Japanese conglomerate Sony said it is well-positioned to play a leading role in the metaverse, or immersive virtual worlds, which commentators speculate will massively disrupt industries and establish new powerhouses. From a report: "The metaverse is at the same time a social space and live network space where games, music, movies and anime intersect," Chief Executive Kenichiro Yoshida said at a strategy briefing on Wednesday, pointing to the use of free-to-play battle royale title Fortnite from Epic Games as an online social space. Sony's game, music and movie units contributed two-thirds of operating income in the year ended March, underscoring the group's transformation from consumer electronics maker into a metaverse-ready entertainment juggernaut under Yoshida and predecessor Kazuo Hirai. The firm is a gaming gatekeeper with its PlayStation 5 console, however observers point to the risk presented by the growth of cross-platform, cloud-based titles and their potential to reduce the influence of proprietary platforms. Sony has been adjusting its approach, enabling cross-play in Fortnite in 2018.

Researchers have linked spending more time playing video games with a boost in intelligence in children, which goes some way to contradicting the narrative that gaming is bad for young minds. ScienceAlert reports: While the difference in cognitive abilities was a small one and isn't enough to show a causal relationship, it is enough to be notable -- and the study was careful to factor in variables including differences in genetics and the child's socio-economic background. Meanwhile, watching TV and using social media didn't seem to have a positive or negative effect on intelligence. The research should prove useful in the debate over how much screen time is suitable for young minds.

The researchers looked at screen time records for 9,855 kids in the ABCD Study, all in the US and aged 9 or 10. On average, the youngsters reported spending 2.5 hours a day watching TV or online videos, 1 hour playing video games, and half an hour socializing over the internet. Researchers then accessed data for more than 5,000 of those children two years later. Over the intervening period, those in the study who reported spending more time than the norm on video games saw an increase of 2.5 IQ points above the average rise. The IQ point increase was based on the kids' performance on tasks that included reading comprehension, visual-spatial processing, and a task focused on memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. The report notes that the study "only looked at children in the US and did not differentiate between video game types (mobile versus console games)."

The research has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Sony has announced the initial lineup of games for its revamped, multi-tier PlayStation Plus subscription service, and firmed up its launch dates over the next five weeks. From a report: The service will launch in Asia on May 24, Japan on June 2, North and South America on June 13, and Europe, Australia, and New Zealand on June 23. Games coming to the subscription service include Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, the Demon's Souls remake, Insomniac's Spider-Man games, and Red Dead Redemption 2. But the structure of the deal is confusing, there's nothing more recent than the director's cut editions of Ghosts of Tsushima and Death Stranding (both released in mid-2021), and the classic games offering for the service's top tier appears extremely thin at present -- even lacking any PlayStation 2 games under emulation.

The number of titles from third-party developers and publishers is dwarfed by the offering from internal studios. It's important to note, however, that Sony characterized this list as "an early look at some of the games that will be included during the launch time frame." So there is room for the offering to improve in the coming weeks. The lowest-priced Essential tier remains the same as the current PlayStation Plus, offering a handful of free PS4 and PS5 games every month alongside access to multiplayer online gaming. Sony has yet to announce the Essential tier games for the service's relaunch in June.

Electronic Arts and Middle-earth Enterprises "announced on Monday an upcoming free mobile game called The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth," reports CNET: With the role-playing game, Lord of the Rings fans can look forward to experiencing the iconic universe in a whole new way.... The game will feature immersive storytelling with iconic plot lines, turn-based combat and a selection of characters from both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to battle the evils of Middle-earth.

"The team is filled with fans of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and each day they bring their tremendous passion and talents together to deliver an authentic experience for players," Malachi Boyle, vice president of mobile RPG for Electronic Arts, said in a statement. "The combination of high-fidelity graphics, cinematic animations, and stylized art immerses players in the fantasy of Middle-earth where they'll go head-to-head with their favorite characters."

What did you think of Twitter Data Dash?

The Guardian describes it as "a Super Nintendo-style browser game that recaps Twitter's private policy."

And the Verge applauds the game — released Wednesday — for its "delightful pixel art aesthetic." "Welcome to PrivaCity!" reads a description of the game on the site. "Get your dog, Data, safely to the park.

"Dodge cat ads, swim through a sea of DMs, battle trolls, and learn how to take control of your Twitter experience along the way...."

The game itself is a pretty straightforward side-scrolling platformer. Each level is themed around what I can best describe as Twitter Things — one features cats wearing ad boards, another has you avoiding trolls — and your goal is to collect five bones as quickly as you can. If you get the bones, the game will explain something about Twitter's privacy settings related to that level and even offer a button linking to Twitter's settings. When you beat the cat ad level, for example, you'll see a message about how Twitter customizes your experience on the platform and points to where you can turn personalized ads on or off....

