Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most hyped AAA game releases in 2020, has been out for a while now. However, not too long ago, Sony, the maker of PlayStation, has pulled the game from its PlayStation Store amidst negative reviews and criticism that the game received. This has resulted in significantly lower sales of the game, as millions of potential buyers were left without an option to purchase it. But not everything is too dark. In the announcement made by CD Projekt RED, the game developer behind Cyberpunk 2077, things are looking bright for the game as Cyberpunk 2077 is returning to the PlayStation store on June 21st. You can see the quote from CDPR below.

CD Projekt REDIn relation to Current Report no. 66/2020 of 18 December 2020, the Management Board of CD PROJEKT S.A. with a registered office in Warsaw hereby publicly discloses the decision by Sony Interactive Entertainment to reinstate the availability of the digital edition of Cyberpunk 2077 on PlayStation Store, effective on 21 June 2021.

Ming-Chi Kuo a renowned Apple analyst has recently predicted that we will see at least three new XR products from Facebook, Sony, and Apple in 2022. These predictions come from an analysis of recent lens orders from Taiwanese manufacturer Yujingguang by the three companies. Yujingguang is expected to supply the lenses used in the upcoming Oculus Quest 3, and PlayStation VR 2 along with being a "key-supplier" for Apple's headset. These new lenses will offer an increased field of view and improved image clarity over existing options. The company expects to supply 50% of the demand for Oculus Quest 3 equal to 22 million units while their exact supply for the devices from Sony and Apple is unknown.

CD Projekt RED (CDPR), the maker of popular games like Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, has just published company's quarterly earnings report. The video game maker is responsible for the development of the most anticipated game in the year 2020—Cyberpunk 2077. Featuring Hollywood star Keanu Reeves, the game was teased multiple times with an amazing delay that happened three times. A bug-ridden debut happened and the overall gaming experience was very unpleasant, leading to an unprecedented move from PlayStation maker Sony. The Japanese company has delisted Cyberpunk 2077 from its PlayStation store, which caused a big impact to CDPR's sales figures.

Today, we got the exact details. The Q1 numbers are down, with net profits down by 67% to 32.5 million zlotys (Polish national currency), revenue down 2% to 197.6 million zlotys, and selling costs that soared 79.6% to 62.1 million zlotys. The company shares have tumbled down by around 10% since the Q1 report, closely following the outlook of the quarter. What remains for CDPR is to re-engage the Cyberpunk 2077 community and repair the game so it can reach its full potential, and give players a chance to finally enjoy the whole experience the game has to offer. This will hopefully get the company's financials back on track.

Sony expects that the PlayStation 5 will remain in short supply throughout 2022 and will therefore be unable to boost sales targets. Sony has sold 7.8 million units through March 31st and expects total sales of 14.8 million units this financial year. Sony has been unable to increase production of the console due to global shortages in components across the semiconductor industry. The PlayStation 5 is currently keeping pace with the early sales of the popular PlayStation 4. Sony isn't the only manufacturer to be impacted by these global shortages with Microsoft and Nintendo reporting similar issues.

Sony CFOI don't think demand is calming down this year and even if we secure a lot more devices and produce many more units of the PlayStation 5 next year, our supply wouldn't be able to catch up with demand

Sony was in discussions with Epic Games to bring six of their first-party titles to PC as Epic Games Store exclusives and was offered a 200 million USD minimum guarantee contract in return. These talks did not succeed with Sony bringing their exclusive titles such as Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone to both Steam and the Epic Games Store. Epic Games did succeed in securing some smaller titles as exclusives for their store including Predator: Hunting Grounds and ReadySet Heroes. Epic was also in discussions with Microsoft to bring first-party titles to the store as exclusives and had wanted to engage with Nintendo for a similar offer.

