's data in RAM鈥攚hether that's on a computer or not.

In an opinion presented to the court back in April, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar also added: "The author of a detective novel cannot prevent the reader from skipping to the end of the novel to find out who the killer is, even if that would spoil the pleasure of reading and ruin the author鈥檚 efforts to maintain suspense."

It should be noted that, naturally, this doesn't stop Sony from banning players who violate their terms of service agreements鈥攖he EU isn't giving you carte blanche to spawn infinite samples in Helldivers 2, or anything鈥攎erely, it's simply not against the law to sell these things for use. The person buying them gets to make the judgement call on whether they're likely to get their accounts in trouble or not.

Honestly, there are a lot of reasons to cheer for this if you're into mods, or think that you should have control over the software and hardware you buy. While that detective novel comparison is pretty messy鈥攇ames are obviously more complicated than that鈥擨 agree with the overall sentiment, and Sony's characterisation of these tools as parasites is far more wack by most metrics.

Cheating in multiplayer games sucks, obviously, but when it comes to single-player games, who rightly cares? Should Sony be able to legally punish someone for modifying a piece of hardware they own, or selling tools to do that? I don't really think so. That's not to mention that software like this also includes accessibility aids that disabled people use to play their videogames. These gamers use software that could (uncharitably) be considered cheats all the time.

Not to mention, accessibility options are growing more and more popular in mainstream gaming anyway, like high-contrast visuals, sound cues, and toggles that just straight-up stop you from dying. Even if some studios still haven't figured out the whole colour-blind thing yet (I'm not still mad, Larian, I pinky promise), I don't think any company should get a say in whether people do it themselves, as long as they're being reasonable and not ruining online modes for others. Let 'em play.

Ghost of Y艒tei, a sequel to 2020 Sucker Punch samurai game Ghost of Tsushima, was announced with a trailer (embedded above) during today's Sony State of Play livestream.

Ghost of Tsushima came to PC earlier this year, and we gave it an 81% in our review, calling it "a thrilling and engaging samurai epic." Given that it took a few years to find its way to our platform, don't expect to be playing Ghost of Y艒tei on PC in 2025, when its PS5 launch is due. As usual for big PlayStation announcements, the console version is the focus right now.

"When we set out to make a new Ghost game, we wanted to maintain the core pillars established in Ghost of Tsushima: playing as a wandering warrior in Feudal Japan, offering freedom to explore at your own pace, and highlighting the beauty of the world," said Sucker Punch Productions communications manager Andrew Goldfarb on the PlayStation Blog.

"We also wanted to continue to innovate. To create something fresh but familiar, we looked beyond Jin Sakai's story and the island of Tsushima, and shifted our focus to the idea of the Ghost instead. At Sucker Punch we love origin stories, and we wanted to explore what it could mean to have a new hero wearing a Ghost mask, and uncovering a new legend. This led us to Ghost of Y艒tei: a new protagonist, a new story to unfold, and a new region of Japan to explore."

Fans of Tsushima will probably also clock that this mysterious new hero wields a second katana in the trailer, which is 100% more katanas than Jin Sakai kept on hand. Y艒tei creative director Jason Connell told The New York Times that players will be able to master both melee weapons and firearms.

"One challenge that comes with making an open-world game is the repetitive nature of doing the same thing over again," Connell told the paper. "We wanted to balance against that and find unique experiences."

Y艒tei's setting encompasses an area surrounding Mount Y艒tei in northern Japan, and the story鈥攚hich Sucker Punch isn't saying much about yet鈥攖akes place in 1603, "more than 300 years after the events of Ghost of Tsushima."

"In 1603, this area was outside the rule of Japan, and filled with sprawling grasslands, snowy tundras, and unexpected dangers," said Sucker Punch. "It's a far cry from the organized samurai clans who lived in Tsushima, and it's the setting for an original story we can't wait to tell."

If recent tradition holds, Ghost of Y艒tei should be on PC before 2030, although the optimist in me thinks it could happen faster than it did for Ghost of Tsushima, which before being ported to PC also had to make the jump from PS4 to PS5.

Forcing PlayStation-uninitiated PC gamers to make an account for a solely singleplayer game is uncool. If a PSN login is your dealbreaker for getting into this genuinely great game, then you might be interested in the NoPSSDK mod by iArtoriasUA. The mod adds a .dll to the Ragnar?k game folder that disables the PSN overlay and seemingly mimicks a fully offline mode.

I tested the mod and can confirm it worked for me, but you should still only try this at your own risk. After installing the mod, the game prompted me to optionally link my PSN account to Steam. I selected "No", and Ragnar?k stopped bothering me about it. The "Sign into PlayStation" button on the main menu no longer does anything, and I'm able to load my save as usual.

Some users have reported issues with the mod鈥攕everal noted the bypass didn't take and they were still receiving popups to sign-in, to which mod author iArtorias suggested they block "GoWR.exe" in Windows firewall settings to correct. The process was smoother for me, but it's worth noting that the PlayStation overlay already recognized my login from Concord (RIP) when I first launched Ragnar?k, so that could explain it.

This is the first PSN bypass mod that I'm aware of. If Sony plans to make the requirement a regular thing in games that shouldn't need PSN hooks (The Last of Us Part 2 and Spider-Man 2 are presumably coming to PC someday), it won't be the last.

Apparently, my wish magic isn't very potent, since PlayStation joint-CEO Hideaki Nishino has emphasised in an interview with Nikkei (via VGC) that鈥攕urprising nobody鈥攃onsoles are still going to be a central part of a console company's strategy for success.

"I think that with mobile devices, there are many games that show advertisements, and PCs are difficult to set up, but with PlayStation, once you turn it on, you can experience the content you bought straight away."

It is with great frustration that I, as someone with nary a console in sight, must grit my teeth and admit: yeah, that is somewhat true. PCs are difficult to set up from scratch鈥攅ither you shell out a nonsense amount for a prefab, or you engage in the world's most stressful version of a LEGO set, where you're not quite sure if you've aligned the CPU's pins right, or whether that loud click/clang was supposed to happen or if you've just wasted several hundred quid.

And then there's the updates, the weird OS features, fretting over kernel-level anti cheat and Denuvo, updating your drivers, and suddenly that $700 price point for the PS5 pro is looking pretty reasonable, if pricier than console gamers are used to. I mean, even here at PC Gamer, we describe a $800 build as penny-saving鈥旇精鍒媿鑻嶆祴-铦夎ˉ鎯鑻嶉┏!

Granted, you're also getting a computer, and that can do other stuff, too鈥攂ut still. If you want to play videogames with a videogames box, any console (or a Steam Deck) is just simpler. Experiencing the content you bought "straight away" seems like a stretch, though, since last I checked, most games come with downloads but hey. He's having to big up the console market after a rough year.

This following paragraph also does scan as a big 'but', to me: "We are trying to increase our share of the overall game market by developing content for PCs as well. There is no doubt that consoles will be at the core of our business, but by offering titles for platforms other than consoles, we will reach a wider range of customers."

Also correct. Sony's strategy of double-dipping console exclusives into the PC market is working out swimmingly for it鈥攏ot only does it help generate another round of sales for its big-name blockbusters, it also appears to be part of a scheme to lure your brethren to the dark side with those tasty, tasty sequels.

That's not me being a cynic, that's literally what co-CEO Hermen Hulst said: "We're finding new audiences that are potentially going to be very interested in playing, for example, sequels on the PlayStation platform 鈥� We have high hopes that we're actually able to bring new players into PlayStation at large."

But also, to push back鈥攎aybe we like the complications, yeah? If we want to upscale a turd's textures (no, literally), or spend over $1,400 on a 4090, or put Yoshi in Resident Evil, then we can do that. The slipshod nonsense is sort of the appeal, even if Microsoft is still trying to get me to use Copilot for some ungodly reason.

The report in question comes from Reuters so it's not some random tech blogger who has said this, though naturally there aren't any named sources for the information. It's being claimed that AMD, Broadcom, Intel, and other chip companies all submitted bids for designing and manufacturing the processor that will power Sony's next-generation PlayStation console.

Given that AMD had the contract for the PlayStation 4, PS4 Pro, PS5, and the freshly announced PS5 Pro, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was already a done deal that Team Red would be used again.

Well, it appears not, and a flurry of discussions between Sony and Intel were apparently held in 2022, with the goal being that not only would Intel design the chip, it would make them via its own foundries, rather than using TSMC.

If Intel had been successful in its bid, it would have provided a much-needed boost in revenue for the company. Reuters claims the deal would have been $30 billion over the period of the contract, requiring its chip factories to churn out thousands of silicon wafers every month.

In 2023 alone, Sony states that 20.8 million PlayStation 5 consoles were sold and every one of them sports an AMD all-in-one APU chip.

AMD doesn't break down its financials in enough detail to work out just how much money it makes from the Sony contract but in the same year, its gaming division enjoyed a revenue of $6.2 billion and the majority of that is the PS5 chip. However, its operating income was $0.9 billion which tells you everything you need to know about how big the profit margin is with console processors.

Reuters states that it was this very thing that ultimately stopped Intel from picking up the PS6 contract: "A dispute over how much profit Intel stood to take from each chip sold to the Japanese electronics giant blocked Intel from settling on the price with Sony, according to two of the sources. Instead, rival AMD landed the contract through a competitive bidding process that eliminated others such as Broadcom, until only Intel and AMD remained."

I suspect that there was more to it than just profit margins, though. Intel's foundry service doesn't really have any big-name customers on its books, although it has made its systems ready for any Arm-based orders. The new chip would have employed an awful lot of unknown technology, especially regarding the GPU (Arc had only just been announced in 2022).

With AMD, Sony would know exactly what it was getting and sticking with them would keep game developers a lot happier.

While the Sony contract doesn't generate a huge amount of income for AMD, it does provide a lot of stability for its revenue stream and that makes it appealing to investors and sourcing loans and the like.

If Intel could have foreseen just where it would be in just two years, it perhaps would have tried even harder to grab the chip contract because all is not well with Team Blue at the moment.

