PlayStation just announced a wider rollout of the new QSSR (Quick Spectral Super Resolution) AI upscaling that it's developed for the standard PS5. The feature works similarly to the more powerful PSSR on PlayStation 5 Pro, and basically results in a sharper image when you're playing, once developers have actually implemented it.

After its debut in Marvel's Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei earlier this year, it was realistically a matter of time until it hit more titles, and now free updates are coming to some huge games, new and old, to add the feature.

The full list of games getting the feature is as follows:

• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
• Control Resonant
• The Finals
• Arc Raiders
• No Man’s Sky
• Hell Let Loose: Vietnam

That's an enjoyably eclectic list of titles, and there are some oldies and some newbies on there, as you might have noticed. One relatively common thread is that the developers who've implemented QSSR are largely from teams that have pushed the bar graphically – especially in the case of Insomniac and Remedy, the first two on the list.

Their games are already pretty bleeding-edge graphically, so it's no real shock to see them first in line to bring the feature out more widely.

The PlayStation blog post announcing these new updates has some impressive testimonials from the developers involved, too, in which they generally praise the way that QSSR can result in a stabler, less fuzzy image when playing.

What's slightly more ambiguous is exactly when each game will get its update. The blog post says the patches will roll out "in the coming weeks", and I'm very much hoping they come sooner, rather than later – although Spider-Man 2's is already live. After all, this time next week we'll all be sinking into a weekend of GTA 6, and it might not be the ideal time to dip back into a slightly sharper older game.

Still, the addition of QSSR is a welcome break from what's otherwise been a dismal time for consumers in gaming. The PS5 might not be cheaper than it was at launch, despite years on the market, but at least this feature means that we can say it's better than it was at launch.

Announced more than a year ago, Sony's PlayStation-friendly Pulse Elevate wireless speakers have taken a while to get here. But now fans will have to wait a bit longer still – the company has identified a "production issue with the product" and has delayed them further.

Originally set for release this week – on Thursday 12 November – the speakers have now been delayed indefinitely. It seems that at least of the units that have been manufactured so far failed to "deliver the experience we intended for our players".

The announcement was made on the PlayStation Blog, with an apology and hope that the issue will be resolved "soon".

I can only imagine what the problem might have been – whether it was an audio issue affecting performance or something involving the wireless technology.

Sony's Pulse Elevate speakers – what's gone wrong?

The Pulse Elevate speakers come as a stereo pair in either black or white. They can stand either flat or tilted backwards to direct the sound at an angle – ideal for desktop use, say.

They use PlayStation Link wireless connectivity and work with PC and Mac, as well as PS5 and the PlayStation Portal handheld. It's an "ultra-low latency" and lossless connection that allows them to connect to your device via an included USB adapter.

They are also Bluetooth-enabled, so you can send audio from a separate device, such as your smartphone or tablet. And you can even listen to a Bluetooth stream and game audio delivered by PlayStation Link at the same time.

Basically, there are a few things that could have gone wrong there.

Alternatively, the speakers sport planar magnetic drivers and support Tempest 3D AudioTech to achieve virtual spatial sound from a stereo pair. And there are built-in subwoofers for deeper bass.

And, with AI noise reduction on the built-in mic in the right-hand speaker, you are meant to get clear, precise voice chat.

Again, any of those elements could have been the problem.

To be honest, it's brave for a company to pull a product so close to release, fix it and ensure it's delivering what it promised. Applaudable, in fact.

After all, the Pulse Elevate speakers cost £199.99 / $219.99, so I'd rather they worked as they should. And I'm happy to wait, in that case.

There have been numerous reports claiming the PlayStation 6 has been delayed, maybe even beyond 2028, but a company executive said today that the next-gen console is still on track.

While not revealing a timeframe or specific details, Sony's chief financial officer, Lin Tao, told listeners during the company's latest earnings call that there will be "solid progress" made on the PS6 in the next financial year.

As reported by VGC, Tao said that the PlayStation brand will "continue to enhance user engagement and further strengthen monetisation through the release of strong titles and the expansion of our service.

"We also intend to make solid progress in preparing for the next-generation platform."

It will be investing in the new platform over the coming 12 months, but don't expect an official launch or announcement quite yet.

"For future growth, we have to attach great importance to a new platform and make the necessary investments for that. We have to support the soundness of our platform and think about how rationally we can invest in that platform," he added.

"We will announce that at an appropriate time in the future."

How much the PS6 will cost when it does arrive remains a bone of contention. It has been claimed that it could be over $1,000 considering the RAM and storage alone is estimated to cost more than $680.

In all fairness, the PS5 Pro is not far that, being priced at $899 in the US and £789 in the UK. That's after a price hike was imposed earlier this year, with the ongoing components crisis to blame.

It's not likely to go up again though, as Tao also revealed that Sony has now stockpiled enough components to continue production through 2027. And, according to a chat we had with a senior vice president at LG, we could see an end to RAMageddon by the end of next year.

Hopefully that will make the next-generation consoles – PS6 and Xbox's Project Helix – more reasonably priced by the time they come around. Although the price hikes don't seem to have affected Sony much – it's still sold close to 100 million PS5 units and stock has been hard to come by recently, not least to the release of GTA 6 on 19 November.

As T3 turns 30, a milestone that very few tech brands can match, let alone tech magazines and websites, we're looking back on the seismic changes that have rippled through consumer tech in that span. It's fallen to me to summarise 30 years of wisdom from the many founders, CEOs, spokespeople and icons of the industry, and to pick out some memorable quotes that do justice to the time that's passed.

So, with the important caveat that this selection is arranged in no particular order, here are some quotes from the 30 years that T3's been in this world. They're the ones that ring true, that tell us something we didn't know, or that have wisdom we could all live by – and they're from a collection of people who know a thing or two about technology.

30 years of tech quotes

As I said, there's no real order to these quotes, but we're starting off with a good one, from someone who changed the face of design in tech.

Jony Ive's design work with Apple needs basically no introduction. He changed how consumers look at broad swathes of tech, from tablets to laptops, and some of his designs are still nearly untouched years and years later (I'm looking at you, Apple Watch).

So, when he talks about what makes tech potent for people, it's worth pricking up your ears. This famous quote about hiding some of the workings behind a curtain might explain some of why Apple's ecosystem thrived in opposition to Windows and the world of PCs. It nails an answer to why people love tech, accurately gauging that people sometimes love not knowing how something works.

As predictions go, this one looks pretty nailed-on, given that Hastings, one of Netflix's co-founders, was making it in 2009. Netflix at that point was years away from even making its first original programming and was instead purely a distributor, but the growth of streaming was already starting to gather steam.

Hastings was right, and now we live in a post-Netflix world. It's one in which it's inconceivable to imagine a TV launching without the app built in, and with a generation of viewers who can't imagine living without a streaming subscription. Price hikes might be threatening the established order, but this still looks like one of the more accurate bullish statements you could find.

Tim Cook's time in charge of Apple was marked by a supreme strategic vision – taking power away from its suppliers and developing its own supply chain. Now that system is operational, and Apple has a nimbleness that few rivals can match, fuelled by its own silicon and chips.

Cook's astute approach to marketing Apple's devices was evident throughout his tenure, but this quote is a particularly apt one. It points out how value can be subjective, depending on what people need from a product and what it offers compared to the competition.

In a year when Apple's phones have become more expensive than ever before, it's a maxim that will be tested to its limits, although Cook himself has ridden off into the sunset.

Carl Pei knows a thing or two about the world of tech, having helped to build OnePlus into what was a genuinely insurgent presence in the phone market. Since then he's gone his own way, and now leads Nothing in London, where he's managed to make a significant splash thanks to some bold design choices.

This quote comes from a discussion of those design elements, and underlines that Nothing believes in functionality over aesthetics. That can be hard to believe when you look at some of its tech, but peel things back a little and you'll see that it has indeed committed to tactility and practicality.

Just look at the controls on the Nothing Headphone (1) – that's putting your money where your mouth is.

Gaming has grown at an enormous pace, along with the rest of the tech world, in the last 30 years, and there's perhaps no more famous quote from its pantheon of creators than this one, generally attributed to Nintendo's great Shigeru Miyamoto. Wrongly, it turns out – there's no actual provenance for the quote, and it's never been verified by the man himself.

The spirit behind it, though, is undeniable, and it's been proven right many times since it started to circulate in articles and essays. The games industry is prone to terrible releases, whether a title is rushed or just overpromises and underdelivers – and the lesson to take your time and do things right is one that tech brands have often struggled to learn.

On the flip side, though, you have this quote from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, one that he's happily confirmed is very much true. It posits that the most polished release in the world is probably one that could have been out in the world a little bit earlier, to capitalise on your momentum.

It's a great quote because it pushes back on the received wisdom that it's a bad thing to release an unfinished product. While it certainly can go badly for you, there are also plenty of examples of how a slightly rough first launch can still establish a huge market lead for a company, whether it's the battle royale mode in Fortnite or the first generation of Apple Watch.

Back to gaming, though, for a minute, to take a look at some words from one of the people who's most tangibly changed gaming in the last 30 years, and in particular during the last decade. The genius behind Dark Souls and, later, Elden Ring, Miyazaki's games are known for their brutally difficult approach to progression.

Well, how's the quote above for an unapologetic approach? In one quick response, he nullifies any possibility of relenting and confirms why he's wired this way in the first place. Why shouldn't games challenge us in the same way that normal life does, after all?

Bill Gates has seen it all when it comes to tech, and while he's long since slid away into a post-work life of endless wealth and dubious connections, he was the source of some surprisingly concise quotes in his Microsoft days.

This one, in particular, about the value of listening to criticism, surely contains a lesson that many of his peers and acolytes must have learned. While it can be tough to take a licking when you release a device, and nobody prefers hard feedback to positive reviews, often the criticisms are more useful.

After all, how can you know what needs to improve in a device or service without listening to the people who've used it and found it wanting?

They don't come much bigger than Steve Jobs when it comes to tech figures who loom large over the past 30 years in the industry. He left too soon, but Jobs helped to build up the company that arguably defines the last three decades: Apple.

In that time, he was prone to catchy turns of phrase, concise demonstrations, and a privately ruthless approach to development. This quote, from a commencement speech he gave to Stanford in 2005, is the shortest on my list, and feels like a good place to leave things.

It's a simple encouragement to the inventors and founders of tomorrow, to keep having ideas, making mistakes and building new things – and it's a quote that has clearly impressed generations since he spoke it.

Like many retailers, PlayStation has already kicked off its Black Friday sale long before the day itself. Running to 30 November, PS5 and PS5 Pro owners can get their hands on some of the biggest games released this year with big discounts, along with a whole lot more.

Available through the PlayStation Store, the deals include 23% off Marvel's Wolverine – a game I called "one of my favourite PS5 Pro games of the year".

The game puts you in the stumpy, hairy legs of Logan, AKA Wolverine, as you travel the globe fighting swathes of enemies in bloody battles. Its combat is fast and frantic, while the story is superbly acted by an excellent voice cast.

As I said in my review, it's played best on PS5 Pro, but even the standard PS5 version presents a great, no-thrills experience for action fans.

Also available in the sale is 007 First Light – Deluxe Edition, which has a huge 50% off. This is (hopefully) the younger Bond's first adventure from IO Interactive, the developer of the Hitman series.

The recently-released RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker - Eclipse Edition gets 20% off, and I've got my own eye on Control: Resonant. The horror sequel to Control is already 20% cheaper as well.

There are many other games with discounts up to 75% off across the PlayStation Store right now. The promotion runs through to the end of 30 November 2026.

We're also hoping to see deals on PlayStation hardware this Black Friday, across multiple retailers. Most notably on PS5 DualSense controllers. So if you do need a new controller, we'll bring you the best prices as soon as we spot them.

PlayStation has just unveiled arguably its best looking PS5 side plates and DualSense controllers yet. The Prism collection includes three console covers and controllers in transparent Flare Orange, Emerald Green and Graphite Grey.

They'll be available to purchase from the PlayStation Store online from 10 November and are likely to be extremely popular. I particularly like the Flare Orange version – the console cover is especially eye-popping.

However, there's one special edition PS5 that tops those and then some.

Goldgenie is renowned for its luxury customisations of consumer tech, often replacing the shells of iPhones and other smartphones with pure gold and leather. The end results can run into the thousands of pounds and dollars, making them as bling as you can imagine.

And that's the case with its latest – a pure 24k gold PS5.

The atelior brand first released a gold PlayStation 5 in 2020, when the console originally debuted. But this latest version is different. Where that one had a golden skin, this is plated in 24k gold.

Goldgenie has used the casing from each model, plus its included DualSense controller. So you're not getting a skinned console, you're getting the shop bought model cased in real gold.

Also, the version chosen this time is the PS5 Slim with the disc drive. It is a limited edition and once all units are sold out, there will never be another of that type.

Of course, it's not exactly in the same price bracket as PlayStation's new accessories. Even with the latest pricing of the PS5 taken into account, you're going to have to dig a bit deeper.

The Goldgenie 24k Gold PS5 will set you back £9,997 in the UK, $13,585.92 in the States.

It's available to order from the brand's own website now and will ship within 14 days to anywhere in the world.

If that's a bit too steep for your liking though, Sony's transparent PS5 covers start at £64.99 / $74.99, with the matching DualSense priced at $84.99 / £74.99.

PlayStation's next batch of free games for all PS Plus subscribers will arrive on 3 November, and it's one of the best lineups for a while.

All three releases are worth sinking time into, with the headliner being one of the most underrated action-adventures in recent times, in my humble opinion. Another of them is an extremely addictive deck-builder, while the last is literally three games in one.

Dead Island 2 might not live up to Techland's original, but its famed development woes were ironed out when Deep Silver and new developer Dambuster Studios finally managed to get it out of the door.

The first-person RPG (of sorts) is a zombie-filled hoot that doesn't take itself too seriously, and provides a whole lot of fun combat and exploration. There's a deep crafting mechanic to customise outlandish weaponry, and solid co-op options to take on the hordes with friends.