It's not only graphics cards and CPUs that are best kept on the edge of manufacturing processes; in truth, one could even say that consoles have more to gain from these transitions when it comes to their manufacturers' financial outlooks. This happens because usually, consoles are subsidized by manufacturers in that their actual retail price is lower than manufacturing costs; this works as a way for console players to increase their platforms' attractiveness and user base, so they can then sell them games and subscription services, where the big bucks are actually made. We knew this already, but Microsoft's head of Xbox business development, Lori Wright confirmed it yesterday at the Apple vs Epic Games hearing. Lori Wright is quoted as answering "We don't; we sell the consoles at a loss" when asked whether Microsoft does or does not turn a profit on Xbox Series S | X hardware sales.

Considering the similarities between the Xbox Series X and PS5's SoC, it's very likely that Sony doesn't make a profit on console hardware sales either - or if it actually does, it's nothing actually meaningful. This is part of the reason why consoles are usually actually in the forefront of manufacturing processes' advancements, as it's a way for console players to quickly reduce the BoM (Bill of Materials) for their consoles. Since the specifications don't change within a console generation (discounting Pro models, which both companies have taken to launching some years into their generations), they choose to take advantage of process advancements due to the transistor density increases that allow for both lower silicon area for the SoC, and lower power consumption - which sometimes enables them to develop slim versions of their gaming consoles.

Sony Interactive Entertainment has acquired a minority stake in Discord as part of their latest Series H funding round, this comes after talks with Microsoft for a complete acquisition failed. Sony hopes to integrate Discord with the PlayStation Network ecosystem on consoles and mobile starting early next year to allow for a more seamless experience. This recent news helps explain Sony's decision to retire the PS4 communities feature which boasted tens of thousands of active users. The complete press release from Sony Interactive Entertainment can be found below.

Sony has announced that it has shipped 7.8 million PS5 consoles since the release of their latest generation gaming system on November 12th. These 7.8 million consoles were sold at the tune of 4.5 million consoles in 2020 (remember that 2020 only starts in November 12th for this matter), and the remaining 3.3 million units were shipped in the three first months of 2021. This places PS5 launch sales higher than PS4's (and obviously higher than the ill-fated release of the PS3). You might think there's a decrease in momentum in sales, but part of that lower average monthly console sales likely comes from the fact that Sony had more PS5 stock at launch (in a veritable stockpile) than the current production output is capable of processing on a monthly basis.

Sony also announced that they have increased the number of PS Plus subscribers to 47.6 million, up 14.7 percent YoY. These numbers mean that Sony too had a very significant first quarter, and great YoY growth. The company announced that its Game & Network Services segment, which includes its PlayStation business, broke revenue ($25.03 billion) and operating profit ($3.22 billion) records for the 2020 financial year. Just keep those PS5 rolling off the presses, Sony. There's much more money to be made here, and many more consumers to make happy.

Sony had previously announced plans to shut down the PlayStation digital store for PS3 and PS Vita devices later this year but after the public backlash they have decided to reverse this decision and now plan to keep the store open on these devices for the "foreseeable future". Sony stated that their decision to shut down the store was a mistake and that they were inspired by the passionate gamers who wanted the store to remain live. This move will help to preserve the digital-only games released on the platforms. Sony still intends to retire PSP commerce functionality on July 2nd as planned, the full announcement can be found below.

Today Epic Games announced that it completed a $1 billion round of funding, which will allow the company to support future growth opportunities. Epic's equity valuation is now $28.7 billion.

This round includes an additional $200M strategic investment from Sony Group Corporation, which builds on the already close relationship between the two companies and reinforces their shared mission to advance the state of the art in technology, entertainment, and socially-connected online services. Other investment partners include Appaloosa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, GIC, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Park West, KKR, AllianceBernstein, Altimeter, Franklin Templeton and Luxor Capital. Epic continues to have only a single class of common stock outstanding and CEO Tim Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder of the company.

According to the latest information coming from The Gamer, Sony is in the process of permanently closing the PlayStation Store support for its older consoles. That includes the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable. According to the source, "PSP's and PS3's [PSN] stores are to be closed on July 2, while the PS Vita store will stay open until August 27. After those dates, you will no longer be able to purchase digital copies of games or DLC for any of the Sony consoles mentioned above". This is marking an end of an era, as those are the consoles that sold in millions and are very well known in the gaming community.

