We've seen some all-in-one Raspberry Pi gaming rigs before but this one definitely takes the cake. Maker and developer ConsciousFish6170 has put a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W inside of a video game controller. Everything you need from the games to the emulation software is contained in one, handheld device. This setup makes it easier than ever to emulate games and keep all of your hardware in one convenient location.

The project is built around a broken Sony PlayStation 4 controller so don't worry— no working controllers were harmed in the making of this project. According to ConsciousFish6170, the controller was big enough to house a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, so it won't be able to play PS3 games like the Raspberry Pi 5 but you can still enjoy quite a bit of emulation for more simple consoles from the NES to the original Sony PlayStation.

It wasn't enough to fit the Pi inside, however, he wanted the controller to look as functional as possible so certain components, like the analog sticks, were left in place. That said, some of the broken hardware had to be removed to make enough room for the Pi and respective cables that allow for external connections and peripherals to be connected.

As we mentioned before, the main board powering the system is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W which is small enough to fit but also has the added benefit of WiFi support along with low power consumption. It's connected to a couple of USB Type-C mini adapters which lets ConciousFish6170 attach both a USB hub and a power supply.

ConciousFish6170 opted to use RetroPie as the main emulation platform for this project, successfully testing a handful of emulators for consoles like the NES, PlayStation 1 and GameBoy Advance. However, you could totally get away with using other systems as well like Lakka or just plain RetroArch.

If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project in action, you can check it out over the project thread shared by ConciousFish6170 to Reddit.

YouTuber Restore Technique has uploaded a immensely detailed 27-minute video demonstrating his personal PlayStation 4 handheld project. Using a 3D-printed custom shell, some custom PCBs, a 7-inch screen, and the original PlayStation 4 Slim console motherboard, Restore Technique was able to create a true handheld PlayStation 4 (249 x 156 x 49.2mm and 1.7 Kg). Some would say that compared to the streaming-only PlayStation Portal, this is far and away the better successor to the PlayStation Vita.

As Restore Technique discusses in the full video, this Portable PlayStation 4 project is set apart from most of handheld console mod contemporaries by using a more powerful console than the commonly modded Nintendo consoles (GameCube and Wii) used for such projects, i.e. Nintendo Kawaii and the recent first-ever handheld Xbox. PlayStation 4 and broadly-equivalent PC hardware of the era can still run quite a few games, so this is much more ambitious than those projects— though it helps that the PlayStation 4 Slim chosen by Restore Technique actually uses an altered low-power design that made it easier to reach the desired heat and power (TDP) balance for this handheld PlayStation 4.

Restore Technique was thorough in their approach. Choosing a model of PlayStation 4 that uses less power and so has a smaller PCB. Some ports and components were removed using the best soldering stations (there was a lot of hot air used to remove the components) and a Dremel rotary tool was used to reduce the size of aluminum heat spreader that serves the all of the motherboard components. They were savvy enough to includes a fan controller, a means to keep the PlayStation 4 cool by speeding up the fan past its original speed. They speculate in the video that such a setup may still be prone to overheating.

A Dual Shock controller was also integrated into the handheld, with lots of wires from the many test points of the controller being broken out to new locations around the handheld.

A handheld like this needs a big battery and Restore Technique has made their own 3S2P LiPo 12V 10,000 mAh battery pack. This is charged via a DC power jack, which they had to upgrade to a 10 Amp model in order to safely charge and game at the same time. Restore Technique used DC buck converters to control the voltages for the 12V and 5V rails, as the screen operated at the lower voltage and would not take kindly to overvoltage.

Restore Technique does share some gaming footage in the video (where they play The Last of Us for 86 minutes), making this a handheld best played with the charger. They also point out that the battery setup is of such high wattage that you wouldn't be able to take this console on most planes.

Besides extracting the PlayStation 4 Slim motherboard, the full video also details a multi-step prototyping process for the "PS4T" (PlayStation 4 Transport, supposedly) shell, done initially with FDM 3D printing before getting the final resin shell manufactured by PCBWay, since specialized material prints are be better for high-heat workloads like a portable PlayStation 4 Slim.

After initial assembly, some thermal and power issues cropped up with the PS4T that resulted in graphical glitches and slowdowns in numerous titles. After replacing the controller frames, improving internal electric shielding and heat dissipation, the handheld began performing stably without graphical glitches.

This is a great build, it covers electronics, 3D printing, soldering and the general maker ethic of learning from failure. Definitely one to watch.

AMD’s Senior Director of Consumer and Gaming Client Business, Renato Fragale, recalls “helping AMD avoid bankruptcy” when he managed the team that developed the PlayStation 4 processor. The PS4 was launched by Sony in early 2013, and the success of the custom ‘Jaguar’ processor behind it (and in Microsoft’s Xbox One) was instrumental to AMD’s survival during a very difficult time for the company.

The headlining news nugget surfaced on social media when another long-standing AMD ‘lifer’ highlighted Fragale’s LinkedIn career experience statement. AMD’s Memory Systems / Interconnect Performance Architect, Phil Park, told his Twitter/X followers that he also remembers living through the difficult times at AMD spanning the late noughties to early 2010s. Both men have spent around 20 years of their careers at AMD.

In his Tweet/X thread, Park illuminates AMD's troubles during this era and discusses how the firm extricated itself from a dangerous financial situation.

After the 2008 financial crisis, AMD was in a difficult position and faced an energized Intel, which had recently come to market with products like Merom, Conroe, Woodcrest, and Nehalem. It takes time to turn around a chip design company like AMD, and the tricky market and strong competition meant that “We sold multiple IPs like Adreno to raise cash,” noted Park. “Most of us took temporary pay cuts.”

As mentioned in the intro, a lifeline for AMD’s finances arrived with the console contracts, which meant it earned cash by supplying the processors behind the PlayStation 4 (and Xbox One). Thanks to the success of this generation of Sony (and Microsoft) consoles, AMD earned an impressive yet steady stream of revenue. If you read AMD's financial news releases in the late 2010s, you will see that the Semi-Custom Business Unit began to deliver a steady financial stream from which AMD could invest in other forward-looking projects — like the development of the Zen CPU architecture that fueled the company's resurgence. AMD’s stock price touched $1.87 just ahead of the PS4 era, at the time of writing it is $163.90 but has been as high as $227.30 in the past year.

Park has some other interesting things to say about AMD recovering from the brink of bankruptcy. Another stroke of luck, the rise of netbooks, meant that AMD’s Bobcat APUs were a surprise hit with consumers, with around 50 million APUs sold. These AMD chips offered a winning mix of one or two CPU cores with integrated Radeon graphics in a low-power envelope (<18W), which was great for ultraportable affordable PCs.

Of course, the PS4 (and Xbox One) console processors, codenamed Jaguar, were built on the foundation that Bobcat provided but steered towards delivering modern gaming in a single APU. Jaguar delivered the advantage of more modern process technology, an octa-core CPU, greater frequencies, improved IPC, broader instruction set support, doubled bandwidth, and more.

PS4 and Xbox One consoles went on sale in 2013 and were phased out in the early 2020s as the next-gen machines started to prevail. The PS4 had an estimated lifetime sales of 117 million, and the Xbox One had around 58 million units, earning a lot for AMD as the processor supplier.

AMD also powers the newest generation of Sony and Microsoft consoles. However, in the interim, AMD recovered strongly from its 2010s doldrums by investing in new architectures like Zen CPUs (from 2017), new Radeon graphics architectures, successive APUs, other technologies, and strategic acquisitions.

A new rooting method shows a jailbreak for the PlayStation 4 game console using an LG Smart TV. This method is unique, as it highlights the possibility of jailbreaking a device with nothing more than a smart TV, further increasing the accessibility of using homebrewed options. Several other methods have been used to root the PlayStation 4, such as the ESP32 or a Raspberry Pi. 

The process requires an LG Smart TV rooted with the WebOS Homebrew Channel. After installing and running the Homebrew Channel, the user must enable an SSH server and 'Block system updates' since the PlayStation 4 jailbreak method is accomplished via the Ethernet connection. After the reboot and a series of steps, the PPLFPwm mod is installed on the PlayStation 4.

Typical with the PPPwm method, the jailbreak is not permanently installed on the PlayStation 4 and hence requires the user to re-run the process when the system is turned on or rebooted.

There are challenges apart from having an LG Smart TV. Not all LG Smart TVs can be rooted as it requires the webOS that has not been patched since mid-2022. The only LG Smart TVs qualified for this jailbreak are those that never used an internet connection or had auto-update turned off before mid-2022. Additionally, it will require the LG Smart TV to have its dev mode disabled in this configuration. The PPPwm jailbreak method works with PlayStation 4 firmware 11.00 and hence PPLGPwm will work. 

The process of using a SmartTV with homebrewed software to jailbreak a PlayStation 4 is no doubt impressive. While jailbreaking a gaming console is not new, companies take multiple steps to deter a direct rooting method with newer firmware and hardware changes. Furthermore, using a rooted device to root another type of system made by a different manufacturer shows the community's resiliency, as it requires time, effort, collaboration, and further research to achieve such success. This further encourages more homebrewed software and methods not limited to gaming consoles. 

Despite LG's steps to ensure its devices cannot be rooted, many hackers find creative ways to bypass these limits. Such methods could further popularize using Smart TVs to deliver jailbreaks for other devices. 

Steam is looking to encourage PlayStation users to spend more time with its platform by officially embracing PS controller-specific support. The latest Steam patch will now integrate, identify and provide input API for PlayStation DualSense and DualShock controllers, thereby providing the required tools to game developers and information to its users. The patch note further specifies console-specific controller support either as a full or partial integration. 

With this major addition, Valve enabled sorting and filters to highlight games compatible with these controllers via Steam's controller-friendly hub. This also includes a controller configuration button conveniently placed on the play bar. Developers can now specify controller recommendations in their game's respective listings. 

Valve's Interest in PlayStation Users

The common ground between the platforms is the controller. Unlike consoles, the PC platform doesn't have any restrictions to disallow support. It depends on the input API. And Valve felt now was the best time to roll out this integration, as 12% of Steam's active players on its platform regularly use a controller to play its games. It acknowledges many games are played with controllers almost exclusively. One of the oldest games I could think of is Rocket League. But you can include any sports or racing games, certain RPGs and fighting games like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken. Because of its vast collection of games and global player base, Steam was able to gather the following data:

• There were over 3 billion game sessions that included a controller in the past year
  • 60% Xbox controller
  • 27% PlayStation models
  • The remaining % is made up of Steam Deck, Switch Pro, and hundreds of other controller models
• The same period four years ago (ending Nov 2019) had 990 Million controller sessions
  • 76% Xbox controllers
  • 19% PlayStation controllers
• During these four years, PlayStation controllers saw a 4x increase in sessions

A combination of official and third-party controllers using XInput and DirectInput gets detected in Steam as an Xbox controller by default. Hence, it is not very shocking to see a 60% share with Xbox controllers. It is still remarkable to see 27% of Steam's user base using PlayStation controllers in 2023 while identifying a noticeable increase since 2019. Steam attributes this to PlayStation 4 and 5 console sales globally, while acknowledging that some of its player base would use Sony's controllers on Steam as a plug-and-play device. Since Valve recognizes the significant use of PlayStation controllers in its platforms, it is only natural to see input API, division and identification of controller-specific games. 

Steam succeeds while Console makers wouldn't tread

While console players would like to take a slice of each other's market share with exclusive game titles and other features, Steam plays on its strong points by providing seamless support on the PC for PlayStation users to alternate with using the same controller. This wouldn't make people replace PlayStation for PC, but will likely result in a more active user base. You'll never see PlayStation or Xbox do this type of cross-integration. While there are unofficial Playstation controllers, notably fight sticks, that use either Brooke Fusion or the open-source GP2040-CE PCBs, Xbox recently put its foot down and disabled third-party controller support, something that didn't go well with many of its users. 

Steam's New Classification for Controller Support

The controller support will now specify 'Full' and 'Partial' controller support differentiating USB and Bluetooth connections for DualSense and DualShock. What this means is that games with full controller support indicate almost all in-game actions and interactions seamlessly. It doesn't necessarily mean it uses every feature on the controller. It is also not certain if gamers will be able to use the audio port via the PlayStation controller, as you'd think it would need Steam to recognize it as a separate audio output somehow. 

A partial controller indicates that some elements may not work even if the controller is seen just fine. As an example, some specific interactions might not work or the game might suggest the wrong key to trigger an in-game action. This wouldn't render your controller completely useless but rather require you to operate with a keyboard and mouse when the situation arises. 

Valve admits this addition is more complicated than Xbox controllers. Hence, Steam is actively encouraging developers to use its input API for all console controllers, including Switch. This will take time, but naturally many developers should eventually integrate either full or partial support for PS controllers with its games. Thanks to Steam's input API, many indie developers will be encouraged to do the same. Seeing these stats, developers should be encouraged to enable all of the console-specific controller functions such as adaptive triggers and haptic feedback for many of its games. If not, the recognition of partial support with PlayStation controllers goes a long way.

While some are surprised that only 12% of Steam gamers use controllers, that's a very large share when you think keyboard and mouse dominate a large section of Steam because of many of its long-running multiplayer titles like Counter-Strike, and now CS2 and Apex Legends.

The Raspberry Pi Pico might be small, but it sure can drive some big ideas. Today we’ve got a cool surveillance robot to share with you, created by maker and developer Mohammad Reza Sharifi. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve featured plenty of his work in the past, including this PS4 controller-operated drone and this robotic car that uses OpenCV to read hand gestures for steering.

In this project, he’s using a system called LabVIEW that makes it easy to design custom interfaces and programs with visual assets. The robot has a custom-made chassis and four wheels. It’s fitted with a smartphone on the front for a live video feed. All of these can be operated using a custom GUI Sharifi created using LabVIEW.

The Pico surveillance robot communicates with a laptop using Bluetooth. This laptop is running LabVIEW which hosts the GUI. To steer the robot, just click the navigation buttons on the interface. As it moves around, the video feed will be updated in real-time so you can see exactly where you’re going.

Sharifi was kind enough to share a complete parts list for the project so anyone who wants to recreate it can do so. As we mentioned before, it’s using a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller. In addition to the Pi, it uses an L298 motor driver to control the wheels, an HC-05 Bluetooth module for wireless support and has a smartphone mounted to the front for its camera.

The software for the robot was written in MicroPython. It’s responsible for handling the input from LabVIEW and translating the data into commands to locomote the robot. If you want to explore the code, Sharifi decided to make it totally open source. You can check it out over at GitHub to see exactly how it works or maybe even download for yourself to try at home.

