All Articles: PS5

EA Sports cancels NBA Live 20

Executives from Electronic Arts delivered a pretty hefty amount of announcements during the company’s most recent quarterly financial report yesterday. But they also (once again) put the kibosh on this year’s entry in the NBA Live franchise.

NBA Live 20 was expected to launch during the NBA’s All-Star Weekend in February, but now EA Sports has confirmed the basketball sim was canceled. The publisher shared a few more details about the cancellation on their official website:

For the past few years we’ve been making real progress with NBA Live, but we’re still not where we want to be. So with continued support from the NBA and the NBPA, we’ve been working on something new and meaningfully different – an experience that operates at the pace of culture, and will change the way you can play, connect and create in basketball.

We’re excited by what we’ve built so far, and yet we know the world is changing. New platforms are coming that will bring social connection, accessibility and player creativity to the fore. In a future of new possibilities, players shouldn’t be content with a game built for today’s realities and based on what we know to be possible, we feel we can go so much further with the new design.

That mention of “new platforms” is telling, as EA Sports plans to bring their next NBA experience (which may or may not be released as NBA Live 21) to “leading edge platforms” like the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett. A release date for this new project wasn’t announced, but we should learn more about it sometime next year.

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EA: Multiple unannounced games coming in 2020, next Battlefield scheduled for 2021, and Dragon Age 4 is in the works for 2022 (or later)

Executives from Electronic Arts had a lot to talk about yesterday during their latest quarterly financial report. So let’s dive right in…

CEO Andrew Wilson kicked things off by confirming that the next game in the Battlfield franchise is being prepped to launch sometime during the company’s 2022 Fiscal Year (which runs from April 1, 2021 – March 30, 2022) for the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett. In the meantime, developer DICE will spend 2020 creating updates and new content for Battlefield V:

Our Battlefield franchise and its community are also a major focus for us, and we’ll add new content and new ways to play Battlefield V in FY ’21. Targeting new innovation that will be enabled by next-gen platforms and a growing install base on the new consoles, our next Battlefield game is set for FY ’22.

With one of the company’s strongest developers taking an extra year to polish their next game, you might be wondering what EA has on tap for 2020. Thankfully, COO Blake Jorgensen used his portion of the presentation to fill in the gaps.

Jorgensen said that EA has multiple unannounced titles scheduled for release in 2020, including a pair of games from the publisher’s EA Partners program, and possibly at least one remaster (which would release alongside the already-announced Command & Conquer Remastered). He also talked quite a bit about Apex Legends, and confirmed that EA’s shooter will be coming to “new platforms and mobile” in the near future. While it’s possible he’s referencing the Switch in that quote, he’s more likely referring to the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett.

Looking further out, Jorgensen even mused about the status of Dragon Age 4. According to the executive, fans shouldn’t expect the next entry in BioWare’s acclaimed RPG franchise to arrive before EA’s 2023 Fiscal Year (which begins on April 1, 2022).

Finally, Andrew Wilson came back around to comment on the recent decision by the NCAA to allow college athletes to receive monetary compensation for their name or likeness. While many fans are hoping this means that EA will resume production on the NCAA Football franchise, Wilson would only say that the company is watching the situation closely:

With respect to NCAA Sports in general, yes, we have been in that business before as well. We saw the news today as did you, said by the NCAA Working Group. That news today was new to us. We’re still digesting it. We would anticipate that there is still a number of things that would have to happen over the coming years before we will be able to get back into that business, but certainly we’re watching closely.

EA’s next major releases, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Need For Speed Heat, will both be released in November.

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Sony trademarks PS6, PS7, PS8, PS9, and PS10 in Japan

It looks like Sony definitely isn’t planning to give up on this whole “game console” thing anytime soon. The company is planning to launch the PlayStation 5 in Fall 2020, but they’ve apparently also secured the future of the line with the Japan Patent Office.

Gematsu has discovered that Sony recently filed trademark applications for “PS6,” “PS7,” “PS8,” “PS9,” and “PS10” in their home country. No such applications were found during a search of the online databases for the US Patent and Trademark Office or the EU Intellectual Property Office.

While it’s fun to speculate about the PlayStation’s future, it’s unlikely that Sony probably has put much thought into the makeup of the PS6 (or subsequent consoles), though they did make us all daydream about a Matrix-inspired PlayStation 9 back in 2000 with a rather memorable commercial from the PS2’s launch.

