According to Bloomberg, Sony has paused production of its PlayStation VR 2 virtual reality headset, as sales have "slowed progressively" since its February 2023 launch. Road to VR reports: Citing people familiar with the company's plans, Sony has produced "well over 2 million units" since launch, noting that stocks of the $550 headset are building up. The report alleges the surplus is "throughout Sony's supply chain," indicating the issue isn't confined to a single location, but is spread across different stages of Sony's production and distribution network. This follows news that Sony Interactive Entertainment laid off eight percent of the company, which affected a number of its first-party game studios also involved in VR game production. Sony entirely shuttered its London Studio, which created VR action-adventure game Blood & Truth (2019), and reduced headcount at Firesprite, the studio behind PSVR 2 exclusive Horizon Call of the Mountain.

Meanwhile, Sony is making PSVR 2 officially compatible with PC VR games, as the company hopes to release some sort of PC support for the headset later this year. How and when Sony will do that is still unknown, although the move underlines just how little confidence the company has in its future lineup of exclusive content just one year after launch of PSVR 2.

Soon you might be able to compete in games against friends and colleagues and even the office next door on LinkedIn. From a report: The Microsoft-owned company is reportedly planning to add a new game experience to the platform. According to TechCrunch, the experience is designed to tap into the same popularity of games like Wordle. Players' scores will be sorted by their workplace and ranked, allowing you to take on another office or even across the country. App researcher Nima Owji posted photos of the gaming experience on Twitter/X on Saturday. A representative from LinkedIn confirmed to TechCrunch that the company is working on adding puzzle-based games to the LinkedIn experience as a way to "unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: When Nintendo sued the developers of Yuzu out of existence on March 4th, it wasn't just an attack on the leading way to play Nintendo Switch games without a Switch. It was a warning to anyone building a video game emulator. Seven developers have now stepped away from projects, are shutting them down, or have left the emulation scene entirely. Of those that remain, many are circling the wagons, getting quieter and more careful, trying not to paint targets on their backs. Four developers declined to talk to The Verge, telling me they didn't want to draw attention. One even tried to delete answers to my questions after we'd begun, suddenly scared of attracting press.

Not everyone is so afraid. Four other emulator teams tell me they're optimistic Nintendo won't challenge them, that they're on strong legal footing, and that Yuzu may have been an unusually incriminating case. One decade-long veteran tells me everyone's just a bit more worried. But when I point out that Nintendo didn't have to prove a thing in court, they all admit they don't have money for lawyers. They say they'd probably be forced to roll over, like Yuzu, if the Japanese gaming giant came knocking. "I would do what I'd have to do," the most confident of the four tells me. "I would want to fight it... but at the same time, I know we exist because we don't antagonize Nintendo."

There's a new meme where Yuzu is the mythical Hydra: cut off one head, and two more take its place. It's partly true in how multiple forks of Yuzu (and 3DS emulator Citra) sprung up shortly after their predecessors died: Suyu, Sudachi, Lemonade, and Lime are a few of the public names. But they're not giving Nintendo the middle finger: they're treating Nintendo's lawsuit like a guidebook about how not to piss off the company. In its legal complaint, Nintendo claimed Yuzu was "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale," giving users "detailed instructions" on how to "get it running with unlawful copies of Nintendo Switch games," among other things. Okay, no more guides, say the Switch emulator developers who spoke to me. They also say they're stripping out some parts of Yuzu that made it easier to play pirated games. As Ars Technica reported, a forked version called Suyu will require you to bring the firmware, title.keys, and prod.keys from your Switch before you can decrypt and play Nintendo games. Only one of those was technically required before. (Never mind that most people don't have an easily hackable first-gen Switch and would likely download these things off the net.) The developer of another fork tells me he plans to do something similar, making users "fend for yourself" by making sure the code doesn't auto-generate any keys.

