CD Projekt Red is still trying to contain the damage from widespread reports of major technical problems in the versions of Cyberpunk 2077 released for the PS4 and Xbox One last month. From a report: To that end, studio co-founder and CEO Marcin Iwinski today tweeted a video message seeking to explain the internal situation leading up to the problematic launch. "Despite good reviews on PC, the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standard we wanted it to meet," Iwinski said in the message. "I, and the entire leadership team, are deeply sorry for this, and this video is me publicly owning up to that." The core of the problem, Iwinski said, was the "in-game streaming system" that Cyberpunk 2077 used to "feed" content and game mechanics to the engine without frequent breaks for loading. That system had to be "constantly improved" for last-gen consoles during development, Iwinski said, in order to keep up with the "epic" look of the PC version (which saw its graphics and other assets scaled down to work on more limited, older console hardware).

"Things did not look super difficult at first, [but] I think that time has proven we underestimated the task," Iwinski said. "Because the city is so packed and the disk bandwidth of old-gen consoles is what it is, it constantly challenged us." winski was less direct about why these problems with the console versions weren't discovered and either fixed or delayed before launch. "Every change and improvement needed to be tested, and as it turned out, our testing did not show a big part of the issues you experienced while playing the game," Iwinski said. He added that communication problems caused by the team working from home amid COVID-related restrictions meant some issues got lost over video calls or emails. "We saw significant improvements each and every day leading up to release [and] really thought we'd deliver in the day zero [version on consoles]," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The "instant on" feature that's activated by default on new Xbox Series S/X consoles could suck up a total of 4 billion kWh -- the equivalent of a year's operation for a large power plant -- from US owners alone through 2025. That's according to a preliminary report released this week from the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmentally focused nonprofit advocacy group. As the name implies, the "instant on" feature of the Series S/X (and the Xbox One before it) lets users skip the usual startup time when turning the console back on. That saves about 10 to 15 seconds of waiting per power cycle on the Series S/X, down from about 45 seconds on the Xbox One.

"Instant on" standby also lets the system check periodically for system updates in order to download and install them in between play sessions. But leaving the "instant on" feature active means the Xbox Series S/X draws nine to 10 watts of power 24 hours a day -- even when it's not being actively used -- compared to less than 1W if the standby settings are switched to "energy saving" mode. The Xbox Series S/X initially drew 25 to 28W of "instant on" standby power at launch, but a recent firmware update caused a dramatic reduction, placing the new systems below the ~13W drawn by the Xbox One's "instant on" mode. The PlayStation 5, by contrast, uses between 1 and 2 watts when sitting idle in "rest mode."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Somehow, it's already been two decades since Microsoft first announced the Xbox, its foray into console gaming. Specifically, the Xbox was unveiled at CES in 2001 -- to commemorate that launch, Bloomberg has published an in-depth oral history of how the console came to be. It's a fascinating read, but one particular passage stands out: details on Microsoft's efforts to secure games for the brand-new console. While the company implored third-party developers to work on the Xbox, Microsoft also considered using its considerable financial might to buy developers. And Microsoft set its sights high, approaching Nintendo about an acquisition. Microsoft was laughed out of the room, says Kevin Bachus, a director for third-party relations on the Xbox project. "They just laughed their asses off," Bachus said to Bloomberg. "Like, imagine an hour of somebody just laughing at you. That was kind of how that meeting went."

Microsoft's specific pitch did make some amount of sense. At the time, Nintendo was lagging behind Sony badly from a hardware perspective. So Microsoft figured it could take on hardware production and leave Nintendo to focus on the software. "We actually had Nintendo in our building in January 2000 to work through the details of a joint venture where we gave them all the technical specs of the Xbox," said head of business development Bob Mcbreen. "The pitch was their hardware stunk, and compared to Sony PlayStation, it did. So the idea was, 'Listen, you're much better at the game portions of it with Mario and all that stuff. Why don't you let us take care of the hardware?â(TM) But it didn't work out."

It might have taken more than 20 years, but a game intended for the original PlayStation has at last made its way into the world. Engadget reports: A group of Japanese developers worked on Magic Castle for eight months in the late '90s. They used Sony's Net Yaroze, a system with which hobbyists could make games for the console. The team sent the RPG to several publishers, but most didn't bite. Sony showed interest, but it wanted the developers to ditch their game and move to a different project. The team rejected the offer and later disbanded. And so the unfinished Magic Castle stayed on the shelf for over 20 years. Until now.