Available for PS5, PS5 Pro and PS4 owners, Dead Island 2 will be completely free to download until 30 November. As with all the PS Plus monthly games, you can keep it as long as you retain Essential, Extra or Premium membership.

The same goes with Monster Train 2, which is being included for PS5 owners only.

A roguelite deck-builder, it's the sequel to one of my favourite Slay the Spire clones. You are all that stands between the forces of Heaven and the gates of Hell and, in a twist, you are essentially the bad guy.

You must stop the angelic attack using different demons, spells and abilities as you ride along the train tracks to damnation. As with all good deck-builders, that includes picking up new units, action cards and power-ups to repel increasingly stronger enemies. Lose the heart driving your train and it's over.

I went through a period of playing this game daily, so it's inclusion with this month's batch lets you find out why.

Finally, Tomb Raider IV - VI Remastered collects Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider: Chronicles, and Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness in the one collection for PS5 and PS4.

The graphics have been cleaned up – although you can also play with the original graphical presentation, too – and there are other quality of life tweaks to the three classic games.

Oh, and don't forget that until the end of play 2 November, you can also download F1 25, Hunt: Showdown 1896, and Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 if you haven't done so already.

It's been a hot minute since a Call of Duty game managed to really grab me. The last couple of entries felt rushed at the best of times, but even if you were a Multiplayer-only type of player, you'd have to gel with the way they pushed into quicker and quicker territory. I'm not into movement shooters, so the return of a slightly more grounded style with Modern Warfare 4 has been a real pleasure this past weekend.

That said, it's the campaign that I mainlined the most efficiently, which is never too huge a challenge given COD's generally modest single-player runtimes. After the enormous disappointment of MW3, I was at least a little interested to see how Infinity Ward innovated and switched things up.

To be honest, I'm not sure this is the return to form that it's been greeted as, having rolled credits on it. While there are some great missions and the production value is right back up there, I still didn't really do anything that felt unlike something from previous games – including the open-world "Stranded" mission that felt like a glimpse into how boring a huge COD could really be.

That's harsh, of course, and the story ripped along at a good pace, but I was disappointed by how little time I spent with a new team of interesting and well-acted South Korean marines, instead repeatedly getting hooked back into the overarching storyline driven by Captain Price.

Price is now a full-on war criminal, for the uninitiated, and it's quite funny to watch the recap video included in the game, showing us a principled and straightforward operator, before dropping into the campaign and watching him be at first complicit and then fully participating in large-scale civilian death.

Still, while its story continued to get sillier and sillier, it's undeniably true that the COD mission format still feels exhilarating to play. As you push through front lines, accompanied by dozens of other marines, the sense of scale is often really impressive, and it crucially all looks pretty stellar.

In fact, playing on my PS5 Pro I was reminded time and again that Infinity Ward really know how to push the COD game engine to its limits. From night-time lighting that's impressively realistic, to explosions that shake your very bones when they hit, this is a really impressive-looking campaign.

It features a few locations that are just insanely detailed if you stop and take the time to soak them in, too. The Korean convenience store from the game's opening moments is perhaps the most photorealistic storefront I've ever seen in a game.

On the PS5 Pro, this is all rendered extremely sharply, too, with the console able to keep things even smoother than its less powerful sibling, without cutting back on the level of detail. Since my friends all game on PlayStation, this is another title that's pulled me away from my gaming PC right now.

As I've come to expect from Infinity Ward, the sound design is excellent. I'm playing with the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite connected, and the booming soundscapes of each battle are quite something to hear. Of course, next up is a multiplayer binge for me, and I'll be interested to see how reliable the audio is on this front.

If you've sat out the last couple of COD games, like me, because they just got too twitchy and were a little far from the traditional gameplay you enjoy, then I'd say this is one to take a look at. It's the biggest step back to basics that COD has made since 2019, and I can only hope it teaches Activision a lesson about leaning too far into competition with Fortnite.

Sony's not making any new 4K Blu-ray players moving forward, it's being reported, in a move that confirms its likely plans for a disc-less PlayStation 6 aren't the limit of its thoughts on the future of physical media.

The reports come out of the Japanese media, as picked up by Push Square, and are backed up by the fact that Sony's UBP-X700/K player is out of stock, with no word at all about any more stock coming in.

Sony hasn't made any comment yet, but given its quiet approach to the unpopular decision to end physical production of game discs for PlayStation, I wouldn't hold your breath for any statement.

The move will rightly worry those of us who are fans of physical media, not because Sony had so huge a presence in the 4K Blu-ray player market (which is rightly dominated by Panasonic), but more because it's a sign of the way the wind is blowing. If Panasonic were to now pull back from its players, things would be even more worrying.

Sony announced earlier this year that it would end physical production of game discs starting in January 2028, and it's hard not to see this as part of the same broad strategy. It's seemingly trying to get ahead of the curve on the slow decline of physical ownership, but that feels a bit like jumping the gun from where we're standing. The move also means a disc-less base PS6 is all but guaranteed at this point.

I have a 4K Blu-ray player attached to my TV, in the form of the Panasonic DP-UB820, and I wouldn't trade it for anything (except perhaps the ultra-premium DP-UB9000). Its picture quality, codec support, and sound are all pretty stunning, but in some ways they're beside the point.

The real reason I've fallen in love with 4K Blu-rays is that I actually own the films in question, with no asterisks. We've all seen stories of de-listed movies that people thought they owned digitally, and I've got no interest in being shafted the same way.

Two years ago, though, I would have thought we had a good long while before discs were under threat like this. Given that Sony also happens to manufacture a heap of discs itself still, including for the likes of the Walt Disney Company, I'm starting to feel a little shakier about the future of the whole market.

For now, I'll take comfort in the fact that millions of people have a UHD player in their living room in the form of a PlayStation 5. Whether they really appreciate it for that part of its arsenal is anyone's guess, though.

It's been just past a year since Battlefield 6 came out – something that you might have noticed thanks to a big promotional push around its new "Game of the Year" edition. That's a label you're allowed to use even if your own mum's the only one who gave it to you, but in this case there's a pretty decent shout about its success.

After all, the franchise had languished far behind Call of Duty for years, through some real low points (the monetisation in Battlefield V being possibly the nadir), only to leapfrog it brutally in 2025. It was the best-selling shooter of that year, and might have a chance at keeping that label this year even with Modern Warfare 4 arriving in a matter of days.

Sales don't make a game good, of course, and if anything, sometimes mean it has to come from behind in terms of my expectations. Yet, without any artifice, I can say that I play Battlefield 6 almost every day on my PS5 Pro, with a group of friends for whom it's completely supplanted COD at present.

We all fell back into that latter franchise in a huge way when Warzone released, but in the last few years the crazy in-game movement it required alienated us, so when Battlefield returned to a more grounded system it was music to our ears. Now, a year on, its fifth season is proving just as much of a hit, and its new maps (set in Las Vegas and Area 51) have already hosted a good half-dozen hours of team play.

I've particularly enjoyed the new Area 51 map, which is expansive and full of varied terrain – and unlike some of the arrivals in previous seasons (like Blackwell Fields), it doesn't feel like one big plane of similar situations to fight in. It has verticality, sprawl, and a whole heap of routes between points.

Crucially, though, the game is also finally at a point where it sounds as good as I remember it being during the pre-launch beta, when footsteps were incredibly clear and could help you win fights multiple times per round. After quite a few months of muddy audio, Dice has tweaked things to the point where wearing a headset once again feels completely essential.

While my friends all play on launch PS5 consoles, I'm also enjoying the game on my PS5 Pro, and it's one of those titles that makes me feel good about the admittedly sizeable investment it represents. It's sharper and a little more fluid than it would otherwise be, not least thanks to its use of PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) to sharpen its base image.

With PSSR actually getting upgrades over time from Sony, this means that BF6 is, if anything, also feeling better than it used to, and it's nice to be able to rely on a game for this long. I have reservations about some of the cosmetics in the game, to be fair, and the "Secuty" typo on a skin this season is particularly embarrassing.

I'm more fussed about the basic fun factor than I am about skins, though, and BF6 continues to nail that side of things. For a game to be drawing me in on basically any free evening an entire year on from release is really impressive enough on its own, frankly.

While some originally suggested that the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Project Helix could release in 2027, it's looking like both could be delayed further. And their prices could be astronomical when they do arrive.

The ongoing components crisis (AKA RAMageddon) has put a kybosh on the next-generation of console gaming, with one industry insider claiming that Sony is struggling to get its PS6 costs down to an affordable level.

That's because the price of memory and storage has skyrocketed over the last two years with the demand from AI data centres making both rare. And according to KeplerL2 (via VGC) that will leave Sony facing a $680 (£510) bill just for the RAM and NAND storage for each PS6.

Responding to a post on NeoGaf that suggested the PS6 will cost $680, he pointed out that the memory and storage would be more than that on their own. You then have to factor in the AMD chipset, GPU, heatsink, fan, power unit, and everything else besides. Not even including a packaged controller, that would put the manufacturing cost alone at just shy of $1,000 (£750).

Even if Sony is willing to sell its next-gen machine at a loss, it can't take too much of a hit per unit.

KeplerL2 is a much-respected AMD expert, so he knows a thing or two about component prices and the potential hardware being considered.

A PS5 costs £569 / $599 today – much more than its launch price – while the PS5 Pro has a retail price of £789 / $899. It would not be a massive leap to suggest the PS6 will be considerably more expensive if the component crisis continues.

What's perhaps more likely is that Sony will wait until the wholesale prices of RAM and NAND reduce. LG recently told T3 that could happen by the end of 2027 or early 2028, which would allow production on a new console to start at a lower cost in spring 2028.

So the holiday season 2028 would be a better bet for the arrival of both the PS6 and Project Helix. And a lot kinder on your pocket, we hope.

I've mentioned it before when testing pro controllers (like the SteelSeries Aeon Pro, just last week), but the PS5 really does have one huge flaw as a console generation on this front. Because of the step forward in haptics taken by the DualSense controller, the market for third-party pads has been hamstrung from the start.

For whatever reason, Sony hasn't been keen to let other brands use its patents and designs on the haptic side of things, and where the PS4 had literally hundreds of options for controllers, the PS5 has been far more barren. Nacon has been one of the few brands making PS5 controllers, though, and it just unveiled its fanciest yet – the Revolution 5 Unlimited.

It's basically an upgraded version of the Revolution 5 Pro, and I've been using it for over a week to get a sense of how it performs. The good news is that it ticks basically every box that I want in a pro controller, with one small caveat, and I'd love if it had more competition from other brands.

A simple prospect

In some ways, I think it's quite simple to make a pro controller – just don't try too hard. The best ones I've used haven't tried to reinvent the wheel or change how you use a controller; they're just extremely premium-feeling versions of what you already know. That's how I'd describe the Revolution 5 Unlimited, which is lovely and solid in the hand.

One of its immediate changes is that it's almost entirely covered in matte-finish plastic, making it grippier when you hold it. That's accentuated by actual rubberised pads in some places, too.

All over the controller, meanwhile, buttons are clickier and more responsive than on the basic DualSense, which is really noticeable. The triggers can also be turned into clickers at will, thanks to a trigger stop toggle, and that's a huge boon for shooters.

Needless to say, the Revolution 5 Unlimited boasts a heap of extra programmable buttons, too. There are two on each side where your fingers sit in a natural grip, while extra shoulder buttons are a little harder to reach but welcome additions.

The analogue sticks are TMR for drift-resistance and responsiveness, and a built-in screen makes it really easy to program buttons, change between profiles and presets and more. If you fancy a different method, a connected app on your phone works just as well.

This all adds up to a wide range of customisation options, but there are even more in the box. It comes with a hardshell carrying case, and inside you'll find extra analogue stick heads (to change from concave to convex, for instance), along with a series of weights.

These slot into hidden compartments to let you choose exactly how heavy your controller is in the hand. That's a degree of choice that few rivals offer even on PC, and it's a really classy touch that Nacon has been fond of for quite some time.

Finally, the whole thing comes with some convenience – a charging dock that can let you slot the controller's dongle in to save on USB ports. It's a neat little addition that makes the controller more of a fixture on your desk.

The elephant in the room

It's worth clarifying at this stage that the Revolution 5 Unlimited costs $229.99 in the US, £179.99 here in the UK and €199.99 in the EU, since that price is basically the biggest single factor in whether you might buy one.

That makes it roughly the cost of three or four standard DualSense controllers, and a small slice cheaper than the DualSense Edge, but in the same premium bracket. The question of which is better is complicated; the Edge has tighter integration with your PS5 and feels slicker in software terms as a result, but when it comes to sheer customisation, Nacon clearly wins.

There's another key difference, too, since Nacon's pad has an asymmetric layout for its sticks. That's a departure from the normal PlayStation layout, and might make it more attractive for those used to Xbox gamepads historically, or it might be something you'd rather avoid.

Another small downside is that where a normal DualSense has a large touchpad, the Revolution 5 Unlimited has a tiny customisable button underneath the larger PS button. It's fiddly to tap, making accessing the map in plenty of games a bit of an annoyance (although customising another extra button to cover the same job solves this).

I've been hugely enjoying my time with the gamepad, though, and expect to keep using it as my standard controller on PS5 for quite some time. I don't have a DualSense Edge, and since my launch-day Scuf Reflex Pro got stick drift about six months ago, I've been playing without extra buttons; Nacon's loan unit has fixed that problem for me, and I'm not sure I can go back again.

So, if you're in the market for a PS5 controller with a whole heap of added features, it's one to check out. If you want a PC and Xbox controller, meanwhile, SteelSeries has you covered with the Aeon Pro.

I'm a big fan of 2K Games' Mafia titles, so much so that I've recently started a new playthrough of Mafia III (my third). That's why I consider Mafia: The Old Country as one of my favourite releases of last year.

