Sony vows to ramp up PS5 production to levels ‘never achieved before’

One of Sony’s top priorities going forward is to ramp up production for the PlayStation 5 to meet unprecedented demand for the console. In a briefing with investors (PDF), the company said that it expects to close the gap in PS4 and PS5 sales this year after the newer console lagged behind its older sibling in 2021. Sony blamed the lack of PS5 sales on its inability to build enough units due to ongoing supply chain shortages in its quarterly earnings report. There’s no lack of demand: Based on the data Sony presented, it takes only 82 minutes to to sell 80,000 PS5 units, whereas it takes nine days to sell the same number of PS4s. 

The company now expects to be able to produce more units as supply chain shortages have eased up a bit, but the pandemic’s impact on parts availability still remains a concern. In addition, Sony is worried that the Russian invasion of Ukraine might also affect its logistics and potential parts inventory. To mitigate the impact of those issues, Sony plans to source from multiple suppliers “for greater agility in unstable market conditions.” It also has ongoing negotiations to maintain optimal delivery routes for the console. 

With those solutions in place, the company believes PS5 sales can overtake the PS4’s again starting next year. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan said during the briefing that after the initial ramp up, the company is “planning for heavy further increases in console production, taking [it] to production levels that [it has] never achieved before.”

Aside from discussing its PS5 production goals, Sony has also revealed that it’s expanding PlayStation Studios by acquiring more game studios, as well as increasing its investments in live services, PC and mobile offerings. It’s committing to launch 12 live services in the coming years that don’t include Destiny, which will be the company’s as part of its Bungie acquisition. And it intends to have half of its annual first party releases on PC and on mobile by 2025. “By expanding to PC and mobile, and it must be said… also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being present pretty much everywhere,” Ryan explained.

NVIDIA reportedly slows down hiring as it braces for a drop in gaming sales

A slowing economy continues to affect the tech industry, as NVIDIA has become one of the first chipmakers to announce a pullback on new hiring, according to memos seen by The New Indian Express and confirmed by Protocol. That lines up its comments during its latest earnings release, when it said that it expects sales of GPUs for gaming consoles and PCs to decline in the current quarter. “Overall the gaming market is slowing,” CEO Jensen Huang told Reuters. 

NVIDIA actually had a solid previous quarter, with revenue up 46 percent over last year to $8.29 billion. It also noted that its “gearing up for the largest wave of new products in our history” with new GPU, CPU, DPU and robotics processors coming online in the second half of the year. 

However, it forecast lower revenue than the market expected for next quarter. And internally, the company appears to be bracing for a slowdown. “Onsite interviews… continue, but we will raise our standard to the highest levels,” it reportedly said in a Slack message. “We were told that leadership wants to take a pause to onboard the thousands of new hires we’ve recently made.” The company also told Protocol that it’s slowing hiring “to focus our budget on taking care of existing employees as inflation persists.

NVIDIA will be joining a number of tech companies, including Lyft, Uber and Snap, in announcing hiring slowdowns. Tech companies have been hit particularly hard by economic headwinds cause by COVID lockdowns in China and the war in Ukraine. NVIDIA, however, was expected to weather events due to continued strong demand in the GPU market that has kept prices high and supply short. 

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Twitter is working toward ‘closing the transaction process’ with Elon Musk

If attendees at Twitter’s annual shareholder meeting were hoping to clear up confusion surrounding Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company, they likely left disappointed. Despite numerous questions about the future of Twitter, the company’s executives had little to say about Musk, who did not attend the meeting.

“We’re working through the transaction process,” CEO Parag Agrawal said during the meeting. The status of the deal has been somewhat unclear since Musk announced it was “on hold,” due to his concerns about bots on the platform. Twitter executives have maintained they are moving forward with their plans.

“Even as we work towards closing this transaction, our teams and I remain focused on the important work we do every day to serve the public conversation,” Agrawal said.

Twitter had said ahead of the meeting that it wouldn’t answer questions related to Musk’s acquisition of the company, which will need to be formally approved by Twitter stockholders at a later date. Even so, shareholders tried to get Twitter executives to address the issue. The very first question in the Q&A portion of the meeting asked what will happen to Twitter shareholders’ stock if “someone” buys the company and takes it private. “We aren’t able to address these questions today,” Sean Edgett, Twitter’s General Counsel, said, directing people to the company’s previous SEC filings.

Shareholders also raised questions about the future of the company’s content moderation policies. Agrawal said the company remains “focused” on existing its current policies and “decreasing our reliance on user reports.” Though he didn’t directly address comments Musk has made about loosening its rules, he said that “silencing political commentary is antithetical to our commitment to free speech.”

The meeting also marks the end of co-founder Jack Dorsey’s tenure with Twitter. He had stepped aside as CEO in November, but remained on the board of directors until the meeting. As with much of Twitter’s future, it was unclear who will succeed him.

Shenzhen Zhengtong electronic financial terminal product ZT8669 has been successfully transplanted and adapted to open source Hongmeng OpenHarmony 3.1: support bank card, passbook, scan code, face, digital RMB and other payments

IT House May 25 news, according to the release of OpenHarmony, the latest 3.1 Release version released by the OpenAtom OpenHarmony (hereinafter referred to as […]

The post Shenzhen Zhengtong electronic financial terminal product ZT8669 has been successfully transplanted and adapted to open source Hongmeng OpenHarmony 3.1: support bank card, passbook, scan code, face, digital RMB and other payments appeared first on Gamingsym.

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Take-Two’s $12.7 billion purchase of Zynga is complete

One of the biggest takeovers in the history of the gaming industry is complete — Take-Two now owns Zynga. The companies announced the $12.7 billion acquisition in January. The two sides have cut through all the red tape and, after shareholders gave the thumbs up last week, the deal is done.

Zynga has joined the likes of Rockstar Games and 2K under Take-Two’s umbrella. As s result of the deal, Take-Two now has a bigger stable of well-known mobile and casual gaming franchises, including Words with Friends and Farmville. Among the games Zynga is working on is Star Wars: Hunters, a free-to-play arena shooter for mobile and Nintendo Switch that’s supposed to arrive this year.

“As we bring together our exceptional talent, exciting pipelines of games, and industry-leading technologies and capabilities, we believe that we can take our portfolio to another level of creativity, innovation, and quality,” Take-Two chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a statement. “Each of our teams has a strong history of operational execution, and together, we expect that we will enhance our financial profile through greater scale and profitability, paving the way for us to deliver strong shareholder value.”

Take-Two’s buyout of Zynga is part of a major wave of consolidation across the gaming industry. In January, Sony announced it was buying Destiny 2 studio Bungie for $3.6 billion. That news came just days after Microsoft said it planned to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Both takeovers are pending regulatory approval. Activision Blizzard shareholders voted in favor of the Microsoft deal last month.

Hyundai will invest $5 billion toward US manufacturing and innovation

Hyundai will allocate an additional $5 billion toward investments in the US, the automaker announced on Sunday. The funds will support the company’s work in electric vehicles, robotics, air taxis, self-driving cars and artificial intelligence. The anno…