Month: August 2022

It’s been more than a month since PlayStation Plus Premium went live, cementing the video game industry’s shift toward cloud gaming and subscriptions. PlayStation’s game-streaming scheme is competing directly with Xbox Game Pass, the service that provided the concept by earning more than 25 million subscribers over the past five years, leveraging Microsoft’s massive cloud network.

As the two main console manufacturers and the owners of huge franchises, Sony and Microsoft set the stage for the rest of the video game marketplace, and the transition to streaming subscriptions is no different. Here we’ll break down what they’re each offering and take a look at the industry from the perspective of the cloud.

PlayStation Plus has three tiers: Essential, Extra and Premium. Essential costs $10 a month or $60 a year, and it’s basically the PlayStation Plus you’re used to, offering three games to download each month, access to online multiplayer features, cloud storage and discounts. PS Plus Extra costs $15 a month or $100 a year, and has everything in the Essential tier plus a library of up to 400 downloadable PS4 and PS5 games.

PS Plus Premium costs $18 a month or $120 a year, and adds up to 340 games from past PlayStation consoles. This is also the tier that unlocks cloud gaming, supporting more than 700 titles and adding the ability to stream or download games from older eras. This tier actually replaces PlayStation Now, Sony’s often-underwhelming cloud gaming service that launched on PS4. With PS Plus Premium, cloud gaming is available on PS4, PS5 and PC, but not on mobile devices.

That’s one difference between Sony and Microsoft’s approach, as Xbox titles are playable on mobile devices as well as consoles and PC. But the bigger distinction is the type of games that are available on each network. Sony doesn’t plan on adding big exclusive games like forspoken or God of War Ragnarok to Plus on day one, meaning subscribers will have to buy these titles separately if they want to play right away. On the Xbox side of things, Game Pass Ultimate offers a streaming library of more than 300 titles, and it includes big first-party drops like halo-infinite on release day. That’s significant, considering Xbox owns influential studios including Bethesda and id Software, and it’s in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard. Xbox offering the next Doom or Elder Scrolls on day one is a bigger draw than Sony offering strayeven if Stray is the most adorable game of the year.

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Xbox has been the loudest proponent of cloud gaming in the console space, and with the support of a robust network from Microsoft and years of public testing, Game Pass has set the standard when it comes to subscription services. Game Pass has PC-only and console-only tiers providing access to a library of more than 300 downloadable games for $10 a month, while Game Pass Ultimate unlocks cloud play on PC, mobile and Xbox consoles for $15 a month. Assuming you pay for PS Plus Premium up-front, this puts the annual price of Game Pass Ultimate ahead of Premium by $60 – which is roughly what it’ll cost PlayStation subscribers to buy one of those first-party Sony games, so it all shakes out in the end.

Xbox has been steadily building the foundation for an industry that isn’t limited by hardware, relying on cloud gaming rather than console generations, while Sony still seems married to the idea of ​​hardware cycles and more traditional game sales. Despite being there first with PlayStation Now, when it comes to streaming, Sony is playing catch-up to Microsoft, but it still has plenty to offer in the form of classic games and new exclusives. Cloud play is here to stay and it’s possible that other services like Steam and the Epic Games Store will follow Xbox and PlayStation’s lead in the coming years. Nintendo is bringing up the rear in terms of online, cloud, and anything resembling 21st century technology, but it has an unrivaled back catalog and Switch Online unlocks a number of NES, SNES and N64 games.

This isn’t about any one service being better than the others. This is about adjusting to the new normal for video games, where your money won’t be spent on a $60 disc or a discrete download code, but will instead be spread among streaming services with individual purchases on the side. We’re used to this idea when it comes to TV and movies, and streaming technology is almost reliable enough to make it the standard in gaming.

These are the new calculations we’ll be running each month: Do I value Game Pass Ultimate over Netflix? Or PS Plus Premium over Spotify? New subscription services pop up almost weekly; something’s gotta give.

A warehouse worker for one of the UK’s biggest collectable card-selling companies was found guilty last week of stealing over $US70,000 ($97,174) of Pokemon cards, and then hide them in…his mum’s house.

Over the last few years, Pokémon cards have become a hot commodity, with specific cards fetching extraordinary prices at auction. Even recently out-of-print card packs can fetch large numbers, and this has led to an increasing number of stories about theft of the valuable cardboard. The Pokémon Company has attempted to address this by printing billions more cards, but it seems they remain a strong temptation to thieves.

Kyriacos Christou worked in the warehouse for Magic Madhouse Ltd, an online store for CCG and tabletop gaming, based in Enfield, North London. Over a series of months, he stole an increasing number of Pokemon cards, becoming ever more brazen in his thefts, Magic Madhouse’s owner Michael Duke told Kotaku.