One of the developers, who goes by PIROWO, rediscovered the Magic Castle source code a while back. They decided to finish and release it, four console generations later. Magic Castle has some interesting tricks up its sleeve, as EuroGamer notes. It features dynamic music and you can customize the position of the user interface. There are four character classes to choose from and 20 floors with randomized elements to make your way through. You can download the game from the Internet Archive and play it with an emulator.

Discovery+, the new streaming channel from Discovery, is officially available in the U.S.. "The list of places where you can download Discovery+ is extensive, with almost every popular platform but the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 included in the company's launch slate," reports Engadget. From the report: Most notably, you can access the app through Amazon Fire TV streaming devices and Fire Edition TVs -- with support for Prime Video Channels coming at a later date. At launch, Discovery also supports Roku devices and 2017 and later Samsung Smart TVs. Typically, Amazon Fire TV and Roku are left out of streaming launches. Of course, you can also access Discovery+ through Apple TV and Android TV if you have those instead.

Discovery+ will set you back $5 per month for the base tier. It's an extra $2 every month if you don't want to see any ads. At launch, you'll find content from channels like HGTV, Food Network, Animal Planet, TLC and of course Discovery. The $5 and $7 price tags put Discovery+ in competition with other specialty services like Peacock and Disney+, which may make it a tough sell for some people.

Phoronix reports: It's been a turbulent year and 2020 is certainly ending interesting in the Linux/open-source space... If it wasn't odd enough seeing Sony providing a new official Linux driver for their PlayStation 5 DualSense controller for ending out the year, there is also a new Linux port to the Nintendo 64 game console... Yes, a brand new port to the game console that launched more than two decades ago.

Open-source developer Lauri Kasanen who has contributed to Mesa and the Linux graphics stack took to developing a new Nintendo 64 port and announced it this Christmas day. This isn't the first time Linux has been ported to the N64 but prior attempts weren't aimed at potentially upstreaming it into the mainline Linux kernel...

This fresh port to the N64 was pursued in part to help port emulators and frame-buffer or console games.
And also, the announcement adds, "Most importantly, because I can."

CD Projekt SA, the Polish video-game publisher of Cyberpunk 2077, was sued by an investor who claims the company misled him about the potential of the error-plagued game whose botched release this month caused shares to dive. From a report: Andrew Trampe sued Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles and seeks to represent other investors who bought the company's securities. CD Projekt failed to disclose that Cyberpunk 2077 was "virtually unplayable on the current-generation Xbox or Playstation systems due to an enormous number of bugs," according to the complaint. As a result, Sony Corp. removed Cyberpunk 2077 from the Playstation store, and Sony, Microsoft and the company were forced to offer full refunds for the game, according to the complaint.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Phys.Org: Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered a way to make self-assembled nanowires of transition metal chalcogenides at scale using chemical vapor deposition. By changing the substrate where the wires form, they can tune how these wires are arranged, from aligned configurations of atomically thin sheets to random networks of bundles. This paves the way to industrial deployment in next-gen industrial electronics, including energy harvesting, and transparent, efficient, even flexible devices.

Using a process called chemical vapor deposition (CVD), they found that they could assemble TMC nanowires in different arrangements depending on the surface or substrate that they use as a template. Examples are shown in Figure 2; in (a), nanowires grown on a silicon/silica substrate form a random network of bundles; in (b), the wires assemble in a set direction on a sapphire substrate, following the structure of the underlying sapphire crystal. By simply changing where they are grown, the team now have access to centimeter-sized wafers covered in the arrangement they desired, including monolayers, bilayers and networks of bundles, all with different applications. They also found that the structure of the wires themselves were highly crystalline and ordered, and that their properties, including their excellent conductivity and 1D-like behavior, matched those found in theoretical predictions. The research has been published in the journal Nano Letters.