While it largely ditches the open-world aspects of the previous games, the prequel proves to be a solid action-adventure, which sets the stall for the series. It's also recently been served by a very decent slice of additional story in The Man of Honor, an expanded DLC package. And so, the original game's inclusion as part of the PS Plus game catalogue this month is very welcome.

Mafia: The Old Country also runs especially well on PS5 Pro, with a 40fps mode for TVs and displays that support 120Hz refresh rates. We even listed it as one of the three games you must play while waiting for GTA 6 to come out – so now's your chance.

It'll be available at no extra cost to all PS Plus Extra and Premium members from 20 October, so you don't have long to wait.

Also returning to PS Plus is Horizon Forbidden West, one of the best RPG / action-adventure games on PS5 full stop. That too will be available from 20 October. As will Mycopunk, a brand new looter-shooter with cartoon-style graphics and co-op action.

PS Plus doesn't get that many day one releases in comparison with Xbox Game Pass, so this is a rare addition.

Those in the UK, US and Japan will have to wait a week longer for the next batch of new, free games. They include Poppy Playtime: Chapter 2, Tales of Arise – Beyond the Dawn Edition, and Monster Energy Supercross 25.

But if you can't wait that long you can also check your PS5 or PS5 Pro now, Premium and Extra members can download The Midnight Walk from the PS Plus catalogue already.

Finally, if you do have a Premium subscription, you'll also be getting Dino Crisis 2 and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition as part of the classics catalogue next Tuesday, too.

How much is PS Plus Extra and Premium?

The game catalogue is exclusive to PS Plus Extra and Premium members (Deluxe in some regions, like Australia). That means you'll need to upgrade your subscription if you just pay for Essential.

PS Plus Extra will set you back £11.99 / €15.99 / $16.99 / AU$24.95 per month, which gives you all the games on the main catalogue, online multiplayer access, and the additional three to four games offered at no extra cost at the start of each month.

PS Plus Premium also gives you the above plus access to the classics catalogue of retro games, many of which have been remastered. And you can play games over the cloud rather than install them. You'll need this subscription to also stream games to a PlayStation Portal. Membership costs £14.99 / €18.99 / $19.99 per month.

PS Plus Deluxe replaces Premium in some regions. It costs AU$26.95 per month in Australia, for example, and comes with everything except the cloud gaming.

I can't quite believe it's been two and a half years since Dragon's Dogma 2 released – and playing the game's early hours again on my Switch 2 while travelling over the past weekend has been a reminder of just how impressive the game really is. Capcom's crunchy action-RPG is the sort of title that can grab hold of you and suck away dozens of hours before you realise what's happening, and that's high praise.

Now, it's got the major DLC it deserved, in the form of Dark Arisen, which also makes big tweaks to the base game and sees the whole package hit the Switch 2 with total parity of content. That's another little trophy in Capcom's cabinet, continuing a frankly ridiculous streak that runs through Pragmata, Resident Evil: Requiem and plenty more.

First, let's talk Nintendo. I'm not saying that Dragon's Dogma 2 on the Switch 2 is the same sort of miracle port as The Witcher 3 was on the original Switch, but it's still really quite remarkable to play on a portable machine this slim and quiet. This is a huge RPG with a massive world and some really emergent combat systems.

That it runs at all is a testament to Capcom's RE Engine and how it scales, but Dark Arisen also brings frame generation to the fore, which is important. We knew that Nintendo's console had the capacity to potentially use AMD's FSR Frame Generation, and now it's here (and more will follow in Stellar Blade soon).

This means that the game, running uncapped by default unless you tweak this in the menus, is able to inject frames to smooth out its gameplay – and the VRR-capable Switch 2 display makes this basically impossible to perceive. It means that the game's frame rate, which in fact hovers in the high 30s most of the time, feels far smoother than all that, and I'm deeply impressed with how playable that makes the whole adventure.

I've played about three hours on my Switch 2 and found myself basically bumping against no real friction in terms of gameplay compared to when I finished the base game (back at release) on my PlayStation 5. Now, though, I have a PS5 Pro to leverage for non-portable play, and that's where I've been playing the late-game expansion content.

This expansion sees you journey into a new region far to the north of the world you'll explore in the main game – which largely trends towards hotter climates, in fact. This means that, despite some parts of its visual design being fairly traditional (we've seen snow zones before), it's a really nice change of pace when you come to it, and its bleak, wintery areas really are lovely to explore.

The pace of the adventure here is really well-judged, too, and while I haven't finished it yet, I have a strong feeling that it'll follow the same trend as the base game – i.e. you could call it "finished" after 15 or so hours, but there will be dozens more in content for you to discover if you fall in love with the game.

One gameplay tweak that I didn't expect to find so addictive has been the addition of spoils, which are basically loot tokens that you find around the world, and which a given NPC can then convert into actual equipment for you to use or sell off. This loop of discovery, looting, then unveiling is surprisingly compelling, not least because the powers that these items can bequeath are occasionally build-changing.

Meanwhile, I've also used Dark Arisen as an excuse to change my main character's build, having played the base game as a mage. I'm now a fighter, and having a really good time getting more up close and personal, including a heap more climbing on and around monsters, the game's speciality.

On PS5 Pro, it's a really good-looking title – there's a cragginess and detail to its designs that draw you in nicely, and while some NPCs can look a little lumpy and randomised at times, hero characters are super compelling and animated. Plus, of course, while the Switch 2's VRR-enabled frame generation makes for decent smoothness, it's nothing compared to what the PS5 Pro can muster when you put it to the test.

This really does feel like one of those win-win releases. If you've never played Dragon's Dogma 2, there's literally no better time than now to dive in with a smoother, less obstructive experience. If you enjoyed the base game, this expansion is quite literally more, with some amazing boss fights and new systems to uncover. Get going!

Sony's PlayStation VR2 was ground-breaking in a number of ways when it arrived as a PS5 add-on in 2023. Its eye-tracking and foveated rendering technologies were particularly innovative.

However, the headset failed to set the world alight and now it seems Sony is ready to throw in the towel. It has reportedly sold its virtual reality patents to Meta.

According to ZDNet in Korea, more than 40 VR patents have been bought by Meta for potential use in future extended reality devices. This includes technologies related to head-mounted systems.

They have been listed as changing hands by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, so that's about as clear cut as it gets.

That's not to say the existing PSVR2 will be impacted though, although it's been a while since PlayStation has highlighted new games coming specifically for it.

There are still plenty of titles to play and the headset is still sold by retailers, such as Amazon. It also works particularly well with the PS5 Pro, we've found. But sadly it seems its days are numbered.

Sony's VR journey

Sony released its first PlayStation VR for the PS4 a decade ago and sold more than five million units before it was discontinued in 2024. The PSVR2 essentially replaced it the year before, but one issue is that the new headset was exclusive to the PS5 and could not play titles released for its predecessor.

That meant game availability was limited, unless developers upgraded their own titles.

It hamstrung the new model and it has reportedly sold less than half the amount of units of the original – even though it was better technically in just about every way.

It will be interesting to see if the existing version will work with the PS6 when it eventually arrives, or whether Sony is simply ready to cut its losses. Either way, if you want a next-gen headset, it looks like a Meta Quest will be your best bet.

I can't be the only one who'd never played an Ace Combat game until this week, right? The series just got its eighth iteration, Wings of Theve, and while I've known about it for quite a few years, I've never had the circumstances align to the point where I've actually knuckled down and played one.

Now, with a review code provided by Bandai Namco, that's changed, and I've been slotting down a virtual visor to go on sorties for a few days, notching hours of flight time and realising that even in-game flight can be way more challenging than I thought.

This isn't a game that dresses itself up with multiple different types of gameplay, either – it's all plane, all of the time. While you do get a surprising amount of story content delivered in briefings and cutscenes before and after missions (in which you can move the camera a little, and occasionally press a button to, for instance, shake someone's hand), the gameplay is all flight-based.

You play as a pilot who's on an early mission with an ace, the Wings of Theve, before being shot down, with that ace passing away. Rather than admitting such a damaging blow, though, the PR operation behind your military (aiming to retake its own territory after invasion) decides to pretend that you are the Wings, continuing the legacy of this larger-than-life figure.

That's all a framework around which a long series of missions play out, as your forces make advances and beat retreats according to the overarching military plot. To help, you'll fly a wide range of missions, from escorting landing troops to retake a city, to strafing a giant land battleship as it crawls towards the battlefield, or long dogfights against enemy squadrons above the ocean.

There are an impressive number of different scenarios to experience, and two main control schemes to do so with. The older-school of the two lets you control pitch and roll, and while it's easy enough in isolation, in the middle of battles (if you're anything like me), the ground becomes your biggest enemy. The more casual option leaves you able to do far fewer interesting manoeuvres, but makes it miles harder to crash, and I've ended up using it to avoid frustration.

That's something I know I'll probably have to change if I decide to dive into the world of online play once I finish the campaign, which is daunting. What's also daunting is that I'm playing on PC, where people are a bit more likely to have access to flight sticks and other equipment; I normally play my multiplayer games on PS5 Pro, where my friends also game, but that option isn't the one I went with this time, and part of me regrets that choice for social play's sake.

Graphically, though, it's hard to argue with the PC version of the game. I'm playing on the Nvidia rig that I have on loan, complete with its 5070 Ti, and Wings of Theve is quite the looker at 1440p. It's a super-demanding game, too, with 4K play stretching my system to the point of needing frame generation to level things out.

Instead, I've dropped to 1440p without any real compromises on clarity, and am playing the game on the Ultra preset with no complaints and no hitches. While smoothness is really important (and I'm getting a steady 60fps without issues), it's also interesting that the pace of dogfights means that I don't feel the need to push for results closer to 120fps at this point.

The game's beautiful, though, and around 10 missions into the campaign, it's doing a great job of showcasing its natural weather systems and cloud formations. Whether it's a golden sunset cascading through high clouds or a dark and rainy night with low visibility, there's a really fun vibrancy to how the stages look.

The aircraft themselves, meanwhile, are also ridiculously detailed and impressive, with moving parts that really sing with authenticity, which makes sense since almost all of the planes you can fly in the game are, in fact, real and licensed.

I wasn't sure whether I'd click with Ace Combat 8, especially in a release calendar so ridiculously busy that I have multiple other new games waiting to be started (I'm looking at you, Silent Hill: Townfall). I'm having a blast, though, and have already carefully plotted how I'll be progressing through the campaign's unlockable skill tree – a sure sign of commitment.

Whether you aim to play it on PS5, Xbox or PC, I'd give Wings of Theve a firm recommendation as an entry point to a long series. If, like me, Ace Combat has always flown by as a theory, not something you've actually tried, then I'd tell you to get on my six, and try it out.

If you only looked at the Metacritic score for Marvel's Wolverine you'd think Sony and Insomniac had made a massive misstep with the PlayStation 5 exclusive. Reviewers and players have been truly torn over the action-adventure, resulting in some wildly differing opinions.

And I'm not one to say anyone is wrong – reviewing and judging any form of entertainment is highly subjective. It'd be a boring world if we all liked (or hated) the same things. I just wonder how many of them played the game on PS5 Pro. For me, that makes a massive difference.

Now obviously a game is only as good as its gameplay, which I'll come to in a bit, but one thing's indisputable – Marvel's Wolverine is a graphical showcase on the Pro.

Insomniac is renowned for eking performance out of PlayStation hardware, with Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart still among the best running games on Sony's mid-generation hardware. The same is true with Wolverine.

You get a healthy collection of picture options to choose from, which run at 30 and 60 frames per second, or 40 if you have a 120Hz TV (I ran it on a Philips OLED+950 – which is more than capable). Fidelity is obviously the sharpest at the cost of frame rate, but even opting for performance mode gives you a glorious picture on Pro.

In addition, you can choose whether to have advanced ray tracing switched on, which introduces some caveats but enhances some aspects if you're looking closely. Thankfully though, ray tracing is available by default anyway, including in performance mode, and considering it runs at a solid, locked 60fps, you'll never likely care.

The game is routinely stunning throughout, whether you are on the neon-soaked streets of Japan or snow covered scapes of Canada. It is as much a visual feast as the Spider-Man games, even if it's very different in genre and tone. And I think it's easily up there will the best-looking titles of 2026.

But what about the game, Bub?

Now we come to the gameplay, and this is the divisive bit. Those expecting a Spider-Man-like open world will be (and have been) disappointed. This is a balls-out combat action game befitting its hero – and it's also why I've found it refreshing.

I'm a big fan of the earlier action-adventure games lurking in PlayStation's past – like the early God of War and Devil May Cry outings. As with those, Wolverine has a modicum of exploration but is a linear fighting game at heart. It is also reminiscent of the glory days of single-player 2D scrolling beat-em-ups, throwing waves of enemies at you to hack, slash and maim.

That might seem unsophisticated in the modern era, but Insomniac's combat mechanics are so fast and smooth, it feels right – especially at 60fps. Basic attacks are simple to employ, while the game adds a selection of combos and special abilities as it progresses, which you can assign through a traditional-style skill tree.

By the third or fourth story mission, you'll be cutting a swathe through your foes in multiple ways – with gore flying around a-plenty. It's a bloody game for sure, which is to be expected considering you play a mutant with unbreakable knifes that extend from your knuckles, and it must be said that the engine that flings around crimson splatters and spray is one of the best ever created.

But that's not my reason to like it so much. Even though fights can get repetitive and the default difficulty is a little on the easy side, it's unique these days to get a AAA title that's so obviously designed for basic fun. You can largely switch off your brain and just play. It's why I also like EA Sports FC 27 so much, I use it to de-stress after a tough day – I really don't have to think much.

That won't be enough for some, admittedly. But it is for me.

And then there's the story

I'm also a big comic book fan, so really like Insomniac's take on Logan. The voice acting throughout the game is superb, especially Liam McIntyre (Spartacus: Vengeance) as the lead. As is the animation. And while the game strays from the comics' canon, being based in Insomniac's gamified take on the Marvel universe instead, the characters feel familiar while also given us new twists to get our teeth into.

