Noclip ha dedicado un documental a WipEout 2097, uno de los juegos más importantes de la historia de Sony, y toque de queda de la primera PlayStation
Many cult games become so because there’s more than the games themselves. What they represented for their time, the culture of a specific time and place, are inseparable from the game itself. This may seem crazy to some people, for whom video games are just entertainment and nothing more, but it makes sense. Sometimes video games are something more.
A great example of this was the first PlayStation. It was the first console that was not only a mass phenomenon but a cultural event in itself. And among its games, none managed to inspire the culture in such a meaningful way as WipEout. The world of electronic music, nightclubs, drugs, and WipEout were so interconnected that it’s hard to talk about one without the others.
That’s why Noclip has dedicated a half-hour documentary to WipEout 2097, the second title in the franchise. Or more specifically, to its soundtrack. Talking to Tim “CoLD SToRAGE” Wright, composer of the soundtrack, Noclip sheds light not only on how the music was made, but how the game itself was developed.
The importance of this documentary should not be underestimated for several reasons. WipEout was one of the launch titles for the first PlayStation and one of the most celebrated, and WipEout 2097 improved practically everything about it. In addition, it featured electronic music luminaries of that time, names like Leftfield, Underworld, The Prodigy, and The Chemical Brothers. It became somewhat of a who’s who of electronic music.
If you experienced the WipEout phenomenon, this documentary will take you back to a moment in time that you know would be impossible to replicate today. If you didn’t experience it, it’ll allow you to see the importance of a video game that understood its era in a way that practically no other video game has understood. Something worth witnessing for yourself.
Sony has shown why journalism is necessary by conducting an interview with Neil Druckmann that has angered the American creative.
It’s easy to underestimate the work of journalists. Anyone can make news or an interview, write a text, many people think. What they don’t know is that, beyond what is written —and whether it is liked or not—, there is a whole work behind to ensure the quality of what is published. Something that, when there is no journalistic ethics behind, has consequences.
Recently, Sony published an interview with Neil Druckmann, creator of The Last of Us and executive producer of Uncharted. In this interview, he made some quite inflammatory statements. He claimed that his next game would redefine the perception of video games in the mainstream and that generative AI was the future, which didn’t sit well with a certain sector of players. And not without reason.
That’s why, shortly after being published, Druckmann made a series of comments on his Twitter. Stating that his answers had been edited and manipulated, much of what the interview said had not come out of his mouth. Something that caused an even bigger uproar, for obvious reasons. Leading Sony to decide to withdraw the interview.
Although the most inflammatory were the mentions of AI, and Druckmann has not corrected this at any time, this only demonstrates the need for journalism. Because a corporate interview, for whatever reason, only shares the interests of corporations. And that is something that Druckmann has learned the hard way.
Sony has had a good fiscal year, despite its stumbles and numerous problems, all thanks to a little game that no one expected anything from.
March and April are the months of financial results in the video game industry. While navigating through pdfs full of numbers is not the most fun thing in the world for most of the audience, there is usually information about how companies are doing. Something in which Sony is not an exception. Since they have released their latest financial results and drop details about what we should expect from PlayStation in the future.
The most important thing is that Sony has met its financial results for the year, although they fell short of their forecasts. They expected to sell 25 million units of PlayStation 5, but they ended up with around 21 million as of March 31, 2024. That puts them on the same trajectory as they had with PlayStation 4, which accumulated around 60 million units sold in the same period of its lifespan. The same number that PlayStation 5 has reached.
Sales, in addition, have increased by 17% compared to the previous year, accumulating 4.26 trillion yen, around 240 million euros. Something that has increased thanks to non-Sony titles, downloadable content, and the impact of the weakness of the yen compared to the dollar and the euro. Something that has also been favored by the success of a game that no one expected anything from: Helldivers 2.
The Arrowhead game is currently the best-selling game at launch. Helldivers 2 has sold 12 million units in the first 10 weeks since its release. This has surpassed the previous best launch in PlayStation history, which happened last year, and it is God of War Ragnarok, which managed to sell 11 million copies. This demonstrates that the PC release, and particularly simultaneous releases, help boost their video game sales.
