PS5: A second firmware update on its launch month, doesn’t seem to fix users’ issues

November 27th, 2020, 23:20 Posted By: wraggster

Sony released firmware 2.26 for the PS5 a couple days ago. And, although that firmware comes with the typical but elusive “This system software update improves system performance”, it doesn’t seem to fix everybody’s issues.


The PS5 has had a massively successful launch according to Sony, and every new batch sells out almost instantly on many retailers. Despite this success, some users have been seeing issues with the console, from annoying coil/fan noises, storage issues, graphical glitches, to experience-breaking crashes.
It’s unclear if any of the firmware updates released recently (2.25 and 2.26) are helping with these issues. This thread on reddit shows that at least some people are still getting crashes on pretty much all games with error CE-108255-1 (side note: this error might get solved for you by booting the console in safe mode and selecting “rebuild database”).
I’ve personally experienced a handful of problems with the console refusing to wake from sleep mode (or, in other words, crashing instantly when awaken from sleep mode, then having to turn it on a second time), but no other game breaking experience. I do feel the updates have helped it for me (specifically, I haven’t had the issue since I updated to 2.25) but that might just be random luck.
In addition to its very generic “performance improvement”, firmware 2.26 brings the following welcome fixes:

• An issue where installed disc versions of games were sometimes deleted was resolved.
• An issue that prevented the PS5 wireless controller from being charged while in rest mode when connected to the PS5’s front side USB Type-A port using the USB cable included with some PS5 consoles was resolved.

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PSVita: re3-vita 1.1 released

November 26th, 2020, 10:09 Posted By: wraggster

As the introduction suggests, re3-vita is a port of the open-source re3 engine for the PlayStation Vita which allows one to play Grand Theft Auto III natively. With Rinnegatamante & TheFlow being behind the port, it was received quite positively within the PSVita community as it finally granted the console a 3D GTA game that ran pretty well compared to the PSP’s GTA games which ran into evident performance issues especially when using TheFlow’s Native Resolution Patch.

PSVita: re3-vita 1.1 released with 40% better performance, freecam feature and various fixes - You can now enjoy GTA III without ever worrying about performance! - Wololo.net

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PlayStation Plus games for December 2020 revealed

November 25th, 2020, 21:15 Posted By: wraggster

The latest lineup of PlayStation Plus games have been revealed. Subscribers can look forward to playing three games this December, across the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 platforms. The two PS4 games are Just Cause 4--an open-world action game--and Rocket Arena--a 3v3 online competitive hero shooter. A cross platform game, Worms Rumble, will be available for both the PS4 and the PS5, offering a new spin on the classic Worms experience, with 32-player crossplatform multiplayer. All three games will be available to download on December 1st. In addition, PS+ subscribers will still be able to pick up Bugsnax, last month's free game, until January 4, 2021. Meanwhile, there will be a limited 2-day free online weekend, where anyone with a PlayStation Network account will be able to experience Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War, Grand Theft Auto V, and FIFA 21 online modes without having to pay for PS+. The free weekend will take place on December 19th and will last until December 20th.

PlayStation Plus games for December 2020 revealed | GBAtemp.net - The Independent Video Game Community

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Sony declares PS5 is biggest launch in PlayStation history

November 25th, 2020, 14:45 Posted By: wraggster

The PlayStation 5 has outsold its forebears at launch, making it the biggest debut since the original Sony console.

The official PlayStation Twitter account thanked fans for their support and confirmed the milestone, although the company has yet to share official sales figures.

"We want to thank gamers everywhere for making the PS5 launch our biggest console launch ever," the platform holder wrote.

"Demand for PS5 is unprecedented, so we wanted to confirm that more PS5 inventory will be coming to retailers before the end of the year -- please stay in touch with you local retailers."

