GTA VI is one of the most hotly anticipated games in history, but Rockstar’s decision to not release a physical copy has hit a sore nerve among fans. Apparently, one of them is a talented hacker who somehow landed their hands on GTA VI gameplay and the entire map and decided to leak them. According to gaming creator NikTek on X, Cyberleek allegedly leaked the two clips and the entire map of Leonida as a protest against the publisher’s decision to sell pre-selling digital copies of the game. They said that they will not stop dropping leaks until the company issues a public apology and commits to doing better.

"No consumer shall pay for a game through digital storefronts before release and independent review. Physical preorders for tangible media remain permitted. Preorders were not created for gamers. They were created because physical discs had manufacturing limits. In digital distribution, there is no inventory. There is no stock shortage. A digital copy cannot sell out. Yet publishers kept the preorder system and stripped away its only consumer benefit. Now gamers pay early and receive nothing in return except a countdown timer and a cosmetic skin,” Cyberleek said on their website. “If publishers want revenue before launch, they can press discs. Print boxes. Put them on shelves. Earn that money through physical production."

Aside from this, Cyberleek has two other points in their manifesto: that publishers should not sell “fake” single-player DLCs that unlock content already included in the base game and that any title featuring single-player content must always be available, even when server support ends. These points are issues that many gamers are fighting for, especially as many companies focus on digital games and subscriptions over physical media and one-time purchases. One major example is Sony’s decision to cut physical media. This move has angered gamers, with many complaining that we no longer own the games we buy. Unfortunately, Rockstar is following in this trend — even though you can still physically buy GTA VI from retailers, these copies only contain a download code, not physical game discs you can insert into your console.

NikTek said in another X post that the leaked clips showed various gameplay details, including basketball games, vehicle loadouts, and openable and closable trunks. There’s also a stamina bar and an honor system similar to Red Dead Redemption 2. The map leak also showed details of the five counties, as well as revealing that there is a massive rail system and many tiny islands that players can explore. Another creator said that these leaked details are already over a year old, but Rockstar has been actively issuing DMCA takedowns against posts that showed these details, meaning these are likely clips of the real thing. After all, the base gameplay has likely already been completed, and the developers probably spent the last few months finalizing the game ahead of its November launch.

One man’s trash is another’s treasure, and that certainly seems to be the case for ‘Josh,’ a GameStop customer. The well-known gaming and trade-in business says that Josh came into its Clackamas, Oregon store and “traded hundreds of broken consoles for $10,690.06 in store credit.” In its Twitter/X post, GameStop shows Josh looking pleased with a fistful of trade credit cards, another image showing reams of receipts, and a far too small photo of the broken console haul.

That’s a lot of in-store credit to spend, but as most GameStop-ites will know, your trade-ins go further this way. In other words, if you asked for cash instead of credit, you would get less. Accepting the compromise of in-store credit can actually net you up to 50% more cash to spend – albeit with your choices locked to what GameStop has in stock. This might not be a big drawback if you like video games. But $10,690.06 is a lot of credit, even for the most avid gamer.

Checking the GameStop website today shows it doesn’t embrace gaming PCs or laptops, or PC components. Your local store might have a selection available, though. What I did see today were a few meager electronics items like MacBooks and iPhones listed. The major trade at this retailer is in PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch consoles and games. This is where most customers would probably expect to use their credit.

I found it interesting to try and identify the few broken consoles we can see in the plastic crates. Without too much scrutiny and pixel peeping, there are clearly a few Nintendo Switch Lites in there, a Sega GameGear, a pair of Sony PSPs, and numerous Nintendo Game Boys representing a few eras (GBC, DS, DSL). Under that crate are what look like a black and a white Xbox 360. There must have been many more crates to tally up to “hundreds.” Squinting at the receipts shows there were indeed multiple PS4, Xbox One, Series X, and 360 consoles in the traded collection.

In terms of pricing, the receipts reveal Josh traded in multiple Xbox One consoles for $7.92 each, Xbox Series X consoles for $10-11, PS4 consoles priced at $16 each, and working Xbox One consoles at around $40. Pricing for the more exciting stuff is unfortunately illegible in the photos.

Some social media keyboard warriors throw scorn at Josh for selling this bountiful collection of broken consoles to GameStop. The key accusation is basically that he’s been swindled by GameStop, who would pay a pittance compared to what could have been raised selling on auction sites like eBay. Perhaps he could have made a lot more cash selling his broken consoles independently, but depending on how many auctions he generated from the 100s of items, that would be a lot more effort: dealing with accurate description writing, photography, shipping, and the inevitable returns.

It would similarly be interesting to find out how much profit GameStop ends up making from this pile of consoles, but it isn't likely to share this kind of business data. Some of the consoles will likely be irreparable, only useful for spares and donor components; others, perhaps if there are rarer special editions in the collection, could bring in a lot of cash if fixed and refurbished.

The PlayStation 5 emulation scene has been a wonder to witness, with rapid progress matching the community's ambition. The latest development on this frontier is SharpEmu, an open-source PS5 emulator, successfully running on the Steam Deck with Astro's Playroom even booting to show the PlayStation Studios loading screen. The framerate doesn't go past 1 FPS, but the fact that it's even running is very impressive.

We scoured the internet for more information on this but couldn't find anything. This seems to be the first and only case of someone getting a PS5 game to load on a Steam Deck without streaming involved. The video above shows the Steam Deck in its desktop mode inside SteamOS, which is based on Linux. Performance fluctuates between 0.5 FPS and 1 FPS according to the overlay in the corner, and the audio is just as choppy.

SharpEmu can smoothly run lightweight 2D titles like Dead Cells and Dreaming Sarah on more capable hardware, but the team's focus is not on compatibility. KytyPS5 is far more advanced in terms of the games people have been able to boot on it, including 3D titles like Demon's Souls. However, Kyty is limited to Windows while SharpEmu has native support for Linux and Mac, and there's even an unofficial Android fork.

We tried this version on a OnePlus 12 and were able to get Dreaming Sarah to show an initial splash screen with the developer's logo. After that, though, the screen turns black, and nothing happens, despite the FPS counter constantly hovering around 60 FPS. A few questionably optimistic users on Reddit have even suggested running SharpEmu on Android through Winlator, so that GTA VI can be played on Android once it launches.

Just like the Steam Deck, even the fact that the game launches on Android is a mighty feat and a testament to the sheer ambition of this community. SharpEmu is only meant for x86 devices; it runs on Apple Silicon Macs through the Rosetta 2 translation layer, and on Windows-on-Arm devices through Microsoft's Prism translation layer. But since it's written in C# from scratch, evidently, the code can be recompiled for Android.

With the ongoing component crisis making even consoles more expensive to purchase, and the death of physical media right around the corner, emulation is once again being touted as a cornerstone of preservation. With a roadmap to playing GTA VI on PC without waiting a few years for a port no doubt in the back of everyone's minds.

Sony lets gamers access their PlayStation consoles remotely through a couple of different tools. The Remote Play app lets gamers stream titles from their consoles to their phones, tablets, and PCs. The PlayStation Portal handheld has an extra trick. It can stream PS5 games both locally from a gamer's own console or directly from the PlayStation Plus Premium service's cloud gaming library.

Third-party apps like Chiaki have already brought PS Remote Play functionality over to Linux, but the new Asobi Remote Play app promises to make that functionality available directly from Steam. It also boasts an exclusive feature that can turn your Steam Deck into a virtual PS Portal, allowing you to play cloud games from the PlayStation Plus Premium library. The app is in a pre-release play test right now, but its capabilities are intriguing.

As long as you have a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription, you can stream select PS5 titles directly from Sony's servers inside Asobi, even if you don't have a PS5 console. This hasn't been possible on any device other than the PS Portal until now. Only the titles Sony has approved are available for cloud streaming on PS Portal, and that same restriction will apply within Asobi.

That said, hundreds of games are already available through this subscription, so you likely won't run into any trouble finding something to play if you want to try the PlayStation library without committing to a PS5.

The Asobi team has just released the app for SteamOS (and, by extension, Linux), which means you can install it on a Steam Deck or Steam Machine and essentially turn your existing Steam Deck into a Portal, saving you from buying a $250 device just to enjoy PlayStation games without a console.

Asobi is not associated with Sony in any way, so there's no guarantees for future compatibility or even a stable experience, but the developer does promise 1080p 30FPS streaming with the app's free tier. The premium tier bumps that up to 1080p 60 FPS with HDR and 4K upscaling support, as well as manual bitrate selection, controller haptics, and lower latency.

All of these premium features are currently free on the Steam playtest, which is also why pricing for the premium tier hasn't been announced yet. Some users already part of the testing are reporting issues, which is to be expected for pre-release software.

But if the team can iron out the kinks, and assuming that Sony doesn't block whatever method Asobi is using to mimic the PlayStation Portal for cloud game streaming access, this app could become the most accessible way to play PlayStation games on the Steam Deck (apart from native PC ports, of course).

Despite widespread public backlash, Sony has reaffirmed its plan to transition PlayStation to an all-digital platform during the company's FY26 Q1 earnings call. The company is moving forward with ending the production of physical game discs in January 2028. After this date, the company will no longer manufacture physical media for new game releases. This decision gives PlayStation fans and retailers a little over a year and a half to prepare for the change.

When asked about Sony's decision to end production of physical game discs during the Q&A session, Lin Tao, Executive Officer and CFO for Sony, replied that:

"On this point, we announced that January 2028 onwards, we will no longer be manufacturing game discs. One and a half years ahead. We made this announcement at this time. There are various reasons we made this decision."

Tao further explains the rationale behind the digital paradigm shift, a move that was met with negative criticism from PlayStation fans and parts of the industry.

"The biggest being that the digitalization of content overall has been progressing. That’s the big factor. It’s not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of contents; digitalization is progressing. When we think about the future, we put in a lot of thought and time; we cautiously considered this, we came to this conclusion, we’re going to cautiously move this forward.

To this decision, we have received various opinions; people have strong views. We understand that the community has put forth those views to us.

Games are loved by many people. It’s a form of entertainment that’s loved by people; it’s connected to people’s fond memories in many cases. We understand those emotions. We want to consider that."

According to Sony's financial results for FY26 Q1, which covers the period from April to June, the company raked in $1.2 billion in digital game revenue. In stark contrast, physical game sales brought in only $128 million for Sony, meaning digital revenue was more than 9X higher than physical sales. The growth in digital sales and the disparity with physical sales shows why Sony is eager to go all in on digital.

Sony was asked directly about the impact of discontinuing physical discs. In response, Ishii, a Corporate Communications executive at the company, provided the following statement:

"Well, up until 2028, well, at this point in time, well, we are not seeing any impact on our business as of now. Going forward, about the content sales, I think a large part is already digitized.

Therefore, as a result of the discontinuation of a disc, we don’t see that there will be any negative impact on our business. However, as I already said, the users, the players, have attachments, and we have to think about how to respond to that feedback."

Phasing out game discs will undoubtedly have a significant financial impact on gamers. Physical game discs not only provide ownership, but they also come with the benefit of resale. Gamers can recoup some of what they paid for it once they are finished playing. The extinction of game discs represents the loss of the ability to share physical games with friends and family. The PlayStation platform does not support sharing digital games, unlike services like Valve’s Steam Families or Nintendo’s Virtual Game Cards.

Game discs enable gamers on a tight budget to purchase second-hand copies of games at great prices at their local game stores or online marketplaces. For instance, used copies of The Last of Us Part I, which came out four years ago, go for as little as $25, while the digital version remains priced at around $69.99 on the PlayStation Store. Even during major promotional events like Days of Play or Black Friday, digital discounts have rarely brought prices below $29.99. Second-hand physical copies are simply a more affordable choice for many players.

Without game discs, PlayStation console owners will have to rely more on internal storage, and when that depletes, they will have to expand the storage with the best PS5 SSDs. The issue is that SSDs are ludicrously expensive right now due to the storage shortage, which could last way beyond January 2028.

The discontinuation of physical discs does not just affect consumers but also retailers. However, Sony expects limited business impact in that aspect since the digital transition has somewhat started a long time ago. Tao elaborated, "For the last 30 years, we have been selling PlayStation, and the retail partners have always been important to us. With the completion of the disc production, we communicated this at an early stage so that we have enough time to be able to listen to various partners’ voices.”

Tao continued, “In North America, this has already happened, but without discs. In the package, there’s a code. That’s how they sell in North America. About the retailers, there are regional characteristics. For each regional partner, we try to have thorough dialogues so that we can end up in a win-win situation. Now, the differentiation from PC. We don’t feel that the disc is the factor to differentiate from the PC."

Gamers are actively voicing their opposition to Sony’s move away from physical media. DoesItPlay, a community dedicated to game preservation, has organized a large-scale boycott dubbed #PSBlackout, urging PlayStation users worldwide to turn off their consoles for an entire week, from August 23 to August 30. The X post has amassed over 1.8 million views and 7,500 shares, but it is uncertain how many users will participate. In addition to this digital protest, a Change.org petition with more than 350,000 signatures is asking for Sony to reconsider its decision to end physical game production.

Sony has been winding down its physical media production over the years (for example, physical boxes with a download code), so it was just really a matter of time before the PlayStation ecosystem adapted to the changes. Unfortunately, the die is cast, and there are rumors that Sony has already started repurposing its factories for other endeavors. There is little to no hope that Sony will reverse its decision to discontinue physical game discs.

The state of PlayStation 5 emulation has been rapidly evolving, partially in response to Grand Theft Auto 6's release later this year. The latest milestone is the first 3D games being playable at very respectable framerates of around 30 frames per second.

The two emulators at the forefront of all this are KytyPS5 and SharpEmu, the former of which is intensely focused on expanding compatibility. KytyPS5 was already able to boot 3D titles and go until their loading screens, with at least two smaller games actually rendering graphics. Now, the same emulator can run two 3D games at around 30 FPS, though there are some glitches.

The first game is XIII, the 2020 remake of the 2003 classic, and it's "playable" at up to 30 FPS with real-time gameplay that accepts player input. We put playable in quotation marks because there are very obvious visual glitches that manifest in the environment not rendering correctly. The textures seem to be broken in multiple scenes, though they don't entirely kill the immersion. XIII is a relatively lightweight game but its cell-shaded aesthetic might be adding to emulation complexity.

