Though Sony announced 75 million PS5 units shipped as of December 31st, 2024 (which includes PS5 Pro consoles), it didn’t offer specific sales for its mid-gen refresh. As such, video game hardware spending in January 2025 dropped to $205 million, a staggering 45 percent lower than last year. It’s also the lowest total spending for game hardware since January 2020.

Piscatella also revealed that PS5 hardware spending dropped by 38 percent year-on-year. The Xbox Series X/S saw a 50 percent decline, while the Nintendo Switch’s spending fell by 53 percent.

You could justify the latter two since Xbox hardware has seen falling revenue for years, and the Switch is almost eight years old, with all eyes on its successor. For Sony, the Pro may not have provided the shot-in-the-arm that it expected. Time will tell, especially in the long term, so stay tuned for further updates.

A follow-up to Primal Carnage: Extinction, Primal Carnage: Evolution is currently available to wishlist on the PlayStation Store. Among other features, the game supports multiplayer for up to 16 players and features new dinosaurs, abilities, and weapons per the official website. It also offers a higher resolution and frame rate on PS4 Pro and PS5.

Offering a contrast to Extinction, Primal Carnage: Evolution also doesn’t seem to have a PC release planned, with the trailer mentioning only PlayStation platforms.

Much like its predecessor, Primal Carnage: Evolution will feature multiplayer action where one team of players take on the role of dinosaurs while other players are hunters, armed to the teeth to take on the dinosaurs. Evolution will feature an expanded roster of dinosaurs to play with over Extinction, as well as plenty of customization options.

That’s as per Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, who recently took to BlueSky and shared that the PS5 Pro has got off to a “solid start” in the United States. Finer details will arrive later, but Piscatella says that the console has sold roughly as much in the region at launch as the PS4 Pro did when it launched in 2016. 

That does line up with what Sony has said about the console’s performance. The company recently revealed that the PS5 Pro’s pre-orders were “slightly stronger” that PS4 Pro’s pre-orders were. Interestingly, Sony president, CFO, and COO Hiroki Totoki also said the controversy surrounding PS5 Pro’s pricing “has not had a negative impact” on its sales. Read more on that through here.

The developer says that due to the game’s “graphic requirements”, if you’re looking to host a co-op session, you need to be playing either on PS5 or Xbox Series X/S, or on PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. While those playing on base PS4 and Xbox One models will be able to join co-op sessions hosted by other players, creating your own session won’t be an option at launch.

“We’re working on giving the option to host on all consoles in the future,” Dambuster Studios said.

The developer has also reiterated that while the game does support cross-gen co-op, cross-play is not supported- so PlayStation, Xbox, and PC players cannot co-op with each other.

Dead Island 2 is out on April 21 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It will run at 60 FPS on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. You can check out its PC requirements through here.

Monster Hunter Rise is the story of Kamura Village, which prepares to face a horde of berserk monsters known as the Rampage. As a Hunter, your job is to stop the Rampage and investigate its cause, going up against the mysterious Magnamalo and other threats. The Xbox Series X and PS5 versions run at 4K/60 FPS and offer a 120 FPS mode, while the Xbox Series S version runs at 1440p resolution.

For details on other platforms, head here. Almost all post-launch updates are included, allowing players can undertake new Event Quests and Collaboration Quests featuring Sonic the Hedgehog, Mega Man, Street Fighter, and more. For more details on the PS5 version, check out our review here. Its expansion Sunbreak will release in Spring 2023.

Fortunately, Capcom has revealed the same. PS4, Xbox One and Xbox One S versions at 1920×1080 resolution. PS4 Pro and Xbox One X run at 3840×2160 resolution, the same as current-gen consoles. The Xbox Series S version runs at 2560×1440 resolution. For those experiencing it via PC Game Pass, there are graphics settings.

You’ll notice that except for Xbox Series X and PS5, the frame rate hasn’t been mentioned for any other platform. Capcom states, “Frame is variable depending on the gameplay situation.” Based on the hardware, you can prioritize frame rate or image quality, though it’s unknown whether Xbox One, PS4, Xbox One S and Xbox Series S get those options.

