Hello Travelers! Your Genshin Impact dev team is back, bringing you the latest information about Version 2.3 Shadows Amidst Snowstorms that releases November 24. As winter is approaching in Teyvat, we’ve been planning a series of challenges and activities in snow across Dragonspine. Meanwhile, Inazuma’s Bantan Sango Detective Agency is also calling for helpers for investigation and rescue operations regarding mysterious mass disappearances of little animals.

With Version 2.3, we’d also like to bring more friends, both old and new, to join your adventure. Albedo and Eula will return, and Arataki Itto and Gorou will also join the game as new playable characters.

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Training in Biting Cold

Covered by snow all year round, Dragonspine is an enormous frozen mountain range in the south of Mondstadt. In this season’s event, Shadows Amidst Snowstorms, the Adventurer’s Guild has decided to hold a winter training camp in this area, and old friends such as Albedo and Eula will also make an appearance in the story. It’s time to sharpen your skills, enjoy the snowy weather, and earn loads of rewards including the new 4-star Sword Cinnabar Spindle to enhance your characters.

The Dragonspine Special Training will provide participants with three different types of challenges. The first one is Agility Training, which will put your speed to the test in specially-designed race tracks with various buffs, collectible seals, and obstacles. The second challenge is the Tracker Training which requires participants to spot and melt certain Ice Crystal Piles to collect Snowman Components. If you’re already a veteran treasure hunter who never misses a chest, this one should be a piece of cake. Last but not least, we have Combat Training

Happy birthday, PS5!

A year seems to have flown by rather quickly since the first day that gamers were able to get their hands on PS5 — and I am deeply honored and humbled to celebrate this amazing first year with all of you.

So much has happened in just one year from the day we lit up landmarks and other iconic places all over the world to mark the arrival of PS5. Incredible games such as Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Returnal, and Deathloop launched. SIE acquired the talented development studios Bluepoint Games, Firesprite, Housemarque, and Nixxes. We revealed our next-generation VR system for PS5. And most recently, we’ve unveiled new footage and exciting updates for upcoming titles such as God of War Ragnarok, Gran Turismo 7, and Horizon Forbidden West all from PlayStation Studios, and announced Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Remake during our September showcase.

A busy year indeed, and we are just getting started with PS5. The imaginative game creators and publishing partners we work with have launched more than 360 games on PS5. Additionally, there are currently more than 25 games in development for PS5 at PlayStation Studios.

Most importantly, the passionate support we’ve seen from you, our players, makes this past year truly special for us. PS5 gamers have collectively played more than 4.6 billion hours of gameplay on PS5 and broadcast more than 26 million hours of content. Here is a look at the top ten PS5 games played during PS5’s first year, based on gameplay hours:

• Fortnite
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
• FIFA 21
• NBA 2K21
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Destiny 2
• MLB The Show 21
• Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• Demon’s Souls
• NBA 2K22

You’ve made PS5 the biggest console launch in history, and I truly can’t thank you enough for your support and dedication this past year.

I also want to thank everyone in the community for your patience. We continue to see historic demand for PS5 and we understand the inventory constraints remain a source of frustration for many of our customers. Rest assured that we are laser-focused on doing everything in our power to ship as many units as possible, it’s something we work on every day across the company and remains my top priority. Again, we appreciate your patience as we navigate through these unprecedented global challenges.

There’s plenty of great things to come for PS5 in the future, and I look forward to sharing more of these extraordinary moments with you. Thank you again for being part of the PlayStation community and celebrating this milestone with us.

All data between November 12, 2020 – September 30, 2021

“Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles”, the video game adaptation of the “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba” anime, is now on sale for the PlayStation®4, PlayStation®5!

Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles | CM

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Step into the worlds of Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas in Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, and get behind the wheel to find your favorite station or host on the radio dial, each thoughtfully curated and packed with hits and hidden gems. 

The team at PlayStation is so excited to dive into these enhanced classics and their iconic soundtracks, that we curated a trio of Spotify playlists. Now Spotify users can listen to timeless tunes of GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas, whether they’re fleeing the law in game or going about their daily life.

Please enjoy!

Grand Theft Auto III Playlist

Cruise to the radio stations of Liberty City, from the classical motifs of Double Clef FM to Scientist’s Dub classics on K-Jah.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Playlist

Indulge in nostalgic tunes from the melodrama of Emotion 98.3 to the quintessential 80s pop of Wave 103.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Playlist

Ride in style with sounds ranging from the West Coast rap of Radio Los Santos to the Chicago house of SF-UR.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition is available now on PS4 and PS5. Grand Theft Auto III – The Definitive Edition will be available on PlayStation Now starting December 7.