The same person who tested XIII also tested Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Wrath of the Mutants and managed to run it at just under 25 FPS with real-time gameplay. The game crashes on the first launch, but once initialized, it's stable and does not seem to have any bugs or glitches like XIII. The framerate looks visibly choppy but is undeniably impressive, on a technical level. Kyty can run other 3D PS5 games as well, but not nearly at this level of performance.

KytyPS5 is advancing at a faster pace than SharpEmu, and that's true for the most part, but not out of stagnation. The team behind SharpEmu is busy tackling a different challenge: accuracy and infrastructure setup rather than game-specific compatibility, per its GitHub repo. In other words, it means fixing low-level issues that are preventing games like Astro Bot from currently reaching the gameplay state.

Both emulators are now part of an unexpected emulation race. With GTA 6 just a few months away and GTA 5 already booting in Kyty, it clearly has the better support for now, and its demos are very promising. SharpEmu's work will undoubtedly help the emulation scene at large, along with RPCSX and other independent developers. The craziest part is that you can try all of this at home for free, and just by doing that you're already contributing to the scene.

The developers of RPCS3 have announced that their PlayStation 3 emulator’s minimum system requirements have been adjusted to include a crop of even older Radeon graphics cards. This well-regarded application already supported ATI Terascale 2 GPUs from the Radeon HD 5000 and 6000 series, but now gamers still cradling Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 series can join in the fun. Some of these GPUs date back nearly 20 years. Please note that while RPCS3 is available for a range of platforms, this extended ATI architecture support is only for Linux users.

Fine wine on Terascale 2

Back in 2021, the RPCS3 devs lowered the emulator’s system requirements to embrace Radeon HD 5000 and HD 6000 (Terascale 2) series graphics cards. In the subsequent five years, the emulator has been tuned to improve performance on hardware from these generations. An example provided asserts that when using Persona 5 as a benchmark, performance in Kamoshida’s Castle went from 35 to 49 FPS between 2021 and today (on a PC system with an ATI Radeon HD 5850, AMD FX-8350 CPU, and 8GB of RAM).

Inspired Terascale 1 experiments

Success spurred the devs to investigate TeraScale 1 performance and compatibility. Some OpenGL wrangling ensued due to TeraScale 1 GPUs only reporting OpenGL 3.3 and GLSL 3.30 support, but getting these old and unloved ATI cards to work with the RPCS3 OpenGL renderer was surprisingly simple. It was done by overriding the reported OpenGL levels to 4.3 and 4.40.

Initial tests made use of a system packing an ATI Radeon HD 4890 with 1GB of VRAM – the most powerful Terascale 1 GPU ever sold. According to the RPCS3 blog, this card has a more powerful GPU than the PS3, but the emulator’s complex shader code is not optimal for older architectures like this. Nevertheless, “Simpler games work perfectly fine, with playable performance,” notes the blog, “while games that have more complex graphics are GPU bottlenecked with subpar performance.” Screenshots show Metal Gear Solid HD Collection and Outrun Online Arcade with frame rates close to 60 FPS.

Moving down the stack and further back in time, GPUs like the ATI Radeon HD 3870 are “still able to render very simple games with playable performance in RPCS,” assert the devs. To achieve playability, you will want to dial in PSP-like resolutions, though. Specifically, 273p was mentioned.

What about the weakest TeraScale 1 GPUs? The ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with a measly 256MB of VRAM even performs poorly at 273p. Screenshots from RPCS3 tests show it only managing 8 FPS in Outrun Online Arcade and 13 FPS in Portal.

With RPCS3’s progress over the last half decade, these performance numbers could also improve. In fact, the blog states that “future optimization should improve performance by quite a bit on these old GPUs.”

It looks like a good time to dust off your retro PC and try a few old PS3 classics on your ATI TeraScale 1 GPU-accelerated rig. Remember this extended graphics card support requires a Linux distro with the Mesa driver r600. Then you need to launch RCPS3 with the following environment variables: MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.3 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=440 ./rpcs3.AppImage

RPCS3, a multi-platform open-source PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger, has revealed that 2,681 of the total 3,559 PS3 titles are now compatible with its software, meaning a huge majority of games can now be played on Windows, Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD. The developers of the app said on X that RPCS3 is continually being worked on and that they’re targeting full preservation of the entire PS3 library. This is an important development for PlayStation 3 owners and enthusiasts, especially as Sony said that it will stop making physical game discs by 2028 and shut down the PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita a year before that.

Ensuring that over 2,600 games are compatible with your emulation is no mean feat, especially for a project that’s mostly supported by Patreon and volunteers. The team has already achieved more than 75% compatibility with the entire PS3 library, with less than a thousand titles needing to be worked on. Of this, 816 are now playable but encounter serious glitches or performance problems, 60 reach the game’s main menu but fail to load past that, while only two titles initialize but are stuck on a black screen. If you want to check if you can now play your favorite PS3 title on your PC, you can go to the RPCS3 compatibility page and type in the name of the game.

This is a huge win for the game preservation community, as this would ensure that you can continue playing your PS3 game library even if your console no longer works. The beautiful thing about RPCS3 is that it works with a lot of different hardware — aside from support for Windows, Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD, it’s also compatible with both x86 and arm64, so you can install it on some of the best handheld gaming PCs to play your PS3 games on the go.

Emulation is quite controversial among game publishers and developers, and many companies have historically taken steps against those who make these apps. However, the courts have said that emulation isn’t necessarily illegal, as long as the people who use them only play games that they’ve already paid for. In fact, the Patreon page of RPCS3 was once hit by a DMCA takedown request from Atlus, the maker of Persona 5, arguing that “no version of the P5 game should be playable on this platform; and [the RPCS3] developers are infringing on our IP by making such games playable.”

While it ultimately failed in its request, it showed how some companies think that their games should only be played on the platform that they designed it for. They argue that emulators might introduce performance issues, meaning players will not get the optimal experience when playing their games. However, RPCS3 has proven that emulators could deliver a similar (or even better) performance than the PS3, with newer versions getting a 5% to 7% boost in FPS numbers compared to previous builds and even hitting more than 1500 FPS on the Minecraft title screen.

For years, the PS5 emulation scene has remained dormant, with updates few and far between as most projects become abandonware. However, Sony's recent decision to stop physical disc production and the impending release of GTA VI later this year have created an unprecedented demand in the market. All of a sudden, an influx of PS5 emulators has popped up online, and they're swiftly hitting development milestones, including actually being able to boot recent PS5 titles.

The most prominent name in the news cycle is SharpEmu, which serves as a PS5 emulator for Windows. It's written entirely in C# and works more like a translation layer since modern consoles and PC share the same x86 underlying architecture. SharpEmu allows the PC to execute CPU instructions natively while translating OS-specific API calls and graphics.

Since it's aiming for accuracy, only some 2D titles such as Dreaming Sarah are running on SharpEmu with solid performance and no hiccups. As far as 3D titles go, that's a different story since it's significantly harder to emulate those. At first, the PS5 remake of Demon's Souls successfully booted, but it didn't go past the startup screen. Then, in a major development, Discord user RShantila was able to boot Astro Bot, which is a PlayStation exclusive from 2024, on SharpEmu.

Getting such a recent game to run is extremely promising and shows that PS5 emulation is currently outpacing PS4 emulation at the same point in its life cycle. And SharpEmu is just one project among what's starting to seem like a sea of hopes and dreams.

The other emulator gaining traction is KytyPS5, which started as a cross-platform PS4 and PS5 emulator in 2021 but was abandoned in 2022. Fast forward four years and developer Nmzik has revived the project, creating their own fork that focuses only on PlayStation 5. According to reports online, within just a few weeks, KytyPS5 can boot commercial PS5 games running in Unreal Engine 4/5, Unity, and other custom engines.

KytyPS5 was able to boot and run Silent Hill: The Short Message till the menu screen. Remember, 3D games were previously limited to just their boot screens, so this is yet another major accomplishment. However, earlier today, the project's GitHub page was updated to show two new 3D games actually running with their graphics being properly rendered, shattering all expectations set thus far.

These two games are PowerWash Simulator and Pac-Man World, both of which are playable with functional gameplay, though we don't have any idea about performance or stability. Even more impressively, and perhaps more on-topic, the KytyPS5 version 0.0.3 successfully booted the commercial PS5 version of Grand Theft Auto V far enough to display the loading screens, main splash art, and actually navigate the in-game display settings.

KytyPS5 has also recently received updates to its shader compiler for better graphics, better memory management that leads to faster load times, and better audio support as well. The emulator works on Windows for now, but a Linux version is also planned for the future.

Finally, we need to mention RPCSX, which isn't exactly an emulator but rather just a research project dedicated to better understanding both PS4 and PS5 software. The devs are still working on being able to boot games from the user interface, but in a race like this, you need every hand on deck, and the team behind RPCS3 is one of the most experienced in the field.

The PS5 emulation scene has suddenly exploded, and the pace of these developments is astonishing. At this trajectory, it won't be unreasonable to expect GTA V to actually run on SharpEmu or KytyPS5 by next month. That being said, emulation is a marathon that takes a long time to perfect, so it's almost guaranteed that the official PC version of GTA VI will be out long before the emulated version becomes playable.

A Change.org petition urging Sony to keep making physical PlayStation games has passed 172,000 signatures, six days after the company announced that it intends to stop producing discs for new games in January 2028. The petition, started by Jade Pearce, CEO of Canadian retailer PNP Games, climbed from around 12,000 signatures on its first day to more than 172,000 by the morning of July 7. Sony hasn’t responded, and the factory that prints its discs has already started moving some staff and equipment onto a different product.

Pearce launched the campaign the same day as Sony's announcement, and it gathered 40,000 names within 48 hours. The petition contends that a boxed download code is a revocable license rather than owned property, references Sony's recent removal of purchased movies from customer accounts, and lists the used-game trade among the jobs at risk. "We are not against digital," Pearce writes. "We are against digital being the only option."

Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad estimated that Sony sold more than 70 million physical discs in 2025, even with digital purchases sitting at roughly 80% of full-game sales. Sony's PlayStation social accounts have stayed dormant since July 1.

Sony DADC's plant in Thalgau, Austria, produces about 600,000 discs a day, roughly half of them PlayStation titles, and has begun shifting some workers onto optical microlens production, DADC CEO Dietmar Tanzer told Austrian broadcaster ORF Salzburg. The company has put €30 million ($34 million) into new equipment, according to Engadget, expects disc output to fall to about 10% of current volume by 2028, and plans to retrain roughly 300 staff rather than lay them off.

Optical microlenses steer and concentrate light across very small distances and appear in camera modules, AR and VR headsets, fiber-optic gear, and automotive lighting. Markus Streibl, head of micro optics at Sony DADC, said mass production could begin as early as 2027.

The PlayStation 6 is reportedly in development without a built-in disc drive, which would leave Sony's hardware team to reintegrate one if the company changed course. Sony's standalone PS5 disc drive has carried a one-per-order purchase cap since at least March last year, predating the disc announcement, and leaked PS6 specifications described in earlier reports frame any drive as an optional backward-compatibility accessory. Grand Theft Auto 6, easily the biggest game of the decade so far, will ship on PlayStation as a boxed download code with no playable disc, ahead of the 2028 cutoff.

Sony has told publishers they can still book disc runs for games released in 2027 or earlier, so existing physical libraries will keep working on supported consoles. Whether the fact that the petition is now pushing 200,000 signatures will compel Sony to move or abandon the January 2028 date is unclear; Sony delayed its 2021 shutdown of the PS3 and PS Vita stores after similar backlash, though that closure is now scheduled again alongside the disc decision.

Sony's one-per-order purchase limit on the PS5 Disc Drive, widely cited this week as a response to panic buying after the company said it will end physical disc production for new PlayStation games in January 2028, has been on PlayStation Direct since at least March 2025. Archived captures of the product page cited by HotHardware carry the same wording, "Due to high demand, there is a limit of 1 per order," more than a year before Sony's announcement. Meanwhile, the largest petition against the disc cutoff sat beyond 74,000 signatures on the morning of July 4th, closing in on its 75,000 goal.

Sony did add something to the product page this week: a bolded notice stating that from January 2028, newly released PlayStation games will be sold on the PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital format only, and that discs for games released before that date will continue to play on supported consoles. We checked the live U.S. listing today and found both the new notice and the long-standing order limit, along with a line warning that household limits may apply.

The detachable drive, $79.99 at retail, is the only way to play physical games or Blu-ray movies on the PS5 Digital Edition and PS5 Pro, neither of which comes with one. eBay listings for the accessory reached $100 to $130 this week, according to HotHardware, which also noted that Best Buy stocks the drive at retail price with no order limit. Sony hasn't said whether it intends to keep manufacturing the drive after the disc cutoff, or how long the PlayStation Direct restriction will remain in place.

A Change.org petition organized by Jade Pearce, CEO of Canadian game retailer PNP Games, gathered more than 74,000 signatures in three days, and Push Square counted at least 15 separate petitions urging Sony to reverse course. The backlash has already spread beyond petitions, with various companies poking fun at Sony's decision, including GitHub, which announced that it'll begin offering CD-ROM copies of public repositories as a jab at the decision.

Regardless, Sony's disc manufacturing plans appear to be set in stone. PlayStation output accounts for roughly half of the volume at Sony DADC's plant in Thalgau, Austria, with new game disc orders making up around 20% of that share, CEO Dietmar Tanzer told Austrian broadcaster ORF in comments reported by Wccftech. The site's roughly 300 workers are being retrained to produce optical microlenses, with mass production of the new line set to begin in early 2027, a year before the disc cutoff takes effect.

Brian “Biscuit” Watson, a game developer whose work spans four decades, recently went on YouTube to tell some of his stories. One of the most interesting revelations he shared on The Retro Collective was the existence of the PlayStation 1 controller prototype, called the PlayStation Puga, that housed an entire PlayStation 1 console. Watson said that this “handheld” was specifically built for the Brazilian market, which had tight import regulations, and was also intended to be manufactured within the country. It was also supposed to come with 4GB of memory that could hold 10 games, and four AA-sized batteries apparently power it and connect to your TV via an included cable.

