Commander Fury

Overwatch 2 is on the verge of releasing the biggest new way to play since Overwatch was first announced in 2014. Stadium is the new best-of-7 mode where you’ll upgrade your Hero over multiple rounds with more powerful abilities to transform what it means to play Overwatch. On a team of five, you’ll earn Stadium Cash each round based on how well you do through eliminations, healing, damage mitigation, and more, using that Cash to buy Items between rounds that will improve things like survivability or damage done. You’ll also be able to select all-new abilities, like Moira having three-orbs or Reinhardt converting his shield into a healing barrier. It’ll take strategy and adaptation to excel when Stadium launches on April 22. To talk about how Stadium’s unique new abilities and Hero builds came together, we talked with Senior Game Designer, Dylan Snyder! How did your team approach building Stadium compared to the core version of Overwatch 2? Snyder: Stadium is the Overwatch team trying to push player fantasy, play expression, and strategic gameplay to their limits within the core Overwatch that you know and love. We have long wanted to have a test ground for some bigger-than-reality ideas for these heroes. But the core gameplay of Overwatch 2 really focuses on competitive integrity, so we approach Stadium as kind of a place to go nuts to let loose a little bit and that’s Stadium. What are the different types of upgrades players can make to their Heroes? Snyder: A huge component of Stadium is the Armory; it’s where you start every match, and it’s where you return when in your spawn room between rounds. We wanted an easy to read yet fun way to spend Stadium Cash on your Heroes. In the Armory, you can buy Items that offer a range from simple Stat boosts to your damage or healing output, to ones that punch up specific abilities. Then there are Powers that are unlocked before rounds 1, 3, 5, and 7, and they are incredibly cool ways to play with really strong new abilities. You want to shoot Ana’s Nano Boost ultimate at your teammates through walls? Because with the right Items and Powers, you can shoot Ana’s Nano Boost ultimate at your teammates through walls.   What are some of the popular Builds and abilities on the dev team? Snyder: There are so many. One of the really fun things we’ve seen in playtests has been the huge number of ways people find to play their favorite Heroes. A few people on the team have latched onto a really fun Double Helix build for Soldier: 76, which can be devastating against opponents that haven’t focused much on upgrading their survivability. But one of my personal favorite builds is focused on Ana’s Nano Boost; you can boost your entire team through walls. This has proven clutch for me personally in matches where I am killed while in overtime but still able to support my team before getting fully back to the fight. Are there any builds or abilities that surprised you? Snyder: A build that I’ve come to love that I didn’t ever expect to is for Junker Queen. I am not a Junker Queen main and have probably played her the least of any Hero live, but for whatever reason, she is my favorite Tank to play in Stadium. Specifically, because I can swing the axe so much more often, and I can turn it into a leaping strike. Nothing feels better than surprising a Juno or Mercy mid-air by hopping up to meet them with a Carnage swing; it never gets old. And you can spec into everything causing wounds, keeping you alive! It’s wonderful. It’s like the version of Junker Queen that was made for me, who is terrible at staying alive in fights. And that’s all I ever wanted, to not die in embarrassing fashion in front of lots of people, but I didn’t know until Stadium. What are some starting tips for players? Snyder: Use the suggested Example builds! And have fun testing things out in the Practice Range. Knowing what your Hero can do will make countering the other team, and building synergy with your teammates, that much easier. Are there any abilities or Items that didn’t make into Stadium that you hope to add in the future? Snyder: Nothing I can go into detail just yet! In the course of developing Stadium, we have quite a backlog of really exciting and promising ideas that we just weren’t able to implement ahead of Season 16. We’re pretty focused on developing a strong, solid foundation to set ourselves up for future Seasons with more Heroes, modes, maps, and abilities, and we feel that we’re in a really good place. And so some conversations are happening about some of those earlier ideas that didn’t quite make it. That can add even more variety to the round to round experience that players have in Stadium. Stadium launches when Season 16 goes live, on April 22! With initial Heroes, more will be added every Season so stay tuned for more updates and details! Thank you. View the full article

Hello everyone! On behalf of The Game Kitchen, in collaboration with Dotemu, Koei Tecmo Games, and Team Ninja, we’re incredibly excited to reveal a brand-new addition to Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound: a second, fully original playable character from the Hayabusa Clan’s long-standing rivals: the legendary Black Spider Clan. In this post, we’d like to take you behind the scenes of how this idea came to life, what you can expect from this new character, and some gameplay details we’re especially thrilled to share. Play Video When we first began designing new characters for Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, one question sparked our imagination: Wouldn’t it be amazing to play as a member of an enemy faction? It’s something we always dream of in our favorite franchises, those rare moments when a game lets you get to step into the shoes of someone from the other side. The Black Spider Clan, a central presence in the 3D Ninja Gaiden installments, has always intrigued us with its fierce style and unforgettable characters. So we asked ourselves: Why not bring them back in a whole new way? That’s how the idea of Kumori was born. Verify your age to view this content. Verify your age to view this content. Verify your age to view this content. Verify your age to view this content. Kumori is a proud kunoichi of the Black Spider Clan and serves as a compelling counterpart to Kenji, the game’s other protagonist. While Kenji is still learning under the guidance of his master, Ryu Hayabusa, Kumori has already earned her place as the top fighter in her clan. Following a near-collapse of the Black Spider Clan, she carries the burden of rebuilding and protecting their future. Ruthless and pragmatic, Kumori fights without restraint and embraces modern weaponry, enemy techniques, and even demonic powers to fulfill her mission. She follows no traditional code, only the path that leads to victory. Unlike Kenji, who fights with a katana and focuses on close-range combat, Kumori wields kunai, granting her high range, rapid attack speed, and the ability to strike from nearly any position or surface. Her agility and adaptability make her an exceptional fighter, especially when engaging enemies in hard-to-reach areas or chaotic encounters. Verify your age to view this content. Verify your age to view this content. Despite their differences, Kenji and Kumori share common values: they are both driven by loyalty, honor, and a fierce sense of duty to their clans. Though they come from opposing sides, they represent a new generation of warriors shaped by legacy but not bound by the past. Their paths intertwine in a pivotal moment when they face a powerful demonic threat, trapping both in the demon world. Faced with annihilation, they make an unthinkable choice: to merge their strength, knowing full well their clans would never accept such an alliance. This unholy alliance is both a blessing and a curse: a necessary bond that will forever alter their destinies. Verify your age to view this content. Verify your age to view this content. As fused warriors, players gain access to the best of both characters, combining their weapons, abilities, and a new energy source: Ki. As players harvest Ki from enemies, Kumori’s spirit can summon powerful Spider Weapons, such as a Kama or a Chakram, capable of slicing through walls and enemies alike, unlocking new ranges, and delivering massive damage. Their combined rage also fuels devastating attacks. Every time an enemy is defeated with a Hypercharged attack, their fury grows. Once their rage reaches a peak, players can unleash a screen-clearing attack, a spectacular display of vengeance and power. True to the spirit of Ninja Gaiden, the gameplay remains fast, fluid, and relentless. All weapons and techniques are seamlessly integrated and there’s no need to stop to switch characters. Combat flows naturally, keeping the adrenaline high and the action nonstop. Equipping your characters also plays a crucial role. Players can collect Golden Scarabs to unlock new upgrades, talismans, and techniques. Kenji’s talismans focus on passive enhancements, such as boosting melee damage, improving defenses, or enhancing Hypercharge effects. Kumori, on the other hand, brings a unique twist with her Shadow Arts, unlocking new Spider Weapons and powerful Ragebound Arts tailored to different playstyles and tactical approaches. Verify your age to view this content. Verify your age to view this content. Since Kumori’s physical body remains trapped in the demon world, only her spirit travels with Kenji, but through Demonic Altars, she can temporarily return to her corporeal form. These moments allow her to interact with an alternate demonic dimension, revealing hidden paths invisible to human eyes. However, her time in this state is limited, forcing players to think fast, solve puzzling situations, and overcome intense challenges before time runs out. These segments offer thrilling platforming sequences, strategic combat scenarios, and unique exploration opportunities that are designed to add to the game’s rhythm and depth. We hope you’ve enjoyed this first look at Kumori. We can’t wait for you to experience both the path of the Hayabusa Ninja and the path of the Black Spider Ninja in this exciting new chapter of the Ninja Gaiden legacy. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound will be available for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 Summer 2025. View the full article

Welcome home, PlayStation 5 players! I’m excited to share some news about our cozy fantasy life-sim adventure, Palia. First and foremost, we’re bringing Palia’s enchanting world to the PS5 on May 13 – complete with all the bells and whistles that only Sony’s hardware can deliver. I have a lot to share with you, so let’s get right into it! Play Video Palia has more than 6 million players, which means that some of you are already familiar with our game. For those who aren’t, Palia is a stress-free refuge where you and your friends can unwind together and explore a gorgeous fantasy world at your own pace. It’s filled with crafting opportunities, customization options, and plenty of exploration to keep you busy for years to come. We know that self-expression is one of the cool things that makes us human, and we’ve extended that into our little corner of the virtual world. Every Palia resident can design and decorate their own home to perfectly suit their individual tastes. Want to live in a cozy cabin and bask in the glow of a crackling fireplace? Go for it! Or maybe you’re looking for something a little more stately. How about an upscale Tudor Revival-inspired mansion (la di dah!)? Or maybe all you need is a place to store your loot and you couldn’t give a rip about aesthetics. I’m not here to judge, you absolute monster (jk, hehe! We’re all about letting you put your unique stamp on the world – and in the lives of our cast of charming (and romanceable!) Villagers. The PlayStation 5 launch is timed around Palia’s most ambitious updates to date, the long-awaited Elderwood expansion. This drop provides all players a massive new location to explore, Elderwood. What a coincidence! This ancient overgrown forest is brimming with magical essence, some of which has been spreading in the shadows beneath its leafy canopy. You’ll be able to investigate the mysteries behind this stunning new Adventure Zone through an engaging line of story quests that will have you exploring the deepest cave to the tallest tree. During your adventures, you’ll face a variety of fierce(ish) new magical creatures… this is a cozy game after all! Don’t worry, though: You’ll be able to harness the power of the all-new Relic system, which grants buffs for your entire party. At Singularity 6, we’ve been fans of the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller from the moment we first held one. Our team has worked hard to fully integrate the DualSense’s one-of-a-kind suite of cool features in Palia, and we think you’ll love what we’ve been able to do with it. The Light Bar changes color based on what skill is currently in use, such as fishing, hunting, mining, and more. It also flashes gold when you make a Guild Store purchase or sale with in-game gold – ka-ching! Adaptive Triggers are tied to in-game skills, providing real-time feedback while hunting, choppin’ down trees, and performing other in-game skills. When you hook a shark on your fishing line (yes, we have sharks), you’ll definitely know! These features are all incorporated on PlayStation Portal, too, in case you want to tuck in and get really cozy. Palia was designed with online multiplayer and community in mind, and we fully support cross-play multiplayer across PlayStation 5, PC, and additional consoles. The Elderwood Expansion is a particularly exciting moment for our community because everyone will be experiencing it together for the first time on May 13. While this is the first time all you people have the chance to kick back and relax with Palia on PlayStation 5, we’ve been busy delivering monthly game updates and seasonal content to keep the game fresh since we first released it in late 2023. It truly is a great time to join our friendly and helpful community and carve out your own little cozy space in Palia’s charming world. View the full article