PS5 launched almost two weeks ago on November 12th in North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea, arriving in all other major markets -- except China -- on November 19.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...tation-history

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Scalpers and bots reportedly driving PS5 shortages

November 24th, 2020, 21:44 Posted By: wraggster

A new report has thrown the impact of scalpers and bots on PlayStation 5's launch into sharp relief.

Business Insider spoke to groups who have secured large quantities of the new console and are reselling them at an inflated price.

One UK-based group, CrepChiefNotify, told the site its 12 members had collectively purchased close to 2,472 PS5 units in recent weeks, plus "just under 1,000" when pre-orders first opened in September.

Groups like this are usually competing with each other over high-price items, such as designer sneakers, as well as other products that have seen a dramatic increase in demand during the pandemic.

"Our developer wrote some site monitor software, and we tracked the stock of the sites selling hot tubs," said Tom, a CrepChiefNotify manager, by way of example. "Every time they pinged into stock, we would notify our members to buy it all."

The group used the same software to monitor retail sites for Xbox Series X|S and PS5 stock, as well as bots that could circumvent wait times, jump online queues and purchase consoles faster than a human being would be able to.

"Bot developers have seen the demand rise for next-gen consoles," said Tom. "[They] have changed their focus from being sneaker-focused bots into multi-use bots for electronics too."

Business Insider reports one individual reseller was charging $1,100 for the $500 disc-based PS5 and $900 for the $400 digital-only model. Meanwhile, groups like CrepChiefNotify charge anyway between $40 and $530 as a subscription to their service.

PS5 launched on November 12 is key markets, and then the rest of the world on November 19.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...-ps5-shortages

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The first PlayStation 5 game has been dumped

November 23rd, 2020, 18:21 Posted By: wraggster

The PlayStation 5 has been out for only a short time, but the very first game rip has already appeared online. Infamous scene group BigBlueBox has dumped two PS5 games: Planet Coaster: Console Edition and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. While there is no current way to utilize these games just yet, it does appear to be a fledgling step for the PS5 scene. BigBlueBox also potentially teased something regarding the Nintendo Switch and its Mariko revision, by including "an early Christmas present" in both releases' .nfo's, in the form of a mariko_bek and mariko_kek key/hash. As to what this means or if it's significant for Switch hacking, it's hard to say right now, but as always, GBAtemp will keep you up to date on any further news about the subject.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-firs...-units.577640/

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Jpcsp XLink Kai Support 1.0

November 22nd, 2020, 11:25 Posted By: wraggster

Jpcsp XLink Kai Support 1.0 is released. JPCSP is a PlayStation Portable(PSP) emulator, allowing you to play your PSP games on a PC. Even though Jpcsp is written in Java, it can already reach 100% PSP speed on a lot of commercial games... and the emulator performance is constantly increasing. Jpcsp takes full advantage of dual-core processors, matching the PSP dual-core architecture. Even a quad-core can give a small performance improvement by leaving free CPU cores for the Java JIT Compiler and the graphics cache.

Jpcsp changelog:
First release including the network support over XLink Kai.

https://github.com/jpcsp/jpcsp

http://www.emucr.com/2020/11/jpcsp-x...upport-10.html

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PCSX-Redux v1578.20201119.6

November 22nd, 2020, 11:17 Posted By: wraggster

PCSX-Redux v1578.20201119.6 is released. This is yet another fork of the Playstation Emulator, PCSX. While the work here is very much in progress, the goal is roughly the following: Bring the codebase to more up to date code standards. Get rid of the plugin system and create a single monolithic codebase that handles all aspects of the playstation emulation. Write everything on top of SDL/OpenGL3+/ImGui for portability and readability. Improve the debugging experience. Improve the rendering experience.

