Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Johan Pilestedt has decried Helldivers 2 and Halo comparisons, arguing that they serve no purpose as there’s room for both games to be enjoyed separately. Helldivers 2 is Sony Interactive Entertainment‘s first multiplatform live service game that went on to become a hit, and that’s attracted quite a bit of vitriol by console fanboys. Much of Helldivers 2’s success comes from PC, where it has a far higher number of players.

Arrowhead CEO on Helldivers 2 vs Halo arguments: Let people love and enjoy both

In response to a comparison tweet from a fan account with thousands of followers, Pilestedt said, “Just let gamers love and enjoy both, either or neither.” He’s of the view that there should be “more compassion and union in the world, and less rivalry.”

In a separate tweet, Pilestedt added that healthy competition is good but even from a business standpoint, neither monopolies nor “cut=throat competitions” do any good.

Pilestedt — who’s earned a positive reputation for his social media conduct and fan interaction — was showered with praise for his response.

Recently, Xbox boss Phil Spencer commented on Helldivers 2’s popularity and console exclusivity, arguing that skipping Xbox platforms doesn’t benefit anyone.

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A Digital Foundry analysis has found that PS5 cloud streaming outperforms Microsoft xCloud in a number of aspects. In fact, the only department in which xCloud surpasses PS5 streaming is latency, and that’s because Microsoft’s service is streaming Series S versions of games rather than their superior Series X counterparts.

How PS5 cloud streaming outperforms Microsoft xCloud

Digital Foundry notes that performance wise, games streamed on the PS5 mostly closely represent locally installed games, but that’s not the case when it comes to xCloud. Those streaming games on the Xbox Series X are getting somewhat of a downgraded version that’s more reprentative of the Series S.

Games streamed on the PS5 also offer better resolution and higher bitrate albeit with inferior latency compared to the xCloud. “Between the use of PS5-grade hardware server-side, the higher bitrate and resolution, PlayStation Plus presents its catalogue at a quality level that’s much closer to justifying that Premium label – even if it’s behind Xbox in terms of latency,” Digital Foundry concludes.

Digital Foundry also notes that both PS5 streaming and Microsoft xCloud come with a similar price tag but Sony offers 851 games compared to Microsoft’s 402 games. 201 out of Sony’s 851 games are PS5 titles.

The post PS5 Cloud Streaming Has Visible Advantages Over Microsoft xCloud, Analysis Finds appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

According to a new report, Dragon Age: Dreadwolf publisher Electronic Arts is “pretty confident” about a 2024 release date for the game. This release window has been rumored for a while and was even mentioned on an EA veteran’s LinkedIn profile, but with the company undergoing layoffs last week, fans wondered if Dreadwolf will be pushed out of 2024 or not.

EA confident about Dragon Age: Dreadwolf release date window despite recent layoffs

The aforementioned update comes from journalist and insider Jeff Grubb, who said during his latest Game Mess podcast that although there are no guarentees that Dragon Age: Dreadwolf will be out this year, EA thinks developer Bioware will manage a 2024 release window. As for when we’ll actually see the game, Grubb recons that it’ll be shown off sometime in the summer.

“It will be released this year, last I heard,” Grubb said. “They’re pretty confident about that. Doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee; could slip, but right now — internally — they expect to release it later this year.”

Grubb added that the real question is when Bioware will actually show Dreadwolf off, and that there’s no word on that yet.

Announcing its layoffs, EA said that it wants to focus on its own IPs going forward.

The post Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Might Actually Release in 2024 – Report appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi has heard player complaints about the game’s graphics in Performance Mode, and has promised an update to resolve them. Shortly after release, players took issue with the marked visual downgrade when using Performance Mode — a patch for which should be out soon.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth update will fix facial lighting

Speaking to One More Game, Hamaguchi said that he can’t detail the incoming patch just yet, but did say that Square Enix plans to address facial lighting as part of it.

“We’ve received a lot of feedback on whether the graphics in the performance mode will be improved or not,” Hamaguchi said. “We hear you, and we are currently working on an update patch to improve that aspect. I don’t think the release date would be far away from now.”