Welcome–or welcome back–to Days Gone, Bend Studio’s sprawling open-world adventure-survival epic. In this PlayStation 5 remaster launching April 25, you’ll once again be able to enjoy Deacon St. John’s journey across the gorgeous natural beauty of the Oregon wilderness–provided you can deal with the mind-boggling amount of mutant Freaker monstrosities that want to shred you into tiny little chunks. We reached out to Kevin McAllister, Creative and Product Lead at Bend Studio, for some additional details about the anticipated remaster, including its notable new additions. So grab your survival gear, gas up your bike, and read on to hear about how Days Gone is better than ever on the PlayStation 5. Play Video Back in the days We first asked how Bend Studio feels about revisiting their flagship game, “Days Gone is a special game for us,” says McAllister. “It’s a special game to our players, too. We got the opportunity to remaster a game that we released originally on the PS4 in 2019 and ported to the PC in 2021. Six years after the original, technology has improved–we have the power of the PS5 now. There was a lot more we could do to showcase the game’s potential.” We then asked about how the PlayStation 5’s capabilities are enhancing the Days Gone experience. “The graphical improvements we’ve made–you’ll see the difference,” McAllister explains. “There’s increased lighting, increased shadow quality ,increased fog depth. For example, night time is now darker; the moon is more natural-looking. The blue sky is more natural, too–Days Gone is a very realistic-looking game. And we’ve taken that to a new level with the PS5.” Sounds like a great fit for the remaster’s new-and-improved Photo Mode, with more lighting options and instant day-and-night switches for beautiful environmental photography. McAllister continues: “Gameplay-wise, right off the top of my head is increased horde sizes. That’s very specific to our new gameplay mode, Horde Assault. And these hordes, they get big. Like, how big? So, for example, the biggest horde in the story is the old sawmill horde, which is a mission that has 500 Freakers. In Horde Assault, we have hordes that range up to 800 Freakers. They cover the screen, that’s for sure.” Crowd control McAllister bringing up these huge hordes felt like the perfect time to ask him to dig deeper into the remaster’s new Horde Assault mode. “It’s our new survival arcade mode, a fresh, unique take on the core Days Gone gameplay loop. We took everything you had in the story mode, built upon that, and took the challenges that we released post-launch and evolved the concept. So, now you have these big open regions, you’re facing a bunch of hordes, and they’re coming from different angles on you. You’re seeing hordes at totally new locations than what you saw in the story, and the hordes at familiar locations are even bigger. Play Video “Horde Assault gives you all the tools at your disposal from the start. New players can jump in and play it right away, and they can experience the core, open world gameplay of Days Gone, but now you’re having the maxed out motorcycle with you, and some new weapons, too. There’s also human enemies alongside evolved Freakers like breakers, reachers, and screamers. It’s a lot more chaotic, but it’s the true Days Gone gameplay experience. It’s a really cool and fun mode, and I think fans are really going to enjoy it.” Another new mode coming to the remaster is a Speedrun mode. “Speedrun mode is separated from the other modes,” he explains. “When you go into speedrun mode, you can play it on any of the difficulties. There’s an always-on-screen timer that will pause during cinematics. Each time you go through, it records your time next to that difficulty. At the very end of your speed run, you get a special graphic showing your detailed stats to share.” We asked McAllister about the thought process behind this addition. “With Days Gone, there are players that have tried and done speed runs, but it wasn’t a big thing. So giving new players who may not have tried the game before a speed running mode–maybe that’s exactly what they wanted. Now they’re able to jump in, have fun, and use their expertise to finish the game as quickly as possible. I respect those players, because that’s something I can’t do, and it’s really impressive to see.” High-stakes survival Another major addition–and perhaps the most intimidating–is permadeath mode, which is exactly what it sounds like: If Deacon dies, the run’s over, no saving. Harsh, but also very fitting for Days Gone’s world. According to McAllister, the players are to thank for helping the team cook this up. “Permadeath mode was implemented because of community feedback. It’s actually something we wanted as far back as 2019, so this was the perfect opportunity to add it. We’ve seen players create videos doing things like trying to go through a whole run taking no damage at all, only using the very weak boot knife. Well, what’s the ultimate challenge? Deathless. So now, you’re really getting that true survival experience. I think players are going to dig it.” “You can play the mode on any difficulty, and there’s two settings to choose from. If you choose whole game, wherever you die in the story, you have to start from the very beginning–your save file gets deleted. If you choose per act, so say, if you die at the old saw mill horde again, you only return to that beginning of the act. That’s going to save you hours of gameplay in this mode. But for the players who do play the whole game: we salute you. We also think trees are going to be the biggest cause of death in this mode. I may be speaking from experience,” he laughs. Finally, what sort of advice does McAllister have for people who want to take on this challenge? “You must be more cautious this time around,” he points out. “Scavenge supplies every chance you get and be more methodical with your approach. When you’re going through an ambush camp, you want to make sure you’re prepared before you leave, because you can run into a horde or a bear. If you don’t have the ammo, the run’s over. Also, there’s an early point in the story where you have to make a decision on which camp to give a stash to. Choose Tucker’s camp–you have access to better weapons quicker, which makes a huge difference in the early game.” Days Gone Remastered will be available for PlayStation 5 on April 25. View the full article

Hello fellow precision platform junkies! I’m Juhana, the Creative Director of Bionic Bay – my most ambitious project yet. Bionic Bay is a precision-puzzle platformer set in an ancient bio-mechanical world, hand-crafted pixel by pixel to create a high-fidelity, atmospheric environment. Bionic Bay started as a chance meeting between me (Mureena) and Psychoflow studio, on a Reddit post showcasing their swap mechanic. We soon began to collaborate, merging their technical expertise with my experience in level design and art direction from previous titles such as Badland 1 and 2. Creating Bionic Bay: One pixel at a time The humble swap mechanic remains a central gameplay mechanic, but Bionic Bay has seen incredible growth since we started. We knew early on that the biggest hurdle would be to create environments which provided a challenge without becoming frustrating. In addition, this balanced challenge would be hosted within intricately detailed and hand-crafted pixel-art environments, taking significant time to create. We approached these development challenges with a simple two-part solution. Firstly, I would focus on level design and art, and Psychoflow would work on the technical solution to make sure our mechanics looked great and worked well. Perhaps more important, we agreed that we would all regularly jump in and play each level, experiencing it just as a player would. We have carried this on all the way to release, and this has helped us to ensure great balance, and that we understand the player journey through Bionic Bay. We all love a precision platformer, but we also wanted to make sure that Bionic Bay provides a unique and worthwhile experience, and that comes down to the game’s core mechanics. This began with the swap feature which first brought Mureena and Psychoflow together – allowing players to switch places with objects within each level. This was soon joined by more tools, with each undergoing regular playthrough testing: ChronoLag, our time dilation technology which allows players to slow down time for a short period. As well as allowing players to navigate through fast-moving areas, it’s also a great way of getting speed boosts to help you get faster times in our ghost data racing mode. Power Fist, providing the opportunity to launch objects across the environment. As well as clearing space in the solo story, used in conjunction with ChronoLag has led to some imaginative puzzle solving to speed up your journey Gravity Manipulation, allowing players to bend the very forces of reality. This can help to clear paths, or help find new paths. It’s important to be careful, however, as this new gravitational direction will also affect loose objects on the level which can lead to… unintended cessation of all life signs. Of course, players will be introduced to these mechanics as you progress through Bionic Bay’s ancient bio-mechanical world. Some you’ll be able to use together, and players will often need to combine these tools (as well as quick thinking and precise controls) in order to overcome the challenges you’ll face. As well as using these within our narrative single-player adventure, players can also find our dedicated online challenge mode with Bionic Bay Online. Bionic Bay Online allows players to compete for the fastest time on a course, racing against other players’ data ghosts – something which should speak to those of us racing on PlayStation in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. To compete in Bionic Bay Online, players will need to use all of the tools at your disposal, and find creative solutions to take the top spot on the leaderboard. We will also be adding special post-launch content for Bionic Bay, including dedicated time challenge levels to allow you to showcase your skills to the world. A legendary PlayStation collaboration We are ecstatic to announce that Bionic Bay also has a collaboration with one of our biggest fans – PlayStation legend Shuhei Yoshida. We’ll be implementing a special level just for Shu within the online challenge mode following Bionic Bay’s launch on April 17. If you take part and beat Shu’s score, you can even unlock our Shu skin, allowing you to customize the look of your scientist for our online leaderboards. As well as Shu’s own player skin, we’re also bringing you a Deluxe edition of Bionic Bay – with our Classic Monster skin pack. This includes eight costumes inspired by vintage horror (a personal favourite genre of mine), with an alien, a werewolf and more. The Classic Monster pack allows players to unleash a little frightful charm and really sink your fangs into the online leaderboards. The bio-mechanical world of Bionic Bay opens up on PlayStation 5 this Thursday – April 17, and is available to wishlist now! View the full article

The first episode of Don’t Nod’s narrative adventure, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, ended with a hell of a cliffhanger: a massive discovery of something unknown, possibly malevolent, and a devastating revelation about one of the story’s central figures. As the second episode, or tape, of this player-choice-driven, nostalgia-powered story aims to draw things to their conclusion when Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 2 launches April 15 day one into the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog, players have been left wondering what to expect. To dig deeper into the game’s ambitions and get some further insight on what to expect from Swann, Nora, Autumn, and Kat’s next escapade, we sat down for a chat with Michel Koch, Creative Director at Don’t Nod’s Montreal studio. You Oughta Know Koch was eager to tell us how this experience would differ from the first. “The first Tape, ‘Bloom’, is the nice and sunny part of the beginning of the summer, of you meeting and bonding with those girls. The second half is called ‘Rage’, which is mostly the aftermath of the cliffhanger at the end of Tape 1. We wanted Tape 1 to let the player find their own space within the group of friends, getting a feeling of a summer where you meet friends, but also giving hints of weird things. They’re finding the clearing. They’re finding the abyss. It’s a very natural story of four girls having a fun summer together before Swann moves away.” “But Tape 2 will focus more on this weirder part of the story. We know what happened at the end of the summer. We still don’t know why, but we know that they promise not to see each other again. We know about the weird box, we know about Kat, but we don’t know the consequences of this revelation. How do you continue to have a normal summer with your friends? And, of course, the continuation of what’s happening with those weird things they found in the forest. ​​ Those supernatural elements will be more important. Personally, I love trying to blend supernatural things and surrealism revolving around the story of our characters. You can create a darker, weirder mood while still focusing on the characters and then adding the characters. We create this vibe, and it will get stronger and play a huge part of the story’s resolution.” The pacing in this follow-up will be more brisk, as well. “Tape 2 definitely picks up the pace,” he continues. “We saw what happened with Kat and the end of the concert, and Tape 2 will start the next day with Swann having to face kind of the guilt, even if it’s not our fault, of putting friends in danger. We’ll advance through the month of August up to the end events. So yes, it’s faster paced, with higher stakes.” Koch also emphasized that players will see more of how their choices in tape one affect the overall narrative. “We had a lot of choices. Who you are talking to, who you are getting closest to, all those interpersonal relationships with the girls, and so on. What was the choice you made during the ritual? What did you do at the abyss? How did you react to Corey and Dylan in the times you were with them? Are you behaving in a more violent or unlawful way, or are you sometimes taking the route to be cautious? A lot of those will change the course of what’s happening in Tape 2.” Girls on Film One of the most interesting features of tape one was the camcorder, which protagonist Swann carries with her everywhere to chronicle her life in Velvet Cove, Michigan. Players could tape objects of interest as in-game collectibles or just film whatever and edit it together to make mini-movies. However, the camcorder becomes a crucial plot and gameplay element at several points. We asked Koch about the role the camcorder will play in Tape 2. “We are expanding it a bit. We wanted to give you a tool that’s Swann’s ‘weapon’ or ‘shield.’ She’s filming people, but she’s also hiding behind the camcorder. We wanted to make it fun in a way that’s engaging like it was to film things in the 90s. We wanted to use these mechanics to link a lot of other mechanics of the game. So, in Tape 2, there will be a few more exotic moments: unlocking a puzzle or finding a solution to a clue or something you have to do. There is a twist with the camcorder and your videos that I don’t want to spoil, that hopefully will resonate with players. It will be the way you film the game that will be important at a point story-wise, and hopefully, there will be a strong connection between those pictures and your own journey.” Will Tape 2 also include more puzzles than the handful seen in the first half? Koch says yes. “There are puzzles that I really like in Tape 2. One is more like a narrative puzzle that’s still a blend of interaction, moving around, and dialogue. I think it’s very interesting because it uses all our narrative design elements, dialog options, and your knowledge about the characters to unlock situations, not just by finding objects but also by really knowing someone and using your main tools of dialogue and the camcorder.” Tonight, Tonight What about the other half of the narrative, the friends reuniting in a bar again 27 years later? “That part will still take place mostly in the bar,” says Koch. “We still need to finish remembering the past. We need to open the box, which will be an important scene. We have four different main endings at the end of the present-day portion, with variations on those endings based on your choices. During those endings, we will get out of the bar. You might discover a bit more of how the town is today, 27 years later.” The bar, he explains, is what the game’s whole concept was built around originally. “Our pitch was a story where we were trying to convey the feeling of meeting again with old friends you haven’t seen for a long time, having a discussion with them, where you would be remembering your past and seeing if you can reconnect with them today. I thought of having a moment in a bar, in a restaurant, or a room where you start to connect again, and sometimes you reconnect perfectly. Sometimes, it’s iffy, and you don’t know if you can still be friends. That was the interesting part for me, the narrative aspect. Within these walls, you’re forced to talk. You’re facing each other, so you are obliged to remember the past.” We asked Koch if he had any closing comments for fans. “I would say to the players, thanks for playing Tape 1, and I hope that Tape 2 will fulfill their hope of where the game goes. I also hope that Tape 2 will surprise them where the game goes, and that they enjoy seeing how relationship choice and morality choices they made in tape one play out. What will happen in Tape 2 will surprise, but also hopefully satisfy them, and they will love the end of the journey. For new players, I hope that they will love the characters, interacting with those girls, and engaging with this story, with us, with the summer.” View the full article

