I was listening to the recent earnings call, and Sony’s CEO, Hiroki Totoki, addressed a question I’ve been wondering about – whether rising component costs will affect the price of the PlayStation. He shared some news during the Q&A, so we’ll have to see what that means for us gamers!
Sony’s CEO, Hiroki Totoki, recently stated that the cost of making the next PlayStation will likely go up, including the price of the parts needed. They’ve secured the necessary materials for the remainder of the year, but haven’t finalized the console’s price, though they’ve made some progress. A release date is still unknown.
For a while, Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors was the highest-rated game added to Xbox Game Pass on day one. It took that spot from MIO: Memories in Orbit, which held the title from January to April. Now, Mixtape from Annapurna Interactive and Beethoven and Dinosaur is currently the top-rated, boasting an 85 on Metacritic. It just came out yesterday, so the score could change as more reviews come in, but it’s currently ahead of Vampire Crawlers.
Starting September 1st, the Switch 2 will be priced at $499.99 in the US, $679.99 in Canada, and €499.99 in Europe – an increase from its previous price of $449.99, $629.99 CAD, and €469.99. In Japan, the Japanese-language version of the Switch 2 will cost ¥59,980 starting May 25th, up from ¥49,980, while the multi-language model will remain at the same price.
Simply put, Sony wrote down the value of its Marathon studio by $765 million last year, which impacted their overall profit.
PlayStation 5 shipments totaled 2.8 million units in the last three months of 2024, a nearly 50% drop compared to the same period a year earlier. For the entire year of 2025, 16 million PS5 consoles were shipped, which is a small decrease from the 18.5 million units shipped in 2024.
As a huge fan of action-horror, I remember when Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy absolutely blew up in 1999. It was a massive hit, making over $400 million on an $80 million budget and really kicked off this wave of action-horror movies. It’s funny, because exactly five years later, on May 7th, 2004, Sommers released Van Helsing. Sadly, it didn’t do so well, and it feels like that movie quietly marked the end of that whole action-horror boom.
PlayStation has sold a combined 74.6 million software units on both the PS4 and PS5, which is 1.5 million fewer than last year. Of those sales, games made directly by PlayStation (first-party titles) accounted for 5.8 million units, a decrease of 100,000 from the previous year. More and more people are choosing to download full game versions digitally, with digital downloads now making up 85% of all sales. The PlayStation Network currently has 125 million active users each month.
Everything on this list wouldn’t be possible without the first movie that launched this popular series. That original film remains popular even after its initial release on Netflix. Recently, a sequel was announced, and last year, a new short film titled Debut: A Kpop Demon Hunters Story was also announced, although we don’t yet know when it will be released.
Netflix’s newest popular series, the action-thriller Man on Fire, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, started as a novel. While many remember the 2004 film with Denzel Washington, the series is actually based on the 1980 book by A. J. Quinnell. The Netflix adaptation takes some significant liberties with the original story, but it still centers around the character of Creasy (known as Marcus in the book and John in both the series and the movie). Interestingly, the book offers a roadmap for future storylines, as Man on Fire is the first in a series. The following may contain spoilers for the Man on Fire series.