Afghan mothers and babies make up most of the dead in violence described as “sheer evil”.
PS5: Sony Says Hardware ‘On Track’ and ‘No Major Issues’ With Software
Sony has said PlayStation 5 remains on track for its Holiday 2020 release, and game development has seen “no major issues” due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
As part of its financial results briefing, Sony Global reiterated that its new hardware is “on track for launch this holiday season”. A statement on the impact of the pandemic reads: “Although factors such as employees working from home and restrictions on international travel have presented some challenges in regards to part of the testing process and the qualification of production lines, development is progressing.”
Xbox boss Phil Spencer has previously said that while Series X hardware development is relatively unaffected by the effects of the outbreak, game development remains the bigger unknown. Sony does not appear to have the same fears about its upcoming software right now: “At this point in time major problems have not arisen in the game software development pipeline for Sony’s own first-party studios or its partners’ studios.”
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While things seem to be progressing somewhat on track for Sony’s games division, the problems caused by COVID-19 has been serious enough for the company to suspend any forecasts about its future performance, meaning we’re unable to see how the company expects PS5 to perform after launch.
As for its current products, Sony reports that PS4 hardware production has taken a hit due to “issues in the component supply chain.” However, sales of existing hardware are “trending well”, and digital game sales and subscriber numbers for PS Plus and PS Now have “significantly increased”.
Yesterday, Sony announced that it had grouped all of its first-party studios’ output under a new brand, PlayStation Studios (and revealed a Marvel-like intro animation to go with it). For more on PS5 check out its full specs, how they compare to Xbox Series X, take a look at its new controller, the DualSense, and the games we know are coming to the system. For a full round-up, here’s everything we know about PS5 so far.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter.
Coronavirus: Brazil records highest daily rise in deaths
The country, which is at the centre of the Latin American outbreak, registers 881 deaths in a day.
Ahmaud Arbery mum ‘believes there will be justice’
The mother of Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed while out for a jog, says the case is moving in the “right direction”.
F1 2020’s New My Team Mode Is ‘Absolutely Enormous’
F1 series game director Lee Mather has explained balancing F1 2020’s new My Team mode has been a significant challenge, although finalising the game in the middle of the global COVID-19 crisis has been largely seamless.
F1 2020’s My Team mode will cast players as a modern-day Jack Brabham – not just a team owner and manager, but key driver as well. Mather believes the nature of driving for your own team, plus seeing a teammate out on track that you hired personally, adds a brand new dynamic to F1 2020’s racing. You’re not fighting for glory for Austrian energy drink companies or Canadian investment consortiums; you’re doing it for your own team.
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My Team will let players become the 11th team on the grid and build a brand new organisation from the ground up. For the first time players will be able to create team colours and a unique badge, sign a power unit from the current engine suppliers, find a major sponsor, select and customise a livery, design race suits, and hire a second driver
“For us, the sheer challenge of balancing a game mode such as My Team – there’s so many moving pieces,” says Mather. “There’s so many things that the player’s going to manage.”
“Obviously, we want to make sure they’re all enjoyable to engage with, but also that the AI do them as well. We can’t just have a player who’s upgrading their team, developing their driver, upgrading their facilities – the team’s have to do that too.
“Formula One’s always been a big game and basically My Team is almost a game again; it’s absolutely enormous.”
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“There’s a lot of moving pieces, a lot of things to balance, [but] with regard to how we’ve worked since the lockdown it’s actually been incredibly seamless,” says Mather. “I think, at the most, we probably lost one or two days while equipment was ferried between studios and to different locations but, aside from that, it’s actually gone really well.”
“I think probably the nicest thing is it’s shown – and I know this is an easy thing to say – just how insanely professional the team is and how versed they are in dealing with an annual franchise. I think without that experience, and also the skill of the newer members of the team, we would’ve been in a very different place. Not everybody who’s got games coming out in a similar window to us have maybe been able to mobilise quite as effectively.”
Cryptically, Mather concedes there was something else “incredibly challenging” about building F1 2020 but won’t reveal it for now.
“[U]nfortunately I can’t talk about it just yet; we’re holding it back for a couple of weeks,” he says. “There’s still something that was really interesting for us to work on and that will be discussed in detail very soon.”
Check out the video below for an overview of some of the new features for F1 2020, including My Team, casual mode, and local split-screen.
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Luke is Games Editor at IGN’s Sydney office. You can find him on Twitter sporadically @MrLukeReilly.