What happened to the ghost colony on Tau Ceti IV and the infamous Marathon ship that started it all? Decades after the original Marathon trilogy, the Bungie development team is ready to dive back into the world of Tau Ceti IV in their upcoming team-based extraction shooter, Marathon. The game launches on PS5, Steam, and Xbox Series X|S on September 24. Today we’ll be covering some of the highlights from the live Marathon Gameplay Reveal Showcase. For all the details, you can watch the livestream here. Play Video A deadly competition In Marathon, players work together in crews of three to scavenge the remnants of the lost colony on Tau Ceti IV. In their search for the powerful weapons and equipment left behind, they’ll face AI security forces, otherworldly threats, and rival Runner teams competing for loot. Death is part of the journey—it’s a cutthroat world, and it’s not possible to survive every expedition. But every time you make it out alive, you get to keep everything you scavenged, which means you’ll grow in power and fill your vault across matches. You’re only ever one run away from your next big score. For your first look at gameplay, check out the Gameplay Reveal Trailer debuted in today’s livestream. Play Video Enjoy your new shell At the heart of Marathon are Runners. Runners are cybernetic mercenaries who’ve given up their human form for biosynthetic shells. They’ve sacrificed a piece of their humanity for a slice of immortality that allows their consciousness to be transferred upon death. In Marathon, you’ll choose from a roster of Runners with unique abilities, stats, and styles. While each Runner brings their own flare, they’re also a foundation for you to customize your playstyle. To do so, you’ll collect implants and other equipment during your runs that you can use to augment your Runner and dial them into how you want to play. “For example, Glitch is all about agility, movement, and going fast. You can lean into this style harder by stacking implants and upgrades that reduce heat build-up and allow you to keep running, jumping, and sliding longer before having to cool down,” says Kevin Yanes, Senior Design Lead. “There are also rare items that can really push the boundaries like Prestige Cores. Glitch has one that will upgrade her double jump to a triple jump, giving you a lot of maneuverability in the air.” Combined with Bungie’s best-in-class gunplay and a wide range of weapons to loot, you can flex your Runner into multiple different playstyles. Learn more about Runners (and more) in the new Gameplay Overview Trailer. Play Video Returning to Tau Ceti The original Marathon series released in the 1990s established a foundation for experiential storytelling that’s become a hallmark for Bungie games. “The interweaving of narratives, events, and characters in the original trilogy delivered a world of discovery, wonder, and misdirection,” says Narrative Leader Jonathan Goff. Players were challenged to engage with the stories they encountered on their own terms, either as passive observers or active investigators into computer terminal tidbits and other environmental clues. “We’re embracing this approach to expand and explore what’s known about the worlds of Marathon through a new lens—the eyes of Runners, who are stepping into the world of Tau Ceti IV and Marathon to uncover the secrets hidden in the wake of the original trilogy’s events,” says Goff. How and where Marathon overlaps, and sometimes clashes, with the original games is a story that’ll unfold over time. And just like those classic games, the truths, lies, and consequences of Tau Ceti’s mysteries will be placed in the hands of players to own, consider, and debate. “At the end of the day, our goal with Marathon is not to tell a story, but to build worlds in which stories can and will unfold,” says Goff. Experience the world of Tau Ceti for yourself in the cinematic short debuted as a final surprise in today’s showcase. Written and directed by the award-winning Alberto Mielgo, director of the “The Witness” and “Jibaro” in Love, Death & Robots. Play Video Shape the future of Marathon Bungie has been working with players and creators since early in Marathon’s development—the earliest Bungie has ever invited players into a game. Even before entering production, players were testing early prototypes and providing feedback that shaped the next builds. Hearing player’s thoughts early and often has made Marathon better in ways big and small. “When we first started playtesting, maps acted more like a persistent world,” says Game Director Joe Ziegler. “So you could drop in and out of the same map server instance multiple times. But we heard this made matches feel unfair and unpredictable, like someone could just be camping spawns forever, or the loot you were going for could’ve already been taken.” “After hearing this feedback, we moved to the design we have today, where each match is a fresh start for everyone. This consistent starting point means you and your teammates can better strategize before each run, and then you can race enemy teams to fight for the loot you’re looking for,” says Ziegler. With Marathon now revealed, it’s time to expand playtests so Bungie can continue development alongside players’ feedback. “We’re beyond excited to invite more players into Marathon and to hear what they think,” says Ziegler. “Plus we have so much more to share in the weeks and months ahead. The journey is really just getting started.” You can sign up for your chance to play in this month’s Closed Alpha Test by joining the community Discord. Marathon launches September 24 on PS5, Steam, and Xbox Series X|S. View the full article

This weekend Bungie revealed Marathon’s sci-fi-fueled gameplay to the world. The studio, celebrated for its sublime first-person gunplay and ever-expanding gameplay, is venturing into the extraction-shooter genre when the game launches on September 24. The Marathon premise is simple and enticing: load up your Runner with valuable gear, compete with other players to secure more loot, and risk it all trying to extract with all the goods. I had the opportunity to catch up with Marathon Game Director Joe Ziegler hot off the heels of this reveal, diving deeper into the details around Bungie’s next game. We cover lots of ground, including Bungie’s approach to a new genre, tapping into the power of PS5, the game’s bold art style, and more. Play Video Tim Turi: Congratulations on the big gameplay reveal! How are you and the team feeling following the event? Joe Ziegler: It’s pretty exciting. The term I’ve been using a lot is “nerve-cited.” It’s a labor of love we’ve been working on for a few years now, and that definitely comes with the passion that we’ve poured into it, iterating with our audiences, and this desire to produce something amazing to play and to see. Having it touch real players’ hands for the first time is thrilling, because we do this to excite and entertain them in amazing ways, but also nerve wracking. You know, you question a lot of decisions you made. You’re really hoping that all the things that you’ve thought of are really what players care about. And we feel like we’re there, but we’re really excited to see what players have to say. During the development of Marathon, were there specific moments or experiences that made the Bungie team realize it was onto something special? So many of them are these unpredictable moments. Moments where you thought one thing was going to happen, but another thing happened. In our game, you’re traveling to this mysterious world where danger could lurk around every corner. Sometimes you turn a corner and you’re face to face with the United Earth Space Council (UESC), these really brutal and dangerous opponents inside of our game. Or sometimes you’re just traversing across the map and bullets are whizzing by from another crew that has seen you. And some of those moments get extremely exciting, because you don’t think you’re going to make it out of it, and you turn the tables, or you just barely eke by, and you find your way out to the exfil. When you get out, you’re just shaking with an awesome intensity that you’re going to remember for a long time. What’s the backstory behind the name “Marathon?” In the original (1994) game, “Marathon” is the name of the colony ship sent out from Earth by the UESC. They sent it past the reaches of our solar system to establish the first colony on a system called Tau Ceti. And so the UESC Marathon is kind of a weird ship built into an asteroid-like moon, and then sent out to make the long journey. …if you were to make me guess, I’d assume that “Marathon” refers to the fact that it was a 500-year journey, and was an appropriate name for a very, very long commitment of travel. We’re using the Marathon name [for this new 2025 game] because of the legacy of the IP. We’re taking a lot of those familiar IP elements, the UESC Marathon ship as well, and bringing it to light in modern day. We’re reinterpreting a lot of things, but there are a lot of familiar elements as well, such as the ship and Tau Ceti, that I think fans from the past will really enjoy seeing. Bungie is famous for its pitch-perfect gunplay. How do you go about being true to that legacy while making Marathon’s FPS action feel like its own thing? A lot of it comes from the nature of the game and the types of decisions that you want players to be making and how you want them to make those decisions. This game is very much about survival. And in survival-style games, a lot of the pressure is on you to manage resources, be adaptive, and be situationally aware. What we’re doing with our gunplay and our systems is we’re taking a lot of that familiar action base that players really enjoy, and we’re adding intense survival layers on top. For example, you don’t regenerate health automatically very quickly, but you have consumables that help you heal. Part of that is to create moments where you make decisions to either go into battle or fall back. You have to think about the resources that you’re carrying. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Do you have a message for any players curious about extraction shooters, but are a little nervous or intimidated by the risk/reward? I will definitely say that this game is challenging and intense, but it’s very rewarding. As you learn it you’ll feel yourself developing survival skills that you may not have experienced before, that begin to make you feel masterful. We have also designed this game to feel really natural on controllers as well. There are a lot of PC extraction shooters where mouse and keyboard are a little bit more common, and so in designing for that what we’re trying to do is get the interface and gameplay finickiness out so you can play it naturally. We want you to be able to focus on adapting and learning those survival skills to pull off memorable runs. Obviously players are risking their valuable loadouts in a given match. Can you tell us about any persistent progression elements? We want to make sure the players feel like they get something for their time spent in every match. Some of that is going to be experience-based. For example, leveling your runner level in any given season. Some of that will be related to upgrades provided by factions. As you gather materials or get currencies, you’ll be able to increase some of your overall character stats. So you might get a little bit more stamina, or you might be able to loot boxes a little bit faster. Some of it will also increase the options that you have to purchase from an in-game item store called the Black Market. You can use the currency you collect in game to purchase different weapons, implants, and upgrades based on what you unlock inside of that upgrade tree. So as you play the game you’ll see a lot of your options grow. What ways is Bungie taking advantage of PlayStation 5 technology for Marathon? We definitely have haptic support for [DualSense wireless controllers], which is pretty fun when you get into some of those gunfights and you feel feedback on your fingertips. We’re also supporting the Tempest 3D Audio engine, so you’re going to hear a lot of immersive audio. In addition, a lot of the rendering technology on the PS5, and especially on the PS5 Pro, is really awesome. So we’re planning some awesome usage of PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution), and some additional support in upscaling and resolution. So if you have a PS5 or PS5 Pro you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how we deliver on the console. Play Video Marathon’s art style is not quite like anything else out there right now. Can you walk us through what makes it so striking and unique? Our aesthetic is hugely inspired by graphic design and a lot of modern product design trappings. But I think what really sets us apart is whenever I look at a [Marathon] image, I go, “I think I understand it,” or “I think I don’t… but I really like it.” There’s something really enticing about visuals that look so bold and graphic like something you’d see in print but also pulled onto the screen and mixed with this technological sci-fi shaping. That, and also put against a very organic background and the contrast of all these things really pops. It’s a mixture that I don’t think we’ve seen a lot of before, and we’re really excited by it, because it creates all those visual contrasts and conflicts that go together to help the tone of the game, which is really about paranoia. It’s about intensity. It’s about not knowing the truth you know, seeking to find it, and constantly being wrapped into a rabbit hole of information. You don’t know what’s true or false. So all those things kind of come together really nicely through the art style as well. Is there anything else you’d like to make sure the PlayStation audience takes away from this big reveal? If you’re a person who really enjoys getting into survival experiences. If you’re a person who really enjoys testing your mettle with other players inside of that space trying to do the same. And if you’re a player who really, just wants to go on a thrilling ride that you never know the outcome of… I think this is going to be a game for you. Especially because we’ve focused so much on making this an experience that translates across platforms really well. I’m especially excited to see PlayStation players come in and experience the genre and our offering inside of it. We’ve poured a lot of passion and love into [Marathon], and we’ve played it a lot, and we played a lot for fun too. So we’re excited to have them join our community, show us what’s good, and show us how good they can be. Marathon launches September 24 on PS5, Steam, and Xbox Series X|S. View the full article

With a backdrop of a challenging economic environment, including high inflation and fluctuating exchange rates, SIE has made the tough decision to raise the recommended retail price (RRP) of the PlayStation 5 console in select markets in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Australia and New Zealand. The updated PS5 RRPs are effective starting April 14, as follows*: EuropePS5 Digital Edition – €499.99 (No pricing changes for the standard PS5 with Ultra HD Blu-ray disc drive) UKPS5 Digital Edition – £429.99 (No pricing changes for the standard PS5 with Ultra HD Blu-ray disc drive)  AustraliaStandard PS5 with Ultra HD Blu-ray disc drive – AUD $829.95 PS5 Digital Edition – AUD $749.95New Zealand Standard PS5 with Ultra HD Blu-ray disc drive – NZD $949.95 PS5 Digital Edition – NZD $859.95 PS5 Pro RRPs remain unchanged. Additionally, the Disc Drive for PS5 will be getting an RRP decrease effective starting April 14, as follows: Europe€79.99UK £69.99AustraliaAUD $124.95New Zealand NZD $139.95 * Select markets in EMEA not listed above may also receive RRP increases. Please check with your local retailer and direct.playstation.com where available. View the full article

