Using the disc drive and controller as a reference, IGN’s Armando Torres mocked up a rough size comparison between the two consoles, which you can see above.
Sony says the “new PS5 has been reduced in volume by more than 30%, and weight by 18% and 24% compared to previous models.” The original PS5 was 390 mm x 260 mm x 104 mm (15.4 in x 10.2 in x 4.1 in), and the new model will be approximately 358 mm x 96 mm x 216 mm (14.0 in x 3.7 in x 8.5 in).
Meanwhile, the PS5 Digital Edition launch model is 390 mm x 260 mm x 92 mm (15.3 in x 10.2 in x 3.6 in), while the new PS5 Digital Edition will be 358 mm x 80 mm x 216 mm (14.0 in x 3.1 in x 8.5 in).
The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are obviously very different from the old and new PS5s, but we thought we’d compare them so you can see how they’ll all stack up in your home. The Xbox Series X is 152.4 mm x 304.8 mm x 152.4 (6.0 in x 12.0 in x 6.0 in) and the Xbox Series S is 279 mm x 149.8 mm x 66.0 mm (11.0 in x 5.9 in x 2.6 in).
For an accurate idea of how all the consoles compare, we used the site CompareSizes to generate a rough picture of all them all together.
While the new PS5s aren’t any more powerful than the launch models, there are some key differences. First of all, both models now have 1TB of storage, which is up from the 825GB offered in the launch models. Furthermore, Sony is offering the option to add an Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Drive to the PS5 Digital Edition at any time for $79.99. The new models also have four separate cover panels, with the top two sporting a glossy look and the bottom remaining matte.
It’s also important to note that the new PS5 Digital Edition has gone up in price by $50 when compared to the launch model. So, the new PS5 model with the Ultra HD Blu-ray disc drive already installed will be the same price as the original at $499.99 and the new PS5 Digital Edition will now be $449.99 instead $399.99.
Additionally, Sony will be selling a new vertical stand that will be available for $29.99, but it will be including a horizontal stand with both models.
After the initial tease last week, it thankfully hasn’t taken Lego and Nintendo too long to lift the lid on its latest collaborative line-up, revealing five sets based on the Animal Crossing franchise launching in March 2024.
With prices ranging from $14.99 all the way up to $74.99, the first batch in what we assume will be an extensive product line represents some of the franchise’s most beloved characters, including Tom Nook, Isabelle, and Kapp’n.
One thing that keeps luring me back to Starfield – other than the idea of building space stations out of onions – is a mysterious game within the game. Titled “Symbol Game”, it consists of chunky, etched, sloping pieces and a 4×6 grid mat adorned with stars, dots and lines. You may have pocketed a few sets, during your journeys across the Settled Systems. They’re not hard to find. But as far as I can tell, nobody has discovered the rules, though there are plenty of theories.
Long Gone Daysis a JRPG set in a near-future, war-torn version of our world. Through a mixture of traditional exploration, expressive storytelling, and innovative turn-based combat, this game explores human connection during war with a focus on civilians, language barriers, and borders.
You play as Rourke, a young man who has trained all his life to be a sniper for The Core—a secretive and militaristic nation with a charismatic leader. Rourke believes strongly in the ideals of his nation, but on his first mission he stumbles into a vast conspiracy that strains his conscience and drives him to desert.
As an idealistic fugitive, Rourke will go on an odyssey to escape The Core’s clutches and avert the catastrophe they’ve set in motion. This journey will take Rourke across Europe, and in each new country he encounters a language barrier (including German, Polish, and more) that must be deciphered to progress.
Expand Your Skills by Forging Bonds with a Party of Comrades
Luckily, Rourke has help. Along his way, Rourke will forge bonds with a diverse party of colorful and well-rounded characters. Each party member contributes potential story arcs, valuable skills in and out of combat, and, crucially, fluency in new languages that allow Rourke to communicate with locals and achieve his goals. These characters form the heart and soul of Long Gone Days, and they serve as bridges between the player and the distinct communities found in each of the game’s three major cities.