Its forthcoming Arrow Lake processor looks very promising but very little of it is made by Intel. Instead, all of the tiles are manufactured by TSMC (as are the Lunar Lake laptop chips), which is hardly a glowing tribute to the quality of Intel's foundries.

The last gaming console to sport an Intel processor was the original 2001 Xbox, which was equipped with a semi-custom Pentium 3 processor (and a separate Nvidia GPU). Since 2013, both Sony and Microsoft have relied on AMD for designing and manufacturing the all-in-one CPU-GPU processor.

Despite Intel's best efforts, it looks like it'll continue to be AMD into the next decade.

From a PC gaming perspective, easily the most interesting aspect of the new Sony PS5 Pro console is its ray-tracing hardware and performance. For a long time it's been rumoured that the PS5 Pro may share its RT hardware with AMD's upcoming RDNA 4 GPU architecture.

Now it's been confirmed by Sony's PlayStation head honcho, Mark Cerny, that not only does the PS5 Pro leverage RT hardware from AMD's roadmap that isn't currently in any available GPU, it was Sony that "motivated" AMD to come up with it.

At least, this is what Cerny claims. Speaking to CNET (via Overclock3D), Cerny says the "PS5 Pro uses the new advanced [ray tracing] feature sets that AMD created as the next step in their roadmap architecture. But if you look around, there are no other AMD GPUs that use it yet. We motivated the development, and I'm very happy we did so...the response from the developers has been extraordinarily great."

Of course, AMD will certainly have had new RT hardware in its roadmap, so we're a little sceptical of the idea that it only happened because Sony pushed AMD as opposed to Sony plucking that IP from AMD's roadmap and asking for it to be stuck into the PS5 Pro's updated APU.

That debate aside, the really interesting aspect of all this is what it says about the ray-tracing performance of AMD's upcoming RDNA 4 GPUs. For starters, Sony says the new PS5 Pro has 2-3x the RT performance of the PS5. That sounds impressive at face value, but hold on.

The PS5 Pro has 1.67x the graphics compute units of the PS5. So, that alone would give you a 1.67x bump in raw RT performance. Meanwhile, AMD claimed a 1.5x RT improvement going from RDNA 2, as used by the PS5, to RDNA 3.?

So, were the PS5 Pro to merely use the same RDNA 3 RT hardware as AMD's existing Radeon RX 7000 GPUs, then the calculation would be 1.67 x 1.5 = 2.5. In other words, merely using ?RDNA 3-style RT hardware along with the added functional units in the PS5 Pro gets you, on paper, to a figure that's slap bang in the middle of the RT performance boost range claimed by Sony for the PS5 Pro.

Anyway, if you want to put a slightly pessimistic spin on all this, you could easily conclude that AMD's next-gen RT hardware isn't looking hugely exciting going by Sony's numbers.

It also squares with what existing rumours around the PS5 Pro's RT implementation. In other words, that it still doesn't have as complete an RT hardware acceleration feature set as either Nvidia or Intel provides in their GPUs.?So, you wouldn't expect RT performance in the PS5 Pro to be on par with Nvidia.

And that in turn implies that when AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs arrive early next year, they probably won't close the ray-tracing gap to Nvidia at any given point in the market at which they are competing. Which is disappointing if true, given that RDNA 4 will be AMD's third-generation of GPUs with RT support.

There's a certain shock factor to the PS5 Pro's price tag. That's a big part of it. The digital-only, mid-generation console is priced at $700. In other words, a console for the cost of a gaming PC. That's not high-end PC money鈥攚ho are we kidding, it's half the price of an RTX 4090 alone鈥攂ut genuine gaming PC cash nonetheless.

Pertinently, the PS5 Pro is the same price as not one, but two 256 GB Steam Deck LCDs, or $100 more expensive than a 1 TB Steam Deck OLED. I won't belabour the point, but you could get a Steam Deck and a helluva lot of PC games for the price of a PS5 Pro.?

So, should you buy a Steam Deck instead of a PS5 Pro? And is that even fair to compare these two devices anyways?

My guy reaction is, no, it's not a fair comparison. For one, these are entirely different form factors, and I feel most would agree that comparing the Nintendo Switch and the Xbox Series X would be a fool's errand. Same goes for the PS5 Pro and Steam Deck.

But, call me a fool, I'll compare the two anyways. Just to give an idea of how ludicrous any direct specs comparison really is.

From what we know about the PS5 Pro, it appears to be a relatively powerful device for the money. It's true that in console terms, the PS5 Pro is the most expensive yet. Yet in PC gaming terms, in some respects, it's a bit of a bargain.

Sony has mostly focused on the GPU for its 'Pro' improvements here, with a vastly increased GPU component within the PS5 Pro's AMD-designed APU. This new chip features 60 Compute Units (CUs), for a sum total of 3,840 cores, likely of RDNA 3 origin. That makes for a serious step up over the 36 RDNA 2 CUs found on the standard PlayStation 5 model.

The desktop graphics card equivalent would be the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, which also has 60 RDNA 3 CUs. That GPU was first launched just over a year ago for $499, though it's a little cheaper today. It would be a big chunk of your PS5 Pro budget should you wish to try to build a comparative PC for the same money (you can't without some serious bargain bin diving or second-hand snooping).

CUs are an important metric, as more of these means a bigger chip with more performance in games. But this isn't entirely an apples-to-apples comparison. The RX 7800 XT has dedicated VRAM, thermal and power limits in excess of what Sony's console will surely handle, and it has the benefit of flexibility to choose what you pair it with inside a PC. That will amount to higher performance from the PC part.

But not the Steam Deck.

The Steam Deck might be a pocket-sized PC, and also come with an AMD-designed APU, though it's an entirely different beast to both console and gaming PC. An APU complete with a mere eight CUs of RDNA 2 graphics鈥攐r 86% smaller than the PS5 Pro鈥攊t's made to meet different design goals. It's a compact device with a low TDP to improve its battery life, which isn't even a consideration for PC or console, and it balances thermal and power constraints with game performance to offer a portable experience that's half-decent away from the outlet.

At least both devices are pretty evenly matched in the CPU department. Eight cores, 16 threads, Zen 2, bish, bash, bosh.?

Clearly, there's nothing much to compare here. So, what causes more people than I would have expected to jump to the Steam Deck as the viable alternative to the PS5 Pro? These two devices clearly couldn't be much further apart.

It comes down to an argument for the holistic gaming experience.?

The PS5 Pro offers an improved experience. You sit down in front of the TV to play some games at the end of a long day and you'll find it delivers a higher quality, higher frame rate, experience than the standard PS5.

The Steam Deck offers a novel and new way for accessing PC games. Perhaps, for some, a new experience. That's why so many feel so strongly about its value proposition: you don't play the Steam Deck instead of your gaming PC, you play it when you don't have access to your gaming PC. That means more time to play games and more opportunity to try new ones. You might find you stop caring so much about frame rate, even.

This isn't an experience limited to the Steam Deck. Any handheld gaming PC, or handheld console, offers the same sort of flexibility. It's why the Nintendo Switch is so immensely popular. I just think a lot of PC gamers' eyes were opened to the modern portable gaming paradigm when they first got their hands on the Steam Deck. Even as a Switch owner, I found myself praising the Steam Deck not for its specs, but for the time it afforded me to play PC games when I wouldn't have been able to previously.

It's a strong case to be made for the Steam Deck, and combine that with the relatively weak argument for upgrading to a PS5 Pro, and the recommendations to 'Just buy a Steam Deck' make marginally more sense.

But I still think telling someone to go buy a Steam Deck instead of a PS5 Pro is pretty weak advice. They're categorically not the same thing鈥攖hey don't even aim to appeal to the same audience.

For the record, I don't think you should buy a PS5 Pro, either. Save your money for the next generation or pinch pennies long enough to buy a gaming PC. Oh, you forgot you were reading PC Gamer?

If you'll afford me one little PC Gamer rant about consoles, I've never understood why consoles insist on degrading ease of use and adding complexity for customers and developers when simplicity and affordability are their strongest traits? Why make a new 3DS that hardly any developer will support? Or two Xbox consoles, except one is hamstrung by its memory? Or a massively improved mid-generation overhaul for a console generation that's frequently cited for having few must-play games? It all feels unnecessary鈥攁 way to bump up sales while threatening the entire point of consoles to begin with.

At least the Switch (mostly) bumps the trend with only an OLED upgrade, and look how well that's worked out for Nintendo. But if consoles are going to tune their appeal to be more about flexibility, options, and premium experiences鈥攖he PC already does it better.

And so the Sony PS5 Pro has arrived. Verily, it's far, far more powerful than the clunker that is now the plain old PS5, but it's also a lot more expensive at $700. And that, dear PC gaming friends, begs the very obvious comparison.

Boil it down to basics, and the PS5 Pro is a $200 premium for a GPU upgrade. The rest of the PS5 Pro's hardware hasn't changed much. In that regard, the new console itself it quite gaming PC-like with a heavy emphasis on graphics performance spend.

But the uplift from $500 to $700 puts the Pro into territory where it might just have to fight to justify its existence. That's not a problem the $500 regular PS5 had to worry about. As an overall gaming platform, a $500 PS5 versus a $500 'gaming' PC was always a bit of a non starter. It's just not enough money to build a decent entry-level rig, but $700? Well, that's a little more plausible.

Gaming PC vs PS5 Pro: GPU

Now, in pure graphics rendering terms, you're going to struggle to fully match a PS5 Pro with a $700 PC. The new PS5 Pro has a revised GPU with 60 AMD compute units. That's the same number as a desktop AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, which goes for $475 and upwards on its own, and to which you'll need to add a case, motherboard, CPU, memory, storage and power supply, at minimum.

Of course, 60 PS5 Pro compute units aren't directly comparable to 60 desktop AMD compute units. The desktop GPU will almost certainly have the higher power budget and clockspeed, probably more cache memory and so on.

