Sony mulling Paramount buyout - reports

While Dragon’s Dogma 2 topped US software charts for March 2024 per Circana’s Matt Piscatella, Helldivers 2 wasn’t far behind. It ranked in second place and is still the best-selling premium title of the year to date. Furthermore, it’s the seventh best-selling title (in terms of lifetime dollar sales) published by Sony, despite only being on sale for two months.

Sony India has announced its ‘Summer Sale' offers on the newly launched PlayStation 5 Slim (PS5 Slim). The console was launched in India on April 5 at the same price point as the existing PS5 and it has already received a price drop. To entice new gamers and keep ahead in the console wars, both Sony and Microsoft announce special offers and bundles on their consoles periodically that include games, accessories, and more. With the latest Summer Sale, the Sony PS5 Slim has received a price drop.

Game Update 6 for MLB The Show 24 has just been released, bringing new content and several bug fixes to the baseball title. The most recent patches for the Major League Baseball game have not made any gameplay changes.

According to a recently published patent, Sony is working on a program that would record in-game and voice chat audio and then convert those sounds into haptic feedback vibrations to be felt on a controller. A number of recent patents from Sony have focused on enhancements to the PlayStation controller's haptic feedback capabilities, and this latest filing has once again showcased the company's efforts to expand the use of haptic features.

Sony’s multiplatform release strategy has accelerated rapidly in recent years, with the company now viewing PC as a much more prominent part of its larger strategy, especially where live service titles are concerned. Earlier this year, for instance, Helldivers 2 launched simultaneously for PS5 and PC, and it’s fair to say that the majority of game’s unexpected success has been thanks to PC audiences. Now, interestingly enough, it looks like Sony might be considering ways to bring even larger audiences into Arrowhead Game Studios’ acclaimed co-op shooter.

Sony has recently confirmed that LittleBigPlanet 3's servers will not be coming back online and will be shut down «indefinitely.» With the shutdown of these servers, thousands of player-created levels from LittleBigPlanet 3 are no longer accessible. This news comes after the shutdown of the servers in January 2024, which was initially stated to be a temporary closure.

It's a bad time to enjoy platformers built on community level creations, as LittleBigPlanet 3 servers have shut down just a week after support for Wii U servers and Super Mario Maker were killed. But while Nintendo fans got to say goodbye to their game, the death of LittleBigPlanet came as a sudden shock.

Sony might be looking to acquire fellow media juggernaut Paramount, and this could affect the Halo live-action TV series. Halo isn’t typically associated with Sony due to the former being a flagship property of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming brand and the latter being the parent company for Xbox’s primary rival PlayStation, so such a development would certainly be a twist. For the past two decades, Halo has been one of gaming’s most seminal FPS franchises, spawning not only six mainline entries but an assortment of spin-off games and tie-in media.

Building on an article published overnight, The Verge has another post that largely reiterates past reporting from Insider Gaming covering what Sony has planned for its PS5 Pro and the upgrades it will bring to current games. Reported first at the start of April but now confirmed through more sources, Sony is reportedly allowing developers to tag their titles as «PS5 Pro Enhanced» after applying one of a few different upgrades.

The immortal SEGA brawler Golden Axe is being resurrected as a comedic animated series, of all things. Ordered by Comedy Central and produced by CBS Studios in collaboration with Sony Pictures, the series will undoubtedly feature buxom men and women battling dragons and various beasts, and presumably, hilarity will ensue.

As if there was much doubting it at this point, the copyright claim of a YouTube video, which has resulted in its removal, points towards all of the PS5 Pro leaks being accurate. The video in question was posted by the channel Moore's Law Is Dead, and it had a hand in kickstarting the leaks that have since surrounded Sony's upgraded console. The copyright claim was, of course, filed by Sony Interactive Entertainment — and so it's easy to conclude that the information was bang on, at least to some extent.

News has been quiet on the acquisition front in recent days, at least when it comes to video game IP. However, according to a new report, Sony is currently in talks with a monied ally to acquire storied picture-house Paramount and all the cross-media potential such an addition would bring.