Most developers I spoke to are also trying to make it clear they aren't profiting at Nintendo's expense. One who initially locked early access builds behind a donation page has stopped doing that, making them publicly available on GitHub instead. The leader of another project tells me nothing will ever be paywalled, and for now, there's "strictly no donation," either. When I ask about the Dolphin Emulator, which faced a minor challenge from Nintendo last year, I'm told it publicly exposes its tiny nonprofit budget for anyone to scrutinize. But I don't know that these steps are enough to prevent Nintendo from throwing around its weight again, particularly when it comes to emulating the Nintendo Switch, its primary moneymaker. Since Yuzu's shut down, a slew of other emulators left the scene. The include (as highlighted by The Verge):

- The Citra emulator for Nintendo 3DS is gone
- The Pizza Boy emulators for Nintendo Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color are gone
- The Drastic emulator for Nintendo DS is free for now and will be removed
- The lead developer of Yuzu and Citra has stepped away from emulation
- The lead developer of Strato, a Switch emulator, has stepped away from emulation
- Dynarmic, used to speed up various emulators including Yuzu, has abruptly ended development
- One contributor on Ryujinx, a Switch emulator, has stepped away from the project
- AetherSX2, a PS2 emulator, is finally gone (mostly unrelated; development was suspended a year ago)

Tom Warren reports via The Verge: Discord will soon allow developers to build new games and apps that can be used directly in its chat app. A selection of minigames and apps have been available to Discord users for months now, but starting March 18th, all Discord developers will get access to a new Embedded App SDK that lets them build these special embedded apps. Discord has used its Activities feature to enable apps like YouTube, promote minigames like poker, and even encourage users to play with a shared whiteboard experience. These apps all appear as an embedded iframe inside Discord, but they've been limited to select developers so far.

The SDK will open up this Activities section of Discord to many more developers, so we're bound to see a lot more minigames that can be played directly inside Discord chats. [...] Discord is also experimenting with a way to allow users to add apps to their accounts so they roam across servers. Developers will be able to enable their apps for accounts, and the experiment will launch alongside the app SDK on March 18th. Discord is also bringing back its app pitches, where developers can pitch prototype app ideas and secure up to $30,000 in funding.

In 1995 Scottish video game designer Chris Sawyer created the business simulator game Transport Tycoon Deluxe — and within four years, Wikipedia notes, work began on the first version of an open source version that's still being actively developed. "According to a study of the 61,154 open-source projects on SourceForge in the period between 1999 and 2005, OpenTTD ranked as the 8th most active open-source project to receive patches and contributions. In 2004, development moved to their own server."

Long-time Slashdot reader orudge says he's been involved for almost 25 years. "Exactly 21 years ago, I received an ICQ message (look it up, kids) out of the blue from a guy named Ludvig Strigeus (nicknamed Ludde)." "Hello, you probably don't know me, but I've been working on a project to clone Transport Tycoon Deluxe for a while," he said, more or less... Ludde made more progress with the project [written in C] over the coming year, and it looks like we even attempted some multiplayer games (not too reliable, especially over my dial-up connection at the time). Eventually, when he was happy with what he had created, he agreed to allow me to release the game as open source. Coincidentally, this happened exactly a year after I'd first spoken to him, on the 6th March 2004...

Things really got going after this, and a community started to form with enthusiastic developers fixing bugs, adding in new features, and smoothing off the rough edges. Ludde was, I think, a bit taken aback by how popular it proved, and even rejoined the development effort for a while. A read through the old changelogs reveals just how many features were added over a very short period of time. Quick wins like higher vehicle limits came in very quickly, and support for TTDPatch's NewGRF format started to be functional just four months later. Large maps, improved multiplayer, better pathfinders, improved TTDPatch compatibility, and of course, ports to a great many different operating systems, such as Mac OS X, BeOS, MorphOS and OS/2. It was a very exciting time to be a TTD fan!

Within six years, ambitious projects to create free replacements for the original TTD graphics, sounds and music sets were complete, and OpenTTD finally had its 1.0 release. And while we may not have the same frantic addition of new features we had in 2004, there have still been massive improvements to the code, with plenty of exciting new features over the years, with major releases every year since 2008. he move to GitHub in 2018 and the release of OpenTTD on Steam in 2021 have also re-energised development efforts, with thousands of people now enjoying playing the game regularly. And development shows no signs of slowing down, with the upcoming OpenTTD 14.0 release including over 40 new features!
"Personally, I would like to say thank you to everyone who has supported OpenTTD development over the past two decades..." they write, adding "Finally, of course, I'd like to thank you, the players! None of us would be here if people weren't still playing the game.

"Seeing how the first twenty years have gone, I can't wait to see what the next twenty years have in store. :)"

Michael McWhertor reports via Polygon: Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start "retiring" games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim unclear. The media conglomerate's planned removal of those games echoes cuts from its film and television business; Warner Bros. Discovery infamously scrapped plans to release nearly complete movies Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, and removed multiple series from its streaming services. If Warner Bros. does go through with plans to delist Adult Swim's games from Steam and digital console stores, 18 or more games could be affected.