The facial lighting issue that Hamaguchi is referring to are complaints of character shadows looking “scary” under some conditions. When asked what his personal preference is between Graphics and Performance modes, Hamaguchi chose the former. “I like to play other games in graphics mode as well because I like to see better graphics,” he explained.

We’ll share Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth update patch notes as soon as we have them.

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Rumor has it that Sony Interactive Entertainment is gearing up to announce Ghost of Tsushima for PC. The Sucker Punch Productions-developed hit title released in 2020 but has yet to be officially confirmed for PC unlike Sony’s other first-party single-player hits. And if rumors are to be believed, we’ll hear something as soon as tomorrow, March 5.

When is Ghost of Tsushima expected to release on PC?

Rumor of an announcement of some sort comes from Nick “Shpeshal_Nick” Baker. As of late, Baker has been spot on with his leaks so we wouldn’t be surprised if this one’s accurate as well. Ghost of Tsushima was expected to release on PC at some point, so it’s merely a question of when Sony will announce it.

Back in February, Sony Group executive and interim Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Hiroki Totoki said that he wants PlayStation to “aggressively” pursue a multiplatform release strategy for first-party games, and stressed that he means PC ports.

“In the past, we wanted to popularize consoles and a first-party title’s main purpose was to make the console popular,” he said of Sony’s changing approach to first-party games. “This is true but there’s a synergy to it, so if you have strong first-party content – not only on our console but also other platforms, like computers – first-party can be grown.”

The post Ghost of Tsushima PC Announcement Reportedly Coming Soon appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Just yesterday, Grand Theft Auto 6 developer Rockstar Games informed its employees they would be returning to the office full-time and scrapping remote work. Those employees have responded to the mandate, and they’re not happy. Some GTA 6 devs are even stating they fear a return to the “toxic ‘crunch’ practices” for which Rockstar was known during the development of games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA V.

GTA 6 devs accuse Rockstar of broken promises

Rockstar has been trying to encourage its employees to return to the office since last year. When the developer tried to enforce a transition to a three-day office week in 2023, Rockstar claimed “this isn’t our first step to 5 days a week. No one wants to go back to the old way of working.” Now the GTA 6 devs are accusing Rockstar of breaking their promises following yesterday’s mandate that employees return to office full-time.

An anonymous employee told VGC that Rockstar is removing a remote working lifeline that allowed them to “balance care responsibilities, manage disabilities, and relocate as we need.” They continued:

Rockstar is snatching away that lifeline without a second thought for the workers who’ll be impacted most. After so many broken promises we now fear management may even be paving the way for a return to toxic ‘crunch’ practices. Senior leadership need to rethink their reckless decision making and engage with their staff to find an arrangement that works for everyone.

Rockstar had gained quite a reputation for its “toxic crunch practices” during previous games. Many of the accusations against the company involved 100-hour weeks, mandatory overtime, and fear tactics. As such, previous reports had claimed GTA 6 would be delayed until 2025 to avoid those crunch conditions.

However, mandatory overtime was a concern for another anonymous employee who said “just one of my concerns is being forced to work late hours in the office to maintain contact with global teams when before we could log on from home to attend late meetings.” The concerns have meant that the IWGB Game Workers Union has also issued a statement condemning Rockstar’s actions:

The workers in the IWGB Game Workers Union at Rockstar are pushing for transparency over pay and promotions, a healthy and inclusive workplace culture, and work life balance centred around what each worker needs. It is unacceptable that Rockstar leadership have gone back on their word time and time again and have ignored the workers’ requests for basic working conditions.

Workers across the industry are done with letting executives make reckless and harmful decisions and the Rockstar workers are showing us the start of what’s to come if they’re continually ignored. There’s no better time than now to join our union and push for this to be the healthy and sustainable games industry we know it can be.

IWGB Game Workers Union chairman Austin Kelmore

Rockstar is yet to comment.

The post GTA 6 Devs Fear Return to Toxic Crunch Practices appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

A pair of fake Helldivers 2 listings on Steam misled some players into thinking that the game received a significant price drop on the platform. Developers behind two indie games carbon copied the actual Helldivers 2 page on Steam, showing steep discounts of 50% and 75%. Unsuspecting players would end up paying for games called Figurality and Do Not Smile, instead.