If you want to see this Raspberry Pi project in action, we highly recommend checking out his YouTube channel. Be sure to follow Sharifi for more cool projects, as well as any future updates on this one.

Apparently, there have been over 21 million Xbox Series X and Series S consoles sold by Microsoft, since launch. A slide reported to have been shared by Microsoft, at the ID@Xbox Developer Accelerator Program in Brazil, has provided this number. That is a lot of consoles, but the number isn't quite as impressive when compared to the sales numbers from console rivals Sony and Nintendo.  

Microsoft has been tight-lipped regarding sales figures for Xbox consoles for nearly a decade. It has been speculated that management decided to hide console unit sales by getting its accountants to publicly weigh Microsoft’s Xbox business in terms of Xbox Live and Game Pass subscriptions. This provides optics than showing the Xbox console unit numbers obviously lagging rivals.

Another revelation concerns the numbers of Xbox One family consoles sold in their lifetime. Remember, it has been so long since we saw Xbox hardware unit sales from Microsoft that it extends to the previous generation. Doing some trivial math, we see that there were 58 million Xbox One consoles sold during its era. Clearly, the Xbox Series X / S still have a long way to go to reach such numbers. To get a good handle on this data, we think a chart is called for.

Note that with the figures above we have tried to source the latest official totals. You can see the Xbox figures that have come from the headlining Microsoft slide at the top. The latest PlayStation 5 and Switch console hardware sales figures come from numbers shared this March, so will be a little out of date by now.

One other interesting morsel from the Microsoft slide concerns the cheaper Xbox Series S. At launch, we contrasted Microsoft’s strategy of launching the Series S with Sony’s. The slide’s assertion that 48% of Series S players are new to Xbox paints it as quite a success. That is a good conversion figure, and that console’s pricing takes it much further into the impulse buying zone than its bigger brother (or Sony’s consoles).

In the current battle royale between the Xbox Series and Sony PS5 consoles, it looks likely that Sony could pull ahead a bit more. Sony was particularly badly affected during the peak pandemic years, with the chip crunch and big stay-at-home demand. However, that period appears to be behind us now and Sony is predicting another 19 million PS5 consoles will be sold by its financial year end (March 31, 2024).

Healthy PC Gaming Market

Last but not least, another slide from the ID@Xbox Developer Accelerator Program showed some figures for PC gaming. Yes, PCs continue to be a hugely important gaming market with “248.6m active Windows gaming PCs,” according to Microsoft.

In an announcement today on the official PlayStation website, Sony revealed plans to release new PS5 games for the Game Catalog to celebrate the first anniversary of the PlayStation Plus tiered plans. In addition to the new games, users can expect ten days of various activities, including a few giveaways for both digital and physical goodies.

PlayStation Plus Premium members will soon have the chance to take advantage of cloud streaming for several PlayStation 5 titles. Players will be able to launch straight into these titles without having to download them to the console first. These titles will also be available alongside various PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 games.

Starting next week, users can play several new additions to the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog including PS4 titles like Tacoma, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Killing Floor 2. The PS5 exclusive Soulstice will be added as well as Far Cry 6, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, Inscryption and Rogue Legacy 2, which are all available for both PS4 and PS5 consoles. Starting June 20th, gamers can check out the WWE2K23 game trial for PS4.

Both members and non-members get free avatars and wallpapers during the celebration—just keep an eye out for a voucher code to redeem them. Three digital rings are available between June 20th and June 30th that can be obtained through a few campaigns. Details on how to get them are listed in the announcement. There will also be a free multiplayer weekend running from June 24th to June 25th for all players, regardless of membership status.

Lastly, users can participate in a giveaway to win a new PlayStation 5 console or a PlayStation VR2 headset and PlayStation VR2 Sense controller. To enter the sweepstakes, players must visit the PlayStation Plus website and answer a few questions about the PlayStation Plus service. This giveaway is open between June 20th and June 30th.

To read more about this celebration and see what’s coming up in greater detail, visit the official blog post shared by Sony. Whether you’re a PlayStation Plus member or not, it looks like there’s at least a little something for everyone to take advantage of to kick off summer.

With PS Remote Play, Sony allows gamers to stream games from their PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles to Android, iOS, iPadOS, macOS and Windows devices. You can even stream to another PS5 or PS4 if you wish. But now, Sony is putting a new twist on Remote Play by introducing the Project Q handheld.

To the untrained eye, Project Q looks like little more than a DualShock 5 controller split in half and then joined by an 8-inch display. The controllers have adaptive triggers and haptic feedback, while the 8-inch display features a 1080p resolution and is capped at 60 fps. 

You'll connect to Remote Play exclusively over Wi-Fi, according to Sony. There are apparently no provisions for integrated cellular connectivity. However, it shouldn't be hard to connect to the internet on the go using your smartphone as a mobile hotspot.

Before you get any ideas that Project Q could be a true Valve Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally or even Nintendo Switch competitor, know that it is only a streaming device. No games are installed directly on the handheld, nor is it packing hardware powerful enough to enable native playback. So, if you want a genuine, self-contained handheld gaming machine, you'll want to stick to the above devices.

Unfortunately, Sony was light on additional details for Project Q. We don't know how much it weighs or how long the internal battery lasts. In addition, no pricing information has been revealed, although we know Sony plans to launch it later this year.

What remains to be seen is if this will be a popular device with customers. As mentioned in the introduction, Sony offers a wide range of options for customers to stream games from their PS5 or PS4. For example, the recently announced Backbone One PlayStation Edition allows you to have a similar Remote Play experience with your Android smartphone. However, you miss out on the larger 8-inch display, haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.

The big sticking point with customers will likely come down to pricing. The PlayStation 5 starts at $399, so Project Q will have to undercut that price by a fair margin to make a splash with the console gaming community.

It seems that Brian Starkey has been busy with their robots. Using one of the best RP2040 based boards, the Pimoroni Inventor 2040 W they've built a Bluetooth controlled robot that uses a PlayStation 4 controller. Best of all, they've shared the code so that anyone can build their own robot.

Starkey's hardware choice was Pimoroni's Inventor 2040 W, a board that we reviewed upon its release. The robot chassis is a Tiny4WD from Coretec Robotics (aka Brian Corteil / CannonFodder) sporting a transparent neon yellow acrylic frame.

The software side of the project is what caught our attention. Bluetooth on the Raspberry Pi Pico W (which Inventor 2040 W is based upon) is still only viable for use with the C language, and so Starkey has written the robot project code using C, and has helpfully provided a Github repository full of information on how to download, build and flash the UF2 file to your own Inventor 2040 W. To simplify the process of connecting a Sony PlayStation 4 controller, Starkey has provided hard coded MAC address values from lines 59 to 66 in /src/bt_hid.c. Replace the corresponding line with your MAC address, flash the code to the Inventor 2040 W, set your controller to pairing mode and you are good to go. Starkey states that "This is a pretty crude project which brings up a Sony DualShock 4 (PS4) controller on Pico-W." but in our eyes, if it works, it works.

Bluetooth support was added via SDK 1.5.0 and brings a Bluetooth API via BTstack. It provides Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth Classic, Sub Band Coding and Bluetooth Network Encapsulation Protocol. For now Bluetooth support is limited to both C and C++. MicroPython Bluetooth support is being worked on but as yet there is no official release date.

All of the code, and instructions can be found in Starkey's picow_ds4 Github repository. To use it you will need to install the C SDK toolchain, of which there is now a one-click installer for Windows.

It looks like the Xbox Series S is facing serious memory allocation issues in Borderlands 3, at least according to Reddit user u/jokekiller94 — who posted a screenshot of the game crashing on their Series S console with an "out of memory" error on the screen. 

The issue isn't limited to the original poster — Reddit user u/bacon_sammer responded in the thread, saying they have the same issue with Borderlands 3 crashing frequently on their Xbox Series S. They said the game runs fine on the Xbox Series X, however, so the it seems to be a Series S issue.

Sadly, this type of memory allocation issue is not uncommon for Microsoft's little console. According to reports from Digital Foundry and The Verge, the Series S' small memory capacity is a headache for developers to optimize around. It is the single biggest contributing factor to the console's lower graphical settings and lack of ray-tracing effects on Series S ports, and it bottlenecks the console's already weak 4 Teraflop (PS4 Pro level) GPU.

Apparently, complaints among developers regarding the Series S' memory became so extreme that Microsoft released a dev kit in June 2022 that gave developers more manipulation over the Series S' memory system. 

The Xbox Series S is Microsoft's most recent entry-level console running on AMD's modern Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures. The console features a 4TF AMD RDNA 2 GPU with 20 compute units clocked at 1550MHz, a 512GB NVMe SSD, and 10GB of GDDR6 memory that is shared between the CPU and the GPU. Strangely, the memory bandwidth is mixed, with 8GB featuring 224GB/s of bandwidth and the other 2GB running at a paltry 56GB/s.

The 10GB memory capacity is why the Series S' memory allocation issues are so problematic. Modern-day PC titles generally recommend at least 16 GB of system RAM, plus at least 6GB to 8GB of VRAM for playing games at high settings. The Series S' unified memory system does reduce a game's memory requirements compared to a PC, but 10GB is still a pretty small number for modern-day gaming (not to mention the unorthodox bandwidth configuration, where only 8GB runs at high speeds). 

Thankfully, the memory allocation errors don't appear to be a widespread issue, and hopefully Borderlands 3's developers will fix this problem in a future patch. But the Xbox Series S' overall longevity does not look good given its past and present memory capacity issues. 

Sony has announced a new controller for the PlayStation 5 that adds a whole new level of customization to the DualSense controller, known as the DualSense Edge. For serious gamers, this might be the controller you've wanted for years. The Edge features several significant upgrades, including control profiles, fully customizable controls, swappable joystick caps, the return of back buttons, and more.

On the surface, the most notable change between the Edge and the vanilla DualSense is the new front cover above the joysticks, which is now painted in a matte black finish, covered by Sony's signature PlayStation logos in a glossy finish, and displayed in a grid pattern. As a result, it is the easiest way to tell if a PS5 controller is the Edge variant or not.

One of the controller's most prominent features is the addition of "Ultra-Customizable Controls," allowing users to remap or deactivate button inputs on all the control surfaces and change the stick sensitivity and dead zones at will. Users can also change the travel distance of each trigger for faster response times.

A new control profile feature also allows users to save multiple control profiles depending on their needs and the game they are playing. Additionally, A dedicated Fn button has been added to the Edge, allowing users to swap control profiles instantaneously in-game, or do other actions such as adjust game volume, check chat, and more.

The stick caps received an upgrade to be user swappable. In addition, users can now choose between standard, high dome, and low dome caps, depending on their preference. Sony also made the physical stick modules replicable when needed, which can be handy if your sticks start to bug out and you need to replace them.

Sony's announcement of the Edge controller also marks the return of the back buttons to PlayStation controllers. Sony began shipping back buttons on the PS4 DualShock controller as an add-on accessory. But Sony neglected to add them to the original DualSense controller when the PS5 launched.

Now, however, Sony has made a comeback, introducing back buttons as a default item on the Edge. Additionally, depending on the user's preference, you can equip the back buttons with half-dome buttons or levers.

Of course, the DualSense Edge has the same features as the original DualSense controller. You won't be losing out on features such as haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, a built-in microphone, and motion controls. The Edge is effectively an upgrade to the current DualSense controller.

Sony will reveal the launch date and additional details in "the months ahead." So we should hopefully know more by early 2023 at the latest. But we suspect Sony will not replace the current DualSense controller with the Edge. Instead, the Edge will serve as an upgrade over the original variant at a higher price.

AMD is extending its custom chip design services even as it aims to offer a portfolio that's close and personal to its client's requirements. During its latest analyst day meeting, AMD Chief Technical Officer (CTO) Mark Papermaster spoke of recent advancements in semiconductor fabrication and chip interconnect technologies that would enable a modular future for the company's chip design. It seems that AMD might be looking at carving another strategy for the decades to come: something like "The Future is Custom."

Building upon work that started with custom silicon designs for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 4, AMD's Semi-Custom Solutions Division has quickly become one of the company's main strengths. AMD adapted its mainstream architectures according to Microsoft and Sony's power, performance, and cost requirements. Even Steam's runaway success, the handheld Steam Deck, has embraced AMD chip designs. But the company wants to take it further.

"We are focused on making it easier to implement chips with more flexibility," said Papermaster, who then expanded on the new philosophy by adding that customers would be invited to bring their own choice of chips towards a tile-like, manufacturable chip structure that can incorporate multiple chiplets wrapped up in a custom chip package. This means AMD customers would be able to pick and choose amongst the company's impressive IP portfolio - ranging from x86 CPUs, GPUs, Arm-based FPGAs through its merge with Xilinx, and even Arm-based networking chips from its Pensando acquisition - while also being able to deploy their own intellectual property.

The new strategy builds upon the recently-introduced Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) standard, which has garnered support from AMD, Intel, Arm, Google, Meta, and others. These companies see the future as an amalgamation of disparate, complementary IPs rather than what each player can singularly offer in-house. UCIe enables a standardized connection between chiplets, like cores, memory, and I/O, in both an in-die and off-die manner that enables performance and latency specifications that are high enough for HPC scaling while relying on well-known protocols like PCIe and CXL.

This makes sense considering the increasing prevalence of custom chip design - bolstered by royalty-free architectures such as RISC-V. Interestingly, RISC-V still hasn't integrated the UCIe standard. Nvidia hasn't either, but the company likely wants to push its proprietary NVLink interconnect as much as possible.

"We're going to make it much easier to add third-party IP as well as customer IP to that chiplet platform," said AMD CEO Lisa Su during the conference. "We've gotten a lot of positive customer engagement so far when you think about hyperscalers, when you think about 5G in automotive," she added. "These are big opportunities where people want to customize and we want to be their partner of choice."

AMD's chiplet-based approach to custom manufacturing is based on its strong relationship with TSMC and leverages the Taiwanese foundries' CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) technology. The same is true for Apple's CoWoS-derivative UltraFusion interconnect. Nvidia's own Hopper GPU is also rumored to be based around that particular bit of TSMC's tech. AMD, naturally, will also be looking to leverage its Infinity Fabric 4.0 architecture, which has been developed for on-die connectivity and hyperscaling in HPC environments.

In what might be one of the most interesting tidbits regarding the future of computing, saying that the company is happy to be ISA (Instruction-Set Architecture) agnostic. Of course, it's easier to be agnostic when a company has the resources, licenses and engineering capabilities to have its feet firmly planted in both dominating and emerging architectures all at once. AMD is capable of this feat thanks to its nearly immaculate execution since Su became CEO.