In addition, for an action game, there's a decent 15 or so hours of well-written story, plus another few of side and collectable missions. Add some great Easter eggs and the ability to unlock classic Wolverine outfits and claws, and you're getting a decent amount of game for your money.

I get that this isn't exactly the game that we all expected when the first teaser trailer appeared five years ago, but it's good to see Insomniac branching out and trying something different. Considering how much flack open-world games regularly get, you can't blame it either.

As for myself, gameplay aside, I'm happy that the studio has provided yet another true visual showcase for my PS5 Pro – one that looks even more stunning on a 65-inch OLED. And as we're unlikely to get a PS6 anytime soon, that's enough for me for now.

We usually find out the PS Plus monthly games long before the previous month is finished, but Sony has left it late this time. The October games have only just been announced, mere days before they'll become available to all members.

PS Plus Essential, Extra and Premium subscribers should be happy enough with the lineup though, as the headliner is one of the best racing games around. You also get a hidden gem of a first-person shooter from Crytek Studios.

F1 25 is a technical tour de force, especially on PS5 Pro. Based on the last F1 season (ie. before most of the latest rule changes) it features some of the best on-track action of the series so far.

There's an update handling model, the ability to create your own F1 team, and a whole host of game modes to test your driving skills. Developer Codemasters also includes a mighty lineup of customisable gameplay options to suit your level, so you can play the game exactly as you want.

And Break Point – the F1 soap opera started in F1 2021 – returns.

You can also choose to update the game with the F1 25: 2026 Season Pack for a one-off fee if you want to bring it bang up to date.

Hunt: Showdown 1896 is an FPS from the team behind Crysis and tasks you with bounty hunting monsters for cash. Beware though, other hunters are also out to earn and are more than happy to steal your rewards from your cold, dead hands.

You can also play this with up to two friends to bolster your team, but there's enough action included to play it solo too.

Finally, all PS Plus members get Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2. It's a light-hearted team shooter with brightly-coloured voxel graphics and alien blasting fun. It's available for PS4 owners as well as PS5.

All of the games will be available to download from 6 October 2026, while it's also worth remembering that last month's games – Sniper Elite: Resistance, MLB The Show 26, Wobbly Life, and Chained Echoes – need to be downloaded by the end of play on Monday 5 October or you'll miss out.

Much has been written about the next PlayStation console, with various reports and leaks on its form factor and features. But none so far have been as unusual as patent filed by Sony for a prospective controller.

A patent application titled "Video Game Controller-Driven Information Transfer" shows a DualSense-like gamepad that not only works to play games, it can be used to pay for them. It has wireless transfer capabilities, much like a tap-to-pay machine in a store.

That means you can use a credit or debit card to pay for online games just by tapping it on top of the controller. Gift cards will also be accepted, claims the patent.

It even looks like you could use your phone to wirelessly pay for games, in-store credit or items, much like you can use it to pay for travel, etc.

Found by Dexetro (via VGC), the patent is not new – it was originally filed in spring 2025. However, it has only just been published so that's why it has now come to light.

There is also no guarantee that the technology will ever make the light of day. Many patents are filed every day with only a fraction being implemented. That Sony would like to find new ways to take our money is not surprising though, and to be fair, this would help those who don't want their card details to be permanently stored in its data systems.

It's also an intuitive way to redeem gift cards, although maybe that could just as easily handled by the camera on a smartphone and through the PlayStation app. Certainly, the next main controller the brand releases – most likely with its PlayStation 6 in a couple of years time – will have a few extra bells and whistles.

Although I doubt we've heard all of the potential features as yet. I'd be happy with a sturdier build quality – I've already gone through four or five DualSense controllers over the last few years. And now the rubber grips on my DualSense Edge are starting to come off too.

When it was first unveiled, there was more than a heavy whiff of The Witcher 3 about The Blood of Dawnwalker, a game that basically feels like a top-quality spinoff from that titanically successful dark RPG. Its developer, Rebel Wolves, features a host of developers who worked on Geralt's last big adventure, so the connection is far from a stretch.

I've stuck around 15 hours into the game over the last couple of weeks, since its launch at the start of September, and I'm loving it way more than I expected, largely thanks to one little choice I made when Bandai Namco offered a review code. I decided to play the game on my PC, complete with its Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, rather than on my PS5 Pro, after some pre-release news indicated that console performance might be a little lopsided.

Well, I've been super glad of that; it seems like a higher-framerate performance mode was a really late addition to the plan for Dawnwalker, and most likely will be refined over time to cut back less than it currently does on PS5 Pro in particular. That console is impressively powerful, but if a developer doesn't cater to it specifically, then it's always going to be at a disadvantage compared to a PC.

Dawnwalker sees you step into the shoes of Coen, a young man growing up in a secluded valley in 14th-century Europe, a historical setting that has a major twist. The valley has been taken over by a violent vampire warlord, a Vrakhir, as they're called in this universe.

He's taking taxes from the valley in the form of monthly blood donations from its denizens, but when Coen's village has its turn, things go wrong, and Coen soon wakes up with his family kidnapped and having been turned into a mysterious semi-vampire. He becomes a Vrakhir at night, but spends the days as a human.

This sets up both of Dawnwalker's most unique gameplay systems. First, a ticking clock that sits on your screen at all times, along with a reminder that you have 30 days to rescue your family before they're executed. As you journey around the valley sniffing out allies and ways to grow your power, your actions will often consume the time slots that make up each in-game day.

So, completing quests or side activities drains from a finite pool, encouraging you to prioritise what you're doing and what will make the biggest difference to your story and path.

The other big system is that you have very different powers during the days and nights. In the former, more humans and allies will be accessible for quests, and you'll be able to use hex-based witchcraft powers. At night, meanwhile, you'll gain the ability to teleport short distances, hugely helpful for exploration; however, you'll also have to manage your health more carefully to avoid losing your resistance and draining the blood of whoever you happen to be talking to.

These systems are great fun to work with because they force you to think about your decisions and plans at almost all times. You'll find yourself shuffling around your quests because some can only be progressed at night, for instance, but you'll also need to keep on top of others that will have different outcomes if you wait too long to complete them.

Making me make meaningful choices is something that more games should really be doing, and Dawnwalker is managing to make me feel that peril pretty regularly, which is no mean feat.

It's also looking great while doing it, and I've been playing on maxed-out settings at 1440p with impressive smoothness. Bumping this up to 4K has proved more taxing, and given the strength of my setup, that underlines that this is a bit of a performance hog for more mid-range systems.

It's also an Unreal Engine 5 game, which means you get stutters in the open world basically no matter how good your rig. These are minor inconveniences, though, and I'm just glad not to be playing at 30fps on console.

If you're craving a story-driven RPG with pretty slick combat (albeit combat that doesn't necessarily feel all that dynamic), and a narrative that feels reminiscent of the most memorable material from The Witcher's world, I'd definitely give Dawnwalker a look. If you can do so on a powerful PC, happy days – but don't overlook it on console just because of a few early performance jitters.

PlayStation only updated its official PS5 headset a couple of years ago, but has now announced a couple of new replacements.

Like the currently-available PlayStation Pulse Elite, the new PlayStation Pulse and Pulse Edge Wireless Headsets utilise planar magnetic drivers for better sound performance, but they are larger in this generation, so are capable of increased bass response too.

Also changed is the design. Gone is the thick headband of the last and original gen models, replaced by what looks to be a more comfortable alternative. The earcups look more rounded and larger too.

The cups can also now rotate to allow you to lay each headset flat.

They again connect to your PS5 or PS5 Pro wirelessly via an included PlayStation Link adapter (USB-C in this instance). This enables lossless, ultra low latency streaming. The Link device can also be connected to a PC, Mac or PlayStation Portal, to expand the use of the headset.

Although we don't yet have costing details or exact release information (beyond "holiday season"), the two models will be at two different price points. The entry level option – the Pulse – features four magnets per planar driver (ie. in each ear), has an integrated microphone with AI noise reduction, and a built-in volume control,

The Pulse Edge ups the magnets per driver to eight, includes a hidden/removable boom mic, volume controls, built-in game audio and chat balance control, and active noise cancellation. You also get a carry case with the Edge.

We should find out more about each of the headsets in the coming weeks, so will update when there are further details – including pre-order information.

Sony has announced the new batch of games coming to the PS Plus game catalogue over the next few weeks, and it's a very solid lineup.

PS Plus Premium and Extra members will be able to play WWE 2K26 at no extra cost from Tuesday 15 September, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

As well as the best WWE wrestling game in years, which is exclusive to PS5 and PS5 Pro, subscribers will also be able to download and play Ball x Pit – one of my absolute favourite indie games right now.

A cunning blend of Arkanoid, tower defence, shoot-em-up and town building, the roguelite sees to take on ever increasing waves of monsters using charged, bouncing balls.

It's crazily addictive and simple to pick up and play, so is a must for every collection, I feel. It'll be available in the game catalogue from 22 September in the UK, US and Japan (15 September everywhere else).

Also coming to PS5 is Runescape: Dragonwilds (15 September). It's an open-world co-op survival game set in the Runescape universe and is brand new to PlayStation.

Another particular favourite, Dungeons of Hinterberg, will arrive on 29 September in the UK, US and Japan. The action-RPG is packed with puzzles and dungeon quests, and is something of an unsung hero in my eyes.

And then there's Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound – the 2D action-platformer that we've raved about in the past. That'll also be available on the same day.

Finally, PS Plus Premium and Extra members will also soon gain access to Sniper Elite: Resistance, and Slitterhead. While Date Everything! has recently been added, too.

Premium members with a PS5 or PS4 will also get Mega Man X Command Mission, and Metro Redux from 15 September, as part of the classics catalogue.

There has never been a better time to love gaming and Lego, with the brick building company continuing to partner with the great and good in the field. We've seen a Lego NES, Atari 2600, Sega Mega Drive and Game Boy over the last few years, and now there's something special to add to that list.

The Lego PlayStation is a faithful recreation of Sony's original machine – the console that effectively changed the whole industry. Having reviewed the original on its release in the 90s, I am of the firm belief that it marked the time when gaming grew up.

Games like WipEout, with its hardcore dance soundtrack, saw consoles find their way into clubs for young adults. It widened the audience and gaming has never looked back since.

Its shape and styling is also iconic, and thus the new Lego set is as great to look at as it undoubtedly will be to build.

Hidden under the disc tray and around the sides of the finished build are dioramas and Easter eggs that nod back to the console's glorious games (such as Ape Escape and Gran Turismo).

There are other nices touches too, such as controllers that use similar connectivity shapes to the original DualShocks. And a reassuringly clicky power button.

The set is also reasonably priced in comparison with some of the other retro console builds we've seen. It'll be available from Lego's own website from 4 October 2026 for just £139.99 / $179.99.

Lego Insiders will be able to order it a touch earlier, on 1 October, while it'll be available on the official PlayStation store around that time too.

All you need to do in the meantime is figure out where you'll display it. At 1,911 pieces, it should fit in a compact area. But just you wait until the Lego PlayStation 5 arrives somewhere down the line.

The tide of videogames shows no sign of abating – with September now hoving into view and promising a genuine deluge of new games, many of which are hugely anticipated. Capcom has one of the earliest slots in the month, with Onimusha: Way of the Sword arriving on 4 September, and I've played a whole heap of it on my PS5 Pro over the last 10 days.

It's a return for a franchise that hasn't had much love recently, other than some recent remasters of older titles, and it brings Onimusha kicking and screaming into 2026 with a pretty interesting approach to character action gaming.

Playing as Miyamoto Musashi, a samurai trying to become the greatest swordsman alive, you'll soon run into trouble and find yourself, well, dead. Revived with an Oni gauntlet on your arm, you'll be tasked with hunting down demons across a version of Kyoto that's been infected with miasmic nastiness.

It's a simple setup in some ways, but it's a little bit of a drag that the first couple of hours of Way of the Sword involve a heap of cutscenes for you to watch. The gaps between combat tutorials can feel torturous at times, even though those cutscenes are pretty terrific in production quality.

The facial animation on hand here is some of the most expressive I've ever seen in a major videogame, with Musashi's expressions in particular routinely causing me to chuckle. He's a refreshingly grumpy and curmudgeonly hero, although his real strength is with the sword.

On that front, Way of the Sword is impressively traditional. While it has moved to an over-the-shoulder camera that you can freely manipulate, its adherence to a core system of parries, dodges, light and heavy attacks really works nicely. You get special moves to earn during fights, and a variety of items to find that can help you, but the combat loop is actually quite simple.

It's dead effective, though, thanks to enemies whose attack patterns can often be surprising and deadly – in particular any time you face off against a boss. These tend to come when you find rifts of particularly concentrated evil energy, and the ones I've fought have all been memorable and rewarding.

The game's visual design is also really quite lovely in places – although it does suffer from the fact that the cuts between cutscenes and gameplay often involve obvious lighting downgrades.

On the PS5 Pro, though, Way of the Sword comes with a heap of graphical options to choose from. You can toggle between a 30FPS quality mode or a 60FPS performance one, but also up to a 120Hz option, too, while a separate frame-rate limiter is a rare addition on console.

It includes a 40FPS mode that might be a favourite for some people, and you can also choose to toggle ray-tracing on or off, as an added tweak. I've been playing at 60FPS with ray-tracing on, and have found the game pretty great to look at, albeit some recent Capcom releases (like Resident Evil Requiem) have wowed me more.

I'm keen to get further into Way of the Sword to discover whether its combat system has more surprises to keep things switched up, but from the roughly five hours I've played so far, it's been really fun and old-school. A semi-open hub area that funnels you towards objectives is fun to explore, but I prefer the linear levels even more.

These are where the game feels closest to its older PlayStation 2 roots, but you can still detect this elsewhere. It's there when you, for example, keep attacking in one direction while an enemy moves, and realise that you're not just going to magically magnetise onto them for continued hits.