Sony has published a new "hid-playstation" Linux kernel driver for bringing up the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller and will also be used for supporting other PlayStation hardware on Linux. Phoronix reports: This new Linux kernel driver supports the PlayStation 5 "DualSense" game controller both in USB and Bluetooth modes. All key functionality along with LEDs, motion sensors, touchpad, battery, lightbar, and rumble are all supported by this official Sony Linux driver. The Linux kernel already has the existing "hid-sony" driver while this PlayStation 5 game controller comes with the hid-playstation driver. In announcing the new driver, they are planning to move some of the Sony Interactive Entertainment hardware support from the existing hid-sony to hid-playstation drivers. The hid-sony driver will continue to be maintained and used by broader Sony devices. This new driver follows the move from about a year ago of Sony "officially" maintaining the hid-sony Linux input driver.

This new driver comes in at just over 1,400 lines of code in its initial form catering to the PS5 controller. When transitioning support for older hardware to this new driver there is also a promise of unit test coverage and more. The new HID-PlayStation driver is currently under review and isn't yet queued up for mainlining but those wanting to try it out can find the 13 patches up for testing.

Microsoft is following Sony's move and offering Cyberpunk 2077 refunds to anyone who has purchased the game digitally. It is not however pulling the game from the Microsoft Store. The Verge reports: "We know the developers at CD Projekt Red have worked hard to ship Cyberpunk in extremely challenging circumstances," explains a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. "However, we also realize that some players have been unhappy with the current experience on older consoles. To date, we have granted refunds to the vast majority of customers who have requested one. To ensure that every player is able to get the experience they expect on Xbox, we will be expanding our existing refund policy to offer full refunds to anyone who purchased Cyberpunk 2077 digitally from the Microsoft Store, until further notice."

If you're interested in a Microsoft Store refund, you can follow the steps on Microsoft's support page.

Rebellion is in the air at Polish video game publisher CD Projekt after the company's highly anticipated, and thrice-delayed, latest title was released to scathing reviews about glitches. Bloomberg News reports: Frustrated and angry staff fired questions at the board during an internal video meeting Thursday that opened with management apologizing for Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous launch, according to two people who were present. It was a fitting atmosphere for a company whose slogan, plastered on posters all around its Warsaw office, is "We are rebels." Developers asked blunt questions about the company's reputation, the game's unrealistic deadlines and the relentless overtime in the months and years leading up to the game's Dec. 10 release. The meeting took place before Sony's shocking announcement that it was pulling Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and will offer full refunds to any customer who requests one. During the staff meeting, CD Projekt's directors said they had come to an arrangement with Sony but didn't offer specifics. In a Twitter post on Friday, the company said that "following our discussion with PlayStation, a decision was made to temporarily suspend digital distribution" of the game.

Sony is pulling Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and offering full refunds for anyone who bought the game from the digital storefront, the company said on Thursday. The Verge reports: If you want to start a refund, Sony says to visit this site and sign into your PlayStation account to submit a request. The game has already been removed from the PlayStation Store for a few Verge staffers on their PS5s, and the game doesn't come up in a search for "Cyberpunk 2077" on the web version of the store.

Players have found that Cyberpunk 2077, which has only been out for a week, has been riddled with bugs. The game looks good on PS5, but in my few hours with the game, I've run into a few complete crashes to the PS5's home screen and a number of distracting visual glitches. On PS4, the game fares a lot worse -- Eurogamer reported poor performance, low framerate, and texture pop-in. Further reading: 'Cyberpunk 2077' Players Are Fixing Parts of the Game Before CD Projekt

Computer programs that automate online tasks, called bots, have aligned with the coronavirus pandemic and low inventories of hot products to create a perfect storm of holiday disappointment -- or opportunity, depending on your perspective. From a report: On Black Friday, when it launched a deal on the console, Walmart.com says it blocked more than 20 million bot attempts in the sale's first 30 minutes. Target says it's constantly tracking and blocking bots, focusing on high-demand products such as the PS5. One British retailer called Very said it canceled at least 1,000 game console orders after it realized they were placed by bots. Using shopping bots to buy these products is perfectly legal in the United States, despite flustering retailers and stoking annoyance for customers like Coleman. Some bot operators are modern scalpers, in it to make money by forcing Santa to pay market prices. Others are computer-savvy shoppers now turning to bots out of desperation to fill their own gift lists.

