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Sony

Sony

Sony Worldwide Studios boss admits scepticism towards Steam Machines

Shaun Prescott at

Sony is in an enviable position at the moment: it’s claimed an early victory in the next-gen console wars, with sales of the PlayStation 4 edging ahead of its closest rival the Xbox One. Of course, gaming is a volatile industry and you just never know what’s going to happen. Sony Worldwide Studios boss Adam Rohde agrees, admitting in an interview that the Steam Machine may compete in the same space one day, but that Valve has a lot of work to do to make this happen.


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"Basic functions" of PlayStation 4 controller will work by default on Windows

Perry Vandell at

President of Worldwide Studios for Sony Computer Entetainment Shuhei Yoshida has confirmed over Twitter that the “basic functions” of the PS4’s DualShock 4 will be compatible on Windows PCs without the need for additional drivers.


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E3 2013: What the next gen consoles mean for the PC

PC Gamer at

Xbox One. PS4. What effect will the poster children of E3 2013 have on the future of PC Gaming? Will new hardware architecture mean more high-profile PC ports or—dare we say it—PC-led titles that are ported for consoles afterwards? Are Microsoft's touted 15 exclusive launch titles going to be anything we'd even want in the first place? Will the pull of the indie scene be enough to turn gamers away from hardware manufacturers that shun them? We chew on this, and feed you our analysis like a mother bird to her chicks.


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E3 2013: The impact on the PC

PC Gamer at

The new consoles have the spotlight at E3 2013 this year, but what will the expo's many reveals, demos, hardware rollouts, and buzzwords mean for the PC? Is this even a show for us at all, with the focus on the brick and mortar retail market? We discuss the implications, and speculate on which of the big, all-star console titles will eventually make it to our corner of the gaming universe.


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PixelJunk Inc. out on Steam later this year for budding soup tycoons

Omri Petitte at

The wide and surprisingly wild world of soup manufacturing caught our attention back in January with PixelJunk 1-6, the codename for Q-Games' latest PC-fied take on its lovely console indie series. The venture has now turned legit with an official name: PixelJunk Inc., a co-op sandbox-platformer of profits, crafting, and the quest to cook history's greatest soup recipe.


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Capcom teases Panta Rhei engine and Deep Down at PS4 press conference

Tyler Wilde at

At Sony's PlayStation 4 reveal earlier today, Capcom announced a new game engine named Panta Rhei and a game tentatively titled Deep Down. As Capcom has a history of porting its games to PC, and the PlayStation 4 is essentially a custom PC, we can probably expect to see the fantasy action game come our way.


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PC Gamer vs. PlayStation 4: How much does a comparable rig cost right now?

Dave James at

Ah Sony, you never quite got the PC did you? The Vaio range of laptops were nice-looking and all, but overpriced lumps might be best used to describe them. And now you’re making a PC-based console in the guise of the new PlayStation 4.

At least it’ll mean all the poorly coded console ports we've cursed our way through ought to be a thing of the past as everybody will essentially be writing for PC hardware now. Good times. So, with this "next-gen" future now so very close on the horizon with Sony finally kicking off the great closed-box bun-fight, what will it take to build a PlayStation 4-a-like PC?


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Playstation 4 details hint at next-gen specs

Tom Senior at

The first clues as to how powerful the next generation of consoles will be has popped up on Edge. "Sources close to the hardware" clued them in on a more PC-like, developer-friendly architecture that will run on a 1.6GHZ eight-core AMD CPU. Current dev kits are apparently running on 4GB of GDDR5 RAM. More below.


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First batch of new PlanetSide 2 weapons on the market tomorrow

T.J. Hafer at

PlanetSide 2 already has enough purchasable gear to run you over $300 per faction. But those of you who just can't get enough guns, or haven't really found one that suits your trigger finger yet, you're in luck. SOE president John Smedley has revealed on his Twitter account that we'll be seeing some shiny, new military hardware go on sale tomorrow.


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PlanetSide 2 Australian servers incoming

Rob Edwards at

Sony Online Entertainment's president, John Smedley, has revealed that an Australian server may be planned for PlanetSide 2.


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Payday: The Heist slightly delayed, trailer steals a man from a bridge

Tom Senior at

 
So far in Payday, we've mostly seen the chuckle brothers stealing gold from bank vaults. The mission shown in the latest trailer replaces the gold with a valuable prisoner, the bank vaults with police security vans, and the old fashioned getaway car with a balloon and a seaplane. It goes to show that hardened criminals are a mad sort, and not especially punctual either. Payday: The Heist has been slightly delayed. Overkill say it's "a move to ensure players and fans of our promise and vision to produce high-caliber games that deliver the best quality game experience."