The prototype was working really well, but it encountered issues with game titles that were intended for inclusion. “The unfortunate problem is that Sony licensing couldn’t get their act together about the royalty terms for each of the games. So, it’s like they’re trying to get in touch with Rockstar and a few other places, and they were wanting way too much in the way of royalties,” Watson said. “But what really stuck in my craw with that one was even if it was a Sony game, they had to negotiate with a separate unit of Sony, and they were never happy about how much royalty they were getting.”

Since the gaming controller and console combo was designed to sell at a low price, they expected to make only 10 cents per unit sold and were unhappy with the pricing. Since it seemed Sony would not be able to ship any games with the PS1 controller console, it canceled the entire project.

Watson actually showed the completed controller to the present audience, but it unfortunately doesn’t run. It does boot into the debug stub, but he doesn’t have any of the other required software to make it run. Still, it’s equipped with an Arm-based processor running at 650 MHz and emulated the PlayStation 1 pretty well. It also lasted about 20 hours on a single set of four AA batteries, which is an impressive feat for the time (and still is today). Nevertheless, the project was not wasted at the emulator built for that system eventually found its way into the Sony Xperia Play.

Yesterday, Sony announced it will cease production of physical discs for PlayStation games starting in 2028, sending a shockwave across the industry. If the news weren't already upsetting enough, companies on social media are now taking advantage of the opportunity with a barrage of corporate satire. Multiple high-profile brands have chimed in with sarcastic announcements of their own that mirror Sony's decision in an absurd fashion.

The Domino's Pizza UK account on X is probably the most prominent inclusion on this list — they went viral earlier for mocking God of War: Laufey by remarking that "God of War without Kratos is like Pepperoni Blast is without pepperoni." For this occasion, the account posted an official (satirical) statement saying the company is stopping production of all physical pizzas in the UK by April 1, 2027.

The company joked that customers would still be able to buy them in a "digital format" where their imagination would have to do the heavy lifting. Apparently, you'll have to download the pizzas to "enjoy them in an entirely virtual sense," and there are pizza codes available for further convenience.

Then there's the Spanish KFC account which made a similar joke-announcement but with a heightened sense of urgency. They're not even waiting for next year; KFC España will stop offering chicken in "physical format" starting right now. The account explained that customers need to now buy the chicken in "fake PNG format," accompanied by a screenshot of their app showing the newly listed digital chicken.

KFC is actually referencing the NFT craze from a few years ago, where people would often joke about how they could just download the image others are paying a fortune for. The company even replied to a comment that said it'll just get the digital format chicken from Pinterest by warning them not to pirate the items.

Somehow, the bit kept going with another tweet laying out the ground rules for KFC España's new PNG chicken. Right away, they announce that a DLC is already in the works for sauces, where each sauce will be sold separately. They urge customers to pre-order "Los Glaseados" because the codes are running out — throwing another jab at GTA VI, this time, and its digital-only release.

Lastly, we have GameSir, a popular name in the PC controller space, who also announced a shift to a digital-only model. If you buy a GameSir controller now, you won't receive anything physical in the box. Instead, you'll get an activation code to download the controller via the GameSir app and use quantum entanglement to control your games. The statement ends by reminding us that "true pro-gamers don't need a controller in their hands; they need a controller in their souls."

Clearly, these posts highlight the sheer absurdity of the situation. Digital games account for a vast majority of all game sales, so Sony is not opening a Pandora's box by itself here. But the core of the issue resides with choice — the consumer should have the right to choose whether they want a physical or digital copy. By mandating it for them, Sony (and those that will follow) is institutionalizing a race to the bottom where ownership will mean nothing. Furthermore, by eliminating the used hardware market, Sony ensures that gamers on a budget won't be able to buy titles at cut prices on the pre-owned market, relying instead solely on the goodwill of developers and Sony to set prices on the PlayStation Store.

Yesterday, Sony revealed that the PlayStation Store will be shutting down for PS3 and PS Vita consoles in July 2027. The irony seemed to be lost on the company, pairing up a disc-killing announcement for the future of PlayStation with news that literally serves as proof of why that's a bad idea. Regardless of the rationale, digital archivists are now kicking into gear to preserve PS3 game data with whatever time they have left, and it seems like RPCS3 is leading the awareness campaign.

RPCS3 is a huge name in the emulation scene. These guys are responsible for the most prominent PS3 emulator out there right now, having recently made a breakthrough in performance for all tiers of hardware. RPCS3 is open source, so naturally the project gravitates towards a preservationist culture where everything must be protected for future generations to come.

Emulators are only as good as the software available to run on them, so these efforts are inextricably tied together. The RPCS3 team suggests using no-intro.org, which is a database that tracks everything that needs to be saved. It doesn't directly host any ROMs; rather, it hosts metadata such as cryptographic signatures (hashes like CRC32, MD5, SHA-1), exact file sizes, serial numbers, and revision histories.

It serves as a ledger for the community, so it knows what has already been verified and backed up, and what still needs to be found before it's permanently removed from storefronts. RPCS3 is actually built around no-intro.org since it features automated integrity checks for PSN content. It can check your dumped .pkg file and tell you whether it's corrupt and precisely what's missing if it is.

For instance, to troubleshoot a niche, digital-only PS3 game that doesn't emulate well on RPCS3, the team would need to look at the original, optimized copy of the game first to understand how it should work. Since the game isn't popular, there's a high chance no one ever bothered to dump it — no-intro.org actively tries to prevent this from happening thanks to its contributors knowing exactly what to archive.

Once PSN goes down for PS3 next year, we will be at risk of losing a goldmine of content that was never preserved in its physical form. With the state of the gaming and hardware industry in general, there hasn't been a warning call like this in ages that has reminded people just how illusory an all-digital future could be.

Hardware is so expensive right now that even researchers from Google are suggesting cloud gaming as the way forward, or that leasing silicon would be more viable than buying it. PlayStation stopping disc production in 2028, with Xbox rumored to follow, means that it won't be long before ownership becomes an ephemeral concept cloaked by debates on efficiency and convenience, all while the actual art itself becomes lost media.

Well, it's official: Sony has just announced that it will stop production of PlayStation game discs starting in January 2028. After January 2028, no more game discs will be produced, and games will only be available through the PlayStation Store and "at retailers in digital formats only." It's a move that anyone could have guessed was coming but which is nonetheless frustrating to many fans, as it essentially rings the death knell for physical media in cutting-edge gaming.

I say "anyone could have guessed" because you'd have to have your head in the sand to ignore all the factors pointing this way. The biggest of such factors is arguably the reality that Blu-ray drive production has sharply wound down outside of game consoles. But there's also the fact that the vast majority of games purchased today are already purchased digitally; in Q4 2025, 85% of PlayStation games were purchased digitally, and if you zoom out to look at the entire US video game market, the PC and mobile markets are already effectively 100% digital.

That's what Sony is talking about when it says it's making the change "in response to shifting trends in consumer preference." Still, the majority isn't everyone, and there are absolutely die-hard gamers out there who demand physical copies because a digital license isn't ownership. All you need to look at to understand this stark reality is the incident just three days ago where PlayStation announced that it is removing over 500 movies from customers' accounts in the UK and Europe because of an expired licensing agreement.

Defenders of the move will point to the aforementioned 100% digital nature of PC gaming as a counterpoint against the pushback to the death of physical media. But there's a key difference, and that's that PC gaming is done on PCs, opening up tools like backups and private servers for game preservation. This is possible on consoles too, of course, but it's a lot more work.

In January 2028, when the move takes effect, the PlayStation 5 will have just passed its seventh birthday; obviously, the PlayStation 6 will have either just launched or be on the horizon, depending on whose leaks you believe. Those same leaks have claimed that the PlayStation 6 would have the option for a detachable or optional disc drive, and that might still be true, but if so, it would exist exclusively for backward compatibility reasons. If that ends up being the case, we will have to applaud Sony for taking care of its customers that way; it would have been just as easy to leave PS4 and PS5 owners with large physical libraries in the lurch, with no way to play their old games on the new machine. Of course, if those rumors of an optional drive turn out to be false, "leaving players in the lurch" is exactly what Sony will be doing.

It's impossible to deny that there is a certain satisfaction in cracking open a plastic case, pulling out a physical disc, and inserting it into the console to select your game. It's also undeniable that it's really nice to be able to scroll a list of all my games and then click on any of them and be playing in seconds. The cold truth is that digital game downloads are more convenient and easier to manage for everyone at every step of the process, and so this move was coming eventually, no matter what.

However, it is darkly ironic that Sony announced this news in the very same tweet where it announced that it's shutting down the PlayStation Store on the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita systems. After the first attempt at this was walked back in 2021 after community outcry, the company has decided five years later that it simply has to cut off support because the old storefronts supposedly can't be updated to support "modern commerce systems," including contemporary global payment processing security standards. There's no technical reason that's true, of course; the reality is simply that Sony doesn't want to continue supporting these nearly 20-year-old machines anymore.

That's wholly understandable, but at the same time, it really does provide the perfect backdrop for the death of discs, as later PlayStation consoles can't play PS3 games, neither disc nor digital. That means that, when the PlayStation Store for PS3 finally dies in July 2027, there will be no official way to acquire and play those games... besides used discs, of course. As for PlayStation 6, that stands to be one of the first consoles to never have a used game market, a momentous end of an era.

Sony has unceremoniously informed its PlayStation customers in the United Kingdom that 551 movies from StudioCanal will be removed from their accounts on September 1, 2026. If you bought any of the films included in this list, you'll no longer be able to access them. There is no workaround, no method to offload them to another device; just absolute, emotionless deletion that doesn't even offer refunds.

The lineup includes some truly legendary movies such as Terminator 2, Apocalypse Now, Mulholland Drive, Moonlight, and Dawn Till Dusk — essentially every film that StudioCanal distributed in the UK. Sony cites licensing agreements between it and the French company as the reason behind the sudden removal. The announcement doesn't include any other details beyond the list of the affected films.

Sony began selling movies and shows on the PlayStation Store in 2008. During the PS3 era, you could actually transfer the content to view on other devices, but that feature was removed on the PS4. In 2021, after the PS5 had launched, Sony stopped selling films and TV series entirely on PSN, which meant that it likely wouldn't renew contractual agreements with studios and distributors going forward.

The only exception to this rule was in 2023, when Sony began a similar deletion spree of Discovery Network shows but signed a new licensing deal to keep them on the platform. It remains to be seen whether public backlash can usher in a similar response for StudioCanal movies this time. You might not have heard its name before, but the studio is responsible for bringing countless popular movies to the UK.

For now, this is yet another distressing reminder of the digital precedent corporations have set for us. You no longer truly own any digital content you purchase; rather, it's just being licensed to you indefinitely. And you agree to this precedent "willingly" when you accept all those terms and conditions that veil ownership rights under fine print.

The moment the provider decides it's not viable to maintain said content, you're at risk of losing access to something you already paid for. It's like a subscription service with extra steps — as if people aren't growing wary enough of those already — except it was never advertised like that.

The Steam Machine seems to be everything that the gaming world is talking about right now, partially because PC building took a nosedive thanks to high prices, and also because it's a Valve product. The console/PC hybrid (PConsole, maybe?) remains a highly anticipated product despite rumors of a price hike. The release is now set in stone and imminent, as Valve has officially confirmed the summer 2026 launch window and expanded its Verified program to include Machine and Frame alongside the Deck.

"Today we are expanding the Verified program to include Steam Machine and Steam Frame, both of which are shipping this summer," the company stated. The news should ease the worries of many an expecting gamer, given today's constant worries about AI servers slurping every RAM and NAND chip on the face of the earth, as well as Valve's own statements about component scarcity delaying the release. Plus, the company always works on its own schedule, so much so that Valve Time is a term.

The release of the Machine has been taking flak, given that while Valve was initially hoping for an estimated $600 to $800 price — in the ballpark of the higher-end consoles — the rumored pricing is climbing around or over $1000. This fact is somewhat corroborated by a February statement from a Valve executive who, like most anyone in the world, stated the price revision was due to the AI-driven component shortage.

No manufacturer can escape that particular black hole, as even the PlayStation 5 Pro is currently going for $899. Paying a slice more for seemingly superior hardware and a gigantic library of cheap games arguably makes more financial sense if you're a frequent gamer.

Steam Verified is a developer-focused program where game makers ensure that their titles are capable of running on the Deck (meaning they'll run fine under Linux), that the UI elements and text are readable at standard resolutions, and that sensible default graphics settings are used. The baseline performance target was 30 FPS at 1280x800 resolution for the Deck, and now 30 FPS at 1920x1080p for the Machine.

Since those latter figures are bound to cause some confusion, it should be double-noted that they're a baseline — the Machine is advertised as capable of 4K, 60 FPS gameplay with the use of upscaling, or in other words, business as usual. The specifications bear this out, as the CPU therein is a six-core unit with a 30 W TDP target, and the GPU is an RDNA3 design with 28 CUs, a 2.45 GHz clock speed, and a 110 W TDP. For comparison's sake, the entire Steam Deck has a 15 W maximum TDP. The rest of the Verified recommendations for the Machine are exactly the same as the Deck's.

Despite price hikes, Steam hardware remains popular. Just recently, the Steam Deck instantly ran out of stock even after its price was bumped up to $789 and $949, depending on the version. Given that zeitgeist and the general thirst for new hardware, it looks like the Machine will do just fine. We just hope that Valve makes enough of them and does its best to prevent scalping.

A modder by the name of tschicki has built a custom "PlayStation 2 Portable" from scratch, powered by a reverse-engineered motherboard that features original PS2 silicon. The hardware sits inside a 3D-printed shell with proper controls, USB-PD charging, and a bespoke cooling solution. The project is entirely open-source and available on GitHub for anyone to follow along with, if you have the right skills and patience required.

Work on the PS2 Portable actually began way back in 2022, but it was only made public last year. The four-year development period really shows when you take a look at how polished the finished product is. The design is inspired by modern handhelds such as the ROG Ally; it has an ergonomic shape with large grips that house two 5000mAh batteries to enable up to 4.5 hours of playtime on a single charge.

On the front, there's an asymmetric control scheme that actually features hall-effect joysticks and face buttons from the PS Vita 2000 model. There's a blue accent piece running along the top, enveloping the triggers and the USB-C port, providing some variety in an otherwise minimalist aesthetic. You'll also find vents up there for exhaust. The rear is largely plain with a few threaded screws and a cutout with a grill for intake.