Shopping bots aren't new, but their use is growing fast. Deployed by people who buy and resell tickets, high-end sneakers and designer fashion, they're now expanding into other categories where demand outstrips supply -- including grocery delivery slots at the height of the pandemic. Imperva, a cybersecurity firm, says that among its clients, "bad bots" accounted for 24.1 percent of all traffic in 2019 -- up from 20.4 percent in 2018. Bots are only one part of the PS5 crunch -- there have even been daring heists. But stopping the use of bots is easier said than done in an Internet economy that connects so many different interests: companies that want to make highly sought-after products and early adopters who will do anything to get them.

Google's cloud gaming service now supports the iPhone and iPad. As expected, the company is using a web app to access the service. From a report: Google also says that you need to update to iOS 14.3, the latest iOS update that was released earlier this week. If you want to try it out with a free or paid Stadia account, you can head over to stadia.google.com from your iOS device. Log in to your Google account, add a shortcut to your home screen and open the web app. After that, you can launch a game and start playing. Most games will require a gamepad, so you might want to pair a gamepad with your iPhone or iPad as well. Apple's iOS supports Xbox One and PlayStation 4 controllers using Bluetooth as well as controllers specifically designed for iOS. You can also play with the Stadia controller, but it's optional. If you just want to check your inventory quickly, Stadia on iOS also supports touch controls.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: GameStop employees across the country were caught by surprise on Saturday when the video-game chain suddenly announced new shipments of the highly coveted PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, sending customers flocking to stores. Workers at the U.S. retailer, speaking to Bloomberg and posting on social media, said they had received little notice for the restock and that the crowds were both chaotic and a risk to their health. The latest generation devices from Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have been in short supply since their release last month, leaving gamers everywhere eager for the latest restock. On Saturday afternoon, GameStop told customers that new inventory was arriving, but that it would only be available to pre-order in stores, not online, where scalpers have dominated digital queues. However, employees found out less than an hour before the public, according to GameStop staffers, which left them unprepared for the rush of customers.

One GameStop manager on the East Coast shared an email from the company, sent just a few minutes before the public announcement, saying that their store would have about 15 new consoles available for pre-order. Minutes after the announcement, the manager said, the store had a crowd of about 40 people, violating social-distancing requirements and overwhelming their clerks. GameStop said its last-minute notification to customers was meant to ensure that individuals, not resellers, were able to purchase the consoles. "We realize that in some situations our approach of notifying customers of this opportunity may have caused unintended reactions from both our associates and customers," GameStop said in a statement. "We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

The rush occurred as GameStop is facing widespread staffing shortages as the retailer has asked stores across the country to cut hours, the manager said. GameStop, which has been struggling in recent years amid the widespread adoption of digital games, reported a disappointing third quarter last week, sending the stock falling as much as 22%. The retailer has shuttered almost 700 stores this year and will close more locations through 2022 while it continues to cut costs, although it expects to see a sales bump this quarter thanks to the new consoles. On Reddit, GameStop employees are sharing similar complaints, telling stories of big lines and unruly crowds.

The success of Nintendo's diminutive gadget led to a flurry of copycats, from a tiny Commodore 64 to a miniaturised Sony PlayStation. Some were good; many were flawed, with the play experience only being surface deep. Fortunately, some companies wanted to go further than fashioning yet another miniature plug-and-play TV console. From a report: One, the ZX Spectrum Next, brought into being a machine from an alternate universe in which Sinclair was never sold to Amstrad and instead built a computer to take on the might of the Amiga and Atari ST. Two other companies headed further back into gaming's past and set themselves an equally ambitious challenge: recreating the exciting, noisy, visually arresting classic cabinets you once found in arcades. "I always saw them as more than just a game, with their unique shapes, art, sounds and lights acting together to lure money from your pocket," explains Matt Precious, managing partner at Quarter Arcades creators Numskull Designs. "I was disappointed you couldn't purchase models of these machines during a time when physical items like LPs were booming in an increasingly sterile world of digital downloads."

Quarter Arcades was subsequently born as a project "trying to capture a piece of gaming history" in quarter-scale cabinets. The machines are in exact scale, including the controls, and play the original arcade ROMs. But look closer and there's an obsessive level of detail: the rough texture of the control panel art; mimicking an original cab's acoustics by careful speaker positioning; recreating the Space Invaders 'Pepper's ghost' illusion effect where graphics 'float' above an illuminated backdrop -- all realised by dismantling and reverse-engineering original cabs.