News of the Warner Bros. plan to potentially pull Adult Swim's games from Steam and the PlayStation Store was first reported by developer Owen Reedy, who released puzzle-adventure game Small Radios Big Televisions through the label in 2016. Reedy said on X Tuesday the game was being "retired" by Adult Swim Games' owner. He responded to the company's decision by making the Windows PC version of Small Radios Big Televisions available to download for free from his studio's website. Polygon reached out to other developers who had worked with Adult Swim Games as a publisher. Two studios responded to say that they'd received a similar warning from Warner Bros. Discovery, but they are still in the dark about what it means for their games. [...]

Polygon reached out to 10 studios and solo developers who had their games published by Adult Swim Games to see what they've heard. Some say they haven't been contacted by WB Discovery, but they expect to. "From what I've heard from others, I will probably be hearing from them soon," developer Andrew Morrish, who published Kingsway and Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe through Adult Swim, told Polygon. "It's not looking good." Molinari said that if and when his game Soundodger+ is pulled from Steam, he'll republish it there "with as little downtime as possible between the two versions." The game is also available from Molinari's itch page.

As reported by 404 Media, the New York Times has issued hundreds of copyright takedown requests against Wordle clones "in which it asserts not just ownership over the Wordle name but over the broad concepts and mechanics of the word game, which includes its '5x6 grid' and 'green tiles to indicate correct guesses.'" From the report: The Times filed at least three DMCA takedown requests with coders who have made clones of Wordle on GitHub. These include two in January and, crucially, a new DMCA filed this week against Chase Wackerfuss, the coder of a repository called âoeReactle,â which cloned Wordle in React JS (JavaScript). The most recent takedown request is critical because it not only goes after Reactle but anyone who has forked Reactle to create a different spinoff game; an archive of the Reactle code repository shows that it was forked 1,900 times to create a diverse set of games and spinoffs. These include Wordle clones in dozens of languages, crossword versions of Wordle, emoji and bird versions of world, poker and AI spinoffs, etc.

"I write to submit a revised DMCA Notice regarding an infringing repository (and hundreds of forked repositories) hosted by Github that instruct users how to infringe The New York Times Co.'s ('The Times') copyright in its immensely popular Wordle game and create knock-off copies of the same. Unfortunately, hundreds of individuals have followed these instructions and published infringing Wordle knock-off games that The Times has spent the past month removing, including off of Github's websites," the DMCA takedown request against Reactle reads. "The Times's Wordle copyright includes the unique elements of its immensely popular game, such as the 5x6 grid, green tiles to indicate correct guesses, yellow tiles to indicate the correct letter but the wrong place within the word, and the keyboard directly beneath the grid. This gameplay is copied exactly in the repository, and the owner instructs others how to knock off the game and create an identical word game," it adds.

The DMCA request then says that GitHub must delete forks of the repository, which it writes were "infringing to the same extent as the parent repository" and which it says were made in what was "clearly bad faith." [...] The DMCA takedown requests are particularly notable because they come at a time when the New York Times is financially thriving, while many of its competitors are losing money, laying people off, and shutting down. The Times is thriving in part because Wordle, the crossword puzzle, and its recipe apps are juggernauts. The company has been aggressively expanding its "Games" business with Wordle, Connections, and a brand new word search game called Strands. The New York Times issued a statement in response: "The Times has no issue with individuals creating similar word games that do not infringe The Times's 'Wordle' trademarks or copyrighted gameplay. The Times took action against a GitHub user and others who shared his code to defend its intellectual property rights in Wordle. The user created a 'Wordle clone' project that instructed others how to create a knock-off version of The Times's Wordle game featuring many of the same copyrighted elements. As a result, hundreds of websites began popping up with knock-off 'Wordle' games that used The Times's 'Wordle' trademark and copyrighted gameplay without authorization or permission."

EA CEO Andrew Wilson believes generative AI will "revolutionize" the gaming industry over the next five years. He predicts that the technology will allow for more efficient content creation, reducing development time from months to days. From a report: Greater efficiency coupled with "deeper, more immersive experiences" will lead to significant audience expansion over the next few years and provide a "multi-billion dollar" growth opportunity, he said. Wilson said that in the past it might take six months to build an in-game sports stadium. Over the last 12 months, that time has shrunk to six weeks, and over the coming years it could maybe be cut to six days.