This weekend Bungie revealed Marathon’s sci-fi-fueled gameplay to the world. The studio, celebrated for its sublime first-person gunplay and ever-expanding gameplay, is venturing into the extraction-shooter genre when the game launches on September 23. The Marathon premise is simple and enticing: load up your Runner with valuable gear, compete with other players to secure more loot, and risk it all trying to extract with all the goods. I had the opportunity to catch up with Marathon Game Director Joe Ziegler hot off the heels of this reveal, diving deeper into the details around Bungie’s next game. We cover lots of ground, including Bungie’s approach to a new genre, tapping into the power of PS5, the game’s bold art style, and more. Play Video Tim Turi: Congratulations on the big gameplay reveal! How are you and the team feeling following the event? Joe Ziegler: It’s pretty exciting. The term I’ve been using a lot is “nerve-cited.” It’s a labor of love we’ve been working on for a few years now, and that definitely comes with the passion that we’ve poured into it, iterating with our audiences, and this desire to produce something amazing to play and to see. Having it touch real players’ hands for the first time is thrilling, because we do this to excite and entertain them in amazing ways, but also nerve wracking. You know, you question a lot of decisions you made. You’re really hoping that all the things that you’ve thought of are really what players care about. And we feel like we’re there, but we’re really excited to see what players have to say. During the development of Marathon, were there specific moments or experiences that made the Bungie team realize it was onto something special? So many of them are these unpredictable moments. Moments where you thought one thing was going to happen, but another thing happened. In our game, you’re traveling to this mysterious world where danger could lurk around every corner. Sometimes you turn a corner and you’re face to face with the United Earth Space Council (UESC), these really brutal and dangerous opponents inside of our game. Or sometimes you’re just traversing across the map and bullets are whizzing by from another crew that has seen you. And some of those moments get extremely exciting, because you don’t think you’re going to make it out of it, and you turn the tables, or you just barely eke by, and you find your way out to the exfil. When you get out, you’re just shaking with an awesome intensity that you’re going to remember for a long time. What’s the backstory behind the name “Marathon?” In the original (1994) game, “Marathon” is the name of the colony ship sent out from Earth by the UESC. They sent it past the reaches of our solar system to establish the first colony on a system called Tau Ceti. And so the UESC Marathon is kind of a weird ship built into an asteroid-like moon, and then sent out to make the long journey. …if you were to make me guess, I’d assume that “Marathon” refers to the fact that it was a 500-year journey, and was an appropriate name for a very, very long commitment of travel. We’re using the Marathon name [for this new 2025 game] because of the legacy of the IP. We’re taking a lot of those familiar IP elements, the UESC Marathon ship as well, and bringing it to light in modern day. We’re reinterpreting a lot of things, but there are a lot of familiar elements as well, such as the ship and Tau Ceti, that I think fans from the past will really enjoy seeing. Bungie is famous for its pitch-perfect gunplay. How do you go about being true to that legacy while making Marathon’s FPS action feel like its own thing? A lot of it comes from the nature of the game and the types of decisions that you want players to be making and how you want them to make those decisions. This game is very much about survival. And in survival-style games, a lot of the pressure is on you to manage resources, be adaptive, and be situationally aware. What we’re doing with our gunplay and our systems is we’re taking a lot of that familiar action base that players really enjoy, and we’re adding intense survival layers on top. For example, you don’t regenerate health automatically very quickly, but you have consumables that help you heal. Part of that is to create moments where you make decisions to either go into battle or fall back. You have to think about the resources that you’re carrying. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Do you have a message for any players curious about extraction shooters, but are a little nervous or intimidated by the risk/reward? I will definitely say that this game is challenging and intense, but it’s very rewarding. As you learn it you’ll feel yourself developing survival skills that you may not have experienced before, that begin to make you feel masterful. We have also designed this game to feel really natural on controllers as well. There are a lot of PC extraction shooters where mouse and keyboard are a little bit more common, and so in designing for that what we’re trying to do is get the interface and gameplay finickiness out so you can play it naturally. We want you to be able to focus on adapting and learning those survival skills to pull off memorable runs. Obviously players are risking their valuable loadouts in a given match. Can you tell us about any persistent progression elements? We want to make sure the players feel like they get something for their time spent in every match. Some of that is going to be experience-based. For example, leveling your runner level in any given season. Some of that will be related to upgrades provided by factions. As you gather materials or get currencies, you’ll be able to increase some of your overall character stats. So you might get a little bit more stamina, or you might be able to loot boxes a little bit faster. Some of it will also increase the options that you have to purchase from an in-game item store called the Black Market. You can use the currency you collect in game to purchase different weapons, implants, and upgrades based on what you unlock inside of that upgrade tree. So as you play the game you’ll see a lot of your options grow. What ways is Bungie taking advantage of PlayStation 5 technology for Marathon? We definitely have haptic support for [DualSense wireless controllers], which is pretty fun when you get into some of those gunfights and you feel feedback on your fingertips. We’re also supporting the Tempest 3D Audio engine, so you’re going to hear a lot of immersive audio. In addition, a lot of the rendering technology on the PS5, and especially on the PS5 Pro, is really awesome. So we’re planning some awesome usage of PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution), and some additional support in upscaling and resolution. So if you have a PS5 or PS5 Pro you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how we deliver on the console. Play Video [EMBED Gameplay Reveal Trailer] Marathon’s art style is not quite like anything else out there right now. Can you walk us through what makes it so striking and unique? Our aesthetic is hugely inspired by graphic design and a lot of modern product design trappings. But I think what really sets us apart is whenever I look at a [Marathon] image, I go, “I think I understand it,” or “I think I don’t… but I really like it.” There’s something really enticing about visuals that look so bold and graphic like something you’d see in print but also pulled onto the screen and mixed with this technological sci-fi shaping. That, and also put against a very organic background and the contrast of all these things really pops. It’s a mixture that I don’t think we’ve seen a lot of before, and we’re really excited by it, because it creates all those visual contrasts and conflicts that go together to help the tone of the game, which is really about paranoia. It’s about intensity. It’s about not knowing the truth you know, seeking to find it, and constantly being wrapped into a rabbit hole of information. You don’t know what’s true or false. So all those things kind of come together really nicely through the art style as well. Is there anything else you’d like to make sure the PlayStation audience takes away from this big reveal? If you’re a person who really enjoys getting into survival experiences. If you’re a person who really enjoys testing your mettle with other players inside of that space trying to do the same. And if you’re a player who really, just wants to go on a thrilling ride that you never know the outcome of… I think this is going to be a game for you. Especially because we’ve focused so much on making this an experience that translates across platforms really well. I’m especially excited to see PlayStation players come in and experience the genre and our offering inside of it. We’ve poured a lot of passion and love into [Marathon], and we’ve played it a lot, and we played a lot for fun too. So we’re excited to have them join our community, show us what’s good, and show us how good they can be. Marathon launches September 23 on PS5, Steam, and Xbox Series X|S. View the full article

What happened to the ghost colony on Tau Ceti IV and the infamous Marathon ship that started it all? Decades after the original Marathon trilogy, the Bungie development team is ready to dive back into the world of Tau Ceti IV in their upcoming team-based extraction shooter, Marathon. The game launches on PS5, Steam, and Xbox Series X|S on September 23. Today we’ll be covering some of the highlights from the live Marathon Gameplay Reveal Showcase. For all the details, you can watch the livestream here. Play Video A deadly competition In Marathon, players work together in crews of three to scavenge the remnants of the lost colony on Tau Ceti IV. In their search for the powerful weapons and equipment left behind, they’ll face AI security forces, otherworldly threats, and rival Runner teams competing for loot. Death is part of the journey—it’s a cutthroat world, and it’s not possible to survive every expedition. But every time you make it out alive, you get to keep everything you scavenged, which means you’ll grow in power and fill your vault across matches. You’re only ever one run away from your next big score. For your first look at gameplay, check out the Gameplay Reveal Trailer debuted in today’s livestream. Play Video Enjoy your new shell At the heart of Marathon are Runners. Runners are cybernetic mercenaries who’ve given up their human form for biosynthetic shells. They’ve sacrificed a piece of their humanity for a slice of immortality that allows their consciousness to be transferred upon death. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image In Marathon, you’ll choose from a roster of Runners with unique abilities, stats, and styles. While each Runner brings their own flare, they’re also a foundation for you to customize your playstyle. To do so, you’ll collect implants and other equipment during your runs that you can use to augment your Runner and dial them into how you want to play. “For example, Glitch is all about agility, movement, and going fast. You can lean into this style harder by stacking implants and upgrades that reduce heat build-up and allow you to keep running, jumping, and sliding longer before having to cool down,” says Kevin Yanes, Senior Design Lead. “There are also rare items that can really push the boundaries like Prestige Cores. Glitch has one that will upgrade her double jump to a triple jump, giving you a lot of maneuverability in the air.” Combined with Bungie’s best-in-class gunplay and a wide range of weapons to loot, you can flex your Runner into multiple different playstyles. Learn more about Runners (and more) in the new Gameplay Overview Trailer. Play Video Returning to Tau Ceti The original Marathon series released in the 1990s established a foundation for experiential storytelling that’s become a hallmark for Bungie games. “The interweaving of narratives, events, and characters in the original trilogy delivered a world of discovery, wonder, and misdirection,” says Narrative Leader Jonathan Goff. Players were challenged to engage with the stories they encountered on their own terms, either as passive observers or active investigators into computer terminal tidbits and other environmental clues. “We’re embracing this approach to expand and explore what’s known about the worlds of Marathon through a new lens—the eyes of Runners, who are stepping into the world of Tau Ceti IV and Marathon to uncover the secrets hidden in the wake of the original trilogy’s events,” says Goff. How and where Marathon overlaps, and sometimes clashes, with the original games is a story that’ll unfold over time. And just like those classic games, the truths, lies, and consequences of Tau Ceti’s mysteries will be placed in the hands of players to own, consider, and debate. “At the end of the day, our goal with Marathon is not to tell a story, but to build worlds in which stories can and will unfold,” says Goff. Experience the world of Tau Ceti for yourself in the cinematic short debuted as a final surprise in today’s showcase. Written and directed by the award-winning Alberto Mielgo, director of the “The Witness” and “Jibaro” in Love, Death & Robots. Play Video Shape the future of Marathon Bungie has been working with players and creators since early in Marathon’s development—the earliest Bungie has ever invited players into a game. Even before entering production, players were testing early prototypes and providing feedback that shaped the next builds. Hearing player’s thoughts early and often has made Marathon better in ways big and small. “When we first started playtesting, maps acted more like a persistent world,” says Game Director Joe Ziegler. “So you could drop in and out of the same map server instance multiple times. But we heard this made matches feel unfair and unpredictable, like someone could just be camping spawns forever, or the loot you were going for could’ve already been taken.” “After hearing this feedback, we moved to the design we have today, where each match is a fresh start for everyone. This consistent starting point means you and your teammates can better strategize before each run, and then you can race enemy teams to fight for the loot you’re looking for,” says Ziegler. With Marathon now revealed, it’s time to expand playtests so Bungie can continue development alongside players’ feedback. “We’re beyond excited to invite more players into Marathon and to hear what they think,” says Ziegler. “Plus we have so much more to share in the weeks and months ahead. The journey is really just getting started.” You can sign up for your chance to play in this month’s Closed Alpha Test by joining the community Discord. Marathon launches September 23 on PS5, Steam, and Xbox Series X|S. View the full article

Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com! Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or download here Hey, everybody! Sid, Kristen, Tim, and I are back this week to discuss Days Gone Remastered and the new hit indie game Blue Prince. We also get Tim’s top five most-played PlayStation games and discover what new titles everyone has been checking out. Stuff We Talked About Next week’s release highlights: Darkest Dungeon II | PS5, PS4 Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn | PS5 EA Sports College Football 25 | PS5 Marathon — Gameplay Reveal Showcase on April 12 Blue Prince — Behind-the-scenes with the devs PlayStation Portal — Cloud Game Streaming Beta features Days Gone Remastered — New Horde Assault mode deep dive Bloom & Rage Lost Records — Creative Director interview all about Tape 2 The Last of Us Complete — Now available on PS5 Indiana Jones and the Great Circle — PS5 Pro features deep dive Assassin’s Creed Shadows — PS5 Pro features detailed by Bethesda PlayStation Plus Game Catalog April Extra and Premium Hogwarts Legacy | PS4, PS5 Blue Prince | PS5 Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 2 | PS5 EA Sports PGA Tour | PS5 Battlefield 1 | PS4 PlateUp! | PS4, PS5 Premium Alone in the Dark 2 | PS4, PS5 War of the Monsters | PS4, PS5 The Cast View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Sid Shuman – Senior Director of Content Communications, SIE View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Kristen Zitani – Senior Content Communications Specialist, SIE View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image O’Dell Harmon Jr. – Content Communications Specialist, SIE View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Tim Turi – Content Communications Manager, SIE Thanks to Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music. [Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.] View the full article

Last week, we asked you to climb to great heights and share images from above in the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights: call_me_xavii shares Aloy taking a hot air balloon ride in Horizon Forbidden West PattyGnand shares the four girls sitting on a lookout ledge in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage secondcapture shares Wander raising a sword atop the head of a colossus in Shadow of the Colossus deogovakin shares their ship zooming through space in No Man’s Sky wingsforsmiles shares Cal being flown over lava in Star Wars Jedi Survivor xenobitz shares the player dropping into Fortnite Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week? THEME: The Last of Us Complete SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on April 16, 2025 Next week, we’re joining Joel, Ellie, and Abby on their complete journey. Share epic moments from The Last of Us Complete using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. View the full article

