Sony's PlayStation Vue TV service may be out this month, but never fear: YouTube TV is in.
Today, YouTube announced the app was being added to the PS Store for PS4, bringing over 70 live TV channels for $50 per month. The app has been available on Xbox One since 2017, and is not currently available on the Nintendo Switch (though the free YouTube app is).
This comes just over a week before Sony shuts down its own TV service, PS Vue, for good. The company announced it would be hitting the brakes back in October, citing the competitive nature of paid TV and the slow change of business models as factors. PS Vue stopped taking new subscribers some time ago, and will fully end for existing subscribers on January 30. Prior to its termination, the cheapest PS Vue plan was $50 per month for around 45 channels.
Currently, the Sony PS Vue page specifically recommends interested users to "please consider YouTube TV as a cable-free live TV alternative."

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...-vue-moves-out ...

RetroArch v1.8.4 is released. RetroArch is a multi-system emulator for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and *BSD. It is formerly known as SSNES. Its design and background is quite different than most other emulators as RetroArch does not implement an emulation core itself. RetroArch talks to libretro, a generic emulator core API. This means that RetroArch is core agnostic, and it does not care which emulator core is running.

Currently there are libretro implementations for systems such as SNES, NES, GBA, GB/GBC, Genesis, and even arcade games (Final Burn Alpha).

libretro isn't only usable for emulators. A preliminary port of an open source reimplementation of Cave Story has been ported to libretro as well.

RetroArch believes in modularity. The application itself is a command-line driven application suitable for HTPC and/or headless use. There also exists a GUI frontend for RetroArch, supporting every single config option available in RetroArch.

http://www.libretro.com/

http://www.emucr.com/2020/01/retroarch-v184.html ...

It's a far cry from the widespread opprobrium that greeted the bizarre live TV focus of the original Xbox One, but it would be fair to say that Microsoft's announcement that it won't be releasing any exclusive titles for the Xbox Series X at launch has not exactly been popular.
At best, it's got fans of the platform cautiously welcoming the decision as a sign of continued strong support for the Xbox One consoles -- albeit with an undercurrent of concern that no doubt stems from the fact that the last time Microsoft messed with the tried-and-tested formula for console launches it did not exactly go well. At worst, it's making a lot of consumers wonder what, exactly, the argument for buying a Series X will be this winter, expressing a not unjustified sense that the case for the Series X just got a lot harder when it'll be competing against both cheaper Xbox One consoles that play the same games and the PlayStation 5 (which will have exclusive games).
These are reasonable stances because, beyond a doubt, Microsoft's decision on exclusives is going to make life more difficult for the Xbox Series X in the early months and perhaps even years of its existence. It's not something that the console can't possibly overcome, but it's going to be playing the game on a tougher difficulty setting than would have been the case otherwise. After the unforced errors on Microsoft's part which helped to hand such a commanding lead to Sony in the previous generation, it's easy to understand why Xbox fans conscious of history's inclination to form rhyming verse would feel a bit uneasy with this latest announcement.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...green-platform ...

In the games industry, when something works, you do it again and again until it stops working. And sometimes you keep doing it even then.
With more than 100 million PS4s sold and a commanding lead over the Xbox One from start to finish this generation, it's fair to say that Sony's marketing plan for the system's launch worked, which is part of what makes Sony's announcement this week that it would be skipping E3 2020 so shocking.
While not entirely unprecedented -- Sony did skip E3 last year as well, after all -- this still represents a massive departure from what worked for the company heading into its last console launch, when the PS4 debuted directly opposite the Xbox One and soundly trounced the competition.
In fact, E3 2013 was perhaps Sony's single most impactful moment in the lead-up to the PlayStation 4 launch. The week before E3, Microsoft confirmed that Xbox One would require an online connection and give publishers the option to disallow second-hand sales of retail games by tying the disc to the first Xbox One that plays it, a massive anti-consumer shift away from the status quo. When Microsoft's press briefing came and went without that elephant being forcibly ejected from the room, Sony took advantage during its own press briefing the next day.



https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ention-opinion ...