On the other hand, the new GPU in the PS5 Pro has upgraded ray-tracing hardware that may well be more powerful and efficient than the RDNA 3 hardware in the RX 7800 XT. And while the desktop GPU will likely have that bigger power budget, it's always a case of diminishing returns as you approach to top end of the power scale.

By way of example, 40% more power doesn't mean 40% more performance. It might only translate into 10% to 15%. Moreover, consoles tend to have lower overheads and make more efficient use of their hardware than PCs.

Anyway, taken in the round, the PS5 Pro will probably be a little slower than a desktop RX 7800 XT for traditional raster performance, but likely on par or even a little quicker with ray tracing thrown into the mix. You also have to factor in the vagaries of comparative CPU performance, what with the PS5 Pro's elderly AMD Zen 2 cores, memory subsystem, storage, and the rest.

Gaming PC vs. PS5 Pro: CPU

So, yeah, those CPU cores. The PS5 Pro really is mostly a graphics upgrade. It has the same eight Zen 2-spec CPU cores as the original PS5 running at the same 3.5 GHz.?

Now Zen 2 isn't exactly a dud CPU architecture. But over in the PC, we're fully three generations ahead on Zen 5 and with clockspeeds well over 5 GHz. Of course, you're not going to be building a brand new PC with a top-spec Ryzen 9000 chip with Zen 5 cores, plus a good GPU and all the other bits, for $700.

But you might well be building one with a Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 chip, or an Intel 12th or 13th Gen CPU, all of which will blow a hole in that Zen 2 CPU in the PS5 Pro. How much does that matter for gaming? Arguably, even an old Zen 2 CPU is fine for most games. But most games are not all games, and even a mid-range modern PC processor has the measure of the PS5 Pro.

Gaming PC vs. PS5 Pro: Storage

The PS5 Pro is largely a discless system, so it certainly needed an SSD upgrade. Fortunately, it got one, up from 1 TB in the PS5 Slim to 2 TB. Arguably, that's a bear minimum for modern gaming given how much space Triple-A titles suck up these days.?

That said, the PS5 only has 825 GB of available space, so we'll have to wait and see how much actually usable space the PS5 Pro has. Specs-wise, ?The PS5 already had a PCIe 4 quad-channel storage interface, something that's carried over to the PS5 Pro.

Admittedly, the PC can be had with PCIe 5 for double the bandwidth. But even as PC fans, we're not going to claim that's a huge real-world advantage for gaming. And you're not likely to get a Gen 5 SSD with an entry-level to mid-range PC. All of which means that SSDs and storage generally are a bit of a moot point in this comparison. Neither platform has a killer advantage.

Gaming PC vs. PS5 Pro: Price

At the top level, the PS5 Pro still has a price advantage, even at $700. That price point just doesn't buy a huge amount of gaming PC. Drilling down into the details, however, is a little tricky.

Unfortunately, we don't have our hands on the PS5 hardware, so precise comparisons of performance and therefore what you're getting for your money aren't possible. Even if we did, comparing a game running on PC to ostensibly the same title on console isn't straight forward. You can't ensure you're running exactly the same settings and quality, the codepaths typically aren't identical.

But with all those caveats aside, the PS5 Pro's potential frame rate performance will likely come in somewhere between the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT in terms of relative PC GPUs. And likely closer to the former. At first glance, that looks like game over for the PC. After all, you ain't buying a pre-built gaming rig with a RX 7800 XT for $700.?

In fact, the cheapest currently available on NewEgg is $1,150. Downgrade to the 7700 XT and you're looking at a touch over $1,000. Over on the Nvidia side of the PC fence, an RTX 4060 Ti box can be had for just under $1,000, but will almost certainly be a fair bit slower than the PS5 Pro in terms of pure raster performance.

As for RTX 4070 rigs, there are actually some very appealing deals starting at $1,100. But that's only really appealing versus other PCs. You're still talking about spending $400 more than that pesky console.

Gaming PC vs. PS5 Pro: Upgrading

In simple value terms, then, the PS5 Pro is still the obvious pick for a pre-built, pure gaming machine that's ready to go. But here's the thing. The PC isn't just available as a prebuilt rig. The PS5 Pro also has to take on existing PCs with a GPU upgrade. Or maybe a GPU and CPU upgrade. Heck, maybe even a GPU, CPU, motherboard and RAM upgrade.

Let's take the toughest of those challenges, the full CPU, GPU, motherboard and RAM upgrade. A quick spin on PC part picker nets an Intel 12600KF CPU, RX 7800 XT graphics, ASRock Z690 Pro RS ATX board, and 32GB of Corsair RAM for just over $800.

Yup, that's more than the console, but for my money it's not even a close contest. The PC option is so much more flexible, in many ways more powerful and itself can be upgraded again. There's scope for at least one more drop-in CPU and GPU cycle with that basic platform.

Of course, you can always split hairs. If you were upgrading a really old PC with those components, what odds your power supply is fit for the job? And wouldn't it be nice to have a new case when spending all that money?

So, like I said, in really simple value terms, the PS5 Pro still has the edge. But the uplift in price has made a PC so much more appealing in practice. At $500, a fully functioning console is so much cheaper than a full gaming PC or even a major component upgrade.

But that $200 uptick for the PS5 Pro makes all the difference. No, you can't buy a similarly powerful gaming PC for the same money. But there's a good chance you can upgrade your existing rig to something similar or perhaps even better for less than that $700 investment in a whole new console.

And then you have an actual PC, that wondrous and endlessly configurable and ever upgradable machine, with an unbeatable back catalogue of gaming titles and broader capabilities that go so much further than gaming itself.

So, the PS5 Pro is a very nice upgrade. And I'd still say it's still great value despite the price bump. But it actually makes PC gaming more relevant than ever.

It was billed as merely being a 'Sony technical presentation' focusing on the PlayStation 5 and "innovations in gaming technology," but with all the rumours building up over the months, we all knew what it was going to be about and it didn't disappoint. Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the PS5, spent 10 minutes spilling some of the details about the PS5 Pro.

Front and center in the updated console is a new custom APU, designed by AMD and Sony, and manufactured by TSMC. Although Cerny didn't say anything about it, the CPU part of the chip is almost certainly going to be the same eight-core, 16-thread Zen 2 design, as having a much more powerful CPU messes up current and backward compatibility, so nobody was expecting any changes there.

However, big things were expected of the GPU and true to the rumours, it's a much beefier affair. Where the PlayStation 5 has an RDNA 2-based graphics processor, with 36 compute units and 16 GB of 14 Gbps GDDR6, the Pro wades in with 60 compute units (almost certainly RDNA 3-based) and 18 Gbps GDDR6. Exact clock speeds haven't been announced yet but given the size of the chip, they're likely to be a bit lower.?

Along with the normal RDNA 3 features, the PS5 Pro GPU also has improved ray tracing units (Cerny said "two or three times faster" but take that with a pinch of salt) and then there's PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling (PSSR), which is an AI-accelerated upscaler, akin to DLSS and XeSS. Earlier rumours also claimed the new GPU has full hardware support for mesh shaders and variable rate shading, making the chip on par with today's PC graphics cards.

Taking all of that on board, one is clearly left with a serious powerful games console. Those 60 compute units might not be clocked as high as the 60 in the Radeon RX 7800 XT but it's one heck of an increase over the original PS5. However, I don't think there will be any L3 Infinity Cache to ease the load on the VRAM, so that modest increase in memory bandwidth is going to be quite a performance limit in some cases. For sheer compute work, though, it'll be a monster.

So console gamers get a lovely new machine to buy (provided they're willing to cough up the steep $700 price, of course) but does the launch of the PS5 Pro mean anything for PC gaming? On face value, the answer would seem to be no, as the number of units that Sony will sell is going to be tiny in comparison to the millions of PS5s it's already shifted.

Few game developers, if any, are going to make a game just for the PS5 Pro but many of the bigger studios are adding something special for the Pro, either in the form of more performance or just better graphics.

And since Sony is dead keen on porting its best-selling PlayStation games to the humble PC, having one that uses the same technology that's already supported by your Arc, GeForce, or Radeon graphics card means that you're not going to be missing out on anything by sticking with a PC.

Consoles have been very PC-like since the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and the PS5 Pro just reinforces that direction. The cost of developing a major game is so high now that few publishers are going to completely ignore the PC, with the odd exception here and there.?

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a PS5 Pro, just to play some of my favourite PlayStation games at their full glory but I'm not going to cough up that kind of money, when (a) I already have a PS5 and (b) I've got a gaming PC that's far more capable and versatile than the Pro. But as a total GPU-nerd, I have to say I can't wait to see the full details of the new chip.

Gunplay is serviceable, with recoil and weapon handling that channels far more of Destiny 2's PvP mode, The Crucible, than Overwatch or Valorant, albeit with none of the punchy feedback that gives that game its sense of weight or tactility. Floaty movement through maps with three lanes and varied sightlines, abilities on cooldown where you toss out orbs that do stuff and then come back, and an exhaustingly long time-to-kill that incentivizes your whole team to mob together and focus down single targets鈥攜ou've seen all this before, and it's been better and $40 less expensive. It is fine in a marketplace where fine does not and has not cut it for years.

This is one part of Concord that is especially confusing. Destiny's Crucible was just a single mode, interwoven into a PvE/PvP progression system designed to make sure hardcore players never ran out of stuff to do. It also wasn't that great, and its Destiny 2 counterpart has long languished in the shadow of the more popular, more substantial campaigns and raids. In isolation, the Crucible would have been a miserable experience鈥攁nd really, that's all Concord has.

Concord's overlong time-to-kill demands precision with weapons and hero toolkits that often aren't up to the task, making gunfights exhausting. Even the weapons in Concord's arsenal geared towards straight DPS, like Lennox's (ref: green cowboy alien) dual revolvers or Teo's (ref: soldier man in body armor) assault rifle are chores to use, unable to chew through health bars fast enough to make fights any less dull.?