In fact, according to interim CEO Hiroki Totoki, their interest is to focus more on porting games from their catalog to PC. This is explained not only by the success of Helldivers 2, but also by the success that other Sony games have had throughout the year.
In addition, Sony has taken the opportunity to announce the CEOs who will replace Jim Ryan. Hermen Hulst and Hideaki Nishino will be in charge of this position, serving as CEOs within the company. Despite these changes, Sony expects a slight decrease in revenue for fiscal year 2025, as they expect to sell fewer consoles and not release any games from their major franchises during this fiscal year. However, they still anticipate generating more revenue than in the previous two fiscal years.
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PlayStation Vita is a console to be vindicated, as it laid the foundation for what portable consoles are today, even if it didn’t achieve the success it deserved.
Today we are witnessing an evident rebirth of portable consoles. Thanks to Nintendo Switch first, and then the Steam Deck, we have seen the emergence of numerous alternatives, both on the console side and on the laptop side in the form of a console. Retro lovers have Analogue Pocket, those who want something more unique have Playdate, and in between there are all kinds of consoles for each person’s preferences.
It is undeniable that we live in a golden age of laptops. Also, now is the perfect time to reclaim some of the ones that, at the time, we should have appreciated more.
One of those portable devices is the PlayStation Vita. Released on February 15th in North America and February 22nd in Europe, the PlayStation Vita was the successor to the PlayStation Portable, focusing on its large OLED screen, dual touch screens, two joysticks, and a more modern and elegant design. These aspects may sound uninnovative today, but at the time they made it a revolutionary handheld console.
In fact, Sony’s marketing was based on talking about PlayStation Vita as the portable version of a home console. A monster that could play the same games you played in your living room. But many people misunderstood what they meant by that. Although it also has great graphics power, especially compared to the Nintendo 3DS, the revolutionary aspect was in its design and controls.
PlayStation Vita was the first console that had an identical layout to a modern controller. Playing Sony’s handheld console was like holding a PlayStation controller with a huge, high-quality screen, on which you could play the same games as the home consoles. Something absolutely revolutionary, considering that, at that time, the majority of the public associated handhelds with Nintendo. That is, a different style of gameplay than you would have on home consoles, due to both hardware and design limitations.
The great virtue of the PlayStation Vita is that it did twelve years ago what is now valued in the Nintendo Switch or the Steam Deck. Being a home console or a mid-power computer, but portable. The huge screen, the possibility of playing everything anywhere, and the control scheme were already present in Sony’s console. It just arrived ten years too soon.
Because the problem with the Vita was not its catalog. It had all the PlayStation Mobile games, a lot of PSX classics, Sony’s own spinoffs of the big franchises, and all the indie games of the moment. Even today, many people consider that games like OlliOlli or Hotline Miami have their true home on this handheld console. And some classics from the first PlayStation, like Vagrant Story or Final Fantasy VII, have never been played better, legally, than on the Vita.
In addition, being backward compatible, it could also play PlayStation Portable games. And thanks to Remote Play, you could play through streaming on your PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles. One of the great virtues of current handhelds, thanks to programs like Chiaki, but already supported natively in 2012.
Although it is still alive today thanks to the modding community, which keeps it alive and has turned it into everything that the Steam Deck is celebrated for today, the PlayStation Vita ceased production on March 1, 2019. Selling around 16 million units in its lifetime, it fell far short of the 80 million units sold by its predecessor, the PlayStation Portable.
What caused this failure? The use of proprietary memory card system, the perception that PlayStation Portable was a secondary console compared to Nintendo DS, and a marketing campaign that failed to communicate the true virtues of the Vita, did a lot of damage to Sony’s console. This has led to, twelve years later and even after demonstrating that it paved the way for a new boom in portable consoles, Sony still hasn’t dared to release a successor to it.
Because while Sony released PlayStation Portal on November 15th, what the audience really wants is a PlayStation Vita 2. What would have been its successor if they hadn’t let it die. But since that’s impossible, here, today, we celebrate the path that PlayStation Vita opened. Even if it came too soon to succeed.
Nightmare Kart is a fusion between Bloodborne and Mario Kart that is coming out very soon, even after its legal issues with Sony.