The entire assembly is broken down into just two parts: a top half and a bottom half that screw into each other. The cooling is handled by a custom heatsink solution that uses the fan from the Switch Lite to keep the ICs under control.

This transitions us nicely into the actual crux of the project. The modder took six original ICs from the SCPH-7900x or SCPH-9000x PS2 models and put them on a custom motherboard.

Built upon the existing work of community veterans who have mapped out PS2 mainboards over the years, Tschicki reverse-engineered the entire circuitry of the console. They were then able to manually draw up a new motherboard layout that integrates the aforementioned original chips with completely new traces, video routing, and power management.

The donor ICs handle the bulk of the processing, such as the Emotion Engine (EE) and the Graphics Synthesizer (GS), while RP2040 microcontrollers are responsible for secondary tasks like thermals, controls, sound, and more. The modder used a custom FPGA-based video processor to get direct video out from the GS instead of going through an analog-to-digital converter that'd otherwise degrade the quality.

As such, the PS2 portable supports many resolutions, but it's wired up to a 5" 480x800p IPS LCD running at 60 Hz. To ensure the controls work on this screen, the RP2040 is utilized to convert data from the buttons and joysticks into native DualShock 2 signals, with full rumble support. Another RP2040 monitors the battery and controls power, allowing for fast charging or "charge and play" at 5V, 9V, or 12V.

Finally, to actually use the console, tschicki customized the original boot ROM to directly launch into homebrew, from where you can use the two microSD card slots present on the device to access your games. One slot hooks directly to the PS2 Memory Card's data lines and tricks the system into thinking one of those bulky 8MB Memory Cards is plugged in. You can use this for boot files and game saves, for instance.

The other slot bypasses the PS2's memory controller entirely and uses the open-source MX4SIO routing standard that doesn't try to emulate a memory card. Instead, it relies on custom homebrew apps running on the console to talk directly to the SD card's native storage interface. Once the custom MX4SIO driver is initialized, you can load up any game you want, which means this slot is better for library storage.

This is possible because the BIOS chip from the actual PS2 is one of the six ICs lifted from the original console, along with the CPU+GPU, the RAM (two separate chips), the I/O processor, and the SP2 audio processor. Anyhow, after the games are loaded, the handheld can play PS2 titles natively via custom software like OPL (Open PS2 Loader) or NHDDL, and supports PS1 games via DKWDRV. There is no emulation happening here.

Because of the sheer stature of custom modding work done, the PS2 Portable is one of the most impressive community projects in recent times. The fact that everything from the 3D printer files (STLs), the PCB schematics, the FPGA code, and the software firmware is open source is just the cherry on top. You can build your own identical handheld, but it's not going to be easy, and Tschicki even warns against it.

All of the relevant resources are available on GitHub, including the BOM (bill of materials) for the mechanical assembly and each PCBA. There's a 10-part documentation with steps you can follow, but they're incredibly detailed and only meant for experts with high-level soldering and programming knowledge. Do not attempt this as a fun DIY project, but then again, curiosity killed the cat.

Now, technically speaking, a portable PS2 already exists — it's called the PlayStation Portable (PSP), and it was one of the most successful consoles of all time. But it doesn't have the PS2's massive catalog of classics, so there's an argument to be made there. That being said, emulation has come a long way, and your phone can even play AAA PC games now, so stick to emulation if you're only after the nostalgia and not the microsoldering anguish.

Sony just increased the price for refurbished PlayStation 5 Slim consoles by $100, bringing the Digital Edition to $499 and the disc drive model to $549. The original PS5 and Fortnite bundle now also appears out of stock at the time of writing, so you can no longer get a brand-new PS5 Digital Edition for just $399. You can see these changes on the Sony website, with u/FernandoRocker sharing the bad news to the r/PS5 subreddit yesterday.

At the moment, the cheapest PS5 you can get is still the original console for $399, although this is a refurbished model. If you want a brand-new unit, you have no choice but to shell out $599 for the PS5 Digital Edition console, or get the Ghost of Yotei Black Limited-Edition Bundle for the same price if you want the version with an optical drive.

The original and Slim versions of the PS5 have almost the same specifications, except for a couple of minor changes — the latter has a larger 1TB internal storage (versus 825GB) and comes with two USB-C ports (instead of a USB-C and a USB-A port). Otherwise, you’re not missing out on much. So, if the budget is tight, you can get the cheaper original refurbished model and then upgrade your console with one of the best PS5 SSDs later, when you have extra cash.

The company did not make any official announcements about the price increases, so this came as a surprise to some of its fans. This also isn’t the recent price hike that Sony made on the PlayStation 5. Just last month, it increased prices across all its new consoles, with the Digital Edition models (both original and Slim) getting a $100 bump, while the PS5 Pro went from $749.99 to $899.99. Even the PlayStation Portal now costs $50 more, at $249.99.

Price hikes for brand-new consoles are understandable, especially given the ongoing memory and storage chip crisis. However, it’s unclear why refurbished PS5 Slim consoles now also cost more. After all, the original refurbished PS5 still costs the same, so we cannot chalk this up to increased labor costs.

Unfortunately, without official guidance from Sony, we can only speculate about why it increased its prices. It’s possible that the company did this to reduce demand for used Slim edition PS5s so they wouldn't run out of stock. After all, if the price difference for a new console is just $100, quite a few buyers would rather go for a brand-new model than a refurbished one.

For the past few days, the internet has been in turmoil over a new DRM policy for PS4 and PS5 games that supposedly forces you to check in online every 30 days. Without an official statement, speculation only intensified with many jumping to conclusions. Some were trying to figure out how the licensing worked under the hood, but we finally have a concrete answer now from Sony itself.

Speaking to GameSpot, an SIE rep clarified that "a one-time online check is required to confirm the game's license, after which no further check-ins are required." That means any digital game you download will remain playable even without an internet connection after 30 days; it just needs the initial check-in to convert the temporary license into a permanent one.

While the spokesperson didn't say why that was necessary, we have a pretty good idea, courtesy of DoesItPlay, who told Kotaku that it "might have to do with a refund scam." Basically, people would buy a game from the PS Store (website) and rip its license file, refund the game, but transfer the license file to an illegally acquired copy, allowing the game to bypass security restrictions and run as usual.

The license file is typically only generated once the game starts downloading, but Sony's policy dictates that you can no longer refund a game once that happens, even within the 14-day return window. So, the bad actors use the PS Store website instead, which will issue the license on a jailbroken console without blowing the no-refund fuse. The new DRM policy is specifically designed to combat such activity.

By first issuing a temporary, online-only license that requires an internet connection, Sony prevents it from getting ripped. Once the console pings Sony servers and doesn't detect any funny business, it turns the license permanent, requiring no further check-ins. These changes were instated in the March firmware update for both PS4 and PS5 consoles, which means Sony recently became aware of the exploit.

Ultimately, it seems like nothing has really changed, and Sony is just trying to bolster precautionary measures against piracy. Clearly, this was an under-the-hood change that people weren't even supposed to find out about, but the validity period labels in the UI gave it away. But Sony did let the situation balloon to the point where even the iconic PS4 game-sharing ad on YouTube filled up with comments mocking the company for becoming what it once hated.

A few days ago, reports of a new DRM policy surrounding PS4 and PS5 consoles began popping up. Many users are seeing a new 30-day online check-in requirement for some games. In the info page of an affected game, you'd see a new validity period and a "remaining time" deadline. At first, this seemed like a software bug, but now PlayStation Support has confirmed its authenticity to multiple users. PlayStation owners are furious about the change.

From what we've seen, this DRM is intended for digital game copies. It works by instating a mandatory online check-in where you have to connect to the internet within a rolling 30-day window or risk losing access to the game. Afterward, you can still restore access, but you'll need an internet connection to renew the game's license first. So far, it seems like only games installed after the recent March firmware update are affected.

Affected customers report that setting your PS4 or PS5 as the primary console doesn't alleviate this check-in policy either. No matter what, any game you download from now on will feature this new requirement, effectively eliminating the concept of offline play for even single-player titles.

Unfortunately, this is a stark reminder of modern-day ownership terms, where you don't truly own a piece of software you buy — rather, you're just licensed to use it. Such access is maintained via DRM that pings to the distributor's servers to ensure developer-side control. This means if the distributor/dev suddenly decides it doesn't want to support the software anymore, you're out of luck even though you did things the legit way.

The community reaction to this apparent change has been visceral. Many point out how Sony has forgotten where it came from, given how it mocked Microsoft for using a similar policy back in the Xbox One days. You might remember the iconic E3 2013 presentation before the PS4's launch where the company proudly said its console "won't require you to check-in online." At the time, that approach was universally applauded, which only makes the current situation more ironic.

While PlayStation Support has confirmed this new DRM policy via its chatbots, Sony hasn't officially come out with a statement so far. Some users argued that only games acquired via PlayStation Plus are subject to this DRM, while others pointed out how a dead CMOS battery can also trigger the license expiration. We can't be sure without official communication from Sony, but it's obvious that rolling this change out silently and without warning is the worst possible approach.

Developers behind the open-source PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 claim that they’ve achieved a breakthrough in emulating the PS3's Cell Broadband Engine processor, with lead developer Elad discovering previously unrecognized SPU usage patterns and writing new code paths to generate more efficient native PC output from them. The improvement benefits every game in the emulator's library, with Twisted Metal, one of the most SPU-intensive titles, showing a 5% to 7% average FPS improvement between builds v0.0.40-19096 and v0.0.40-19151.

The PS3's Cell processor paired a PowerPC-based PPU with up to seven Synergistic Processing Units, each a 128-bit SIMD co-processor with its own 256KB of local store memory. RPCS3 emulates SPU workloads by recompiling the original Cell instructions into native x86 code using LLVM and ASMJIT backends. The quality of that translation determines how much host CPU time each emulated SPU cycle consumes.

SPU emulation is the largest CPU bottleneck in RPCS3. While the PS3 could run up to six SPUs simultaneously for game workloads, each one must be recompiled and executed on a host CPU thread. Elad's contribution identifies new patterns in how PS3 games use SPU instructions and implements more efficient recompilation for them.

This means tighter host-side machine code for the same SPU workloads, reducing CPU overhead across the board. RPCS3 shared side-by-side Twisted Metal video comparisons showing the frame rate gain, and noted that the cutscene used for demonstration features dynamic lighting, NPC positioning, and environmental effects that change on every run, accounting for minor visual differences between captures.

RPCS3 said the optimization benefits all CPUs, from low-end to high-end, and cited user reports of improved audio rendering and slightly better performance in Gran Turismo 5 on a dual-core AMD Athlon 3000G, a budget APU that you’d expect to struggle with PS3 emulation.

Elad, known in RPCS3's codebase as elad335, has a long track record of SPU optimization work on the project. His June 2024 SPU optimizations delivered 30% to 100% performance gains on four-core, four-thread CPU configurations, with titles like Demon's Souls seeing doubled frame rates on constrained hardware.

In March, RPCS3 demonstrated over 1,500 FPS on Minecraft PS3 Edition's title screen, a benchmark the project used to illustrate the efficiency of its recompilation pipeline. A few weeks later, in the latest SPU improvement, the project also added new Arm64 SDOT and UDOT instruction optimizations to accelerate SPU emulation on Arm hardware, including Apple Silicon Macs and Snapdragon X laptops.

RPCS3 currently lists over 70% of the PS3's game library as playable and supports Windows, Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD, and added native Arm64 architecture support in late 2024.

The original PlayStation came out in 1994 and changed gaming forever with its focus on 3D graphics. Six years later, Sony released the "PS One," a shrunken-down model of the classic, featuring more efficient silicon that ran cooler and consumed less power. However, compared to the original, it had inferior audio processing capabilities (among other downsides), which opened the door to a best-of-both-worlds console — which is exactly what modder thedrew (also known as Secret Hobbyist on YouTube) is trying to achieve.

The video above is actually the second part in his series on creating a "PlayStation Hybrid" that combines the original PS1 and PS One to form the ultimate experience with "no cons." In a previous video, the modder redesigned the PS One motherboard and miniaturized it to about a quarter of its original size, but that setup still required a lot of external components to operate. Now, it was time to refine the work.

Secret Hobbyist decides to grab the CPU, GPU, and RAM ICs from the PS One (since they're more efficient), while lifting the audio chip, CD drive controller, and BIOS from the original PS1 motherboard. He desolders all the chips from their respective pads and resolders them onto his new custom PCB that's tailor-made for these components.

The new PCB also integrates two other crucial mods: the XStation and an HDMI daughterboard from Hispeedido. The latter is self-explanatory — it uses an FPGA to connect directly to the PS1 GPU and enable up to 1080p HDMI output, upscaled from 480p. On the other hand, the XStation interfaces with the console's CD drive, essentially replacing it by allowing you to play ROMs off of a microSD card.

After all the soldering was done and the custom PCB was ready, it was time to power on the Hybrid PlayStation. Since this is still an ongoing project, there was no 3D-printed shell or anything like that; the modder used alligator clips to directly inject power into the PCB's voltage rails. On the opposite end was an HDMI cable, with a DualShock controller connected up front, and the entire setup came to life.

The YouTuber showed off a bunch of games, all running smoothly with a clean HDMI output that even had scanlines built overlayed atop the picture, similar to a CRT shader. The whole motherboard draws less than 2 watts on its own, working perfectly at 3V, so it's incredibly efficient and can branch off into a separate handheld project as well.

A few wires are still present for the controller and Memory Card connector (not SD card) for now, but Secret Hobbyist is working toward integrating those into the PCB as well. Whatever the final form of this project turns out to be, these are relatively small quirks that can even be addressed within the chassis. All the important work is already done, and Hybrid PlayStation will soon become a finished product.

If you're interested in console modding, someone recently transformed a PS4 Slim into a handheld with an OLED screen, while an entire PC was fit inside an Xbox One S. If you like to software-mod your devices then you'll love seeing Linux running on a PS5, but if you don't care about PC gaming and just want all the consoles, check out the "Ningtendo PXBOX 5" that combines a PS5, Xbox Series X, and a Switch 2 in one.

The global component crisis has reached an inflection point where even consoles, historically a bastion of affordability against the fluctuating PC market, are now affected. Sony has just announced that all PlayStation 5 models are receiving price hikes, going into effect from April 2, 2026. It's your last chance to buy a PS5 or a PS Portal, because they're about to get $100 to $150 more expensive in just a few days.