These party members include Adair, a cool and collected fellow soldier who has trained as a medic, and in so doing seems to have made peace with the cost of war. By contrast, players will also meet Lynn and Ivan – civilians who find themselves under attack by the Core. Lynn is quiet but won’t hesitate to fight tooth and nail for those she loves. Meanwhile, Ivan is a pacifist who will not hold a gun but contributes everything he can to support the party—including foreign language skills and some fantastic cooking. Atiye and Pascal are two fan-favorite characters from later chapters in the game, and while we don’t want to spoil too much of their stories, suffice to say each brings a unique set of skills, perspectives, and language capabilities to the table.
Overcoming Language Barriers is Key to Progression
As characters join your party and contribute their linguistic skills, a world of possibility opens. When you first arrive in a new city and can’t understand the language, you’ll find yourself feeling a bit alienated and without much freedom—much like in real life. But once you unlock the ability to understand the locals, you can make your way through each town, access shops, and progress storylines. Beyond the main plot, being able to communicate lets you engage with the numerous side-quests in each chapter.
Through both the main and side quests, the ability to speak the local language lets Adair and the party quickly become enmeshed in the lives of others. The game’s quests focus on the small stories of specific characters, but each also feeds into the larger plot. For example, you might evade curfew to bring medicine to a home-bound grandmother, help a local animal shelter search for stray animals before a city is evacuated, or help defang propaganda by covering it in hand-made art. With language as the key, these quests all unlock heartfelt emotional moments rooted in the people and the culture on display in each chapter.
Languages, Borders, and Human Empathy
Language and communication are powerful concepts, and they are at the heart of what Long Gone Days is trying to say. On the one hand, language can feel like an insurmountable, alienating barrier. Yet, the moment one understands another, they can freely access a new world of humanity—they can once again find common ground. In this way, through its unique language mechanics, Long Gone Days consistently highlights the beauty and importance of people, no matter their circumstances or nationality.
Long Gone Days is out today, October 10th, on Xbox! We hope you’ll join Rourke on his journey to fight for a future he can believe in. For more updates on the game, follow @SerenityForge on Twitter!
Long Gone Days is an RPG set in the real world about human connection during war, focusing on civilians, language barriers, and borders.
Follow Rourke, young man trained from birth to be a sniper for The Core— a subterranean paramilitary state.
On his first mission, he is sent to the surface under orders of great significance. Motivated to finally be able to show the fruits of his training, he carries out his first orders to perfection only to find out that The Core was far from being the noble organization he thought he knew.
Model redesign aside, the new console (also known as the PS5 Slim) reduces the weight of Sony’s ninth-generation console by 18-24%, depending on which model you get. The redesigned PS5 includes more storage, 1TB instead of 825GB, and an increased price for the Digital Edition.
With the announcement of new gaming hardware, users on X (formerly known as Twitter) have turned to the platform to share their thoughts. Some are excited (especially if they did not already buy a PS5), while others are not mincing words on how they feel about the reveal, including poking fun at the fact that the design of the remodel looks a lot similar to its predecessor.
Others were quick to call out the horizontal stand that was also revealed today, which is sold separately. There were doubts about how exactly the lil guy would work, as well as some jokes about the disproportional look.
Others were quick to bemoan the PS5 Digital Edition seeing an increase from $399.99 to $449.99. Some are perplexed at the decision and argue that the increased internal storage does not warrant a $50 price hike.
Look…
I like the design, & the idea that you can add a Blu-ray drive at a later date. But they’ve essentially increased the price of the PS5 Digital & decided to sell the stand separately. Nope a slight increase in SSD does not justify the price increase. https://t.co/MnEHjucLXH
The new “slim” all-digital PS5 is saving Sony on materials, shipping, and manufacturing footprint, plus the bigger margin it gets on digital game sales.
Alienware’s AW3423DWF is a fantastic gaming monitor – and the one that I was the most sad to return after my review. This 34-inch QD-OLED ultrawide debuted at $1100 last year, but it’s now available for $300 off at Dell’s US store in a nicely-timed Anti-Amazon deal. That brings it to $800 – still a lot of money for a monitor, but absolutely worth it for a monitor that has become well-loved for users and critics alike.