These touches make Onimusha: Way of the Sword feel like a clever reinvention of the franchise for a modern world in which people love retro gaming. People want games to feel like they're still a continuation of what came before, even if they're actually substantially modernised in most ways, and this first massive release of September ticks that box smartly.

Well, it took a bit of time but here we are – living in a post Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look world. Rockstar waited almost as long as it could to showcase the next GTA game properly, and almost certainly wishes it had gone a little earlier, given the plague of leaks in August.

Now, though, we can all sink in to watch the Extended Look for free on YouTube, after its maddening Netflix exclusivity faded. What a showcase it is, too, fully 27 minutes of cut-together gameplay that makes the game look like possibly the most accomplished console release in ages, at least visually.

Still, for as much as the preview obviously does give us a clear look at the game and its structure, particularly where main missions will be concerned, it still leaves quite a lot vague. Here are three things I think were missing from the showcase, ranging from the technical to the stylistic.

1. Performance details!

Rockstar ends the Extended Look by clarifying that it was captured on a PS5 (not a PS5 Pro), which confirms what everyone suspected – the game is going to look fairly unbelievable.

However, beyond that one fact we don't really know much at all about its approach to performance. In interviews with influencers released just after the showcase, Rockstar apparently confirmed that the game will target 30FPS on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, with no 60FPS mode available at launch.

We still don't know what might differ on the PS5 Pro, though, which is a major variable, and I would have loved to find out more about the wizardry being employed to get such a dense world working.

There's clearly some degree of ray-tracing going on in the lighting engine, for one, but there are also some moments where what I can only assume is upscaling gives some blurriness in busy moments. I'd have loved Rockstar to give us a more precise readout on this all, although such details might still come down the line.

2. Proper introductions to our main characters

Sure, those with a smattering of media literacy who've watched the previous trailers and now the Extended Look can easily build out a picture of Jason and Lucia, but still – why not give us firmer details?

These two characters are clearly going to be the centre of the game, and we'll be able to swap between them with relative freedom outside of scripted moments. Maybe they're blanker slates than I realise, but I'd have been interested to learn more about them this time.

Is their motivation pure capitalistic greed? Do they have a social mission that's simmering under the surface? Is Lucia really going to be this much more lively to watch than the somewhat morose Jason? All these questions and more are lingering after watching the showcase, and I do think Rockstar could have grounded us in their characters a little more, given the length of the showcase.

3. Where's my darn voiceover?

Okay, this might start off sounding daft, but stick with me. Some of my clearest memories of gaming trailers from my younger life have been Rockstar's showcases of its games, using serene and calm voiceovers to explain the game world and the technical advancements being shown.

Check out these trailers for Red Dead Redemption and its sequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, for instance. Both feature lovely voiceovers explaining the times the games are set in, and the things you'll be able to do in each. Sure, they're a little bit more old-fashioned as a result, but by golly, they're informative.

I get why Rockstar didn't take this approach for the Extended Look, from a marketing point of view, since it left the showcase open-ended and gave the impression of limitless activities in-game, but I really missed some explanation. This was Rockstar's chance to control the narrative more carefully and to actually go into detail, but it stuck to the broad brush instead.

I'm now left hoping that subsequent trailers will return to that old style, so we can actually get some more concrete details about what we're looking at.

Dragon's Dogma 2 was one of the great surprise pleasures of 2024, at least for me – a sprawling, mechanically complicated RPG that did things in different ways from the vast majority of the competition. Its commitment to those foibles made it feel really unique and special, so its upcoming expansion is naturally alluring.

Dark Arisen repeats the trick that worked for the first Dragon's Dogma by updating the base game and also adding a large new area at the same time, and I was super interested to get my hands on it at Capcom's UK office a couple of weeks ago.

After over an hour with the game, it immediately convinced me that more Dragon's Dogma 2 is a good thing, with the added bonus that it's coming to Switch 2 in a pretty impressive way.

The new expansion is set in Norgan, which you can basically think of like Skyrim – it's the snowy northern region of the landmass you've been exploring. That means icy terrain, snowstorms and generally frigid climes. These look lovely, especially on PS5 Pro, and give some fun new traversal challenges and obstacles.

To the victor, the spoils

I had around an hour to run around an open starting area, beginning in a small village with some quest-givers, a hub that I'd return to a few times. Dark Arisen introduces a new loot system called Spoils, and it'll be familiar to Diablo or other ARPG fans. As you explore and kill foes, you'll collect generic loot called Spoils, in various rarities.

Only by returning to this base can you pay a vendor to reveal these items of loot before choosing to keep or sell them according to their worth to your build. Even in just an hour's play, I uncovered some really powerful new items this way, and it's clear that it opens up a world of loot grinding that wasn't really in the base game at all.

After pootling around for 45 minutes finding enemy camps and completing some side quests, I realised the time and mainlined my way to the boss arena that would close the demo out.

Along the way, I had to fight a giant, horned giant that proved quite a formidable foe on its own, frankly, but with my memory of the base game flooding back, I was able to chop off its horns and eventually best it with the help of my NPC pawns.

From there, it was a short hop to a dark arena inhabited by a sort of zombified dragon, which I got to fight up to a certain point – once I whittled its health down by a certain amount (chopping off limbs and even its head, only to watch them regenerate), a cutscene ended my fun.

This Fallen Dragon seems to clearly be central to the plot of the expansion, along with the mysterious woman Eir who showed up to help me with it. I'd imagine the encounter I played won't be the only time you get to clash with the beast.

While the reality of more Dragon's Dogma 2 was indeed just as fun as I'd hoped, and the new region was great to explore, perhaps the bigger treat was getting to play the game on Switch 2 after my main demo ended.

This far more limited demo, the one now on the show floor at Gamescom, let me choose between a few boss fights, with a 15-minute timer to limit things. I played the most advanced available, battling against an ice dragon with a pretty sinister voice, and had a great time beating it.

Some 12 minutes later, I left massively impressed by how smooth the 30fps-capped gameplay had felt in a boss fight with a lot of particle effects, weather, powers and stuff flying around the screen. Whether it's truly representative of performance in the open world, I can't say, but I definitely know that the game will be extremely playable on Nintendo's console.

Pending final testing, that looks like another major notch in Capcom's belt, underlining how impressive its Switch 2 strategy has been compared to basically any other multi-platform publisher. Day-and-date launches keep coming, and they keep being barely compromised compared to more powerful consoles' versions.

I don't know if I'll have time to fully replay Dragon's Dogma 2 on the Switch 2, but the fact that people will have the option to, along with its expansion, feels like a pretty great thing. That said, they'll have to wait for its release date on 9 October.

This is a huge week for Grand Theft Auto fans worldwide, with the long-awaited reveal of actual, honest-to-goodness gameplay from GTA 6 finally about to arrive. Or, at least, we're all very much assuming that we'll get a massive chunk of gameplay to digest when Rockstar releases Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, a 30-minute preview of the game.

The trailer, as everyone and their nan now knows, will hit Netflix first on Thursday 27 August, with a six-hour exclusivity window for subscribers to one of the biggest and best streaming services out there.

That makes it the first of its kind – an advertisement for an upcoming game, delivered like a one-off documentary special on a streamer. It's a pretty wild situation, but you're probably wondering about the exact timing of the show, both on Netflix and then subsequently on YouTube. Read on to find out all the key times.

Netflix timings

Here are the timings for when the Extended Look will go live on Netflix (all on Thursday 27 August):

• UK: 8:00 PM BST
• Europe: 9:00 PM CEST
• North America: 12:00 PM PT / 3:00 pm ET

YouTube timings

Next, here are the times when the trailer will then go live on YouTube, for free, six hours after the Netflix premiere:

• UK: 2:00 AM BST, 28 August
• Europe: 3:00 AM CEST, 28 August
• North America: 6:00 PM PDT / 9:00 pm EDT, 27 August

What will the GTA 6 Extended Look show?

Rockstar has stayed extremely vague about what the Extended Look will actually show us from GTA 6, but it's a really safe bet that it'll be an extended showcase of the gameplay offering that the game will bring to the table.

The developer's patience has clearly been stretched by a fortnight of nonstop leaks, during which anyone who really wants to see gameplay from the upcoming mega-release could simply search for it and, well, see it.

Frankly, there's no way those leaks haven't at least slightly dimmed the hype, since millions of people can no longer say that the Extended Look will truly be their first glimpse of actual gameplay. Still, untold millions more won't even know the leaks have happened, so there's no real doubt that this remains one of the biggest trailer events of this generation.

My guess is that we'll get a more detailed breakdown of the story of the game, and then we'll see a campaign mission play out. That'll involve some driving to show off the cars and physics model, as well as some run-and-gun action. Those two are the biggest parts of the game's actual gameplay loop, so we'll surely get proper looks at them.

I'd also hope that we'll get clarity on the game's graphical settings, namely whether it'll have a mode aiming for 60fps or not, and what upgrades the PS5 Pro will bestow on the game for those who have one.

Beyond that, it's anyone's guess what exactly Rockstar will choose to walk us through. With half an hour to fill, though, we should leave the showcase with a much clearer expectation of what the game will be like.

Depending on who you are, Call of Duty has either spent the last few years ruthlessly specialising in exactly the quick-paced twitchy action you love, or has become so rapid and relentlesss as to alienate you a little bit. With the arrival of Battlefield 6, I'm in the latter camp – wall-running and omnimovement made the last couple of COD games feel too challenging for my little soul.

That's meant I've been quietly quite excited for Modern Warfare 4, which sees developer Infinity Ward return to centre stage. I want a return to the smooth but methodical action of Modern Warfare 2019, but a weekend of open beta action with MW4 has confirmed I won't be getting that, quite.

A few matches of multiplayer confirmed that the game is, at least, slower than the frenetic Black Ops games from the last couple of years, and that's a huge step. Once again, footstep audio feels key, and far more limited starting ammo also meant I had to manage my shots more carefully and pick up other people's guns more often.

The movement tech here is a middle ground between older, slower styles and newer crazes. Mantling and jumping over obstacles is super quick, and the same goes for sprinting and sliding; you can also now climb pipes and jump to edges more freely, which actually feels quite cool to control.

Gunplay, meanwhile, does feel great, albeit I only sampled a handful of weapons. Rattling through killstreaks remains compelling, and as the first game to abandon the PS4 and Xbox One generation, MW4 looked pretty excellent in motion on my PS5 Pro.

Most intriguingly, though, this is the first time the open beta for a COD game has included a single-player mission. This might be Activision's way of trying to convince people that the dire campaign of Black Ops 7 was just an aberration, and to be fair, it might achieve just that.

The mission, called Entrenched, is a fairly classic slice of COD, seeing you start with trench-to-trench warfare before moving into a vehicle for some tank action, then back on foot for more close-quarters interior fighting and a final run through climbing sections to escape a burning reactor.

It's a great little demo, and it makes the open beta feel more like just that – an old-school demo disk that gives you the chance to really sample the final game, rather than purely its multiplayer component. A good COD campaign is a real thrill, after all, and we haven't had a properly consistent one in a surprisingly long time.

I think MW4 will still have a hard time pulling me away from Battlefield as it stands, though, and most shooter fans will know what I mean when I say there's only really room for one of them in my life. Since these games are where I play socially with my friends, it's a proper tussle for supremacy.

With my mates largely scarred by BO6 and BO7's outrageously fast pace of play in multiplayer, COD has its work cut out for it in convincing them to come back for another try. This beta is a good start, to be fair, but the fact that I'm most captured by the single-player element is probably a sign for caution, still.

I think something might have clicked quite recently for Sony when it comes to its Inzone gaming brand. When it first launched a few years ago, it was confusing – the devices were clearly intended for PC gaming, but they were designed with the same white aesthetic as the PlayStation 5, muddying the waters in terms of intended audiences.

Now, though, a second generation of products has been making its way to the market, and they're almost all redesigned with more stealthy, lightweight black aesthetics, nailing down their place a little more clearly. The latest I've tried is the H6 Air headset, a more mid-range option compared to the H9 II from late last year. So just how does this headset stack up?

Price and Availability

Sony released the Inzone H6 Air earlier this year, so they're fully available now and come in at £179 / $199 / AU$269 / €199.

That sees them sitting in the upper end of the mid-range market, although "mid-range" is a bit of a misnomer given how good some of the headsets in this bracket can be.

For context, similar money would get you the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7, a wireless model that has no noise-cancelling, but does pack in more features than the Inzone H6 Air.

Design and Features

The H6 Air has a really familiar design from the H9 II, but with one very obvious difference: where that earlier headset had smooth, matte plastic on the outside of its earcups, the H6 Air is covered in tiny perforations that actually make its cups semi-transparent.

That's because it's an open-back headset that deliberately avoids isolation to give you a really wide soundstage. And, to be fair, I really like how the headset looks as a result. It has the same suspended headband system as the older model, but the fact that you can see its drivers from the outside gives it a really nice industrial quality.

The other incredibly obvious feature of its design comes the moment you pick it up out of the box. This headset is phenomenally light, as the "Air" in its name suggests. It comes in at just 199g, which means it's one of the lightest options anywhere on the market.

That weight (or lack thereof), combined with the comfortable headband system, makes it a dream to wear – it's in the category of headsets that you might forget you have on if you're immersed enough in what you're playing.

Of course, as I'll get to, some of that weight has been saved in ways that do have downsides, but from a comfort point of view, the H6 Air is a home run.

Rounding out the design, the headset comes with a detachable microphone arm, and its controls are relatively limited. You get a 3.5mm jack for that connection, a volume slider, and a bobbly mute button that pops out when you're muted, so you can tell just from feeling it with your fingers.

The absence of many buttons and settings hints at the absence of ornamentation where features are concerned. This is a wired headset, so there's no Bluetooth or any wireless standard at all here, and that also means that its software configurability is somewhat limited.

You can use the Inzone Hub to customise the headset's EQ, but if you want those changes to be saved, then you have to listen to the headset through the included USB-C audio dongle – the headset itself has no storage for profiles or anything. That's a drag, although it arguably doesn't actually change the convenience level, given it's already wired.