And while FIFA 23 has 12 run cycles for how the players move in the game, EA Sports FC 24 has 1,200 created with generative AI. Over the next five years, Wilson hopes that generative AI will make EA's development 30% more efficient, help grow its 700 million-strong player base by "at least" 50%, and lead to players spending 10-20% more money on its games. "What we've seen every time there's been a meaningful technological advancement in media and in technology, where you are able to democratise an industry and hand it over to the population at large, incredible things happen," he said.

During a recent Morgan Stanley conference, Warner Bros. Discovery gaming boss J.B. Perrette discussed some of the company's strategy for gaming going forward, and it includes more live-service, mobile, and free-to-play games. From a report: He said, "We're doubling down on games as an area where we think there is a lot more growth opportunity that we can tap into with the IP that we have and some of the capabilities we have on the studio where we're uniquely positioned as both a publisher and a developer of games."

Perrette said WBD's recent gaming output has focused on AAA games for console, and that's great when a game like Hogwarts Legacy sells 22 million copies and becomes the best-selling game of the year, but this kind of success is never guaranteed in what Perrette said was a "volatile" market. He pointed out that one of WBD's latest big games, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, was a disappointment for the company.

So the plan going forward, he said, is to help reduce volatility by focusing on core franchises and bringing at least some of them to the mobile and free-to-play space, as well as continuing to invest in live-service games that people play--and spend money on--over a long period of time. This will help WBD generate more consistent revenue, he said, going on to tease that WBD had some new mobile free-to-play games coming this year. Also worth noting is that just because WBD may push into new places, that doesn't necessarily mean it will stop making big single-player AAA games.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Liliputing: Yuzu is a free and open source emulator that makes it possible to run Nintendo Switch games on Windows, Linux, and Android devices. First released in 2018, the software has been under constant development since then (the Android port was released less than a year ago). But last week Nintendo sued the developers, claiming that the primary purpose of the software is to circumvent Nintendo Switch encryption and allow users to play pirated games. Rather than fight the case in court, Tropic Haze (the developers behind Yuzu) have agreed to a settlement which involves paying $2.4 million in damages to Nintendo and basically shutting down Yuzu.

As part of a permanent injunction, Tropic Haze has agreed to stop distributing, advertising, or promoting Yuzu or any of its source code or features or any other "software or devices that circumvent Nintendo's technical protection measures." The court is also ordering the developers to turn over the yuzu-emu.org website to Nintendo and bars them "from supporting or facilitating access" to any other related websites, social media, chatrooms, or apps. In one of the more bizarre parts of the court order, the Yuzu team is told to delete all "circumvention devices," which includes any tools used for development of Yuzu and "all copies of Yuzu."

Microsoft has outlined a new Windows API designed to offer a seamless way for game developers to integrate super resolution AI-upscaling features from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. From a report: In a new blog post, program manager Joshua Tucker describes Microsoft's new DirectSR API as the "missing link" between games and super resolution technologies, and says it should provide "a smoother, more efficient experience that scales across hardware."

"This API enables multi-vendor SR [super resolution] through a common set of inputs and outputs, allowing a single code path to activate a variety of solutions including Nvidia DLSS Super Resolution, AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, and Intel XeSS," the post reads. The pitch seems to be that developers will be able to support this DirectSR API, rather than having to write code for each and every upscaling technology.

The blog post comes a couple of weeks after an "Automatic Super Resolution" feature was spotted in a test version of Windows 11, which promised to "use AI to make supported games play more smoothly with enhanced details." Now, it seems the feature will plug into existing super resolution technologies like DLSS, FSR, and XeSS rather than offering a Windows-level alternative.

Nintendo has filed a 41-page lawsuit against the makers of Yuzu, an open-source Nintendo Switch emulator, accusing them of "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale." Polygon reports: Yuzu is a free emulator that was released in 2018 months after the Nintendo Switch originally launched. The same folks who made Citra, a Nintendo 3DS emulator, made this one. Basically, it's a piece of software that lets people play Nintendo Switch games on Windows PC, Linux, and Android devices. (It also runs on Steam Deck, which Valve showed -- then wiped -- in a Steam Deck video clip.) Emulators aren't necessarily illegal, but pirating games to play on them is. But Nintendo said in its lawsuit that there's no way to legal way to use Yuzu.