PCSX-Redux Changelog::
* Changing distribution link
* Merge pull request #291 from nicolasnoble/cpu-tests-comments
* Adding comments explaining these weird tests.
* Merge pull request #290 from nicolasnoble/test-mode
* Adding testmode to avoid abrupt shutdown for non-tests
* Merge pull request #289 from nicolasnoble/mips-unit-testing
* More CPU tests
* Merge pull request #288 from nicolasnoble/multilist-test
* Adding multilist test
* Wrong release directory.
* Recursive clone
* Recursive clone
* Merge pull request #270 from nicolasnoble/mips-unit-testing
* Merge branch 'mips-unit-testing' of github.com:nicolasnoble/pcsx-redux into mips-unit-testing
* Adding some CPU torture tests.
* Merge remote-tracking branch 'upstream/main' into mips-unit-testing
* More tests
* Few more tests.
* More tests.
* Splitting off 32 bits build for Windows
* Splitting off 32 bits build.
* Fixing Azure Pipelines

http://www.emucr.com/2020/11/pcsx-re...202011196.html

https://github.com/grumpycoders/pcsx-redux

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PS4: OpenOrbis Toolchain updated to 0.5.1

November 21st, 2020, 21:57 Posted By: wraggster

Developer SpecterDev has published an update to the PS4 Homebrew development toolchain OpenOrbis.
Although this is a less “meaty” update than release 0.5 in August, version 0.5.1 still brings some significant improvements and bug fixes, from multiple devs in the scene (see changelog below for details).
What is the OpenOrbis PS4 Toolchain

The OpenOrbis toolchain is basically everything you need to develop Homebrew for the PS4, without having to rely on “leaked” official tools from Sony. you can find more details on the toolchain’s official github.
You’ll need a hacked PS4 to run any homebrew created with this set of tools.
SpecterDev warns that you’ll want to use LLVM 10 or below for the time being, as LLVM 11 breaks some compatibility with the toolchain. (source)
OpenOrbis Toolchain 0.5.1 Changelog

• Fixed various discrepancies between BSD and MUSL including function prototypes, structure definitions, and macros!
• Added Docker container support (thanks alazif)!
• Added proper TLS support (thanks sleirsgoevy)!
  
  
• Added a battery of unit tests for issues addressed in v0.5.1. These tests will be kept up to date with future additions to attempt to improve release qualities.
• Fixed an issue where MUSL was not thread-safe due to custom CRT.
• Added support ‘+’ and ‘-‘ escaping in NIDs (thanks sleirsgoevy).
• Fixed an issue where relocations could refer to incorrect symbols due to not accounting for an additional SECTION entry (thanks sleirsgoevy).
• Fixed copy/paste induced bugs in the autobuild.py script (thanks alazif).
• Fixed a minor issue where the __bswap32 macro in the endian include header produced compiler warnings (thanks astrelsky).

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The Search for the PS5 on Launch Day in the UK i Was Successful

November 19th, 2020, 15:46 Posted By: wraggster

Today i had the task of trying to get a PS5 for my son, this was some task, 4 hours of trying to get onto sites and with hundreds of thousands all doing the same, on Very it said 79,000 were on the PS5 page, i went through Argos, Smyths Toys, Amazon UK, Argos, Currys Asda Tesco and John Lewis and site after site were crashing under the amount of people trying to buy a PS5,

Finally after 4 solid hours i got lucky on Very and managed to buy one for my son, it was fun but dont give up and dont pay silly prices on Ebay.

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PlayStation 5 sold almost six times as many units as Xbox Series X|S in Japan

November 19th, 2020, 15:42 Posted By: wraggster

The PlayStation 5 largely outsold the Xbox Series X|S in Japan, shifting almost six times as many units at launch.
According to Famitsu's data (as reported by Gematsu), Sony's PS5 sold 118,085 units in four days (from launch on November 12, to November 15), with 14,184 of these units being the console's digital edition.
Microsoft's Series X and S had combined sales of 20,534 units in six days (from release on November 10, to November 15). Breaking down the sales numbers, the Xbox Series X sold 16,247 units and the Series S 4,287 units.
PlayStation 5 games also performed well in Japan, with Marvels' Spider-Man: Miles Morales shifting 18,640 physical copies, making it the top-selling PS5 game in Japan so far. Demon's Souls was a close second with 18,607 units. There was no report on Xbox Series X|S software sales, as Microsoft's games are mostly digital-only in Japan.
PS5 games have been performing well outside Japan too, making appearances in the UK charts despite the console having not launched yet at the time.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...s-x-s-in-japan