Hello everyone! Tomorrow, Team17 releases the long-awaited Epic Chef on PlayStation 4. Epic Chef is a story-driven adventure game flavoured with life-sim farming, and crafting elements, blended into one delicious dish via an interactive cooking experience – all served with a side of humour and elaborate cast of characters. From humble beginnings you will build a farm, grow delectable ingredients, craft machinery, and cook your way to becoming the most Epic Chef in Ambrosia.

The team at Infinigon have gone above and beyond in their pursuit of culinary mastery , and Epic Chef will feature over 100,000 combinations of dishes, with 27,000 having unique visuals. Today we’re going to show how just about anything can be used to create a delicacy of delectable dishes, well… depending on your taste.

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Check out our mouth-watering launch trailer.

Anything can be an ingredient

With this in mind and trusty axe in hand – gathered logs from the boughs of the Erwin Trees provide an earthy flavoured punch through the core of this dish, complementing the home-made flour cakes and marinara to sit delicately on the palette.

Create outrageous dishes with grotesque ingredients

Say you’re caring for some unique and beautiful unicorns on your farm and during a routine mucking out they happen to leave you a ‘delight’ amongst the hay – hold your horses, that’s an incredibly potent flavoursome ingredient that you need to keep. Sling this in a pan with your favourite Evil Mandragora, grown from the seeds passed to your hand from the well-versed mages of Ambrosia, and you’ve got yourself a Toxic Tartare and Erwin Mousse with Yolk Compote.

When creating and serving in your own restaurant, it’s important to remember that success in Ambrosia, whether during a chef

October proved a packed month for new releases, with the likes of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy,  Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles, and The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes all battling it out for chart spots (and lengthiest game names).  The biggest winners of the four week period however were Far Cry 6, FIFA 22, and Back 4 Blood, all of whom took top billing on the PlayStation Store PlayStation 5 charts. 

Scroll down for a breakdown of the full charts for PS5, PS4, PS VR and F2P, across US & Canada and Europe. 

