Items tagged with PlayStation-4
Sony today released Software Update 8.00 for the PlayStation 4, which included a bunch of new social features. Sony also stealthily added a voice “Party Safety” notification letting users know their voice chat may be recorded. Some gamers were taken aback by this and were quick to call it out, and Sony subsequently released a statement in attempts to quell the concerns. As we are just weeks away from the PlayStation 5 launch, Sony is gearing up its software in preparation. The update that came out included some tidying up of apps and features, as well as the aforementioned voice recording notification. According to Sony, “Voice chat recording for moderation is a feature...
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Sony is hard at work on its next-generation of game console, but we still have no idea when that console will land. Some rumors expect to see the PlayStation 5 land in 2019 while others expect a 2020 release for the new console, which will reportedly have an 8-core AMD Ryzen processor. Whatever the launch window is, the new console will undoubtedly need gorgeous, blockbuster game to showcase its hardware capabilities. To that end, new Sony job listings have turned up seeking people to join a development team for an unannounced AAA game. The intriguing part about the job listings is a call out that the design team will focus on the "next chapter of cinematic storytelling." One of the team...
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Sony has announced that it is bringing back the Days of Play celebration. The event is meant to celebrate the “passionate” PlayStation community, and part of that celebration includes a special edition PS4 console and discounts on games. The special deals will be offered across the U.S. and Canada from June 8th through 18th and include discounts on hardware, peripherals, and games. The biggest special during the event is a Days of Play Limited Edition PS4 console for $299.99. That console will land June 8th and includes a special Days of Play blue color with a gold PlayStation symbol on top and a 1TB HDD. The special console comes with a blue DualShock 4 wireless controller with gold...
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What kind of video game elicits multiple play-throughs? Quantic Dream’s latest video game Detroit: Become Human offers players a variety of dialogue choices that can deeply affect the lives of characters in the game. Detroit: Become Human was released worldwide yesterday and has received generally favorable reviews from critics. Detroit: Become Human is a third-person adventure game. The player’s dialogue choices and quick-time events can determine whether or not certain characters in the game will live or die. The storyline will continue without the main characters, but the player is able to rewind time to certain plot points if they so desire. The playable characters in the game...
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Sony this week gave up some details on its gaming business while presenting its financial results for the recently completed quarter. The highlight of the announcement was that Sony shipped 19 million PS4 consoles for fiscal 2017. That is about a million its less than it shipped in fiscal 2016, but it was enough to push the total number of PS4 consoles sold to 79 million units. Compare that to shipments of the previous generation PS3 pegged -- which logged around 80 million units total -- and Sony has hit a home run with its latest console. The PS4 isn't going to retire anytime soon, meaning it will most definitely surpass lifetime sales of the PS3. In fact, the PS4 should pass the PS3 next quarter...
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If you have been kicking yourself for missing out on the deals that were offered on the PlayStation VR during the holiday season, you can make it up to yourself this weekend. Sony has announced that it will be offering $100 off the price of the PlayStation VR standalone headset, Doom VFR Bundle, and the Skyrim VR Bundle. The sale will start on Sunday, February 18 and will run through Saturday, March 3, giving you a couple weeks to cough up the dough and get into VR gaming on the PS4. The PS VR standalone headset will sell for $199.99. Note that price is the headset only. If you want a fuller package you will need to spend the $299.99 price for the PlayStation VR Doom VFR Bundle. That bundle includes...
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Sony has announced that PlayStation 4 gamers on the beta channel have a new software update to try out. The update brings the PS4 to software version 5.50 and is codenamed KEIJI. Gamers who are registered for the beta program will receive an email that tells them how to download the new software and get started with the update. Those who aren’t in the beta program will get the 5.50 update in the future. Some of the big features coming in the software update include Play Time Management, Library UI updates, enhancements to Quick menu, and more. Play Time Management will probably be the feature that parents of little gamers will appreciate. This feature allows family managers set as guardians...