We'll get to tell civilians to GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR later this month when Payday goes on sale at £14.95 / $19.99, and can be pre-ordered now on Steam and Direct2Drive. Check out our Payday: The Heist preview for an insight into the mind of a clown gone bad.


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Payday: The Heist preview

Kim Richards at

Bank robbers are badass. John Dillinger, Jesse James, Hans Gruber. They may be breaking all kinds of laws, but dammit; they’re sticking it to The Man. They’re people we daydream about – something Overkill Studios picked up on when diving into their first release, Payday: The Heist.

“It’s one of those concepts that once you see it in action, you understand that it’s brilliant and wonder why no one has done it before,” says creative director Simon Viklund. “We went boldly into the preplanning phase with the firm conviction that Dane Cook was right when he said, ‘more than sex, every guy wants to be part of a heist.’”


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Hands on with Sony's external graphics card: it's superb

Adam Oxford at

Over the last week or so I've been playing around with Sony's new Vaio Z laptop. It's not really relevant for a PC games blog - I was looking at it for Stuff magazine - except for one thing. This ultralight notebook comes with an optional dock which adds an optical drive and USB hub along with extra monitor ports for when you're sat at your desk rather than staring at an Excel sheet on the train. Inside that dock, there's an auxiliary graphics card which adds an AMD Radeon HD6650 GPU to the on-board Sandy Bridge processor. And it's stunningly good.


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Fancy an external graphics card?

Adam Oxford at

Tired of jemmying the side of your case off every time you want to upgrade your graphics card? Sony's latest invention could be what you've been waiting for. The new Sony Vaio X is a hyper-expensive-but-paper-thin laptop, and comes with a Mac-like Light Peak port for attaching hard drives, monitors and... a graphics card.


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Lulzsec suspect arrested in joint Scotland Yard and FBI investigation

Tom Senior at

The suspected ringleader of Lulzsec has been arrested in a joint operation between Scotland Yard and the FBI. The 19 year old Brit is accused of masterminding the recent spate of cyber-attacks on CIA.gov and a number of games company sites, including Nintendo, Minecraft and Eve Online.

The teenager was apprehended at his home in Wickford, Essex, in a joint operation that could see the suspect extradited to America to face charges, reports Sky News.

Update: Lulzsec have tweeted in response to the arrest, saying "seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now... wait... we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?" The suspect has been named by the press as Ryan Cleary, and is thought to be an ex-member of notorious hacking organisation, Anonymous.


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Epic and Bethesda sites compromised as hacker attacks continue

Tom Senior at

Epic and Bethesda are the latest victims of wave of cyber-crime that has so far seen data stolen from a number of games company sites, including Sony Online Entertainment, Nintendo, Eidos and Codemasters.

A post on the Bethblog yesterday revealed that the game publisher's site and forums had suffered "an unlawful intrusion" that resulted in the theft of an undisclosed number of forum and website passwords and email addresses.

On Friday, Epic sites also experienced downtime in the aftermath of a similar attack that compromised a number of forum accounts. Thankfully, both companies report that no credit card information was stolen. Other companies have been less fortunate.


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Sony Online Entertainment databases were hacked, players' credit card and bank information stolen

Anthony Valva at

Just as Sony's security troubles seemed to be drifting to the back of our minds, ready to be forgotten, SOE has released a surprisingly frank appraisal of how the security leak affected their databases. On April 16 and 17, hackers accessed their database and stole a ton of information. If you've played an SOE game, read on to see what information has been compromised, so you can take the proper steps to protect yourself.


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PC Gaming Alliance loses more members

Tom Senior at

The PC Gaming Alliance was founded in 2008 by a group of influential developers and hardware manufacturers to help tackle the industry-wide problems that faced the PC. Primary issues included piracy, DRM and complicated hardware labelling that provided a barrier of entry to new PC gamers. The group has mostly worked to produce reports on the state of PC gaming, and recently released figures at GDC showing the booming PC market.

It seems that all is not well at the PC Gaming alliance. Recently the new head of the PCGA, announced that major founding members Microsoft and Nvidia had left the group, without giving any reason. Now, Dell have downgraded their involvement, and Sony have left the group completely.


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GDC panel hints at PC support for Playstation Move

Tom Senior at

All those incredible PC Kinect hacks seem to have made Sony jealous. According to a panel entitled 'Update on PlayStation Move Development' at this year's Game Developers Conference, we might see Sony's glowing motion controller supported on the PC.


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Why the PC won E3

Tim Edwards at

PC Gamers don't get to watch a glitzy press conference at E3. We don't get a PR firm to pump millions into glossy stage shows, or detailed press releases. We don't even get a mascot. But we do get incredible games, and a steady stream of hardware innovations that let the PC leapfrog the opposition. Here's why the PC was the real victor at E3.


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