Sony’s gaming division shared its results for the third fiscal quarter (ended December 31). Despite generally good performance, sales of games and hardware have fallen. The company is unable to cope with the demand for the PS5, which now lags behind the PS4 in terms of the number of devices sold over the same period.The main thing from the financial report

Jim Ryan, head of Sony Interactive Entertainment, spoke about the significance of the Bungie acquisition deal for the future of the PlayStation. We are talking about further investments in the multiplatform, the creation of game services and development beyond one console. At the same time, other major purchases should be expected from Sony in the future.Destiny 2

Sony intends to improve its relationship with indie developers. According to the results of a survey for PlayStation partners, the company plans to fix a number of obvious problems of its platform. We are talking about slow communication, low findability of games and opacity of work processes.What prompted Sony to respond to the problems?

Jim Ryan, who heads PlayStation, criticized Activision Blizzard amid the latest accusations against the publisher. He believes that the company is not doing enough to improve the situation. Meanwhile, Activision’s management continues to support Bobby Kotick and tries to calm down disgruntled employees. Reaction of the head of PlayStation

Two weeks ago, for the first time in 33 years, all 30 places in the Japanese bestseller chart were occupied by games for one console. It became the Nintendo Switch. The Gaming Bolt portal has found out why this console has become more attractive to local developers and why they are no longer eager to cooperate with Sony.

Sony‘s gaming division is not ready to share a financial report yet, but it has already brought data on PlayStation 5 sales. The console sold 10 million units worldwide by July 18 and became Sony’s fastest-selling console.

Shawn Layden, a gaming consultant and former boss of PlayStation Studios, expressed his opinion about the problems of the gaming industry. He fears that consolidation could lead to stagnation of the industry. Leyden also doubts the effectiveness of the Xbox Game Pass model and believes that gaming is on the threshold of a new era.Sean Layden

Indie developers have repeatedly talked about the negative experience of working with PlayStation. Yesterday it turned out that the feature in the PS Store costs $ 25 thousand. After that, Sony was hit by a new wave of criticism. Developers began to point out many other problems of the company — including lack of support, poor game findability, and, as a result, low sales of indie games.

Today Sony announced the acquisition of the Finnish studio Housemarque, developers of Returnal. However, the Japanese PlayStation division mistakenly mentioned Bluepoint Games, the creators of the Demon’s Souls remake, in the announcement. It seems that the Japanese company was planning to announce the purchase of this studio soon.On June 29, Herman Hulst, head of PlayStation Worldwide Studios, announced the acquisition of Housemarque on the PlayStation blog.

Abandoned is an upcoming indie horror from Blue Box Studio. Almost nothing is known about the team or the game itself. However, thanks to fan theories about its connection with Silent Hill and the provocations of developers, it has become one of the most discussed projects of 2021. We talk in detail about who is hiding behind the Blue Box, and whether Hideo Kojima has anything to do with it.

Sony has officially returned Cyberpunk 2077 to the PlayStation Store. The game was absent from the platform for six months, and now it is sold at a reduced price. Despite the return of the CD Projekt project to the store, users are warned about the remaining performance problems.On June 21, the opportunity to buy the game again appeared on the Cyberpunk 2077 page in the PS Store.

Yesterday Sony held a presentation for investors, where it shared the main figures of the gaming direction and plans for the future. It turned out that PlayStation is going to “go beyond consoles” and focus, among other things, on ports for mobile and PC.

Sony for a long time did not want to support the crossplay function on PlayStation consoles, refusing to share its audience with competitors. In 2019, she changed her mind, but set a condition — game publishers will have to pay a commission.

Sony shared the report for the fiscal year (ended March 31). He became the best in the history of the company’s gaming direction. Revenue exceeded $24 billion, PlayStation 5 shipments approached 8 million, and the total number of games sold for the year was almost 400 million copies.The revenue of the entire company for the year amounted to $8.9 trillion ($81.7 billion), and operating profit — ¥971.9 billion ($8.9 billion).

Sony continues to actively develop ideas that, in theory, can facilitate the passage of even the most complex and demanding games. The corresponding patents of the company speak about the movement in this direction. Among them is an expert assistance system, difficulty adjustment based on machine learning, as well as an AI assistant for passing certain sections of the game.Demon’s Souls (2020)

Sony has published a small guide for indie developers on pitching games. The company told what you should pay attention to when applying, and also clarified which questions should be answered before presenting your project for PlayStation.Journey

Sony continues to selectively abandon the exclusivity of some of its titles. The MLB baseball simulator The Show 21, which was previously released only on PlayStation, will also appear on Xbox for the first time. This is hinted at, among other things, by the cover of the game merged into the network.The covers of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox One versions of the game were shared by a well-known insider Anerdydad.

PlayStation is probably planning to actively develop the mobile direction and develop new games for it. This is also hinted at by the new vacancy of the European division of the company.Uncharted: Fortune Hunter

While multiplayer GTA V and Call of Duty: Black Ops III are leading in the top sales for PS4, Sony itself says — in fact, players like single-player games much more. That’s just that users have almost no time for them. The company offers developers to disclose information about the length of quests and allow gamers to run tasks in a convenient sequence.