The official announcement is expected to follow after this, however, we still don't know when Sony will address this officially. It shows that the company is now focusing on more modern consoles and that the 9-year-old PS Vita, 13-year-old PS3, and 16-year-old PSP are considered legacy now. The remaining consoles are the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro, and the latest PlayStation 5, which are all going to be supported by the PlayStation Store for a while.

The Sony PlayStation 5 comes with an internal 825 GB PCIe 4.0 SSD which offers around 667 GB of usable storage for games and other content. With new games such as the latest Call Of Duty easily taking over 100 GB the need for more storage has never been more evident. Sony has prepared for this eventuality by including an internal M.2 drive bay on the PS5 to expand the available storage. The shift to ultra-fast storage on this latest generation of consoles has limited their ability to support external storage as new games developed for the consoles will expect a certain level of performance. Sony will reportedly enable software support for the M.2 slot with a limited selection of tested PC drives to ensure these minimum performance requirements are achieved. The approach by Sony differs from that of Microsoft who has created a proprietary connector for storage upgrades.

Sony has restarted their "Play At Home initiative" to provide a "series of free games and entertainment offers for our PlayStation community to make the next few months a little more fun and enjoyable". The Play At Home initiative was launched by Sony in April 2020 and offered PlayStation users a free copy of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, and Journey for PS4. Sony will now be offering a free copy of Ratchet & Clank PS4 from Insomniac Games between March 1st and March 31st. Once you redeem the game, it will be yours to keep as was the case previously. All the games offered via the Play At Home initiative are playable on the PS5 with backward compatibility mode. Sony has also partnered with Funimation to offer an extended trial for new customers of the anime streaming service. Sony will announce additional free games and services in the coming months.

Sony has officially announced that they are working on a next-generation PlayStation VR headset for the PS5. Sony has only provided limited details of the upcoming headset but they include upgrades to resolution, field of view, tracking, and input. The new headset will also connect to PS5 with a single cord to simplify setup. The new VR controllers will incorporate various improvements from the latest generation DualSense wireless controller along with general ergonomic improvements. While this new PSVR system is still under development and will not launch until at least 2022 Sony has reaffirmed their commitment to the existing PSVR platform confirming the launch of several new titles including After The Fall, Sniper Elite VR, and Humanity. You can read the full release from Sony below.

We recently reported about the class action lawsuit being filed against Sony surrounding the alleged drift on their DualShock 5 controllers. We now have some new evidence from iFixit which points towards this physical issue being present on all DualShock 5 controllers. The DualShock 5 controllers use "off-the-shelf joystick hardware with a long history of predictable, preventable issues" according to iFixit. They also estimate that the life-time of these joysticks is just over 400 hours of game time which is significantly less than what would be expected on a 70 USD controller.

The controller drift will get worse as the controllers are used due to several design faults. The main issues identified by iFixit include the specific potentiometers used in the joysticks which will wear down from use quickly making the reading more unreliable. The springs used to bring the joystick to a neutral position will fatigue over time creating a new neutral point and shifting readings. The plastics used in the DualShock 5 controller will inevitably deteriorate with time. The controller will also accumulate grime and dust in the housing from use which increases the severity of drift. The best way to minimize controller drift is to clean your controller regularly; however, this will not solve the hardware faults.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Sony by Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP regarding the alleged drift present on Sony's latest DualShock 5 controller which comes bundled with the PlayStation 5. The lawsuit was filed on February 12th in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York and argues that the DualShock 5 controller is defective as it suffers from drift compromising the core functionality of the device. The lawsuit also notes the limited repair options available and Sony's lack of disclosure to customers even after numerous reported cases. Sony joins Nintendo and Microsoft who are both also in multiple court battles regarding drift on their respective controllers.