Monster Hunter Rise launches on January 20th for PlayStation and Xbox. For more details on what to expect, check out our feature. You can also read our review of the PC version.

Excited for the launch of #MHRise on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows, Game Pass, PS5, and PS4? Read on below for some helpful info ahead of release on Jan 20! pic.twitter.com/553p11gqbk

— Monster Hunter (@monsterhunter) January 13, 2023

More importantly, the frame rate and resolution for the title on each platform have been revealed. On PS5 and Xbox Series X, it runs at 4K/60 FPS, while on Xbox Series S, it runs at 1080p/60 FPS. The latter requires an update to patch ver. 1.0.1 on launch day, else it will run at 1080p/30 FPS. Meanwhile, the PS4, Xbox One, and Xbox One S versions run at 1080p/30 FPS. The Xbox One X and PS4 Pro versions run at 4K/30 FPS.

Nintendo Switch players can look forward to a 720p resolution and 30 FPS in handheld and docked modes. The PC version’s resolution is display-based but supports 30 FPS, 60 FPS, and 120 FPS. There are also options for V-Sync, Texture Quality, Shadows Quality, Anti-Aliasing, Ambient Occlusion, and Fullscreen.

All listed frame rates are variable, so we’ll need to wait and see which version performs the best. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion is out on December 13th worldwide.

#CrisisCore –Final Fantasy VII– Reunion is coming to PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Steam on December 13.

Here's how it'll run on each platform. pic.twitter.com/2IdZP6yQGn

— FINAL FANTASY VII (@finalfantasyvii) November 17, 2022

Most notable, of course, are the PS5 and Xbox Series X, both of which will see the game featuring two graphical modes- quality mode will run at 4K/30 FPS, while performance mode will target 1080p/60 FPS. The Xbox Series S, meanwhile, will have just one mode running at 1080p/30 FPS- which, incidentally, is what the game will target on the base PS4 and Xbox One as well. 

Meanwhile, on Xbox One X, Evil West will target 4K/30 FPS. On the PS4 Pro, however, it will run at 1080/30 FPS, same as the base PS4- though Focus Entertainment says that between the two, the PS4 Pro version will feature “improved graphical quality”. 

The publisher has also revealed the minimum and recommended requirements for the game’s PC version. Read more on that through here.

Evil West launches on November 22 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. 

In a recent statement, Square Enix said, “Despite all our efforts to bring you regular updates with fresh and exciting content, we haven’t been able to deliver the experience that we were hoping and that you all deserve. So we have made the extremely tough decision to end service for Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier.” Non-English languages see support ending on October 31st, 7 PM PT, after which only English text will be available.

Shinra Credits are no longer available to purchase in-game, but players can use any remaining Credits till the game shuts down. Updates will continue to roll out over the next few months, so existing players can expect new things to do.

Released on November 17th, 2021, for mobile devices, Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier is a prequel to the mainline series. Though essentially a third-person battle royale shooter, it also featured several Final Fantasy elements like Jobs (called Styles in-game), magic, Summons, and even monsters on the battlefield. It’s seen numerous updates and seasonal content since its launch, with Season 4 currently ongoing.

Despite the many improvements this version brings when compared to the original incarnation, The Last of Us Part 1 finds itself in a rock and a hard place as far as gameplay improvements are concerned. In addition to the improvements on the graphical front, there are some subtle improvements on the gameplay side of things as well – though that doesn’t amount to much when looking at the whole picture. But in this feature, we will be focusing on the graphical end of the game and comparing it with the remastered version on the PS4 in an effort to see what improvements this version is bringing to the table.

As you can easily gauge from a brief look at the two versions of The Last of Us, the PS5 version looks a lot darker than the PS4 remaster when it comes to the choice of colours. The Last of Us Remastered doesn’t shy away from using macabre colours like brown and grey but that is balanced out with the abundant use of green for the overgrowing foliage in the environments. The PS5 version ends up being really conservative with its colour palette, and the colours are a lot more muted which makes the environments feel drab, dreary, and more hostile than before. Of course, this is an artistic change that’s not reflective of the game being downgraded in any sense.