• Buy PlayStation 5 Digital (slim)
• Buy PlayStation 5 Disc (slim)
• Buy PlayStation 5 Pro
• Buy PlayStation Portal

The base PlayStation 5 with a disc drive is now $649.99, up from $549.99, while the digital edition will now cost $599.99, up from $499.99. Both of those face only $100 hikes, but the PlayStation 5 Pro is $150 more expensive now, going from $749.99 to 899.99. Remember, the PS5 Pro doesn't come with a disc drive either. The PlayStation Portal, on the other hand, is now $249.99, up $50 from its original $199.99 price.

Sony says these changes were necessary given the current economic climate and that the company understands the community vitriol that'll stem from this decision. The PlayStation 5 already received another price hike in August 2025, where all models were made $50 more expensive. The new prices announced today are sure to upset many, but they won't surprise most of us.

This announcement comes at a time when most of the world, not just the tech industry, is reeling from an economic and political crisis tied to the Iran-U.S. war. The Strait of Hormuz, a major trade route in the Gulf region responsible for carrying a large chunk of the global oil supply, is still closed. The conflict is showing no signs of fizzling out.

The chipmaking sector is on the verge of facing a helium crisis, impacting the manufacturing process of silicon used in all sorts of devices around us. That includes the APUs Sony puts inside its PlayStation 5 consoles, and the future chip that'll power the PS6 and Microsoft's Project Helix. Let's not even get started on the memory shortage that the AI boom already caused, driving RAM and SSD prices up by as much as 500%.

Prices for PlayStation 5 consoles have risen in the UK, Europe, and Japan as well, so countries that import units from there will also experience the inflation soon. In Europe, the PS5 Pro will cost €899.99 from next week; that translates to a whopping $1,037. In the UK, at least, Sony offers PS5 rental services through a third-party vendor, and we assume they'll start to get a lot more popular now.

We've previously talked about how the upcoming Steam Machine isn't trying to hit console-level prices, but seeing what's happening to those in real time, one can only wonder the situation Valve is in.

The PlayStation platform will reportedly receive frame-generation technology, according to the console’s architect. Mark Cerny, who is the lead system architect for the PS4 and the PS5, said in an interview with Digital Foundry that machine-learning-powered frame generation will arrive on Sony’s gaming console. However, it’s unlikely to arrive this year, and gamers seeking higher FPS on the same hardware will likely have to wait until 2027 (or longer) to achieve that capability.

Cerny said in the interview, “The new PSSR uses the same core co-developed algorithm as FSR Redstone’s Upscaling.” AMD released the latest version of its upscaling and frame-generation technology in late 2025 to compete with DLSS 4, with FSR 4.1 dropping recently for RX 9000-series GPUs. The PlayStation architect said that AMD and Sony also co-developed the technology behind FSR Frame Generation and that “an equivalent frame generation library should be seen at some point on PlayStation platforms.”

However, Cerny was quiet when asked whether frame generation would hit the PlayStation 5 Pro or the upcoming PlayStation 6, which will have GPU upgrades that will enhance AI-rendering performance. “All I can say is that we have no more releases planned for this year,” he told the publication.

AMD is working with Sony to develop the next-generation PlayStation, which typically launches about 6 to 7 years after the current one. The company released the PS5 in 2020, with the PS5 Pro following in 2024. Because of this, many expect the PlayStation 6 to launch in 2027. Unfortunately, there are rumors that the company might delay the console until 2028 or even 2029 due to the ongoing chip shortage.

Some hardcore enthusiasts dismiss AI-powered technologies like super resolution and frame generation, calling them “fake pixels” or “fake frames.” However, this is one way manufacturers can deliver higher resolutions and faster frame rates without resorting to beefier, more expensive hardware that requires much more power. More importantly, the technology has improved over the years. Earlier versions of DLSS and FSR come with several downsides, like ghosting; newer releases have fixed those issues, with only the most keen-eyed gamers and pixel peepers able to spot the imperfections. So, by adding these machine-learning-powered features and pairing them with appropriate hardware, console gamers might finally be able to achieve the visual performance of a high-end gaming PC without shelling out the cash for one.

U.S. gaming retailer GameStop has “officially” declared that the Sony PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii U are, “for all practical purposes, now officially retro consoles.” This new classification, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, references the consoles’ age, lack of Fortnite, and their use of component cables as justification.

This isn’t just a joke, however. The change in policy means that gamers are now free to trade in these old timers, even if they’re defective or “aesthetically unfortunate,” as long as they power on. These consoles will likely go on sale in larger stores that cater to displaying old school consoles and games, as well as via its website, with GameStop also referencing other “beloved legacy hardware” like the Sega Saturn and Nintendo DS on its list.

The company shared its message in a letter shared on its social media channels. In the message, GameStop also confirmed that from now until March 21, anyone who trades in a Wii U, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or any other retro console, game, or accessory will gain an extra 10% in trade credit on the transaction.

While confirming that these consoles are “still very cool” and that anyone who owned one at launch is “absolutely not old,” which is a relief to this writer, who happens to be among them, it’s not a huge surprise to see GameStop do this. Both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 launched in 2005 and 2006, respectively, and while the Wii U launched in 2012, that console has also been long superseded by the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. All three consoles are products of a different era, and modern gaming has simply moved on.

Of course, a retro console isn’t the only way to play games from this era. PlayStation 3 emulation has long been possible, although tricky to optimize, while emulators for the Xbox 360 and Wii U have also grown in strength and quality over the years. However, the best option remains, in many cases, to run these games on their native consoles —as long as they still work, that is.

Old or not, there’s likely to be a significant number of still-working PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U consoles out there ready for a second life, and it looks like GameStop is preparing to support the transition. You can view GameStop's full list of retro consoles, games, and accessories over at GameStop’s Retro website.

Unless you're a low-level developer yourself, you probably don't realize how complicated emulator development is. To be frank, the RPCS3 emulator for PlayStation 3 is probably one of the most tightly-optimized pieces of software being actively developed today. Case in point: the project's official X account just posted a screenshot of the app running the PlayStation 3 version of Minecraft and achieving some 1558.84 FPS on the title screen.

There are a lot of "yeah buts" about this result. It's Minecraft, and more than that, it's not even in-game; it's the title screen. The thing you have to understand is that this isn't just "running Minecraft at over 1500 FPS." This is "pretending to be a PS3 that is running Minecraft at over 1500 FPS." That is an entirely different task, and in an entirely other galaxy of complexity.

As a refresher, the PlayStation 3 was released in November 2006. It's a game console that features a graphics processor, the Reality Synthesizer or RSX, that is a very close relation (though not identical to) an NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX, albeit with half the memory bandwidth and a few other tweaks. That GPU is mated to the IBM-Sony-Toshiba Cell Broadband Engine, a single-core PowerPC CPU with eight "Synergistic Processing Elements" (SPEs) hanging off the back of it, though only seven are functional in the final design.

So, a single-core CPU with SIMD and an old GPU. Easy to emulate on modern hardware, right? No. The design of the PS3 is legendarily idiosyncratic. The RSX and the Cell communicate with each other over a proprietary bus called FlexIO, which is extremely fast—sometimes. For certain transfers, it can be as slow as 16 megabytes/second. Complicating matters, the latency of a FlexIO operation varies depending on whether you're reading or writing, and which device you're doing either to and from. This matters because software is programmed to expect a certain latency, and screwing it up could crash a program or cause other unexpected behavior.

Moreover, the Cell's SPEs are not like a modern CPU's SIMD units. They're somewhere between that and discrete CPU cores, with their own 256K of "Local Storage" and their own memory controller that works independently of the "SPU", which is the actual functional unit inside the SPE. The SPUs can only work on data resident in their own Local Store, but loading data in and out of the Local Store has to be done manually by the developer by sending commands to the Memory Fabric Controller inside each of the six usable SPEs (one is reserved for OS functions).

Worse than that, the SPUs are spectacularly weird processors. They can only work with just a few data types, and they do things that modern processors simply aren't capable of without considerable work shuffling bits around; a single instruction explodes into dozens. In particular, the SPUs perform a lot of 128-bit atomic operations that require tons of complex, tightly-optimized code to emulate both quickly and accurately on x86-64 CPUs, and that's to say nothing of trying to perform said emulation with a "close-enough" latency. Recently-added instructions as part of the AVX-512 ISA extensions help with this, but don't fully resolve it.

All this to say that yes, it's Minecraft's title screen. It's Minecraft's title screen coming out of an application that's emulating all this arcane PlayStation 3 hardware within less than two-thirds of a millisecond (0.64ms). I wasn't kidding when I said RPCS3 is one of the most heavily optimized pieces of software on the planet. The recompiler is doing things normal developers would stare at in befuddlement for speed.

Still, the replies to the Twitter post are largely unappreciative. It's easy to understand how they feel; when a game from 2009 won't run smoothly on your 2026 hardware, it feels ridiculous—although we have to point out that actual 2026 hardware generally will run everything just fine; even God of War III and Metal Gear Solid 4 are mostly playable on the best CPUs for gaming.

The simple reality is that the PS3 was a beautiful disaster of a machine, and the way it does things is just fundamentally different from the way we do things in x86-land. The fact that the app exists at all is a testament to the hard work put in by kd-11, Nekotekina, Whatcookie, and the dozens upon dozens of other contributors to the open-source project. Our very humble hats off to the team for donating countless hours of their free time to push the state of PS3 game preservation ever forward.

One of the upsides of playing on PC is the sheer variety of sales and discounts you can accumulate across different marketplaces. In contrast, a console — like the PS5, is locked down to just the first-party PS Store, which doesn't operate as generously. However, it seems that Sony might be shifting gears on this avenue as a new report from PSprices claims that the company is now experimenting with dynamic pricing, or more specifically, dynamic discounts.

According to the outlet, Sony has been running A/B testing on the PlayStation Store for more than three months. The test reportedly started with 50 games in 30 regions and has expanded to 150 titles across 68 regions now, including Sony's own first-party games. Certain users have been seeing lower prices for these games in the PS Store, varying from a 10% discount to all the way up to a 17.6% discount.

During sales where everyone can enjoy price cuts, some players were targeted with even more aggressive discounts; Helldivers 2 was off 25%, but for users participating in the A/B testing, they saw up to a 56% reduction in prices. Games like The Last of Us, God of War, and Gran Turismo 7, all important PlayStation exclusives, along with third-party titles like Rockstar's RDR2, were part of this testing.

During routine tracking, PSprice discovered what it calls 'unusual offer structures' with never-before-seen identifiers like "IPT_PILOT," "IPT_OPR_TESING" in the PlayStation API. That led them to discover certain listings were dynamically altered. Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Africa are all participating regions where users are seeing personalized discounts, while America and Japan are notably omitted.

To be clear, if the experiment is limited to just discounts, then it's technically not dynamic pricing because, by definition, that involves price hikes as well. Think of concert tickets and how they become more expensive when demand is high. That predatory tactic is why dynamic pricing is very controversial amongst customers, but if Sony is just offering discounts to incentivize sales, that's different.

Steam has regional pricing for developing or third-world countries with weaker currencies. A $60 game might sell for half of that in Pakistan or Brazil, and even upcoming releases on pre-order will be discounted to ensure gamers in those regions can afford them. Sony's A/B testing looks more similar to this, especially because the United States is not part of the experiment.

Sony fortifying its home base by offering more and more PC-like features doesn't come as a surprise when the company is widely reported to be shifting back to a console-first strategy. New first-party exclusives are likely not coming to PC anymore, and with the next-gen Xbox running Steam to offer better, more personalized sales anyway, it's only sensible that the Japanese giant gets in on the action, too.

In light of Sony's heavily-rumored decision to pivot away from PC releases, one security engineer took matters into his own hands and turned the PS5 into a PC. Andy Nguyen ported Linux to a PlayStation 5 console, hacking through several layers of hardware and software barriers thanks to full-chain exploits. Not only did he manage to get Linux running, but the modded console actually performs well in games.

As the video below shows, that's a PS5 Slim running full-fat Linux with no illusions. Now that it's a PC, it can do anything a standard computer can, which includes running GTA V Enhanced Edition via Steam. It's set to 1440p resolution, with ray tracing enabled as denoted by the "High RT" preset in settings. The gameplay is steady at a smooth 60 FPS with barely any fluctuation, and even the sound is working.

Andy says this Linux-PS5 (LinuxStation 5?) supports 4K HDMI and audio output, and all USB ports are working. The CPU is sitting at 3.2 GHz, while the GPU is at 2.0 GHz, but both can go higher — the CPU can boost to 3.5 GHz, and the GPU can boost to 2.23 GHz. But the PS5 Slim doesn't have the thermal headroom to keep up with those numbers and simply overheats if pushed any harder.

To achieve this, Andy used a PS5 running significantly older firmware, between 1.0 and 2.0, that was released around five years ago. The author used the 'Byepervisor' exploit to say bye to the hypervisor Sony uses on its console, gaining kernel-level control to run unsigned code. GPU acceleration is still incomplete, and some functionality remains limited, but the community's efforts are impressive nonetheless, as Andy demonstrates.

To be clear, GTA V Enhanced Edition, the game Andy tested on this, is natively available on PS5 as well, but where's the fun in that? Under the hood, the PS5 is essentially a locked-down x86-based PC that's very similar in architecture to a modern computer. If Sony's hypervisor weren't in place, you could probably boot Linux directly on it. In fact, Sony used to allow that back in the early PS3 days as "OtherOS."

In a way, this is a tease of what the upcoming Steam Machine will be since it'll feature similar performance and run SteamOS, based on Linux. Through Proton, it can play pretty much any Windows game, sometimes with even a slight FPS bump. The Linux-PS5, therefore, is like the best of both worlds because it can go back to being a regular exclusives-playing machine after the tinkering phase is over.

Sony has released PlayStation exclusives on PC for a few years, starting with Horizon: Zero Dawn back in 2020. At the time, the gap between its PS4 release and its PC launch was 3 years, but those windows have shrunk considerably, with just 8 months between Death Stranding 2's debut on both platforms. Now, it seems like Sony is reconsidering this strategy from the ground up.

Bloomberg reporter Jason Schrier, speaking on the Triple Click podcast, revealed that Sony is "backing away from putting their exclusive console stuff like traditional single-player stuff on PC." He implied that Sony no longer sees PC as an important outlet for some of its titles and is ready to relinquish the revenue generated from the platform (which apparently wasn't much to begin with).