When AMD and Sony collaborated on making the next generation console chip, AMD has internally codenamed it Flute, while Sony codenamed it Oberon or Ariel. This PlayStation 5 SoC die has today been pictured thanks to the Fritzchens Fritz and we get to see a closer look at the die internals. Featuring eight of AMD's Zen2 cores that can reach frequencies of up to 3.5 GHz, the CPU is paired with 36 CU GPU based on the RDNA 2 technology. The GPU is capable of running at speed of up to 2.23 GHz. The SoC has been made to accommodate all of that hardware, and bring IO to connect it all.

When tearing down the console, the heatsink and the SoC are connected by liquid metal, which is used to achieve the best possible heat transfer between two surfaces. Surrounding the die there is a small amount of material used to prevent liquid metal (a conductive material) from possibly spilling and shorting some components. Using a special short wave infrared light (SWIR) microscope, we can take a look at what is happening under the hood without destroying the chip. And really, there are a few distinct areas that are highlighted by the Twitter user @Locuza. As you can see, the die has special sectors with the CPU complex and a GPU matrix with plenty of workgroups and additional components for raytracing.

Members form the UK Parliament are apparently preparing to introduce a bill that would regulate the scalping phenomenon that's being witnessed worldwide. According to Scottish politician Douglas Chapman, in an interview to IGN, "The issue of scalping first came up with constituents contacting me to explain their frustration about being unable to get hold of certain games consoles or computer components pre-Christmas." He then expanded on that by adding that "On investigation, we uncovered more details of the unscrupulous practice of 'scalping' by automated bots to bulk buy these goods and sell them on at inflated prices." Oh, and this bill is unlikely to pass, by the way.

Scalping, however, isn't done only in the UK; it's a pervasive international issue that crosses borders. And scalping, as it is known, is nothing but a form of speculation, which some might say is part of the backbone that keeps the world's capitalist blood pumping through the economy - some might even argue that scalping occurs directly due to mechanisms of supply and demand, and thus, isn't an unlawful activity in and of itself. Companies, corporations, and all other legal entities, however, have to adhere to strict anti-monopoly/anti-cartelization laws, which deal with the same base issue, although in another facet of it. The problem is that it appears that in some countries, speculation is regulated at the enterprise level, but not at the citizen level. And herein lies the crux of it.

Sony has confirmed that it is paying some of the upfront cost in acquiring their latest PS5 games console by pricing it below manufacturing cost. Consoles being priced as such isn't a new move in itself; manufacturers have often sold their consoles at a loss so as to keep consoles attractive to buyers and thus increase their install base. This, in turn, equates with higher sales of software - which is often where Sony or Microsoft recoup their margin loss on hardware.

Sony has also confirmed that its PS5 console has sold around 4.5 million units since launch, putting it in a similar footing with the PS4 in the corresponding period, despite the higher retail price at launch. The sales figure also puts Sony's PlayStation division results for 2020's Q3 FY as their historical best ever since the company started selling games consoles. Revenue increased 40 percent to 883.2 billion yen ($8.4 billion), partly driven by PS5 sales, whilst operating profit increased by 50 percent to 80.2 billion yen ($763.3 million) due to higher software and services sales (such as PlayStation Plus subscriptions), and better margins on PS4 hardware, which still shipped around 1.4 million units.

Sony has sold 3.4 million PlayStation 5 units in the four weeks following its release, this puts it ahead of the PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch for their first month sales. The Xbox Series X/S from Microsoft is currently estimated to have sold slightly over 2 million units however as with both consoles this is a supply issue and not a demand one. The main reason for Sony's lead in shipments is their early production start meaning they had more units on hand for release. Sony is targeting 16.8 - 18 million PlayStation 5 shipments in 2021 topping the PlayStation 4 and making it the company's most successful launch to date.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) dropped the hammer on Cyberpunk 2077 earlier this week, by withdrawing the game from the PlayStation Store, and offering full refunds to anyone who wants it. It appears like the move affects Cyberpunk 2077 availability for all PlayStation gamers, and not just those on older-generation consoles such as the PlayStation 4. "SIE strives to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, therefore we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased Cyberpunk 2077 via PlayStation Store. SIE will also be removing Cyberpunk 2077 from PlayStation Store until further notice," reads the company's statement.