Coupled with Concord's agonizingly slow movement speed, I found that I was rarely getting kills, unless I opted to stay glued to my team to become a giant roving death star of heroes. Concord obviously encourages team-play and cooperation, but the piddly weapons and sluggish heroes leave its deathmatch and objective control modes feeling samey, devoid of that captivating sense of push and pull that you find in other hero shooters. Most of Concord's matches devolve into two giant mobs of Battleborn wash-outs waddling around huge empty maps, slowly chipping away at each other.

It doesn't help that Concord's maps are a total bore to actually play: An assortment of alien ruins, research facilities, and cargo bays designed for strictly even competitive matchups with barely a hint of personality.?

Isolating a healer or tank carries none of the importance in Concord that it does in Overwatch. The absence of ultimate abilities is sorely felt in this regard, leaving Concord's matches none of that call and response dynamic that Overwatch and Valorant players will be familiar with鈥攖here's nothing in Concord's combat space that is as attention-demanding as a Genji deploying his Dragonblade ultimate in your disorganized backfield, or a Cassidy "high-noon"-ing from a clear vantage point. Concord is just about killing other dudes and standing on circles, and any abilities that slow down that already sedative process feel like a waste of everyone's time.

Concord's heroes, termed "Freegunners," are by and large forgettable, lacking the distinctive flavor of their contemporaries. Their names and backstories washed over me, almost immediately forgotten鈥攊t's a sanitized, rag-tag found family so derivative that I found myself yearning for a cartoonishly grimdark spacefaring Glanton gang to ride onto the scene and blast the static smirks off everyone's faces. The prospect of spending any more time with this cast feels like emotional labor, and I can't imagine myself tuning in for weekly cinematics where I'll doubtlessly be threatened with even more stale one-liners and sarcastic comebacks.

The Freegunners' tool kits are a bit more engaging than their personalities, but only just. Many of the weapons and abilities feel too unwieldy or are overly difficult to deploy effectively in combat. One Freegunner, DaVeers, has a support-oriented kit built around a woefully underpowered incendiary grenade launcher, and it's rare to be able to do much with her before being mobbed to death. Duchess trades offensive power for an area denial toolkit which has her tossing out concrete walls to lock off lanes, forcing opponents to slowly jog around barriers of negligible importance before easily murdering their builder. Even when it does go off correctly and cuts somebody off from their team, the aforementioned time-to-kill issue doesn't provide an avenue to capitalize on that.?

Not every Freegunner is a total dud鈥擨 enjoyed the reconnaissance-focused Kyps and her relatively fast movement speed, which opened up some rare opportunities for flanking and harassing the enemy. The most fun I had in Concord was complimenting my team's own roving death star by being a constant thorn in the side of the enemy, placing traps, marking targets, and racking up assists.?

You can tell Concord aspired to be more. Its world is vast, mercenaries fighting for scraps in the shadows of an impossibly powerful merchant guild, and I was surprised by how often I found myself saying "woah" after reading one of its lore entries. Take the guild's headquarters, the Spire: as a show of force to the galaxy at large, the merchant guild confiscated a moon, hauled it across space, and dropped it onto the capital of an imperial rival, burying them under a mountain of ash and rubble before driving a gigantic lance-ship into the crater and decreeing it the new center of the universe. Excerpts like this embody a tension that rests at the core of Concord, where 5v5 team deathmatch and objective control skirmish modes fail the promise of an undeniably inspired sci-fi setting. That setting isn't only failed by the gameplay, though, as Concord's actual writing is bordering on embarrassing, overly-quippy banter cribbing from the likes of Firefly, Borderlands, and Guardians of the Galaxy.?

A major problem right now is that players simply aren't willing to stick out a whole match. One of these two mobs will invariably obliterate the other, and then one or two of the losing mob's members will come to their senses and realize that they are playing Concord and that they could be doing anything else with their time and quit. This leads to the second round almost always being a steamrolling of the other team. I've never in my life played a game where a week inside the launch window, games are being won and lost because players seem to be getting depressed mid-match and quitting. Worst of all, even when everyone sticks around for a full match, it's still scraping at the shadows of Overwatch and Destiny 1.

There's no getting around how baffling Concord is. It's a $40 hero shooter whose only real selling point is that it has lore. The abysmal launch and already dismal player count make Concord impossible to recommend to even the most diehard hero shooter players.

About time, too.

For its latest ode to PC, Sony is opening up support for customisation of its DualSense Edge controller on PC. This is done via the PlayStation Accessories app, which used to be the "Firmware updater for DualSense wireless controller" app鈥擨 can see why they changed the name. Providing you download the latest version (2.0.0.13) from its official website, you can try it out right now.

One thing to note: this only works for the DualSense Edge, Sony's premium controller pad. The app doesn't open up options on the significantly cheaper DualSense. I made the mistake of thinking it might and rushed to connect my PS5 pad only to be met with a Bluetooth connection screen and little else.?

That's a shame, but to be fair to Sony, I failed to read its recent tweet that stated the distinction quite clearly in the copy.

DualSense Edge users will get something out of it, at least. This include button assignment customisation, deadzone tweaks, and vibration intensity.?

Small ways to make your ~$200 controller your own while gaming on PC.

This support is very welcome, of course. Just further evidence of Sony's growing love affair with the PC. Though for the avoidance of doubt, there are plenty of premium controllers with PC support to choose from, and for that reason I wouldn't suggest the DualSense Edge for the exclusive PC gamer. Just go with any of the best controllers for PC and you're good to go.

"Today Firewalk Studios launched [Concord]," Weisnewski says. "The game has been in development for around eight years, and I've been there for almost five of them. We don't get a lot of launch days in our careers, so today is special for a ton of reasons. Oblige me some good vibes today."

Concord is taking a slightly different approach to the hero shooter. Instead of having a battle pass, players will pay upfront to have access to everything in the game, skins and all, for free. It's an interesting gamble to take, especially when there are so many options for hero shooters that players can get for free. But this risk is founded on trust.?

"Obviously, it's a group effort, and having a seat at the table with others who inspire you and push you to do your best is a tremendous privilege," Weisnewski continues. "That trust gave the game so much identity. Concord has so much humanity and depth to it. I really hope people give it a shot. Insanely proud of the game, we're strapped in and ready to push it for years to come."?

From what we've seen of the hero shooter so far, it seems promising. PC Gamer staff writer Morgan Park played seven hours of it during the closed beta and came away with some reserved excitement: "Concord's guns feel tremendous across the board (especially Lennox's revolvers). Every hero I've played has a fun hook I don't instantly recognize from other games."

Although a lot of prospective players on PC seem rather disinterested in Sony's hero shooter, who can blame them? The competition is tough. Players have even pointed out that the internet has already decided that this is a flop. "If people latch onto a game because [gamers] all say it's a huge success, everyone will act and speak of it like it is (despite flaws it may have)," one player points out. "Unfortunately, Concord ended up on the opposite end of that, and that's because of how they marketed the game, in my opinion. The internet has decided this is a bad game and wants it to fail."?

While Concord has the potential to do well on console, PC players have instead looked elsewhere to get their new hero shooter fix. A good few players have really taken to Marvel Rivals. The closed beta was, by and large, a success, with players scrambling to get in, even if our online editor Fraser Brown did think that it was "aggressively bad." ?

Concord will be released tomorrow for $40 / ?35, although folks who prepurchased it have already been playing for the last couple of days. It will include six modes, 12 maps, and 16 characters. The roster will be expanded in October, when Season 1 begins, and again in January and April for consecutive seasons.?

"I don't think I have the power to do that," Cenat said in response to a chat question about him somehow making it happen. The clip was shared to X, "The Everything App" by content creator Chito Gaming. "But I definitely have the power to bring attention to a topic within the Souls community.

"I feel like the developers have watched my every move when it came to me playing these games. So the least that I can do is try to push the narrative for something to happen."

Cenat then addressed the relevant rights holders directly: "PlayStation, FromSoft, this is one of the most highly-requested games for a remaster and a PC version. I haven't even touched it. Just from me entering this community, I want to go ahead and be like 'Hey, can you please do something.'"

It definitely seems like Sony is the big party in need of persuasion: Speaking to PC Gamer senior editor Wes Fenlon in the spring, FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki said that many employees at the studio wanted to see a PC port of Bloodborne, and jokingly admitted "If I say I want one, I'll get in trouble, but it's nothing I'm opposed to."

The gothic, 19th century monster hunter-themed action-RPG is still probably tied with Elden Ring as my favorite of FromSoft's games, even nine years on. And after all these years, it's still locked at 30fps on the PS4, even lacking resolution and performance bumps from Pro or PS5 hardware. I do gotta say though: Talk of a Bloodborne remaster always makes me nervous. I'm not fond of Bluepoint's new art style for Demon's Souls, and the thought of something like that being how Bloodborne finally makes it to PC feels like a classic monkey's paw situation. Now, a resolution bump and high fps mode "remaster?" That's something I could get behind.

Only time will tell how Sony might choose to respond to the demand for Bloodborne on PC though. For now, I definitely appreciate Cenat putting it back in the headlines, and I wish him luck on his first Bloodborne playthrough. I wonder how tough Bloodborne's baddest fights will seem when you've already gone through the trials of Shadow of the Erdtree.

An official app for Sony's PS VR2 headset has just been listed on Steam. The PlayStation VR2 App will launch on August 6, one day ahead of the release of the official adapter required to get everything working.

The PlayStation VR2 App Steam page (spotted by TechRadar) says of the app: "Enjoy VR games and apps on Steam with PlayStation VR2! Install PS VR2 App to use PS VR2 on your PC, set up your PS VR devices, and keep the firmware for PS VR2 headset and PS VR2 Sense controllers up to date."

It also notes a requirement for the PlayStation VR2 PC adapter, which will be sold separately on August 7 for $60/60/?50. This is effectively a breakout box that turns the single USB Type-C cable from the VR headset into DisplayPort, power and USB.