PlayStation is renowned for its single-player story games, such as God of War and The Last of Us franchises. Still, the company also produces and/or distributes multiplayer titles like Arrowhead's highly-popular Helldivers 2. It's only the former that Sony seems to be pivoting on, deciding to keep its AAA exclusives exclusive to the PS5, while live-service games will continue to be available as usual.

"Sony is shifting their PC strategy, absolutely," said NateTheHate on the ResetEra forums, backing up Schrier's comments. Another prominent leaker, SneakersSO, also agreed. If that's not enough, even Digital Foundry's John Linneman said he has "an inkling that [they’re] pulling away from PC," going on to add, "PC has become less important" for Sony under the current leadership.

Schrier brought up Insomniac's Wolverine, which is due for release this September on PS5, citing it as an example of Sony's new strategy — that game may never come out on PC. "I'm not sure how successful those PC releases were," said Schrier, implying that they didn't sell well enough to justify keeping first-party titles on the platform. Sony can afford to lose that audience to focus on fortifying its home base.

That audience has been very vocal about this development online. Scouring through a few subreddits presents wildly different perspectives on Sony's purported decision. Zooming in on r/pcmasterrace, the comments unanimously infer they would never buy a console and that Sony has foolishly given up the chance to potentially recoup their investment via a PC release. That's precisely the point.

Not everyone has a competent gaming PC, and many can't build one these days, even if they wanted to. Consoles are still a significantly cheaper entry point (barring online play fees), and Sony wants to ensure people make the jump quicker and more easily, not leaving the option open that PS5 prestige will eventually land on PC. The audience that's open to exploring different platforms is Sony's fishing ground.

The timing of the decision makes sense when you look around the gaming landscape. Nintendo is an indirect competitor, and Xbox seems pretty much done for with Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond leaving the outfit. Sony has no real rival except for PC, and with a global component crisis, even that seems to have sorted itself out for now. Valve's upcoming console-esque Steam Machine is not even in the same price bracket.

With the next-gen Xbox essentially being a PC, PlayStation wants to stand tall as the only option (left) in its class. It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume the Japanese giant doesn't want people on the Green Team easily playing its first-party exclusives, no matter the nuances of the platform. The PS5-PC "Cross-Buy" feature we reported on earlier also seems to have been cancelled now. In addition, Sony recently shut down Bluepoint Games, its in-house remaster/remake specialist.

Play Has No Limits — except if you're trying to buy a console. Amidst the dire wastelands of the tech industry, Sony has decided that enjoying its PlayStation 5 console should remain its top priority. Even if you can't pay for one outright, the company will now lease it to you every month with recurring payments, thanks to a local collaboration with Raylo in the United Kingdom called "Flex."

Raylo is a "tech subscription service" in the UK that allows customers to lease all sorts of stuff, including TVs, phones, appliances, and consoles. PS5s were already available on Raylo's site, but this new program, in partnership with PlayStation Direct, makes the process even more accessible. In fact, even this offer has been active since at least March 2025, so the company is simply readvertising here.

Instead of buying from third-party vendors or retailers like Amazon, you can buy PlayStation hardware "directly" from Sony via its online store. Every item sold here is authentic and official, adding another layer of legitimacy to the purchase. Raylo's leasing partnership is limited to PlayStation UK.

Speaking of which, the offer includes four options: 12 months, 24 months, 36 months, and an indefinite rolling plan. The longest lease is the cheapest, starting from £9.95 per month ($13.55) for the base PS5 Slim across 36 months. The most expensive plan is the flexible one, where you pay a flat £19.50 per month ($26.56) for the same PS5 Slim and £37.49 per month ($51.06) for the 2 TB PS5 Pro. Prices vary across hardware.

You can choose from a range of devices, including the PS5 Pro, as well as newer additions such as PSVR2 and the PlayStation Portal. The DualSense Edge controller, for instance, can be leased for as little as £6.50 ($8.85) per month for 36 months. Regardless of whatever item or plan you choose, at the end of the contract, you have to return the console or "upgrade for free."

That means this is not a financing situation; you're not paying installments as part of a payment plan to own the console at the end. You're simply renting it for the time being, but Raylo says you can contact them to discuss buyouts as well. On the other hand, Microsoft offers a similar leasing solution through "Xbox All Access," but that option lets you keep the console after you've fully paid it off.

Now, some quick math shows that renting a PS5 Slim over 36 months at £9.95 per month would total £358.2 ($487.89) — that's not too far from the console's upfront cost, and it's been on sale for less before. Perhaps short-term renting is the best use for this service: you can simply get the console for a month when a new exclusive comes out, play it, then return it as part of the 20 quid rolling plan.

Of course, then there's the doom and gloom of it all. Everything is a subscription service nowadays; you will own nothing,g and you will be happy. Beyond the obvious long-term disadvantages of this service, it's not a bad deal entirely. Even the maximum contract length of 3 years makes sense if you plan to upgrade to the next-gen PS6 at the end. Raylo says you can also keep paying after the lease ends if you don't want to return or upgrade the console.

The PlayStation 5 ROM keys leak has ignited a frenzy, signaling that a firmware 12.00 jailbreak for the PlayStation 5 is imminent. Gezine — a leading developer and security researcher in the jailbreak community — confirmed that a physical disc copy of Star Wars Racer Revenge is now essential for the exploit. The revelation has sent prices rocketing to all-time highs, prompting jailbreakers and gamers to go on a buying spree.

Star Wars Racer Revenge, which sports the CUSA-03474 game code, hides a rare vulnerability that lets developers inject code directly into the PlayStation system—an exploit that’s quietly evaded patches since the game’s 2002 PlayStation 2 debut. Critically, only the PlayStation 4 physical edition (not the PlayStation 2 original) is vulnerable to the jailbreak. That version was released as an ultra-limited run of just 8,500 copies worldwide, making it a hot ticket for jailbreakers.

The game’s usual $59.99 price tag has vanished, replaced by empty shelves at every major U.S. retailer—including Best Buy and Amazon. The only way to snag a copy now is through resale platforms like eBay, where opportunistic scalpers and savvy collectors are driving prices sky-high. As of now, 80 copies are up for grabs on eBay in the U.S., with jaw-dropping price tags ranging from $230 to $399.99. Before the PlayStation 5 jailbreak news, the same game was going for as low as $20 on eBay.

The jailbreak isn't available to the public yet — Gezine is still refining the code before making it available. The developer acknowledged that the requirement to use a specific, ultra-rare game for the jailbreak has frustrated many in the community. Star Wars Racer Revenge is notoriously hard to find. Gezine also cautioned enthusiasts not to expect a BD-JB exploit just yet.

The skyrocketing prices for Star Wars Racer Revenge may only be a temporary phenomenon. Once early adopters finish jailbreaking their consoles, many will probably resell their copies, which could bring prices back down to earth. If you’re not desperate to be among the first to join the jailbreak scene, waiting it out might be the smartest move.

But for those who want instant access, your best shot could be to scour local game shops, retro stores, or check listings on platforms like Facebook Marketplace. Don’t count on big retailers—Best Buy, Amazon, or even Playasia—to restock anytime soon, as this ultra-rare game remains firmly in the hands of early jailbreakers and opportunistic resellers.

The PlayStation 5’s ROM keys have allegedly been leaked, meaning anyone who can get their hands on the hex strings now has the hardware code that will allow jailbreakers to try decrypting and analyzing the console’s bootloader. According to The Cybersec Guru, this is an unpatchable problem for Sony, because these keys cannot be changed and are burned directly in the APU. The only way that the company can invalidate the leaked codes is to replace the chips on yet-to-be-manufactured units, meaning consoles that are already in the wild could possibly take advantage of future jailbreaks stemming from the use of these leaked codes.

When you turn on the PS5, its CPU runs the BootROM code that’s baked in the chip and uses the ROM keys to ensure that Bootloader is valid. Now that the ROM keys have been leaked (and assuming they are valid), a hacker could then decrypt and study the official bootloader and potentially use that as a starting point to understand how the PS5’s boot system works. Since the issue is at a hardware level, Sony would not be able to release an update that will stop consoles with the compromised chip from loading kernel-level exploits in the future, should one become available.

Note that this leak does not automatically mean that we will see jailbroken PS5s on the market right now, especially as Sony has other security measures that hackers need to bypass. However, the appearance of these codes means that one of the biggest security features of the console has likely already been compromised, making it easier for those working on creating custom firmware to have a deeper understanding of how the console works and use that knowledge to maybe build a modified (or even a totally different) operating system for it.

This isn’t the first time that Sony has had to deal with a security crisis with the popular PlayStation family. The PlayStation 3 was previously hit with a vulnerability when the company made a mistake with their cryptography on the console, allowing users to install homebrew software and allow piracy and cheating on popular titles. We also saw this with the Nintendo Switch, when a flaw in the Nvidia Tegra X1 chip that it used let tinkerers run Linux on the handheld.

Sony has yet to release a statement regarding the hack, but the company could release revised hardware in the near future to rectify the situation. Another solution is to issue a recall for all existing PlayStation 5 consoles on the market and replace their motherboard to change the hardware codes, but this is unlikely to happen as it’s either going to be too costly for the company or gamers would be unwilling to pay extra for a mistake that was ultimately not theirs.

The original PlayStation wasn’t built to be particularly compact, but later revisions like the PS One managed to get pretty small, while retaining CD media compatibility. However, console hacker Thedrew has managed to condense that already dinky PS One revision motherboard down to less than a quarter of its prior size. This custom PlayStation motherboard is the smallest ever made, according to Hackster, and perfectly timed to celebrate today's 31st anniversary of the console's release.

Thedrew’s creation is an “Original hardware for the win” design. Sure, it could have gone much smaller if the project had been propped up by an FPGA, a modern SoC with an emulator, or some similar electronic/software concoction. This is the real deal, though, with original PS One rev PM-41 chip packages onboard. In other words, it uses Sony’s original CPU, GPU, SPU, RAM, and BIOS chips.

With these components in hand, Thedrew designed the most compact supporting motherboard his skills and resources would allow. The current working model is a quarter size of the PS One mobo, says the console hacker in the above video. Actually, Rev.1 of the compacted mobo measured just 73 x 59mm. That gives us the following rough comparison:

• Original PlayStation motherboard – about 10 x 7-inches
• PS One motherboard – about 7.5 x 5.5-inches
• Thedrew’s PS One redesign – less than 3 x 2.5-inches

Now that the custom PlayStation motherboard is ready and working, we eagerly await the next steps from Thedrew. Towards the end of the video, he says, “now we have a working prototype, let’s make it even better.” This work should find its way into a range of projects under the umbrella term of “The PS One Redesign Series.”

The original PlayStation's anniversary

31 years ago today, Sony released its first blockbuster games console to the unsuspecting public. Commonly abbreviated as the PS, PSX, or PS1, this affordable box of wonders sparked the immersive 3D gaming home console revolution. The PS One (year 2000) was a significantly smaller footprint console that played the same first-gen games.

In 1994. Sony's $299 TV-connected gaming system clearly outshone most contemporary PCs in 3D prowess. Remember, it wasn’t until late 1996 that the legendary 3dfx Voodoo appeared on the scene to bring new levels of 3D realism to PC gaming. Coincidentally, the Voodoo would also cost $299 at launch. You'll have to pay a lot more to buy the best PC gaming graphics card in 2025.

About this time last year, we reported on the new-improved grooved heatsink design that was discovered under the PlayStation 5 Pro’s cooling apparatus. Now these same improvements have reportedly dripped down to the mainstream. Specifically, the same style of heatsink has been spotted in the latest revision of the PS5 Slim.

Click 'See more' to reveal Modyfikator89's image gallery and further replies.

Console modder and fixer Modyfikator89 on X appears to have been the first to spot this revision by Sony, sharing some images to verify his observations.

The console enthusiast reckons this “silent upgrade” from Sony is “the MOST important hardware update of the year.” Moreover, he goes on to remark that this is an early upgrade to the PS5 Slim cooling system, modeled on the Pro’s, and one which represents “a GIANT step for console longevity and stability.”

Benefits of the change for ‘standard’ PS5 buyers will be threefold, reckons the PS5 hardware expert. In addition to better thermals and thus system stability, the new consoles starting with model CFI-2116 should be “free from the metal leak issue that affected older PS5 FAT/ OG and Slim CFI2016 from 2023,” comments Modyfikator89.

In our earlier coverage of a very similar-looking heatsink design, which debuted last year, we noted that the machined grooves were expected to reduce the chance of heatsink dry spots and oxidation. That’s an occurrence which seemed all too familiar to expert repairers like TronicsFix. Indeed, it became part of PS5 lore that vertical standing PS5 consoles would inevitably suffer a liquid metal leak. Sony's feedback from the Pro rollout must have signalled this leaky issue had been tamed. But since this is a "silent upgrade," we might never know the stats behind the engineering change.

Modyfikator89 seems rather pleased with the heatsink upgrade, declaring that it represents a “huge engineering victory,” and that the new Slim is “the most stable PS5 you can buy right now.” It is certainly good to see these small refinements continue, as the PS5’s successor is probably still three to four years away. As such, some would say this generation is still in its prime – especially with launch issues, and niggles ironed out, and the game library and system affordability being better than ever.

Back in 2021, AMD's crypto-mining-focused BC-250 graphics card, powered by the Sony PlayStation 5’s APU instead of regular GPU chips, started popping up on eBay for around $500. Fast forward to the present day, and similar units are now available in China for as low as £96, or about $120. One such unit was ordered and procured by the creator of the YouTube channel Budget-Builds Official, notably sold as the “PS5 graphics card.”

The unit received by the YouTuber indeed looked like a GPU; however, in reality, it was a server-style motherboard with a large passive heatsink, power and fan headers, I/O ports including DisplayPort, USB 2.0/3.0 ports, Ethernet, as well as a CMOS battery slot. The unit also included a standard 8-pin PCIe connector to feed power and an I/O shield. According to the YouTuber, at its core, the custom board included the BC-250, a cut-down version of the APU used on the PS5, with six Zen 2 cores (compared to eight on the console), 12 threads, 24 compute units (compared to 36 on the console), and 16GB of GDDR6 memory. Interestingly, the board did not include any provision for standard DDR memory; instead, the GDDR6 memory was divided equally between the system and the Radeon GPU.