Twitter introduced the game as part of a bigger push around its privacy policy, which the company has rewritten. "We've emphasized clear language and moved away from legal jargon," Twitter said on its Safety account.
Gizmodo calls the game "adorable," but also "buggy". And they also have some quibbles with its ultimate message: It's a bit rich that Twitter made a game about avoiding faceless advertisers when the platform is actively doing everything it can to make ads tougher to avoid....

[A]fter watching our personas bounce from level to level with our lil blue dog in tow, it became clear that this game is less for us — or any Twitter user, really — and more for the company itself. It's a way to paper over uncomfortable topics like "privacy" and "consent" and "ownership of our personal data" with a lil blue dog, collecting lil bones by hopping across lil stages. Just promise you won't think about where those bones came from in the first place.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg Law: Valve must face antitrust litigation over claims that "most favored nation" policies for its Steam distribution platform have driven up video game prices across the industry, a federal judge in Seattle ruled. Judge John C. Coughenour let part of the case move forward in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, saying it's plausible Valve exploits its market dominance to threaten and retaliate against developers that sell games for less through other retailers or platforms.

The company "allegedly enforces this regime through a combination of written and unwritten rules" imposing its own conditions on how even "non-Steam-enabled games are sold and priced," Coughenour wrote. "These allegations are sufficient to plausibly allege unlawful conduct." The May 6 decision hands a win to the consumers and game publishers leading the proposed class action after the judge twice issued preliminary rulings in Valve's favor. Coughenour first ordered Steam subscribers to arbitrate their consumer claims in October, then tentatively dismissed the developer lawsuit the following month. Consumers who don't subscribe to Steam -- and never signed its arbitration agreement -- are still involved in the case. [...]

Coughenour trimmed the Valve case May 6, rejecting claims that the Steam store and gaming platform operate in separate markets the company ties together. There are no plausible allegations of any consumer demand for "fully functional gaming platforms distinct from game stores," he said. But the judge let the most-favored-nation claims move forward, walking back his earlier skepticism about the idea that Steam commissions are "supracompetitive." He had previously found that their stability over time shows Valve didn't raise prices as it gained market share. In fact, when the company competed only against brick-and-mortar retailers, it "did not need market power to charge a fee well above its cost structure because those brick-and-mortar competitors had a far higher cost structure," Coughenour wrote. That makes the analysis apples-to-oranges, he said.

Sony and Nintendo said their flagship videogame machines are likely to be in short supply all year owing to component shortages, extending a problem that has plagued both companies. From a report: "There's no end in sight to the semiconductor shortage at this point," said Nintendo's president, Shuntaro Furukawa. Sony's chief financial officer, Hiroki Totoki, said the company aimed to sell 18 million units of its PlayStation 5 videogame console in the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2023, down from a previous projection of 22.6 million. Demand is greater than what Sony can supply, he said.

Among other problems, Mr. Totoki cited Covid-19 restrictions in China, including a lockdown in Shanghai, that have made it hard for companies there to manufacture and ship parts used in game machines. "It would be likely to affect our production if the pandemic situation in China worsens, or if the lockdown expands further," he said. The PlayStation 5 has been notoriously hard to get hold of since its introduction in 2020. In the fiscal year ended March 2022, Sony said it sold 11.5 million units of the machine, falling short of the previous target of 14.8 million.

EA Sports will rename their popular FIFA game series after they failed to extend their partnership with world football's governing body. From a report: The Athletic revealed in October that EA Sports were considering renaming their gaming series and it has now been revealed it will be called EA Sports FC from 2023. EA Sports said in a statement: "After nearly 30 years of creating genre-defining interactive football experiences, we will soon begin an exciting new era. Next year, EA SPORTS FC will become the future of football from EA SPORTS. Alongside our 300+ licence partners across the sport, we're ready to take global football experiences to new heights, on behalf of all football fans around the world. Everything you love about our games will be part of EA SPORTS FC -- the same great experiences, modes, leagues, tournaments, clubs and athletes will be there. Ultimate Team, Career Mode, Pro Clubs and VOLTA Football will all be there." EA Sports have been producing an annual version of the football video game since 1993, along with various spin-off editions. It is one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time.

