The PS5 stock shortage isn’t showing any signs of subsiding but luckily for grandparents around the world, there’s this fake PS5 – or GameStation 5 – that they can purchase for Christmas. Not only is it affordable at $25 (or $15-20, depending on where you look), it also comes with 200 games so you don’t have to spend a penny on those $70 AAAs.
Let’s watch the fake PS5 in action
The GameStation 5 has been around for a while so it’s nothing new but it caught my attention when I saw an actual video showcasing the console and its games. There are plenty of unboxing videos but none that show the true power of this thing quite like YouTuber Spawn Wave.
I actually became curious and started digging around to see where I can find this GameStation 5 and AliExpress delivered, as always. The package comes complete with a stand like the actual PS5 and knock off DualShock 3s. It’s an 8-bit console so you don’t need any fancy screens, but unfortunately, no game saves. If you die, you die.
The product description I found states that GameStation 5 supports NTSC so it’s a step ahead of PS Plus Premium classics in most regions that are stuck with poorly performing PAL games. Rest assured, GameStation 5 will not be a stutter fest.
Jokes aside, it’s crazy to think that these consoles have enough demand for them to be produced nearly every generation with the same old games. At this point, they’ve got to be more profitable than the PlayStation Classic, which bombed critically and commercially, and ended up going from $100 to a whopping $20 brand-new at retail.
PS Plus Essential July 2022 games lineup has leaked. We’re confident about this one because it comes from the same Dealabs user, billbil kun, who has been accurately leaking the service’s monthly lineup for eons now. It looks like the most basic tier of the revamped service is due to receive Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan, and Arcadegeddon.
When will PS Plus Essential July 2022 games go live?
As a reminder, the Essential tier is PS Plus as we knew it before. You’ll get Cloud saves, some basic membership bonuses like discounts, and monthly games. We’re assuming that Essential will follow the same format as before, which means that the aforementioned games will go live on the first Tuesday of the month. That falls on July 5th.
Man of Medan is also part of PS Plus Extra lineup but the other two games aren’t. Nevertheless, the difference between PS Plus Essential and Extra/Premium is that the former allows you to keep the games forever and play whenever you want provided you are an active member. Games in the Extra/Premium tiers aren’t yours to keep. So you shouldn’t really be worried about Essential offering games that have appeared in Extra/Premium. There will inevitably be some dupes considering the sheer amount of games offered in Extra/Premium and the fact that there will be plenty of users who are only subscribed to Essential, so we have to be a bit reasonable with our expectations here.
As previously mentioned, given billbil kun’s track record, we are fairly confident that this leak is accurate. As usual, we’ll update our readers when the lineup is officially confirmed this week.
Good news! Final Fantasy 16 setting and accents will match, ensuring that players don’t complain about immersion, or lack thereof, when they hear American accents while running around in fantasy medieval Europe. Square Enix’s Naoki Yoshida has confirmed that the upcoming game will only feature British accents.
“Medieval fantasy = Europe,” says Yoshida
Speaking to Dengeki Online (translation via Twitter user aitaikimochi), Yoshida said that he wanted to avoid getting complaints from American players who will inevitably question why they’re hearing similar accents if the game is set in fantasy Europe. Square Enix went the extra mile to ensure that every accent was British.
I think what we equate as ‘Medieval fantasy = Europe’ would probably be best represented by The Lord of the Rings. We made sure not to include any American accents. We decided to do this to prevent Americans from playing the game and getting mad by saying something like, ‘I was looking forward to playing a game set in fantasy medieval Europe, but why are they speaking American English!?’ To prevent this, we made sure all the dialogue was recorded using British English.
Yoshida added that Final Fantasy 16 will be the first PS5-only game that tells a full-fledged story set within fantasy medieval Europe. So, you know, the pressure is on to set an example…
Yoshi-P is very aware of specifically Americans +their complaints on English voice acting lol.