To power up the board, a standard 1,000W PSU was used along with an SSD, peripherals, monitor, CMOS battery, and a standard 120mm fan to actively cool the heatsink. To the YouTuber’s surprise, the janky system came to life, booting directly into the BIOS. After loading Linux, initial testing with Half-Life 2 and 3DMark’s Time Spy and Fire Strike benchmarks failed, likely due to issues with Linux drivers.

After some tinkering, the YouTuber was eventually able to run Half-Life 2 at over 200 FPS, however, 3DMark benchmarks did not show any signs of stability. Additionally, more games were tested, including GTA V Enhanced Edition, which ran at an average of 65 FPS at 1440p high settings and 25–30 FPS with ray tracing enabled. Counter-Strike 2 rendered fairly well at 1440p in a competitive setting, averaging 130 FPS. Surprisingly, demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Hitman 3 also managed to run at 1080p high settings with 42 FPS and 47 FPS, respectively.

While the performance of the custom BC-250 board may not be able to replace your Nvidia RTX or AMD Radeon GPU-powered gaming rig any time soon, it is interesting to see a PS5 APU converted into a working desktop. At $120, it might be one of the cheapest gaming PCs out there, but in reality, it is truly a collector’s item and highlights how inventive PC enthusiasts can get when given the right hardware and a bit of determination.

The past few years have witnessed a shift in Sony's strategy for first-party exclusives, as more and more titles make their way onto PC. While there's no sign of those titles also showing up on Xbox, the Japanese game company seems comfortable giving them up to Microsoft's other baby: Windows. And now we have our first look at what could be PlayStation's version of Xbox Play Anywhere — "Cross-Buy," a service that will let you purchase one game and own it across multiple platforms.

The news was first spotted by Amethyst on X, and now popular leaker billbil-kun on Dealabs is corroborating that they've found a "Cross-Buy" option in PSN, along with a "PS5 / PC" icon — both hints suggesting the new feature could be dropping soon. Billbil-kun reportedly managed to access the CSS files for PlayStation Store's website and discover a reference to "crossbuy-tag," which was recently added in June 2025.

Sony used to have a Cross-Buy feature back in the day, where you could buy one game and own it across PS3, PS4, and PS Vita, but it's been dormant for some time. The June 2025 date confirms that we're looking at something new. Since it was found alongside a PS5 / PC logo, it's pretty easy to connect the dots and conclude that you may soon be able to buy a game on PS5 and also own it on PC.

Microsoft already does this with its Xbox Play Anywhere program, in which buying the game on Xbox also gets you the Microsoft Store version. But Sony doesn't have a native PC launcher — it relies on Epic Games and Steam to distribute exclusive games, so it'll be interesting to see what sort of licensing deals are chartered up to make this whole ordeal work.

The other, more exciting possibility could pertain to the long-rumored PS6 handheld in the works. Since Cross-Buy is already associated with the PS Vita in some way, a spiritual successor building upon its legacy would be the perfect time to revive this branding. Realistically speaking, such functionality wouldn't be added in the files this early for a product that's at least two years away. Only time will tell if Cross-Buy extends to the next generation, though, while we wait for it to show up in the current one.

The creator of the Tiny PS5, Not From Concentrate, has announced a new initiative, the Tiny PS5 Redux. In its most recent installment, which offers guidance on reducing the size of your PlayStation 5, the YouTube channel has supplied a comprehensive tutorial, including a parts list and 3D-printable files, available for $10, enabling you to replicate the Tiny PS5 Redux.

The Tiny PS5 Redux is comparatively less extravagant than the water-cooled PS5 Slim from several years prior, yet it is more practical. Nonetheless, the project is still a challenging undertaking due to the significant time and financial resources required. Beyond repurposing the PlayStation 5's existing hardware, it is necessary to procure additional components, such as a CPU air cooler, cooling fans, and a FlexATX power supply. This project is exclusively compatible with the CFI-1215A and CFI-1215B models of the PlayStation 5. Nevertheless, one advantage of 3D printing is that you can modify the design to accommodate other revisions of the PlayStation 5.

The project fundamentally converts the PlayStation 5 into a portable mini-PC, featuring a high-quality exterior with a premium aluminum body and a Cerakote finish. Cerakote, a ceramic-based coating, is frequently utilized in firearms for its protective properties against corrosion and impacts. Although it increases the overall project cost, it is an excellent choice for safeguarding the exterior of the Tiny PS5 Redux, particularly when it is frequently transported between locations.

As its name suggests, the primary goal of the Tiny PS5 Redux is to reduce the PlayStation 5's size so it's easier to carry around. The device has a volume of six liters, which is 19% more compact than the PlayStation 5 Slim and up to 43% smaller than the original PlayStation 5.

The Tiny PS5 Redux is not only more portable but also incorporates several enhancements, including improved heat dissipation and wireless connectivity. The PlayStation 5's PCB is positioned between two custom-printed heat sink plates. Additionally, a low-profile Alpenföhn Black Ridge CPU cooler, equipped with two slim 120mm Noctua Chromax fans, maintains optimal thermal performance for the custom AMD 6nm Obreron SoC. Cool air enters the device through the rear, while three 60mm Noctua fans expel hot air through the side panel.

The original antennas on the PlayStation 5 are located within the Tiny PS5 Redux, but they connect to a pair of external antennas to enhance connectivity. Due to spatial constraints, an M.2 extension cable links to a 3D-printed M.2 bracket, facilitating the use of the best PS5 SSDs with M.2 2280 support and a maximum capacity of up to 8TB. A 500W GaN power supply powers the Tiny PS5 Redux to ensure sufficient electrical provision.

According to the modder's benchmark results, the Tiny PS5 Redux pulled around 220W in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 with temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius. It ran cooler and drew less power than the creator's original Tiny PS5 project (220 to 225W and 56 degrees Celsius) and a stock PlayStation 5 (230 to 235W and 59 degrees Celsius).

We are approaching the PlayStation 5's fifth anniversary in just one week. Although Sony has introduced numerous special, game-themed editions of the PlayStation 5, including the PlayStation 5 30th Anniversary Edition, the Tiny PS5 Redux is definitely in a class of its own. It's a great way to give your PlayStation 5 a distinctive makeover, provided you have the funds and access to the right equipment.

The rumors (via billbil-kun) regarding Sony's revision of the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition have been confirmed through various overseas Amazon listings. Although the new CFI-2116 revision maintains the original pricing, Sony has decreased the internal storage from 1TB to 825GB, representing a 17.5% reduction in capacity. This change further emphasizes the importance for owners to upgrade their consoles with one of the best PS5 SSDs.

The PlayStation 5 has been on the market for nearly five years, during which time the console has undergone multiple hardware revisions. These modifications have varied from minor optimizations, such as improvements in heatsink design, to substantial hardware alterations, including a die shrink, culminating in the transition to the PlayStation 5 Slim models. Consequently, the most recent CFI-2116 revision feels like a regression.

The original PlayStation 5, colloquially referred to now as the PlayStation 5 Fat, was equipped with 825GB of internal storage, of which approximately 650GB was accessible to the user, depending on system updates and other variables. The shift to the PlayStation 5 Slim introduced numerous enhancements, including an increase to 1TB of storage, providing the user with approximately 850GB of available space (subject to similar factors).

The CFI-2116 revision, also known as "Chassis E," marks the return of the 825GB SSD, which Sony advertises on the new packaging. Consumers are losing close to 200GB, or 24%, of usable, high-speed storage with the latest revision. You could argue that 200GB isn't a lot, and that's true in a way since some AAA titles — specifically, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War — are pushing over 300GB of installed size. But under normal circumstances, 200GB should be enough for one or two games.

Gaming accessory maker Turtle Beach has announced the Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded, a new modular game controller under its Victrix esports brand. Successor to the original Victrix Pro BFG, the new controller builds on the design by Performance Designed Products (PDP), the manufacturer behind the original model which was acquired by Turtle Beach in 2024.

The latest Reloaded model now comes with a reconfigured Fightpad module with improved ergonomics, as well as updated Hall Effect thumb sticks and triggers. The company will be offering it in black and white color variants with a dedicated model for Xbox which is compatible with Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows. An officially licensed PlayStation version will also be available, offering compatibility with the PS5 and PS4 consoles alongside Windows, again.

The modular aspect of the Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded controller allows it to adapt to various genres and play style, including fighting games, first-person shooters, and RPGs. Users can swap between three modules and 11 interchangeable components including various thumb sticks, a selection of D-pads, and thumb stick gates that can attach to the bottom of a joystick or thumb stick limiting the directions in which the stick can move.

The controller also comes with patented 5-stop hall-effect clutch triggers with a Hair-Trigger mode that allows adjustable sensitivity, which makes it suitable for FPS gamers. Additionally, there is a 6-button Fightpad module which features Kailh microswitches that are claimed to deliver tournament-level accuracy.

The included USB Type-A dongle offers low-latency and a range of up to 30-feet, while the 2,000 mAh inbuilt-battery offers up to 20-hours of backup. Alternatively, players can use the included braided USB-C cable for wired operation. There is also a 3.5mm audio jack with Sony 3D Audio support on the PlayStation variant.

The Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded is on sale in the UK and EU regions starting at £179.99 and €199.99 respectively. For customers in the US, the controller is now available for pre-order on Amazon at $209.99, and will officially start shipping on September 28.

Jace from self-confessed “silly tech” YouTube channel MetraByte has shared a video documenting their attempts to get Windows 95 and Doom up and running on the Sony PlayStation 2. In brief, Windows 95 eventually yielded to attempts to get it to boot, and it was possible to fiddle around in the standard apps, but there was no way Jace could get Doom to launch.

Both these platforms are very long in the tooth in 2025, of course. Windows 95 arrived in 1995, and the PS2 debuted in the year 2000. With its half-decade tech-age advantage, you might expect the PS2 to sail through the Windows 95 and Doom challenge. Indeed, it might have, but the hacky nature of getting x86 code to run on Sony's MIPS machine, plus the well-known foibles of Windows 95, built on DOS, meant there were lots of hurdles.

So, how did Jace do/not do it? It is quite a long story, but Jace condensed tens of hours of coaxing the PS2 to run Windows 95 into less than half an hour (video embedded above).

All Jace’s testing took place using a modded PlayStation 2, a game controller with a QWERTY keypad, plus a USB stick and a hard drive inserted into the fat PS2 for storage and data transfer. In parts of the video you can see Jace use a specially prepared USB stick or HDD which packed in the following contents:

• A PlayStation .ELF file. This is the homebrew code to run on the modded PS2. DOSBox and Bochs emulators for the PS2 were both tried.
• A virtual DOS boot disk or image file
• A Windows 95 install HDD or .ISO image file
• A free partition or image file for installing Windows 95 and Doom

Jace's initial time-consuming effort to use DOSBox to achieve their Windows 95 and Doom goals stalled, and after at least “47 attempts” to persuade the vintage OS to boot to desktop, our mad scientist decided to switch to another emulator called Bochs. The former is designed primarily for enjoying simple games, where the latter is billed as an accurate (and slower) general-purpose x86 emulator.

If you watch the full video, you will almost feel Jace’s pain. Such is the slow and frustrating process of getting an x86 OS onto this MIPS console. Nearly every process took an ungodly amount of time, hampered by limited and slow I/O on the PS2, the emulation layer, and these early editions of Windows sitting precariously upon DOS.

Using Bochs wasn’t plain sailing, either. Jace had to deal with a wide range of system hurdles, complaints about read errors, write errors, boot order, drive letter and mounting configurations, missing files, drivers, and more. However, they eventually saw the Windows 95 setup screen appear on their PS2 screen.

Dutch PlayStation gamers are up in arms about what they call the unfair 'Sony tax.' Their collective anger has been mobilized today in a class action suit against Sony, alleging monopolistic practices. In brief, legal representatives of the 'Fair PlayStation' campaign say that “consumers pay an average of 47% more for these digital versions than for exactly the same game on a physical disc” (machine translation used), as Sony leverages its monopoly on digital sales.

Research undertaken by the Dutch collective indicates that Sony has been “exploiting its dominant position in the console market for at least ten years,” with things made much worse by barring other app stores from the platform. It concludes that “at least 1.7 million Dutch PlayStation owners pay too much for digital games and in-game content.” In total, Dutch consumers have thus had to shell out €435 million ($505 million) more than they should have done since 2013, according to campaigners.

Wherever you live, though, new PlayStation 5 releases are expensive, and typically arrive at $69.99 in the U.S., for example. While Sony can easily control game pricing in its digital store, competing sellers of physical game media releases will often race to cut the margins they enjoy per game to aim for the volume market. This kind of healthy competition is being eroded by the introduction and promotion of the digital-only versions of consoles.

An electronics enthusiast has designed and prototyped what they say is the “first custom PlayStation 1 motherboard created in 30 years.” Moreover, it wasn’t created by a team of Sony engineers but an individual with access only to an original PS1 motherboard, a scanner, some sandpaper, old service manuals, and a passion for reverse engineering. With the project now at an advanced stage, creator Lorentio Brodesco has shown off a manufactured sample of the nsOne, and recently set up a Kickstarter page.

On social media, Brodesco explained that the creation of the nsOne has been a reverse engineering labor of love spanning many months. The PCB shown is said to be fully PS1 compatible. “This isn’t an emulator. It’s not an FPGA. It’s not a modern replica,” asserted the Italian engineer. Rather, it was emphasized that the project is a new drop-in motherboard, which is compatible with all the original chips Sony will have mounted to it (e.g. CPU, GPU, SPU, RAM, oscillators, regulators, etc.).

PlayStation console aficionados might also be interested to hear that the design of the nsOne offers some other unique appeal. It is fully compatible with the original console’s case, of course, but it also improves on the PU-23 series (from the SCPH-900X compact models) by reintroducing the parallel port. Thus, Brodesco explains, the nsOne is effectively a desirable “hybrid that never existed.”

With the advent of the Kickstarter campaign, Brodesco is promising various levels of rewards to backers, deliverable in January 2026. The lowest level of funding which promises a hardware reward is just €35 ($40.50). For this, a project backer can expect an exclusive nsOne 4-layer motherboard, which is compatible with the original PlayStation 1 case. Such buyers will have to bring along their own SMD components and ICs to create a fully functioning motherboard.