Working with foreign IPs is always risky. Even if they have flexible policies and usually don’t pursue people who use them, it is still someone else’s intellectual property. At any moment, they can send their lawyers to let us know that we shouldn’t be doing that. Something that happens very often with Nintendo, although the most striking case so far this year has had Sony as the protagonist.
An independent developer named Bunlith has been developing a game that is a mix of Bloodborne and Mario Kart for years, called Bloodborne Kart. Starting as an April Fool’s joke in 2021, it would become a full-fledged project during 2022. All so that, when it was about to be released at the end of 2023, Sony told them that they couldn’t release the game with the name Bloodborne or its most distinctive elements.
Far from giving up, what Bunlith and his team have done is rename it and change the most distinctive elements of the game. The game is now called Nightmare Kart and features 20 racers, 16 maps, a campaign with boss fights, and a battle mode. All of this with enough changes to be different enough from Bloodborne to avoid a lawsuit.
This is especially peculiar because Bunlith’s previous game was Bloodborne PSX, a reimagining of Bloodborne as if it were a game for the original PlayStation, which Sony had no problem with. In any case, Nightmare Kart will be released for free on May 31st for Steam and itch.io.
The CEO of PlayStation has retired this month, after thirty years working in the company, so they have decided to give him a farewell tribute… with a twist.
The video game industry is old enough for some of its important figures to be dying. Also for the second generation of these to be retiring. It’s a natural cycle, and some handle it with more grace than others. Something that doesn’t seem to matter too much to Sony, given the circumstances.
Jim Ryan has retired this March 2024 after thirty years at PlayStation. Reaching the position of CEO of the company, he was one of the most important figures in the video game industry, for better or for worse. That’s why at Sony they have decided to celebrate his thirty years working in the company in the most grotesque way possible: by giving away a digital collectible in the form of a bobblehead doll of Jim Ryan.
If you want to achieve it, you will have to do something that would make Jim Ryan happy. You will have to play one of the games that he promoted within the company, such as Gran Turismo 7, Marvel’s Spider-man 2, God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part 2, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Destiny 2. As you can see, these are exclusively games from Sony’s recent years, as a man who claimed not to understand why anyone would want to play old Sony games when asked why their consoles were not backward compatible.
While it is a somewhat ridiculous way to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary, in addition to giving an expensive importance to the players that is doubtful to have, it is a sweet gesture in its own way. Grotesque, but sweet. Because at least, and seeing the industry trends, they haven’t made it an NFT.
Even though they were launched with great fanfare, the PlayStation VR2 has proven to be a failure, to the extent that Sony has entirely halted its production.
As much as it pains us, virtual reality has not managed to take off. It has been with us for over a decade and it doesn’t seem like it will ever find its footing. Perhaps it’s due to the lack of essential titles, apart from Half-Life Alyx, or perhaps it’s due to its price, which is unaffordable for many wallets. Because the only thing we know for sure is that no one is managing to popularize this technology. Not even Sony.
According to a report by Bloomberg in one of their latest articles, PlayStation VR2 could be nearing its end. Since its launch, unit shipments have been progressively more limited each quarter. To the point that, currently, they have completely halted the production of new units.
Launched on February 22, 2023, the PlayStation VR2 was released at a price of €599, a price well above the competition. Only compatible with PlayStation 5 and without backward compatibility with games from the first PlayStation VR, they were received with lukewarm reviews by critics and the public, despite the obvious improvements compared to its first iteration. Especially due to its price and lack of exclusive titles.
While Sony has not clarified how many PlayStation VR2 units it has sold so far, we have some estimated approximations. According to IDC, a market analysis company, the estimated sales were 270,000 units by the end of March. Something that Sony denied by stating that they would be around 600,000 units.
According to IDC’s estimate, however, the figures would not be so promising. Falling consistently throughout the quarters. In the second quarter of 2023, they would have sold around 435,000 units, 343,600 units during the third, and 325,200 during the fourth. Ridiculously low figures for a piece of hardware.
That would explain Sony’s reasons for completely stopping production of the PlayStation VR2. Or their recent announcement that they are testing the possibility of making them compatible with PC, so that players can access the entire catalog of games on that platform. Something necessary given the poor first-party support that Sony has given it.