Your PC will need to meet some minimum requirements to run PS VR2. Here they are:

By the standards of 2024, it's all pretty easy-going. The GPU requirement especially so, at quite a bit lower than the respective power of the PS5. However, you will need pretty recent architectures inside your machine to get PS VR2 functioning. That's Turing, RDNA or later on the GPU side; or Zen 2 or later if running an AMD CPU. That's all likely due to what the PS VR2 was designed to work with originally: the Zen 2/RDNA 2-powered PS5.

One thing to note is that some of the features found on the PS VR2 are set to stay as PS5 exclusives. That includes HDR, headset feedback, adaptive triggers and haptic feedback. You'll net the benefit of the PS VR2's high resolution visuals and foveated rendering, however.

Its jet fuel combat had my interest, but a recent interview by our friends at GamesRadar with director "Soulframe" Liang doubles down on a similar sentiment shared in a PlayStation blog last year, and that has my attention: "It's just like the old Souls games 鈥� You move around and explore in a seamless map, it's just not a huge open-world map. But every region is connected together seamlessly."

As someone very publicly on-record about my general malaise surrounding Elden Ring's open world鈥攁 feature executed beautifully, but which constantly lies at-odds with the game's other strengths鈥攖his has me very interested. As a matter of personal taste, I prefer a smaller, intimate, connected world over big open fields any day.

"There's still some process you go through," explains Soulframe, "but it's non-linear. There are always multiple paths you can go through. It's just like the Souls games before Elden Ring."

Soulframe seems keen to stop the soulslike comparisons there, though鈥�in a Q&A last month, they were adamant that the team was angling more for "combo-driven, heart-pumping combat that is hectic, rewarding, and exhilarating." The team's taken inspiration from the soulslike genre for its environments, sure, but little else: "There will be difficulty options, and you won't have to face respawned mobs after you die or interact with checkpoints."

If anything, that description smacks a little more of God Hand, a 2006 beat-'em-up often mentioned in the same breath as soulslikes in terms of its difficulty, with long combo strings more at home in fighting games.

Either way, I'm hungry for this thing. I never had the chance to play the OG God Hand, but I'm always a big fan of games that take FromSoftware's secret sauce and change up the recipe鈥攚hy not draw on the legendary dev's environmental design while also doing your own thing? Reuse and recycle, I say.

And hey, I wasn't disappointed. Concord is very fun so far. I played seven hours of the beta and was impressed by developer Firewalk Studios' strong FPS fundamentals鈥擟oncord's guns feel tremendous across the board (especially Lennox's revolvers), every hero I've played has a fun hook I don't instantly recognize from other games. Maybe best of all is that the whole roster is just there from the start. The closed beta is over now and I'm really eager to get back to it when the open beta begins July 18, but I have a few doubts, too. Some takeaways after seven hours with Concord:

Concord has more in common with Call of Duty than Overwatch

Concord's roster of heroes鈥攚ith their varying sizes, species, and backgrounds鈥攎ight give the initial impression of an Overwatch also-ran, but their similarities end once you get past the heroes themselves. In reality, Concord has more in common with modern arena shooters like Call of Duty, XDefiant, Destiny 2's Crucible, or even Halo.

That's made clear by the handful of modes playable in the beta鈥攁 grab bag of FPS favorites like team deathmatch (Takedown), Kill Confirmed (Trophy Hunt), Search and Destroy (Cargo Run), and a elimination take on King of the Hill called Clash Point. It's smart to stick together as much as possible, but unlike Overwatch, you're not encouraged to stay in one massive "hero clump" to have any chance of winning fights. You don't always spawn near teammates in Concord's multi-laned or bowl-shaped maps, and some heroes work best as lone wolves.

Concord - IT-Z"

Every hero has a niche, but they're all pretty lethal

Concord is much more of a "shooter" than a "hero" game. Other than a few tank-shaped heroes who struggle to compete without a teammate around, every Concord character can hold their own in a fight. There is no "Mercy" who's basically useless when the rest of the team dies鈥攖he two Concord heroes with group healing, Daw and Jabali, also have wicked powerful guns.

The default PC settings are wack

Concord is only Sony's second simultaneous PC/console launch after Helldivers 2, and while it plays well on PC, it took some tweaking to get there. The whole game felt off for my first few matches and my framerate was all over the place (RTX 2080 Super, 1080p). Turning off motion blur (curse you!) and setting everything to medium cleaned things up dramatically.

Its mouse and keyboard controls are also awkwardly mapped from the PS5 controller scheme by default. One example: you dodge roll by double-tapping sprint (mimicking the double tap of circle on PS5), despite an abundance of unused keys below WASD that could do the job. It's an awkward command for a maneuver you're meant to pull off in the heat of a fight. Thankfully, you can quickly remap it to a single tap of a more sensible button.

Concord's hero 'variants' are a neat way to offer different builds of a single character

This is kinda cool: You can unlock "variants" of Concord heroes that have the same abilities, but a unique perk that changes their playstyle. The one available in the beta for Lennox, the green guy who looks like Cousin Richie from The Bear, swaps his default perk that reloads his guns after rolling with double the magazine size for both of his pistols.

Variants are their own hero slot, which looks weird on the roster screen, but that plays into Concord's "crew builder" system. More on that below.

The 'Crew' system is really confusing and maybe pointless

One of the most unique aspects of Concord is also its most bewildering. By default, you can pick from all 16 heroes in a match, but you can also build a custom roster (a "crew") and use some of those slots for hero variants or even multiple copies of the same hero. That can matter in Concord's round-based modes as you're locked out of playing a hero once you've won a round as them. You could choose to exclude heroes you don't like and add five copies of Lennox to your crew, ensuring you can play your main throughout the whole match. That's somewhat interesting, but it's not at all intuitive and I question how much it'll really play into strategy.

Worse is that the crew system makes a lot less sense in a respawn mode like Trophy Hunt or team deathmatch. There's no point to adding multiple copies of a hero to your crew when there's no lockout mechanic, and the game even suggests that you equip a default roster with all heroes when playing these modes. If that's the case, then why are you able to screw yourself over in the first place?

Concord's guns are top notch

I'm simply in love with Concord's guns. They look incredible, sound really cool, and animate beautifully. Unsurprising for a team of Bungie vets, but Concord is especially masterful at reloads鈥擨 adore the clockwork crank of Haymar's hand crossbow as she loads another firebomb into its breach, marvel at the way Duchess replaces the side-fed magazine of her futuristic WW2 SMG and then turns it like a key to lock it in place. I also can't help but grin every time Emari unexpectedly reloads her minigun by replacing the entire front barrel assembly of the gun instead of a more conventional drum magazine.

Not since my first days with Overwatch in 2016 have I been this impressed by the variety and personality of weapons in a hero shooter. Some of Concord's guns are really out there, like a spore launcher whose pellets aren't so much bullets as they are creatures that fly toward enemies with a mind of their own, or 1-OFF's vacuum that sucks up bullets and spits them back out for low, consistent damage.

Some of my favorites so far are just really well-executed versions of guns we've all played with before. Lennox's two revolvers riff hard on Destiny's hand cannons and Hunt: Showdown's vintage six shooters. DaVeer's goopy launcher is like the TF2 Demoman's remote mines and grenade launcher in one gun. The strike of Vale's sniper rifle can be heard across the map, and leaves an intimidating smoke trail just like in Halo or Valorant.

Concord - KYPS"

Dodging is neat, but is third-person really necessary?

Concord has a dodge button that's genuinely useful, but I don't like that using it zooms the camera out to third-person. I know that occasional perspective shifts are a Destiny/Bungie staple at this point, but I'd love the option to stay in first-person at all times in Concord.?

The respawn modes rock, but Concord's round-based modes are super sluggish right now

I ended up sticking mostly to Concord's respawn modes this weekend, and that's because its elimination modes move way too slowly right now. There are just way too many pre-round steps. Every round has a pick phase where each player picks one at a time in order, followed by a loading screen, then an intro cinematic, then a countdown. I like to think I have a high tolerance for this sort of thing with my 2,000 logged hours of Rainbow Six Siege, but Concord's sluggish transitions wore me down quick. This is a fixable problem, so I'm curious how quickly Firewalk will be able to respond to feedback just a month before Concord's launch.

An official Valve gaming handheld, clearly visible for eight seconds of an 11-minute cartoon? Truly, this was the moment PC gaming became mainstream.?

OK, no, this was not the dawning moment of cultural acceptance of our decades-old hobby, which you could reasonably argue is the first and oldest gaming platform. By my count, PC gaming has enjoyed mainstream visibility on par with its console counterparts arguably as far back as 2017 or 2018, when the generation that grew up on Minecraft reached ages that made it a perfect audience for games deeply steeped in the spirit of PC gaming. (Also, technically, Smiling Friends referenced PC gaming a whole year earlier last season when it showed us a depressed Satan spending time playing Rust and hanging out on Discord. Relatable, Satan.)

If mainstream-ness is measured in television appearances, readers of this very website will know that PC gaming has been blessed for some time by the acknowledgement that only minor-to-medium celebrities can provide. A wing of our website was temporarily dedicated to documenting Henry Cavill's PC gaming habit, but earlier than that, Terry Crews spoke to us in 2017 about discovering PC building, and Chlo? Grace Moretz built her own $4000 desktop in 2022. The greatest chess player in the world appeared in a Hearthstone ad. Jack Black operated a gaming YouTube channel for a few years.?

I mean, the South Park WoW episode aired in 2006, woof. You'd think we PC gamers would be feeling seen at this point.

If I sound insecure, it's because the notion of PC gaming becoming genuinely mainstream felt like the furthest thing from possible for a very long time. If you were a PC gamer from 1993 to 2010, you know what it was like to feel like you were the strange creature among your friend group who played games on a keyboard and didn't have strong opinions about the uneven power levels of the Smash Bros. roster. The nature of PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo as global products predisposed them to becoming household names, and the vast marketing supporting them understandably eclipsed PC gaming for most of the last 30 years.?

When I joined PC Gamer in 2008, I was still caveating this hobby to non-gamer friends and family by saying I "write about videogames, but you know, for the computer." There are few replacements for having a beloved mascot who has appeared on lunchboxes since 1985, and last year in a $1.3B film.