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PSX mecha action game Remote Control Dandy translated

November 18th, 2020, 22:24 Posted By: wraggster

An English translation of the PlayStation mecha action game Remote Control Dandy, the first by Earth Defense Force developer Sandlot (in all but name), has been released!
In 1999, twelve-year-old Mamoru Oza, heir to the largest fortune in the world, received two gifts from his father. The first: A simple handheld remote controller…which operated the fifty-meter-tall combat robot “Vordan”. The second: Ownership of the newly-established Torino Defense Force Co., Ltd, a company formed to combat the “Enigmabots” – mysterious giant robots rampaging through the world’s major cities. Remote in hand, Mamoru now finds himself the sole hope of survival for the people of Torino City.
Can a boy, his robot, and a single remote solve the riddle of the Enigmabots and save the world…without going bankrupt first?
Remote Control Dandy is a 1999 mecha action game by Human Entertainment for the Sony PlayStation. In a major departure from most mecha games, it hearkens back to giant robot shows of the ’50s and ’60s such as Tetsujin 28-gou, in which the robots, rather than containing a human pilot, are controlled from afar via remote. The game adopts this as its core mechanic: not only does the player have to contend with remotely navigating their robot in the manner of an RC car, but also personally run after it to keep it in sight, all while not getting stepped on by enemy robots.
Though the game was nominally developed and published by Human Entertainment (known for the Clock Tower and Fire Pro Wrestling series), Human went bankrupt a few months after its release, with almost all of the game’s key staff members subsequently founding the game studio Sandlot and going on to develop the successful Earth Defense Force series. Thus, Remote Control Dandy is essentially the first Sandlot game; it bears all the hallmarks of their unique brand of outsize destruction, and it’s received the occasional nod or oblique reference in their later games. Particularly, the 2002 game Robot Alchemic Drive is essentially a spiritual sequel to this one – and Sandlot would even go on to make an actual Tetsujin 28-gou game!
This patch fully translates the game into English. Aside from the text, subtitles have been added to scenes which were originally voice-only, and all in-level textures such as billboards are also translated (the ones that were legible, anyway). Video of the translation in action can be viewed .
The patch was the work of TheMajinZenki (translation), Supper (hacking), cccmar (editing and testing), and Xanathis (testing). Due to having worked on a large number of projects together, and in an attempt to resolve a frequent source of confusion, this team has decided to adopt the name “LIPEMCO! Translations” for their collaborative projects. They hope the partnership will continue to be a fruitful one.
Those interested in this game may also want to check out the fan translation of Sandlot’s Nintendo DS title Chou Soujuu Mecha MG, released last year by Phantom, Supper, and cccmar; the games share many conceptual similarities.
http://www.romhacking.net/translations/5761/

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PSVita Release: ds34vita released

November 16th, 2020, 17:37 Posted By: wraggster

Connecting DualShock 3 & DualShock 4 controllers to the PlayStation Vita is nothing new thanks to xerpi’s ds3vita/ds4vita and TheFlow’s MiniVitaTV but now, a new plugin having to do with these beloved controllers is on the bloc. This plugin is ds34vita which combines ds3vita & ds4vita together with some improvements of its own!

What is ds34vita?

As its name suggests, ds34vita is a plugin by MERLev that merges two plugins by xerpi, namely ds3vita and ds4vita while adding some of its features and improvements.


Fancy playing games with a friend on your PSVita? ds34vita has you covered although you should also give MiniVitaTV a look as it offers similar functionality!