Putting The Last of Us Remastered and The Last of Us Part 1’s environments side by side, we can see that most of the level geometry and props are the same – but the actual assets have been re-built with higher quality textures which results in a more cleaned up look than the original. That said, because the geometry of the levels have remained the same – they can still end up feeling a bit unpolished and crude at times with some rough edges sticking out from places. It might not be immediately notiscale, but it’s a difference that one can notice when pitting the games side-by-side.

Then there are the character models, which have gotten a significant facelift in the PS5 version when compared to the PS4 remaster. The character models now boast markedly more detail than the original counterpart, which also has a downside in that some characters now look a lot older than before. Joel now has more visible wrinkles in his face, and the same can be said about Tess. On the flipside though, Bill seems a lot younger in this new rendition. Ellie’s character model has also been updated to retain similarity with the original. Poly-counts for these character models are incredibly high with highly detailed facial hair and skin meshes, and they all look spectacular in this new format.

The Last of Us Remastered uses a mixture of precalculated ambient lighting data along with sparse use of directional lights and shadows for most of its environmental lighting. The remake also seems to be utilizing the same lighting techniques, and the quality of lighting is in line with what one can expect from a modern game – complete with the additional cinematic lights that serve the purpose of adding more depth and definition to the character models during cutscenes. That said though, the cinematic lights in the remake seem to be softer in nature.

There are some more improvements with respect to lighting and reflections as well. Surfaces such as roads and the sides of buildings now reflect nearby environmental light sources like police sirens and rising flames with varying intensities depending on their reflective properties, which culminates in a more realistic feel when compared to the Remastered release. There’s no evidence of ray-tracing in reflections and shadow maps, but because the game’s environment’s lighting doesn’t dynamically change all that much – the lack of ray-tracing doesn’t really have any impact on the end result and the game still looks great nevertheless.

Particle effects have also seen a massive improvement with the remake, with a lot more alpha particles per explosion. The flames also look far more realistic than the original, and the volumetric smoke that surrounds the flames is also thick and diffuses light from its surroundings.

As for anti-aliasing, The Last of Us Remastered used Naughty Dog’s signature TAA implementation that worked to great effect in smoothing out the image quality without showing visible signs of artifacts during gameplay. Unsurprisingly, the developer has stuck to its roots for the remake and seems to have used the same TAA implementation along with the natural improvements that the Naughty Dog engine has seen over the course of almost a decade. That said, the game does looks sharper which is most likely a result of the higher base resolution on which the TAA pass is performed.

Briefly touching upon the animations, the cinematics animation data in The Last of Us Part 1 seem to be a one-to-one replica of that in The Last of Us Remastered, albeit with an added element of camera shakes. Character movement in cutscenes is the same, which isn’t a surprise since no motion captures were redone for this project. But there are major improvements in the facial animations which add more emotional weight. On the gameplay front, we now get the spectacular motion-matching technique which makes for seamless animations that blend well into one another. This improvement is more pronounced in sections featuring Ellie, though you can also spot some differences with the way how Joel now goes about things as well.

On that note, we should also talk about the performance. The Last of Us Part 1 is an interesting candidate from Naughty Dog because it’s the developer’s first release from the ground up in many years to have launched with support for 60fps gameplay. The game features two graphical modes – a Fidelity mode and a Graphics mode. The Fidelity Mode bumps the image resolution to 4K and locks the frame-rate to 30fps while Performance Mode knocks down the resolution to dynamic 4K and bumps the frame rate over to 60fps.

In addition to this, you can also adjust a couple of sliders such as motion blur, camera shake intensity, and film grain to get a better personalised experience for your playthrough. It’s all basic stuff, but appreciable nevertheless. The game performs well for the most part in both modes, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering that the PS5 is much more powerful than the PS4 and the improvements featured in the remake are iterative rather than radical.

In conclusion, The Last of Us Part 1 is a faithful remake of the original – and the many improvements on the visual and gameplay front have been done in an effort to make the game fall in line with current gen standards.