When did PC gaming become mainstream?

I think the factors that produced the wider recognition and adoption that PC gaming enjoys today reached critical mass around 2019. The tailwinds of PUBG and Fortnite behind it, this was the year where so many things seemed to coalesce, from Sony's surprising move to publish most of its games on PC, Discord's dominance as a chat app that also works on your phone, crossplay, and the continued outperformance of small-studio games like Slay the Spire.

Here's my attempt to compress the last three decades into a highlight reel:

1993-1999: PC Gaming's First Golden Age

• CD-ROMs, shareware, 3D acceleration
• Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, and the formation of the FPS
• Myst, X-Com, Civilization, Baldur's Gate, Thief, SimCity 2000
• Blizzard's trinity: StarCraft, Diablo, Warcraft
• Proto-MMOs like Ultima Online, leading to EverQuest
• The creation of modding as we know it
• (An uncountable number of innovations, important games, and gaming moments.)

2005-2012: The Dark Times

• The Xbox 360 is a tremendously popular alternative to PC gaming, going on to sell more than 84 million units
• Windows Vista and Windows 8 are perhaps the worst-ever versions of the OS, particularly for gamers?
• Games for Windows Live is abysmal, excruciating DRM that hamstrings the experience of major blockbuster games on PC
• Many disappointing and/or delayed PC ports of multiplatform games (ex.: Capcom manages to completely screw up Resident Evil 4, a universally beloved action game)
• Duke Nukem Forever releases
• But hey, Minecraft!

2014-2018: Rebirth

• CS:GO and League of Legends ascend as popular global esports
• Kickstarter paves the way for self-publishing
• Through Steam, independently-published games enjoy greater parity with blockbusters
• Modern VR headsets, though not widely adopted, represent a new performance frontier
• Variable refresh tech & 144Hz monitors
• Skill-based matchmaking replaces privately-operated servers as the standard multiplayer format
• Frequent Steam sales contrast the less-flexible retail prices of console games
• Nvidia Shadowplay enables wide clip sharing (now GeForce Experience)
• With Play Anywhere and other moves, Xbox signals its embrace of PC gaming
• SSDs come down in price
• Steam Workshop eases some of the pain of installing mods
• Japan learned to love PC gaming?
• Widespread adoption of PC gaming in China?
• We create the PC Gaming Show, in an effort to give PC gaming its own dedicated moment in the E3 spotlight?
• The Witcher 3, PUBG, Fortnite (special thanks to its tremendous merchandising machine, which put PC gaming in every school lunchroom in America), Overwatch, Stardew Valley, Dota 2, and the formation of the battle royale genre

2019-Present: PC Gaming's Second Golden Age

• Consoles increasingly resemble PCs
• Crossplay becomes standard
• Wide adoption of Discord as a social companion app
• DLSS significantly lowers the traditional hurdle of GPU performance
• The notion of a "PC port" as an inferior version of a multiplatform game fades?
• Helldivers 2, a PlayStation-published game, sells more copies on Steam than on PS5?
• "Weird little games" dominate 2024
• Nvidia briefly becomes the most valuable company in the world
• Baldur's Gate 3, Apex Legends, Slay the Spire, Valorant, Disco Elysium, Elden Ring, Factorio, Hades, Crusader Kings 3, Final Fantasy 14: Shadowbringers, Doom Eternal

Even with much left out, the line of dominoes that led us to where we are is surprisingly long. It wasn't one giant announcement made at E3 or the launch of one GPU that elevated PC gaming鈥攊t was an accumulation of many, often competing trends, games, genres, policies, and technologies from many people and groups, often not moving in lockstep, but nevertheless together contributing to the meaning of this open gaming platform.

PC gaming couldn't replicate Mario's marketing, but we could recreate him in the aggregate.?

Now what?

The trends that produced this age are still in play, and to my eyes, don't show signs of disappearing. Let's take stock of them:

Supported by modders and independent developers, PC will continue to be the place where new genres are born鈥攃olony sims, extraction, roguelike deckbuilders, prox-chat co-op horror鈥攎ade possible by highly-moddable PC exclusives like Arma 4. The Steam Deck is a strangely cheap entry point to PC gaming at a time when inflation means every dollar counts. PC's proximity to streaming and the wider internet will make it the natural choice for the people who are most passionate about gaming.?

Small studios will continue to enjoy parity with the biggest publishers in the world, partly because their development timelines allow them to react to trends more quickly. There will be a steady beat of unexpected hits鈥攎ore Balatros, Valheims, Vampire Survivors, and Lethal Companies. The still-increasing accessibility of the tools used to make and publish those games will continue to invite the 20-year-olds of the world to make Scary Thomas The Tank Engine FPSes.?

We will look back on Helldivers 2 as a significant moment for PC gaming, and perhaps not for the reasons you'd think. Yes, it's eyebrow-raising that a PlayStation game will be one of the best, and best-selling, PC games of 2024. But what I notice is how systems-driven Helldivers 2 is, a historically rare quality for a blockbuster and something spiritually associated with PC gaming. The unknowable firing behavior of the Arc Thrower. The way that Terminid limbs can be severed and, guided only by ragdoll chaos, seconds later fall from the sky and decapitate you without warning. The way that new enemies and weapons have appeared in-game for a handful of players, and are then publicly, playfully disavowed by the studio. Perhaps the biggest DNA-level connection to PC gaming is Helldivers 2's "game master" overseer Joel, a descendent of Lord British and other MMO admins and folk heroes.

All this stuff will sustain PC gaming's booming popularity. As a set of trends, they aren't surprising, but they are heartening. I mean, I don't need a Marvel movie star to profess their lifelong love for StarCraft in order to know that I'm playing games in the best place, but I won't complain.?

I was, obviously, not the first person to ask Miyazaki about returning to Bloodborne or making a sequel; just a few months ago he told IGN that FromSoftware doesn't own the IP rights. "Unfortunately, and I've said this in other interviews, it鈥檚 not in my place to talk about Bloodborne specifically," he answered at the time.

I tried a slightly different approach: making myself the sacrificial lamb. I said I'd get in trouble if I didn't ask this question, then led off by acknowledging that I know FromSoftware doesn't own Bloodborne. But there are millions of PC gamers out there still holding onto hope, I said. Would he鈥擬iyazaki鈥�personally like to see Bloodborne come to PC someday?

This got a laugh from the FromSoftware crew鈥攁nd a genuine answer.

"I know for a fact these guys want a Bloodborne PC port," Miyazaki said, referring to FromSoftware producer Yasuhiro Kitao and interpreter Bobby Simpson seated at the conference table near him. "If I say I want one, I'll get in trouble as well. But it's nothing I'm opposed to."?

I thought that would be the end of the topic, but Miyazaki went on to elaborate on his answer.

"Obviously, as one of the creators of Bloodborne, my personal, pure honest opinion is I'd love more players to be able to enjoy it. Especially as a game that is now coming of age, one of those games of the past that gets lost on older hardware鈥擨 think any game like that, it'd be nice to have an opportunity for more players to be able to experience that and relive this relic of the past. So as far as I'm concerned, that's definitely not something I'd be opposed to."?

You heard it here, PC gamers鈥擬iyazaki wants Bloodborne on PC. FromSoftware wants Bloodborne on PC. So what's Sony going to do about it?

After this brief detour to Yharnam, look out for more from Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree鈥攊ncluding our cover story dropping online鈥攂efore the expansion's release.

It's not just vibes: Console sales are down. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella marked a 26% decline in spending on current-generation consoles this April compared to last April. Xbox hardware in particular is struggling to sell: Microsoft reported a 30% decline in Xbox hardware revenue between the first few months of last year and the first few months of this year.

Meanwhile, Sony's recent State of Play stream was almost as much a PC gaming show as it was a PlayStation show, featuring a PvP hero shooter that'll release on PC day one and the news that God of War Ragnar?k is on the way to our platform.

Hey, we're happy. It wasn't long ago that God of War on PC sounded like a pipe dream, but Microsoft and Sony finally cut it out with the console exclusives like we always wanted. And although Sony still makes us wait for its big singleplayer games, FOMO is harder to cultivate than it once was. New phenomena like Palworld appear all the time, and with the help of a good Amazon TV show, a years-old game like Fallout 4 can suddenly become the hot thing to play. We've got more than enough to distract us from whatever's big on PlayStation right now鈥攚hich incidentally is Helldivers 2, a game that at last check had made more than half of its money on PC.

There is one force of nature on the horizon that I expect to flip those console hardware revenue frowns upside down: Grand Theft Auto 6 releases next year, and will almost definitely be exclusive to consoles for a period. Daddy Rockstar'll take care of ya, don't you worry.?But one GTA doesn't bust the trend: Are we really, finally approaching the end of consoles as closed hardware platforms with exclusive first-party games??

Microsoft certainly appears to be prioritizing gaming revenue over hardware revenue, despite what its recent mass developer layoffs and studio closures might seem to indicate. Xbox console sales are down, but Microsoft as a whole is fine, and its gaming revenue has swelled this year due to its Activision Blizzard acquisition. It's also going all-in on Game Pass with plans to offer the next iteration of its shiny new moneymaker, Call of Duty, on its PC and console subscription library. Sony's strategy has changed less dramatically, but PlayStation certainly doesn't feel like the remote destination it used to.

The one holdout among the console makers is Nintendo, whose PC strategy is still to threaten fan projects with lawsuits. Perhaps I do not have to hand it to Nintendo for this, but as a result of its obstinance, the Switch is the only console I'd consider buying as a PC gamer. Nintendo remains a one-of-a-kind gaming company, whereas Xbox and PlayStation feel less and less distinguishable from gaming at large鈥攁ka PC gaming.?Maybe I'm finally starting to understand the PlayStation fans who are mad that the thing they like is dissolving into the great PC gaming ocean of everything. (But too bad: Kratos is now our dad, too.)