Nintendo argued that Yuzu executes codes that "defeat" Nintendo's security measures, including decryption using "an illegally-obtained copy of prod.keys." "In other words, without Yuzu's decryption of Nintendo's encryption, unauthorized copies of games could not be played on PCs or Android devices," Nintendo wrote in the lawsuit. As to the alleged damages created by Yuzu, Nintendo pointed to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Tears of the Kingdom leaked almost two weeks earlier than the game's May 12 release date. The pirated version of the game spread quickly; Nintendo said it was downloaded more than 1 million times before Tears of the Kingdom's release date. People used Yuzu to play the game; Nintendo said more than 20% of download links pointed people to Yuzu.

Though Yuzu doesn't give out pirated copies of games, Nintendo repeatedly said that most ROM sites point people toward Yuzu to play whatever games they've downloaded. Nintendo said its "expended significant resources to stop the illegal copying, marketing, sale, and distribution" of its Nintendo Switch games. It says that Yuzu earns the team $30,000 per month on its Patreon from more than 7,000 patrons. Nintendo said the company has earned at least $50,000 in paid Yuzu downloads. Nintendo said that Yuzu's Patreon doubled its paid members in the period between May 1 and May 12, when Tears of the Kingdom was released. Nintendo is asking the court to shut down the emulator, and for damages.

Sony's PlayStation division is cutting jobs in the latest round of high-profile layoffs in the video game industry. From a report: By some estimations, 2024 has already seen more than 7,000 video game industry layoffs. Related to these moves, PlayStation is proposing to close its London games studio, which was most recently responsible for developing PlayStation VR games. Cuts are also coming to Sony's other studios, including Firesprite, Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, and Guerrilla. PlayStation's technology, creative, and support teams are also affected by these measures. In a blog post, outgoing SIE CEO Jim Ryan said it was an "extremely hard decision" to make these cuts, which amount to 900 people or about 8% of PlayStation. Ryan is leaving in March.

Landscaping tech company Husqvarna has partnered with Bethesda to bring the original 1993 Doom to its $2,000+ robotic lawnmowers. Kotaku reports: This new way to play Doom arrives in April on all Nera robotic lawnmower models. You don't have to pay for the game, either, just a $2,000+ lawnmower. Instead, just download it and play the shooter via the robo-mower's built-in screen. To rotate your view, you turn the knob and to shoot demons, you press it down. You hold the start button to move forward.

A few caveats to mention. First, this isn't available in the United States. Why? I don't know. Perhaps we can't be trusted with video games on lawnmowers? Secondly, this isn't all of Doom. Instead, it's just the first episode -- Knee Deep In The Dead -- which is arguably its most famous one, sure, but just keep in mind you won't be able to play the rest of the beloved shooter in the middle of your backyard on a tiny LCD screen. Sorry.

Sadly, this won't be a permanent feature that you can show off to family and friends for years to come. Instead, Doom and all its demons and guns will be removed from lawnmowers on September 9. So enjoy it while you can.

It's no surprise that the broader tech industry has largely moved away from physical disks to digital subscription-based models. But Microsoft's Gaming CEO Phil Spencer says Xbox isn't trying to do away with disks just yet -- even though making disk slots could become challenging in the future. From a report: "Our strategy does not hinge on people moving all-digital," Spencer said in a recent interview with Game File. "Getting rid of physical, that's not a strategic thing for us." While Spencer implied that disk slots have become somewhat old-school at this point, Xbox consoles will continue to offer both disk-compatible and diskless options if gamers still want to choose. Xbox hasn't confirmed yet whether the previously leaked diskless Xbox refresh of the Series X console is still coming, though.

"Gaming consoles themselves have kind of become the last consumer electronic device that has a drive," Spencer conceded, calling it a "real issue." Because so few manufacturers are still making physical disk slots, it's possible making consoles with them could become cost prohibitive in the future. "When you think about cogs that we're going to go put in a console -- and as you have fewer suppliers and fewer buyers -- the cost of the drive does have an impact," Spencer said.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Sony's new PlayStation Portal has been hacked by Google engineers to run emulated games locally. The $199.99 handheld debuted in November but was limited to just streaming games from a PS5 console and not even titles from Sony's cloud gaming service. Now, two Google engineers have managed to get the PPSSPP emulator running natively on the PlayStation Portal, allowing a Grand Theft Auto PSP version to run on the Portal without Wi-Fi streaming required. "After more than a month of hard work, PPSSPP is running natively on PlayStation Portal. Yes, we hacked it," says Andy Nguyen in a post on X. Nguyen also confirms that the exploit is "all software based," so it doesn't require any hardware modifications like additional chips or soldering. Only a photo of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories running on the PlayStation Portal has been released so far, but Nguyen may release some videos to demonstrate the exploit at the weekend.