Polinym strikes again, this time with something that ISN’T a localization!
Polinym and Mareeta present… EightBound, a one-of-a-kind Final Fantasy experience.
EightBound is a hack that changes EarthBound into a brand new Final Fantasy game. It is a full conversion of menus, weapons, spells, items, enemies, bosses, and everything else to Final Fantasy equivalents. It also features a whole host of new content on its own. It’s a combination of every type of hack coated with a Final Fantasy theme.
EarthBound was an atypical RPG for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It played similar to the Dragon Quest series.
EightBound began as Polinym’s attempt to get his associate, Mareeta, to play EarthBound. She didn’t like the MOTHER series, but she did like Final Fantasy. So Polinym began a simple text hack with a few sprite changes to make it more appealing. Mareeta quickly jumped on board the project, all sorts of new ideas sprung up, and it took off. With the additions of new bosses, spells, story conversions, gameplay ideas, and more ways to make it Final Fantasy, EightBound became a whole new game on its own.
EightBound’s battle system was made to be much faster and more exciting. Battle messages cut out all the unnecessary fluff and get right to the punch. This results in battles akin to the Final Fantasy series that leave you on the edge of your seat. It also takes advantage of the rolling MP meter system throughout the WHOLE game, unlike the original game.
EightBound corrects some of the frustrations and balancing flaws of the original game. The game now is completely free of tedious sidequests with no fights. Items dropped by enemies are now much more logical (ex. Enemies who inflict Poison drop Antidotes, all items drop at reasonable rates unlike EB’s 1/128 chance drops, valuable weapons/gear are only dropped by bosses). NPCs now give more helpful hints, so your next objective will always be clear.
However, EightBound also attempts to be a significantly more challenging game than EarthBound. EightBound is filled to the brim with powerful bosses, each with carefully planned movesets so that every boss has a specific strength and weakness. No two boss fights are the same! It also contains about 50% MORE bosses than the original game! Only true experts will be able to reach the credits!
The story was rewritten to contain Final Fantasy themes and characters. It is based on Final Fantasy VIII, following Squall and his friends’ quest to stop Ultimecia from destroying the world. However, it takes a more comedic approach as a parody of both EarthBound AND the Final Fantasy series. Characters and content from all the series make appearances.
EightBound prides itself on not merely picking Final Fantasy content at random. Polinym and Mareeta took special care to ensure that everything picked was memorable, and accurately reflects the experiences that players had with that content.
All sorts of other new additions can be found in EightBound. Save Moogles, which allow you more opportunities to save your game, hassle-free, kupo! Four Fiends!Hold Y to sprint, and get around faster! Espers! “Spell-casting items”, which grant new moves when used in battle, allowing for greater character customization! Cheat protection! Crystals! Cloud Strife! Boss Rush mode, where you fight a series of bosses to gain new power! Post-game content out the wazoo! Explore previously-visited areas to find it all!
You can even enjoy EightBound even if you’ve never played a Final Fantasy game in your life! It pays homage to all sorts of other things like Dragon Quest, Legend of Dragoon, Jane Austen, Star Wars, Castlevania, Xenoblade Chronicles, Super Mario Bros., Banjo-Kazooie, Wuthering Heights, Match Game ‘76, The Twilight Zone, Crash Bandicoot, Donkey Kong 64, and more!
A special TRAILER was also made to go with the release, which you check out using the RELEVANT LINK, or here: ( )
EightBound truly offers something for everyone.

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=29876 ...

An online auction of rare gaming items and more is the latest industry effort to raise money towards helping fight against the Australian bushfires.
Organised by a small group of Australian developers, led by Defiant Development founder Morgan Jaffit, the initiative is called Game Devs For Firies and follows a similar format to the recent #AuthorsForFireys auction.
Starting tomorrow (Tuesday, January 14), games companies and professionals will be offering signed games, one-off experiences, services and more via the hashtags #gamedevsforfiries and #gamedevsforfireys.
The highest bidder for each item will be instructed on how to donate directly to an Australian state fire service, either of the seller's nomination or the bidder's choice. Once they proof the donation has been made, their prize will be dispatched.
Jaffit himself is offering a signed copy of the Hand of Fate, plus the board game version and "a one-hour tarot reading/real-life Hand of Fate RP experience."