For the uninitiated, ds3vita and ds4vita do exactly what their name implies which is allowing one to connect DualShock 3 and DualShock 4 controllers respectively to a PlayStation Vita console.

Going back to ds34vita, this plugin combines the aforementioned plugins into one together with:

Allowing you to connect 2 controllers simultaneously – no information on controller configurations was given and I can’t personally test it as I don’t have 2 DS3/DS4 controllers
A dead-zone for the touch panel was introduced
PlayStation TV-style button mapping

https://github.com/MERLev/ds34vita/releases

https://wololo.net/2020/11/15/psvita...res-and-fixes/

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PS5 Reports Warn of Putting PlayStation Console in Rest Mode

November 15th, 2020, 13:06 Posted By: wraggster

A new PS5 report warns of putting the PlayStation console in rest mode. Since release yesterday, PlayStation users have been reporting various issues with the PS5, which like the Xbox Series X, hasn't had the smoothest launch. For example, the PS5 has been freezing on players while they play some of the console's launch games, like Demon's Souls, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and Marvel' Spider-Man: Miles Morales. For now, it remains unclear how prevalent this issue or what's causing it, but apparently it's not the only freezing issue inflicting the piece of new next-gen hardware.

Over on a "PS5 Help Thread" on Reddit, multiple users have been reporting issues with putting their PS5 consoles in rest mode, with most citing an issue when specifically putting the console in rest mode while running a game. Meanwhile, Giant Bomb's Jeff Gerstmann also recently reported the same issue, noting it happened a few times while running Marvel's Spider-Man: Remastered.
On popular video game forum Reset Era, one user added to all of this noting that a GameStop employee warned them about putting the console in rest mode, though it's unclear if this is because GameStop has been tipped off by Sony about the issue or because this specific employee has been reading about issues with rest mode on the Internet like the rest of us have.

At the moment of publishing, we haven't had any issue with putting our PS5 consoles in rest mode, but it seems like many have. Remove anonymous Reddit and Reset Era users from the equation, many members of the press and influencers have been having issues with the PS5 freezing, and a bulk of these issues stem around putting the console in rest mode.

https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/ps...ole-rest-mode/

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PCSX-Redux v1531.20201113.6

November 15th, 2020, 12:29 Posted By: wraggster

PCSX-Redux v1531.20201113.6 is released. This is yet another fork of the Playstation Emulator, PCSX. While the work here is very much in progress, the goal is roughly the following: Bring the codebase to more up to date code standards. Get rid of the plugin system and create a single monolithic codebase that handles all aspects of the playstation emulation. Write everything on top of SDL/OpenGL3+/ImGui for portability and readability. Improve the debugging experience. Improve the rendering experience.

PCSX-Redux Changelog::
* Merge pull request #287 from JaCzekanski/fix-console-stdio-initialization
* Added return value to dev_tty_open
* Added entry for C(0x16) - cdevscan
* Merge pull request #286 from JaCzekanski/add-remove-device-to-b0-table
* Added RemoveDevice call to B0:48
* Merge pull request #285 from nicolasnoble/asm-view-fixes
* Fixing assembly view

https://github.com/grumpycoders/pcsx-redux

http://www.emucr.com/2020/11/pcsx-re...202011136.html

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GePatch 0.2.0 released with ability to skip GE patches & more

November 14th, 2020, 23:02 Posted By: wraggster

GePatch is a plugin by TheFlow for the PSVita & PlayStation TV that allows one to play PSP games at the consoles’ native resolution of 960×544 through the highly popular Adrenaline ePSP solution. This means that games have to push 4 times as much pixels than they do normally as the PSP’s screen only has a measly resolution of 480×272 but a good amount of games respond well to this which is pretty surprising considering that with GePatch, games are still running on the PSP hardware found within the PSVita!

https://wololo.net/2020/10/12/psvita...ve-resolution/

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PlayStation 4: Firmware 8.00 released with new avatars, revamped Party & Messages