Sony has registered the name of a new unknown franchise, suggesting that they may have something prepared for this same year.
Sony is not in a great position for 2024. With a lackluster catalog of titles during 2023, and even more lackluster for 2024, it doesn’t seem like the company has big plans for the console. In fact, this is what the COO of Sony hinted at during the last shareholders meeting, confirming that Sony’s big titles will not return to the console, at least, until 2025. But it seems that something might be cooking behind the scenes.
On February 12th, Sony Interactive Entertainment, the gaming branch of Sony, registered the name Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet in the United States. As of today, there is no information regarding any video game called that or any other similar name. This is unusual for PlayStation, as they usually do not register game names before their announcement, but it may also put us on the list of something. Sony’s COO has stated that no major titles from established franchises will be released. Leaving the door open for new IP titles, such as potentially this Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
Of course, we cannot confirm anything about it. All that is known so far is the name and nothing else. The registration does not allow to know any data beyond the name, although if we listen to old rumors, one of PlayStation’s studios would be working on a science fiction shooter in the style of Mass Effect. So, until they reveal exactly what it is, perhaps 2024 is not as empty as they have painted it.
These are the PS Plus games for February 2024, and one of them is a big surprise, in addition to introducing one of Square’s major innovations.
Sony doesn’t rest on its laurels and has already announced the games for February for PS Plus subscribers. One of them is not a surprise, but the other two… The other two are interesting. But let’s not beat around the bush. Just a reminder that all three titles will be available from Tuesday, February 6th until Monday, March 4th. That being said, let’s go with the games!
The new 4 vs. 4 team-based online multiplayer shooter by Square Enix and Toylogic is very reminiscent of Splatoon, and we won’t blame you if you think the same. Here, instead of ink, we have foam, and instead of squids, we have attractive boys and girls with a Korean aesthetic, but everything else feels like a shooter of this kind. Undoubtedly, the big release of the month for Plus.
Rollerdrome (PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5)
Not our favorite. Roll7 gave us Rollerdrome, a third-person action shooter that combines three things we love: skating, shooting, and cyberpunk retrofuturism. We are in a competition where we have to shoot down our enemies, and to reload our weapon we have to do incredible stunts with our inline skates. Sounds complicated? It’s not that much. But it is incredibly fun and very underrated.
Steelrising (PlayStation 5)
For those who love soulslike games, or have always wanted to get into the genre but have been hindered by its difficulty, Sony has decided to give them a treat. Steelrising is an action RPG, heavily inspired by From Software games, but set in a French revolution with loyalist robots and a much more balanced difficulty. It may not be Bloodborne, but it is still a remarkable game.
Square Enix announces the release date of its upcoming game… and fans are not happy about it, as they have announced that it uses AI to create part of its art.
Square Enix has been doing a good job with their games for a few years now. With a greater focus on their old catalog, releasing more small and medium-sized games, giving space and budget to their bigger games, they are doing interesting things. They still need to improve the marketing of their non-AAA games, but it seems like they are on the right track. Except for their marked obsession with NFTs, generative AI, and everything that causes allergic reactions in players.
Last Tuesday, January 16th, in a post on the PlayStation blog, they revealed the release date of their upcoming game, Foamstars: February 6th. This game is a 4vs4 third-person multiplayer shooter for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 that strongly resembles Splatoon, but with a k-pop-inspired aesthetic. Something they hope will reach a different and broader audience.
The problem for Square Enix is that the game has not been well received. Because, according to the game’s producer, Kosuke Okatani, the development team has used AI-generated assets. While he has emphasized that all design aspects have been developed by humans, the reality is that some game icons and disc covers have been created through Midjourney. This can also create several problems for them in the medium and long term.
The most obvious one is that, as we have already mentioned, the public does not feel particularly excited about the idea of playing a game that uses AI-generated art. However small it may be, the public’s perspective on this type of content is becoming less favorable, and Square Enix seems to be aware of this, clarifying that 0.01% of the game’s art, or even less, is generated by AI. Which does not solve the problem at hand.
Foamstars will be released on February 6th for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. In addition, from February 6th to March 4th, all PlayStation Plus users will be able to play it for free. At least, those who are not bothered by its use of Midjourney to create game assets.
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