It does mark a difference in stance compared to the walled garden approach historically preferred by chipmakers. To be fair, there's still a wall - there's a reason only AMD and Intel manufacture high-performance X86-x64 chips. But the gates are now ever so slightly ajar. In the meantime, we await the arrival of AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors and other new products on its consumer CPU roadmaps. 

Tune in to The Future Games Show Powered by Mana on Saturday, June 11, to get an up-close look at 40 games and titles developed by leading publishers in the industry. The Future Games Show will be broadcast by our sister site, GamesRadar, across multiple sources so you can choose your flavor with streams available on Facebook, Twitch, Youtube, and Twitter. The show is planned to kick off at 12:00 PDT / 15:00 EDT / 20:00 BST.

Highlights include game showcases, world premieres, exclusive announcements, and interviews with top developers, including Thunderful, Team17, and Amanita Design. In addition, viewers are welcome to indulge in an up-close look at new 2022 titles for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC platforms.

Mana CEO Joe Zhou had this to say, “We’re proud to partner with the Future Games Show - it’s a tremendous opportunity to help promote the things we love and all things gaming during an exciting event that is truly important for the community. We also hope to use this opportunity to let the community know—no matter what games you play, Mana is here to empower you and the future of games.”

It isn’t the first Future Games Show, and it certainly won’t be the last. Content Director of Games at Future Daniel Dawkins explains, “The Future Game Show is GamesRadar’s premiere digital games showcase—it reached over 120 million views across three shows in 2021. The June show will be the second of three shows in 2022, with an additional show planned for GamesCom 2022.”

In addition to the upcoming show, Future invites streamers to apply as official partners for the show. While anyone can stream the show for free, official partners receive access to a unique asset pack and an opportunity to be named an official co-streaming partner at GamesRadar+. Check out the official Streaming Partner form to get started—more details are available for streamers on the official GamesRadar website.

At just $150, the newly available Anbernic RG503 gaming handheld is certainly undercutting the likes of the Steam Deck and AyaNeo Next on price, but its specs - as reported by CNX Software - point more toward an emulation and streaming deck than a portable PC.

At its heart sits Rockchip’s RK3566 SoC (featured in boards such as the Station M2 and considered a step up from the chip found in the Nintendo Switch and Raspberry Pi 3B+), which contains four Arm Cortex A55 cores ticking over at 1.8GHz. These are backed by just 1GB of LPDDR4 RAM and a Mali G-52 EE GPU. Storage comes in the form of two Micro SD slots, and the screen is a 4.95in OLED with a 960×544 resolution but isn't a touchscreen.

To interact, you’ll need to use the D-pad, pair of analog sticks (in a PlayStation configuration at the lower edge of the chassis), four face buttons, and triggers. There's wireless communication in the form of Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2, and a 3,200 mAH battery apparently good for six hours of use. The video out port comes via a micro HDMI 2.0a socket, there's a USB port for charging, and the whole thing weighs just 235g (8.3oz) in a package measuring 19 x 8.4 x 2.1 cm (7.4 x 3.3 x 0.8 in).

Now, with one eye on our lawyers, we should tell you that the device is available with a 64GB Micro SD card stuffed with games - 4,193 of them - which, judging by video reviews we’ve seen, appear to be of the copyrighted variety. Of course, we couldn’t possibly suggest buying one for that sort of thing, but the Linux OS the device runs (a fork of EmuELEC) sets it up nicely as a streaming unit, perhaps running Moonlight to stream Steam games from a gaming PC on the same network, and pretend it’s a Steam Deck, or Chiaki to stream your PlayStation 4 games. Alternatively, Kodi functionality is advertised, so you could use it as a media streamer, though that screen is likely to be as limiting as the small amount of RAM.

The Anbernic RG503 is available from Anberic’s store for $149.99, rising to $157.99 with that naughty SD card. It’s also being sold on AliExpress, where you should take a look at our list of AliExpress promo codes, and Banggood.

HyperX returns with a new update to the wireless edition to the Cloud Flight family, that promises enhanced Playstation support and over 30 hours of battery life. This comes after the Cloud Flight S, which saw the product line go wireless and introduce QI charging for the first time. We could not justify its initial price of $160 just for those two new inclusions, but this version of the Cloud Flight Wireless is more competitive at $120.

True, you’ll lose the gimmicky QI charging and NGenuity software support here, but you will get some classy RGB lighting in the earcups. 

PC and PlayStation (and Switch, kind of) compatibility are along for the ride. This, plus its lowkey design, make the Cloud Flight Wireless a solid buy for gaming and office use. However, we have a few gripes with it, such as a lack of dynamic sound across platforms, that keeps the headset from making our best wireless headsets list.

Specifications - HyperX Cloud Flight Wireless

Audio Performance

The HyperX Cloud Flight keeps it pretty simple with its 20 Hz - 20 kHz frequency response. But its 50mm Neodymium drivers are what makes the headset special for console gaming, since the drivers are known for delivering pleasing and immersive audio experiences. 

I played a few games on PC first to cover my bases, like Grand Theft Auto V and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The sound effect quality was so immersive that I forgot it was 15 minutes before quitting time at the office, which is a feat, to say the least. I was sucked into my gaming session the way people get sucked into a movie, a testament to the near-cinematic quality of the sound. In particular, I was really drawn into the opening of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which has Lara Croft escaping from a collapsing tomb. The thought of being buried alive (a very real fear of mine), coupled with the crunches of rock in my ears, made me repeatedly whisper “nope” under my breath. 

When I first used the Cloud Flight for music, I noticed how loud, clean, and isolated the sound was thanks to the headset’s 50mm driver and the memory foam ear cushions. Unfortunately, the cans produce little to no bass and songs lack dynamic sound as a result. I listened to “Deep Down” by Winter Kills and sure, it was loud, but the song lacked thump from the rhythmic kicks and deep bass. From the sound of it, it feels like the headset could produce some range in mids and lows if it had software EQ to toy around with. But unlike the headsets before it, this iteration of the HyperX Cloud Flight does not. 

I took time to use the headset while I played Persona 5 Royal on PlayStation 4 to listen for any sound quality differences, and surprisingly I did. When I connected the dongle to the front of the PS4, the headset connected instantly. Other headsets like the Razer Kraken V3 Pro had me shuffling around the settings menu before connecting on its own. 

Once I was connected, I noticed how crisp the clicks sounded as I navigated through the PS4 UI. After the opening cinematics for Persona fired up, I also realized how dynamic the music was. All the kicks had thumps that made the headset rumble on my head. That was a clear difference from when I was listening to music on PC. Even in comparison to when I used it to game on PC, although the sound was refined and immersive, sounds were more dynamic when using the headset on the PS4. 

I asked HyperX to explain the difference between audio quality and the company told me the following: “From the hardware side, there isn’t any system-specific EQ for Flight, [so] any differences in audio would be caused on PlayStation.” I take that to mean the headset has been developed specifically with PlayStation consoles in mind first, and so it sounds a little better on those platforms as a result.

I tried to turn the music up but got some beeps inside the cans from the PS4 indicating the volume could go up no further. This is disappointing, especially since the headset gets louder when connected to other devices. When gaming on the PS4, I realized just how long the USB dongle is. It’s the size of a flash drive, which doesn’t bother me when on PC, but was rather intrusive on the console. I always had a fear I’d bump into it while moving back and forth from my gaming area.

Design and Comfort of HyperX Cloud Flight Wireless

The design of the HyperX Cloud Flight Wireless doesn’t stray too far from previous iterations, and that’s mostly a good thing. The headset is black and the microphone is detachable, which is good if you decide to also use it on mobile devices via its 3.5mm headphone jack. Regrettably, a cord to use the jack is not included in the packaging. When used through the wireless adapter, both logos on either side of the earcups strobe with a blue hue by default. But the lighting can be turned off to help battery life. 

The light meshes well with the blue wiring that connects from the cans into the headband. But it would be great to be able to customize the color at your discretion. There’s a blue light in the wireless adapter that will also strobe to indicate the headset’s low battery. When you push in on the left earcup, you can mute the microphone, which will then produce a red ring around the mouthpiece. 

The headset itself feels pleasant on the head and around the ears thanks to the plush leatherette and memory foam cups. The earcups can also rotate 90 degrees to the left or right to give your ears a break or to help you listen to your surroundings, which comes in handy. But during my time with this headset, I never felt the need to give my ears a break during extended use, because the earcups were so light and comfortable. Despite the comfort, the Cloud Flight Wireless utilizes a metal frame, which exposes itself when adjusting the headband. It’s reminiscent of those retro headphone bands that would get caught in your hair. Thankfully though, that didn't happen with these headphones.

However, the plastic used for most of the shell of the headset feels hollow and cheap, like it wouldn't stand up well to repeated drops without cracking or snapping. The quality issue was made even more apparent when I got my hands on the more expensive HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless ($199.99), which utilizes a pebblestone leatherette, threaded wiring, and steel material instead of plastic. But of course that headset costs substantially more.      

Comfort is a necessity in order to enjoy up to 30-hours of battery life, and that longevity is one of my favorite things about this headset. Fresh out of the box, without a charger, the Cloud Flight Wireless lasted over four full workdays before I had to charge it. As of this writing, I go into the office twice a week, so I had roughly 32 hours of power before the headset died. I didn’t even have the RGB turned off in order to preserve energy, which is impressive. I wanted to drain the battery again in order to see how long a full battery would last, but after a few days, I was convinced I’d finish my review before it ever died. After two weeks and four office days, the headset finally started beeping, signifying its approaching demise. But the cans didn’t officially kick the bucket until the end of the day. The headset automatically turns off after a few minutes of inactivity, and I’m sure that helped in keeping the headset alive for so long.

Compatibility

The HyperX Cloud Flight Wireless utilizes a 2.4Ghz USB dongle for wireless connectivity. This USB dongle can be attached to PCs, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 without a hitch. You can also use the dongle on a docked Switch to play wirelessly. However, folks will have to utilize a 3.5mm headphone connection when playing in handheld mode. The analog wire is mostly needed to use this headset with mobile devices, as there are no Bluetooth options available. 

I wish compatibility weren't as scattered across the range as it is. The HyperX Cloud Flight range has three iterations, not including the Cloud Flight Wireless. All three have varying compatibility between consoles. The original Cloud Flight can be used for PC and PS4, while the CloudX Flight can only be used for the Xbox One. The previous Cloud Flight S is compatible with PC, PS4, and PS4 Pro. It’s a hassle to find out which headset is the correct one for your system because of this. I hope HyperX does better consolidating compatibility in its next range of headsets.

Microphone

I hopped on a call with a colleague with the microphone attached to the headset. I was told that the quality was very average from the other end. It didn’t sound like anything special, and if I hadn’t told them I was testing a product, he would have thought it was a standard laptop mic. 

The detachable bi-directional microphone has a built-in noise-canceling function, so I tested it in the office. In playing the recording back, I couldn’t hear a thing from the folks around me talking. I was rather impressed by this, as the conversation was taking place directly behind me. The mic was able to pick up my whispered voice very well during the convo, even with my face mask off. Unfortunately, there was static behind my voice when I listened to the playback. Although the mic quality is nowhere near close to what the best desktop microphones can produce, it’s a solid option for voice meetings and chatting over PS4.

Bottom Line

The HyperX Cloud Flight Wireless is a great mid-range option for gaming,  especially as a PlayStation alternative to SteelSeries’ Arctis 7P+. The Flight Wireless has a similar PlayStation aesthetic thanks to its black and blue colorway, but can also blend into an office environment more than the Arctis’ color scheme. Its bi-directional microphone also makes HyperX’s Cloud Flight a more than a serviceable option to use during work. And thanks to its long-lasting battery life, gamers and office workers alike won’t have to worry about charging it until the end of the week in most cases.

The HyperX Cloud Flight Wireless brings gaming to life, but is optimized to sound better on PlayStation consoles. The range of sound the cans delivered during my time with the music-heavy Persona far exceeded the dynamics I heard when listening to regular playback over PC. The inclusion of software could possibly make this a non-issue. But alas, HyperX NGenuity support is not compatible with this device. 

Although I've got gripes over the different qualities of sound across platforms, the headset’s 50 mm Neodymium drivers keep audio refined nonetheless. And despite its cheap plastic and lack of software, the HyperX Cloud Flight Wireless is competitively priced, making it a decent mid-range option.

Sony's long-rumored (and long-awaited) answer to Xbox Game Pass is finally coming. The Japanese gaming giant announced today that it is combining the two subscription services that it currently offers to PlayStation gamers. As a result, PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now are being transitioned into three tiers of PlayStation Plus.

The first tier is called PlayStation Plus Essential and is a rebrand of the current version of PlayStation Plus. That means subscribers get two free game downloads per month, online multiplier game access, cloud storage for your save games, and discounts on digital items in the PlayStation Store. Pricing remains the same at $9.99 per month.

The next step up is PlayStation Plus Extra, which includes all the perks of the base subscription. However, you also can access a game library that includes roughly 400 PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games. According to Sony, these include "blockbuster hits from our PlayStation Studios catalog and third-party partners" available for download. The PlayStation Plus Extra tier will cost $14.99 per month.

Things get interesting with the flagship PlayStation Plus Premium subscription, which costs $17.99 per month. As you might expect, this tier includes all the features mentioned above but adds original PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable games to the mix. In addition, games across all current and previous generation console platforms are accessible via cloud streaming using a PS4, PS5 or PC. Sony says that up to 340 additional games are available via the PlayStation Plus Premium tier. Another perk of PlayStation Plus Premium is the option for developers to offer time-limited trials of games. 

It is not all good news if you live in a region that doesn't currently offer PlayStation Now streaming. In those regions, Sony will offer PlayStation Plus Deluxe "at a lower price compared to Premium." In addition, PlayStation Plus Deluxe will provide a "catalog of beloved classic games from the original PlayStation, PS2 and PSP generations to download and play, along with time-limited game trials." 

According to Sony, the three new PlayStation Plus tiers will launch starting in June in Asia. Sony will then expand availability across North America and Europe.

"At launch, we plan to include titles such as Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel's Spider-Man, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11, and Returnal," said Jim Ryan, President, and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. "We're working closely with our imaginative developers from PlayStation Studios and third-party partners to include some of the best gaming experiences available with a library that will be regularly refreshed."