If you’ve been gunning for a CRPG in the classic Baldur’s Gate or Fallout vein, and you don’t have many leisure hours to spare, you might get a kick out of Space Wreck. Created by Latvia-based Pahris Entertainment, it launches out of Early Access today with a brace of Very Positive reviews, tantalising perma-hungover Disco Elysium players like me with flirtatious mention of “an intentionally short”, very non-linear campaign in which combat is totally optional and there are “three to eight ways” to complete any quest. “It’s okay to fail,” you say? Every NPC can be killed, even those apparently central to the story? Be still my beating heart.
Are you a Mac player who’s been hungrily looking forward to the eventual Mac port of Counter-Strike 2, released last month, after sinking many hours and much pocket money into the preceding Counter-Strike: Global Offensive? Fantastic news, it’s been binned off! In the course of making what they’re calling “the largest technical leap in CS history”, Valve have decided to discontinue support for MacOS. They’re also doing away with support for older PCs, including DirectX 9 and 32-bit operating systems – in future, the game will be exclusive to 64-bit Windows and Linux systems.
As we hurtle towards Holiday season, we can all agree that 2023 has been an incredibly strong year in terms of the number of quality games hitting the Switch eShop on a weekly basis. Last month alone, we published 34 reviews in 30 days, and we could have easily doubled that number based on the sheer amount of interesting-looking Switch software.
But, alas, resources are finite and inevitably we aren’t able to play and review everything we’d like to here at Nintendo Life. So, every six months or so we put out a call to our lovely community of readers to highlight gems that passed us by. Back in April, in Part 6 of our Reader Recommendations series, you highlighted 22 eShop gems, including Xiaomei and the Flame Dragon’s Fist, Floppy Knights, and Terror of Hemasaurus.
How Skull Island: Rise of Kong Is Inspired by Its Rich Lore
An iconic quest for survival and vengeance. Kong, the King of Skull Island, pursues his ultimate arch-nemesis Gaw in Skull Island: Rise of Kong, an all-new action-adventure game that explores the origins of Merian C. Cooper’s “King Kong.” Before New York, Kong was born and raised in the prehistoric wilds of Skull Island; this childhood cut short as the super-saurian predator Gaw kills Kong’s parents forcing the eventual King to survive the exotic threats of Skull Island on his own. In Skull Island: Rise of Kong, you’ll journey as Kong on his quest to transcend this moment of terror, overcome all odds, and become the legendary battle-scarred 30-foot “King of Skull Island.”
This game involved the close collaboration with creator Joe DeVito, who penned and illustrated two original stories about the lore of the island in “Skull Island” and “The History of Skull Island.” These stories answered fan questions about King Kong: what was the human civilization like on Skull Island, how was the Wall built, the history of the Kong species and of course, how did Kong become the King of Skull Island?
Zach Alt: What from Kong’s story were you most interested in seeing adapted into a video game?
Joe DeVito The thing I was most excited about in this game was seeing the backstory of the young Kong himself and what he had to go through to become the ruler of Skull Island. Seeing Gaw, and her highly intelligent death runner minions interpreted as living creatures was particularly gratifying. In my King Kong of Skull Island universe life on Skull Island did not stop when the dinosaurs became extinct all over the rest of the earth some 65 million years ago. It continued to evolve, and I wanted to build on that. What if its ‘hands’ developed dexterity akin to ours, which have opposable thumbs–an essential detail that helped put our brains on the fast track towards developing a problem-solving intelligence? What I discovered was a race of pseudo-sentient saurians and their colossal Queen: Gaw.
When the human civilization and the Kongs arrived on Skull Island, it was Gaw and the deathrunners who had ruled there for uncounted years, and they had no intention of giving up their dominion over the island.
This struggle would not be finalized for many centuries. Its conclusion would finally come with the rise of an orphaned young Kong who would eventually grow into a giant among giants. He would pass into myth and legend as King Kong. This history is what I am hoping gamers really gravitate to and enjoy as they experience this title.
Zach Alt: What was fascinating about Kong’s origin story?