“He would take cards out of boxes, and put them in his pocket, Duke explained. “We didn’t have any CCTV in the premises at the time, so if he was isolated he was using it as an opportunity to grab things.” This included individual cards, booster packs, and booster boxes, the latter worth anything from $US100 ($139) to $US1,000 ($1,388). “I have aimed at the higher rarity stuff, a lot of promotional stuff. We were in the process of re-cataloguing our cards, and we were halfway through Pokemon, so we hadn’t quite finished cataloging the whole range. Initially, he was aiming at cards we hadn’t finished cataloguing.”

ReadMore: The Top 12 Most Valuable Pokémon Cards In History

But as time went on, Christou became less careful, and starting stealing cards for which they had specific records. “The stuff that was going missing was stuff that was out of print,” Duke detailed to Kotaku. “Evolutions was going missing, they’re almost four-digits a box.”

Once the thefts were getting noticed, Duke says he was able to pinpoint specific things that were going missing, and started looking on eBay for the missing items. “I stumbled across this eBay store,” he told us, “and looking what the person had up for sale, and looking for things [missing from] our inventory, and I found discrepancy after discrepancy.” Duke went on to work out which areas of the warehouse were seeing the highest amount of theft, and set up secret cameras. “Less than twelve hours later, I caught the person stealing.”

Photo: Kotaku

The court case, originally reported by The Daily Star, revealed that Christou’s eBay store had sold one booster box for £520 ($US630 ($875)), as well as a collection of 22 rare holos for £450 ($US545 ($757)). A single first-edition Lugia went for $US1,200 ($1,666).

All the cards were being kept in Christou’s mother’s house, which was also shared by Christou’s brother, a Pokemon YouTuber. According to the Starthere were over half a million Pokemon cards in the house. Duke said the police told him, “There were cards everywhere, all over the house. In the living room, kitchen, everywhere.” This complicated things, because it made it hard for the police to know which cards were stolen, and which belonged to his brother. So the police focused on Christou’s bedroom and the cards found there.

After pleading guilty, 28-year-old Christou was given a 16-month suspended sentence, meaning he’s spared jail time on the condition that he re-pays £6,000 ($US7,270 ($10,092)) within 28 days of the sentencing, as well as completing 175 hours of unpaid work, and doesn’t reoffend for the next two years. He also went to some effort to return cards he hadn’t yet sold, including the rarest stolen item, one of 32 cards given to winners during a World Championship Pokemon game. This, apparently, swayed the judge away from giving him immediate jail time. This is something Duke says he’s happy with. “It was a massive weight off my shoulders,” he told us. “I’ve been rewarded some compensation for losses. I’ve managed to secure a bunch of cards back. And while not being anywhere near perfect, it’s probably the best I could have hoped for.”

This doesn’t mean Duke came out even. When I asked how much he thinks he lost, he replied, “25, maybe £30,000.” ($36,353 ($50,465)). But it seems to be the emotional toll that has worse affected the business owner. “I’m doing better now,” he told Kotaku. “For several weeks after, it affected me quite badly. I wasn’t able to focus, I wasn’t able to sleep properly, I had bad trust issues. Then I thought I got better, but I realized I was suffering from other things as well. I’ve been using the Apple Health app on my phone a lot more recently, and I can start to see all the trends. ‘Ah, that’s when this started happening. And that’s when Este started happening.’ It’s honestly been a real struggle.”

With the court case over, and now the warehouse has security cameras and other measures in place to prevent something similar from happening again, Michael Duke says he hopes to find some closure.

Given Magic Madhouse is an officially recommended reseller by PokemonI figured it would be a good idea to also ask Duke if he thought the recent crazy prices for Pokemon cards would continue. “I think it’s settled down now,” he explains. “The recent craze died off at the start of this year. Now there’s a remarkable disparity, some people selling a card for £150, others selling it for £500. It’s harder to price cards, but I think you find the same in a lot of collectable markets.”

On Tuesday, Google kicked off its “Get The Message” RCS campaign online and will be continuing with digital billboards in NYC going after Apple.

Starting August 25, the pressure campaign will appear on over 500 digital billboards in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The examples we have today show the ads appearing on LinkNYC kiosks and their portrait displays, which fit the messaging thread nature of the advertisements. [Note: We were initially informed that there would also be “static billboards,” but we’re now told NYC is just a digital campaign running until October 6.]

Google is going after how Android to iPhone texting results in low-resolution images due to the old MMS standard, while noting the blue/green bubble phenomenon.

The green Android head appears in the bottom-left corner with a “Help Apple #GetTheMessage” and link to the Android.com website. There’s also a Chrome Dino QR code.