PS5 Games

*Naming of products may differ between regions

*Upgrades not included*Naming of products may differ between regions

PS4 Games

	US/Canada	EU
1	FIFA 22	FIFA 22
2	Far Cry 6	Far Cry 6
3	Back 4 Blood	Grand Theft Auto V
4	Madden NFL 22	Minecraft
5	NBA 2K22	The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
6	Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles	Red Dead Redemption 2
7	Grand Theft Auto V	Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag
8	NHL 22	Need for Speed Heat
9	Insurgency: Sandstorm	Gang Beasts
10	Minecraft	CarX Drift Racing Online
11	God of War	The Last of Us Part II
12	Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War	Friday the 13th: The Game
13	Red Dead Redemption 2	I Read more Embark on this bullet hell adventure with Yuki on PS VR next week Game Ace Pro / Tuesday, November 9, 2021 0 0 Yuki revolves around the titular character, a Space Ranger whose duty is to guard the Star Flower, a celestial body responsible for nurturing the universe with creativity. The object of desire of the evil Yokaliens, Yuki sees her beloved universe in danger once they steal all of its creative force, setting the universe towards a destructive path. Joined by the immeasurable powers of a kid’s wild imagination, Yuki will blast through infinite bullets and chilling creatures so that together, they can save the universe. Now that you are on board for this adventure, you might as well know a bit more of the universe you are about to delve into! In this article, we share with you the game’s core fantasy, an important pillar that helped us sustain most of our design choices. With the immersive capabilities of PlayStation VR, Yuki takes us back to our childhood, when, with our favorite toy in hand, the four walls of our bedroom would suddenly become too small to fit the worlds we would imagine. Being a game that revolves around creativity, we wanted the player to feel like a kid again, and with Yuki’s action figure in hand, embark on a perilous adventure to save the universe. Basically, every design choice came from that principle, which we called the core fantasy of the game, and helped us base every major decision during the making, including the bedroom, the game’s entryway. It was very important for us that each player had their own take on the game while still feeling like they belonged there, and most importantly, we wanted each player to have a unique connection towards Yuki’s action figure, just like they had with their favorite toys growing up. For that, we decided to set the game in a reality based on our own, but without any specific mention of where the story takes place apart from a kid’s bedroom. Not any bedroom, this one belongs to a clearly huge fan of Yuki, a decision made in order to strengthen the player’s sense of who they are in the game straight away.  The key to entering the imagination world, picking up Yuki transports the player to where the real action takes place. While the main focus here was to create a challenging mix of bullet hell with roguelite elements, it was important that the game’s core fantasy remained present. Therefore, obstacles and bullet patterns that constantly reminded the player that they were holding a toy were created. At the same time that it’d be fun to see if Yuki could go through the narrow bars of a gate, or experience the thrill of dodging seemingly infinite bullets, it’d also be an instinctive way to strengthen the bond between Yuki and the player. It was interesting to see this happening during our playtests, where testers would hide Yuki behind them, once too many bullets would risk her safety, or even apologize to her once she got hit. Read more Memories of life working on Final Fantasy IX, available with PlayStation Now Game Ace Pro / Tuesday, November 9, 2021 0 0 Hello everyone, my name is Kazuhiko Aoki, and I was the event designer for Final Fantasy IX. I was responsible for bringing the characters of the game to life, as well as the different scenarios players would experience. In honour of Final Fantasy IX’s release on PlayStation Now, I thought I’d share some of my personal memories of the game’s development. Play Video Starting out I was assigned to the Final Fantasy IX team from the very beginning. I’d previously worked on Final Fantasy III, IV and VII, so I was no stranger to working on the series, but one thing in particular was going to be different this time: the game was going to be made in Hawaii. That was a big move for me – I wondered what the development environment would be like over there, for example. However, I didn’t start working on Final Fantasy IX right away. Right before development was due to begin, Hironobu Sakaguchi, the director of the game (and original creator of the Final Fantasy series!), asked me: “How about you make Chocobo’s Dungeon 2?” As a result, I ended up taking the development staff for that game to Hawaii with me and we made Chocobo’s Dungeon 2 there as well. Maybe some of you played it on the original PlayStation! Once that game was complete, I joined the Final Fantasy IX team and we started working on the game together.  Looking back while moving forwards From the very beginning, Mr. Sakaguchi said that he wanted Final Fantasy IX to be a return to our roots. Final Fantasy VII and VIII had been set in science-fiction-inspired worlds, and we wanted to go back to the fantasy style established in the earlier Final Fantasy games. This did cause us a few issues, however. For example, we’d built up a lot of experience depicting taller characters with the two previous games, but in order to best support the fantasy atmosphere of Final Fantasy IX, we needed more stylised designs. That meant we couldn’t rely on the techniques we’d learned – we had to essential Read more (Re)building the awe-inspiring machines of Horizon Forbidden West Game Ace Pro / Monday, November 8, 2021 0 0 The world of Horizon is inhabited by highly advanced machines — technologically advanced robots that have become Earth’s dominant species. They come in all shapes and sizes, based on various life forms that existed throughout history, such as dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, and birds. Awe-inspiring yet ferocious, they pose a serious threat throughout Aloy’s mission. Spoiler Alert: Please note this article contains some spoilers for Horizon Zero Dawn and its storyline. Some of the machines encountered during the events of Horizon Zero Dawn will also be present in the upcoming sequel, Horizon Forbidden West. The Watcher, for example: resembling a small theropod, these machines often patrol larger herds and scan for potential threats. Or the Snapmaw: lethal, crocodile-like beasts which were originally created to purify water and went feral as a consequence of the Derangement. The Forbidden West is also filled with new dangers… in the Horizon Forbidden West gameplay trailer, Aloy meets a few of them, such as the fast and agile Clawstrider and the deadly mammoth-like Tremortusk. Of course there will be many more machines to fight, mount, or run from, so Aloy – and you – should be prepared for any circumstance in these forsaken lands. Awe-inspiring metal beasts Principal Machine Designer Blake Politeski has been with Guerrilla since the first machines were concepted at the start of Horizon Zero Dawn. Together with Asset Art Lead Maxim Fleury, their teams (among others) have been working on some great additions for the upcoming sequel. “We’re getting to explore a new area within the world of Horizon,” begins Blake. “It was interesting to figure out what type of machines would live in different ecological zones, and how they would interact with each other, their environment, and of course humans. Machines are the so-called caretakers of this world, so how they perform their roles and what the player can do to use these behaviors to their advantage was always interesting to consider. “During Horizon Zero Dawn’s development, we had a ton of ideas — of course not everything could make it into the first game, but now with Horizon Forbidden West we’ve been able to match some exciting ideas that previously weren’t feasible with new and interesting concepts!” Maxim elaborates: “Blake’s team provides us with a design document that describes the general look of the machine, what type of (interactive) parts it has, and what sort of attacks it can do. There’s some top-level drawings to explain the document further, but then the real visual design moves to the Robot and Weapon Asset team.