For comparison, Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass [Console] subscription costs $9.99 and provides access to over 100 games, day-one access to Xbox Games Studios releases, and exclusive member discounts (the PC version includes EA Play at the same price). Xbox Game Pass Ultimate costs $14.99 per month and offers the same game library, EA Play, Xbox Live Gold and the ability to stream games using Xbox Cloud Gaming.

In just one week, all of the major game console companies have suspended sales of their hardware, software, and services in Russia in response to the country's conflict against Ukraine. Microsoft was the first to announce its suspension and now we see Nintendo, and Sony are also suspending their sales and services, as reported by Bloomberg. Nintendo and Sony join the hundreds of multinational companies suspending their business operations in Russia. 

With no new Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Sony PlayStation shipping to Russia, there could be a surplus of stock. Europe may get some additional units as these systems are shipped to the country through European ports. Since the Russian console gaming market is not particularly strong, do not expect an ample of additional consoles coming to the European market. Though, if you were hunting for a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X, now may be the time to check your favorite retailers.  

Microsoft was the first to suspend sales of its software, Xbox game consoles, games, and services in Russia last week. It is currently impossible to get or preorder an Xbox console or a game from official retail stores. Nintendo and Sony were somewhat slower and announced suspension of hardware and software shipments to Russia late this Wednesday, reports Bloomberg. Sony's and Nintendo's digital stores in Russia have also been suspended.  

While all purchased and delivered games will continue to work, future titles will not be released.

"We have suspended all software and hardware shipments, the launch of Gran Turismo 7, and operations of the PlayStation Store in Russia," a statement by Sony Interactive Entertainment reads. 

In addition to indirect support of Ukraine, there is another reason why companies like Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are suspending their work in Russia. The Russian ruble has lost about 43% of its value since mid-February, which makes particularly hard for these companies to manage their logistics and prices. Also, major payment systems have suspended their operations in Russia and several banks were cut off from Swift, making it close to impossible for residents to pay and for companies to accept payments. 

"Nintendo [is suspending shipping all products to Russia] for the foreseeable future […] due to considerable volatility surrounding the logistics of shipping and distributing physical goods," a statement by Nintendo published by Reuters claims.

Flashing a light with a Raspberry Pi is nothing new—it’s the first thing many makers do with their first Raspberry Pi. Mohammad Reza Sharifi is taking the idea further by not just controlling an LED but instead is operating a light bulb using hand gestures and virtual buttons to trigger the light on or off.

This isn’t the first time we’ve covered Sharifi’s Raspberry Pi work. Most recently, he created a project that uses a PlayStation 4 controller to operate a drone. He’s also tackled hand gesture-operated projects in the past, including this robotic car that relies on hand signals for steering and control.

control_light_bulb_using_virtual_buttons from r/raspberry_pi

In a demo video shared by Sharifi, we can see a camera fixated on his hand with lines drawn across to show where the Pi has identified the hand shape. Two virtual buttons are overlaid on the camera feed. With the help of Node-Red, an event driven programming language, and some computer vision algorithms, the Pi is able to determine when the hand has moved into position and selects the corresponding button with a virtual “press”. This toggles the light bulb on or off depending on which button has been selected.

It doesn’t take much hardware to create this project but it will take a bit of effort on the software side. You will need a Raspberry Pi 3B+ or Raspberry Pi 4 and a compatible external camera of your choice. If you want to operate an appliance like a lamp or fan, you will need a relay to control it with the Raspberry Pi but more importantly the knowledge to safely work with higher voltages.

Sharifi explains that OpenCV and Python were used to construct the hand gesture detection system. It relies on the Cvzone library to determine the hand shape by measuring the distance between the fingers and its location in relation to the camera feed. If it detects that a virtual button has been pressed, a command is relayed to trigger the Raspberry Pi GPIO using MQTT protocol and Node-Red.

If you want to construct a similar system yourself, the best thing you can do is explore the original thread shared to Reddit by Sharifi. It has a demonstration video of the project in action as well as comments with additional details on how the project operates. We also recommend checking out our list of best Raspberry Pi projects for more inspiring creations from the maker community. 

Seagate has introduced its new Sony PlayStation 5 compatible external hard drives with a USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface in capacities up to 5TB. Seagate says that firmware of the new HDDs is optimized for consoles. Just like the majority of external HDDs these days, the new Seagate Game Drives use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology with all of its peculiarities. 

The news drives, which also support the PlayStation 4, biggest advantages over SSDs used by the latest consoles are their relatively low price and ample capacity. The line-up of Seagate's new external drives compatible with PS4 and PS5 includes four models: 2TB and 4TB Game Drives priced at $92.49 and $139.99 (respectively) as well as 2TB and 5TB Horizon Forbidden West Limited Edition Game Drives that cost $99.99 and $159.99. By contrast, a high-performance 1TB M.2 SSD compatible with PS5 can retail for $170. But this is where advantages seem to end. 

Seagate's Game Drives traditionally pack the company's 2.5-inch BarraCuda drives with a 5400 RPM spindle speed that almost exclusively use drive-managed SMR technology with all of its peculiarities that include very slow overwriting of shingled bands (virtually all SMR drives have both shingled and non-shingled bands) and considerably reduced performance at times when the drive moves data from non-shingled (CMR) to shingled zones. We do not know how exactly Seagate optimized firmware of its Game Drives for PlayStation game consoles, but it is logical to assume that the optimizations have to deal with those random performance drops. 

Being 5400-RPM HDDs, Seagate's BarraCuda 2.5-inch HDDs are not meant to demonstrate very high sequential read/write speeds, so they are rated for up to 140 MB/s. Meanwhile, sequential speeds usually get considerably lower on outer edges of HDD platters, so in many cases performance of the Game Drives will not achieve 140 MB/s. Furthermore, if the drive starts to move data from a CMR band to an SMR band while the software makes a read request, its performance collapses to megabytes per second. 

One could argue that an external HDD for game consoles is used for rarely played games and once they are all located on shingled bands, performance drops will rarely occur. While this is a rational argument, it is necessary to note that games are updated, which will incur overwriting of SMR zones, which is a tremendously slow process. As a result, in a bid not to compromise experience with games from an external HDD on the latest consoles, one should probably fill it up with legacy titles that rarely (if ever) get updated and hope that they will stay intact till the end of times.

God of War — the PS4 2018 release, at least — is finally making its way to PC. Along with visual enhancements, it also has DLSS and FSR support. We've grabbed some of the best graphics cards and tested performance to see how it runs. We've also put together a video showcasing the image quality of the various DLSS and FSR settings using Nvidia's ICAT utility.

For newcomers to the series (like me!), there's a long history that I'm missing. I've certainly seen images and videos of Kratos over the years, but other than the fact that he battles big monsters, I couldn't tell you much. So far, that hasn't really detracted me from enjoying the game. Reviews of the original PS4 version were extremely favorable (94 average at Metacritic), and the PC release has been equally well-received (93 average). I've heard the PS4 release could struggle at times with performance, but the PC release doesn't seem to have any such problems — with the appropriate settings and hardware, at least.

For our look at the launch performance of the Windows release of God of War, I grabbed a selection of the latest GPUs from AMD and Nvidia, plus a couple of previous-gen cards, and ran some benchmarks at 4K with ultra settings. That's definitely going to be too taxing for some of the slower GPUs, but the game also supports DLSS and FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), and I tested all the available settings for those on each of the cards as well. I'll get into image quality below, but just be warned that using the DLSS ultra performance or FSR performance modes can result in a visible loss in fidelity, though with a decent boost to performance.

Running at lower resolutions would also help quite a bit, though the Windows release at present only supports windowed and borderless windowed modes. There's no fullscreen mode, which is unfortunate and makes running at other resolutions more time consuming for testing purposes. Because of that, I skipped changing the desktop resolution and just focused on the 4K results. The scaling shown in the following charts should also apply to 1440p and 1080p resolutions, though CPU limits might become more of a factor.

One final note is that Nvidia provided early access to God of War and said the current 497.29 drivers would suffice, which was a bit strange as they're not specifically listed as being Game Ready. AMD's 22.1.1 drivers do list God of War. The game also uses DLSS version 2.3.4.0, which incorporates the latest updates.

God of War PC Performance

If we're willing to round up, four of the GPUs managed an average performance of 60 fps while running God of War at 4K native with ultra settings. Minimums do dip below that mark, and the major battles can drop things even further, but this is as taxing as God of War gets. Basically, you'll need an RTX 3070 Ti or RX 6800 XT to hit 60 fps without any help from FSR or DLSS.

We can also see indications of the Nvidia-centric optimizations, or perhaps it's just that the game uses a DX11 rendering engine and Nvidia tends to be better about driver optimizations for DX11. Either way, where the RX 6800 XT typically ends up just a few percent slower than the RTX 3080 Ti (it's 14% slower at 4K ultra in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy), here it trails by 25%, barely edging past the RTX 3070 Ti. Note that testing at 4K does put more strain on AMD's Infinity Cache, which is part of the reason for the worse showing by AMD's RDNA2 GPUs here.

The AMD deficit extends to previous generation cards as well. The RTX 2060 nominally competes with the RX 5600 XT, and in our GPU hierarchy was 2% slower overall at 4K ultra. However, in God of War, the RTX 2060 was 8% faster than the RX 5600 XT. The same goes for the RTX 3060 and RX 6600 XT. They're tied in our GPU benchmarks using a test suite of nine games, but the RTX 3060 was 15% faster in God of War.

Enabling the various FSR modes doesn't radically alter the standings. In fact, the only change in rankings is that the RX 6800 XT eventually falls behind the RTX 3070 Ti in the charts due to a significant drop in minimum fps. Of course, that may simply be an anomaly, and we'll try to retest the card and also look at the RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 if time permits, but at least FSR doesn't appear to favor AMD's GPUs in any noticeable way.

Looking at the relative gains versus native rendering, FSR ultra quality improved performance by 26% on average, quality mode provided a 41% boost, balanced was good for a 53% increase in framerates, and performance mode yielded a 67% improvement. 

Looking at image quality, there's almost no perceptible loss from the ultra quality and quality FSR modes, at least in this game. In contrast, balanced and particularly performance mode do show a more noticeable degradation. Note that this is only if you're targeting a 4K output result, as we've seen in the past that FSR and DLSS both tend to do better with 4K than 1080p.

In God of War, performance scaling from the DLSS modes was relatively close to what we saw from FSR. DLSS quality mode improved framerates by 28% on average, balanced mode gave a 38% increase, performance mode boosted fps by 48%, and ultra performance mode provided a 63% increase. However, the 9x upscaling factor used in ultra performance mode definitely results in visible image quality degradation, so we would avoid using that mode whenever possible.

It's also worth pointing out that DLSS tends to benefit the slower GPUs like the RTX 2060, RTX 3060, and RTX 3060 Ti more than it does the RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3080 Ti and 3090. Memory bandwidth and (to a lesser extent) capacity are contributing factors, and the 3070 Ti, 3080 Ti, and 3090 all have more than enough bandwidth to spare. For example, DLSS quality mode provides an average improvement of 33% on the three slower RTX cards we tested, but only 25% on the three faster cards. The same can be said for FSR: slower GPUs often benefit more from the reduced workload.

God of War PC Image Quality and Settings

Trying to provide real-world comparisons of image quality can be difficult. Screenshots don't always convey the user experience, and videos don't always match up. More importantly, video compression algorithms (especially those on YouTube) can munge the quality and obscure differences. Still, we've provided both just to show how DLSS and FSR affect the final rendered output.

The above video uses Nvidia's ICAT utility with video results captured via GeForce Experience on the RTX 3090 — the card shouldn't matter other than affecting the fps counter. While the original captures were all at 50Mbps, the YouTube video downgrades that to just 16Mbps, so keep that in mind. As we've hinted at already, there's not a massive difference between native rendering and the higher quality DLSS and FSR modes, at least when targeting 4K. We could play God of War quite happily using just about any of the modes, with DLSS ultra performance being the only real exception. There's certainly a loss in fidelity with the DLSS performance, FSR performance, and FSR balanced modes, but it's not terrible — at least in this particular game.

Looking at the still screenshots more or less confirms the above impressions. Most of the DLSS and FSR modes look practically identical, and you have to look carefully to spot the differences. For example, you might notice a slight loss of detail in the twigs overlapping the tree in the middle-top area of the screen, but you likely wouldn't notice it in motion.

The one exception to this is DLSS ultra performance mode, where curiously, the heavy depth of field blurring effect on the mountainside and trees in the distance basically disappears. It's due to the way DoF filters work with resolution; starting at 720p, the filter just doesn't end up blurring things as much — the reduction in blur is also visible on the DLSS performance screenshot.

But again, the key is to see these things in motion and then decide how much the loss of detail impacts the gaming experience. DLSS ultra performance is playable, but you see some shimmering and other artifacts on grass quite a bit, even at 4K, and it becomes much more noticeable at 1080p — not that you should need ultra performance mode if you're running at 1080p.

Of course, using DLSS or FSR isn't the only way to boost performance. God of War includes four presets, along with a "custom" option that allows you to tweak the seven individual graphics settings. We tested with ultra for the above results, but dropping to the high preset boosted performance about 20%, the "original" preset was about 50% faster than ultra, and dropping to the low preset improved performance by around 60%. A reduction in shadow quality is the most visible change between the various presets, and not coincidentally, that single setting affects performance the most.

You can, of course, mix using the presets with DLSS and FSR. In our performance charts, the RX 5600 XT could only hit 47 fps using FSR performance mode. It could also reach 44 fps at 4K using the low preset, but more importantly, using the original quality preset with FSR quality mode got it to 64 fps, and the low preset combined with FSR quality mode got it to 74 fps. That's a 175% improvement in framerates if you're willing to drop the settings and enable FSR.

It's not particularly surprising that the RX 5600 XT and similar GPUs can easily break 60 fps under such constraints, of course. God of War first came out as a PS4 game, and even the more recent PS4 Pro only has a GPU that's roughly equivalent to the Radeon RX 580 — the original PS4 has a GPU that's more akin to an RX 560, which sits at rank 54 out of all the graphics cards we've tested in our GPU hierarchy. So if all you want is 1080p using the original quality preset, just about any GPU made in the past five years should suffice.

God of War for PC, Finally Where it Belongs

It's been interesting watching the change of heart from both Microsoft and Sony over the past few years. When the original Xbox came out, Microsoft started buying up gaming studios and then made the resulting games console exclusives. Sony had basically been doing the same thing. Of course, there are plenty of cross-platform games, but the assumption was that getting gamers to buy into a specific console platform would ultimately generate more money.