Another potentially attractive option for backers is at the €80 ($92.50) level. For this, backers are told that they will get the same motherboard, as above, but populated with all the required chips and ICs from original PS1 consoles. Moreover, all passive SMD components are brand new, “ensuring greater durability and reliability compared to the original parts,” says the campaign page.

In addition to the hardware, Brodesco hopes to share “comprehensive documentation, design files, and production-ready blueprints for manufacturing fully functional motherboards,” to the community.

Today marks the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, but if Nintendo consoles and games aren't to your tastes, how about getting your hands on the current most powerful games console on the market? Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro is the current console king with its mid-life refresh. Everything has been upgraded, from the graphical power to the base amount of available storage. Unfortunately, the price was also upgraded, so it's nice to see a discount on Sony's latest console.

Available at Amazon, you can pick up the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro for just £636. This is a tasty discount from the £699 list price and almost matches the all-time lowest price seen for the PlayStation 5 Pro of £635. This offer is for the console and a single DualSense controller. The console is a "digital-only" version, but you can upgrade with a separate disk-drive addon like in this bundle deal from John Lewis, where the PlayStation 5 Pro, DualSense controller, and Digital disk drive are on offer for £709.

The PlayStation 5 Pro is the refreshed version of the PS5, sporting more storage (2TB) as standard, and using new PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution or PSSR tech to upgrade and enhance image quality and framerates of PlayStation games from the PS5 and PS4 era. The PS5 Pro even has upgraded tech for ray tracing capabilities, for more immersive lighting effects in your games.

As I briefly touched upon, this deal only includes the console tower and a controller. If you want to upgrade the PlayStation 5 Pro tower to include a disk drive, you need to purchase a separate Sony PlayStation 5 Disk Drive like this one from Very for £69, reduced from £100. This will allow you to play PlayStation 5 games from physical disk media, where you might be able to pick up games cheaper second-hand, or use collectors' edition disks.

A games console modder has revealed a crab-themed PS One creation dubbed the 'Playstacean.' GingerOfOz's real-world remake of an artwork of the same name by Anh Dang, a concept artist on League of Legends, is crab-solutely stunning. It is a fully functional Sony PS One, as demonstrated in the video, but GingerOfOz humbly admits that the claw controllers are "not comfortable to use."

GingerofOZ's regular (crab)shtick involves taking retro consoles like the Wii, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and others and documenting his work in turning these classics into portable consoles on his YouTube channel. The Playstacean is something of a diversion for the modder, though, as it remains a (cru)stationary device designed to be plugged into your TV at home.

GingerOfOz has had the idea to build a real-life Playstacean in his mind for a few months, ever since he first spotted Anh Dang's artwork. As with many similar projects, the starting point was to hunt down a cheap and cheerful yet functional example of the console at the heart of the project—a PS One from eBay.

With the actual console in hand, GingerOfOz started work on 3D CAD artwork, melding the original Playstacean visual with the real-world console's physical form. That's easier said than done due to the compact PlayStation's curvy nature. Other art-meets-reality tweaks to the Playstacean design were caused by the console being thicker than the concept art, and conversely, the controllers needed to be made a bit heftier to fit the thumb stick and buttons and be rugged enough to game with.

The original PS One's motherboard didn't survive this project unmodded. GingerOfOz documents several trims of the ground plane, but nothing major or too worrying.

After many hours of design, modifications, and test prints, GingerOfOz was happy enough with his Playstacean to call it a day. We think it looks great. If you want to learn more about the concept and process, the I Built A Playstacean video is worth 20 minutes. There's also a bit of insight into using the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon, which our reviewer summarized as "one of the best prosumer desktop FFF 3D printers on the market."

For a wider perspective on the 3D printers on the market right now, our regularly updated Best 3D Printers for Home, Workshop, or Business in 2025 feature is worth a look.

PlayStation uploaded a video yesterday of Mark Cerny presenting a PS5 Pro Technical Seminar at Sony Interactive Entertainment HQ. The system architect provided a deep dive into Playstation 5 Pro's new hardware and chose to clarify some rumors floating around the new console. Mark spent some time addressing "FLOPflation" since an "erroneous 33.5 TFLOPs number" was leaked due to a misunderstanding of the hardware by a leaker assuming deeper use of RDNA 3-inspired architecture.

In reality, the PS5 Pro achieves 16.7 TFLOPs compared to the PS5's 10 TFLOPs. Meanwhile, one of the accurate pre-release leaks pointed toward the PS5 Pro achieving 300 TOPS when performing 8-bit calculations. 16-bit calculations, meanwhile, can achieve 67 TFLOPS. As Cerny clarifies, RDNA 2.X, Sony's customized AMD RDNA 2 architecture, uses many RDNA 3 features but maintains enough of the original architecture to not force code rewrites on the new hardware.

According to Mark Cerny, the biggest improvements of PS5 Pro are considered to be its new Ray Acceleration structure using BVH8 (Bounding Volume Hierarchy) and leveraging improved "Stack management in hardware," which means that graphics shader code is now better-managed, simpler, and more performant on the new hardware.

BVH refers to how bounding boxes, a common feature of 3D rendering, are used to make graphics calculations like reflections. BVH4, with bounding boxes in groups of 4, was used on PS5 for RT calculations, while PS5 Pro can now leverage BVH8 (8 bounding boxes) for its RT calculations. Similarly, the Ray Intersection Engine has doubled from checking rays against 4 boxes and 1 triangle (PS5) to 8 boxes and 2 triangles (PS5 Pro).

These improvements to ray tracing hardware in the PlayStation 5 Pro, made possible through an incredibly customized version of the RDNA 2 GPU architecture used within the PS5, give great performance gains with curved and bumpy light reflections but only moderate gains with shadows and flat reflections.

The full 37-minute video on the PlayStation 5 Pro is recommended for more technical information. It includes lots of interesting hindsight into the console market and the technologies required to compete in it.

A Kickstarter campaign is touting its PlayStation 5 cooling unit that purportedly resolves overheating and instances where the rear I/O can melt. The campaign was at $89,000 when we wrote this, with a stretch goal of up to $125,000. Pricing for the cooling element starts at $39.

The add-on is dubbed the Arctic PS5 cooler and is advertised as the world's first AI-powered PS5 cooler. The device is a clip-on vent that hooks onto the rear exhaust of Sony's PS5 console, featuring either four or six fans that actively dissipate heat. The device is powered with a single USB port and features a pass-through USB port, negating any reduction in port selection from the console.

SCRY, the creators of the new Kickstarter, are offering three unique models, one for each PS5 version, the original PS5 (SCRY is dubbing the "fat" model), the PS5 slim, and the recently launched PS5 Pro. The PS5 Pro and Slim models are very similar, with four fans in total, three at the top and one at the bottom. The PS5 "fat" version comes with six fans.

As highlighted several times on the Kickstarter campaign page, the three cooling add-ons are powered by "smart thermal AI" that adjusts fan speed based on the PS5's internal temperature. It's unclear how or if this is different from the way PC fan speeds have been controlled for decades. At 50C, the fans are purportedly programmed to ramp up to maximum fan speed to keep the console as cool as possible.

SCRY says its new cooling element provides a 30% reduction in temperature compared to stock operation, dropping from a max of 64C to a max of 55C. Thermal camera imaging on the site shows a 9 degrees Celsius reduction in temperature at the hottest point at the rear of the PS5 chassis, the ethernet port.

The goal of these PS5 coolers is to prevent any overheating issues that might occur on Sony's latest console. Last year, reports were swirling regarding overheating problems in several titles, such as Final Fantasy XVI. In some rare instances, reports have shown the PS5 can overheat to the point where some of the rear connectors can melt.

In addition to the PS5 coolers, SCRY is also promoting a Gen 4 M.2 SSD with a heatsink as part of its Kickstarter campaign.

Again, the main page shows a stretch goal of up to $125,000 with that milestone arriving with a free "vertikal" universal PS5 stand. Stretch goals for $75,000 and $100,000 are also in place but will purportedly be "announce when unlocked."

This week, developers behind the PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 announced that RPCS3 had now achieved stable, native Arm64 architecture support for Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms— Arm64 architecture support so definitive that it even includes the Raspberry Pi 5, of all devices, utterly pushing the limits of emulation believed possible on the Raspberry Pi 5. In the past, Raspberry Pi 5 has also been seen emulating GameCube and Wii (Wii less effectively) — but with the correct settings adjustments, it seems even PS3 emulation is possible on today's entry-level Arm hardware.

Running PS3 emulation on Raspberry Pi 5 is very much "challenging the limits of PlayStation 3 emulation"— considering the settings used, which make the affair look like a genuine PlayStation Portable (PSP) game by scaling down to the PSP's output resolution of just 273p versus PS3's native 720p. But this makes running some 3D games actually possible, including God of War (and God of War II) HD (originally PS2 games), Catherine, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, and more. 2D games will be a lot more playable across the board, of course, but even being able to turn around playable framerates in PS3-era 3D titles is well beyond the emulation capabilities most would expect from a Raspberry Pi 5.

Over on the MacOS side of things, native support for Arm architecture versus simply emulating x86 has netted some massive performance gains on Apple Silicon playing PS3 games. Framerates are seeing increases of anywhere from 50-100% just by running natively instead of being forced through x86 translation on top of intensive PS3 hardware emulation, making truly performant Arm-powered PlayStation 3 emulation a reality instead of a far-off dream.

Unlike the Raspberry Pi 5 testing which more or less approximates a PlayStation Portable, the Apple Silicon testing shows off high performance in some true PS3 powerhouses, including the likes of God of War III and Skate 3. These titles are much harder to emulate than PS2-to-PS3 HD ports like God of War HD, but they are still quite playable on Arm architecture hardware, so long as it has the muscle to back the experience.

Sony is working on a portable gaming console that will aim to compete against Nintendo and Microsoft, according to reports. This portable gaming device will allow gamers to play Playstation 5 games irrespective of the location, unlike the PlayStation Portal which is a connected remote play device. However, the standalone device may still be "years away from launch," leaving plenty of time for Sony to change or abandon the project.

Earlier, Microsoft CEO Phil Spencer said that the development of a portable Xbox gaming device would take a few more years, which now seems similar to Sony. Nintendo is a major player in the handheld gaming market, and its next-gen Switch is expected to be released next year.

Sony's spokesperson declined to comment regarding its plans.

In recent years portable gaming has evolved dramatically with Valve's Steam Deck and its newer OLED version making big waves. This encouraged others to step into the market- namely Asus, Lenovo Legion, Logitech, MSI, and many more. The major benefits both Microsoft and Sony have are their wide collection of games in their libraries and the ability to attract more IPs and developers for their platforms- either exclusive or cross-platform - by indie and AAA studios.

Making a portable device to work with the PlayStation 5's games will take time as it will need suitable hardware and specially optimized firmware. Since this project is still in its initial design phase, it remains a distinct possibility that Sony may change the design goal or abandon it completely.

The State of Portable Gaming- Then Vs. Now

Sony is familiar with the portable gaming market, as it released the original PlayStation Portable, PSP Vita, and PSP GO years ago. According to Bloomberg's earlier report, the PlayStation Portal was meant to be a standalone device, but the company ended up opting for a remote gaming device with an 8-inch screen that wirelessly streams games from the user's PlayStation 5 via WiFi.

Irrespective of its success with the PSP in the past, Sony has many competitors now. Sony will also be competing with cloud gaming services that are device agnostic - led by Nvidia with GeForce Now and Microsoft's Xbox cloud gaming offerings.

There are major benefits to going portable, as it opens its offerings to a wider audience base who may not play games on either PC, cloud, or console. If Sony decides against marketing a new portable, it is going to be the only gaming platform not to enter the handheld gaming market.

Digital Foundry tested the PlayStation 5 Pro's power consumption and discovered some surprising results. According to its three-way discussion piece on YouTube featuring Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman, and Oliver Mackenzie, the PlayStation 5 Pro consumes practically no additional power than the base PS5, despite featuring a significantly more powerful GPU.

Digital Foundry tested the PS5 Pro in Elden Ring, Spider-Man 2, and F1 24. All three games were compared to the launch model of the PS5, the refreshed variant dubbed the PS5 Slim, and the Pro model, with the Pro running the Pro-exclusive version of all three games with enhanced graphical capabilities.

Elden Ring saw the PS5 Pro operating at virtually identical power draw to the PS5 Slim. In one instance of the video, the Pro model operated at 214.1 watts of power consumption, the PS5 Slim model at 216.2 watts, and the PS5 Launch model at 201.3 watts. Frame rates were inevitably much higher on the Pro, operating at 52 FPS, the PS5 Slim at 40 FPS, and the PS5 launch model at 37 FPS. (The frame rate variance between the Slim and launch models should be taken lightly, as the information displayed was taken from one snapshot of Digital Foundry's benchmark run. Both consoles are the same in terms of performance.) Effectively, the PS5 Pro was operating at the same power as the PS5 Slim, while providing a 30% higher frame rate.

Spider-Man 2 showed a slightly different story due to the game being locked to 60 FPS on all three consoles. In the same scenario, the PS5 Pro yielded the highest wattage at 232 watts, the PS5 Slim at 218.2 watts, and the PS5 launch model at 208.1 watts. In Spider-Man 2, the Pro consumed 6% more power than the PS5 Slim and 11% more power than the launch version. There were no comparisons for the F1 24 title, but Digital Foundry showed the PS5 Pro operating at around 235 watts in-game, locked at 60FPS.

Note the launch model and Slim should not be taken lightly; power consumption can change based on silicon quality, which explains why the Slim is performing worse than the launch model. Variance in silicon quality means that certain consoles can operate at their advertised CPU clock speeds at lower voltages compared to others.

Digital Foundry's testing confirmed that the PS5 Pro operates at very similar power consumption targets as the base PS5 models, despite featuring a significantly more powerful GPU. This came as a surprise to Digital Foundry, who thought the console might consume upwards of 300 watts.

The PS5 Pro is armed with an 8-core Zen 2 CPU and a 16.7 TFLOP capable RDNA-based GPU, with 576 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The regular PS5 models ship with the same CPU (though CPU clocks could be different) but with a significantly weaker 10.28 TFLOP RDNA-based GPU, featuring and 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth.