Tech
Sony State of Play February 2023: Everything Announced
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Sony’s State of Play for February 2023 is a wrap, and we’ve got you covered with details on all of the reveals for both PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2. The show delivered reveals for a trio of new Street Fighter 6 roster additions, as well as our longest look yet at Rocksteady’s upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Read on to learn about everything announced at the latest State of Play.
Rocksteady Shares Extended Look at Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
We got our biggest look yet at Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which showed off the game’s combat, RPG, and live service elements. We saw gameplay of Harley Quinn, King Shark, Captain Boomerang, and Deadshot, as they romp around the metropolitan levels destroying all enemies in sight. Rocksteady also talked about post-launch support, including a cosmetic battle pass, gear score mechanics, and upgradable weapons.
Capcom Reveals Three New Street Fighter 6 Characters
Zangief, Lily, and Cammy have all been confirmed for Street Fighter 6. Each character got a brief gameplay showcase displaying their unique fighting styles. Cammy got the biggest makeover, coming into Street Fighter 6 with a new hairstyle and jacket. Lily joins the cast as a newcomer to the series.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Launches on August 31
We got a lengthy trailer for the upcoming Baldur’s Gate 3, along with a release date of August 31. The trailer showed off various classes, shots of the multiplayer, and combat. The game is set for release on PlayStation 5 and PC.
New Resident Evil 4 Trailer Confirms the Return of Mercenaries Mode
We got another new look at Capcom’s upcoming Resident Evil 4 remake, which confirmed the presence of Mercenaries mode, which is a classic feature from the original game. The trailer also gave us our first look at a boss fight with Jack Krauser, and Leon heading through the minecart section. We also learned a special demo of the game is on the way.
Bungie Reveals Destiny 2: Lightfall Launch Trailer Ahead of Next Week’s Launch
Destiny 2’s latest expansion, Lightfall, is just five days away from its launch on February 28. To get players ready, Bungie shared the launch trailer for the upcoming expansion. The trailer highlighted the battle between the Guardians and The Witness and Callus’ Shadow Legion of Cabal. We also got a new look at the upcoming Strand subclass.
Sony Reveals Five Games Heading to PSVR2 This Year
Sony kicked off the show with five new games coming to PSVR2 sometime in 2023. The first game shown was The Foglands, a haunted first-person shooter showing off combat against skeletons, spiders, and more. We also got a look at a VR survival game called Green Hell, which showed the player creating tents, bows, and other tools to survive in a harsh rainforest environment.
Up next was a fast-paced FPS with some telekinesis powers called Synapse. The game takes place in a black and white world, with the only color seemingly coming from your character’s powers. Then, we saw a sci-fi stealth game based on the iconic Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. The game showed shooting and stealthing around a space station. The last game shown was Before Your Eyes, a colorful interactive adventure about memories where everytime you blink, you jump forward in time.
Tetris Effect Developers Reveal New Project Called Humanity
The team behind Tetris Effect revealed a new title called Humanity, which shows a spirit-like dog leading hundreds upon hundreds of humans in Lemmings-like fashion. We also saw a creation tool, where players can create and share levels with others around the globe. The game is coming this May on PS5, PS4, PSVR, and PSVR2.
Tchia Launching into PlayStation Plus Extra Tier This March
Tchia is the upcoming Wind Waker-like exploration game from Awaceb, and we learned it’s launching into PlayStation Plus’ Extra and Premium tiers on March 21. For more on this game, the developers shared an official gameplay overview last weekend at IGN Fan Fest.
Goodbye Volcano High Coming to PS5 and PS4 on June 15
We got a release date for Goodbye Volcano High, the coming-of-age narrative game coming to PS5 and PS4. The game will launch on June 15. The trailer showed off narrative conversations between the characters and some rhythm sections, as you play through band practice for the main characters’ band.
Naruto x Boruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections Gets New Trailer
Naruto x Boruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections collects the Ultimate Ninja Storm series and reconnects them into one story. We saw gameplay of the battle between Naruto and Sasuke, as well as tons of other characters from across the series.
New Trailer for Digital Extremes’ Wayfinder
We got a new look at the upcoming action RPG Wayfinder, where you can work together with friends to push back a hostile force that’s taken over the world. The latest trailer was a gameplay overview, showing off combat and a giant boss battle.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
A Calgary animator’s newest cartoon started streaming Thursday night on HBO Max.
Tank Standing Buffalo’s MONSTR was one of eight animated shorts chosen from more than 1,200 submissions to be part of the HBO Max series Only You: An Animated Shorts Collection.
MONSTR deals with Standing Buffalo’s fight with inner demons while apprenticing with a northwest totem carver following the death of his wife Marsha.
“My partner Marsha died suddenly in my arms of a brain aneurysm,” Standing Buffalo said in a release. “One moment she was there, the next she was gone. Without her, I was lost.
“I left Calgary to walk the west coast until I couldn’t walk, and ended up on carver Phil Ashbee’s doorstep. He saw I was in trouble, and took me in. I began a tough year-and -a-half apprenticeship, learning from him and another carver. The teachings were harsh, but helped me to heal.
Tank Standing Buffalo’s next project MONSTR is part of an HBO Max program for animators
“MONSTR takes place during my time with Phil, and brings to life how I confronted the grief of Marsha’s passing. It is my story, one only I can tell.”
Standing Buffalo worked with co-writer Xstine Coo, producer Amanda Miller and composers Cara Adu-Darko and Brandon Smith on the film, which features music by Walter MacDonald White Bear.
The film features the voices of Corey Feldman and Tristan Risk.
It’s Standing Buffalo’s third animated short, following RKLSS (2020), which screened at TIFF, and SAVJ (2021), which is currently being screened at a variety of film festivals.
HBO flew Standing Buffalo to Los Angeles for the Hollywood premiere of MONSTR Tuesday night.
Scene from MONSTR by Tank Standing Buffalo
In his artist statement, Standing Buffalo said art has literally saved his life – and his emergence as a rising animation star was launched by a scholarship he received to attend a Calgary animation workshop.
“I came to love animation six years ago when I received a scholarship through Quickdraw Animation Society in Calgary,” he said. “I am a person who thrives on routine and discipline. I appreciate the meditative repetition required to create animation.
“Through making my first two autobiographical shorts with monster and fantasy elements, I’ve found telling my story through animation is a form of time travel; my art is healing the person who I was in the past.”
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March 24 (Reuters) – Databricks, a San Francisco-based startup last valued at $38 billion, on Friday released open-source code that it said companies could use to create their own chatbots along the lines of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The code is an AI model, an algorithm that is trained on sets of data and can then learn from new data to perform a variety of tasks.
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said the release was aimed at demonstrating a viable alternative to training a kind of AI model called a large language model with enormous resources and computing power.
A large language model underpins OpenAI’s viral chatbot ChatGPT. OpenAI, valued at $29 billion, trains its AI models with huge troves of data on a supercomputer from investor Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O). The computing costs are “eye-watering”, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said.
OpenAI charges business for access to its models for their own applications and has projected $1 billion in sales by 2024.
Databricks’ effort comes with caveats. Ghodsi told Reuters that, while the open-source chatbot displayed impressive capabilities at such tasks as drafting blog posts, the company had not released formal benchmark tests to show that the bot matched ChatGPT’s performance.
Databricks sells cloud-based data mining and analytics software to businesses and said last year it had surpassed $1 billion in annualized revenue.
Databricks wants enterprises to train their own AI models using its software. Ghodsi said the company’s researchers had taken a two-year-old model that was freely available and trained it with a small amount of data for three hours on single computer that anyone with a credit card could rent.
“The future will be that everyone has their own model, and they can actually train it, and they can make it better,” Ghodsi said. “And that way, they also don’t have to give away their data to someone else.”
Databricks’ move comes at a time when startups are raising millions of dollars of venture capital investment to train their AI models and as big tech firms such as Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) and Meta Platforms (META.O) rush to shrink the size and cost of AI models while improving their accuracy.