Helldivers 2 is still full price, Arrowhead clarifies

Over on its Discord channel, developer Arrowhead Game Studios expressed frustration over the scam. Many have been left concerned by how the devs behind the aforementioned indie games could heavily edit not only their store descriptions but also developer and publisher information in order to mimic the Helldivers 2 page.

As shown in the screenshots below by Twitter user Wario64, the scammers listed Arrowhead as the developer and PlayStation as the publisher.

Steam has since nuked the listings but the ease of scamming people has caused alarm.

“People posting as us trying to scam people is obviously very sad and frustrating, and for that as well as for security reasons we urge you to stay clear of them,” Arrowhead wrote. “The only two Helldivers 2 products we market are Helldivers 2 and Helldivers 2 Super Citizen Edition.”

The post Fake Helldivers 2 Steam Listings Leave Arrowhead and Sony ‘Frustrated’ appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

A week after Warner Bros. admitted that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League failed to meet expectations, the game’s player count seems to have dropped to concerning levels. On Steam, Suicide Squad’s concurrent players are peaking at a few hundred only, and it seems that things aren’t any better on consoles.

Suicide Squad player count doesn’t bode well for its future

As noted by Forbes’ Paul Tassi, less than a month after its release, Suicide Squad saw just 593 concurrent players on Steam a day ago, with the number dropping as low as 287. This is alarming for a live service game that needs a robust player count to justify the cost of keeping servers online.

PlayStation and Xbox do not have a system for revealing concurrent player counts, but Tassi noted that he hasn’t seen Suicide Squad anywhere in Xbox’s top 50 for the past week at least — not a good sign for a game that only just released.

Suicide Squad launched to mostly negative reviews, with its PS5 version settling for 60/100 on Metacritic. Warner Bros. revealed in a recent financial earnings call that the $70 game has “fallen short of our expectations,” resulting in its games business seeing a “tough year-over-year comp in Q1.”

The post Suicide Squad Player Count Continues to Drop as WB Admits Lackluster Performance appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Sony’s Firesprite Studio has been accused of fostering a toxic work environment and ignoring complaints of workplace misconduct and harassment. An in-depth investigation of the claims by Eurogamer found that Firesprite — which Sony acquired in 2021 — was being led by two senior members of Sony’s XDev team, both of whom were investigated for claims of sexual discrimination and ageism made against them.

Sony’s Firesprite was recently hit by PlayStation layoffs

Eurogamer’s investigation began prior to Sony announcing mass layoffs across PlayStation, which Firesprite was also impacted by. Not only was the studio’s headcount reduced, its Twisted Metal live service game was also canceled.

According to sources speaking on condition of anonymity, Sony dismissed the aforementioned claims against its XDev leadership, terming it a “misunderstanding.” However, some of the complainants began exploring legal options, following which they received a financial settlement from Sony.

“Sony has committed the worst possible mistake in buying a studio and meddling to the point where it may end up in a death spiral and unable to complete any of the projects it is working on,” one of Eurogamer’s sources said. However, some sources countered that by saying that Firesprite needed the internal changes that came with its acquisition by PlayStation.

The post Sony’s Firesprite Studio Accused of Toxicity and Workplace Misconduct appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

After a financially tumultuous year, it looks like Embracer Group is preparing to sell Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment. Rumors of a potential sale first emerged late last year, and according to a new report, a deal is currently being finalized.

Borderlands boss Randy Pitchford responds to Gearbox sale report

An update on Gearbox’s status was provided by Kotaku. The website’s sources claim that studio CEO Randy Pitchford held a town hall earlier this week, during which he said that a decision was made regarding Gearbox’s future. Kotaku claims to have heard that a sale is currently being finalized. However, it’s not known at present who the buyer is.

In response to Kotaku’s request for comment, Pitchford released somewhat of an odd statement, expressing his delight over his company being the subject of rumors and speculations. “I’m delighted that what we might be up to is interesting enough to people that you want to make a story about us for your readers,” he said. “I’m honored and humbled that our company is a topic of rumor, speculation, and discussion.”

Pitchford added Gearbox will be “thrilled” to reveal what’s next when it has some news to share.

Elsewhere, Embracer Group is also selling Saber Interactive.

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