Hello everyone! We just released Title Update 1.0.2 which added some key improvements to the PS5 Pro version of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, including the addition of PSSR support and the inclusion of ray traced reflections for Balanced mode. To celebrate, we wanted to give you deeper insight into the work done to bring this version – the best console version of Shadows – to life. Pushing our rendering vision As gamers, we are always excited to see new hardware. As developers, we are even more excited, and the PS5 Pro was no exception. As soon as we were briefed on the new capabilities of the console, we were excited to take advantage of it; the PS5 Pro allowed us to push our rendering vision to its full potential across all modes – Quality, Balanced and Performance. First, let’s recap the three core technological improvements. The PS5 Pro has three compared to a standard PS5: It has a faster GPU. It has new ray tracing capabilities (BVH8 support). It has PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution. Play Video Leveraging the improved GPU and ray tracing capabilities Early in the conception phase of AC Shadows, we decided to revolutionize our lighting pipeline by moving from a pre-baked global illumination1 system with limited in-game flexibility to a runtime, ray traced, one. There are several image quality benefits to this, and it allows for much more dynamism within the world, as lighting can always adapt to what happens in-game. Quality is also increased, and subtle, yet important, lighting details emerge when using ray traced global illumination (RTGI). While the PS5 allowed us to realistically target 30 and 40 FPS with its native ray tracing support, it did not entirely make it possible at 60 FPS given everything else happening on the GPU: simulations, geometry rasterization & shading, character deformation & hair rendering, etc. Play Video However, with the announcement of the PS5 Pro last year, we knew we had all the ingredients to build the ultimate console version of AC Shadows. By itself, the PS5 Pro’s faster GPU helps performance without much effort from developers, but the game changing technology is the improved ray tracing capabilities of the PS5 Pro that BVH82 (BVH stands for ‘bounding volume hierarchy’, more below) offered over BVH4. With our implementation of BVH8 support on PS5 Pro, we were able to speed up GPU tasks involving hardware ray tracing usage by about 300%. Those 2 critical upgrades, the faster GPU and support for BVH8 made it possible for us to realistically target a stable 60 FPS while showcasing our new generation ray traced lighting engine. What is global illumination? In game rendering, global illumination (GI) refers to a set of techniques used to simulate the way light interacts with surfaces in a 3D environment. Rather than just illuminating objects with direct light from a light source (like the sun or a lamp), GI accounts for indirect lighting, which is light that bounces off surfaces and contributes to the overall lighting of a scene. Think of the following scenario: If you place a red box close to a white wall in a well-lit room, the red color will “bleed” onto the nearby wall. What is a BVH ? A BVH, or bounding volume hierarchy, is an acceleration structure that is core to the use of hardware ray tracing in 3D graphics. Think of it as boxes within boxes. If you need to trace a ray, determining which big boxes intersect the ray first, then testing recursively is what makes ray tracing possible with performance matching the requirements of modern games. Typically, BVH have 4 big boxes (BVH4) meaning that each box can contain 4 other boxes. With BVH8, we have 8 boxes per box, which allows for faster traversal of the BVH when doing ray tracing GPU tasks as the tree is shallower, each node having twice as many children. Something unique to console players on PS5 Pro: ray traced reflections Ray traced global illumination at 60 FPS in an open world is a nice feat alone. However, Given AC Shadows’ delay, we had time to assess how we could push things further, and we became confident that we could implement ray traced reflections1 in time for launch. Play Video Using ray tracing reflections solves many issues encountered with classical techniques such as SSLR and cube maps. While some games on PS5 Pro had opted for a single 60 FPS mode, our approach was: if a choice between playing 30, 40 and 60 FPS was good for PS5 players, why not replicate that for PS5 Pro players, if meaningful improvements could be offered in each mode? With ray traced reflections, we believe that a significant uplift in photorealistic rendering is achieved. Again, this was possible because of the faster GPU as well as the 300% speed up in ray tracing capabilities that we were able to achieve by leveraging BVH8. At launch, we offered ray traced reflections only when playing in Quality mode, but we are happy to report that title update 1.0.2 brings ray traced reflections to the PS5 Pro Balanced mode, an improvement many of you have requested. Once again, Balanced mode offers a great compromise between quality & performance, for players with supporting TVs. Play Video In short, PS5 Pro brings: Ray traced global illumination in Performance Mode, (versus the pre-baked global illumination on the standard PS5.) Ray traced reflections in Quality and Balanced Mode (complimentary with the ray traced global illumination present on standard PS5.) What are reflections? Reflections refer to how the light reflects on surfaces that are shiny, metallic, etc. While reflections are mostly noticed on those types of surfaces, they affect most pixels on screen in a very subtle way that grounds the image. Usually, this is done using information on screen, with a technique called screen space local reflections (SSLR) or by using older techniques such as cube maps, which are pre-baked offline or dynamically rendered in-game with lots of latency and a lower resolution, because of memory & storage constraints. Ray traced reflection solves the main problem with SSLR, which is that it can’t reflect what is outside of the screen and has a much higher level of fidelity than cube maps. Supporting PSSR With all we’ve discussed so far, we’ve only covered two out of three key improvements that the PS5 Pro brings. What’s left is a piece of PS5 Pro technology called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, a.k.a. PSSR. First, let’s explain what PSSR is. PSSR is an AI-driven upscaler, meaning it takes an image rendered at lower resolution, say 1080p, and upscales it up to 2160p, approximating 3 out of 4 pixels in other words (upscaling isn’t anything new; we’ve been using a technique called Temporal Anti-Aliasing, or TAA (TAAU), for upscaling since Assassin’s Creed Origins.) The benefits of upscaling are great: lowering the render resolution results in higher framerate. The tradeoff is one of image clarity, and sometimes visual artefacts. TAA is an analytical technique, meaning that it is based on math & statistics, broadly speaking. Play Video Upscaling combined with dynamic resolution scaling (DRS), a technique where the render resolution changes depending on how well the GPU performed in the AI, allows us to maximize the visual fidelity of the game by lowering the pre-upscaled resolution in more demanding scenarios. Without DRS, we would need to calibrate our budgets for the worst scenario, even if those occur only in specific circumstances and once in the entire game. Therefore, a good DRS implementation paired with a great upscaler offers the best of both worlds: higher framerate and more visual fidelity. AI upscalers are typically trained with reference footage in the target resolution. Contrary to an analytical upscaler, they can work with lower pre-upscaling resolutions better, as their model encodes behaviors which are hard, if impossible, to reproduce analytically. With the delay in AC Shadows, we had valuable opportunities to explore early implementations of PSSR in other PS5 Pro enhanced titles, and to conduct our own in-depth analysis on AC Shadows. We found that PSSR provided a superior experience vs. TAA overall, and was definitely something that could benefit players. Recognizing this, we reached out to Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) for further collaboration. Sony worked closely with us, providing updated model parameters that were needed to perfect our implementation in the latest PS5 Pro firmware, which was just released. When compared to TAA, PSSR brings a more stable image with notably less shimmering artefacts, that brings up the image quality. Play Video With this firmware being out now, we’re happy to say that official PSSR support is now available in AC Shadows through our new title update, as both the improvements made at the system software level and our work in-engine will now seamlessly work together. Players that have already played the game on PS5 Pro will need to activate the option in the video tab of the options menu, but all new players will by default play with PSSR activated. As always, we’re committed to improving our implementation in upcoming title updates as this technology continues to evolve. Conclusion With ray traced global illumination in Performance mode (60 FPS), ray traced reflections coming to the Balanced mode (40 FPS mode) as well as Quality Mode (30 FPS) and PSSR now available in all modes, we’re very satisfied with our PS5 Pro version and believe it is the ultimate console experience for AC Shadows, one that rivals ultra-high-end PC gaming. We’ve fully leveraged all the 3 core technology pillars of the PS5 Pro, and combined, these really support our technological vision and have us really excited for the future! We hope you enjoyed this technical deep dive into the making of the PS5 Pro version of Assassin’s Creed. Thanks Nicolas Lopez, Technical Architect and Sebastien Daigneault, Project Lead Programmer – Rendering for helping contribute to this article.. View the full article

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to PlayStation 5 consoles next week! Set between “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Last Crusade”, Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is a first-person, single-player adventure that will take you all over the world, uncovering clues and solving an ancient mystery. Your journey will take you from the hallowed halls of the Vatican and the arid deserts of Egypt to the lush and sunken temples of Sukhothai and the frigid peaks of the Himalayas. Play Video Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set to launch on PlayStation 5 on April 17 (or up to 2 days early if you pre-order the Premium Edition), showcasing advanced features that leverage the console’s capabilities. “We’re so excited to bring Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to PlayStation players,” says Production Director John Jennings. “Each platform introduces something unique to the experience, and we’ve worked hard to ensure our use of the PlayStation 5’s suite of features directly benefits you and the game. We look forward to hearing your Indy stories!” DualSense controller features Indiana Jones and the Great Circle throws you right into the action with the DualSense controller’s immersion-enhancing features, including haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Whether you’re in combat, traversing through your environment with the help of your whip, or using tools like your camera and lighter, you’ll feel every action in the palms of your hands. Additionally, the lightbar is connected to game actions to give you visual feedback about Indy’s current status. For example, when you enter combat, the LED light around the touchpad will turn yellow, or pulse yellow if the NPCs are searching for you. If your health gets low, the light will pulse red until you heal up. Using a consumable to restore health like food or a bandage will turn the light green for a few seconds. Performance enhancements The game benefits from frictionless loading, selective installation that prioritizes your system language (other languages can be installed separately), and SSD optimization, ensuring a seamless experience with faster streaming and loading. The Great Circle also takes advantage of the PlayStation 5’s advanced CPU and GPU capabilities to achieve stable 60 FPS with high quality resolution. Visual and audio immersion Indiana Jones and the Great Circle makes extensive use of the PlayStation 5’s ray-tracing capabilities both on the base model and the PlayStation 5 Pro console. The global illumination system allows for greater detail and quality as well as more realistic and dynamic lighting throughout the world. Audio immersion is enhanced by 3D audio and HD rumble during cinematic scenes and gameplay, letting you feel like you’re right in the scene as Indy himself. Community Game Help Need a little help progressing in the game? Who better to lend a hand than your fellow players. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle supports Community Game Help, allowing you to access tips from other players on specific game sections. Activities have been set up for all objectives in the game (including sub-steps in each mission), so you’ll never feel like you’re alone on your adventure. Play Video PlayStation 5 Pro enhanced Make your journey around the world even more striking with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PlayStation 5 Pro. The optimized console performance on the PS5 Pro ensures you achieve higher and more consistent frame rates, making every moment of your adventure unforgettable. Experience next-level realism and image clarity with native 4K resolution and advanced ray tracing. “Playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at a native 4K resolution really is the best way to appreciate the level of detail the team at MachineGames has poured into every corner of the world,” says Jennings. “You could spend hours just walking around the different environments admiring every little thing, from each artifact in Marshall College’s impressive collection to the verdant beauty of Sukhothai’s jungles.” Learn more about Community Game Help here. View the full article