November 14th, 2020, 22:59 Posted By: wraggster

Having originally been released in late 2013, the PlayStation 4 is still going strong when it comes to support from Sony despite the PlayStation 5’s release not being too far off with a release set for mid-November. Now, the console has received its 8th major update which brings along a decent arsenal of changes which include:

• New avatars from numerous popular PS4 titles including God Of War, The Last Of Us Part II & Uncharted 4
• The Party & Messages functionality has been revamped which includes UI changes
  
  • Party & Messages will use the same Groups of players for both Party voice chats and messaging rather than having separate groups for each application
  
  
• It is now possible to mute all microphones from the Quick Menu accessed by long-pressing the PS button
  
  • Apparently, muting works in a different manner now because before FW 8.00, muting a player meant that neither of you could hear each other. With FW 8.00, muting someone only mutes the other person on your end but NOT on their end!
  
  
• ​https://wololo.net/2020/10/16/playst...-by-community/

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HEX-Flow Launcher: A coverflow-like launcher for the Vita out for the public

November 14th, 2020, 22:56 Posted By: wraggster

Moving over to a homebrew release, VitaHEX is at it yet again and this time around, HEX-Flow Launcher has been released publicly! As its name suggests, HEX-Flow Launcher is a Lua-based homebrew utility allowing one to browse the games (or apps) they have installed on their PSVita using a coverflow-esque interface while also launching them. The launcher also allows one to view game details and to sort by category among some other things!
In order to put in cover photos for your favourite games, you can simply copy PNG images within “ux0:/data/HexFlow/COVERS/PSVITA/” with a filename that either matches the game’s TITLEID or name. The launcher’s background is also customisable by copying a ‘Background.jpg[/png]’ file within “ux0:/data/HexFlow/”. A resolution of 256×256 and 1280×720 (or smaller) is suggested for the cover photos and custom background respectively

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Zanki Zero English Translation Patch for the PSVita released

November 14th, 2020, 22:55 Posted By: wraggster

As the PSVita had much more success in Japan than in Europe/North America, a swath of titles were released only in Japan with them never receiving an English version. However, a good deal of these titles received an English localisation sometime after their initial Japanese release for other platforms such as the PlayStation 4 and PC which allowed for the creation of numerous English translation patches making more games available to Western audiences.
Now, yet another title has received the English translation patch treatment and this time, it’s Zanki Zero with Nightwinter creating the patch! For those who have never heard of the game, Zanki Zero (: Last Beginning) is a dungeon crawling game featuring 8 individuals stranded on an island after Earth was destroyed. The title was originally released back in 2018 in Japan with PS4/PC English localisations following in mid-2019. Moving over to English translation patch, its creator mentions the following important information:

• The version 1.05 patch needs to be installed
• Most of the game is translated but there are some overlapping issues together with some images not being translated
• If needed, it is recommended to use 0syscall6 instead of ref00d as it’s now outdated
• ​https://wololo.net/2020/10/25/psvita...ng-your-games/

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PSVita: Grand Theft Auto III port by Rinnegatamante & TheFlow released

November 14th, 2020, 22:54 Posted By: wraggster

The PlayStation Vita’s Grand Theft Auto III port is based upon the re3 engine which is a open-source reverse-engineered game engine for the game. Initially starting their porting with the Switch’s re3 engine port, Rinnegatamante and TheFlow managed to make swift progress over the last week with the port going from not being able to display any 3D graphics to now being fully playable with only very minor issues being present.
Performance-wise, Rinnegatamante states that game never drops below the 20-24 FPS bar which provides an experience pretty close to the PlayStation 2 version of the game which runs at 25 or 30FPS depending on the console’s region. Thanks to this, the PlayStation Vita finally has a fully playable native Grand Theft Auto title running on it which will surely make a good deal in the community happy!

https://wololo.net/2020/10/28/psvita...-all-the-time/

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