An anonymous reader shares a report: "The first one, I'll be honest, probably took seven or eight hours," says TJ Gardner. "But the subsequent ones -- Stroke the Beaver, for example -- would have taken about half an hour." Gardner is the creator of the "Stroke" video games, available to download from the PlayStation Store for $4 a pop. Each one features a different animal -- cats, dogs and hamsters, along with less cuddly creatures such as snakes and fish -- and they all follow the same blueprint.

When you start the game, an image of the animal appears against a plain blue background. In the top left-hand corner of the screen are the words "Strokes 0." You press X to stroke the animal. The animal flashes briefly. The number in the corner goes up by 1. After 25 strokes, you are rewarded with a bronze trophy. Keep going until you hit 2,000 strokes, and you will receive a platinum award. That's it. There is no animation; there are no sound effects. Just a picture of an animal under a Creative Commons licence from Wikipedia, and some lo-fi acoustic beats looping endlessly in the background. No running, no jumping, no guns, no baddies, no special moves or power-ups or puzzles. Are the Stroke games even video games at all? The Stroke games, launched in September 2022, have been downloaded more than 120,000 times, amassing nearly $350,000 in sales. Sony takes a 30% cut for hosting the game in the PlayStation Store, leaving Gardner with a pre-tax profit of about $240,000.

VGC: Nintendo's next console could launch later than expected, in early 2025, it's claimed. That's according to Brazilian journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe, who claims in a new OX do Controle video that he received the information from five separate sources. According to the sources, they are also working on games targeting Q1 2025, to launch alongside the console itself, which has internally slipped out of a previous 2024 target.

Eurogamer reports it's heard "similar whispers" from industry sources this week, though has not been able to concretely substantiate them. Previously, VGC reported that Nintendo was targeting a launch for its next console in late 2024, per development sources. This was later supported by other outlets.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Epic is one step closer to opening its iOS games store in the European Union. As part of its 2023 year in review, Epic Games announced Apple has reinstated its developer account, which means it will finally be able to let users download Fortnite on iPhones again. Epic first announced plans to bring its game store and Fortnite to iOS in January, but it wasn't clear whether Apple would grant it a developer account.

In 2020, Apple pulled Epic's developer account after the company began using its own in-app payment option in the iOS version of Fortnite, sparking a lengthy legal battle over whether Apple's behavior was anticompetitive. But even after the trial ended, and neither company emerged a clear winner, Apple still refused to reinstate Epic's developer account. Things are changing now that the EU has implemented the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The new rules force Apple to open up its iOS ecosystem to third-party app stores in the EU. Epic Games says it plans to open its iOS storefront in the EU this year. "I'll be the first to acknowledge a good faith move by Apple amidst our cataclysmic antitrust battle, in granting Epic Games Sweden AB a developer account for operating Epic Games Store and Fortnite in Europe under the Digital Markets Act," Sweeney says in a post on X.

Microsoft announced this week that four of Xbox's previously-exclusive games are going cross-platform to PlayStation and Switch. Xbox head Phil Spencer says in a new interview that he'd like to see Sony and Nintendo bring their games to Xbox -- but that he isn't holding his breath. From a report: In an interview for journalist Stephen Totilo's Game File newsletter, Spencer said the decision to bring four Xbox games to other consoles wasn't intended to make its rivals follow suit. "This is not for me, like, some kind of bartering system," Spencer explained. "We're doing it for the better of Xbox's business." Despite this, Spencer said he would of course welcome other consoles' games on Xbox, and noted that it would be beneficial for multiplayer games in particular, where building a large online community is important for a game's lifespan.

"I will say, when I look at a game like Helldivers 2 -- and it's a great game, kudos to the team shipping on PC and PlayStation -- I'm not exactly sure who it helps in the industry by not being on Xbox," he said. "If you try to twist yourself to say, like, somehow that benefited somebody somewhere. But I get it. There's a legacy in console gaming that we're going to benefit by shipping games and not putting them on other places. We do the same thing." Spencer also noted that Helldivers 2 -- which Sony released on PlayStation and PC on the same day -- is doing well on the latter. "I will say shipping more games in more places and making them more accessible to more people is a good part of the gaming business," he said. Further reading: Phil Spencer Puts Apple's Money Where His Mouth Is.