To seek a refund, simply log in to the refund claims page with your PlayStation ID. Once SIE verifies that you purchased your copy of Cyberpunk 2077 via the PlayStation Store, you have the option to request a full refund, which removes the game from your library, and processes a refund to your original mode of payment. The move follows a massive backlash on social media by console gamers—particularly those on older-gen consoles such as PS4 and Xbox One; claiming that the game has glaring bugs and doesn't look nearly as good as shown in its trailers. CD Projekt Red admitted that it didn't show gamers how Cyberpunk 2077 plays on older consoles; and offered full refunds.

IC Insights' November Update to the 2020 McClean Report, released later this month, includes a discussion of the forecasted top-25 semiconductor suppliers in 2020. This research bulletin covers the expected top-15 2020 semiconductor suppliers (Figure 1).

The November Update also includes a detailed five-year forecast through 2024 of the IC market by product type (including dollar volume, unit shipments, and average selling price) and a forecast of the major semiconductor industry capital spenders for 2020. A five-year outlook for total semiconductor industry capital spending is also provided.

The title says it all, really. We've only just been able to add AMD's latest RX 6800 and 6800 XT graphics cards to our shopping carts in multiple etailers, but the cat is already out of the bag and into scalpers' pockets. This has been a recurring event for all gaming-related tech, from DIY PC parts to the latest-gen games consoles from both Microsoft and Sony. At this point, it becomes moot to talk about availability issues, or demand issues, or reaching a conclusion between the two - the stock just isn't there for anything gaming-related, period.

Some etailers are only selling their graphics cards in-person, as a way to both control flow of stock and protect themselves from scalpers buying up the entire inventory with recourse to some digital sidekicks that automate the purchase process, and then allow them to resell anything from graphics cards from NVIDIA to AMD, passing through AMD's latest Ryzen 5000 series and the Xbox Series X and PS5 gaming consoles.

Microsoft has today published another article on its Xbox Wire blog, dedicated to all the news regarding the Xbox consoles and its ecosystem. In the light of yesterday's launch of AMD Radeon RDNA 2 graphics cards, Microsoft has congratulated its partner and provider of processors SoCs for their next-generation consoles. Besides the celebrations and congratulations, Microsoft has proceeded to show off what the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles are capable of, and how they integrate the RDNA 2 architecture. The company notes that there are hardware accelerated DirectX Raytracing, Mesh Shaders, Sampler Feedback, and Variable Rate Shading units built-in, so game developers can take advantage of it.

Another interesting point Microsoft made was that "Xbox Series X|S are the only next-generation consoles with full hardware support for all the RDNA 2 capabilities AMD showcased today." What this translates into is that Microsoft is the only console maker that uses the full RDNA 2 potential. This could leave Sony out in the dark with its PlayStation 5 console, meaning that it does not support all the features of AMD's new GPU architecture. There are not any specific points, however, we have to wait and see what Sony has left out, if anything.

Sony Electronics Inc. today announced the debut of the Spatial Reality Display (SR Display), a groundbreaking new product made with Sony's award-winning Eye-Sensing Light Field Display (ELFD) technology. The display, initially shared with attendees at the Consumer Electronics Show in January of this year, does not require virtual reality glasses or a headset. The SR Display enables creators across a variety of industries, from automotive and industrial design, to Computer Graphics (CG) and Visual Effects (VFX) designers and creators in film to bring ideas to life in stunning 3D displays.

"We're excited to bring the world's best technology to bear, moving the design and creation industry forward, particularly as the shift to digital has become so pronounced," stated Mike Fasulo, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics North America. "This technology drives new versatility, allowing us to advance an entirely new medium and experience for designers and creators everywhere."