Blog: PlayStation - Page 2

With both PS5 and Xbox Series X having sold out their pre-order stock, the winter holiday race is heating up. Following Microsoft’s acquisition of ZeniMax Media, we wrote that the acquisition is unlikely to have a short-term impact on console sales, and rather play a larger role in the conversion of existing and new users to Game Pass.

With the acquisition of ZeniMax Media, Microsoft is gaining an important content asset for its portfolio – Bethesda’s games. And while the timing of the announcement certainly won’t make Sony too happy as it is about to launch PS5, the key benefits of this acquisition are tied to the future of Xbox Game Pass, rather than to who will sell more consoles this holiday season.

Sony has made a strategic investment of $250 million to acquire a minority stake in Epic Games. According to Venture Beat , Sony will own 1.4% of the company, valuing Epic Games at $17.86 billion. While the size of the deal does not afford Sony any direct legal control, it opens up a number of doors and is an important step in its cross-entertainment strategy.

Sony , EA , and Activision were among companies to postpone marketing events and product release efforts in light of the current protests against police brutality and racism in the United States. The current situation is a stark reminder that just because there is a COVID-19 crisis out there, it doesn’t mean that other world problems are on hold in the meantime.

Amazon might delay games streaming service launch to 2021 The New York Times has reported that Amazon’s games streaming proposition (now deemed Project Tempo) may be delayed to 2021 due to coronavirus.

E3 is approaching fast, and it’s shaping up to come out with a number of announcements which will significantly impact the games landscape as the platform- and device-agnostic games streaming revolution unfolds.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend – a phrase that nicely sums up the latest major development in games streaming and the console gaming industry. “ Sony and (Microsoft) announced on Thursday that …the two companies will partner on exploring joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services.

As Mark Cerny, the lead system architect of PlayStation, implied in an exclusive interview with Wired , PS5 is coming likely in fall 2020 – and it is not just meant to be a mere upgrade of the PS4. The key question remains, however, whether even a big upgrade to the hardware and gaming experience will be enough to compete in the increasingly platform- and device-agnostic gaming environment.

As you could tell from the social media frenzy about having to delete other games to accommodate the new Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) release, hard drive space is a real issue for many console gamers, with their desire for a new game forcing some of their previously played games off their consoles.

The majority of the gaming industry is pro cross-platform gaming and truly sees it as the natural evolution of the industry. Sony, however, is retaining the walled garden model as manifested by the recent Fortnite issue.

We have written on the potential of VR in the past , specifically about our concern that gaming VR headsets will not take off en masse, until there is content mix compelling enough to justify device price points.

Four years after its near-mythical Kickstarter campaign introduced the name Oculus Rift into the consciousness of virtual reality believers worldwide, the headset finally launches in the UK this week. Arguably the poster-child product for VR’s renaissance since its company’s acquisition by Facebook in 2014, its arrival feels more belated than triumphant – and is marked by serious questions over its ability to draw consumers beyond the die-hard gaming contingent.