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Sony’s highly anticipated System Software Update 4.50 will launch tomorrow, and with it comes a welcome new feature for PlayStation 4 Pro gamers: Boost Mode. Sony says that Boost Mode will increase performance for “legacy” games that haven’t been specifically optimized to take advantage of the additional firepower found on the PlayStation 4 Pro. “This can provide a noticeable frame rate boost to some games with variable frame rates, and can provide frame rate stability for games that are programmed to run at 30 Hz or 60 Hz,” says Sony, which goes on to reveal that gamers may even see reduced game load times with Boost Mode enabled. In some titles, Boost Mode was able to increase frame rates by...
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Those of you who splurged on an Xbox One, PlayStation 4, or a DirectX 11-capable PC, start stocking up on Earl Grey tea or whatever it is that relaxes you the most. Come April 7, 2015, Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin will be available for your platform of choice, which means you'll get to experience what it's like to die over and over and over again. It's also coming to PS3 and Xbox 360 on the same day.Dark Souls is known for its high level of difficulty, and Scholar of the First Sin isn't likely to change that in any significant way. That said, the updated version will be a prettier (in some cases) compilation of Dark Souls II with its three DLC chapters -- Crown of the Sunken King,...
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AMD has released its annual earnings report, and the news for the chipmaker is mixed but looking up. For the year, AMD saw revenue drop 2% from 2012 (from $5.42 billion to $5.3 billion), but the company had a solid fourth quarter in 2013 with $1.59 billion revenue which marked a 38% year-over-year jump from 2012. Much of that revenue came from sales of Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4. (Lest anyone forget that both of those very popular consoles run on AMD semi-custom hardware, that was a big win for the company.) AMD says that altogether, the Microsoft and Sony sold 7 million gaming consoles in two months. In addition, AMD did well in its Graphics and Visual Solutions...
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The good news is that Bungie’s eagerly anticipated Destiny finally has a release date. The bad news is that date is September 9th, 2014, which is several long months away. The Destiny Beta will kick off this summer, so those involved on that front won’t have to wait as long to dive in, but that still may be disappointing news for some--it was previously thought that the beta would launch sometime in Q1 2014. As we noted earlier, the beta will launch first for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, offering a tasty early selling point for Sony’s consoles over Microsoft’s. The latter’s Xbox 360 and Xbox One will get the game soon enough, though. Destiny is an ambitious...
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As the specter of the next generation of gaming consoles looms large on the horizon, there’s certainly a case to be made for rolling with a gaming PC instead of an Xbox One or PlayStation 4, and Dell’s Alienware is sweetening the pot by offering a $200 cash back incentive. When you buy a new Alienware gaming rig, you can trade in your old console and get $200 cash back; the same deal applies for old PCs. After you buy your new Alienware system, you can visit the Alienware Trade Up Portal and provide a copy of your receipt and your bank information. Then you’ll be given a prepaid shipping label to print and instructions for sending the old device and any power cables into Alienware....
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The latest Battlefield 4 game trailer from EA is here, and this one is a single-player story trailer that gives you a taste of the sort of character arc you can expect from the game. The trailer starts out with the evacuation of American VIPs from Shangai and--wouldn’t you know it--things get a little crazy on the way out. (WARNING: Some NSFW language.) We’ve been impressed so far with the videos we’ve seen of the game, and this one is no exception. It looks like there’s a good bit of drama and intriguing characters in the single-player story to go along with the killer gameplay and superb graphics. In our own preview of the title, we found that BF4 is basically a more...
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If you’ve never played “Skylanders” with kids before, you’re missing out. It’s easy to see why the franchise is so popular; the game is simple enough that young kids can play it, yet it’s sufficiently entertaining that you don’t get bored playing it with them, and the multitude of available characters with different strengths and abilities provide another vector of engagement for the youngsters. There’s another installment launching today--”Skylanders SWAP Force”--and in this go-around, Activision has added a superb element: the ability to swap the tops and bottoms of 16 characters so that players can create their own combinations of...