Sound Performance

So, if the H6 Air is deliberately stripped back where the design and features sides of things come into play, it arguably has its work cut out to justify those decisions from a sound perspective.

After all, by skipping wireless play, it makes itself less convenient, and it also doesn't have any noise-cancelling to speak of (other than in its microphone). The open-back system here is really impressive, though – it sounds phenomenal, provided you don't have any background noise fouling things up.

I used the headset for a good few hours of Battlefield 6 and found it nice and precise when it came to enemy footsteps and vehicle locations. It also worked well in more immersive games like The Adventures of Elliot on my Nintendo Switch 2, where the orchestral soundtrack sounded lush and deep.

That said, I can't pretend that I didn't miss some more isolation – when my robot vacuum was running, or the neighbour's washing machine was in its final spin, the simple fact was that these sounds made it past the earcups and disrupted my audio experience.

You have to know going into the H6 Air that you're fine with that, I'd say, or the lack of isolation could end up being more frustrating than rewarding.

Another interesting note on the microphone side of things. My friends are used to me popping up with new microphones pretty regularly as I test headsets, but this was one of those occasions where I caught pelters for my mic. It took a lot of adjustment, both in software on my PS5 and in terms of physical placement, before the microphone would stop picking up my breathing sounds and relay them to my chat.

That's a very rare problem in my reviewing experience, and the slightly over-tuned microphone therefore doesn't get a top grade from me, despite its actual recording quality being very solid.

That's another asterisk in my experience with the H6 Air, though, and for the price attached, I think Sony might have liked to get it more flawless to really compete with wireless models.

Verdict

The Inzone H6 Air is a curious headset, not least because I'm not sure who exactly will be clamouring for it. Inzone's other headsets like to claim that they're great for pro gamers, for instance, but there's no way they'd use this and be bombarded by outside crowd noise at events, surely?

For normal gamers like me, the same doubt lingers. Is your gaming environment reliably quiet enough to make noise-cancelling an unnecessary extra, and do you care about wireless play? In both cases, I know that I'd rather have those features than not.

That said, the Inzone H6 Air sounds excellent in the right setting. If you're a wired aficionado, then have at it, as you'll love the lightweight built. But other gamers might be better served by more appropriate alternatives.

Also consider

I've compared the H6 Air a couple of times to the pricier and only slightly older Inzone H9 II, and I think the pricier headset is well worth a look if your budget is flexible. It solves all my issues with the H6 Air and is still impressively light, making it also very comfortable.

If you do want to stick to the same rough price point, though, you'll probably save money by opting for the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 Gen 2, which can often be had for a fair discount and is brilliant. It's light and sounds great, but it has way more features and works a treat wirelessly.

Sony has finally furnished us with more details on its PlayStation-branded wireless speakers, as revealed last September. That includes pre-order and full release dates, plus pricing.

The Pulse Elevate speakers were unveiled during a State of Play video feed in 2025, but with the understanding that they would release in 2026. We didn't expect it to take so long, though.

Coming in two colour options, black and white, the speakers will be available to pre-order from 1 September 2026 in the UK, US and several Central European countries. They'll be available on the PlayStation store online.

Pricing stands at £199.99 / $219.99 / €219.99 a pair and they come with a wireless dongle to attach to a PS5 for ultra-low latency. They will also come with Bluetooth support for connection to a smartphone, PC or Mac.

Why are the speakers called "Pulse Elevate"

The clue to one of the speakers' main features lies in their name. Each speaker is designed to sit straight on a desktop or tilt backwards to "elevate" the audio to a listening position.

This allows them to mimic height channels for a wider soundscape.

They can also be connected to power via a cable or, thanks to housing rechargeable batteries, can be moved around a desk or even room to room. That's much like a Sonos Move 2 speaker, so you aren't restricted to using each Pulse Elevate with gaming.

However, when you do, you can also make use of their built-in microphone for multiplayer online play. That way you won't need a separate headset with a boom mic.

Each speaker comes with a woofer built-in too, so they should work fine without a separate subwoofer.

We hope to test the Pulse Elvate speakers here on T3 soon, to let you know what we think.

Lego and retro gaming have proved a match made in heaven over the years. The brick building brand has released sets based on Nintendo consoles, the Atari 2600 (VCS), and even the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis. And now it seems another classic machine is on its way.

A Lego PlayStation has leaked. We don't yet know the exact specifications of the build, nor do we have an image, but a post on the Legoleak Reddit does reveal some interesting details – not least a price, release date and the free add-on that'll be available from Lego.com.

Posted by BrickTap (via VGC), the Lego PlayStation (72306) will allegedly come with 1,911 pieces in the box. It is likely to include a build of the console itself and, if previous sets are any marker, an original DualShock controller.

It'll cost around $160, it is claimed, and will be available to order from 1 October 2026.

The post also reveals that, excitingly, an Astrobot gift will be available to redeem when purchasing the Lego Playstation from the brand's official site.

It often includes GWP (gift with purchase) releases that are exclusive to Lego itself, and they can become very collectable soon after. It's therefore worth keeping an eye out for an official announcement and pre-order details. We'll keep you informed with anything further we hear too.

As for the main set, I'd personally be surprised if it doesn't have an Easter Egg or two in the construction – such as a famous PlayStation scene that's revealed when you lift the disc cover, for example.

This has been a trademark of some of the other sets. The Nintendo NES came with a CRT TV featuring an animated Mario, while the Lego Atari 2600 sports an 80s gaming room hidden in the front.

This is also not the only retro gaming set coming this year. A Lego Donkey Kong build was launched soon after it too had leaked. That's currently on back order at Lego.

There are some things in life that you just have to have, no matter how impractical they may be. This sofa designed to look like a PlayStation controller is exactly that - and I have to have one.

This design comes from Muddycap (shared by Yanko Design) and fits nicely into Muddycap's other chair design: it's impractical, but lust worthy. The same designer has a chair that's shaped like a pigeon as well as a set of keys, which looks about as comfortable as the Iron Throne.

Based around the classic DualShock PlayStation controller, there's space for two gamers in the centre, leaving the rest of this sofa to the iconic design.

Sadly it's just a 3D model, which makes it even more frustrating as I won't be able to buy one, but you can see how - thanks to the D-pad on one side and the buttons on the other - that this sofa could expand its skills beyond just looking great.

With so much space taken up by the design, it's begging for a pull-out fridge or snack drawer to the sides, or maybe just a charging dock for controllers at each end.

If there's one criticism of this as an actual gaming chair, I'm not sure it would be slouchy enough for me. I'm either almost horizontal as I become the sofa during long sessions, or I'm standing in the middle of the room when things get more fraught.

This is a far cry from the best gaming chairs, which give you full adjustability, lumbar support and arm rests, so this sofa is less of a Call of Duty chair and more of a Mario Kart chair, you know, where precision might be less important.

While I'm going through a crisis trying to figure out how I can commission a furniture builder to make me this sofa, PlayStation is enjoying its own crisis after announcing that PlayStation will stop physical disc releases from 2028.

That's going to put a nail in the used game market and while PlayStation would probably rather sell you the game at a higher price, for those seeking out games they missed well after release, getting it second hand has always been a way to snap up a bargain.

While PlayStation and its gaming community wrangles with that hot potato, I'm going to measure up my lounge and see exactly where I might fit a PlayStation controller sofa.

Xbox is currently undergoing a reset which has resulted in a vast amount of jobs being lost across the business. It is also dramatically changing strategy – nigh-on reversing a decade of decisions to refocus the company and brand. And it seems that some of the endeavours are working.

It has been revealed that, in the US at least, sales of the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles have "more than doubled" year-on-year.

In comparison, hardware sales for PlayStation and Nintendo have dipped – with the latter falling by 79%.

To be fair, that's understandable. The Nintendo Switch 2 launched in June 2025 so the company reported a massive spike in sales as pre-orders were shipped and launch stock sold out quickly. The sales for June 2026 were always likely to be much lower.

More interestingly, perhaps, is that PS5 sales dipped by 19% YOY. But then, Sony did recently raise its console prices significantly. And the Xbox Series X/S equivalent price hike is yet to come into affect.

It'll occur in just over a week, on 1 August, so consumers could be snapping up the consoles before that happens.

The sales figures are also relative. Mat Piscatella of data firm Circana revealed on Bluesky that while Xbox performed better than many expected last month, it still sold fewer consoles that its rivals. The Nintendo Switch 2 continued to be the best-selling option, in both units and dollars earned, with the PS5 in second.

Uncertainty in the games business

Whatever the trends, the games market is still looking uncertain at present. When it comes to the next generation, at least.

Xbox has admitted that its Project Helix plans might have to change in the light of the ongoing components crisis. Its hope to launch a "premium" PC/console hybrid might have to be scaled back to remain affordable.

Meanwhile, Sony is said to have delayed the PS6 for similar reasons, and we all know what happened with the Steam Machine. While it seems to have found a market, it is undeniably overpriced for what you get.

And so it seems we'll see this current console generation continue for the foreseeable, which is good news for those who already own a PS5, Nintendo Switch or Xbox Series X/S. At least the games are still coming thick and fast.

Sony has announced the latest lineup of games coming to the PS Plus game catalogue and, in a break from the norm, they will be staggered over the next couple of weeks in the UK, US and Japan.

That's a release strategy more akin to Xbox Game Pass than PS Plus in the past, but we're sure PS5 fans won't be whinging as the excellent Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will be leading the way.

It'll be available for PS Plus Extra and Premium members from 21 July in all regions, and is one of the best first-person action adventure games I've played in many a year. It's also arguably one of the best movie tie-ins ever made.

The other games being added might be available a little sooner or later, with the dates jumping around a bit depending on where you live.

Rise of the Ronin, for example, is available for PS5 in the UK, US and Japan now, but in other regions from 21 July.

Firefighting Simulator: Ignite, also PS5-only, will be available everywhere from 21 July, while Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind will be added for PS5 and PS4 from 28 July in UK, US and Japan, 21 July everywhere else.

That's the same day another of my favourite first-person games arrives, too. Dying Light (the PS4 version) will be joined by Citizen Sleep 2: Starward Vector (PS5), as well as Snow Bros. Wonderland.

Things are a bit more regular when it comes to the new (old) games being added to the classic catalogue for PS Premium members. Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and Indigo Prophecy (AKA Fahrenheit in the UK) will be available globally on 21 July.

Sony has announced the games coming to all PlayStation Plus members next Tuesday, and they are lead by a bit of a surprise inclusion.

Xbox recently made a big decision on Call of Duty when it comes to Game Pass Ultimate, but PS5 and even PS4 owners will be getting one of the best entries in the series at no extra cost.

In preparation for this year's Modern Warfare 4, PS Plus subscribers will get the cross-gen bundle of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.

Comprising a four to five hour single-player campaign, multiplayer and a Zombies mode, the game sees Captain Price return to track and take on Vladimir Makarov. It's also notable for introducing open world areas to its campaign missions, and giving you more freedom on routes and gameplay styles.

What's interesting is that Xbox – owner of Activision Blizzard – recently announced the decision to stop adding Call of Duty games to its Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service, in order to cut the monthly price.

Admittedly, that comes into effect with COD: Modern Warfare 4 and beyond, but it's a strange look putting another big release on the rival PS Plus platform soon after – even if it's already available on Game Pass.

I'm sure PlayStation fans won't care though.

It'll be available for PS4, PS5 and PS5 Pro from Tuesday 7 July, as will For the King II and CrossCode – two additional PS Plus games for the month. All members can redeem them – Essential, Extra and Premium.

They'll be available to grab until Monday 3 August.

PlayStation Plus pricing and membership tiers

There are three tiers of PS Plus membership. You will need to subscribe to one of them if you want to play multiplayer games online. However, each also offers additional benefits.

PS Plus Essential is the cheapest. Priced at £6.99 / €8.99 / $9.99 / AU$11.95 per month it gives you online play, plus three or four free games at the start of each month.

PS Plus Extra sits in the middle. It costs £10.99 / €13.99 / $14.99 / AU$18.95 per month, and adds access to a game catalogue of more than 300 full games to download.

PS Plus Premium is the most expensive tier and has all of the above and more. It is priced at £13.49 / €16.99 / $17.99 per month, and includes game demos, and an additional catalogue of classic games. There's cloud streaming too, for many games. That works across PS5 and the PS Portal handheld.

Note: in some regions – including Australia – PS Plus Premium is replaced with PS Plus Deluxe for AU$21.95 per month. This is the same as Premium, but without the cloud streaming.

I'll be interested to see if the news that Sony won't make disc-based physical releases for its consoles starting in January 2026 makes a proper ripple in the home cinema world, but it really should. The more I've thought about this announcement from PlayStation, the more despair I feel, and I don't think it'll just be games that are affected in the long run.

I've written a lot in the past year about how much I've enjoyed getting into physical media, starting up a modest but decent collection of movies both in standard Blu-ray and 4K formats. While I now use the brilliant Panasonic DP-UB820 and love it, for a long while I relied entirely on my PlayStation 5 to play 4K discs.

To be more precise, I used my PS5 before I upgraded to the PS5 Pro, at which point I had to fork out more money for the optional extra disc drive, since the PS5 Pro is digital-only. That already made it clear that using a disc on a PlayStation wouldn't be accessible forever, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon.

The key point I'm trying to make here is that we know the market for 4K Blu-ray players is really small – it's been that way for years, and the number of brands making players has shrunk over time.

Now, given that we can be extremely confident the PlayStation 6 won't have a disc drive (because why on earth would it?), it's highly likely that the one remaining mainstream way of being able to play 4K discs (the console under your TV) will also disappear.

Someone who didn't necessarily have a big collection of discs, but had some old favourites and could be tempted by a big new release on 4K, will soon quite probably have no hardware to actually watch a disc – unless they keep hold of their PS5 or Xbox Series X.