“My belief is that in the end, you will make these models smaller, smaller and smaller, and they will be open-sourced,” Ghodsi said. “Everyone will have them.”
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Shares of Activision Blizzard surged Friday, after the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority narrowed the scope of its investigation into Microsoft‘s takeover of the games publisher.
The development marks a partial win for Microsoft, as it pursues an expansion of its video game business. The Redmond, Washington-based technology giant has deepened its focus on gaming through blockbuster acquisitions, such as its purchase of ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks.
In February, the CMA published provisional findings from its probe into the takeover, stating at the time that the transaction may result in higher prices, fewer choices and less innovation. Among its concerns, the regulator flagged that the deal would cause a substantial lessening of competition in the console gaming market.
Since then, the regulator has received a “significant amount” of feedback from various industry participants on the deal. With this new evidence, the CMA now says it no longer believes the transaction will hamper competition in console games.
“Having considered the additional evidence provided, we have now provisionally concluded that the merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in console gaming services because the cost to Microsoft of withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation would outweigh any gains from taking such action,” Martin Coleman, chair of the independent panel of experts conducting the CMA investigation, said in a statement Friday.
“Our provisional view that this deal raises concerns in the cloud gaming market is not affected by today’s announcement. Our investigation remains on course for completion by the end of April.”
Shares of Activision Blizzard surged more than 6% in U.S. premarket trading. Microsoft shares declined slightly amid a broad market slump.
‘Call of Duty’ distribution in focus
The CMA announcement comes after the U.S. technology giant has also won support from some companies that were against the deal, or sitting on the fence.
One of the major concerns from Microsoft’s competitors was that the transaction would block distribution access to Activision’s crown jewel franchise — “Call of Duty.” Last month, Microsoft said it signed a “binding 10-year legal agreement” to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo players on the same day as Microsoft’s Xbox, “with full feature and content parity.”
Additionally, Microsoft signed a deal with Nvidia to bring its Xbox games to Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service. Microsoft said it would also bring the Activision games library to Nvidia’s service, if the acquisition closes. Nvidia was reportedly against Microsoft’s Activision takeover.
But Microsoft has yet to bring onside its biggest rival, Sony, which owns the PlayStation console. Microsoft President Brad Smith told CNBC last month that the company is offering Sony the same agreement as it did Nintendo — to make Call of Duty available on PlayStation at the same time as on Xbox, with the same features. Sony still opposes the deal.
“We appreciate the CMA’s rigorous and thorough evaluation of the evidence and welcome its updated provisional findings,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC via email.
“This deal will provide more players with more choice in how they play Call of Duty and their favorite games. We look forward to working with the CMA to resolve any outstanding concerns.”
An Activision spokesperson told CNBC that the CMA’s updated provisional findings “show an improved understanding of the console gaming market and demonstrate a commitment to supporting players and competition.”
“Sony’s campaign to protect its dominance by blocking our merger can’t overcome the facts, and Microsoft has already presented effective and enforceable remedies to address each of the CMA’s remaining concerns. We know this deal will benefit competition, innovation, and consumers in the UK.”
Microsoft is not completely off the hook.
The CMA says it still has reservations about the deal as it pertains to cloud gaming, where delivery of games content is handled from remote servers rather than from a device’s internal memory. Notably, cloud gaming is still in its infancy and not yet a mass-market technology.
In its provisional conclusions, the CMA suggested that Microsoft may need to divest part or all of Activision — or its CoD franchise alone — to resolve its concerns. The CMA did not provide an update as to whether it believes this remains a potential resolution.
The watchdog will make its final decision on April 26.
Microsoft also still faces uncertainty from regulators in the U.S. and European Union. Smith travelled to Brussels last month to meet with EU regulators. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust case against Microsoft attempting to block the Activision deal.
Some major companies retain reservations about the acquisition, which includes Google parent Alphabet, according to Bloomberg.
– CNBC’s Steve Kovach contributed to this report
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