Whether you’re dancing as Aloy, Varl, Teersa or Erend through a post-post-apocalyptic world made of LEGO bricks, you need a soundtrack that can keep up. Today we’re celebrating the launch of the official LEGO Horizon Adventures soundtrack, a collection of tracks that reimagines Aloy’s journey in a whole new light. To kick things off, we’re debuting a special music video for post-post-apocalyptic dance party by mxmtoon, a synth-powered anthem that perfectly captures the game’s playful energy and mxmtoon’s passion for both music and gaming. Play Video Dancing through a LEGO World For mxmtoon, the collaboration was personal, playful, and packed with nostalgia. “The very first moment that I started writing ‘post-post-apocalyptic dance party’, I was sitting in my grandma’s living room in Florida. I was just so excited to have the opportunity to write a song that felt inspired by a character that I’ve grown to love and it just felt really natural,” she says. Her love for both LEGO bricks and games, and the Horizon series helped guide the tone of the track from the very first note. “My inspiration behind creating and writing this song is definitely because I grew up loving and playing a bunch of the LEGO games, and I love music. It felt like the perfect opportunity to express both of those interests and loves into one project.” That blend of influences helped shape not only the sound of the track, but the storytelling within it, referencing nods related to the lore and unique setting of Horizon. “There were so many elements of the Horizon series that were incredibly influential to me when I was writing this song because you’re provided this really rich landscape of lore and world-building through the canvas of Horizon Zero Dawn which was a world I was really familiar with as a fan of the game. It was really fun to involve those pieces of lore and vocabulary into moments of the song, whether you’re talking about the Focus or you’re talking about the landscape of a post-post-apocalyptic world. So it felt really fun just to be like, naturally a nerd about the game and involve all the elements and bits that I loved learning about while I was playing into writing the song.” The whole process also stirred up a bit of nostalgia for mxmtoon. “It was like being 15 again, writing a piece of music that I was just excited to make, about something I wasn’t quite sure what it would be yet, but eventually turned into a project I’m so proud to be a part of.” Diving deeper into the soundtrack While mxmtoon brings the pop, the rest of the musical world of LEGO Horizon Adventures is shaped by composer Homay Schmitz, whose score strikes the perfect balance between adventurous and whimsical. “Right from the start the idea was to keep it light and upbeat rather than going too epic for most of it,” says Homay. “The game has such a playful and lighthearted charm to it, we wanted to reflect that in the overall tone‬ throughout the score. When you go through the game you have all these different environments that‬ change from folkier stomps and claps to slightly funky synth pop to something that has hints of a western‬ desert blues and over to orchestral metal but the through thread was always to keep it fun, bright and‬ adventurous or something you could potentially groove to.‬” The game’s visual design also played a key role in shaping the sound. “The very first time I saw gameplay I thought how stunning and detailed everything looked,” Homay points out. “Especially the movement of each of the LEGO elements and the way the waterfall moves. It created a very specific style and there was such a‬ warmth and friendliness about it all.‬” Working within the LEGO version of the Horizon universe meant embracing both its emotional roots and its reimagined, light-hearted tone. Homay explains: “‬Some themes from the original game were carried over to create a sense of familiarity and tie the two‬ worlds together. For example, ‘‬Aloy’s Theme’‬, written by Joris De Man, was a choice that made sense to keep for the main character, which is instantly recognisable and was peppered throughout the game. It just had to be infused with LEGO DNA to transform its beautifully haunting‬ quality into something more sprightly.‬” That playful twist did not mean abandoning the essence of Horizon. Homay wove familiar motifs into the score in clever, unexpected ways. “One detail I personally found really exciting, though maybe more subtle, was having access to a few of the original game’s sound sources. These included a combination of tuned and untuned percussion put together by composers‬ The Flight‬, which we were able to incorporate into the new score. Having played‬ Horizon‬ and listened to its soundtrack, I recognised those sounds immediately. It felt really special to use‬ elements from such a beloved game in LEGO form—another way of bridging the two worlds.‬” Fans might have noticed one more Easter Egg while playing the game, says Homay: “‘In The Flood’ from Horizon Forbidden West was played back by a baby mobile as a lullaby‬ and appears in one of the cut scenes!” Homay had to get creative while composing some of her favorite pieces on the soundtrack: “If I had to pick a couple it would be ‘Jewel Tones’ and ‘Melodies on the Mesa’. One of which made good use of Boomwhackers, which serve as percussion instruments and are basically tuned plastic tubes, and material wise, fits nicely into the LEGO world. I have also not worked with them before so that was a fun palette to explore!” Whether it’s Aloy soaring through a LEGO version of Mother’s Heart or battling a Sawtooth made of LEGO bricks, the music punctuates each moment with personality and punch. “Finding the right tone for the first combat cue was both enjoyable but maybe also slightly challenging‬,” Homay recalls. “I had to strike the right balance between fun and intensity to make it drive enough for the fight but without ever sounding too threatening or too dark in any way. Once that was established though, it set a‬ good marker for the other following combat cues to safely go to battle without it ever getting too intense or‬ unsettling.‬” Speaking of epic battle tracks, Homay mentions the cue she worked on with composer Harry Brokensha: “The orchestral rock metal mix for the final boss. There are a fair few different genres that can be found overall‬ in the game, which were all fun to work on but I really loved what Harry did with this track, which is‬ probably the most dramatic cue amongst them all but still has all the fun elements it needs in it!”‬ Homay looks back with fondness on the collaboration with the development teams and the response of the community. “‬From start to finish, it was an absolute delight to work with such an incredible team! We collaborated closely on the music and had regular catch-ups to discuss the LEGO‬ Horizon‬ world, its themes, and the‬ styles within it.” We are all super excited for the Horizon community to get to enjoy the soundtrack anywhere they go! The official LEGO Horizon Adventures soundtrack is now available on all major streaming platforms—so whether you’re reliving your favorite in-game moments or vibing out to ‘post-post-apocalyptic dance party’, there’s something here for every fan. Stream the full soundtrack here today! View the full article

Here at Naughty Dog, we have some exciting news to share with The Last of Us fans, whether you’ve been with us since its debut in 2013 or are just wanting to jump into the games now. We wanted to celebrate our studio, the series, and you, the fans, by making it easier than ever to experience this story. We’re proud to introduce The Last of Us Complete. Check out our announce trailer below: Play Video Available today on the PlayStation 5 console, The Last of Us Complete allows players to experience both The Last of Us Part I and The Last of Us Part II Remastered in one package. The Last of Us Complete makes it easier than ever to experience the full story on PS5, whether you’ve played both entries, just one, or have yet to immerse yourself in the world of Joel, Ellie, Abby, and all of our characters. The Last of Us Complete digital download is available now The complete experiences of Part I and Part II Remastered are the definitive ways to play each of these games. Our team rebuilt The Last of Us Part I from the ground up specifically with PlayStation 5 in mind, offering full DualSense support, 3D audio, and more. The Last of Us Part II Remastered allows you to not only experience an enhanced edition of the sequel, but also dive behind-the-scenes with hours of commentary, and additions like Lost Levels, the roguelike No Return mode, Guitar Free Play, and more. From our entire studio, thank you so much for your incredible support for The Last of Us and Naughty Dog over the years. This is such an exciting moment for both the franchise and our teams. We are so humbled by your personal stories of what the series has meant to you, have marveled at your incredible Photo Mode shots, and inspired to keep pushing ourselves forward to create more stories and worlds you’ll love. **3D Audio via built-in TV speakers or analogue/USB headphones. View the full article

During the recent 2025 ESO Direct livestream, The Elder Scrolls Online team unveiled an exciting year of adventures, stories, and improvements. This included the new 2025 Content Pass and Premium Edition, the Seasons of the Worm Cult zone and storyline, a unique kind of in-game event, and base-game additions. Want to know more? ESO’s Game Director Rich Lambert and Executive Producer Susan Kath are here to expand a little on what was revealed during the big show. Play Video A sequel 10 years in the making “For this year, we knew we wanted a story that celebrated 10 years of the game being live,” says Lambert. “We’ve always been interested in doing a sequel to the original launch game and figured this was the perfect opportunity. As we started in on the process, one piece of player feedback kept coming up—players wanted something different. So, we took that to heart this year.” Because of this feedback, the Seasons of the Worm Cult continues ESO’s base game story and returns Tamriel original bad guys to the fore: the Order of the Black Worm. In addition to the returning foe and storyline, Seasons of the Worm Cult introduces Solstice, a new zone divided by an arcane barrier known as the Writhing Wall. The wall itself is the focus of a new in-game event in Q3/4, which will take place between Seasons of the Worm Cult Part 1 and 2 and open the way to the second half of the zone and the conclusion of the larger storyline. ​​ “This is a new server-wide event—the shattering of the Writhing Wall—that will see players’ collaborative actions determine the outcome of the conflict,” explains Kath. “Solstice and the wall are all part of the 2025 Content Pass, but if you don’t have access and still want to help in the war effort, there will be special activities that everyone can participate in from mainland Tamriel as well.” Introducing 2025 Content Pass and 2025 Premium Edition Also announced during the ESO Direct was the 2025 Content Pass and 2025 Premium Edition. For the first time in the game’s history, you can acquire an entire year of adventures in one. “We’ve talked recently about our plans to move away from the yearly Chapter release model, and this year is where we’ll start that evolution,” says Kath. “In the past, because of the lead time and resources necessary to create Chapters, it’s been difficult to allocate time to experimental updates, because we had to have every little detail planned far in advance.” Now, the team has more flexibility to introduce emergent content such as the recent Cyrodiil Champions test, which saw players help the development team collect valuable PvP data and feedback on a unique Alliance War campaign. The 2025 Content Pass (and Premium Edition) includes a ton of adventures and challenges for you to discover, including Seasons of the Worm Cult Part 1 and 2 (zone and storyline), two dungeon packs, and access to the Writhing Wall event—everything coming in 2025 in one. “Another benefit for players this year is that it means there’s always something exciting around the corner, rather than a big release in June that you can play through and then find you’re waiting a year for the next big release,” explains Kath. “With all that in mind, this year is a transition year for us, and you’ll see even more changes coming in 2026.” Big base-game additions In addition to all the new adventures, the Update 46 base-game patch introduces a host of free updates for all ESO players, including the powerful Subclassing system. “Subclassing is something I’m very excited about,” says Lambert. “It gives you even more freedom and flexibility in how you play your character, without having to reroll a new one and lose all the time and progress you have put in over the years.” A major shakeup to the way you manage your character builds, Subclassing allows you to replace two different class skill lines to create your ideal hybrid playstyle. Arriving alongside Subclassing is the new Hero’s Return system—helping you get back into the game after a prolonged absence. “With all of these changes, we want to make it as easy as possible for past players to hop back in and check it all out, and that’s at the core of Hero’s Return, updating tutorials, and refreshing the early game zones,” says Kath. “We’re also looking to the ESO community for more insight and feedback into what they really want us to be working on next.” Your pass for adventure Big changes are on the horizon for The Elder Scrolls Online, and the above are just some of the new adventures and changes coming in 2025. Don’t forget, you can purchase the 2025 Content Pass or Premium Edition right now on the PlayStation Store and get immediate access to the Fallen Banners dungeon pack, with the Seasons of the Worm Cult Part 1 arriving June 18 on PS5 and PS4—we’ll see you in Tamriel! View the full article

Here at Naughty Dog, we have some exciting news to share with The Last of Us fans, whether you’ve been with us since its debut in 2013 or are just wanting to jump into the games now. We wanted to celebrate our studio, the series, and you, the fans, by making it easier than ever to experience this story. We’re proud to introduce The Last of Us Complete. Check out our announce trailer below: Play Video Available today on the PlayStation 5 console, The Last of Us Complete allows players to experience both The Last of Us Part I and The Last of Us Part II Remastered in one package. The Last of Us Complete makes it easier than ever to experience the full story on PS5, whether you’ve played both entries, just one, or have yet to immerse yourself in the world of Joel, Ellie, Abby, and all of our characters. The Last of Us Complete digital download is available now, but we’ve also created a special physical version. The Last of Us Complete: Collector’s Edition is also now available for pre-order exclusively at direct.playstation.com and will be available on July 10.* The Last of Us Complete’s physical release is housed in a beautiful collector’s box featuring new artwork capturing the humanity at the heart of our story through a beautiful, intricate design. Included is a Steelbook Case with this artwork, which stores physical discs with new, minimal designs for both The Last of Us Part I and Part II Remastered. The complete experiences of Part I and Part II Remastered are the definitive ways to play each of these games. Our team rebuilt The Last of Us Part I from the ground up specifically with PlayStation 5 in mind, offering full DualSense support, 3D audio, and more. The Last of Us Part II Remastered allows you to not only experience an enhanced edition of the sequel, but also dive behind-the-scenes with hours of commentary, and additions like Lost Levels, the roguelike No Return mode, Guitar Free Play, and more. Additionally, we’re proud to include a set of lithographs from a host of talented artists. Our team hand-picked artists who we felt could offer beautiful takes on these characters that mean so much to both our studio and to all of you. They make for wonderful pieces to display, representing the heart, humanity, and beauty at the core of our series. From our entire studio, thank you so much for your incredible support for The Last of Us and Naughty Dog over the years. This is such an exciting moment for both the franchise and our teams. We are so humbled by your personal stories of what the series has meant to you, have marveled at your incredible Photo Mode shots, and inspired to keep pushing ourselves forward to create more stories and worlds you’ll love. *direct.playstation.com purchase information: Starting April 10, 2025 at 10am PT in the U.S., and 6pm local time in the U.K and Portugal., 7pm France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, players will be able to pre-order The Last of Us Complete: Collector’s Edition exclusively through direct.playstation.com in limited quantities. When ordering directly from PlayStation, enjoy free launch day delivery for eligible pre-orders – visit direct.playstation.com for more details. **3D Audio via built-in TV speakers or analogue/USB headphones. View the full article