PlayStation 4 Lifetime Sales Top 110 Million, And Digital Sales See A Huge Increase
The PlayStation 4 is the second-best selling Sony console (after the PlayStation 2), and the company’s latest earnings report has given the most up-to-date figure on how the console is doing. Although there has been the expected year-on-year decline as the PlayStation 4 nears the end of its life cycle, the console has continued to do well, and has now sold through 110.4 million units over its lifetime.
Daniel Ahmad, a senior analyst at Niko Partners, has compiled data from the latest Sony earnings report to paint a picture of the PS4’s sales over the last financial year, ending March 31, 2020. 13.6 million units were sold over the last financial year, down from 17.8 million the previous year. It’s expected that sales in the current quarter of the 2020 financial year might actually exceed those from a year ago, as COVID-19 means that people are at home and bored.
Lifetime sell in for the PlayStation 4 is now 110.4 million.
Sony shipped 13.6 million units in FY2019/20, down from 17.8m in the prior year.
Sony has not provided a forecast for FY2020/21, but is expected to be lower. pic.twitter.com/deffOX0tJP— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) May 13, 2020
245 million units of software were sold over the same period. This is down from 257.6 million the previous year, as is to be expected. This also marks the first time that digital sales have exceeded physical–51% of game sales during the financial year were digital. A whopping 66% of sales in the final quarter of the financial year were digital, which is, again, likely due in part to self-isolation and restrictions that came into effect in March 2020.
Josh Gad Will Save Humanity In Next Disaster Movie From Roland Emmerich
Josh Gad has been cast in the next movie from well-known disaster film director Roland Emmerich. Gad, who recently played Olaf in Frozen II, will play a character named KC Houseman, who is described by The Hollywood Reporter as “odd and unkempt.”
The film is called Moonfall (no connection to the video game of the same name) and it has the kind of absurd plot that you’d expect from an Emmerich movie. The moon becomes knocked off its orbit by a “mysterious force” and begins falling toward Earth, threatening to wipe out humanity. Weeks before the moon crashes down on Earth and annihilates humanity, a motley crew is assembled to fly a ship onto the moon and save the day.
Gad’s character is a “genius who correctly predicts that the moon has fallen out of its orbit, thus making the space-obsessed, profoundly unfiltered and eccentric man one of the most important people on Earth.”
Call Of Duty: Warzone Cheating Update: PC Players Must Now Use 2FA
Call of Duty: Warzone developer Infinity Ward is taking further steps to help stamp out cheaters in the popular battle royale game, at least on PC. The studio has released a new “security update” that adds mandatory two-factor authentication.
According to Infinity Ward, this is “another step to provide an additional layer of security for players.” Note that 2FA is only required for people who are playing the free-to-play client, not those who are accessing Warzone through Modern Warfare. This new 2FA update only applies to PC.
Security Update: We have initiated two-step SMS authentication for new #Warzone PC users, who log in as free to play as another step to provide an additional layer of security for players.
— Infinity Ward (@InfinityWard) May 12, 2020
With more than 60 million players, there were always going to be some bad eggs in Warzone. For what it’s worth, other popular battle royale games such as PUBG and Fortnite have also acknowledged cheating issues.
The Untamed Is A Perfect Quarantine Binge
Now that the passage of time is feeling more imaginary than ever before, finding something to focus on for an extended period is becoming something of an art form. Let’s face it: Re-watching the full series of The Office for the millionth time or speeding through something nostalgic like The X-Files all over again was fun when this all started, but we could use something new to take our minds off things for more than just a few hours at a time–or, better yet, something that is so new it doesn’t immediately become background noise as you zone out and gaze into the void (or tend to your Animal Crossing island).
Enter: The Untamed, or Chén Qíng Lìng (abbreviated CQL–this is a world with lots of alternate titles, abbreviations, and acronyms. Don’t panic, you’ll get used to them).
Activision Blizzard To Hire 2,000 Employees In The Next Year
It appears Activision Blizzard’s hiring spree at Call of Duty: WWII developer Sledgehammer Games is just one part of the company’s overall ambition to increase its development headcount.
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said on Twitter that the company plans to hire more than 2,000 people in the next year. “Over the next year, Activision Blizzard is aiming to hire over 2,000 employees so that our incredibly talented teams can continue making epic entertainment,” Kotick said.
The executive did not provide a breakdown of hiring plans by division, however. Activision Blizzard operates Activision (Call of Duty, Tony Hawk), Blizzard (WoW, Diablo, Overwatch), and King (Candy Crush).