With Windows 10, Microsoft had a change of heart and started releasing nearly all of its first-party games on the Microsoft Store as well as the Xbox One. Actually, it took things a step further with the Play Anywhere initiative and let you buy a game once for both the Xbox One and the Microsoft Store. Clearly, that experiment worked out well, even though the Microsoft Store is one of the worst digital distribution platforms, because Microsoft has started releasing more games on other services like Steam.

It took a few years more before Sony was willing to chance doing the same thing, with Death Stranding and Horizon Zero Dawn being a couple of examples of formerly PlayStation exclusives coming to PC. And guess what? People are still more than happy to buy the consoles, and some people prefer to play games there, but there's clearly an untapped market of PC gamers. God of War is another major PlayStation franchise that's now on PC, and it looks and plays great, even more than three years after its initial release.

Now all we need is a remastering of the rest of the series for PC, similar to what Microsoft did with the Halo Master Chief Collection. We can only hope such a project will see the light of day and get the necessary attention to detail. Because, despite GPU and component shortages, the PC as a major gaming platform clearly isn't going anywhere.

Severe game consoles and graphics card shortages sometimes make developers rethink their plans for previous-generation products. In a bid to fight its PlayStation console shortage, Sony intends to keep producing PS4 machines throughout 2022. That essentially means that Sony will extend the PS4's lifecycle for a period of time, which means a slower transition to the latest PlayStation 5. 

Sony originally planned to stop producing its PlayStation 4 consoles by the end of 2021, reports Bloomberg (citing confidential sources). However, Sony decided to keep manufacturing its previous-generation PlayStation 4 system throughout 2022 because it is easier and cheaper to make after having already spent years in production.  

Sony has never disclosed its plans for its PS4 after the PS5 launch, but traditionally the company keeps selling its previous-generation consoles for years after it launches its newer-gen system. With PS5, the company reportedly intended to quickly transit its console business to PlayStation 5. 

Unfortunately, it is unclear from Bloomberg's report whether Sony plans to keep producing the PlayStation 4 Slim, PlayStation 4, or both systems. But Sony has officially confirmed that PS4 is still in production. 

"It is one of the best-selling consoles ever, and there is always crossover between generations," a statement by Sony reads.  

Since demand for game consoles is generally high, Sony needs all the hardware it can get to maintain its unit market share. Meanwhile, due to chip shortages and a limited number of leading-edge chips that AMD and its partner TSMC can supply, Sony opted to keep making its previous-generation console and sell it to customers who cannot get or afford the latest system. Also, the relatively cheap PS4 might be considered as a viable competitor for Microsoft's inexpensive Xbox Series S.  

Since Sony (and Microsoft) now sell everything they can, keeping the PlayStation 4 in production for another year or so does not necessarily mean a significant extension of the active PS4 lifecycle since the systems will be gone from stores unless there are plenty of PS5s available. Meanwhile, since there will be more recently purchased PlayStation 4 systems in the hands of users, game developers will certainly extend their support for the platform. In some cases, it could mean that they will spend less effort on games for the latest PlayStation 5.

Consumers still looking to purchase Sony's PS5 will have to contend with even less consoles to go around throughout this holiday shopping season. On a conference call late last month whose details are only now surfacing via Blommberg, Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki told investors that logistics and parts procurement for the PS5 had become increasingly difficult. According to people familiar with the current situation at Sony, it seems that the company has reduced its PlayStation 5 production outlook for this fiscal year due to these constraints.

Initially hoping to have delivered 16 million PS5 consoles by March next year, Sony has now cut its PS5 sales guidance by one million consoles; and a lower number of manufactured consoles naturally translates into lower consoles for sale. The supply chain issues had already manifested in lower than expected PS5 console sales as of September 2021; the delta between Sony's initial outlook and actual production capabilities seems like it could be widening even further.

The logistics constraints have already resulted in the PS5 losing its (small, but real) sales lead over the previous-gen PS4. While the initial cavalcade towards the 10 million shipped consoles was faster to achieve for the PS5, its sales now lag behind those of its predecessor, the PS4. Not by much - a mere 400,000 units separate both consoles yet. But it remains a testament to the severity of the pandemic and its impact - production capabilities have only increased since the PS4's debut in 2014.

Slower and unpredictable vaccine rollouts throughout various nations involved in one form or another in the PS5 production means that production, packaging and shipment can be affected by localized outbreaks. Even daily contact between Sony's assembly partners and component makers seems to have only improved the situation up to a point - shipments are frequently arriving outside their original schedules. This impacts all stages of production and produces delays for every manufactured console, from the one that's just entering the assembly line to the one that's awaiting for a packaging order to arrive. 

It's expected that the PS5 will remain in tight supply throughout the entirety of 2022; Sony is likely revising its sales outlook for the end of 2022 as well. A 22.6 million PS5 sales target by the end of 2022 seems somewhat unfeasible at the present time. Adding insult to injury, scalpers are still active on the PS5 front - and they will until there's been enough of a market penetration for the console that demand abates. Luckily, Sony is itself trying to stop scalpers in their tracks (at least in the U.S.) with a direct purchase option being made available through its website. 

Even as virtual worlds and storytelling have only become more massive, expansive, and a way for us to exit stage right and get immersed in other realities, it's been a somewhat bumpy ride since the latest generation consoles' launch. We've put together a comprehensive retrospective article looking back at the both Sony's PS5 and Microsoft's Xbox family - it's an easy way to get a full picture of events leading up to this continued shortage. 

To combat the ongoing shortage of PlayStation 5 consoles this upcoming holiday season, Sony is giving people a chance to buy them directly.

Interested potential customers will have to register directly on the PlayStation site, where a "limited amount of PS5 Consoles" will be available for U.S.-based customers.  Registering puts you in the running to receive an invite to order directly from Sony, with selection based on "previous interests and PlayStation activities."

 We don't know what that exactly means, but we assume this is how Sony will ensure PlayStation 5 owners don't get a duplicate console, and players with active, existing accounts on PS4 may have a higher chance of being qualified.

Each invitation will be open for a limited time, allowing you to purchase the following products:

• 1 PS5 console or 1 PS5 Digital Edition
• 2 DualSense wireless controllers (Bundles , Cosmic Red or Midnight Black)
• 3 DualSense wireless controllers (White)
• 1 PS5 Media Remote
• 1 PULSE 3D wireless headset

You don't have to purchase everything, you can order as few or as many products as you want from the list. However, Sony ensures that only one PS5 console will be available for purchase per PSN ID.

Just remember, there is a limited time window for buying a PS5 if you are qualified. Sony will send you an email detailing expiration times before you get kicked out. Even getting the invite might not be enough, as Sony's FAQ still warns you may see messages that the console is sold out.

Unfortunately, Sony has said nothing more specific on the value of supply, so we have no idea how many customers will get a PlayStation 5. With the state of the CPU and GPU shortage right now, we can only estimate that number won't be significant, considering how many gamers want a PlayStation 5 in the United States alone.

Following the Xbox Series X release, the Playstation 5 is finally available to the public, marking the official start to Sony’s next generation of gaming. Pre-orders were a bit of a debacle for this console, so it’s possible you weren’t able to reserve one before launch. That’s a shame- the PS5 is much faster than the PS4 and the adaptive triggers on the Dualsense controller are a unique experience you can’t get elsewhere. The launch library’s thin enough that there is a strong argument to be made for waiting to buy one, but Spider-Man: Miles Morales at 60 fps and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart are tempting.

There’s two versions of the Playstation 5 out now, but they’re identical aside from the presence or lack of a disc drive. 

Online stock for both is still infrequent, usually launching in occasional small batches via various retailers or direct from Playstation. We'll link to all the stores where you'll have the best luck of finding one below, but for regular updates on online restocks, follow our Techradar colleague Matt Swider over on Twitter.

As for in-person stock, there hasn't been any at major retailers (outside of club stores) for 2021 yet. However, Best Buy recently confirmed that it will be holding an in-store console purchase event on September 23rd.
 

 Playstation 5 

US PS5 retailers at a glance: Amazon | Best Buy | Gamestop | Target | Newegg | Walmart | Playstation Direct

US PS5 resellers at a glance: eBay | stockX  

The Playstation 5 is Sony’s aptly named successor to the PS4, and has a custom 8-core Zen 2 cpu and custom 10.3 teraflop RDNA 2 GPU. On paper, that leaves it a little less powerful than the Xbox Series X, but optimization and specific games will probably make performance more of a case-by-case issue. This version comes with a 4K Blu-ray disc drive as well, which might be important to you if you like to own your games and movies physically.

We expect supply for the PS5 to be largely sold out for a while, but occasional online stock batches do drop now and then, so it’s not a bad idea to check major retailers on occasion. 

Of course, there's also more underground options available. While we don't necessarily condone resellers, keeping track of markup can be a helpful way to figure the current state of demand. The current PS5 markup on eBay seems to be between $100 - 200 depending on your listing. There’s also stockX, which has similarly priced listings.

 Playstation 5 All-Digital Edition 

US PS5 retailers at a glance: Amazon | Best Buy | Gamestop | Target | Walmart | Playstation Direct

US PS5 resellers at a glance: eBay | stockX  

The Playstation 5 release also marks the first time Sony is releasing a discless version of one of its consoles. This isn’t like the Xbox Series S- the PS5 Digital Edition is the same machine as the regular PS5, just without a disc drive. Still, that concession will save you $100 if you can manage to find one new.

It also gives you another avenue to find a Playstation 5 that’s in stock.

The current markup for the PS5 All-Digital Edition seems to be about $100 on eBay. Listings on stockX are more expensive, being priced similarly to versions of the console with the disc drive.

Nothing says that a new console generation is here quite like the old console gen getting working emulators. And despite the PS5 still being hard to come by, the PS4’s emulation day has come. Spine, a closed source PS4 emulator for Linux that’s been privately in the works since 2019 just made its first full public release earlier this month, complete with a new compatibility list featuring hundreds of games.

There are a few caveats, though. PS4 emulation is still in its early days, and the games that currently work with emulation reflect that. While Spinedev’s pushed far beyond what they had working in Spine’s 2019 demo, most of what the current compatibility list labels as working "ingame" (one word) are smaller 2D titles that already have their own proper PC releases. In other words, don’t expect to be playing God of War or Spider-Man: Miles Morales on your PC any time soon. And just because a game technically runs doesn’t mean it works flawlessly. For instance, you can play Sonic Mania in Spine, but the color palette looks trippy even for Sega’s blue blur. 

Spine’s also limited to Linux for now, there’s no GUI to speak of and you’ll have to acquire your own firmware and game files. That last part’s especially tricky, since you’ll probably need to mod your own PS4 to get your hands on the data you need. (Which, of course, comes with the usual legal gray areas.)

But even in this nascent state, Spine’s far ahead of other PS4 emulator projects like Orbital and isn’t a likely scam like PCSX4. Watch out for that last one, by the way, since it’s the first google result when you search for “PS4 Emulator.” It’s named after a popular emulator for PS1 and PS2, but the site in its current state just exists to serve ads and get you to fill out surveys.

In truth, Spine right now is mostly just be a curio, but it's a promising one. Unless you want to play 2D games like Dead Cells, which you should probably just buy the proper PC ports for, you won’t get much practical use out of it. But it’s a positive sign of things to come. Emulation might be a tricky topic, but given the current state of digital stores and rights management, there’s an argument to be made that it’s vital to game preservation. Nobody's really selling Wonderswan games new anymore, you know? Just don’t expect to skirt around shelling out the money for AAA Sony exclusives quite yet.

The original Quake videogame was a pretty forward-looking first-person shooter (FPS) that set an example for many of today's best FPS games. Today, at the QuakeCon virtual event, id Software published an update to its legendary shooter with the remaster of the original Quake with support for the 4K resolution, enhanced visuals, and more.

The first installment in the Quake game series arrived in 1996, a full 25 years ago, when id Software partnered with GT Interactive to publish one of the most game-changing game series of all time. The game implemented new technologies (at that time) like 3D acceleration through OpenGL, and later on, brought support for multiplayer.

Presented at today's virtual QuakeCon conference, id Software and Machine Games partnered to develop a Quake remaster with various visual improvements for nostalgic players.

The game remained the same. It includes all the classic exploring of maze-like medieval environments, including battling monsters using a portfolio of different weaponry. That means that the game is still preserved at its core; however, visuals are in for an overhaul. The game now supports 4K displays with widescreen options, new extension bundles, and an online multiplayer experience. You can check out the video trailer below to see what the fuss is all about.

The newly remastered game is available for purchase for $9.99. It will also be available for Steam on PCs, consoles including Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4 and 5, and most notably, the Nintendo Switch. All players that already own the game are in for the free upgrade with enhanced visuals, and id Software offers crossplay options for everyone. That means that whatever you are rocking a PC or a console, you can meet in an online match and try out who is better at this retro shooter. Check out this official FAQ for more information.

Thanks to Digital Foundry; we get an early look into PlayStation 5's new 2.0 Firmware update that unlocks all the capabilities of its built-in M.2 NVMe expansion slot, allowing anyone to upgrade their PS5 with up to 4TBs of NVMe storage. Once this update goes live, you will no longer be stuck with the PS5's rather small 650GB internal SSD alone.

• Here are some PS5 SSD options

For this preview, Digital Foundry tested only one SSD, the 500GB Samsung 980 Pro as it is one of the best SSDs on the market, and obliterates the expansion slot's minimum requirements, detailing a PCIe Gen 4 drive and read speeds of 5500MB/s or greater.

Another requirement is the addition of a built-in heatsink for any NVMe SSD going into the expansion slot as its location is isolated from the PS5's cooling fans preventing any fresh air from entering the M.2 slot. This is quite different from M.2 SSDs mounted to a PC which almost always have passive airflow going over the drives thanks to the PC's chassis fans.

Because the Samsung 980 Pro does not come with a heatsink, Digital Foundry added a custom Aorus copper heatsink to the drive before inserting it into the PS5. But for testing purposes, Digital Foundry also tested the drive without a heatsink to see if there were any measurable performance differences.

The Gen 4 requirement is pretty high but is necessary for PlayStation 5 games to perform well. Most PS5 games rely on streaming assets into the game on the fly, which demands a lot of speed and bandwidth from storage drives.

This is why PS4 backward compatible titles are allowed to run off much slower external storage solutions hooked up to the console via USB, as PS4 games generally load all their assets into system RAM before doing anything else.

To test the drive, Digital Foundry tested Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart which is known to be one of the most storage-intensive games on the PS5 thanks to the game's creative use of portals that allow Rachet to move from one location to another instantly.