China's internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), has published guidelines that aim to stop minors from giving tips or other forms of payment to livestreamers, watching after 10pm, or livestreaming themselves. The Register reports: "Website platforms must not develop functional applications that attract minors to tip or induce minors to give 'gifts.' If it is found that the website platform violates the aforementioned requirements, measures such as suspending the tipping function and shutting down the live broadcast business will be implemented," said the recently published Opinions on Regulating Online Live Rewards and Strengthening the Protection of Minors (in Chinese). The opinions were issued jointly by China's Central Civilization Office, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and State Internet Information Office. The focus was to "persist in taking the socialist core values as the guide."

If minors try to circumvent the rules and use adult accounts, the platforms may be responsible for providing refunds. [...] Beijing's qualm with livestreaming and its tech is that the practice can result in physical and mental health issues, as well as create "social problems." [...] There is also concern that teenagers will spend their evenings staying up late online and therefore not have sufficient rest time, hence the 10pm curfew.

Complex Games, the developers of the new Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate -- Daemonhunters, have issued a statement to frustrated players after running a campaign where certain in-game items were only available to those who sat through some Twitch streams. From a report: While Complex probably thought they were running a fairly standard (by 2022 standards anyway) release window promotional thing, the nature of the items and the fanbase and platform in question weren't having it. Here's an example of a negative review left on the game's Steam page as a result, one of many that presumably prompted the statement: "The game would have gotten a thumbs up but for one thing. The developers for some ridiculous reason decided to put 11 ingame items(not skins or cosmetics but actual weapons and armor) behind twitch drops on the day of release. In order to get these items you not only have to create and link a Frontier account and a Twitch account but you have to watch hours and hours of inane twitch streamers prattling on instead of actually playing the game you paid for. They also are timed so if you miss them you miss them forever. If there was another way to earn these ingame it would not be a big deal..."

The Angry Joe stream was actually only 45 minutes, but their point remains. The items weren't anything fancy or game-breaking. Most of them were just very slight variations on early-game weapons and armour that you'll move past in a few hours anyway. But it's the spirit of the move -- and its mandates on player's time if they want to try out everything the game has to offer -- that has upset people as much as its practical consequences. As a result, Complex have said that every item offered during the streams will now be given away to free to all players later this month.

"While Valve has yet to actually release a proper ISO for SteamOS 3 used on the Steam Deck, others have been taking it into their own hands to provide," reports GamingOnLinux, "like with the new HoloISO.

"This is possible, since 99% of what SteamOS uses is open source (not the Steam client though)..." So people can easily hack away at it to do whatever they want. [HoloISO] is not exactly the same as SteamOS 3 but it's probably the closest I've seen yet, with the main packages coming direct from Valve with "zero possible edits" the developer says.
It's described as a "first beta release."

Neowin supplies some context: Back in early March, Valve released the Steam Deck recovery image for Deck users who need to get back to a factory state. When it was released, many of us over at the Steam OS subreddit did the first thing any reasonable enthusiast would do and tried installing it on a standard PC. The results of this approach were mixed, and only partial successes were achieved. Then HoloISO happened....

The first release, called 'Ground Zero', was released today and allows users to install Steam OS on any machine. But there are some things you need to know before installing this for yourself....
There's a bunch of caveats, but the article still concludes that "If you're team red and you want to give this a shot, head over to the project's Github page to read more and download."

Thanks to Slashdot reader segaboy81 for sharing the story!

Wordle!, an old mobile game with the same name as the viral online game Wordle, has been bought by mobile marketing firm and game maker AppLovin in an undisclosed deal. TechCrunch reports: While you may have now heard of the popular online game Wordle, later bought by The NYT, you may have missed the story earlier this year about how a mobile game of the same name was blowing up on the App Store. [Developer Steven Cravotta] said he had been surprised to find a game he created as a teenager five years ago suddenly being downloaded 40,000 times per day, up from just 10 downloads per day the month before, The WSJ had reported at the time. As it turned out, iPhone users had gone to the App Store in search of the Wordle game everyone was talking about and had been downloading Cravotta's game by mistake.

Cravotta's Wordle! game was similar to the online version that everyone was playing. He said he had created it as a teen because he wanted to make something that would challenge people's minds and be a great game for kids. But the app never took off. Cravotta promoted it for around half a year, he says, before deciding to move on to other things. "It just sat in my developer account for the longest time getting maybe one to two downloads a day for six years ... until all this craziness happened," Cravotta tells TechCrunch.

The mobile game monetized through paid advertisements and in-app purchases. While Cravotta could have tweaked the game to make even more money to capitalize on the surge of users, he left it untouched. "I just kind of let it run and do its thing," he says. According to data from Sensor Tower, the mobile game was downloaded approximately 18.9 million times. The vast majority of the installs (more than 99.6%) arrived after the web game went viral -- with downloads spiking on Jan. 12, 2022. From Feb. 12, 2022 onward, the game has seen 13.7 million downloads -- or about 72% of its lifetime installs since its April 2016 launch, the firm said. Today, the iOS game is still the No. 19 mobile game in the U.S. by average monthly active users as of the first quarter, right behind bigger titles like Among Us and just ahead of notable games like Minecraft and PUBG Mobile.