Until NYC goes live, Google will continue running digital Get The Message advertising on YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok targeting Apple. It also has “celebrity influencers” (like Keke Palmer, Vanessa Hudgens, and Madelaine Petsch) on Instagram and Twitter.

Google wants Apple to adopt RCS (Rich Communication Services) so that iPhone and Android users texting each other can benefit from read receipts, typing indicators, sending over data, higher-res video and images, and better group chats.

Messaging is how we stay connected with our family, allow our friendships to feel close enough to touch no matter how far apart they are, and how we get things done. However, conversations between people using iOS and Android platforms today are unnecessarily challenging and they emotionally pull us apart. From Google’s perspective, any platform that isn’t built to bring people together simply doesn’t represent the level of seamless communication and modern technology people deserve and expect. This campaign is intended to deliver a clear call to Apple to finally join us in adopting the latest messaging standards that provides the best possible messaging experience for everyone, both on iOS and Android.

— Adrienne Lofton, Global Vice President of Integrated Marketing, Platforms and Ecosystems

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This week, alongside a massive unveiling of brand new foldable devices and accessories from Samsung, Google put out its own ad campaign in an attempt to rally the troops against Apple’s tyrannical reign on messaging. Google’s #getthemessage campaign hopes to stoke the flames of millions of bothered Android fans so that Apple might be encouraged to support RCS messaging, the cross-platform standard recently adopted by Google Messages.

The Get The Message website reads like a Bible class handout from my old Christian school. It has all the talking points Google wants me to use to remind people that it’s Apple’s fault that I, as an Android user, don’t have access to the full resolution and capabilities afforded by Apple Messages. Google brings up that, sometimes, group messages get broken because they include a mixture of Apple and Android-using folks, often leading to “social frustration.” It even links to past coverage pointing to evidence that children and teens dread carrying around Android devices for fear of being denoted an uncool Green Bubble.

I immediately knew what Google was going for when I saw the ad campaign go live. I remember covering Google Senior Vice President Hiroshi Lockheimer’s first tweet storm about the inefficiencies of Apple’s proprietary messaging standard. And then the second time, months after when he called on Apple to make it easier on everyone.

But the latest #getthemessage campaign seems a little all over the place. I’m struggling to understand precisely the demographic that is supposed to go after Apple to make things play nice. Is it Android olds like me who are crotchety and have complained about the lack of parity in messaging since the early days on the platform? Or is it Gen Z-ers on TikTok who have no problem taking in the weirdest Riverdale storylines and running with whatever horror shitshow the CW is allowing to show over there? (I hear it’s very good.)

Why is Madelaine Petsch, who plays Cheryl on Riverdalepart of this advertising campaign? Is she supposed to inspire the youngins to help drive the point home? Furthermore, why is Vanessa Hudgens part of this ad campaign, when her last relevant IMDB entry is The Princess Switch, a Netflix-exclusive Christmas movie with nothing on my Lifetime favourites? I have absolutely no emotional connection to these people as an Android user. Not to mention, you can tell they’re reading off a script from their screens. I don’t believe these famous-ish people know what my life is like wielding an Android phone and hanging out in Apple land.

What’s the problem with iMessage?

There’s indeed fragmentation in text messaging among the major mobile platforms. Apple Messages app runs on the iMessage service to send texts between iPhones and other iOS-enabled devices. It supports end-to-end encryption, better support for group chats, and high-resolution images and videos. But when an Apple user texts an Android device with the default texting application, the message is sent out as an old-school SMS or MMS message, often deprecating the experience of the text on the Android user’s side.

Google adopted RCS, or Rich Communication Services, to try to fix this dichotomy, and it’s already in use in other markets. RCS enables encrypted messaging, high-quality media sharing, and other modern features like bigger character limits and read receipts. If you have access to RCS on Android Messages and are chatting with another Android user, you already have access to some of these features. That’s what life could be like with your iPhone-using pal.

Google has attempted to bridge the gap between iOS and Android messengers despite the repeated pleas for Apple to do the work. Emoji reactions, which used to be limited to iPhone users, became available earlier this year after the company added support for them on Android.

The fragmentation will persist unless Apple wants to get on board with RCS. But Apple is committed to keeping its walled garden coifed and gated up, because it helps sell its hardware, where it makes the bulk of its cash. The iOS 16 Beta already has iPhone-only abilities to edit and delete delivered iMessages. That sort of feature is possible precisely because of the tightly-knit nature of the iOS platform.

Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if this campaign fizzles out because Android users have already moved on. Meta’s Messenger and WhatsApp have a stronger hold on the market, and many other messaging apps work with your phone number. Even I’ve moved on from Android Messages and find most of my daily correspondence happening exclusively inside Instagram DMs.