Digital Foundry found that the Samsung 980 Pro was able to outperform the PS5's internal storage with fewer FPS dips when going through portals. These FPS dips were incredibly minor, just one to two FPS, but were enough for the 980 Pro to slip ahead of the PS5's built-in SSD, giving it a slight edge.

Next, the 980 Pro was tested on a host of PS4 and PS5 games to test game loading times. Overall, the 980 Pro proved to be slightly ahead of the PS5's built-in SSD when loading PS4 backward compatible games like the Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy XV, and Fallout 4, being a few seconds faster.

But, with PS5 specific games Digital Foundry tested, performance was found to be identical or worse than the built-in drive. Battlefield V showed loading time performance to be swapped between the two drives with the built-in storage coming out a few seconds faster than the 980 Pro. But for Jedi Fallen Order, loading times were the same between both drives.

Surprisingly, the 980 Pro's performance stacked up very well when ditching a heatsink. Loading times were usually on par with the PS5's built-in SSD, and just a hair slower than the 980 Pro with a heatsink. However, these were just loading times, so we're not sure if the 980 Pro will overheat when actively used in-game.

Digital Foundry finally tested internal game transfers between the two drives, and the results are significantly different for both drives. Moving Cyberpunk 2077, a 100GB game, from the internal SSD to the 980 Pro resulted in a completion time of just 1 minute and 11 seconds. A whopping 1.42 GBps transfer speed.

The results couldn't be more different when moving the same game from the 980 Pro to the internal SSD, which resulted in a transfer time of 7 minutes and 18 seconds. This equates to a transfer speed of just 230 MBps, barely quicker than that of 7200RPM hard drives.

We don't know why moving games to the internal SSD is so much slower, but we suspect it could be a bug with the new firmware as it is still in beta.

Either way, it's good to see Sony now working on enabling the PS5's expansion slot for all consoles, allowing gamers to use more than 600GB of drive space for PS5-exclusive titles without any compromises.

When we reported that the Security Service of Ukraine shut down 'a cryptocurrency mining farm' that was stealing power directly from a power plant located nearby and seized tens of CPUs, hundreds of graphics cards, and 3,800 PlayStation 4 Slim game consoles, we knew that something was off since mining on PS4 Slim didn't exactly seem like a good idea. We were right as apparently the farm was actually used to get rare characters in FIFA 2021. 

As pictures from the SSU demonstrated, Sony's PlayStation 4 Slim game consoles had game discs in them, something you do not need when you want to mine Ethereum or Bitcoin. As it turned out, the game in question was FIFA 21 and the farm was used to earn in-game currency and/or get rare characters. The farm operators could then sell these accounts for money, according to Delo.ua (via 3DNews).  

Like many other sports games these days, FIFA 21 has an Ultimate Team mode that theoretically allows gamers to build a dream team of players using cards from lootboxes. Lootboxes can be purchased either using in-game currency or for real money. The caveat is that the chance to get a truly powerful character is less than 1%, so it is possible to spend a ton of money and not get a decent player. Meanwhile, obtaining in-game currency takes a lot of time since it requires loads of grinding (performing repetitive tasks).

Grinding is apparently what these PlayStation 4 Slim systems controlled by PCs and a neural network were meant to do to earn in-game currency. Then, the perpetrators could either sell accounts full of in-game currency to people who wished to try their luck and get a rare player by purchasing lootboxes, or try and gain those rare characters themselves in a bid to sell it for a lot of money. Selling in-game currency is hardly too lucrative, but trying to get a rare character is hard. Considering that they had free electricity, even playing a lottery could make financial sense for them. 

With 500 graphics cards at their hands and free power, the same farm could mine Ethereum too. Meanwhile, the same 500 graphics cards could control characters in other games to train them, get in-game currency, and/or lootboxes. In any case, it looks like we have seen a pretty diversified operation that could be used both for cryptocurrency mining as well as cultivation of game characters — whichever was more profitable.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) on Thursday reported that Ukrainian law enforcement has pulled the plug on a clandestine cryptocurrency mining farm in the city of Vinnytsia. The perpetrators had set up camp in an old warehouse and stealthily tapped into the city's power grid to mine cryptocurrency. Most interestingly, the miners were caught with a shocking number of Playstation 4's. And pretty much everything else, too. 

The Ukrainian authorities reportedly seized up to 5,000 pieces of hardware, including over 500 graphics cards, 50 processors and 3,800 PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles, all of which are in short supply in the U.S. and beyond, as well as other tidbits. 

It's not surprising to see processors and graphics cards discovered, since they are required to power mining rigs. The PS4 consoles, however, seem to be out of place.

Mining With PS4?

The photographs showed an endless list of racks with PS4s that are apparently connected to the internet. While we've seen pictures of alleged PS4 mining setups before, there has never been any concrete evidence that you can actually mine cryptocurrency on a gaming console. Although, after seeing a DIY project with a Game Boy mining Bitcoin, anything is possible. And the fact that the Ukrainian miners had so many PS4s does suggest that they may have found a way to mine with them.

There's a base level of compute performance associated with Ethereum mining. However, the bar is so low that the majority of graphics cards end up with more compute performance so memory bandwidth has a more prominent role.

The PS4 features 8GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 5.5 Gbps. Across the 256-bit memory interface, the PS4 delivers a memory bandwidth up to 176 GBps. The Pro variant, on the other hand, has memory running at 6.8 Gbps, offering up to 217.6 GBps. For comparison, the Radeon RX 580, which is one of the best mining GPUs, has a memory throughput of 256 GBps. Hypothetically, the PS4 Pro could potentially come close to a Radeon RX 580 in Ethereum mining.

Even if it is possible to mine with a gaming console, using a graphics card or ASIC would still be more efficient. Then again, the Ukrainian miners had put up bogus electricity meters and were stealing electricity, so efficiency probably wasn't on their agenda.

PC gamers aren't the only ones dealing with scarce parts. According to Kotaku this week, last-generation gaming consoles are now equally hard to get as the current PlayStation 5 (PS5) and Xbox Series X/S. That means that the PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One X/S consoles are now difficult to source, even though they should be old news. 

The report indicated that scarcity is especially present in the U.S., where shoppers at Walmart, Amazon, Target, and GameStop have experienced that stock is close to non-existent.

As anyone who's looked to buy one of the best graphics cards lately knows, if a product is hard to get, its price increases. For example, the 1TB PS4 Slim, which typically retails for $300 is currently listed for up to $430 on Walmart as of writing. 

Meanwhile, Sony is struggling to meet demand for the PS5, and the PS4 still hasn't been discontinued. 

It's a similar story with the last-gen Xbox. An Xbox One S console usually retailing for less than $300 is at $639 on Amazon as of writing. 

Gaming fans eager to get back to adventuring in Night City on their PlayStation 4s have spotted a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of an announcement that the famously broken near-future RPG Cyberpunk 2077 will be returning to the PlayStation Store. The oncoming train comes in the form of a heavy hint that the game should only be played on PS4 Pro and PS5.

‘Crashy,’ ‘buggy,’ and ‘NSFW wardrobe malfunction’ are not the names of Cyberpunk characters, but descriptions of the state of the game on all platforms when it launched back on December 10th last year. The original PS4 console version was the worst of the lot, running at between 720p and 900p, and the game was pulled from the PlayStation Store on December 17th. Since then, it has received patches and improvements, but even though it’s now back in the store, things aren’t looking too good for PS4 owners.

“You can play the game on PlayStation 4 Pro and PlayStation 5,” says the tweet from the official Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account, followed up with: “Users may continue to experience some performance issues with the PS4 edition while we continue to improve stability across all platforms.”

A rather pretty game when played on a machine that can handle it, Cyberpunk 2077 has an 86% rating for PC on gaming score aggregator Metacritic. This drops to 57% when you switch the hardware to PS4. It’s only just a little bit better for the original Xbox One, the PS4’s console contemporary, which raises the score to 61%. A free next-gen update will be offered to PS4 players in the second half of 2021, assuming that, by then, they have acquired some of the famously elusive PS5 (or Tesla) hardware.

While in-person Computex has been canceled, companies still have new product to roll out, and today Western Digital adds a trio of new drives to its gaming-focused WD_Black line. There are a pair of D30 Game Drives targeting next-gen consoles, with one model aiming for the PlayStation 5 market, and a WD_Black D30 Game Drive SSD for Xbox targeting Sony's console competition. But for PC builders and gamers, the internal WD_Black SN750 SE will be of most interest, as it brings PCIe Gen4 support at a starting price of $54.99. But without DRAM, it will probably have a hard time making it to our best SSD list.

But first, let's tackle the console-focused externals. Both models will come in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, with the Xbox model starting at $99.99 and the more generic WD_Black D30 Game Drive SSD starting at $10 less ($89.99). Both come in typical bulky-looking rugged housings with detachable stands, with the non-Xbox model delivering claimed speeds of up to 900 MBps. This drive will allow you to play and store PS4 games, but only allow for archiving of PS5 games. (The PS5 only plays the latest-gen games from the internal SSD).

The D30 Game Drive SSD for Xbox, meanwhile, will ship with a one-month membership of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to help make up for the slight price difference. Similar to the other drive, you'll be able to play and store Xbox One games on the drive, but only archive Xbox Series X/S titles. WD says the white-accented Xbox-branded drive should arrive in June, while the more generic black model should be available today at "select retailers" and the WD Store.

Shifting to the new internal M.2 drive, the WD_Black SN750 SE is an NVMe drive that supports PCIe 4.0 (and is also backwards compatible with Gen3). WD says it will deliver read speeds of up to 3,600 MBps. So it's no barn-burner, but WD says it will consume up to 30% less power than the previous SN750, which may help its appeal for laptop gamers. Note, though, that this model will be a DRAM-less drive, which no-doubt helps keep costs (and power consumption) down. 

The WD_Black SN750 SE will start at $54.99 for the 250GB model. Pricing on the 500GB and 1TB capacities has not been revealed, nor is there a mention of a 2TB model. But we're sure to learn more (and hopefully have a full review for you) as we get closer to availability. WD says the WD_Black SN750 SE is available for preorder from WD now, and will land on store shelves this summer.

The PlayStation 5 has one of the smallest storage sizes of any console over the last decade, but it's not as bad as it seems. Sony is reportedly using a specialized data compression technology that can shrink game file sizes by as much as 60%. This would more than compensate for 825GB of storage on the console.

Twisted Voxel reported that the survival game Subnautica has just a 5GB file size on the PS5. Compare this to 14GB on the PlayStation 4 and you're saving more than 60% of storage space.

TechRadar reports that Control: Ultimate Edition also benefits significantly from Sony's compression tech, coming in at just 25.79GB on the PS5 compared to 42.5GB on the Xbox Series X. That's a 39% reduction in file size.

A lot is still unknown about Sony's compression technology, all we know at this time is Sony's name for the tech, so-called "Kraken". We don't know if all PS5 games are supported, or if games need to be optimized for this compression tech. Kraken could also extend to support PS4 games and older but we're making educated guesses at this point.

Traditionally, compression technologies have never required game developers to optimize for compression, so technically all games running on the PS5's built-in SSD should support Kraken.

Hopefully, PS5's Kraken compression will expand to the console's second M.2 SSD slot, once Sony unlocks it. We could also see Kraken coming to external USB drives, but that could be wishing for too much.

It's great to see such massive advances in compression technology in an era where games are doubling in size every three to four years. Hopefully it means people can upgrade their storage a bit less often and keep more games on their systems.

PlayStation and Discord are working together to "bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile starting early next year," SIE president and CEO Jim Ryan wrote in a blog post. For the first time, Discord will have some sort of functionality on a console; the popular chat and social app was popularized by PC gaming before spreading widely.

It is unclear if there will be a native Discord app on the PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 4, or if it will be plugged in to the PlayStation user interface somehow, nor is there information on how mobile messaging may work. Fans have long called for Discord on consoles to unify their gaming communications.

Ryan's post suggests more will be made clear in the months to come, so perhaps we'll learn how it works soon.

This comes as Sony Interactive Entertainment has made a minority investment in Discord's Series H round of funding. This deal was announced mere weeks after Discord stopped talking with Microsoft, which was in talks to buy the company for as much as $10 billion dollars. It appears that Discord is continuing going public through an IPO.

Nothing in the announcement suggested that this partnership is exclusive, and that Discord could not build functionality within the Nintendo or Xbox ecosystems in the future. Whether that happens, however, is anyone's guess.

Sony today announced that its Game & Network Services division enjoyed record profits in fiscal year 2020 (FY2020) as consumers rushed to buy the PlayStation 5, even though supply constraints forced many people to purchase the console from scalpers instead of the retailers to whom Sony actually sells the product.

The company said in an earnings announcement that it sold 7.8 million PlayStation 5 consoles in FY2020, which is made even more impressive by the fact that it was only available for two quarters. Sure, the console almost certainly benefited from being released just before the holiday shopping season, but that’s still an impressive debut.

Note that by “impressive” we mean “record-setting”: Sony’s figures came shortly after the NPD Group‘s Executive Director & Video Game Industry Advisor, Mat Piscatella, revealed in a tweet that the PS5 was “the fastest selling hardware platform in U.S. history” based on “total dollar sales after 4 months in market.”

Consumers were not only clamouring for the PS5, though. Sony also sold 5.7 million PlayStation 4 consoles in FY2020, according to the earnings announcement, even though that console hasn’t seen a significant revision to its hardware since the PlayStation 4 Pro was released in November 2016.

Demand for PlayStation consoles seemed to line up quite nicely from FY2019 to FY2020, in fact. Sony said it sold 13.5 million PS4 consoles in FY2019, which perfectly matches the total number of units sold in FY2020, with the primary difference being that those sales were split between two console generations.

The Game & Network Services division’s record profits weren’t directly made via hardware sales, however, because of “strategic price points for PS5 hardware that were set lower than the manufacturing costs.” But that doesn’t really come as a surprise; Sony often sells PlayStation consoles at a loss when they launch.

Instead the company made its money by selling games made for its consoles, the PlayStation Plus subscription offering, and other services. Most people don’t just buy a new console—they also buy games for the platform and, in the PS5’s case, pay to have their old games upgraded to take advantage of the new console’s hardware.

Unfortunately that also means Sony expects its profits to fall in FY2021 as second- and third-party developers have to delay their games because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Titles originally expected to be released in 2021 are likely to debut in 2022, at the earliest, because of the challenges posed by remote development.