Hi PlayStation players! I’m excited to introduce you to Duskfade, an all-new 3D action-platformer coming to PlayStation 5 in 2026. Duskfade is a brand-new action-platformer that fuses the nostalgia of classic PlayStation titles like Jak and Daxter and the original Ratchet & Clank games, with modern gameplay and a deeply heartfelt story. You play as Zirian, a young workshop apprentice, as he embarks on an adventure to restore time itself to a world enshrouded by eternal night, discovering vibrant locations on a wondrous adventure set within a stunning clockpunk world. The game is being developed by the talented team at Weird Beluga Studio, a group of passionate action-platformer fans who want Duskfade to rekindle that magical, timeless feeling of those classic, fan favorite titles. Check out the brand new trailer below – and welcome to the world of Duskfade. Play Video A nostalgic yet fresh take on action-platforming Duskfade is the kind of project that really excites us here at Fireshine Games: it’s a heartfelt tribute to the golden age of 3D action-platformers, packed with tight, fluid gameplay, stunning world design, and a deeply emotional story that hits hard in all the right ways. Every movement, fight, and environment has been carefully crafted to feel tactile, electric, and full of momentum, whether rail-grinding through crystal caves or fending off clockwork foes. Players will jump, dash, grapple, and glide through gorgeous levels that rekindle the magic of classic action-platformers, and we can’t wait to bring this dream game to players around the world next year. Here are some comments directly from the development team to help you get a better understanding of their vision for Duskfade: “Our game takes inspiration from Jak and Daxter and Ratchet & Clank, with movement that has been designed to feel agile and fast. Flow is a core focus, and we want players to feel like Zirian is gliding through the world, chaining actions seamlessly and covering large distances without losing momentum.” – Tomás Manzano Sobrido, Lead Programmer “The combat in Duskfade takes cues from games like Ratchet & Clank and Kingdom Hearts, with additional mechanics inspired by contemporary action games, like a responsive dodge roll, layered in to add depth and keep the action feeling fresh and dynamic” – Esteban Marin Illana, Game Designer A story of loss, love, and moving forward Beneath the vibrant visuals and explosive combat lies something far more personal. Duskfade tells the story of siblings Zirian and Allira, who find themselves pulled into a mysterious reality shaped by memory, grief, and the echoes of their past. It’s a game about navigating loss – inspired by real-life experiences from the development team – and learning how to hold onto what matters while moving forward. “Losing a loved one always leaves a deep wound, especially when they were your guide and role model. That’s what happened to me with the Ioss of my grandfather. However, it gave me the strength and the inspiration to write this story.” – Ricardo Chorques Mesa, Narrative Designer How a group of friends turned a passion into Duskfade Weird Beluga’s story started in 2019 when five university friends entered the PlayStation Talents competition with a passion project and walked away with awards for Best Game and Best Art. With the momentum and support that came from PlayStation Talents and Sony Interactive Entertainment Spain, they made a big decision: they dropped out of university, founded Weird Beluga Studio, and got to work. Just two years later, in 2021, they released their debut title, Clid the Snail on PS4 and PS5, a full-circle moment for a team that grew up playing on PS1, PS2, and PS3. That early backing from PlayStation didn’t just launch their first game, it helped shape their entire journey. Today, three of the team’s original five developers, Tomás Manzano Sobrido, Diego Redondo González, and Ricardo Chorques Mesa, are still driving the studio forward. We at Fireshine Games are thrilled to be partnering with them to bring Duskfade to life. Emotional resonance and representation in gaming With Duskfade, Weird Beluga is setting out to create something that goes beyond being a fun action-platformer. The game is also part of a growing wave of indie games that embrace emotional storytelling, personal themes, and inclusive perspectives. Whether you’ve experienced grief yourself or simply want a game that connects on a deeper level, Duskfade hopes to offer something meaningful and universal to every player beneath its spectacle. “We’re aiming for a striking contrast in our game: a colorful, innocent visual style inspired by classic games, paired with a deep, emotional narrative. Beneath the vibrant world lies a story that explores serious real-world themes, adding weight and meaning to the adventure.” – Diego Redondo González, Lead Artist Duskfade is more than a passion project – it’s a heartfelt tribute to classic action-platformer favorites wrapped up in an emotional narrative. Stay tuned for more updates and a deeper look at what makes the game such a special journey soon, and we can’t wait for you to experience Duskfade for yourself when it launches on PS5 next year. View the full article

Have you been eagerly awaiting your acceptance letter to Hogwarts? This month, you can finally step into the magical world of the wizarding school and its spellbinding surroundings with Hogwarts Legacy. Or, you could investigate a mysterious shifting manor filled with puzzles in Blue Prince, continue the nostalgic narrative adventure of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage with Tape 2, or golf your heart away in EA Sports PGA Tour. There’s plenty to choose from in April’s PlayStation Plus Game Catalog lineup*. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 2 and Blue Prince are both releasing day one into Game Catalog, with Blue Prince available to play April 10, and Bloom & Rage Tape 2 available April 15. EA Sports PGA Tour will also be playable April 11, while all other titles will be playable from April 15. Meanwhile, PlayStation Plus Deluxe welcomes survival horror Alone in the Dark 2 from the original PlayStation and PS2’s kaiju-filled fighting brawler War of the Monsters. PlayStation Plus Extra and Deluxe | Game Catalog View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Hogwarts Legacy | PS4, PS5 Hogwarts Legacy is an immersive, open-world action RPG set in the world first introduced in the Harry Potter books. Embark on a journey through familiar and new locations as you explore and discover magical beasts, customize your character and craft potions, master spell casting, upgrade talents and become the wizard you want to be. Experience Hogwarts in the 1800s. Your character is a student who holds the key to an ancient secret that threatens to tear the wizarding world apart. Discover the feeling of living at Hogwarts as you make allies, battle Dark Wizards and ultimately decide the fate of the wizarding world. Your legacy is what you make of it. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Blue Prince | PS5 Welcome to Mt. Holly, the mysterious manor with shifting rooms. In Blue Prince, you embark on a genre-defying experience, filled with a unique mix of mystery, strategy, and puzzles that weave together to create an unpredictable journey. As the heir of Mt. Holly, you have been tasked to explore its shifting halls in search of Room 46. Yet as your journey takes you further into the mansion’s depths, you start to discover that there is more lurking under the surface than a missing room. Investigate a past woven with the threads of blackmail, political intrigue, and the mysterious disappearance of a local children’s book author. The deeper you venture, the more you realize that the past is closer than it appears. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 2 | PS5 Dontnod’s latest narrative adventure takes you to a picturesque corner of Michigan in 1995, where lies the seemingly sleepy little town of Velvet Cove. Between dense woodlands and serene lakes, it’s a place where beauty meets the bizarre. The first episode, titled Bloom, was included in the Game Catalog in February. This new episode, titled Rage, continues and concludes the sisterhood’s adventure. As the story unfolds, the bonds forged through their growing friendship, their punk band, and the unexplained event that forever changed their lives are put to the ultimate test. Navigate between dual timelines – 1995 and 2022 – to uncover the life-changing secrets they discovered back then and understand why they’re reuniting now, after all these years. Together, they must confront the fateful memories that have eluded them for the past 27 years. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image EA Sports PGA Tour | PS5 The exclusive home of the Majors, EA Sports PGA Tour features Pure Strike for superior golf gameplay and unrivaled access to the world’s most exclusive golf courses. As your golf game improves, so does your path to becoming a Major champion. Create and customize a golfer, develop your skill set with new Shot Types, gain deeper course knowledge as you play, and learn to attack every hole like a pro. The tee is yours at 30 courses, including some of the world’s most exclusive, designed in stunning quality with Frostbite so you can enjoy more of golf’s finer details than ever before. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Battlefield 1 | PS4 Experience the dawn of all-out war in Battlefield 1. Fight your way through epic battles ranging from tight urban combat in a besieged French city to the heavily defended mountain forts in the Italian Alps or frantic combats in the deserts of Arabia. Discover a world at war through an adventure-filled campaign, or join in epic multiplayer battles with up to 64 players, and adapt your tactics to the earth-shattering destruction and dynamic weather. Fight as infantry, lead horse charges or take control of amazing vehicles on land, air and sea, from tanks and biplanes to the gigantic Behemoths – some of the largest vehicles in Battlefield history. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image PlateUp! | PS4, PS5 PlateUp! combines chaotic kitchen and restaurant management with strategic planning and development to create a delightful roguelite dish unlike any other. Up to four players build and run a restaurant from scratch, choosing dishes, buying and placing appliances – some of which can be daisy-chained together to create ambitious automatic kitchens – cooking food and serving customers. Players have free rein to design their restaurant which will expand and develop between shifts – with additional content and challenges unlocked through progression. Equip your restaurant to handle the most fickle of customers and deliver them what they need, right when they need it. PlayStation Plus Deluxe View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Alone in the Dark 2 | PS4, PS5 The sequel to the critically acclaimed Alone in the Dark has Edward Carnby dive into another mystery. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image War of the Monsters | PS4, PS5 Giant monsters have stormed the planet, and they’re fighting each other for supremacy. In War of the Monsters, choose your own mutant brute (or armored robot, or giant lava beast) then battle it out across 13 destructible battlegrounds. This PlayStation 2 classic from 2003 looks stunning in HD and features full trophy support – including an all-important platinum. Because this title does not support PlayStation 2 peripherals, there may be times where the game plays differently to the original, or where some features may not be available. *PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and PlayStation Plus Deluxe lineups may differ by region. Please check PlayStation Store on release day. Like many businesses around the world, we continue to be impacted by global market conditions and will be adjusting our local prices for PlayStation Plus. This price adjustment will enable us to continue bringing high-quality games and value-added benefits to your PlayStation Plus subscription service. Starting on April 16, 2025, PlayStation Plus subscription prices will change to the following in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia PlayStation Plus Essential 1 Month Subscription: SGD 10.90 | RM 35 | THB 270 | Rp 126,000 3-Month Subscription: SGD 28.90 | RM 95 | THB 720 | Rp 331,000 12-Month Subscription: SGD 88.90 | RM 285 | THB 2,200 | Rp 1,010,000 PlayStation Plus Extra 1 Month Subscription: SGD 15.90 | RM 55 | THB 410 | Rp 189,000 3-Month Subscription: SGD 44.90 | RM 155 | THB 1,170 | Rp 536,000 12-Month Subscription: SGD 142.90 | RM 490 | THB 3,720 | Rp 1,710,000 PlayStation Plus Deluxe 1 Month Subscription: SGD 18.90 | RM 65 | THB 480 | Rp 221,000 3-Month Subscription: SGD 53.90 | RM 185 | THB 1,380 | Rp 632,000 12-Month Subscription: SGD 169.90 | RM 575 | THB 4,350 | Rp 1,990,000 For current subscribers, the price change will not take effect until your next billing date that occurs on or after June 24. However, any membership changes you make on or after April 16, such as upgrades, downgrades or adding additional time, will reflect the new prices. You can change or cancel your subscription at any time. For more information: https://www.playstation.com/support/subscriptions/cancel-playstation-plus/. View the full article

Days Gone Remastered comes to PlayStation 5 on April 25. Experience the definitive version of Days Gone with new modes, features, and technical enhancements to leverage the PS5 and PS5 Pro consoles. The new game modes including Horde Assault, Permadeath, and Speedrun also arrive on PC via the Broken Road DLC. Whether you’re visiting Days Gone for the first time or jumping back on the Drifter bike, there’s plenty of content to explore and new things to discover. If you haven’t already, be sure to read our Days Gone Remastered announcement blog for more details on all the new content and features. Introducing one of our most expansive new additions to Days Gone Remastered, Horde Assault – a survival arcade mode. Before we dive in, watch the gameplay trailer for the new mode below. Play Video What is Horde Assault mode? Horde Assault offers fresh and unexpected gameplay designed to challenge your skills as you try to achieve a high score, while surviving as long as possible against increased horde sizes and various other enemies, like Breakers, Reachers, and Rager bears, oh my! Fight your way through a brutal, ever-changing landscape where enemies escalate in difficulty the longer you survive. Horde Assault was built from the promise of “This World Comes For You,” showcasing the core gameplay of the Days Gone open world in a unique way. Horde Assault is your playground for a truly endless game mode, go show them Freakers who’s boss. Begin Horde Assault by dropping into Cascade with only a sidearm weapon at your disposal. Fight your way through the initial assault of Freakers to reach your Drifter bike, a valuable tool to traverse the open region. Seek out Supply Boxes scattered around the map to obtain powerful weapons to greatly increase your chance at survival. With more than 20 available weapons to use, including a new flamethrower not offered in Story mode, finding a Supply Box could be life or death when encountering the next horde. What weapons drop from each Supply Box is random and will reset upon each new start. While you’re out there fighting for your life (literally) refill your resources and earn additional XP by completing Side Jobs. These mini objectives are critical for keeping you in the fight. Running out of ammo with up to 800 Freakers chasing you, is not ideal. We did say there are increased hordes… Of course, we couldn’t make it that easy for you. Should you make it to 30 minutes of survival time in any map, you will be treated to the Ultimate Horde. A never-ending horde fight in a relentless approach to hunt you down. We’ll stop explaining it any further and let you experience it firsthand. Survive Move up in level to earn in-mode rewards with never-before-playable characters, new patch cosmetics, and unique Injectors on offer to greatly impact your gameplay experience.  Speaking of Injectors, players of Days Gone will already be familiar with the benefits of Injectors from the main story. This idea carries over to Horde Assault, but now with a big uplift to drastically change gameplay in the form of modifiers. During your journey to Legendary Survivor, you can earn a total of 24 unique Injectors – 12 Positive and 12 Negative. Positive Injectors provide a positive boost to your score but increase the challenge. Negative Injectors provide a penalty to your score but increases your chance of survival with gameplay benefits. We don’t want to spoil the full list, but let’s spotlight a couple Injectors to give you a sneak peek what they have to offer. Exploding Freakers – Upon death Freakers will explode. You need any advantage you can get when facing increased horde sizes and this Injector is a unique way to trim its numbers. Wanted – Start at maximum heat level. In Horde Assault, the longer you survive the more difficult your survival chances become. With this Injector, that escalation difficulty system begins immediately proving to be a real challenge that only the strongest will survive. During your time with Horde Assault, you will progress through a Reward path. The Reward path consists of 35 levels to achieve with each level earning you a reward including Injectors, character skins, and patch cosmetics. With the inclusion of Rewards, an additional six never-before-playable characters from Days Gone joins the roster including O’Brian, Lisa, fan-favorite Skizzo, and more. Patches make a return from players who are familiar with the Challenges we released in 2019. This time, the patches serve as purely cosmetic on Deacon’s cut to show off to your friends. That Enhanced Photo Mode will come in handy here. Once you earn the patches, they will carry over to the story as well. In addition to the Reward path, there are bonus rewards in the Reputation Phase, beating the target score in all four regions. We don’t want to reveal this right away, but one of the rewards is a highly requested item our players have been asking for. Hint: It has to do with your bike. Horde Assault is treated as end game content, though it is playable as soon as you boot up Days Gone Remastered. We encourage newcomers to get a handle on the combat and mechanics first by visiting the story, but nothing is stopping you from jumping right into the action to encounter the uniqueness of Days Gone, the hordes. Horde Assault will offer an additional 10 hours of gameplay packed on top of a content filled package that we hope will bring you plenty of enjoyment in the world of Days Gone. When and where can you play Horde Assault Horde Assault is available April 25, 2025 on PS5 with Days Gone Remastered as well as on PC with the Broken Road DLC. Days Gone Remastered is available to pre-order today on PlayStation Store. For players that have purchased Days Gone on PlayStation 4, you can upgrade to Days Gone Remastered including all new content and features for $10 USD. * Add Days Gone Broken Road DLC to your wishlist today on Steam and Epic Games Store. We can’t wait for you to experience all the new content and features or relive the epic story of Deacon St. John once again. *Price shown in U.S. currency and may vary by country. Check PS Store at launch for local pricing. Owners of the PS4 disc copies must insert them into their PS5 every time they want to download or play the PS5 digital version. PS4 game disc owners who buy the PS5 Digital Edition disc-free console will not be able to get the PS5 version for the discounted price. PS4 game redemptions via PlayStation Plus are not eligible for upgrade. View the full article