According to a Sony patent spotted by T3, the console maker may be working on a new PlayStation 5 with two graphics card. From the report: The patent describes a "scalable game console" where "a second GPU [is] communicatively coupled to the first GPU" and that the system is for "home console and cloud gaming" usage. To us here at T3 that suggests a next-gen PlayStation console, most likely a new PS5 Pro flagship, supercharged with two graphics cards instead of just one. These would both come in the APU (accelerated processing unit) format that the PlayStation 5's system-on-a-chip (SoC) do, with two custom made AMD APUs working together to deliver enhanced gaming performance and cloud streaming.

The official Sony patent notes that, "plural SoCs may be used to provide a 'high-end' version of the console with greater processing and storage capability," while "the 'high end' system can also contain more memory such as random-access memory (RAM) and other features and may also be used for a cloud-optimized version using the same game console chip with more performance." And, with the PlayStation 5 console only marginally weaker on paper than the Xbox Series X (the PS5 delivers 10.28 teraflops compared to the Xbox Series X's 12 teraflops), a new PS5 Pro console that comes with two APUs rather than one, improving local gaming performance as well as cloud gaming, would be no doubt the Xbox Series X as king of the next-gen consoles death blow.

The cloud gaming part of the patent is particularly interesting, too, as it seems to suggest that this technology could not just find itself in a new flagship PS5 Pro console, but also in more streamlined cloud-based hardware, too. An upgraded PS5 Digital Edition seems a smart bet, as too the much-rumored PSP 5G. [...] Will we see a PS5 Pro anytime soon? Here at T3 we think absolutely not -- we imagine we'll get at least two straight years of PS5 before we see anything at all. As for a cloud-based next-gen PSP 5G, though...

Joe2020 writes: Famous developer Hector Martin who put Linux on the PS4 now wants to port Linux to the new Apple M1, and he wants to do it with the help of crowdfunding by making it his full-time job. One can find his official pledge for support here. "Since these devices are brand new and bespoke silicon, porting Linux to run on them is a huge undertaking. Well beyond a hobby project, it is a full-time job," the developer explains.

"The goal is to bring Linux support on Apple Silicon macs to the point where it is not merely a tech demo, but is actually an OS you would want to use on a daily driver device. To do this, there is a huge amount of work to be done. Running Linux on things is easy, but making it work well is hard. Drivers need to be written for all devices. The driver for the completely custom Apple GPU is the most complicated component, which is necessary to have a good desktop experience. Power management needs to work well too, for your battery life to be reasonable," the dev explains. Martin says he hopes to have enough donations to purchase the new Apple Silicon-powered devices and hire other people to help with the job.

Slashdot reader NoMoreACs also shared the news via Mac Rumors.

We know that time and money spent on video games is surging due to the pandemic. Now, industry-tracking firm The NPD Group is providing detail on where that growth is coming from. From a report: And it turns out that people across all age demographics are playing more games more often. That's big for mobile games, but it also includes Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox. In its "2020 Evolution of Entertainment" report, NPD found that 4-out-of-5 consumers in the U.S. played a game in the last six months. More important for the industry, those consumers are spending 26% more time and 33% more money on games than the same period in the previous year. But this isn't just coming from young people. Older demographics are turning to games more often as they find themselves with money they can no longer spend on dining out or attending live events. Spending on video games for Americans 45 years old-to-54 years old increased 76%. People age 55-to-64 increased their spending 29%.

A new bug in the PlayStation game Spider-Man: Miles Morales "turns Miles into various inanimate objects, including bricks, cardboard boxes, and even a trash can," reports GameSpot: Despite Miles' changed appearance, he can still perform many of his heroic antics, including web-swinging and beating up bad guys. It's an important lesson to all of us in these trying times: You might look like trash, but you can still do your job.
Today Engadget reports that the glitch even turns Spider-Man into a patio heater: If you've ever wanted to keep people toasty warm while fighting crime, now's your chance.

We've asked [the game's creator] Insomniac Games for comment, although it already tweeted that the hiccup was "equally embarrassing as it is heart-warming." Into the Spider-Verse's Phil Lord joked that the heater would find its way into the sequel if the team had "any self respect at all."