Friday, 17 January 2025
PlayStation Studios Tentpole Lineup Is Dire for Next Few Years – Report
Sony Interactive Entertainment has apparently canceled at least eight (that we’ve heard of) PlayStation Studios games in recent years, which has left a big question mark over its first-party output. These games — all of which were live service titles — were meant to aid PlayStation’s single-player output, but it’s increasingly looking like Sony’s tentpole slate won’t take shape until the PS6 generation.
What’s going on with PlayStation Studios single-player games?
When Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier reported Bend Studio and Bluepoint project cancellations last night, a fellow journalist asked if PlayStation’s tentpole lineup for the next few years was as bad as it seems right now. Schreier didn’t deny the suggestion, and instead lent credence to it by saying that the company’s attempt at making 12 (yes, 12) live service games hurt its overall output.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that Sony doesn’t have first-party blockbusters lined up. At least one of them — Ghost of Yotei — is scheduled for this year. We also expect Insomniac’s Wolverine within the next two years even though a release date has not been announced.
But two games aren’t enough, and we’re fast approaching the PS6. We don’t know when Santa Monica Studio’s next project will be revealed let alone released, there’s no release window for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, and Sony has confirmed that it still hasn’t determined what’s next for Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games, so we can rule out seeing anything from them in this generation.
We do expect smaller PS5 exclusives here and there, but following recent developments, things just aren’t looking good for PlayStation Studios.
The post PlayStation Studios Tentpole Lineup Is Dire for Next Few Years – Report appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.
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Wednesday, 15 January 2025
SEC lawsuit claims Musk gained over $150 million by delaying Twitter stake disclosure
After a more than two-year investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission has sued Elon Musk over his delayed disclosure of the Twitter stock he amassed before announcing his intention to acquire the company in 2022.
In a court filing, the SEC says that Musk filed paperwork with the SEC disclosing his purchase of Twitter shares 11 days after an SEC-mandated deadline to do so. (Federal law, as the SEC notes in its statement, requires investors to publicly report when they have acquired a more than 5 percent stake in a company.) This delay, according to the regulator, allowed Musk to buy up even more Twitter stock at a time when other investors were unaware of his involvement with the company.
From the lawsuit:
During the period that Musk was required to publicly disclose his beneficial ownership but had failed to do so, he spent more than $500 million purchasing additional shares of Twitter common stock. Because Musk failed to timely disclose his beneficial ownership, he was able to make these purchases from the unsuspecting public at artificially low prices, which did not yet reflect the undisclosed material information of Musk’s beneficial ownership of more than five percent of Twitter common stock and investment purpose. In total, Musk underpaid Twitter investors by more than $150 million for his purchases of Twitter common stock during this period. Investors who sold Twitter common stock during this period did so at artificially low prices and thus suffered substantial economic harm.
The regulator has been investigating Musk for years, and has long been at odds with the owner of X. At one point, the SEC accused Musk of attempting to stall and use “gamesmanship” to delay its investigation into his investment in Twitter. Last month, Musk shared a copy of a letter addressed to SEC Chair Gary Gensler in which Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, accused the regulator of “six years of harassment” targeting Musk. The letter indicated that Musk refused a settlement offer from the SEC related to its Twitter investigation.
Musk also faced a class action lawsuit from other Twitter investors and an FTC probe related to the delayed disclosure. However, as The New York Times notes, it’s unclear if the SEC’s latest action will amount to much, as Gensler is expected to step down following the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement to The Times, Spiro called the SEC’s action a “a single-count ticky-tack complaint," calling it “an admission by the S.E.C. that they cannot bring an actual case."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/0aToc2qfrom Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/0aToc2q
A PDF File Is The Latest Unlikely Thing Doom Has Been Ported To
A crafty high-schooler was able to do something I didn’t think was possible: They got Doom running inside a PDF file. Seriously. And weirdly, it works better than you might expect!
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Tuesday, 14 January 2025
Sony Drops PSN Requirement on PC for Upcoming Game – Report
A Sony-funded upcoming game, which the company will also be publishing, has apparently dropped PSN account requirement on PC. The game is none other than Final Fantasy inspired PlayStation China Hero project by Ultizero Games, Lost Soul Aside, which is set to release on the PS5 and PC simultaneously.
Sony possibly making exceptions when it comes to PSN requirement on PC
As spotted by TwistedVoxel, the SteamDB entry for Lost Soul Aside shows that Sony “removed 3rd-Party Account – PlayStation Network” requirement back in December. PlayStation LifeStyle can confirm that at the time of this writing, the change appears in Lost Soul Aside’s changelog.
To be clear, Sony doesn’t classify games like Lost Soul Aside and Helldivers 2 as third-party titles since they’re fully funded and published by PlayStation. Sony picked up Ultizero’s game as part of PlayStation China Hero program nearly a decade ago, and it’s a PS5 console exclusive.
With the above in mind, there are two things to note here: 1. This change signals that Sony is prepared to make exceptions in some cases. 2. Seeing Black Myth: Wukong‘s unprecedented success in its homeland China and beyond, which also helped push up PS5 hardware and software sales, Sony possibly doesn’t want to limit Lost Soul Aside’s reach.
Games that require PSN aren’t available for purchase in countries where the network isn’t officially supported. Dropping PSN requirement ensures that Lost Soul Aside is available worldwide.
The post Sony Drops PSN Requirement on PC for Upcoming Game – Report appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.
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Dragon Age Voice Actor Arrested After Threatening Ex With 'Revenge Porn'
Jonathon Rees, better known by his stage name, Greg Ellis, was the voice behind Dragon Age’s fan-favorite templar knight and romanceable NPC companion, Cullen Rutherford. He was arrested last week on multiple charges of coercion, unlawful surveillance, and harassment stemming from a 2022 breakup after which he…
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Monday, 13 January 2025
PS5 Players Can Now Stream PS Store Shovelware, Apparently
PS5 cloud streaming support is now being extended to shovelware, if PS Store’s own tags are anything to go by. Sony’s online storefront has been a mess for quite some time — from licensing issues to being clogged with asset-flip shovelware and incorrectly tagging games — but this one surprised even us, despite having written about these issues at length.
PS5 cloud streaming is exclusive to PS Plus Premium members
While browsing through the PS Store via the PS App, I noticed a bunch of new demo recommendations for me, one of which was … wait for it … The Jumping Ice Cube. It’s a $0.99/£0.79 game that rewards players with a Platinum trophy within a few minutes. Not really a game that needs a “demo,” but I digress.
The Jumping Ice Cube’s PS5 page proudly displays the message “PS5 game streaming supported only with Premium subscription.” I thought this was a mistake, so I checked the game’s store pages via the web browser for the U.S. and U.K. regions, and found that they both supported the PS5 streaming label.
Impressive that The Jumping Ice Cube received streaming support prior to some major games!
On a serious note, we sincerely hope that this is a mistake that’ll be rectified soon. We’re sure PS Plus Premium subscribers won’t be ecstatic to see shovelware beginning to clog their PS Store cloud game listings. These asset-flip games have already made browsing PS Store sales difficult enough. The last thing we need is for the problem to get worse.
The post PS5 Players Can Now Stream PS Store Shovelware, Apparently appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.
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