For FF16, they made sure NOT to include any American accents to prevent Americans from getting upset thinking “if it’s in fantasy Medieval Europe, why do they speak American English!?” pic.twitter.com/UrFdtN0tzA
The skies overhead could soon be filled with constellations of commercial space stations occupying low earth orbit while human colonists settle the Moon with an eye on Mars, if today's robber barons have their way. But this won't result in the same freewheeling Wild West that we saw in the 19th century, unfortunately, as tomorrow's interplanetary settlers will be bringing their lawyers with them.
In their new book, The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration, renowned astrophysicist and science editor, Donald Goldsmith, and Martin Rees, the UK's Astronomer Royal, argue in favor of sending robotic scouts — with their lack of weighty necessities like life support systems — out into the void ahead of human explorers. But what happens after these synthetic astronauts discover an exploitable resource or some rich dork declares himself Emperor of Mars? In the excerpt below, Goldsmith and Rees discuss the challenges facing our emerging exoplanetary legal system.
Almost all legal systems have grown organically, the result of long experience that comes from changes in the political, cultural, environmental, and other circumstances of a society. The first sprouts of space law deserve attention from those who may participate in the myriad activities envisioned for the coming decades, as well, perhaps, from those who care to imagine how a Justinian law code could arise in the realm of space.
Those who travel on spacecraft, and to some degree those who will live on another celestial object, occupy situations analogous to those aboard naval vessels, whose laws over precedents to deal with crimes or extreme antisocial behavior. These laws typically assign to a single officer or group of officers the power to judge and to inflict punishment, possibly awaiting review in the event of a return to a higher court. This model seems likely to reappear in the first long-distance journeys within the solar system and in the first settlements on other celestial objects, before the usual structure of court systems for larger societies appears on the scene.
As on Earth, however, most law is civil law, not criminal law. A far greater challenge than dealing with criminal acts lies in formulating an appropriate code of civil law that will apply to disputes, whether national or international, arising from spaceborne activities by nations, corporations, or individuals. For half a century, a small cadre of interested parties have developed the new specialty of “space law,” some of which already has the potential for immediate application. What happens if a piece of space debris launched by a particular country or corporation falls onto an unsuspecting group of people or onto their property? What happens if astronauts from different countries lay claim to parts of the moon or an asteroid? And most important in its potential importance, if not in its likelihood: who will speak for Earth if we should receive a message from another civilization?
Conferences on subjects such as these have generated more interest than answers. Human exploration of the moon brought related topics to more widespread attention and argument. During the 1980s, the United Nations seemed the natural arena in which to hash them out, and those discussions eventually produced the outcomes described in this chapter. Today, one suspects, almost no one knows the documents that the United Nations produced, let alone has plans to support countries that obey the guidelines in those documents.
Our hopes for achieving a rational means to define and limit activities beyond our home planet will require more extensive agreements, plus a means of enforcing them. Non-lawyers who read existing and proposed agreements about the use of space should remain aware that lawyers typically define words relating to specialized situations as “terms of art,” giving them meanings other than those that a plain reading would suggest.
For example, the word “recovery” in normal discourse refers to regaining the value of something that has been lost, such as the lost wages that arise from an injury. In more specialized usage, “resource recovery” refers to the act of recycling material that would otherwise go to waste. In the vocabulary of mining operations, however, “recovery” has nothing to do with losing what was once possessed; instead, it refers to the extraction of ore from the ground or the seabed. The word’s gentle nature contrasts with the more accurate term “exploitation,” which often implies disapproval, though in legal matters it often carries only a neutral meaning. For example, in 1982 the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea established an International Seabed Authority (ISA) to set rules for the large portion of the seabed that lies beyond the jurisdiction of any nation. By now, 168 countries have signed on to the convention, but the United States has not. According to the ISA’s website, its Mining Code “refers to the whole of the comprehensive set of rules, regulations and procedures issued by ISA to regulate prospecting, exploration and exploitation of marine minerals in the international seabed Area.” In mining circles, no one blinks at plans to exploit a particular location by extracting its mineral resources. Discussions of space law, however, tend to avoid the term “exploitation” in favor of “recovery.”
