An anonymous reader shares a report: Sony's PlayStation chief, Jim Ryan, believed that Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard wasn't about locking games as Xbox exclusives, according to a newly unsealed email. Microsoft counsel revealed the exchange between Ryan and Chris Deering, former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, discussing the announcement of the deal last year. "It is not an exclusivity play at all," said Ryan. "They're thinking bigger than that and they have the cash to make moves like this. I've spent a fair amount of time with both Phil [Spencer] Bobby [Kotick] over the past day and I'm pretty sure we will continue to see Call of Duty on PlayStation for many years to come."

The surprise revelation runs counter to Sony's arguments against Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal and its filings with regulators. Sony has maintained it fears Microsoft could make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox or even sabotage the PlayStation versions of the game. Ryan went on to say, "We have some good stuff cooking," referring to Sony's Bungie acquisition which Sony announced just days after the email exchange. "I'm not complacent, and I'd rather this hadn't happened, but we'll be OK, we'll be more than OK." Microsoft initially offered Call of Duty on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement between Activision and Sony ends. Ryan called that offer "inadequate on many levels." Microsoft eventually offered Sony a 10-year deal for Call of Duty on PlayStation, but the company has refused to sign this so far.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The courtroom showdown between the FTC and Microsoft over the tech company's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard kicked off this morning. First announced in early 2022, the pending transaction has been scrutinized by various global regulatory bodies. Xbox has frantically worked to appease their concerns. While addressing its potentially dominant position, Microsoft lamented its third-place position and admitted defeat in the ongoing "console wars."

Part of Microsoft's current legal strategy is demonstrating the domineering lead PlayStation and Nintendo have established in the gaming industry. Xbox entered the market in 2001, and according to Microsoft's own documentation, their consoles have been outperformed by Nintendo and Sony by a "significant margin." Despite hard-fought success in the Xbox 360 generation and notable financial gain in recent quarters, Xbox claims it's never stopped "losing the console wars." As it stands, Xbox is confidently one of "big three" players in the console market, alongside PlayStation and Nintendo. However, Microsoft states its market share is trailing notably behind the most prominent competition.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday argued in federal court for a preliminary injunction to temporarily block Microsoft's acquisition of videogame maker Activision Blizzard, which would stop the deal from closing before the government's case against it is heard by an administrative judge. From a report: "If this deal is completed, the combined company ... is likely to have the ability, an incentive, to harm competition in various markets related to consoles, subscription services and the cloud (for gaming)," FTC lawyer James Weingarten said in the government's opening arguments in what is expected to be a five-day evidentiary hearing.

The FTC argues it needs a judge to block Microsoft and Activision Blizzard from closing their $69 billion merger until the agency's in-house court gets to rule on whether the combination hurts competition in the videogame industry. The FTC says the combination would give Microsoft's Xbox videogame console exclusive access to Activision games, leaving Nintendo consoles and Sony Group's PlayStation out in the cold. "I think you will see that every piece of evidence shows that it only makes sense for Xbox to make these Activision games to as many people on as many platforms as possible," Microsoft lawyer Beth Wilkinson said in opening arguments, adding that if an injunction is granted it could result in a three-year administrative proceeding that would kill the deal.

Sony is still beavering away on its own phones and it plans to keep doing so for the foreseeable future. From a report: Sony has struck a multi-year deal with Qualcomm to use Snapdragon platforms to power its handsets. This is an extension of an existing agreement between the two sides. Qualcomm chipsets will be used in Sony's upcoming premium devices, along with high- and mid-tier smartphones. Sony revealed the awkwardly named Xperia 1 V just last month.

Microsoft is increasing its Xbox Series X prices in most countries in August apart from the US, Japan, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia. From a report: The Xbox maker is also increasing the monthly prices of its Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions for the first time next month, which will see the base Game Pass subscription for console move up to $10.99 a month from $9.99. "We've held on our prices for consoles for many years and have adjusted the prices to reflect the competitive conditions in each market," says Kari Perez, head of communications for Xbox, in a statement to The Verge. Xbox Series X console pricing will largely match the price hike Sony announced for the PS5 last year, with the Xbox Series X moving to $612 in the UK, $604 across most European markets, CAD $649.99 in Canada, and AUD $799.99 in Australia starting August 1st. The Xbox Series S pricing will not be adjusted in any markets, remaining at $299.99.