Given that the PS6 is likely to cost a genuine bomb, though, this might mean missing out on a decent trade-in fee for the older console, a luxury that only some will be able to afford.

It all means that an already niche market for physical cinema and TV releases might well shrink even further, and that's a terrible thing in my eyes. I've had some of the best home viewing experiences of my life in recent months thanks to proper physical releases from outlets like The Criterion Collection, replete with extras and featurettes to enrich a viewing.

In a world with fewer actual disc players, the idea that we'll still see the same number of disc releases feels pretty optimistic to me, and while we've seen revivals for formats like vinyl and cassettes in the music world, there aren't the same green shoots yet in movies.

Only this week, PlayStation users found a huge list of movies being deleted from their libraries after supposedly having been purchased, so it's not like the digital question is only for gamers. So, while it might seem unfair to say that PlayStation isn't just killing physical games with this decision, but also killing physical movies, there's certainly an argument to be made there.

Put it this way – I'd buy a Panasonic player sooner rather than later. They might get discontinued at some point, and then you'll be up the creek with just a PS6 and no disc drive to help.

Well, what a time it is to announce this one. Hot on the heels of news that GTA 6 won't have a disc in its "physical version", we're now learning that all PlayStation consoles will stop getting physical game disc releases from January 2028 onwards.

PlayStation announced the move in a surprisingly short blog post, with little deeper explanation of its thinking beyond touching on market trends (which are hard to ignore). It's blunt: "Physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028".

In its own continuing words, "This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs."

Closing the gap

There's no getting away from the fact that around 85% of games sold right now are digital, with physical media ever-shrinking, but this is still an absolutely enormous step, and one that will have major effects on the whole gaming industry.

After all, you'd put solid money on a PlayStation 6 coming out sometime around 2028 based on the current trajectory, and some observers would say this basically confirms that it will be digital-only. Unlike the PlayStation 5 Pro, it would also seem likely that it won't have an optional disc drive, since that drive would only be for older PS5 games anyway.

This will mean that, unless there are major changes to how purchasing works on PlayStation consoles at some point, the PlayStation Store will be the only way to get games directly on Sony's consoles, with the physical market becoming entirely code-in-a-box, and no likelihood of used games.

Digital ownership

Given that PlayStation is already fighting a multi-billion-pound lawsuit here in the UK around the prices on the PlayStation Store, it's hard to avoid the suspicion that this is a fairly dire change from the point of view of most consumers. After all, even if you rarely bought used discs, you always had the option to, and that option will now disappear.

On top of that, we're not even a week on from Sony catching major flak for deleting purchased movies from people's PlayStation accounts, underlining just how tenuous the concept of "ownership" is when you don't have a disc in hand.

It's also worth remembering that it's harder to actually capture the scale of the used market from retailers like CEX and marketplaces like eBay – again, there are plenty of buyers who will suffer from being restricted to digital purchases only.

Given the discontent generated by the lack of a disc in GTA 6's box, expect a fairly significant wave of backlash to be generated in the coming days. There's almost certainly nothing that anyone can do to change Sony's mind on this, but that won't stop people from making their unhappiness known, and loudly.

Sony has informed many customers that 100s of digital movies they've purchased will soon be deleted from their libraries.

PlayStation owners will lose access to over 500 movies from Studio Canal, after the expiration of content licensing agreements between the studio and Sony. There's a list of all the films that will be removed on the PlayStation website, but it includes the likes of the original Rambo trilogy, the Paddington movies, and The Evil Dead.

The cull list also includes many TV series, such as multiple seasons of Gomorra and The Young Pope.

They will be removed from users' libraries on 1 September 2026 (via VGC), and there doesn't seem to be a backup system or library swap service (to move your purchase rights to another platform).

Time to collect 4K Blu-rays?

Although this is just one storefront and one studio, the example it sets is clear. When you purchase a movie on a streaming platform you more often than not don't own it. You are simply purchasing the right to play it as often as you like, as long as it remains on that service.

But if, as in this case, the rights expire, you are left with nothing.

This is an argument Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray and even DVD collectors have been making for years. While streaming is more convenient, the only way to ensure you own a copy of a movie is to have a physical version (and the player to spin it on).

Picture and sound performance is an obvious benefit, with higher bitrates afforded by 4K Blu-ray discs, but even they pale into insignificance to a movie being deleted from your collection by a third-party.

It's why I retain my physical disc collection personally, even though it takes up a considerable amount of space. At least I can watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 4K whenever I fancy, rather than find it has simply disappeared when I next get the urge.

The biggest game of the century so far is nearly here – GTA 6 is open to pre-order now, ahead of its release on PS5 and Xbox on 19 November. Still, you might have some questions about it, not least because every screenshot and trailer of the game released so far appears to be jaw-droppingly high-fidelity.

If you're a PS5 owner wondering about the game's compatibility, or if you don't currently own a console but plan to buy one to play what is a genuinely titanic gaming release, you're in the right place – here are some key answers about what hardware the game will run on, and how.

Will GTA 6 require a PS5 Pro?

Here's the big headline question – given how good it looks, will you need a PS5 Pro to run GTA 6? No.

Rockstar has long since confirmed that the game will release for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles, meaning that it will be available to play on base hardware from the launch of this generation. That means that if you have a PS5 right now, you're absolutely fine to play the game when it launches.

It also means that if you don't have a console, you can choose between a PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S as to where you end up playing it. The game isn't releasing on PC at first, although that will hopefully come later, and it also hasn't been announced for the Nintendo Switch 2.

Will GTA 6 be PS5 Pro enhanced?

This is a more difficult question to answer. According to the PlayStation Store listing for GTA 6, the game will indeed be enhanced for the PS5 Pro. However, Rockstar and PlayStation have said absolutely nothing about what this actually means.

Sometimes game developers tell us before a game releases what the differences will be between playing on PS5 and PS5 Pro, whether it's higher resolutions, framerates or better ray-tracing.

In this case, we don't know anything about what'll improve; that said, we have months to go before it comes out, so there's no reason to believe that we won't get these details eventually.

Frankly, given the extra power offered by the PS5 Pro compared to every other console on the market right now, it's a given that the game will run better, but we'll have to wait for further details to know in what ways.

Will GTA 6 be better on PS5?

Here's another more contentious question. In theory, the versions of GTA 6 coming to PS5 and Xbox should be the same in terms of content, PlayStation and Rockstar have a marketing partnership pushing people towards the PS5.

A recent blog post confirms that there will be various PS5-specific enhancements, too, including using the DualSense's haptic triggers, its built-in speaker, and the console's 3D sound engine for more immersion.

In practice, none of those will be all that game-changing (and I always turn the DualSense's speakers off in-game as I hate how they sound), but these little touches do mean that the game will arguably have slightly more to offer on PS5 compared to Xbox, if you're keeping track of all the minutiae.

Where to pre-order GTA 6 on PS5

If you're a dedicated PlayStation gamer and you want a copy of GTA 6 locked in for launch day, you'll find some links above for pre-orders. It's worth knowing and reiterating that the "physical copies" being sold in stores won't actually have discs, though.

They're going to be download codes in boxes, which is a frankly grim step that nonetheless will mean that Rockstar is completely safe from pre-release leaks. The firm indications are that a disc version will follow eventually, but it's fairly rotten to know that this won't be available at launch.

When you've got a PS5 Pro to call on at any time, but also a Nintendo Switch 2 and a gaming PC that just so happens to have a 5070 Ti inside it, knowing what platform to choose for a game isn't always that straightforward. A lot of the time, I'll base my decision on what hardware I think will be most interesting to evaluate, and in the case of Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, I found myself drawn to the PS5 Pro for reasons I can't fully explain.

I've been playing the Lego games since the very earliest incarnations – the mid-2000s were a great time to be a kid with an Xbox 360, and I played some of the Lego Star Wars games to death. I've given them a bit more space recently, being a full-on adult and all, but the buzz around Legacy of the Dark Knight made me think I should check it out.

I wasn't wrong – this screams out that it's a great place to get back into the franchise if you haven't played one in a few years, not least because it's basically a hybrid between a Lego game and a sequel to the superb Arkham series that has been so badly missed in recent years.

I've played half a dozen hours of Legacy of the Dark Knight and enjoyed every minute, crunching through the prequel scenes that establish Bruce Wayne as Batman, and fairly quickly acquiring the core gadgets to make moving around this brick-built version of Gotham City super fun.

What's been most interesting in that time has been how the game approaches the PS5 Pro's beefier hardware. Principally, unless it has something going on behind the scenes, there's actually no Pro setting here in the menus, meaning you get the same choice between "performance" and "fidelity" modes as those on the normal PS5.

The performance mode targets 60fps, while fidelity aims for 30fps, and the visual difference is actually quite obvious. Fidelity is a good chunk sharper, but also has more accurate and vivid reflections and lighting, while the performance setting obviously strips things back a bit.

Normally, I gravitate straight to performance options for smoothness, but I've actually been playing the game on fidelity mode to get the most of it visually, because this is a surprisingly lush-looking game at times. Its nighttime cityscapes can be really pretty, and the detail in its Lego constructions is really fun, especially when they're at a sharper resolution.

That said, there's no getting around the fact that I'm surprised there's no "Pro" mode here, or at least that the in-menu information could be clearer about whether the PS5 Pro has any boosts to offer. The game looks great, but it's still quite surprising to find a Lego game limited to 30fps if you want the best visual performance, especially when you think about the modes on offer in something like Assassin's Creed Shadows, for instance.

I'm hopeful that we'll get a patch down the line to improve things, even if it is just a matter of clearer communication, but I'll still be having fun with Legacy of the Dark Knight regardless. I didn't expect it to pull me away from 007 First Light on my PC, but it's done a good job of offering a low-stakes palate cleanser, and there's a reason it's been met with the reviews and word-of-mouth that it has.

I've been hugely impressed by the PS5 Pro since the PSSR 2.0 patch arrived in February – not least thanks to its implementation in games like Cyberpunk 2077, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Crimson Desert and Pragmata.

These truly feel next-gen with higher frame rates, technologies like ray-tracing, and 4K resolutions all running at the same time. PC gamers will just shrug and say they've had that pleasure for years, but Sony's console is catching up.

The results have been so positive that the imminent need for a PS6 or Xbox Project Helix has been diminished. Even with its price rocketing in recent times, the PS5 Pro is holding the fort admirably.

That's evidenced once more with its handling of Saros, Sony and Housemarque's latest PlayStation exclusive. As a fan of Returnal, I've been looking forward to this latest bullet ballet roguelite for some time, but little did I expect its visuals to be my favourite bit.

Developer Housemarque truly takes the "roguelite" tag to heart – coming back time and again with familiar game concepts, but powered up in some way. And that is the case with Saros.

Built with love

Built using Unreal Engine 5, but with the studio's proprietary particle systems (Graphite VFX) layered on top, the game has a unique look in combat. Like Returnal, enemies bombard you with glowing, neon-like fire patterns, but there's a greater emphasis on voxel explosions and disintegrations, to the extent where the best battles result in spectacular light shows.

The planet on which you find yourself trapped (this time with a few colleagues in tow) – Carcosa – is more muted and devoid of much colour, which makes the bright effects all the more impressive. And sometimes it's easy to just stop and admire the Geiger-esque landscape as it's lit up in multiple hues, just before you get blasted into oblivion again.

Making life easier

Thankfully, Saros is even more forgiving than Returnal in that there is a traditional skill tree and weapon upgrade system – including while on a run. That makes it technically easier to play – although mastering it is another matter.

It is also more interesting in story terms, with the stunning graphics also elevating character models. That includes your lead, Arjun Devraj, who is superbly portrayed by English actor Rahul Kohli (of The Fall of the House of Usher and We Were Liars fame).

The cutscenes provide a welcome respite from the action too, while also helping to unravel the mystery of why the colonists first sent to Carcosa have disappeared. This story feels more involving than we've had from other Housemarque games and it helps drive you on, even when the going is getting much tougher.

Just the one graphics option – but oh, what an option

Surprisingly for a modern game, Saros only comes with one graphics option on PS5 Pro (and PS5). The game plays in 4K using PSSR 2.0 and at an almost consistently locked 60 frames-per-second.

You can't tweak the settings, that's your lot. However, what you get is so good and stable, why would you?

The Pro version is also so much sharper and better defined than on a standard PS5. It is a great advert for upgrading, for sure. And thankfully, as many retailers have opted not to adopt Sony's own hikes, you can still do so at roughly the original launch price – even less in some cases.

It's certainly worth it, with Saros now sitting loud and proud on the rapidly expanding list of enhanced games that take advantage of the latest tech. Long may it continue to grow. At least until PS6 arrives, anyway.

PS Plus members got a big win earlier in May with the addition of EA Sports FC 26 as part of the monthly lineup, but arguably the best is yet to come. One of the best games of all time is returning to the service for Extra and Premium subscribers.

What's more, you'll also be getting the best Star Wars games for PS5 too.

Red Dead Redemption 2 will return to the PS Plus game catalogue on Tuesday 19 May. In my opinion it's the best game ever made, not just one of them, but I appreciate that's subjective.

It's actually been part of the catalogue before, but was removed at the tail end of 2024 – its return is therefore a welcome reward for our patience.

If you've not played it before, it is a prequel to Red Dead Redemption, telling the story of the rise and fall of the Van der Linde gang, mainly through the eyes of main antagonist Arthur Morgan.

It's beautifully scripted, vast in scope and scale, and will undoubtedly take you on an emotional roller coaster.

There have been numerous rumours about a PS5 remaster, but this PS4 version also gets a little glow-up when running on a PS5 Pro. It's still locked to 30fps, but there's more fidelity in the graphics if you switch on "Enhanced Image Quality for PS4 Games" in the consoles' settings.

Also being added to the PS Plus game catalogue next week is Star Wars Outlaws – Ubisoft's open world adventure set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

You play as a young Han Solo-like scoundrel, Kay Vess, who must assemble a team of crack thieves to take on a heist against a criminal organisation. This takes you to different planets and open world landscapes, each of which packed with side missions and interesting characters.