Being able to play your PlayStation 4 and 5 games all around your house via Remote Play streaming is a neat feature, but the small number of officially supported devices means you’re stuck with Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, or another PlayStation. Enterprising coders determined to get an open-source Remote Play client running on a wider selection of devices have had it happily streaming on Linux for a while, and the humble Raspberry Pi, with its Debian-based OS, is the latest target, as shown in this video from Philippines-based Evoneg Tech. 

To get it going you’ll need a Raspberry Pi 4, and a fork of the Chiaki streaming app from Github. Remote Play needs to be activated on your PS5, and you should pair a Bluetooth controller with your Pi (a DualShock will work fine, but make sure it’s not still paired with, and within range of, your console).

You’ll need to install a few dependencies first, then build the app on your Pi, so don’t jump in unless you’re comfortable with typing console commands. There’s a full guide to Pi installation on the project’s Github wiki. You’ll also need your PSN account ID, which can be extracted by following the steps here.

It works on both wired and wireless connections, and with a good connection you’ll get a 1080p/60fps connection. The devs say it also works on the PS4 Pro, but there’s no mention of the original PS4 console. Nintendo Switch owners should note that there’s a build of the app for their console too, but it has some very specific installation instructions.

Sony was among the first companies to launch a virtual reality head mounted display (HMD) in 2016, and the PSVR become one of the best VR headsets. While the unit was optimized for successful game consoles, it has gained limited popularity to a large degree because Sony's PlayStation 4 was not powerful enough to enable the same VR experience as high-end PCs. Sony's PlayStation 5 is by far more powerful, which is why Sony is working on a brand-new VR headset designed specifically with PS5 in mind. 

Sony's next-generation VR system would be better than its predecessor in every aspect, including resolution, field of view, tracking, and connectivity, Sony said on Tuesday. According to Sony, the new unit will also come with an all-new VR controller that will support 'some of the key features' found in the DualSense wireless controller. 

Sony has not disclosed any actual specifications of its next-generation VR HMD but said it was in development and will not launch in 2021. Keeping in mind that the unit will be released in 2022 or 2023, six or seven years after the original PSVR, it promises to feature massive improvements over its ancestor.  

Game console developers tend to start talking about their next-generation products sometimes over a year before their release to support demand for existing hardware. Sony's PS VR is compatible with PlayStation 5 (albeit using a special adapter), and the company will continue to release new games for PS VR for quite a while. Therefore, it makes a sense for Sony to give some additional attention to its virtual reality platform. Sony named After The Fall, Sniper Elite VR, and Humanity among its upcoming console titles.

Only weeks ago, CD Projekt Red was the victim of a cyberattack that saw the source code for several of its titles stolen and eventually sold via an auction. The Polish developer is now looking to mitigate some of the damage by filing DMCA takedowns against anyone posting links to the stolen source code.

Last week, several Twitter users received notifications from a copyright monitoring company for providing links to torrents containing the source code. CD Projekt Red paid for exactly this sort of service, which apparently puts CDPR firmly into the big corp segment of CP77. This was first reported by Motherboard, which was able to gain access to a copy of the email sent to the Twitter users.

"Description of infringement: Illegally obtained source code of Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. Posted without authorisation, not intended to be released to the public," is what was stated in the DMCA takedown. 

In addition to those Twitter users, several others also had their tweets taken down, replaced with a reply from Twitter that stated: "has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder."

With the source code now in the hand/s of those who committed the cyberattack against CD Projekt Red, many had wondered how the company would attempt to protect its property. While the offenders have yet to be identified, there's little doubt that the company has been working with various agencies to investigate the situation further. And with the recent DMCAs, we now see that they're already policing popular locations such as Twitter.

However, DMCA takedowns aren't the only issue that CD Projekt Red is facing. We're five days away from the end of February 2021, and the developer has yet to make good on its promise to release a major update that many are hoping will address the performance of Cyberpunk 2077. With the title still missing on the PlayStation Store and Sony insisting they will not add it back until CD Projekt Red can assure that the game will run well on both the PS4/PS4 Pro and PS5, there's money sitting on the table. Things aren't much better on the Xbox One either, while the PC performance is hit or miss, depending on how beefy the PC running the game is.

These last few months have not been kind to CD Projekt Red, and we can only hope that it will be able to turn its string of bad luck around.

CD Projekt Red has released its first Cyberpunk 2077 patch of 2021, bringing a slew of stability improvements and bug fixes for all platforms. This is the first of two updates that CD Projekt Red promised towards the end of 2020. However, it's definitely not the massive patch that many were expecting and it isn't the magic "fix everything" update that many were hoping for.

"In this update, we focused on various stability improvements, which you can find outlined in the patch notes below. We will continue this work in patch 1.2 and other upcoming updates. At the same time, we will keep fixing the bugs you encounter and listening to your feedback on how to improve the overall game experience." 

You can read the full list of patch notes by heading over to the Cyberpunk 2077 website. However, it's worth pointing out a couple of key points. First are the PlayStation-specific updates that address the rampant crashing on the PlayStation 4 while also providing some much needed PlayStation 4 optimization that addresses the crowds on the PS4 Pro and PlayStation 5. The Xbox wasn't left out as CD Projekt Red has done some optimization to memory utilization, which is sorely needed. Even the Stadia version gets some love, though nothing appears to help the title's performance. 

This update weighs in at roughly 5.4GB on Steam and considerably smaller at 1.1GB on GOG. While the patch is a step in the right direction, it still doesn't address the number of outstanding issues, such as the buggy AI, missing content, and a large number of quests that are still broken. Here's hoping that the upcoming patch 1.2 will address those concerns and more.

Following the initial blockbuster sales of Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red faced a massive backlash due to performance issues that impacted gameplay on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the PC. This eventually led to refunds being offered to consumers not happy with the title's performance, prompting PlayStation to remove the title from its PlayStation Online and Xbox to apply a warning to anyone looking forward to purchasing the game. The company is also facing multiple lawsuits from investors who felt misled by CD Projekt Red. 

Ever since PlayStation cut ties with Facebook, streamers can no longer broadcast live or upload clips directly to Facebook. It’s easy to livestream directly to Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter, though. You can start the stream from your console, know that your voice and game audio will be leveled, create a title, click start streaming and watch the stream from your phone, tablet, or computer.

What You Need to Livestream from PlayStation

●     PlayStation 4 or 5: the user interface is similar.

●     Headset with a 3.5 mm output to plug into the PS controller.

●     A Controller to navigate through the menus and monitor audio levels

●     A Monitor to see how high or low the volume

●     A PSN account to access the party function.

Setting Up Voice Audio for PS4 Livestreams

To ensure sure that your livestream includes your voice

2. Slide to the right and select Settings

3. Select Sharing and Broadcasts

4. Select Broadcast Settings.

5. Then select Advanced Settings

6. Navigate to Audio Sharing Settings

We see three different options

●     Include Microphone Audio in Video Clips is for when you’re recording gameplay. For example, 15-minute clips can be recorded and saved in your gallery with or without your commentary. Select this to include any commentary made during the 15 mins. Include Microphone Audio in Broadcasts is for livestreaming. Check this box to ensure your microphone is heard during your livestreams. Share Party Audio: checking this box will include party audio in video clips and broadcast. This one needs to be selected in order for your livestream to hear the people in your party chat. Selecting this will also override the first one Include Microphone Audio in Video Clips. Your voice will be included in every clip made.

Now that you have made your party chat sharable with your livestream, let’s setup allowing your voice to be broadcast in your friend’s livestream.

How to Set Your Broadcast to Capture Friends’ Party Chat Audio

These are the settings you need to change and have others in your party change on their ends  so the stream can hear you and your buddies.

2. Press the OPTIONS button on the right of the touchpad on the controller to see Party Settings & select Party Settings.

3. Scroll down to Allow Your Voice to Be Shared

4. Select Always Allow

Now your voice is available in your buddies’ stream.

Once you’re in a party and you notice someone’s mic is too low or too high they can be adjusted in party settings.

Since PlayStation’s recent update, joining parties and in-game sessions are different. Once you select party, the software will automatically take you to the party that you’re in. Or it will show you parties that you are invited to. You can no longer view other people’s parties without an invitation.

3. Select Party Settings from the right-side menu.

You’ll see the top three options are now available to select

4. Select Adjust Microphone Level, if you wish to change your microphone sensitivity.

If the bar is yellow in the Too Low zone, you’re a quiet talker, slide the bar up to increase your volume.

If the bar is red and in the Too High zone, you’re a loud talker, slide the volume down to lower your volume.

5. Select Adjust Audio Mix

The bar will adjust the game or your party chat. If you’re playing a game like Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout and don’t need to hear the game audio slide the bar to the left.

If you’re playing a game like Apex Legends and you need to hear the game audio slide the bar to the right. This adjusts settings for you and your broadcast as well.

6. Select Chat Audio to prioritize which chat is being used, the game voice chat or the PlayStation party voice chat.

Adjusting these settings can increase the production value of your stream. And it combats people who like to put their mics close to their mouths. You are able to control anyone’s volume from your PlayStation.

Setting Up Voice Audio for PS5 Livestreams

1. Click the Settings button on the top right-hand side

2. Select Captures and Broadcast

3. Select Broadcast on the left side of the screen.

4. Select Audio.

5. Toggle on Include Voice Chat Audio. This allows other streamers to broadcast your voice, your livestream to capture your voice and your commentary to be captured when you save Game Clips.

A shortcut to including your Mic Audio and Party Audio is included your Save Game Recording Menu

How to Balance Voice Chat and Gameplay Audio

1. Press the PS button on the controller. You’ll see a menu appear on the bottom

2. Scroll to the right to the Sound icon. A menu box will appear that will have a bar underneath Voice Chat Balance.

3. Move the bar to the left to turn up the Voice Chat or move it to the right to turn up the Game Chat Audio.

As we mentioned above, if you’re playing a game like Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout and don’t need to hear the game audio, slide the bar to the left. If you’re playing a game like Apex Legends and you need to hear the game audio, slide the bar to the right.

How to Access Party Settings

1. Press the PS button on the controller.

2. Slide to the right toward Game Base. Game Base is four icons over

3. Create a party by pressing the square button on your controller.

4. Press the PS button

5. Select Game Base and scroll to the right of Create Party button to the Settings button

6. Select Voice Chat Settings

How to Adjust Your Mic Settings

1. Select Microphone Level Voice from the Voice Chat Settings menu.

2. Slide the bar to the left to turn down your mic sensitivity and slide the bar to the right to turn up the mic sensitivity

Also in Voice Chat Settings, you see Share Your Voice.

Here is another place where you can allow your voice to be shared through your buddies’ livestream.

There is a shortcut available in your Game Base to adjust or mute your mic. 

The PlayStation 5’s UI is slightly different, with newer icons and functions. So you’re able to do the same things with fewer steps. The mini-menu that pops up when you press the PS makes it easy to create shortcuts.

If you've been following the recent developments surrounding CD Projekt Red and how the company has handled its latest game, Cyberpunk 2077, then you know that there has been one colossal mistake after another. PC users have had a hard time meeting the Cyberpunk 2077 System Requirements and getting strong performance while PS4 and XBox One users have had painful console experiences.

These have led to both Microsoft and Sony changing their refund process to allow frustrated owners of the game to get a refund with no questions asked. Sony then went one step further and removed Cyberpunk 2077 from its online store. The more recent development even involves the developers at CD Projekt Red addressing their frustration on how everything has been handled. 

Outside of the refunds, CD Projekt Red has announced that the outstanding issues, including the lackluster performance of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions, would be addressed in two patches, which are scheduled for January and February 2021 releases. 

However, it would seem that due to the recent events, that timetable has been moved up as a new patch was released just this evening. Hotfix 1.05 addresses a huge number of bugs for both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions. This is also being released for the PC very shortly.

While the list of specific fixes is way too large to include here, the patch promises "multiple stability improvements" across all platforms, but we don't know what those are specifically. This update also includes a fix for incorrectly identified AMD Ryzen processors, which led to disabled cores. 

Other PC highlights include removing the use of AVX to stop crashes on non-AVX CPUs, adjusting the lighting so ray-traced effects are not too bright and solving an issue with the Steam overlay. The company also removed the debug console to "prevent functions that could lead to crashes or blocked quests." However, it says that it plans to do something to accommodate the "modding community" in the future.

When CD Projekt Red first spoke on the issues, it assured everyone that the developers would have some time to relax and enjoy the upcoming holiday. Now it seems like that is no longer the case, as the events surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 and the mishandling of the game by CD Projekt Red's management have kicked things into overdrive.

 It looks like getting a refund for the PlayStation 4 version of Cyberpunk 2077 has just gotten harder. Originally, CD Projekt Red had referred frustrating owners of the title to reach out to either Sony PlayStation or Microsoft Xbox for a refund if they didn’t want to wait for the company to fix the outstanding issues. Now it would seem that isn’t the case.

In a new update from CD Projekt Red, they are now telling the game owners that they should reach out to Xbox. but that is no longer the case for PlayStation 4 owners. The original messaging made it seem like the company was getting special treatment, which turned out not to be the case.

Since then, both PlayStation and Xbox have likely received a high number of requests for refunds, which has likely frustrated both companies. However, Microsoft has a “better” refund policy and has been known to be lenient when it comes to refunds. PlayStation has been known to stick to their guns, and don’t easily refund anything. 

According to PlayStation's refund policy, it will only offer a refund if a game hasn't already been downloaded, and if it has been, then it has to be proven to be faulty. In this instance, the rampant bugs and performance issues don't equate to being faulty, at least not in PlayStation's eyes.

Numerous refund hopefuls that have been turned away by PlayStation have turned to CDPR, which prompted the company to release the following message, which was first reported by Kotaku:

Xbox One owners are free to keep contacting Xbox, while PlayStation 4 owners appear to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Sure, you can still reach out to PlayStation, but you may not like what you hear when you do. It doesn't seem like the door is completely shut, as CDPR did at least say that they'll provide another update regarding the matter before 2020 ends.

If you're someone who owns a PlayStation 4 version of Cyberpunk 2077 and is looking for a refund, your best bet, for now, is to reach out to CDPR at the email address helpmerefund@cdprojektred.com. But do it quick as this email address was supposedly only going to be available until December 21st, 2020, which is next Monday.

It's been a rough few days for anyone who purchased CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 for either the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. Due to several issues, such as buggy AI and performance-related issues, many customers have taken issue with the state of the game.

Sony was already allowing some refunds through its online store. Now, CD Projekt Red has come out and provided a detailed outline regarding the state of Cyberpunk 2077 and is suggesting unhappy customers of the digital versions apply for refunds through Sony and Microsoft's console marketplaces.

