Everything from State of Play January 2024

It’s Pokémon Day, the annual celebration of everything Pokémon that’s timed to the original launch of Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green in Japan on Feb. 27, 1996. The Pokémon Company started celebrating the 1996 release date officially in 2016 and has hosted events every year since, making Feb. 27 one of the more important days on the Pokémon fan calendar. Typically, we get a Pokémon Presents broadcast on Pokémon Day, and this year is no different: Pokémon Presents debuted at 9 a.m. EST and showed off a whole new era of Pokémon.

Happy Pokémon Day 2024! This year's celebrations have been capped off with a relatively short Pokémon Presents livestream, showcasing what's in store for the franchise this year and beyond.

Sony is laying off around 900 employees in its PlayStation division, the company announced on Tuesday. The cuts will impact 8% of the division’s global workforce, as Sony becomes the latest company to announce major cuts in recent weeks and months. Sony also announced that it will be closing its London Studio in the U.K.

A new lawsuit sees many PlayStation players demanding cash payouts from Sony, and the company will now need to defend itself in court after the case was accepted. If the lawsuit is successful, these players could be owed up to £562 (approximately $711) depending on how much PlayStation content they've purchased since August 2016. A main reason for this is the pricing of modern gaming. In recent years, the price of games has increased significantly, with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X generation seeing the standard edition of AAA titles releasing at approximately $70, with companies citing far greater development budgets as the main reason.

The 20 best-selling video games for January 2024 have just been revealed, showing which titles have drawn in the most customers since the start of the year. 2023 was pretty eventful for the gaming industry, both in landmark events like Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard buyout finally being completed and the releases of some highly-anticipated titles. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Starfield are just a few of the chart-topping games released in the past year.

Microsoft first-party games Pentiment, Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush, and Sea of Thieves will soon be available on Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation platforms. Xbox confirmed on Wednesday that much like other popular multi-platform games like Minecraft, Call of Duty, Overwatch and Diablo, players will soon be able to access these exclusive games on their Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles. This move underscores a larger trend in the gaming industry towards greater accessibility and cross-platform interoperability. By adopting this strategy, the company hopes to encourage greater inclusivity and reach a wider range of gamers.

Nintendo has been relatively silent on what’s in store for 2024 — until today. The company’s first Direct of the year didn’t show off what the company was releasing first party; instead, we got a good look at what some of its partners are set to release. We’re getting a new Endless Ocean game, a remastered Epic Mickey, and we now know that Grounded and Pentiment will be the first Xbox titles to hit the Switch as a part of Microsoft’s new cross-platform strategy.

Intel has reportedly demanded further subsidies from the Biden administration under the CHIPS Act as the firm ramps up developments in setting facilities in the US.

So before everything kicks off in a few hours, let's run down what we're likely to see - and some of what we hope we'll see too. 

It’s time to see which PS5, PS4, PS VR2, PS VR, and free-to-play games topped the download charts last month. New release blockbusters and vintage fan favorites are included in January’s PS5 list with Tekken 8 and Grand Theft Auto V both breaking the top five. The PS VR2 list saw Beat Saber rock and roll to the top of the list with the most downloads in both US and EU regions.

Microsoft's gaming top brass are expected to lay out their plans to publish some Xbox games on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms via a business update released this week as a podcast.

Exodus, the upcoming action-adventure RPG from former BioWare veterans, is now also being worked on by a Halo and Call of Duty support studio.