Exclusivity Is the Achilles' Heel of Huge Blockbusters, Says Former PlayStation Exec | Push Square

Swen Vincke, director of Baldur's Gate 3 and founder of developer Larian Studios, used the opportunity afforded by winning big at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) to blame the industry's current state on rampant corporate greed, a sentiment we can get behind. Plenty of developers made their voices heard at the Independent Games Festival Awards and Games Developers Choice Awards (held as part of GDC). Still, Vincke directed his ire at a specific part of the industry: publishers, those companies that proliferate games and allow them to reach a wider audience, for a price.

Rise of the Ronin, the latest tentpole PS5 console exclusive from legendary Japanese developer Team Ninja, has been subject to a colossal marketing push in Asia, where posters and billboards have been spotted around cities such as Taipei for several weeks now. That’s all culminated in an Edo period art exhibition in Huashan 1914 Creative Park – coincidentally, the former home of a Japanese sake manufacturer– where Sony has installed several 19th-century props inspired by the game.

The Explore page on the PS5 home screen appears to be running a beta that adds new features like backgrounds, friend activities, your controller's battery life, and easy links to console storage. Mystic, a popular PlayStation YouTuber, posted a new video today detailing the additions, which appear to have only rolled out to select PS5 users. You can see what's new in the video above.

With more than 61 million copies sold, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the best-selling titles of all time, but good luck getting it to run on your PS5 any better than the resolution and frame rate designed for its original PS4 edition. For years now, fans have been begging Rockstar to give the open worlder an update to make it run a bit better on Sony's current console — as it does on Xbox Series X — and as an unexpected patch actually does arrive 18 months after the last one, of course there's no sign of current-gen support.

The days of developers pushing for native resolutions feel like they’re coming to an end. The reality is that it’s a waste of resources, especially as upscalers like DLSS (or Deep Learning Super Sampling, to give it its full name) get better and better. It’s no surprise Sony is exploring similar technology with PS5 Pro, and it looks like this is all part of a long-term plan which will eventually expand to PS6 as well.

Studio Media Molecule has been winding down its live development and support for Dreams for a while now, as it shifts towards work on its next big game. The next step in this process is the stoppage of the game's live curation, which has been manually handled by a dedicated team since the game's launch.

Since the breakout success of Genshin Impact a few years ago, Sony has slowly been encouraging developers to bring their hit gacha games to PS5, which has resulted in the amusing moniker GachaStation 5. But with Zenless Zone Zero and Wuthering Waves right around the corner, the platform holder may have discovered another gem, likely to explode in Asian territories.

MLB The Show 24 is the latest baseball simulation by PlayStation Studios developer San Diego Studio, inspired and influenced by the 2024 season of Major League Baseball, which will run from 20th March, 2024 through 29th September, 2024. The game is available on the PS5 and PS4, in addition to the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Sony is reportedly undertaking an internal investigation to determine how exactly the specs for Trinity, the codename by which the colloquially-named PS5 Pro is internally known, leaked so entirely over the weekend. The incident occurred during a third-party developer rollout, and while we may never learn the culprit's identity, there will undoubtedly be additional security ramifications for other third-party devs moving forward.

PlayStation Studios has churned out some fairly immaculate AAA bangers over the years, and now the firm is applying the screws to fans, asking them to pick their favourites. In a tournament-style Twitter poll designed to crown «which PlayStation game reigns supreme», Sony has infuriated long-suffering FromSoftware fans by not including the cult classic Bloodborne amongst the contenders, the latest in a long line of indignities the fanbase has endured.

Sony knows it’s onto a good thing with the PS Store, as with each passing week it continues to add dozens of new titles, all of which are ripe for future reductions and price promotions. That means we’re seeing bigger and bigger sales every month, and time-limited Weekend Offers are becoming a thing on top of regularly scheduled sale events.

According to all rumours and reports, Sony is working on its own reconstruction technology similar to DLSS, or Deep Learning Super Sampling. The feature, named PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution according to Insider Gaming, seems like a long-term play by the platform holder, with the first iteration planned for the PS5 Pro.