Simultaneously, the developer is suggesting that those who purchased physical copies should try to request a refund at the store where the game was purchased and reach out to CD Projekt Red directly if they aren't able to do so. The company has an email that will be available for one week, until December 21, which is before the Christmas gift-giving period.

"Finally, we would always like everyone who buys our games to be satisfied with their purchase." The statement reads. "We would appreciate it if you would give us a chance, but if you are not pleased with the game on your console and don’t want to wait for updates, you can opt to refund your copy. For copies purchased digitally, please use the refund system of PSN or Xbox respectively. For boxed versions, please first try to get a refund at the store where you bought the game for boxed versions. Should this not be possible, please contact us at helpmerefund@cdprojektred.com and we will do our best to help you. Starting from today, you can contact us for a week up until December 21st, 2020." 

If Microsoft and Sony accept refund requests, it is benevolent. Per their purchase and pre-order policy, once someone has downloaded a game to their console, they can no longer request a refund. There's no doubt that the game's numerous issues have prompted Sony and Microsoft to intervene, and it's good to see the companies working to accommodate their user bases.

Neither the PS4, PS4 Pro, or the Xbox One can provide a steady 30 frames per second, and segments that involve driving and gunplay can see drops as low as 20 frames per second. It's clear that there is still some optimization work to do, and CD Projekt Red has its work cut out for it with getting the console versions to an acceptable and playable level.

While the author of this piece is enjoying Cyberpunk 2077 on his PC, it is hard to recommend anyone playing this on the base version of the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 4 Pro, or Xbox One for that matter. The best way to play the game, is via PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, X or Google's Stadia, which runs surprisingly well. In the meantime, CD Projekt Red has acknowledged the issues and has already released an update that addresses several game-breaking bugs.

Also, the company has recently announced its plans to "correct" the current status of the game across the last-generation of consoles. However, there are still numerous bugs that have yet to be patched, as many of us are well aware of.

"Together these should fix the most prominent problems gamers are facing on last-gen consoles. We will be informing you about the contents of each patch ahead of their release. They won’t make the game on last-gen look like it’s running on a high-spec PC or next-gen console, but it will be closer to that experience than it is now."

For now, you'll have to decide if you'll either hold on to your copy of Cyberpunk 2077 or if you'll request a refund and see how the situation plays out.

While we don't have the official next-gen console versions of Cyberpunk 2077 just yet, that hasn't stopped CD Projekt Red, Sony, and Microsoft from adding a few extra graphical features to the PS5, Xbox Series X, and S consoles when you run Cyberpunk 2077 in compatibility mode. Digital Foundry found out in its next-gen console review that the PS5 received a 60 fps cap while Xbox Series X gets some extra graphical enhancements, even on the series S.

The enhancements to the Playstation 5 are pretty self-explanatory: If you load up the PS4 version of Cyberpunk 2077 on the PS5, the game will detect it is running on the next-gen console and will automatically switch the frame rate cap to 60 fps. Besides that, Digital Foundry believes you get the same graphical settings as the PS4 Pro.

The Xbox Series X meanwhile receives a few graphical enhancements and inherits the same Quality and Performance modes from the Xbox One consoles. If you run the Series X in quality mode, limiting frame rates to 30 fps, you will receive ambient occlusion and a much higher NPC population in Night City.

The Xbox Series S sits in a weird middle ground between the Series X and PS5. The Series S has a 30 fps frame cap, but with that cap, you receive ambient occlusion for extra graphical oomph.

It's nice to see some extra enhancements were implemented into the next-gen consoles while we wait for the official PS5/Series X version of Cyberpunk 2077 coming out next year. If you're wondering about performance, it's very playable on the new consoles, thanks to the new Zen 2/RDNA2 SOC and high-speed NVMe storage. That means you won't have to worry about frame rates tanking like on the PS4 and Xbox One. If you want to play Cyberpunk 2077 on something that isn't a PC, the next-gen consoles will offer a good gaming experience, even in compatibility mode.             

When Cyberpunk 2077 launched a few days ago, it was met with tons of game-breaking bugs that ruined the Cyberpunk experience for many players, including many issues with quests. Luckily Cyberpunk devs have released a new hotfix, version 1.04, to address many of these issues. The hotfix is available now for PC and Playstation 4. CD Projekt Red is still working on the patch for Xbox consoles and should have it out soon.

The main bug fixes are primarily regarding quests themselves, namely fixing issues with completing objectives, correcting issues when abandoning quest mid-way through, and quests being blocked. The vast majority of the issues are NPC based, whether that's an NPC not calling V by her name or NPCs despawning completely if you left the game. Some other key fixes include eliminating the smudge effect on Xbox One and Playstation 4 and modifying flash effects on braindances to help reduce epileptic symptoms.

The patch should be available for download now on PS4 and PC. Here's a detailed rundown of the fixes:

Quests

• Fixed an issue with completing the final objective in Gig: Freedom of the Press.
• Fixed an issue with starting conversation with Johnny at the end in Life During Wartime.
• Corrected a rare issue with NPCs no longer calling V if A Like Supreme quest was abandoned mid-way.
• Fixed an issue with Nix not going into his default state in Spellbound and KOLD MIRAGE.
• Fixed issues blocking progress in I Fought The Law if the quest area is left.
• Fixed inability to find Delamain in Epistrophy.
• Fixed issues related to remaining in the second phase of the quest after finishing Pacifica fight with Ozob if played after Finals.
• Fixed an issue with Nomads no longer present if V leaves the quest area mid-combat in With a Little Help from My Friends/Queen of the Highway.
• Adjusted mappings and re-enabled quest tracker in M'ap Tann Pèlen/I Walk the Line/Transmission.
• Fixed constraints on freedom to get up and sit down if neither blueline condition is met in Violence.
• Fixed issues with time and space resulting from leaving the quest area or abandoning the quest in Following the River.
• Fixed an issue with conversation with Johnny not starting after leaving the hotel in Tapeworm.
• Fixed an issue with quest being blocked upon leaving the quest area before climbing the hill in Following the River.
• Fixed the objective “Go into booth 9” not completing if the room’s entered too fast in Automatic Love.
• Fixed Jackie’s issues with sitting still in The Ripperdoc.
• Other quest fixes

Gameplay and Visuals

• Fixed the preview in weapon crafting.
• Reduced vehicle appearance pop-in.
• Speeded up switching first person perspective to third person perspective in a vehicle.
• Fixed issues with animations missing from important quest NPCs during cinematics.

Performance & Stability, Miscellaneous

• Improved stability, including various crash fixes.
• Modified the flashing effect on braindances to reduce the risk of inducing epileptic symptoms. The effect has been smoothed out and the flashes reduced in frequency and magnitude.
• Removed copyrighted songs incorrectly present in the game with "Disable Copyrighted Music" feature toggled on.

PC-Specific

• Switching language to default in the in-game settings now correctly sets it to the language of your Steam client.   

Console-Specific

• Improved reflections quality on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 to eliminate the smudge effect.
• Fixed “The Wasteland” achievement being stuck on 97% after completing all relevant missions in The Badlands on Xbox.
• Fixed an issue with missing PT-BR VO for Xbox players in Americas.      

After seven long years of anticipation, Cyberpunk 2077 is finally out, and so far we’ve had the opportunity to benchmark it on PC and play it on Stadia. Our impressions of the game’s performance have been generally positive so far, but these aren’t the only platforms the game is on. The game’s PS4 and Xbox One versions are also out today, but aside from two short gameplay videos, developer CD Projekt Red hadn’t given press any access to the game on console. Now that the game’s officially launched, though, we’re starting to see reports hit social media from all over, and the results are concerning. 

Until now, all we had seen of Cyberpunk's console versions were a few sequences of pre-recorded gameplay running on the Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, Xbox Series X and PS5. The version in these videos was technically built for current-gen consoles, with a proper next-gen update slated for next year, though the base versions of the PS4 and Xbox One were mysteriously absent from these videos. If reports starting to come out from players are to be believed, though, we might now know why. 

Videos are starting to hit Twitter that show the game running on the base PS4 and Xbox One, and they’re filled with muddy textures, flat surfaces, heavy pixelization, crashes and plenty of unreactive or buggy AI.
 

We’ve also seen complaints that the game runs in 720p on the base PS4 and Xbox One, with frequent dips below 30fps.

There’s a caveat to some of these user complaints, however. While Cyberpunk 2077 launched on December 10th in the US, we first started seeing footage of the game running on base consoles hit American social media on December 9th, which means that the users behind those posts may have adjusted their time zones to access it early. This means that some of them might not have been playing with Cyberpunk’s supposedly extensive day-one patch. While CD Projekt Red ensures that the game should automatically have the patch applied if you preloaded it, Ethan Gach of Kotaku said that when he attempted to play Cyberpunk early by adjusting his time zone, his copy was stuck on a pre-patch version with no option to download updates. This persisted even after re-downloading the game from scratch.

But certain post-patch members of the press are having a bad time, too. Speaking to Eurogamer, Tom Morgan of Digital Foundry said “Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 looks very blurry, running between 720p and 900p resolution, and the framerate for any driving around the big city areas is constantly at around 20 [fps].”

He also said that he experienced frequent hiccups and texture pop-in issues. Most of these issues went away by playing on the PS5, despite the console version out now being branded for current-gen consoles, but Morgan said that glitches like T-posing persisted.

Because of these issues, and because CD Projekt Red did not provide us a console copy of the game, we here at Tom’s Hardware haven't yet tried it. However, Tom’s Hardware freelance contributor Kieth Mitchell told us that he also experienced “low frame rate and resolution” on his base PS4, though these issues went away when playing on the PS4 Pro.

To be fair to Cyberpunk 2077, this is a 2020 game running on 2013 hardware, which some of the game’s fans have pointed out on social media. Others, however, are posting counterexamples of similar high-fidelity recent open world games that run much more smoothly on base current generation consoles.

Regardless, what we can say is that while the versions being sold for console right now are branded for the PS4 and the Xbox One, it might not be worth buying them unless you have a PS5 or Xbox Series X. For now, at least.

CD Projekt Red's eagerly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 has been released, with its highest profile release being the PC version of the game. Reports show that the game has already hit torrent sites and is being pirated. Notebookcheck first reported the news.

Let's make the position of Tom's Hardware clear: pirating is bad. We don't condone it. You shouldn't do it. It also may put your PC at risk to malware. Instead, purchase a legal copy or wait for it to go on sale.

Cyberpunk 2077 was released on three platforms for the PC; Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG. The latter is owned by developer CD Projekt Red, and the biggest appeal of GOG is that they offer DRM-free versions of games; this is the version of the game that is floating around on the internet. Not having any form of DRM makes it fairly easy  for those savvy enough to repackage them and distribute them across the internet, which is the very thing that's happening to Cyberpunk 2077 right now.

Both Steam and Epic Games Store act as the DRM for many games on their respective storefronts. You can't play games without logging into the services (except for a few). And sometimes, they also use other DRM such as Denuvo, which also tends to cause performance-related issues due to higher CPU demand. In some cases, it locks legit users out of games completely. This is why some developers eventually remove the DRM after a while.

Cyberpunk 2077 is currently available on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and S, and Google Stadia, all of which are platforms to legally purchase the game.

A week ago, CD Projekt Red posted the first footage we’d yet seen of Cyberpunk 2077 running on consoles, using both the Xbox One X and Xbox Series X for its demonstrations. Now, Playstation owners are getting some attention as well, with a new trailer that shows about 4 minutes of PS4 Pro footage and about 2 and a half minutes of PS5 footage. Unfortunately for those of us who are still on the PS4's launch model, there’s nothing to show off how the game runs on Sony’s base current-gen (last-gen?) machine.

Like with the Xbox footage, the video showing off Playstation gameplay maxes out at 1080p and doesn’t support 60 fps, so we’re mostly stuck to anecdotal impressions here. Also like the Xbox footage, the video here takes place early into the game and jumps around to avoid spoilers, which means it shows off a good deal of situations, though there’s a bit of a catch.

Before we get started, though, the video’s narrator reminds us that the footage we’re about to see doesn’t include all of the day-one graphics enhancements set to come as a free patch at launch, though it does have “a great number of those fixes.” She also affirms that a “full, next-gen upgrade is coming for free sometime next year,” which means that the video's Playstation 5 footage is from the game running via backwards compatibility. 

That’s quite a few disclaimers, probably because of the game’s many delays and reports of crunch at the studio, but perhaps most noticeable in this video is the lack of side by side comparisons that we saw in the Xbox footage. Instead, the video starts with a sequence of PS4 Pro footage and ends with some brief PS5 footage.

That’s a bit of a shame, because it means that while the video does show off driving, combat, daytime, nighttime, clear weather and rainy weather, only some of those effects show up on certain consoles. On my watch, the character and vehicle models looked great on either console, with the major difference being the effect fidelity. There’s a small moment around 3:35 where the shadows on a dossier seem to pixelate and glitch out as a character flips through it on the PS4 Pro, and rain looks more dense on the PS5 than on the PS4 Pro. 

It’s a little difficult to make direct comparisons, though, because certain effects, like rain droplets accumulating on a car window or the sun’s rays shining down in the desert, only appear on one of the consoles. 

Still, if you’re planning on playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Playstation, this video might be useful to you despite being as manicured as it is. We’re going to have to wait to get our hands on official benchmarks, as well as to see how that day one patch and next-gen upgrade pan out, but for now, it seems as if you’ll be able to run the game just fine on either generation. Except, perhaps, if you own a base model PS4 or Xbox One, which we again still haven’t seen any footage from.

CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 is slated for a release date of December 10th and it appears promotional content for the game is already being sent out to stores in preparation for the release. Mikeymorphin on Twitter posted a photo with the promotional content, including Cyberpunk 2077's PS4 Pro physical game copies.

Interestingly it appears that the physical copies of the game come with two Blu-ray discs in the packaging. It is possible the second disc is there for extra optional content and it's also possible that other platforms such as PC, PS5 or XBox will come on only one disc as the photo  

The game itself requires 70GB so it makes some sense that it might need two Blu-rays as a single disc can only house 25GBs per side (50GB for dual-layer discs). Of course, that's assuming that the CD Projekt Red couldn't compress the content so it fits in 50GB and doesn't want to force users to download at least another 20GB of content on install. 

This two-disc inconvenience is only necessary if you will purchase a physical copy of the game. On every platform, including PC, there will be a downloadable version. 

If you're planning to play Cyberpunk 2077 on your PC, see our article on Cyberpunk 2077 System requirements, where we document not only what CD Projekt Red recommends but what we think you'll really need to have a good Cyberpunk experience.