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We love a good gameplay trailer around here, and the latest one from EA showing off Battlefield 4’s multiplayer play looks fantastic. We already saw a lengthy (17 minutes) demo earlier this year that gave us a look at the fluid and detailed visuals as well as the storyline with a mix of scripted scenes and actual gameplay, and this latest video just adds to the fun. Judging from the clip, you’ll be able to fight with automatic weapons, perform hand-to-hand combat, and use a variety of land, sea, and air vehicles to take on your opponents. You can go solo in multiplayer mode, or you run with up to a 5-man squad. There’s also a commander mode lets you take command of multiple...
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Sony made several announcements about new and updated products, including confirming that the U.S. release of the PlayStation 4 is November 15th and that the mobile PlayStation Vita is getting a refreshed look, but the big news concerned a small streaming micro console called the PlayStation Vita TV. The device has several roles in the home entertainment setup; on the one hand, it’s a streaming set-top box not unlike Roku or Apple TV, and you can watch “movies, TV shows, and video services” on it. It also serves as a lightweight gaming console, and you can actually pop in PS Vita, PSP, and PSPOne games and play them with full controllers on the big screen. Further, it features...
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Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 4 will support voice commands and facial recognition through its PlayStation 4 Camera peripheral. Unlike the Microsoft’s Kinect camera, which is standard issue with the Xbox One, Sony’s camera will be sold separately--or taken another way, optionally. A Sony Entertainment spokesperson told Polygon, "Sony Computer Entertainment can confirm that PlayStation Camera allows for voice recognition and we will look forward to sharing more details in the lead up to the launch of PlayStation 4 on November 29." The camera is listed on Amazon for $59.96, and the description says that the it will include functions “from navigational commands to facial recognition”,...
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Want to know everything there is to know about the new Call of Duty? Bang it here for the live stream of the full reveal of Call of Duty: Ghosts. Call of Duty: Ghosts will be available for the PC as well as the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4 consoles. It appears to be coming for the Wii U, as well. We’ve covered this game a bit already, and the trailers look amazing. Enjoy getting all the details from Activision....
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Ever since Microsoft announced the Xbox One, the company has been dealing with a good bit of blowback for some of the features of the new console, including the requirement for an online “check in” every 24 hours; a required, always-on Kinect (that costs an extra $100 to boot); and the inability to sell used games, among some other PR black eyes. It didn’t help when Sony released a funny video mocking the Xbox One’s sharing capabilities. Microsoft has backed down on most of those, but in the meantime it was easy to forget that the Xbox One was going to enjoy 15 exclusive titles that included 8 new game franchises. That’s a win, right? It would be, were it not for...
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For all the hullabaloo surrounding the respective launches of the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 (in which we’ve taken part), there was always going to be a time when sales numbers would tell the story. We’re not there yet by any means, but there is some indication that the PlayStation 4 might be leading its competition: Preorders for the PlayStation 4 (Launch Edition) are sold out on Amazon. Meanwhile, the Xbox One (Day One Edition) remains available. Of course, we must take all of this with a grain of salt, because we don’t know how many units each company was readying for preorder, but Amazon shows the PS4 as a top seller ahead of the Xbox One, for what that’s worth. Further, after...
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John Riccitiello is the former CEO of EA, and after all the recent chaos that led to him leaving his post, you’d think he’d keep a low profile for a while. However, he’s resurfaced again with an op-ed at Kotaku concerning the upcoming Xbox and PlayStation consoles wherein he cautions Microsoft and Sony about maintaining a certain focus on gaming with these devices. “I certainly see the temptation to emphasize all sorts of experiences that these boxes might bring to the living room. These new machines can do a lot”, he wrote. “The risk is that either or both of the new platforms emphasize these ‘value-add’ experiences too much, both in the user interface...
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We knew that Sony had a PlayStation 4 brewing, and we knew a little something about the upcoming gaming console’s specifications, but now we know when we’ll know all the juicy details. In a teaser trailer for the PS4, Sony indicated that the big reveal will take place on June 10th at 6pm PDT at E3. The trailer itself leaves something to be desired, to say the least. It’s a short spot, and we see a blurry black box in the background that we never get to see in focus, and there are spliced-in bits showing closeups of the PlayStation 4 that don’t really tell us anything. (It will have some Christopher Nolan-era Batmobile-type angles, and at least part of it will have a sort...
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