In many ways, Star Wars Outlaws is a sci-fi Assassin's Creed, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Finally, PS Plus Extra and Premium members can also enjoy Bramble: The Mountain King (PS5 / PS4), The Thaumaturge (PS5), Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn (PS5), Broken Sword – Shadows of the Templar: Reforged (PS5 / PS4), and Enotria: The Last Song (PS5) from next Tuesday.

Premium subscribers will be getting Time Crisis on PS4 and PS4, too – as part of the classics collection.

PS Plus tiers and pricing details

PlayStation Plus is mandatory if you want to play the vast amount of online games on your console. However, it also provides you with a number of free games each month, depending on your tier.

Here are the options:

• PS Plus Essential is £6.99 / €8.99 / $9.99 / AU$11.95 per month. It includes online play and three or four free games each month (as above).
• PS Plus Extra is £10.99 / €13.99 / $14.99 / AU$18.95 per month. You get the same benefits of the Essential plan, but also access to a game catalogue of more than 300 games to download and play.
• PS Plus Premium is £13.49 / €16.99 / $17.99 per month. You get everything in the Extra and Essential plans, plus game demos, and an additional catalogue of classic games. There's cloud gaming too, on PS5 and PS Portal.
• In some regions, including Australia, PS Plus Premium is replaced with PS Plus Deluxe for AU$21.95 per month. This doesn't include cloud gaming.

It is largely believed that, in the grander console wars, Sony won this generation. The PS5 sold considerably more units than Xbox Series X and Series S combined. And its mid-range refresh – the PS5 Pro – is undoubtedly the most-powerful games console we've had to date.

However, it could also be that Sony has looked longingly at something Xbox has been doing better for a fair while – something that could be important for the future of PlayStation and, in the short term, the PS6.

It is claimed that when a next-generation PlayStation arrives, it will be accompanied by a next-gen cloud gaming service.

While PS Plus Premium members have access to games via Sony's own cloud gaming platform, on both PS5 and the PlayStation Portal, the technology and scope is seen as inferior to Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Sony reportedly has plans to address that.

According to MP1st, upgrades could be coming to make the service more competitive – to improve its infrastructure and, potentially, lower latency. It is claimed that it will enhance the technology at server level, with once change touted being the adoption of PCIe Gen5 NVMe storage that's considerably faster than what's currently employed.

By reducing load and access times, this could have an impact on play for the consumer. At the very least, it should dramatically reduce the queuing time it takes for a game to start up.

PCIe Gen5 NVMe storage almost doubles the speed of access over Gen4. It's also suggested that this will be found in the PS6 console too – with the built-in SSD potentially capable of up to 14,900 MB/s read speeds.

Developers could have a field day with their games if they could live load assets at those speeds.

This is just a rumour for now, of course, but it wouldn't be a far stretch to believe that Sony would want to improve its cloud gaming service. After all, it's become the heart of the PlayStation Portal and with regularly leaked plans to bring a PS6 handheld to market, it could be important to that device too.

UK PlayStation owners will have until the start of June 2026 to comply with a mandatory requirement, or face being unable to use certain features on their consoles.

Sony has started to inform PS4, PS5 and PS5 Pro players that age verification is needed to allow specific functionality – such as chats, messaging and live streaming. It is necessary for the brand to comply with the UK's Online Safety Act, and all users are affected, no matter their age.

Players will have to use Yoti's verification tools to confirm that they are the right age to use social features online. It's simple to perform, using either a mobile number, face scan (through your phone or using a webcam) or an approved ID. You can simply scan the QR code on a PlayStation support page and follow the instructions.

Once your age is verified, your PlayStation account will be permanently approved.

Other gaming firms will need to do the same soon, to operate certain services in the UK. Xbox started its age verification process late last year, which is also mandatory to access social features on its consoles.

It's likely others will follow suit in the coming weeks.

Why do you need to verify your age on PlayStation and Xbox?

The UK's Online Safety Act was passed into law in 2023, although companies were given time to enforce its rules and guidelines. This includes age verification to allow access to online content that could be deemed harmful to children.

In terms of the video games industry, that specifically applies to the social aspects of online play – as it is hard for games publishers and console manufacturers to ensure underage players don't hear or read inappropriate language.

The rules do not apply to other countries, although some have their own guidelines and laws.

There have been plenty of rumours on Sony's return to handheld gaming before, but the latest is of particular interest to those looking for the ultimate retro device. That's because it is tipped to be able to emulate systems even the latest PC handhelds cannot.

As an owner of multiple handhelds, including Android, Linux and the SteamOS-powered Lenovo Legion Go S, I can just about play games from every era of console. However, there are two in particular that remain out of reach. And that's where the PS6 Portable could come in.

According to YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead (via NotebookCheck), the PS6 Portable will be able to play PS5 and PS4 games natively.

There is an emulator for the latter available for PC, Linux and Mac (ShadPS4) but it's very early in development and it'll only run a handful of PlayStation 4 games. And even then with caveats.

A handheld system that will run PS4, PS5 and PS6 games could be the holy grail for retro gamers, therefore, especially with some PS4 titles never getting decent remasters or PC releases.

Add the ability to play older classic PlayStation 1, 2 and 3 games through PS Plus Premium – likely through streaming – and you're onto a winner.

Of course, to be the ultimate retro gaming handheld you'd really need it to also play other classic systems, but I'm a believer in having multiple devices for different use cases. For example, I play 4:3 systems on my Ayaneo Pocket Air Mini, Game Boy and Game Boy Color on my TrimUI Brick Hammer, and 16:9 games on my Legion Go S or Odin 2 Portal.

Adding a PlayStation powerhouse that can play a vast library of otherwise difficult to emulate games seems a shoo-in to me.

There is one thing to note though, according to Moore's Law is Dead – who claims to have gleaned his information from a leaked Sony internal document – you will have to own the digital versions of games you play on the handheld. There is currently no way to assign disc copies to your account.

So all those physical games you've been collecting will be exempt, as things stand.

That said, the main PS6 console could be different – let's just hope it includes a disc drive, unlike the PS5 Pro.

Yes, these are troubling times for gaming, with soaring hardware prices and reported delays for next-generation consoles, but amongst all that, the PS5 Pro is finally coming into its own – especially if you have PS Plus Extra or Premium membership.

That's because, as well as being able to download the newly-upgraded Cyberpunk 2077 at no extra cost, another enhanced game is coming for subscribers. And it too is a sci-fi RPG masterpiece.

Horizon Zero Dawn was already one of the greatest and best-looking games on PlayStation consoles on its original release for PS4, but last year's remastered version took things to a whole new level.

The PS5 Pro version in particular looks absolutely stunning, with the console's newly updated PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) technology giving it a crisp, detailed facelift and buttery smooth 60fps gameplay.

However, as good as Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is, it's actually another game coming to PS Plus Extra and Premium subscribers that I recommend the most.

Monster Train is a roguelite deck-builder that I have been addicted to across multiple platforms (no pun intended). It is a must-have indie hit, in my opinion, and a superb addition to the PS Plus game catalogue.

In it, you have control over a band of demons and monsters and must stop Heaven's soldiers from breaching your Hell bound locomotive to destroy its energy source – the pyre.

You play cards and power-ups to defeat each enemy as they progress up four levels of your train, and there are plenty more cards to pick up along the way. It is similar to Slay the Spire in many ways, except on public transport.

Like with Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, you can pick Monster Train up at no extra cost from 21 April. It'll be available for PS5 only (Horizon Zero Dawn will also be downloadable on PS4 in its original form).

The other titles coming to the game catalogue for Extra and Premium members this month are: The Crew Motorfest (PS5, PS4), Football Manager 26 Console (PS5), Warriors: Abyss (PS5, PS4), Squirrel with a Gun (PS5), and The Casting of Frank Stone (PS5).

PS Plus Premium subscribers with also get Wild Arms 4 (PS5, PS4) added to the classics library.

It feels like an age has passed since Sony announced that its prices would be rising pretty much globally across pretty much all the main hardware associated with the PlayStation 5, from the PS5 and PS5 Digital to the PS5 Pro and even the PlayStation Portal.

Tech news progresses at such a pace that there have been plenty of stories since then, but few are bigger than the chunk $100 and £90 price hikes Sony's bringing in with slightly less than a week's notice across its whole lineup. I've already written about how this is objectively terrible news for gamers right now, but there's no escaping the fact that it could also make for a pretty terrible situation for the next console generation.

After all, the PS5 is already five years old, and that normally means it would be time to start wondering when the PS6 might be unveiled. The PS4 lasted for seven years before the PS5 hit the market, and if the PS6 followed that same window, then we'd only be around 18 months away from seeing the console unveiled.

Normally, that would be exciting, and there's no doubt that the hype would build on my side if Sony did drop the news that an unveiling was coming, but there'd be one element that would spell real worry – pricing.

After all, we're now in a situation where the PS5 Pro is going to cost a massive £780 or $900, a nearly unthinkable price just a few years ago, and there's basically no argument that the reason for that price is market forces. Sony isn't willing to sell the console at a loss, and components are now so expensive that it's passing the cost on to customers, rightly or wrongly.

The table of price rises that we've used a few times is still useful for underlining just how big the hikes are around the world:

So, that leads us to a game that's always played in the run-up to any big gaming launch – what will it cost? The PS6 is now likely to launch years into a period of rampant pricing inflation in tech, and it's anyone's guess whether the current demand for memory will have faded away and corrected itself or not.

If it did go back to normal, then you'd assume that Sony would be looking to launch for no more than the £500 mark, one that's traditionally been seen as quite a hard barrier in the minds of most consumers. Now that the PS5 will cost £570 for the foreseeable future, though, it might be more like a £600 mark in reality.

So, if £600 is a more reasonable and likely prediction right now, how does that look to most people in the market? The PS5 was already a somewhat tough sell at launch thanks to a lot of re-releases and cross-generation games, and it would seem the PS6 could well be in for a similar fate.

We've all seen the way graphical leaps have plateaued in the last half-decade, so it would be fascinating to see whether people are willing to countenance that sort of price if they've got a PS5, albeit one that has technically appreciated in value (ridiculously).

My role in tech journalism means I'll always be an early adopter when a new PlayStation rolls around, but £600 would be a steep ask for many of my gaming friends, albeit without knowing at this stage how big the leap in power might be.

Until that's clearer, we'll have to brace ourselves for doom-saying rumours for the next, I'd wager. People smell a story, and the chances of the PS6 having a truly off-putting price clearly just went up quite steeply.

I was in a cafe in the centre of London when I saw Sony's blog post about raising the PS5's price across all models last week. Sometimes a day off coincides with some big news, and there's just nothing you can do about it – but that didn't stop me from basically ignoring a conversation for a few minutes to read the whole post.

Sony's explanations do hold water, to a degree; its arguments about the "continued pressures" in the market, particularly in terms of the steeply rising costs of various components, including all types of memory, are fair enough and are being made by plenty of other tech giants, too.

Still, there's no way this can be spun into anything remotely resembling a positive story – it's a disaster for the console generation, and means that the PS5 will be cemented as the console era in which waiting to buy a console when it's cheaper stopped being something you could even do.

The hikes aren't even negligible from a percentage point of view, adding £90 or $100 basically across the board (ignoring the cheaper Portal as its own separate case). That's huge money, and it's striking that these are the sorts of margins that PlayStation consoles' prices used to fall by once they'd been on the market for half a decade.

It seems like those days are gone, or at least don't seem like they're coming back anytime soon, and it's not too hard to work out the broadest reason for all this happening. Whatever moniker you want to give it, from RAMageddon to the RAMpocalypse, the fact is that we're now a long way into the memory price spikes caused by AI companies driving demand for components.

Sony's not the only corporation to have raised prices on its consoles, and it must be remembered that this isn't even the first PS5 price hike it's brought in. We're years into this process, and it doesn't feel good at all.

At a time when gaming studios seem more fragile than ever, and where big games need to sell millions of copies to stand a chance of breaking even, or attract millions of players to last longer than a few weeks before being shuttered, it underlines the fact that the vibes in gaming aren't so great right now.

Some people might try to spin this as not the worst thing in the world for actual gamers, who can skate above the industry turmoil and just play the games that survive, but it all speaks to a really precipitous situation – and "industry crash" is the sort of phrase getting bandied about more and more in development circles.

Sure, titans like GTA 6 will still come and do genuinely incredible numbers every so often, but with the amount of turmoil going around, and now these price hikes, the actual ceiling of players out there feels like it may start to plateau or stagnate.

None of that worry makes it Sony's fault that the PS5's getting hiked – the blame lies more with the AI bubble and the investors pushing it. Still, it makes 2026 feel like a pretty challenging year for gaming and gamers. Needless to say, if you can buy a PS5 of any description before 2 April, I'd do that.

Sony appears to be working on a new PS5 DualSense controller add-on that lets you use your smartphone as the PS5 console itself.

The idea, in patent concept at least, is to clip a phone to a DualSense controller which interacts with the device to play full-on PS5 games.

This would use a good network connection and stream games, while also allowing developers to use all the phone's hardware as part of the game interaction experience.

If you recognise this, that's because Sony already did it. Yup, this little clip to attach a phone to the controller was introduced back in 2014. The problem then was that even on a Wi-Fi network, streaming didn't work so well. As such it was quietly ignored.

Now, with 5G and enhanced WiFi, plus plenty of experience streaming games, the chance for this to work has returned.

The patent filed shows Sony is looking into using a phone to play games but rather than just mirror, to also let developers use all the touchscreen, motion sensor and hardware features of the handset as part of the gameplay.

Sony already offers the PS Portal, an 8-inch 1080p LCD toting handheld to stream PS5 games over WiFi. Imagine that getting upgraded to any internet connection and using your phone, all you'd need is your controller to continue full-on gaming wherever you are.

Sony files a lot of patents, that never amount to much. But this feels different, grounded in a tested reality and really not that far from becoming a real offering soon.