According to an industry insider, LCD TVs won't see any further development because all new R&D money is being spent on self-emissive displays like MicroLED and OLED, as well as on backlight technology like Mini-LED. Tom's Guide reports: According to Bob Raikes from Display Daily, it's all about OLED development. "I asked EMD (which is the US name of Merck KGaA and is by far the dominant supplier of LC materials), what they were doing to push LC materials for displays onto the next stage ... They are developing LCs for privacy windows and antennas, but they told us that 'there is no pull from clients' for significant development in LC materials," Raikes wrote in a recent article. "That shouldn't have been a surprise to me -- I have been talking about the switch to OLED and other emissive displays for the premium end (and later the mainstream) of the display market for a lot of years. Still, after decades of reporting on LC developments, it took a moment to sink in!"

As for what, specifically, manufacturers are working on, it's the production of QD-OLED panels for use in the high-end Samsung and Sony TVs like the Samsung S95C OLED and Sony A95K OLED as well as the development of PHOLED panels that use a blue phosphorescent material that has a longer shelf life and can go brighter than the traditional organic material in OLED panels. [...] Sadly, LCD TVs' days are coming to a close, but OLED TVs are still going strong.

Sony says it has started testing the ability to stream PS5 games from the cloud. The PlayStation maker says it's testing cloud streaming for PS5 games and is planning to add this as a feature to its PlayStation Plus Premium subscription. From a report: "We're currently testing cloud streaming for supported PS5 games -- this includes PS5 titles from the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Game Trials, as well as supported digital PS5 titles that players own," says Nick Maguire, VP of global services, global sales, and business operations at Sony Interactive Entertainment. "When this feature launches, cloud game streaming for supported PS5 titles will be available for use directly on your PS5 console." A cloud feature for PS5 games would mean you'll no longer have to download games to your console to stream them to other devices. Sony currently supports streaming PS5 games to PCs, Macs, and iOS and Android devices, but you have to use your PS5 as the host to download and stream titles to your other devices.

Isaac-Lew (Slashdot reader #623) writes: The Lego scene in "Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse" was animated by a 14-year-old high school student after the producers saw the trailer he made that was animated Lego-style.
The teenager had used his father's old computers to recreate the trailer "shot for shot to look as if it belonged in a Lego world," reports the New York Times: By that point, he had been honing his skills for several years making short computer-generated Lego videos. "My dad showed me this 3-D software called Blender and I instantly got hooked on it," he said. "I watched a lot of YouTube videos to teach myself certain stuff..."

[A]fter finding the movie's Toronto-based production designer, Patrick O'Keefe, on LinkedIn, and confirming that Sony Pictures Animation's offer was legitimate, Theodore Mutanga, a medical physicist, built his son a new computer and bought him a state-of-the-art graphics card so he could render his work much faster... Over several weeks, first during spring break and then after finishing his homework on school nights, Mutanga worked on the Lego sequence... Christophre Miller [a director of "The Lego Movie" and one of the writer-producers of "Spider-Verse."] saw Mutanga's contribution to "Across the Spider-Verse" not only as a testament to the democratization of filmmaking, but also to the artist's perseverance: he dedicated intensive time and effort to animation, which is "not ever fast or easy to make," Miller said.

'The Lego Movie' is inspired by people making films with Lego bricks at home," Lord said by video. "That's what made us want to make the movie. Then the idea in 'Spider Verse' is that a hero can come from anywhere. And here comes this heroic young person who's inspired by the movie that was inspired by people like him."

Sony's chief executive has warned that cloud gaming is still technically "very tricky," playing down the risk to the console maker of the industry quickly converting to a technology on which its rival Microsoft has bet heavily. From a report: In an interview with the Financial Times, Kenichiro Yoshida said the PlayStation creator would still study "various options" in the future for streaming games over the Internet itself, adding it could utilize GT Sophy, its artificial intelligence agent, to enhance cloud gaming. "I think cloud itself is an amazing business model, but when it comes to games, the technical difficulties are high," said Yoshida, citing latency -- the fast response times demanded by gamers -- as the biggest issue.

