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Sony

It’s hard to imagine a company with a greater influence on consumer electronics than Sony. You can trace a direct line from the Walkman -- the first portable media player -- to the smartphone. Today Sony is a massive force in gaming, making the PlayStation and publishing games for it and other platforms. Sony image sensors are in iPhones as well as its own mirrorless cameras. Not to mention the OLED TVs; smartphones; noise-canceling headphones; music, tv, and film publishing; and, yes, robot dogs.

Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
Guess how much Sony paid to make Horizon Forbidden West and The Last of Us Part II?

A big letter from Sony president Jim Ryan to the FTC wasn’t redacted properly, and we’ve been furiously hunting for secrets! First up: Horizon Forbidden West apparently cost $212 million over five years with 300 employees.

The Last of Us Part II: $220 million for some 200 employees, if we’re reading right. Development started in 2014 right after the original game was released, though that was already public info.

Image: Sony
Tom Warren
Tom Warren
Someone messed up the redactions in Sony’s documents.

A new exhibit has just dropped and it’s full of important financial data that has been marked out with a black pen. Unfortunately that doesn’t keep it secret once you scan it in, and oops everything is no longer secret.

Oops.
Oops.
Sony’s PlayStation chief says publishers hate Xbox Game Pass

FTC v. Microsoft day three was all about Sony’s objection to the Activision Blizzard deal, its bet against Game Pass, and a cloudy future.

Tom Warren
Tom Warren
Tom Warren
Xbox games involve shooting things.

PlayStation chief Jim Ryan is asked why Xbox games resonate better with customers in the US than outside the country:

“Many of their games involve an element of shooting and online multiplayer. Both of which typically are more popular in the US than they are outside of the US.”

Tom Warren
Tom Warren
Jim Ryan’s video is 70 minutes long.

We’re going to get a lot of testimony from PlayStation chief Jim Ryan. The video will run for 1 hour and 10 minutes in total. Ryan confirms Sony tracks Microsoft’s console sales.

FTC: How have Xbox gen 9 consoles performed in terms of sales?

Ryan: Like us they have been troubled by supply shortages we understand, but demand for their products is robust.

Microsoft opened the FTC hearing with a Sony bombshell

Day one of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing was all about a surprise email, Xbox exclusives, and a costly cloud.

Tom Warren
Tom Warren
Tom Warren
The chaos of an FTC hearing in one image.

I love the chaos of this FTC v. Microsoft hearing, where confidential documents are dragged to court alongside a PS5. Philip Pacheco from Getty Images perfectly captures the mayhem outside a US courthouse building, as FTC attorneys juggle with a witness binder for Sarah Bond, head of Xbox creator experience, and a PS5 console.

Day two of the hearing kicks off at 8:30AM PT / 11:30AM ET and you can bet we’ll be covering the less chaotic proceedings inside the courtroom live right here.

Evidentiary Hearing Held In San Francisco As FTC Seeks Injunction In Microsoft And Activision Blizzard Merger
Photo by Philip Pacheco/Getty Images
Tom Warren
Tom Warren
Sony won’t share PS6 info with a Microsoft-owned Activision.

The FTC vs. Microsoft case kicks off today and we’re gradually hearing more about Sony’s opposition to Microsoft’s proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition. In a deposition, PlayStation chief Jim Ryan says that Sony would no longer share confidential details about next-gen PlayStation consoles with a Microsoft-owned Activision. “We simply could not run the risk of a company that was owned by a direct competitor having access to that information.”

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Some of Sony’s 2022 TVs will get updated with the game menu that’s in 2023 models.

Sony’s 2023 lineup of TVs will include a special game menu, similar to the ones companies like Samsung, LG, and others already have

Now a video on its YouTube channel says that feature is coming to X80K and higher TVs from the 2022 lineup, while certain models going back to 2020 will get updated with an Eco Dashboard to control power-saving settings. It’d be nice to see the updates available more widely, but that’s the list, for now.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Why wouldn’t Miles Morales be dealing with anxiety in the new Spider-verse short?

For his new Spider-Verse short The Spider Within that just premiered at the Annecy International Film Festival, director Jarelle Dampier wanted to get real about Miles Morales having anxiety because he “just seems like that kind of kid.”

“We’ve never been able to have that slice-of-life moment because the movies are so big and excellent and breathtaking. I think horror is just one of those great down-on-the-street-level genres that you can use to just get intimate and find out what really makes this character tick.”

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Meet the 14-year-old animator behind Across The Spider-Verse’s Lego world.

While most of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s creatives were seasoned professionals, Preston Mutanga, the genius behind the movie’s brief foray into a stop-motion world full of Lego characters, is a Canadian teen — the same who recreated the movie’s trailer:

“We found out that it was a 14-year-old kid who made it and we were like, ‘This looks incredibly sophisticated for a nonadult, nonprofessional to have made,” [Across the Spider-Verse writer/producer Chris] Miller said on a video call. “It blew us all away, including some of the best animators in the world.”

Across the Spider-Verse’s greatest feat is the way it takes Spider-Man’s fandom to task

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse deepens the mythos of Miles Morales by turning one of the ugliest parts of Spider-Man’s fandom into a canonical conundrum.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
Don’t expect Sony’s Q handheld to stream cloud games anytime soon.

Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida hinted to the Financial Times that it’s still in the studying phase re: cloud gaming, due to the “technical difficulties” of streaming games over the internet.

Wait, doesn’t Sony already have a cloud gaming service? Kinda, but I suspect he’s talking about this new one!

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Across the Spider-Verse is the new definitive Spider-Man movie.

Sony’s Across the Spider-Verse isn’t just a breathtaking work of art — it’s a seminal piece of Spider-Man storytelling that rightfully establishes Miles Morales as this generation’s definitive webhead. Across the Spider-Verse’s trailers alone have been tremendous, but check out our review to read more about what makes the movie work so, so well.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Spider-Verse producer Amy Pascal says live-action Miles is on his way.

At Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s LA premiere this week, producer Amy Pascal teased that Miles Morales is definitely making his live-action debut in the near future, and Sony’s already working on another Spider-Man starring Tom Holland:

“We’re in the process, but the writers strike, nobody is working during the strike. We’re all being supporters and whenever they get themselves together, we’ll get started.”

Across the Spider-Verse is an animated masterpiece that upends Marvel’s Spider-canon

Sony’s Into the Spider-Verse sequel is a bigger, bolder, more ambitious film than its predecessor — and a powerful deconstruction of Marvel’s Spider-Man mythos.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Sony’s small but mighty XB100 speaker is cheerful and very cheap

There are smarter and much bigger speakers to choose from, but this tiny little thing offers surprisingly crisp sound for its low price.

Chris Welch
Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
Sony’s PlayStation Q handheld in 25 seconds flat.

Want more? Read our full story here.

Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
Xbox throws (useful) shade.

The subtext: twelve of those games you just saw announced at Sony’s PlayStation Showcase are also coming to Xbox.

Which is helpful, considering at least one of Sony’s reveal trailers was crafted to exclude competitors.