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...-fire-services ...

PlayStation 5 may not be heading to Los Angeles this June, but Xbox Series X certainly will.
In the wake of Sony's revelation to GamesIndustry.biz that it will not be attending E3 for the second year in a row, Xbox boss Phil Spencer took to Twitter to assure that his company would still be present.
"Our team is hard at work on E3, and we look forward to sharing with all who love to play what's ahead of us," he wrote. "Our artform has consistently been propelled by the cross-section of creativity and technical progress. 2020 is a milestone year in that journey for Team Xbox."
Both Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 are due on shelves this Christmas. While the two platform holders will almost certainly host their own reveal events prior to E3, as they have in past generations, the LA-based showcase has historically been a crucial event in building up hype ahead of a new machine.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...-be-at-e3-2020 ...

• It's the first Cemu update of the new year! It may not be as drastic of an update as the previous one, which finally gave us the Vulkan renderer we'd all been waiting for, but v1.16.1 brings with it some much-appreciated fixes under the hood. Various minor issues regarding Vulkan were ironed out, including removing unnecessary calls to certain variables, fixing some graphical bugs, and better index decoding for supported CPU's. If you like keeping your Cemu up to date with the latest and greatest version available, be sure to go check out the official Cemu site, to get the new update.
  

  general: Online mode can only be enabled if all required files are dumped
  general: The DLC migration assistent will now also detect if DLC is installed in multiple redundant locations
  general: Fixed an issue where clicking the background of the shader loading screen would hide the status info (#224)
  general: Fixed a typo in the UI (#230)
  general: Updated language files
  
  Vulkan: Various optimizations
  - Avoid redundant calls to vkCmdBindDescriptorSets
  - Accelerated u32 index decoding by using AVX2 if supported by CPU
  - Avoid unnecessary checks if states were not modified by any PM4 commands since previous drawcall
  
  Vulkan: Fixed a bug where the renderer would use the wrong graphics pipeline, leading to driver crashes or graphical corruptions
  Vulkan: Cemu will only use vkvalidation/ as validation layer path (VK_LAYER_PATH) if vkvalidation/VkLayer_khronos_validation.dll exists
  Vulkan: Minor additions to logging to help troubleshoot Vulkan issues
  
  Note:
  (#xx) refers to bug tracker issues resolved by this change. See http://bugs.cemu.info/projects/cemu/
  Click to expand...

  Source
  
  https://gbatemp.net/threads/cemu-emu...rmance.555582/

...

It's rare for a company to have such a strong entry into the games market as Sony did with the original PlayStation. What started as a collaborative project with Nintendo in the late '80s soon turned into its own product, taking the market by storm in 1994 in Japan and much of the rest of the world the following year. In March 1999, Sony told investors that it had shipped 54.42 million consoles, a figure that went north of 70 million over the following 12 months.
But the people heading up Sony's brand new video game venture knew that it wasn't enough to just do well the once -- you needed to land another smash hit in the bag before you could consider yourself successful. Going into the PlayStation 2's launch, there was a degree of trepidation among Sony's leaders, all of whom had been in the industry for a while and knew what a fickle beast it could be.
"It was always in the back of my mind," says Chris Deering, who was Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) Europe's boss at the time. "If PlayStation was ever successful, the real proof would be to have the follow up come out and do as well or maybe better."Jack Tretton, who was heading up SCE US, adds: "Everybody was euphoric coming off the success of PlayStation. We had set the bar high but it really exceeded our expectations. Going into PlayStation 2, we were certainly confident, but we were also cautious because it was very rare that the leader of one generation could hold that position in the next. There was a great deal of trepidation not to get caught up in our success and to make sure that we redoubled our efforts going into the next generation."
The original PlayStation had been targeted towards a broad audience. There was promotion aimed at bringing kids on board, like the goofy and colourful Society Against PlayStation commercials, as well as marketing like the rather gruesome print ad featuring two women with bleeding noses for WipEout. For the PS2, however, SCE wanted to bring in a more mature audience. This was part of the reason why Twin Peaks creator David Lynch was hired to make the unsurprisingly bizarre The Third Place trailer.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...world-by-storm ...