"So there will be challenges to cloud gaming, but we want to take on those challenges." Despite various attempts to remake the gaming industry around the cloud, many users have yet to switch from a console or high-end gaming PC to streaming games entirely over the Internet, fearing the lags that can be caused by slowing Internet connectivity and server speeds. Publishers have also not been fully supportive.

Polish games developer CD Projekt is not for sale, its CEO reiterated on Monday, following weekend rumours that the maker of "Cyberpunk 2077" could be targeted by Sony. From a report: "Nothing has changed on our end. I can repeat what we've been saying throughout the years - CD Projekt is not for sale. We want to remain independent", Adam Kicinski said on a conference call following first-quarter results. "It's very exciting to follow our own path, so it's pure rumour."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amid a plethora of game trailers, Sony dedicated a single minute of its more-than-an-hour-long PlayStation Showcase livestream on Wednesday to reveal two new hardware products. The most buzzworthy of these is surely Project Q -- that's the internal name, as the final name is still pending. Whatever it is called in the future, Project Q confirms a long-standing rumor: It's a new PlayStation handheld.

The device will be focused on streaming; Sony says it will allow users to stream any non-VR game from a local PlayStation 5 console using Remote Play over Wi-Fi. In fact, it won't be able to play games on its own; it's all about the streaming functionality. As for Project Q's specs, it has an 8-inch HD screen and "all the buttons and features of the DualSense wireless controller." Release dates and pricing for these haven't been announced [...]. Ars notes that Sony has been offering Remote Play for a while on other devices. "You can sync a DualSense controller with your macOS, Windows, iOS, or Android device and stream your games over Wi-Fi or the Internet, though the latter is laden with latency challenges."

In addition to Project Q, Sony also announced plans to launch Bluetooth earbuds that can simultaneously connect to a PlayStation console, mobile device, and PCs, similar to AirPods.

South Korea's LG Display will start supplying high-end TV panels to Samsung Electronic from as early as this quarter, three sources told Reuters, in a deal that would help the loss-making flat-screen maker turn profitable. From the report:LG Display aims to supply 2 million units next year and boost shipments to 3 million and 5 million units in subsequent years, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. Initial supplies to Samsung would likely be 77-inch and 83-inch white OLED (WOLED) TV panels. For Samsung, the deal highlights how it is looking to expand in high-end organic light emitting diode (OLED) TVs as competition heats up in the lower end with Chinese vendors. OLED panels cost nearly five times more than liquid-crystal display (LCD) panels. With this deal, Samsung could overtake Sony as the second largest supplier of OLED TVs globally.

International online sports broadcasting company DAZN has joined a global task force that aims to shut down pirated and unauthorized sports streaming operations worldwide. The new group is operated by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which counts giants like Amazon, Apple, NBC Universal, Netflix, Disney, Sony, and Warner Bros. among its members. From a report: Unauthorized streaming sources can often be the only available option for people to watch certain teams and matches subject to complicated broadcasting deals, locked into high-priced bundles, and blackouts. With more tech and entertainment companies using sports as a sweetener for their services (NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube, MLS / MLB for Apple TV Plus, and Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime are a few examples), they have more reasons to collectively take issue with anyone popping up a free stream.

ACE as a whole had previously taken down IPTV-based service NitroTV, which allegedly charged users $20 per month in the US for a collection of unlicensed streaming content. ACE was first formed in 2017 as the anti-piracy arm of the Motion Picture Association (formerly known as the MPAA until it dropped the second A in 2019). Now with DAZN, it consists of 53 big media companies.

Slashdot reader Dave Knott shares the four class of 2023 inductees into the Video Game Hall Of Fame. They were announced today at The Strong National Museum of Play. From the press release: Barbie Fashion Designer : "The 1996 hit Barbie Fashion Designer emerged at a time when many games were marketed to male players. Published by Digital Domain/Mattel Media, it proved that a computer game targeted to girls could succeed, selling more than 500,000 copies in two months. The game helped greatly expanded the market for video games and in the process opened important -- and ongoing -- discussions about gender and stereotypes in gaming. Barbie Fashion Designer was also innovative in bridging the gap between the digital and the physical, allowing players to design clothes for their Barbie dolls and print them on special fabric."