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Sony confirms the next PlayStation will be known as the PlayStation 5

It’s just a random day in October, but Sony just went and announced a slew of details about the next PlayStation.

Even though everyone has been referring to it as the PlayStation 5 since the consolemaker first started to discuss their “PlayStation Next-Gen” project earlier this year, they confirmed it once and for all on the PlayStation Blog this morning. Oh, and Sony also announced that the newly-christened PS5 will be available on store shelves “in time for Holiday 2020” (probably sometime around November if you’re looking for my guess):

Since we originally unveiled our next-generation console in April, we know that there’s been a lot of excitement and interest in hearing more about what the future of games will bring. Today I’m proud to share that our next-generation console will be called PlayStation 5, and we’ll be launching in time for Holiday 2020.

Not only does it now have a name and a launch window, but Sony’s executives further expounded on the PS5’s under-the-hood capabilities in an exclusive report by Wired.

First, it looks like Sony will attempt to challenge the Switch’s HD Rumble with the advanced “haptic feedback” found in the PS5’s new controller:

First, we’re adopting haptic feedback to replace the “rumble” technology found in controllers since the 5th generation of consoles. With haptics, you truly feel a broader range of feedback, so crashing into a wall in a race car feels much different than making a tackle on the football field. You can even get a sense for a variety of textures when running through fields of grass or plodding through mud.

And second, Sony will add “adaptive triggers” to the controller to better simulate the “tactile sensation” of various actions such as “drawing a bow and arrow or accelerating an off-road vehicle through rocky terrain”:

The second innovation is something we call adaptive triggers, which have been incorporated into the trigger buttons (L2/R2). Developers can program the resistance of the triggers so that you feel the tactile sensation of drawing a bow and arrow or accelerating an off-road vehicle through rocky terrain. In combination with the haptics, this can produce a powerful experience that better simulates various actions. Game creators have started to receive early versions of the new controller, and we can’t wait to see where their imagination goes with these new features at their disposal.

Sony also confirmed that the PlayStation 5 will ship with a 4K Ultra HD Disc Drive for games and movies, and reconfirmed that it’ll include a Solid State Drive for faster loading times.

And a well-hidden part of the Wired report even hinted at a huge new title from Bluepoint Games (“We’re working on a big one right now,” said President Marco Thrush). But the entire article is definitely worth a read, even if it doesn’t answer the most important question about the PlayStation 5… how much it’ll cost.

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Sony offers up more details on their plan for the PlayStation 5

Sony has been quietly talking up the PlayStation 5 a lot this Spring, and now they’ve offered up even more details about the next-generation platform during their most recent Investor Relations Day.

The PS5 is known internally as the “PlayStation Next Gen,” and it’s expected to deliver lightning-fast loading times on PS4 titles. Using Spider-Man as an example, Sony showed that players on the PlayStation Next Gen could be ready to play in just 0.83 seconds, versus 8.1 seconds on a PS4 Pro. This comparison is important as the PlayStation Next Gen will include full backwards compatibility with the PS4.

Sony isn’t ready to discuss when the PlayStation Next Gen will be released, or how much it’ll cost, or what its launch lineup will look like, but the consolemaker did confirm that the platform will include an “All New CPU and GPU,” as well as support for Ray Tracing and visuals up to 8K Resolution, a Blu-ray Drive, a Solid State Drive, and 3D Audio.

However, this next-generation console doesn’t mean that the PS4 is going away anytime soon. According to Sony, the PS4 will “remain the engine of engagement and profitability for the next three years.” They also reconfirmed that Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II, Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, and Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima will all be released for the PS4. That said, the report doesn’t rule out a cross-generational PS5 re-release for all of these games (though neither does it confirm one).

While Sony has no plans to give up the Blu-ray disc format or full-game downloads, the consolemaker is hoping for an increased focus on PlayStation Now streaming with their next-generation console. Currently, PlayStation Now is sitting at 700,000 subscribers, but Sony projects that the service’s subscriber base will increase to more than five million after the launch of the PlayStation Next Gen.

You can view Sony’s entire presentation about the future of the PlayStation platform within the consolemaker’s Investor Relations Day report.

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