Since Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming launched two years ago, more than 10 million people worldwide have streamed games through the service. That number's likely to jump a bit higher as a result of a partnership Microsoft struck with Epic Games to offer Epic's hit title Fortnite for free through Xbox Cloud Gaming. From a report: The move will effectively let people play Fortnite in a way similar to how they stream videos from companies like Netflix, regardless of how beefy their gaming device is. Unlike previous efforts, Microsoft said this agreement applies to anyone who wants to play, with or without a subscription. Gamers will be able to play on an iPhone or iPad or a device powered by Google's Android software, even though both Apple and Google have banned Fortnite from their respective app stores amid an ongoing legal dispute. "This is just the beginning for us -- we're going to learn, implement feedback, and in time look to bring even more free-to-play titles to players through the cloud," Microsoft said in a statement. The service will be available for free in 26 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico and the US.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The New York Times' seven-figure purchase of viral hit Wordle in January was "incredibly valuable" to the company and was responsible for "an unprecedented tens of millions of new users to The Times," the media giant said in announcing its quarterly earnings (PDF) Wednesday morning. And while New York Times Co. CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said the "majority of these incremental users only played Wordle, many... stayed to play other games, which drove our best quarter ever for net subscriber additions to Games."

Levien said during an earnings call that the number of average weekly users for the Times' non-Wordle games "nearly doubled" during the quarter ending in March. The game "played an outsized role in the quarter's engagement and subscriber growth," she added. The Wordle acquisition was part of a larger effort to make The New York Times seem "more valuable to more people by helping them make the most of their lives and passions," Levien said during the call. [...] Despite all the Wordle love, Levien's remarks also offered a small hint that the Times doesn't necessarily expect the game to remain quite as strong of a draw going forward. Levien said the Times is "moving swiftly to leverage [Wordle's] massive audience to introduce Wordle players to our other games, recognizing that its audience may moderate over time." In other words, the Times seems aware that, across months and years, players may start to grow less interested in Wordle and that the simple five-letter daily guessing game may not be as consistent and long-lasting a draw as deeper and more complicated puzzles like the crossword.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, Japanese game publisher Square Enix confirmed that it was selling all three of its Western video game studios, along with many significant game series and intellectual property attached to those studios, to the European game publisher Embracer. The sale includes game studios Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and Square Enix Montreal. All three had previously been wholly owned by Square Enix, and Embracer will acquire their entire staffs, combined at roughly 1,100 people, along with popular IP such as Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Legacy of Kain, and a game-publishing catalog of "over 50 games," for $300 million.

Not all of the deal's IP has been confirmed thus far, however, and an announcement from Square Enix indicates that its Western operations "will continue to publish franchises such as Just Cause, Outriders, and Life Is Strange." This suggests that Square Enix will retain some of its Western-specific IP and that its future collaborations with Western game makers will come via publishing deals with outside developers. The report notes that Embracer "will likely also claim the rights to Tomb Raider's legacy as a Hollywood film series."

They also confirmed that "development has already begun on 'the next mainline Tomb Raider game,' complete with 'next-generation storytelling and gameplay experiences,' while several other 'AAA' projects were teased as being in development by the combined studios." Furthermore, Eidos Montreal confirmed that its next major game would be set in the world of Deus Ex.

Without adding any hardware that actually makes contact with the wearer's face, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Future Interfaces Group have modified an off-the-shelf virtual reality headset so that it recreates the sensation of touch in and around a user's mouth, finally fulfilling virtual reality's inevitable one true purpose. Gizmodo reports: The researchers upgraded what appears to be a Meta Quest 2 headset with an array of ultrasonic transducers that are all focused on the user's mouth, and it works without the need for additional accessories, or other hardware set up around the wearer. We've seen ultrasonic transducers used to levitate and move around tiny particles by blasting them with powerful sound waves before, but in this application, they create the feeling of touch on the user's lips, teeth, and even their tongue while their mouth is open. The transducers can do more than just simulate a gentle touch. By pulsing them in specific patterns, they can recreate the feeling of an object sliding or swiping across the lips, or persistent vibrations, such as the continuous splashing of water when leaning down to sip from a virtual drinking fountain.