Computer Space : "Nutting Associate's Computer Space appeared in 1971 and was the first commercial video game. Inspired by the early minicomputer and previous World Video Game Hall of Fame inductee -- Spacewar! (1962) -- the coin-operated Computer Space proved that video games could reach an audience outside of computer labs. While not a best-seller, it was a trailblazer in the video game world and inspired its creators to go on to establish Atari Inc., a video game giant in the 1970s and 1980s."

The Last of Us : "Released by Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2013, The Last of Us jumped into an oversaturated field of post-apocalyptic zombie games and quickly stood out among the rest with its in-depth storytelling, intimate exploration of humanity, thrilling game jumps and cutscenes, and its memorable characters. More than 200 publications named it the game of the year in 2013. Its story has since made the jump to Hollywood, inspiring an HBO adaptation in 2023 watched weekly by millions."

Wii Sports : "Wii Sports launched with the Nintendo Wii home video game system in 2006 and introduced motion-based technology to living rooms across the world. With a simple swipe of the controller, players could serve a tennis ball, hurl a bowling bowl, throw a left hook, or drive a golf ball. The simple mechanics made the game accessible to almost anyone -- allowing it to be played by young children and seniors alike -- and helped to redefine the idea of who is a "gamer." Ultimately, the game helped Nintendo to sell more than 100 million Wii consoles worldwide." These titles managed to beat out several other incredibly popular titles, including Angry Birds, Age of Empires, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, GoldenEye 007, NBA 2K, FIFA International Soccer, Quake, and Wizardry.

While claiming that "the console is the core of the Xbox brand," Microsoft's head of gaming has reiterated the company needs to focus on the wider gaming market if it's to be successful. From a report: During the Kinda Funny Games Xcast podcast, Spencer was asked if Xbox has taken its eye off the console market by focusing too much on PC. In response, Spencer said Microsoft would be wrong to think that just building great console titles could help it overtake Sony and Nintendo in terms of hardware sales. Instead, it has chosen to pursue a different strategy to the Japanese companies, one focused on fulfilling developers' vision of enabling customers to play their games on any screen. "We're not in the business of out-consoling Sony or out-consoling Nintendo," Spencer said. "There isn't really a great solution or win for us. And I know that will upset a ton of people, but it's just the truth of the matter that when you're third place in the console marketplace and the top two players are as strong as they are, and have in certain cases a very, very discrete focus on doing deals and other things that kind of make being Xbox hard for us as a team, [and] that's on us, not on anybody else."

He added: "I see commentary that if you just built great games everything would turn around. It's just not true that if we go off and build great games then all of a sudden you're going to see console share shift in some dramatic way. We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation where everybody built their digital library of games. So, when you go and you're building on Xbox, we want our Xbox community to feel awesome, but this idea that if we just focused more on great games on our console that somehow we're going to win the console race, I think doesn't really lay into the reality of most people." Spencer claimed that 90% of the people who buy a console every year already own a PlayStation, Nintendo or Xbox console, and their digital game library lives on that ecosystem.

The Writers Guild of America, the union that bargains on behalf of Hollywood's screenwriters, has called a strike after negotiations with major studios failed to produce a favorable contract this week. From a report: The strike, which is the first involving WGA to occur in 15 years, seeks to bring firms to the table on a host of issues, including higher pay and better working conditions. But some of the issues are quite unique in the annals of modern labor disputes and have to do with technological changes currently disrupting the entertainment industry -- such as the role artificial intelligence may play in future screenwriting projects. "Though our Negotiating Committee began this process intent on making a fair deal, the studios' responses have been wholly insufficient given the existential crisis writers are facing," the WGA tweeted late Monday evening. "Picketing will begin Tuesday afternoon."

Negotiations between WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers -- the trade organization that represents the movie and streaming studios in contract negotiations -- have been ongoing for the past month but the deadline for a new contract was midnight on Tuesday morning. In its own statement, the AMPTP claimed that it had presented a "comprehensive package proposal" to the Guild and that it had been willing to "improve that offer" but claimed that the "magnitude of other proposals" that the union had made were untenable. "The AMPTP member companies remain united in their desire to reach a deal that is mutually beneficial to writers and the health and longevity of the industry," said the organization, which represents the likes of Netflix, Disney, Apple, Amazon, Sony and other entertainment giants. The New York Times adds: The dispute has pitted 11,500 screenwriters against the major studios, including old guard entertainment companies like Universal and Paramount as well as tech industry newcomers like Netflix, Amazon and Apple.