Have you been eagerly awaiting your acceptance letter to Hogwarts? This month, you can finally step into the magical world of the wizarding school and its spellbinding surroundings with Hogwarts Legacy. Or, you could investigate a mysterious shifting manor filled with puzzles in Blue Prince, continue the nostalgic narrative adventure of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage with Tape 2, or golf your heart away in EA Sports PGA Tour. There’s plenty to choose from in April’s PlayStation Plus Game Catalog lineup*. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 2 and Blue Prince are both releasing day one into Game Catalog, with Blue Prince available to play April 10, and Bloom & Rage Tape 2 available April 15. EA Sports PGA Tour will also be playable April 10, while all other titles will be playable from April 15. Meanwhile, PlayStation Plus Premium welcomes survival horror Alone in the Dark 2 from the original PlayStation and PS2’s kaiju-filled fighting brawler War of the Monsters. PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium | Game Catalog View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Hogwarts Legacy | PS4, PS5 Hogwarts Legacy is an immersive, open-world action RPG set in the world first introduced in the Harry Potter books. Embark on a journey through familiar and new locations as you explore and discover magical beasts, customize your character and craft potions, master spell casting, upgrade talents and become the wizard you want to be. Experience Hogwarts in the 1800s. Your character is a student who holds the key to an ancient secret that threatens to tear the wizarding world apart. Discover the feeling of living at Hogwarts as you make allies, battle Dark Wizards and ultimately decide the fate of the wizarding world. Your legacy is what you make of it. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Blue Prince | PS5 Welcome to Mt. Holly, the mysterious manor with shifting rooms. In Blue Prince, you embark on a genre-defying experience, filled with a unique mix of mystery, strategy, and puzzles that weave together to create an unpredictable journey. As the heir of Mt. Holly, you have been tasked to explore its shifting halls in search of Room 46. Yet as your journey takes you further into the mansion’s depths, you start to discover that there is more lurking under the surface than a missing room. Investigate a past woven with the threads of blackmail, political intrigue, and the mysterious disappearance of a local children’s book author. The deeper you venture, the more you realize that the past is closer than it appears. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 2 | PS5 Dontnod’s latest narrative adventure takes you to a picturesque corner of Michigan in 1995, where lies the seemingly sleepy little town of Velvet Cove. Between dense woodlands and serene lakes, it’s a place where beauty meets the bizarre. The first episode, titled Bloom, was included in the Game Catalog in February. This new episode, titled Rage, continues and concludes the sisterhood’s adventure. As the story unfolds, the bonds forged through their growing friendship, their punk band, and the unexplained event that forever changed their lives are put to the ultimate test. Navigate between dual timelines – 1995 and 2022 – to uncover the life-changing secrets they discovered back then and understand why they’re reuniting now, after all these years. Together, they must confront the fateful memories that have eluded them for the past 27 years. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image EA Sports PGA Tour | PS5 The exclusive home of the Majors, EA Sports PGA Tour features Pure Strike for superior golf gameplay and unrivaled access to the world’s most exclusive golf courses. As your golf game improves, so does your path to becoming a Major champion. Create and customize a golfer, develop your skill set with new Shot Types, gain deeper course knowledge as you play, and learn to attack every hole like a pro. The tee is yours at 30 courses, including some of the world’s most exclusive, designed in stunning quality with Frostbite so you can enjoy more of golf’s finer details than ever before. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Battlefield 1 | PS4 Experience the dawn of all-out war in Battlefield 1. Fight your way through epic battles ranging from tight urban combat in a besieged French city to the heavily defended mountain forts in the Italian Alps or frantic combats in the deserts of Arabia. Discover a world at war through an adventure-filled campaign, or join in epic multiplayer battles with up to 64 players, and adapt your tactics to the earth-shattering destruction and dynamic weather. Fight as infantry, lead horse charges or take control of amazing vehicles on land, air and sea, from tanks and biplanes to the gigantic Behemoths – some of the largest vehicles in Battlefield history. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image PlateUp! | PS4, PS5 PlateUp! combines chaotic kitchen and restaurant management with strategic planning and development to create a delightful roguelite dish unlike any other. Up to four players build and run a restaurant from scratch, choosing dishes, buying and placing appliances – some of which can be daisy-chained together to create ambitious automatic kitchens – cooking food and serving customers. Players have free rein to design their restaurant which will expand and develop between shifts – with additional content and challenges unlocked through progression. Equip your restaurant to handle the most fickle of customers and deliver them what they need, right when they need it. PlayStation Plus Premium View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Alone in the Dark 2 | PS4, PS5 The sequel to the critically acclaimed Alone in the Dark has Edward Carnby dive into another mystery. This classic survival horror-game, initially released in 1993 on the original PlayStation, is playable on PS5 for the first time. View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image War of the Monsters | PS4, PS5 Giant monsters have stormed the planet, and they’re fighting each other for supremacy. In War of the Monsters, choose your own mutant brute (or armored robot, or giant lava beast) then battle it out across 13 destructible battlegrounds. This PlayStation 2 classic from 2003 looks stunning in HD and features full trophy support – including an all-important platinum. Because this title does not support PlayStation 2 peripherals, there may be times where the game plays differently to the original, or where some features may not be available. *PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and PlayStation Plus Premium/Deluxe lineups may differ by region. Please check PlayStation Store on release day. View the full article

Today, we have an announcement for our fellow gamers on PlayStation Portal remote player. As we continue to improve user experience based on community feedback, we are releasing a new system software update for PS Portal starting later today, which will add a few new features to improve your gaming experience while using Cloud Game Streaming Beta. As a reminder – Cloud Streaming (Beta) is an option for PlayStation Plus Premium members to play games via cloud streaming on PS Portal, allowing select PS5 games in the PlayStation Plus Catalog* to be streamed directly from our servers, even without a PS5 console. Since Cloud Streaming (Beta) on PS Portal is still an experimental offering, the features available during the beta period may change over time and may not reflect the final experience. For more details, visit here. Without further ado, here are the new features added in this update: Sort You can now sort games in the Cloud Streaming (Beta) catalog screen. There will be a new sort icon added to the top left corner, allowing you to sort games by: Recently added to PS Plus (default), Name, and Release date. Capture gameplay The Create button on your PS Portal will now be enabled during a Cloud Streaming (Beta) session. Here is what you can do: Press once: Display the create menu Press and hold: Take a screenshot Press twice: Start/finish recording a video clip** Images and videos captured during a streaming session will be automatically uploaded to the cloud server, which can be accessed from the PlayStation App by selecting [Library] > [Captures]. Your captures will be stored for 14 days after they were created. Queue You can now wait for your turn to play when the streaming server is full. The estimated wait time will be displayed on screen, and the game session will automatically start as soon as it’s your turn. Pause During a Cloud Streaming (Beta) game session, gameplay will now pause in the following situations: Gameplay will pause when you open the PS Portal quick menu. You can open the quick menu by pressing the PS button, swiping left from the top right corner of your screen, or tapping the quick menu icon from the status bar. When you press the power button once, PS Portal will be put into rest mode and the game will be paused. You can un-pause and get back to your game play by pressing the power button again. If PS Portal remains in rest mode for more than 15 seconds, the cloud streaming session will be disconnected. Gameplay will also pause when a system error message is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Note that the pause feature will not be supported in some cases, such as during an online multiplay session. Notification of inactivity You will now receive a system notification when your streaming session is about to close due to inactivity of over 10 minutes. User feedback screen We have added a user feedback screen at the end of the streaming sessions to rate the quality of your streaming experience. This will help us identify what went well or could be improved, as we continue to enhance the quality of our service. Thanks to the support and feedback from our player as we continue to add new features to further enhance the PS Portal experience, including support for select public Wi-Fi networks, which we launched last year. We hope you enjoy the new beta features – your feedback is essential for us to evolve the streaming game experience even further, and we look forward to hearing what you think! *Includes select PS5 games in the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Classics Catalog. Titles available in the PlayStation Plus Catalog vary over time, region/country and plan. See https://www.playstation.com/Plus for details and updates on PlayStation Plus offerings. PlayStation Plus is an ongoing subscription subject to a recurring subscription fee taken automatically (at the then-current PS Store price) at the frequency you choose at purchase until cancellation. Terms apply: play.st/psplus-usageterms **Video clips up to 1920×1080 in resolution and up to 3 minutes in duration are supported. View the full article

If you have ever found yourself in an unfamiliar room, staring at a closed door and wondering what lies beyond it, then you are already familiar with the mysterious driving force of Blue Prince. Will this door lead to a twisting passageway? A quiet bedroom? Or a grand ballroom? My name is Tonda Ros, an indie developer with a love for atmospheric games, and for the last eight years, I have been working on a game about a large manor and its many mysterious doors. Blue Prince was formed from big ideas from very different worlds. It has elements of mystery, strategy and discovery, merging the world of a first-person puzzle adventure with the drafting mechanics of a tabletop card game. It also launches April 10 as a day one PlayStation Plus Game Catalog title. But how exactly does the game work? Floor plan drafting When my own journey began almost a decade ago, I had one simple idea: “Every door is a choice.” In a way, these five words sum up the entirety of Blue Prince. The estate of Mount Holly is not an ordinary house. This is a manor of shifting rooms and ever-changing expectations. And in this house, each door you open can lead to one of three different rooms. The choice is up to you. Do you want a storeroom to gain useful tools? A library to search for more clues? Or perhaps simply a long hallway, to grant yourself even more doors to continue your exploration? As you make your decision and open the door, you are instantly met with the room of your choosing. Constructing a shifting house Ironically, the process of creating this game is a lot like playing Blue Prince. Both the player and I are attempting to construct a shifting house of many rooms. A mansion that is full of challenges that we cannot foresee at the onset of our adventure. And to create this house, we build rooms, one at a time – door by door, blueprint by blueprint. The rooms we choose to draft are of course, entirely up to us. As we create, we are also able to explore, traveling from room to room in search of answers and clues. Where the player’s adventure begins to differ, however, is at the end of each in-game day. When you awake tomorrow, you will find the house you have been exploring will have a completely different layout. You will find doors that lead to new rooms. You will find different items, different clues and different puzzles. You will make new discoveries, and each day you will learn more and more about the strange rules that govern this mysterious house. Shifting puzzles Designing puzzles for a game taking place in an ever-changing mansion was a bit of a challenge. One player might find a puzzle in the mansion, and the very next room they draft might contain a clue for it.. For another, it may be dozens of rooms before they discover the secret. The beauty, of course, is this is actually what makes the experience special. The rooms you draft, the items you find, and the order in which you make discoveries all contribute to an adventure that will be wildly different from every other playthrough. Additionally, there is no puzzle in the game that must be solved. Like most things on the estate, there are always alternate avenues of progression to find and various solutions to the challenges you face. If you can’t figure something out in the game, don’t be afraid to move on. Exploring the manor will eventually lead you to the answers you are looking for, as most challenges in the game cannot be solved without finding more information and clues in other areas of the estate. After eight years of development, I am finally at the end of my journey, and I am eager to hand over the keys to you so you can start your own. If you will allow me one final word of advice: the less you know about this game going in, the better. In this article, I have only given you a broad sense of the basic mechanics of my game and how I approached designing them. I will leave the evolution of these mechanics and the story of Mount Holly for you to discover yourself. But don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long. The doors of Blue Prince open April 10. View the full article