The distinctions between Xbox, PlayStation, and PC haven't totally dissipated: Japan Studio's new Astro Bot looks like a PlayStation-ass PlayStation game, and Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Sucker Punch, and Sony Santa Monica are still plugging away on future PS5 games which won't come to PC at launch. But the big leap to me was Sony releasing first-party PlayStation exclusives on PC at all, and I doubt it ends there.?

God of War on Xbox sounds ridiculous, but God of War on PC once sounded the same, and for its part, Microsoft is going to start releasing some of its smaller Xbox exclusives on PlayStation and Switch.

"I do have a fundamental belief that, over the next five or ten years, exclusive games鈥攇ames that are exclusive to one piece of hardware鈥攁re going to be a smaller and smaller part of the games industry," said Xbox boss Phil Spencer after that announcement.?

We've been joking for years that the consoles are "just PCs now," and the sentiment has only become more and more true. Microsoft has boasted that its next Xbox will be a powerhouse, so it's obviously not getting out of the game, but I can't see that machine having anything like the cultural impact of the Xbox 360. (I can picture that glowing green ring clear as day, as well as the moment it turned red.)

Maybe Valve's old living room PC project was just ahead of its time, and now that the exclusivity walls are falling, we're due for the second coming of the Steam Machines. They'd be consoles that get every Xbox game, every PlayStation game (some on a delay), and of course, every PC game. And you wouldn't need a PlayStation Plus subscription to play online. The Steam Deck's success, and resultant SteamOS compatibility push, suggests it wouldn't be the worst idea.?

Sony launched its second-generation VR headset for the PlayStation 5 last year, though it's not sold particularly well since then. That's certainly not down to its hardware specifications, as they're pretty decent鈥攊ts HDR OLED panels with 2000x2040 resolution and up to 120 Hz refresh rate are easy on the eye, as is the 110-degree field of view.

There are infrared cameras to track eye movement, and multiple gyroscopes and accelerometers to monitor head movement (along with more cameras to aid in that). Plus the hand controllers are furnished with adaptive triggers and haptic feedback, very much like that in Sony's Dualsense controller for the PS5.

Sounds fab, yes? Except the PC adapter won't support the use of HDR, headset feedback, eye tracking, adaptive triggers, and haptic feedback (other than rumble). In other words, all the best aspects of the PSVR2 that make it stand out against the likes of the Meta Quest 3 won't be an option.

And then there's the price of the adapter to consider. If you don't already have the PSVR2 headset, you'll need to spend around $450/500/?440 to get one and then another $60/60/?50 on the PC adapter kit itself. Combined, that's more than the price of the 256GB version of the Quest 3 and you're not getting any massively better, in terms of features.

You'll also need a spare DisplayPort cable (DP1.4 compliant), a Steam account (to get its SteamVR app), and a PC that meets the minimum hardware requirements:

At least this last aspect is palatable, as that's a very reasonable set of requirements. It's worth noting that in VR gaming, high-resolution panels can place a big demand on the GPU, as it needs to render two such frames at a high enough rate, to prevent motion sickness from kicking in.

This is why Sony recommends a GeForce RTX 3060 or Radeon RX 6600 XT for the graphics card, to ensure everything is as smooth as possible. A lot does depend on the game being played, though, and many VR games go quite easy on the graphics to give the GPU an easier time of things.

If you're still sold on the idea of using Sony's PSVR2 headset on your gaming PC, and who am I to judge if you are, then you'll need to wait a while as it won't be available until August 7. That gives you enough time to check out the best VR games but, to be frank, if this is your first time dipping a toe in virtual reality, then I strongly recommend you don't spend too much and go with the Meta Quest 2, the best, cheap way into VR gaming.

Big Papa Kratos is coming back to Steam.

During Sony's State of Play stream on Thursday, the company dropped the news that God of War Ragnar?k, the acclaimed sequel to the 2018 reboot of God of War, will be arriving on PC September 19.?

Dad Kratos's second outing was a big hit in 2022鈥�"Everybody but us is having a great time in God of War: Ragnar?k," we wrote not-at-all-passive-aggressively shortly after its release. While Elden Ring more or less swept the 2022 awards season as the top dog for Game of the Year, Ragnar?k was still an impressive runner up. It took home the trophy at a number of publications that year, including at our sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag. It also earned high praise in reviews; GamesRadar+ awarded it 4.5/5 stars, writing "There's a light start that feels padded鈥攕till good but missing depth鈥攚hich leads into a weighty finish that's every bit the equal of its predecessor."

Hopefully God of War Ragnar?k's PC port lives up to the high bar set by the January 2022 release of God of War, which has been one of the very best of the PC PlayStation crew. We praised that port's performance, writing "God of War runs so well on PC we didn't even need a graphics card." Thanks to its PS4 origins, it's a perfect game to play on the Steam Deck, and still looks great despite its age (some extra bells and whistles on PC definitely didn't hurt).?

The Ragnarok PC announcement above highlights a few of those PC-exclusive features, including unlocked framerates, Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR support, and ultrawide resolution compatibility. And just to allay any doubt: the Valhalla DLC is also included.?

Flying under the radar of the Druckmann controversy (though nonetheless spotted by IGN) is another ream of buzzwords courtesy of head of PlayStation productions and product Asad Qizilbash, who has a brave new angle on the tech via an interview on Sony's website: You see, AI's got what the kids crave for more reasons like鈥攗h, personalisation, and reactivity, and meaning, and stuff.

"In terms of gaming's future, I envision games becoming more personalised due to advances in technology and AI," Qizilbash says when asked about PlayStation's next 10 years, gazing into his crystal ball.?

"... technological advancements will enhance emotional depth in games by allowing characters to be much more emotive and expressive, fostering more evocative storytelling. That's going to help a whole generation of creators be able to just create so much more emotion in the stories. The focus is going to shift from graphics or visuals to immersive narratives that resonate long after the controller is set down."

As we all know, videogames made prior to 2024 have all been about ray-traced graphics and sick 360 MLG no-scopes. Before AI, no one was ever emotionally moved by a game鈥攏o one ever put a controller down and felt impacted by the thing they just played. It never happened.

This newfound frontier of immersion and narrative, hitherto just impossible without current technology, is especially relevant to the youth?, Qizilbash argues: "Advancements in AI will create more personalised experiences and meaningful stories for consumers. For instance, NPCs (Non Player Characters) in games could interact with players based on their actions, making it feel more personal." Yeah, if only Baldur's Gate 3 had that, it would've been way better. I would've felt a bajillion immersions.?

"This is important for the younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences, who are the first generations that grew up digitally and are looking for personalization across everything, as well as looking for experiences to have more meaning."

The temptation I have to simply tear into this clear bowl of corporate word salad is tremendous, but I'm going to resist in favour of sharing the first time a game really moved me鈥�Supergiant's Bastion. Spoilers, in case you haven't played a game that came out 13 years ago.

In the game's final act, protagonist "the Kid" is presented with a very simple choice between wrath and justice. You can either save Zulf, or leave him to die.?

Zulf is a character from a nation of old enemies called the Ura, who betrayed you. However, by the time you reach him to wreck bloody revenge, the Ura have already blamed Zulf for leading you to them. They blame him for the demise of their fellows you fought through to get here. They rough him up and leave him to die.?

If you pick him up, the kid staggers through Ura territory with Zulf on his back, shielding him with his body as Ura troops fire upon him, until they all eventually just鈥� stop, and let you go. The fight draining from them in the face of your selflessness. There's no dialogue, but you get a real sense that all of them had the same thought at the same time: 'What are we doing? He's just a kid.'

Plenty of meaning achieved without a deep learning model of any kind, there.

Anyway鈥攜es, AI's got its uses, but developers obviously don't, nor have they ever, needed it to deliver personalised narratives or meaningful stories. The "shift" Qizilbash describes of new technologies letting a "whole generation of creators be able to just create so much more emotion in the stories" already happened decades ago. It happened with Missile Command in the 1980s, an arcade cabinet that captured the raw anxiety of the Cold War with pixels, bleeps and bloops.?

Honestly, I think more than anything the statement is just kind of insulting. I'm a young millennial myself, but I know people from Gen Z and Gen Alpha鈥攁nd beyond some utterly unassailable memes, the kids are alright. Bare minimum, I'm sure they're capable of sniffing out a good story when it's told to them without needing an AI that reacts when you talk about burgers, or a bajillion hours of regurgitated machine-generated content.

The exterior of the console is extremely polished despite its DIY origins. It includes a sleek white case adorned with PlayStation's own brand of Cross, Triangle, Circle and Square buttons, a d-pad, plus start and select buttons. A pair of shoulder buttons on either side round off what could be, from my description, any regular PlayStation pad. All except for the 480p VGA screen nestled in the middle, anyways.

There's a lot more to this handheld than meets the eye, too. Break it apart and you'll find a wonderful entanglement of PCBs, wires, batteries and speakers. It's janky in all the best ways. It's using the original PU-18 motherboard out of the PS1, though the PS1's considerably larger shell means to fit the motherboard in the handheld, it had to be snapped in half.

"... in order to fit the PU-18 motherboard into this small of a case I had to cut it in half and fold it. Lots and lots of magnet wire," the creator says in a post on the bitbuilt.net forums, in a brutal process they call "portablizing".

They manage to stuff an SD card reader, rumble functionality and twin speakers into the device thanks to the space-saving. The device measures just 181 x 91.5 x 30.25 mm, and in case you're wondering there's no disc drive. It uses Xstation to load games from an SD card instead.

Fixing all the now severed traces within the PCB involved running a lot of magnet wire. It looks like a fiddly process, and one I'm quite comfortable with watching from afar rather than doing myself. Incredibly, the operation was a success, and the PS1 Portable does work, for up to 2.5 hours. That's off the included 3500 mAh battery. That's rather good compared with today's best handheld gaming PCs, which are lucky to get over an hour of gaming.

There are a few bits that don't quite work as intended. There's no volume control, some of the power and reset functionality isn't wired up, and it has no heatsinks, meaning it runs hot. That last one seems quite important for the longevity of this device, but it might be tricky to sort considering the folded motherboard. There's also the issue of accidentally brushing the power button and turning the entire device off.?