Sony says it sold a total of 38.4 million PlayStation 5 consoles, according to the company's latest earnings release. In the first three months of the year, it shipped 6.3 million units -- "more than triple what the company shipped in the same quarter the previous year (2 million)," reports The Verge. From the report: On the software side things were more mixed, Bloomberg notes. Revenue from game software was up overall, but units shipped fell from 70.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 68 million in the same quarter of 2022. PlayStation Network monthly active users were up slightly from 106 million to 108 million, but the number of PlayStation Plus subscribers were flat at 47.4 million.

This disparity partly reflects the lack of major first-party games releases in the quarter. But there are also concerns that the PS5's earlier hardware supply issues are having a knock on effect on software sales and subscriptions, which are important if the company wants to build a "virtuous cycle" of mutually reinforcing console and game sales. CNBC notes that the company reported an operating profit of a record 1.21 trillion yen (around $8.9 billion) for the year, with revenue in the quarter rising 35 percent to 3.06 trillion yen (around $22.5 billion).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Last spring, engineers in Barcelona packed up the sperm-injecting robot they'd designed and sent it by DHL to New York City. They followed it to a clinic there, called New Hope Fertility Center, where they put the instrument back together, assembling a microscope, a mechanized needle, a tiny petri dish, and a laptop. Then one of the engineers, with no real experience in fertility medicine, used a Sony PlayStation 5 controller to position a robotic needle. Eyeing a human egg through a camera, it then moved forward on its own, penetrating the egg and dropping off a single sperm cell. Altogether, the robot was used to fertilize more than a dozen eggs. The result of the procedures, say the researchers, were healthy embryos—and now two baby girls, who they claim are the first people born after fertilization by a "robot."

The startup company that developed the robot, Overture Life, says its device is an initial step toward automating in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and potentially making the procedure less expensive and far more common than it is today. Right now, IVF labs are multimillion-dollar affairs staffed by trained embryologists who earn upwards of $125,000 a year to delicately handle sperm and eggs using ultra-thin hollow needles under a microscope. But some startups say the entire process could be carried out automatically, or nearly so. Overture, for instance, has filed a patent application describing a "biochip" for an IVF lab in miniature, complete with hidden reservoirs containing growth fluids, and tiny channels for sperm to wiggle through.

"Think of a box where sperm and eggs go in, and an embryo comes out five days later," says Santiago Munne, the prize-winning geneticist who is chief innovation officer at the Spanish company. He believes that if IVF could be carried out inside a desktop instrument, patients might never need to visit a specialized clinic, where a single attempt at getting pregnant can cost $20,000 in the US. Instead, he says, a patient's eggs might be fed directly into an automated fertility system at a gynecologist's office. "It has to be cheaper. And if any doctor could do it, it would be," says Munne.

PlayStation has agreed to acquire Firewalk Studios, the AAA multiplayer developer that is working on a live service game for PS5 and PC. From a report: If the name sounds familiar, it's because Sony had already announced it would be publishing Firewalk's first game back in April 2021. It is the third dedicated live-service game studio that PlayStation has acquired over the last 18 months, alongside Bungie and Haven Studios. Firewalk was set-up in 2018 as part of ProbablyMonsters (a collective of AAA game developers). It was formed by a number of Bungie veterans, including studio head Tony Hsu (previously general manager and senior vice president of Destiny at Activision) and game director Ryan Ellis (previously creative director at Bungie). It now boasts almost 150 employees. Firewalk is the 20th developer to join PlayStation Studios.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A photographer has stirred up fresh controversy and debate after his artificial intelligence (AI) image won first prize at one of the world's most prestigious photography competitions. He has since declined to accept the prize while the contest has remained silent on the matter. Berlin-based "photomedia artist" Boris Eldagsen participated this year in the World Photography Organization's Sony World Photography Awards, a leading photo contest that offers prizes that include $5,000 cash, Sony camera equipment, a trip to London for the awards ceremony, and/or worldwide publicity through a book and exhibition. Eldagsen submitted an image titled THE ELECTRICIAN to the Creative category of the 2023 Open competition. It picture appears to be a portrait of two women captured with a photographic process from the early days of photography.