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/KvslmRp
Former PlayStation executive and Sony Computer Entertainment America’s founding member Bernie Stolar has passed away aged 75. News of Stolar’s demise was first reported by VentureBeat and confirmed by his friends. Stolar was also known for his tenure as president of Sega of America after he left Sony.
Stolar had an eventful career as a PlayStation executive
Stolar was no stranger to the video games industry when he was tapped by Sony but it was as a PlayStation executive that he signed a number of major franchises that are loved even today. These include Crash Bandicoot, Ridge Racer, Oddworld Inhabitants, and Spyro The Dragon. Back in 2015, he told VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi that he loved working for Sony but left out of fear of getting fired. At the time of his departure, PlayStation underwent major restructuring that saw a lot of executives ousted. Stolar wasn’t fired but when he got an offer at Sega, he felt that it was the right time to jump ship.
I loved working for Sony, I really did. But when the opportunity came up to go to Sega and help rebuild the business and come up with new hardware, I was very interested in doing it. I wouldn’t have left Sony if I hadn’t also lived in fear of getting fired along with everyone else, though.
At Sega, Stolar was behind the development and launch of Dreamcast, and he later became instrumental in acquiring Visual Concepts to create 2K Sports. Unfortunately, by the end of 1999, Stolar was pushed out alongside another executive, leading to him joining Mattel.
“I love this business,” Stolar said of the games industry. “I love it because I get to work with people who are young and passionate. I’m one of the old gray-haired guys in the industry, but it’s wonderful to work with all this young talent.”
Players in some countries have spotted a promotional image suggesting that Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart PS Plus entry is on its way. The screenshot that’s being circulated on Reddit and Twitter doesn’t make it clear if players are getting the full game or just a timed trial but I’m personally assuming the latter considering that it appeared for PS Plus Premium users.
Rift Apart PS Plus – timed trial or full game?
The image in question can be found above (click to enlarge) and it shows that the player is a PS Plus Premium user. Considering PS Plus Extra users haven’t spotted this one yet and timed trials are specifically a PS Plus Premium feature, some fans have decided to keep their expectations in check and have assumed that we’re looking at an upcoming timed trial. But never say never.
If Rift Apart happens to become part of Extra/Premium then it would be a great addition to the lineup. Between this, the upcoming Stray, and games like Returnal, PS Plus is offering a ton of value in a single month. That said, if Rift Apart happens to be a timed trial (bummer if so), it’ll join the likes of Horizon Forbidden West and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection.
Here are all the timed trials available thus far:
Biomutant
Crusader Kings 3
Cyberpunk 2077
ELEX 2
Farming Simulator 22
Horizon Forbidden West
Hot Wheels Unleashed
Lego City Undercover
MotoGP 22
Olli Olli World
Spellforce 3: Reforced
The Cruel King and The Great Hero
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection
WWE 2K22
We’ll update our readers when we have more information. For now, take everything with a grain of salt.
Apple will reportedly not challenge the recent vote by employees at its Towson Town Center retail location in Maryland to unionize. Citing a “person familiar with the company’s plans,” Reuters reports the tech giant will participate in the bargaining process “in good faith.” Apple declined to comment on the report.
On June 19th, workers at the Towson Town Center Apple Store voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining of International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Of the approximately 110 employees who were eligible to participate in the election, 65 voted yes. Towson Town Center was the first Apple retail location in the US to vote on unionization after organizers at a store in Georgia called off an election over intimidation claims.
If the reporting from Reuters is accurate and Apple does not plan to challenge the Towson vote, the company’s approach would put it at odds with much of corporate America. Amazon, for instance, quickly came out against the historic vote at its JFK8 facility in Staten Island, saying it would appeal the result over allegations the Amazon Labor Union had intimidated workers and committed “electioneering.” Even if their appeals are ultimately thrown out, companies will typically challenge union votes as a way to delay the bargaining process and pour water on other organizing efforts.
from Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/9L8Q1tn