But hey, it's an incredibly impressive device considering its DIY origin.

Granted, there's plenty of reasons as to why a dev team would want to optimise something for a specific loadout鈥攖he PC's breadth of potential compatibility issues are a complete nightmare, especially as games get bigger in scope.

PlayStation has been a particular pain point over the past few years, with some genuinely excellent games like Final Fantasy 7 Remake, 2018's God of War, and Insomniac's Spider-Man taking their sweet time to mosey on over to Steam. Trends have continued with Rebirth, God of War: Ragnar?k, and Spider-Man 2 respectively.?

But worry not, fair keyboard warrior鈥攊t seems like the tide is largely turning according to both PlayStation's current president, and now its former one too. That's according to an interview with ex-head honcho Shawn Layden, courtesy of GamesBeat.

"When your costs for a game exceed $200 million," Layden says, "Exclusivity is your Achilles' heel. It reduces your addressable market. Particularly when you're in the world of live service gaming or free-to-play. Another platform is just another way of opening the funnel, getting more people in."

Layden's reasoning here鈥攖hat console exclusivity primarily hurts live service games鈥攊s a smidge corporate, especially considering many of the PlayStation exclusives I've been drooling over are single-player. Still, when he notes that "in a free-to-play world, as we know, 95% percent of those people will never spend a nickel 鈥� You have to improve your odds by cracking the funnel open", he's not necessarily wrong.

The recent wave of live service games has followed a very similar pattern to the wave of MMORPGs in 2010-2020. As I pointed out last year, the problem is still very much the same: A big thing becomes popular, companies want to make their own version of the big thing, spend a bunch of money to do so, then watch it collapse under its own weight. The gaming ecosystem can only support a few of these giants before the whole thing buckles and breaks.

While a live service golden goose is still being chased by many developers, it's actually really hard to get one off the ground. Layden adds: "Helldivers 2 has shown that for PlayStation, coming out on PC at the same time. Again, you get that funnel wider. You get more people in." I do think part of Helldivers 2's success is down to its fairer premium currency system, but the wider player pool doesn't hurt.

As for single-player titles, Layden says there's grounds to benefit there too: "For single-player games it's not the same exigency. But if you're spending $250 million, you want to be able to sell it to as many people as possible, even if it's just 10% more." He notes that while the console user base has increased its raw spending over time, "I look at that and see that we鈥檙e just taking more money from the same people."

This is mostly just further evidence to stack onto the pile that鈥攏o, PC gaming isn't dead. It's also cause to cross my fingers even harder that we'll eventually see the end of these year-long waits鈥攖hough whether we'll see more day-one releases like Helldivers 2 is another question entirely. The prestige of "Only on PlayStation" games is still a huge part of the company's strategy, so we could just be looking at a shorter window, rather than a closed one.

CEO Jim Ryan announced the news on the Sony Interactive Entertainment blog, in a post titled "Difficult News About Our Workforce". Ryan called it an "extremely hard decision," adding that "employees across the globe, including our studios, are impacted." In an email shared by Ryan which was sent out to the company, it's revealed that the PlayStation Studios in London will close in its entirety. Firesprite, the studio behind the VR game Horizon Call of the Mountain, will see reductions, as well as "reductions in various functions across SIE in the UK."?

Details behind layoffs in other regions are a little more vague. Ryan says US employees who are impacted by the layoffs will be notified today, while those in Japan will begin "a next career support program" process. Other countries will see "conversations with those who are potentially at risk or impacted as a result of this proposed course of action."

In the company email, Ryan wrote: "For those who will be leaving SIE: You are leaving this company with our deepest respect and appreciation for all your efforts during your tenure. For those who will be staying at SIE: We will be saying goodbye to friends and colleagues that we cherish during this process, and this will be painful. Your resilience, sensitivity, and adaptiveness will be critical in the weeks and months to come."

As for the reason behind cutting 8% of its staff, Ryan blamed "the evolving economic landscape, changes in the way we develop, distribute, and launch products, and ensuring our organization is future ready in this rapidly changing industry," calling the decision "inevitable."

It's an exhausting continuation of what has been more than 16,000 layoffs since January 2023. It's only been getting worse since the new year rolled round: we're still barely nine weeks into 2024 and yet we've already seen layoffs such as:

• Activision-Blizzard and Xbox, January 2024 鈥� 1,900 employees
• Behaviour Interactive and CI Games, January 2024 鈥� 40 employees, 10% of workforce respectively
• Lost Boys Interactive, January 2024 鈥� a "sizeable portion"
• Riot Games, January 2024 鈥� 530 employees
• Twitch, January 2024 鈥� over 500 employees
• Airship Syndicate, February 2024 鈥� 12 employees
• Blackbird Interactive, February 2024 鈥� Unspecified number
• Supermassive Games, barely even a day ago 鈥� 150 employees at risk

Sony announced the acquisition of Bungie in January 2022, a blockbuster deal seen in some ways as a counterpunch to Microsoft's takeover of Activision Blizzard, and an opportunity to add more live service game knowhow to the roster of PlayStation studios. It said at the time that Bungie would operate as "an independent subsidiary," with the freedom to remain multiplatform and "self-publish and reach players wherever they choose to play." Bungie, in turn, said Sony "unconditionally supports us in all we are," as it "begins our journey to become a global multi-media entertainment company." Business as usual, in other words.

But just two years later, that relationship is showing signs of potential strain. A December 2023 report said Destiny 2 player numbers had declined dramatically, while revenues were said to be running 45% below projections. Morale at the studio was also said to be in bad shape following layoffs in October. Bungie was also reportedly facing the possibility of a full takeover by Sony, ending its functional independence.

Totoki's comments aren't likely to quell those concerns. He began by addressing the situation at Sony Interactive Entertainment in general, saying employees have a "solid understanding" of their individual roles and responsibilities, but "don鈥檛 necessarily understand how their respective efforts tie into overall growth, sustainable profit generation, and higher margins."

"By providing everyone involved with highly transparent description of the company and industry conditions, as well as of analyst views, I would like to encourage them to come to their own realizations," Totoki said. "This will get everyone in the business onto the same page. Then, I would like them to consider what we need to do to work toward our major objectives."

Then he moved on to Bungie specifically.?

"I visited the Bungie studios and had meetings with [the] management, and I saw that employees working at the studios were highly motivated, showing great creativity as well as an impressive knowledge of live services," he said. "However, I also felt that there was room for improvement from a business perspective with regard to areas such as the use of business expenses and assuming accountability for development timelines. I hope to continue the dialogue and come up with some good solutions."

I'm not an investment analyst, but I know a veiled threat when I see one. My dad used to call it "explaining the facts of life," while my mom preferred the phrase "you clean it up, or I will." Either way, just like Totoki encouraging studio leaders "to come to their own realizations," it was made very clear that although the final decision in a particular situation was mine to make, the consequences for making the wrong decision would be, well, not good for me.

Totoki, who stepped in as chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment in October 2023 and will assume the role of interim CEO in April 2024 following the retirement of longtime president and CEO Jim Ryan, may have different ideas about how Bungie should be run than his predecessor. But irrespective of the shifts that inevitably follow a changing of the guard, his impatience is understandable.?

Bungie blew a lot of gamer goodwill with its mishandling of layoffs, and then just a month later delayed the big Destiny 2 expansion The Final Shape from February to June 2024, pushing into Sony's next financial year. There may be a lot riding on it: According to the December report on Bungie, employees expect that even more layoffs will occur if The Final Shape doesn't do well. Meanwhile, against that backdrop the remaining players are enduring a massively-extended season with content thin on the ground, at the same time as Helldivers 2 offers an alternate path to shooting aliens in space with your buddies. Still, at least Mr Totoki can console himself with the fact that that's also a Sony game.

And following a recent Q&A at a Sony financial results briefing (imperfect transcript here), it sounds like things might be getting even better for us when it comes to PlayStation games arriving on PC. Sony president and PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki was asked about the corporation's plans to improve its bottom line, and he had a clear answer: more first-party Sony games on non-Sony platforms like PC.

Noting that cost of manufacturing consoles is going up, eating into Sony's profit margins on every PS5 sold, Totoki said that one potential profit driver was "first-party title generation," business-speak for Sony's in-house games like Spider-Man and God of War. "In the past, as you all know, we wanted to popularise consoles, and a first-party title's main purpose was to make the console popular."

"But there is a synergy to it," continued Totoki, "If we have strong first-party content, not only with our console, but also other platforms like computers, the first-party can be grown with multi-platform, and that can help operating profit to improve. So that's another one we want to proactively work on鈥� we'd like to go aggressive on improving our margin performance."

Well, isn't that interesting? To be sure, it's no surprise that Sony's happy with the performance of its games on PC (to the extent that Totoki specifically called out "computers" in his answer): the corporation is making a ton of money off them, after all. But words like "proactive" and "aggressive" make it sound like PlayStation might be ready to narrow the gap between its games' console releases and their subsequent PC versions.

In the past, Sony bosses have said PC players can expect to wait "two or three years" between a game hitting PlayStation and coming to PC, but with the recent stonking success of Helldivers 2 and its simultaneous release on PS5 and Steam, I have to wonder if Sony isn't thinking very hard about the extent to which it can close that gap (without infuriating PlayStation fans who forked over the money for their console and the timed exclusives thereon, anyway).

Sony is, of course, not alone in asking itself these questions. Xbox boss Phil Spencer is set to address the faithful in a podcast later today, where he's widely expected to announce some kind of seismic shift in Microsoft's gaming strategy, possibly in the form of Xbox games on PlayStation.

If, as Totoki says, the margins in the console business are just getting narrower, the big numbers its PC releases keep spitting out must look better than ever. Perhaps it won't be too long before releases like Helldivers are the norm and not the exception. Heck, maybe we'll finally even get Bloodb- no. No. I'm sorry. I can't even joke about it at this point. Some things are just too good to ever happen.