The researchers have come up with other custom virtual reality experiences that demonstrate how their mouth haptics hardware can introduce more realism, including a hike through a spooky forest where spider webs can be felt across the face, a race where the user can feel the wind in their face, and even virtual eating experiences where food and drinks can be felt inside the mouth. But if and when someone runs with this idea and commercializes the mouth haptics hardware, we're undoubtedly going to see the world's first virtual reality kissing booth realized, among other experiences the researchers are probably wisely tip-toeing around. The paper detailing the work can be found here.

When Sony's expanded PlayStation Plus service starts rolling out next month, it will fold in PlayStation Now, which offers access to hundreds of games from older console generations. Now, it seems the company is getting even more serious about game preservation. From a report: According to Twitter and LinkedIn posts spotted by Video Games Chronicle, Sony has hired at least one engineer (Garrett Fredley, a former build engineer for mobile developer Kabam) to work on a new preservation team. "Today is my first day as a Senior Build Engineer at @PlayStation, working as one of their initial hires for the newly created Preservation team! Game Preservation was my first career passion, so I'm ecstatic that I get to go back to those roots," Fredley wrote. "Let's go and ensure our industry's history isn't forgotten!" [...] Sony historically hasn't done an incredible job with preserving games. Aside from the original PS3 models being able to run many PS1 and PS2 games, backward compatibility seemed like an afterthought until the PS5, which supports all but a few PS4 titles.

Millions of people stopped playing Call of Duty in the first quarter of 2022, as one of gaming's top franchises continued to cool off, according to Activision Blizzard's latest financial results. From a report: Call of Duty is the biggest annual franchise in gaming, so any struggles can have knock-on effects for the rest of the industry. Activision Blizzard said its Activision-branded games -- which nearly entirely consist of Call of Duty -- had 100 million monthly active users in the first three months of 2022. That's down from 107 million in the quarter before. And it's down from 150 million in the first three months of 2021. The drop comes as Microsoft presses forward on a bid to buy Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. In a press release, the company blamed the decline on "lower premium sales" for November's Call of Duty: Vanguard compared to November 2020's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. It also cited "lower engagement" for free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone and flat performance for its Call of Duty: Mobile title.

"We have worked on Overgrowth for 14 years," begins their new announcement. Development first began in 2008, and the game runs on Windows, macOS and Linux platforms. Overgrowth's page on Wikipedia describes the realistic 3D third-person action game as "set in a pre-industrial world of anthropomorphic fighter rabbits, wolves, dogs, cats and rats."

And now, "Just like they did with some earlier games, Wolfire Games have now open sourced the game code for Overgrowth," reports GamingOnLinux. "[J]ump, kick, throw, and slash your way to victory.... The source code is available on GitHub. You can buy it on Humble Store and Steam."

The Overwatch site adds as a bonus that "we're also permanently reducing the game's price by a third worldwide" (so U.S. prices drop from $29.99 to $19.99).

"Only the code is getting open sourced," the announcement notes, "not the art assets or levels, the reason is that we don't want someone to build and sell Overgrowth as their own." Wolfire CEO Max Danielsson explains in a video that "you'll still have to own the game to play and mod it." "What it does mean, however, is that everyone will have full and free access to all our source code, including the engine, project files, scripts, and shaders.

"We'll be releasing it under the Apache 2.0 license, which allows you to do whatever you want with the code, including relicensing and selling it, with very few obligations. We tried to keep this easy...

"This isn't the next big engine. We don't intend to compete with any other great open source game engines like Godot, which is a great option if you're looking for a general-purpose game engine. But if you're interested in looking at what shipped game code can look like, want to look at specific code, like the procedural animation system, or if you're an Overgrowth modder who wants to make an involved total conversion mod, then this is for you.
"We have wanted to open source Overgrowth for a long time," says the announcement on Wolfire's site, "and we are incredibly grateful to our team and community for making this happen.

"We are excited to see what people do with this code and we look forward to the spirit of Overgrowth living on for another 14 years."

Sony is building a program to let advertisers buy ads in PlayStation games. From a report: It's doing testing with adtech partners to place in-game ads, similar to an initiative by rival Microsoft. The program is expected to launch before the end of the year. Sony is working on a plan to put ads inside PlayStation games, sources said, similar to a move by Microsoft to run ads in Xbox. Three people who are involved in the plans said Sony is doing testing with adtech partners to help game developers create in-game ads through a software developer program. The idea is to encourage developers to keep building free-to-play games, which have soared in the pandemic, by giving them a way to monetize them, they said. PlayStation's current ad inventory is limited to in-menu ads like game publishers promoting their own titles in the console's store, the sources said. PlayStation also serves ads on streaming video to people who stream via their consoles through apps like Hulu .