Joe DeVito The aspects I loved most about creating my prequel/sequel to King Kong were two-fold. The first was answering life-long questions behind the story of Kong and Skull Island, such as who or what was Kong and how did he come to exist on the island? For that matter, what was the history of Skull Island itself and why did the dinosaurs there never die out? What were the details of the human civilization that came to live there and how did they manage to build a gigantic Wall with the likes of ferocious dinosaurs and Kong himself lurking in their midst–and if they built the Wall to keep Kong and other giants out, why did it have doors big enough to let them in?
Unraveling all those mysteries naturally led to contemplating a myriad of associated details of Skull Island all the way down to the rocks, water, even the bacteria of the island’s make up, in order to detail a plausible reality on which to base my findings. This led to unending possibilities for the all the normally associated species of plant, insect, and animal forms of life, and the creation of many that have never been encountered before. An example of the last detail is an indigenous spider species that shows strange characteristics of both arachnid and mammalian, such as external musculature on the eight legs and feeding the dozens of hatched spiderlings with a milky substance–not to mention grasping appendages at the end of each of its eight otherwise spider-like limbs. I delved into the reasons for these and many other strange anomalies on the island, and why they have (so far) not spread to the rest of the world and visa-versa are all explored in detail. The questions could go on forever…in total, it is what could be described as the “world creation” of it all that enthralled me the most.
It was really fun to see some of these questions and backstory that I created adapted into the creatures in the game, especially the aforementioned spiders that Kong will encounter later in the game. I hope the gamer has fun seeing some of these creations adapted, seeing skullite-filled caves, and exploring some of the backstory through collectibles that are present within the title.
Zach Alt: Who are the most compelling creatures you wanted to see brought to life in the game?
Joe DeVito The main creatures I was most excited to see in the game and the main one–more accurately, ones–are the deathrunners and their monstrous queen, Gaw. Gaw is a deathrunner herself that is chosen early on and fed a special diet by the other deathrunners, like a queen bee. This diet triggers a physiological transformation necessary to preserve and propagate their line. They are a unique and intelligent species, the result of over 65 million years of additional adaptation in the strange environs of Skull Island. The smaller, though slightly larger than human, deathrunners are not at all like an ordinary raptor, such as Velociraptor. They exhibit many physiological differences including a greatly enlarged braincase with a more erect stance due to the spinal column being connected underneath the skull as in humans rather than through the back as in other saurians, with an altered hip structure and other anatomical changes.
Gaw is utterly unique to herself, being an enormously enlarged version of a deathrunner with even more enhanced intelligence bringing her to a level on that with the Kongs themselves. But Gaw and the deathrunners are different in that theirs is a cold, calculating, reptilian intelligence, whereas Kong is a mammal, capable of a wider range of emotions. In the end it is Kong’s greater courage, his indomitable spirit if you will, that gives him the edge over the larger and in some respects, more powerful, Gaw. This was all well reflected in the design of the game!
Embark on a 3rd person action-adventure quest to avenge the death of your parents at the hands of the ultimate alpha predator: Gaw. Conquer waves of primal beasts and defeat the minions of your arch-nemesis on your way to becoming the rightful King of Skull Island. Traverse the mysterious island and uncover lore and all the secrets the island has to offer as you encounter swamps, waterfalls, jungle, and skullite-filled caves that give the island’s flora and fauna its power
• Experience the origins of the orphaned Kong as he metamorphosizes from a young Kong to the fully mature King of Skull Island
• Unleash the combat fury of Kong to deal devastating combos to dominate the ferocious minions of Gaw and tactically unleash rage mode to heighten the impact of your attacks against the island’s gargantuan subterranean denizens
• Send your enemies running for the hills as you unleash Kong’s spine-tingling roar and deliver their final coup de grace through unique finishing attacks
• Discover the Mythos of Skull Island as you unearth collectibles, unlock mysterious areas of the island and learn about the history of the islanders, the exotic flora and fauna and the rich history of the Kongs.
• Ascend Kong to new heights through special events and a variety of boss fights that unlock his full combat potential
• Leap and Climb mountainous terrain, island vines, swamps, hidden caves, and the various terrain of the jungle-island on your quest to avenge the death of your parents.
