It's Friday, which can only mean one thing: It's time for this week's edition of Replay, WIRED's rundown of everything happening in the world of games and gaming. What's the biggest news this week? It's actually a little device that fits in the palm of your hand. What else? Well, there's some good—or at least interesting—news about Sony PlayStation games too. Let's get going.
First off, no, the crank doesn't power it. And yeah, we're kind of bummed about that too. What the Playdate does do, though, is provide a tiny and stylish way to walk around with a limited run of games made by famous designers like Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy) and Bennett Foddy (Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy).
The twee, yellow machine is the latest offering from Panic, a game developer turned game publisher turned hardware manufacturer. It has a simple design with a black-and-white screen, two face buttons, and a D-pad. (The crank also provides game input.) It'll come with 12 games, one each week after the console releases, at least in the so-called Season One. If you're interested in the first season of games and the console along with them, it'll put you back $149 when it launches in early 2020.
Taking a page from Marvel's book, Sony Interactive Entertainment earlier this week launched PlayStation Productions, a unit focused on turning its videogame properties into movies and TV shows.
"We've got 25 years of game development experience and that's created 25 years of great games, franchises and stories," Shawn Layden, chairman of Worldwide Studios at Sony Interactive, told the Hollywood Reporter. "We feel that now is a good time to look at other media opportunities across streaming or film or television to give our worlds life in another spectrum."
PlayStation Productions is already working on its first slate of films. Are we going to get any good videogame movies out of this? Eh, maybe? I wouldn't get super hopeful.
Some nice news coming out of Sony's IR Day 2019 conference: US Gamer reports PlayStation 5 consoles will not only be backward-compatible with the PlayStation 4, but will allow online play between both consoles, consolidating the user base. After Sony's own efforts to limit crossplay with their competitors, and the general walled gardens that the last generation of consoles were, this wasn't a given and is welcome news. My biggest hope for the next console generation is that it's a bit more open and flexible, and gives users more power over their own stuff instead of taking it away.
Some things just aren't what they appear. And Pony Island is a mystery wrapped in a cute game about ponies, an existential nightmare of being trapped in a computer while hostile children's games attack you. Part hacking simulator, part No Exit, and all ridiculous, this is one of the most interesting games of its type. Games that are self-conscious about themselves are a dime a dozen, but this is one of the most creative.
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