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Is PSX Extreme Going To Review Astro Bot?

Gabriel Stanford-Reisinger 1 Comment

Just gonna say it; yes we do have a review of Astro Bot in the works. It’s late because we do not get first-party PlayStation codes on a consistent basis and our reviewer purchased a physical copy so we had to wait until that came in and now that it is, he’s well into playing it.

Furthermore, considering the nature of the game — a love letter to everything PlayStation, we wanted to make sure this review was done right and if that means being late, so be it.

Just wanted to mention that as I’m sure many people are interested in knowing whether or not we will be reviewing it and when it is due out. While I can’t say exactly when it is to be released, I can say with confidence; PSX Extreme is reviewing Astro Bot.

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PS5 Pro Confirmed, Price Takes A Page From PS3 Release

Gabriel Stanford-Reisinger 0 Comments

Sony has confirmed the existence of the PS5 Pro alongside its price and release date. Naturally, fans aren’t happy with the lofty price tag attached to the mid-gen system refresh.

During the technical presentation on YouTube followed by a PlayStation Blog post, it was revealed that after many, and we mean many, rumors, the PS5 Pro is heading out this year aiming to improve fidelity and performance of the console. Priced at a staggering $699.99 here in the US, meanwhile it’s a whopping $959.99 over in Canada.

This discless (with an add-on to include a disc drive heading our way) refresh remodels the PS5 with a black stripe across the side of the console. It’ll introduce a 45% boost to its GPU performance, enhanced ray-tracing, the introduction of its PlayStation Super Spectral Resolution, which is their proprietary AI-powered upscaling tech, and a beefy 2TB SSD.

Games like Alan Wake 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, and more will benefit from its upscaling tech and other features. It’s wild that Sony is placing this price tag on its consoles considering the backlash it faced during the PS3 generation when its beefier 60GB console was brandishing $599.99.

For those who are interested, pre-orders open up on September 26 and the console itself will release on November 7.

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Days Gone Director Unhappy With Astro Bot Cameo

Gabriel Stanford-Reisinger 0 Comments

As you may expect, Astro Bot contains Days Gone cameos, including a bot donning Deacon St John’s outfit. Unfortunately, this just didn’t sit right with former Bend Studio vet, John Garvin.

Taking to Twitter, Garvin, the same vet who bashed gamers for waiting for sales to buy the game, expressed his dissatisfaction with Deacon being “reduced to promoting other games” before trashing the studio. Of course, he’s become kind of known for his harshness toward people who disagree with him and his bluntness.

In a separate post, he brandished Astro Bot as a “small game,” despite what looks to be a large part of Sony’s marketing department backing the game. While we can understand his frustration, calling this a “cartoon schill” is a crazy thing before then telling people who think he’s overreacting to “sit down” and that “adults are talking.”

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New PS5 Technical Presentation Tomorrow

Gabriel Stanford-Reisinger 0 Comments

PlayStation has announced a new technical presentation slated for tomorrow. It’ll be a short presentation spanning only nine minutes.

PlayStation senior director Sid Shuman announced on the PlayStation Blog that this presentation will focus on “PS5 and innovations in gaming technology” whatever that truly means. Obviously, this is likely the route they’re taking to reveal the much-rumored PS5 Pro.

On a side note, we have no doubts that many people will assert some sort of handheld device rumor, but we highly doubt this will be the case. Most likely this technical presentation will showcase the commonplace system refresh we’re all used to.

The presentation will begin on September 10 at 8 AM PST.

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Astro Bot Dev Won’t Chase Sony’s Hyper-Realistic Trend

Gabriel Stanford-Reisinger 0 Comments

Astro Bot released yesterday and its developer, Team Asobi, is naturally very excited to welcome fans into the continuation of the PS5 tech demo. Lucky for us, it seems the Japanese studio is looking to fill a specific niche that Sony’s flagship console simply fails to keep going — non-hyper-realistic games.

A lengthy report by VGC shares the info, with studio head Nicolas Doucet stating that they’re looking at filling a gap within the internal PlayStation market. It’s no secret that the PlayStation line has gone from slightly more lighthearted content to more mature mainstays, AKA going from classics like Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper to The Last of Us and Horizon.

This leaves Sony’s first-party teams with no one to fill that gap. The gap of more cartoonish games that have a broader appeal. That’s what Doucet’s pivoted Team Asobi into and so far it’s led to great success.

“If you consider the history of PlayStation and how every studio has positioned themselves, it’s interesting that – and this is also what I show management – as the audience of PlayStation grew, a lot of these [studios] went from making cartoon games to a little bit more mature, hyper-realistic games.

“That’s when we at Team Asobi as a studio decided that we really wanted to fill that gap, that used to be the gap filled by other studios 20-25 years ago. That’s really where we want to be: all ages, colourful etc. Even if we made a horror game, it would be a funny horror game.”

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Astro Bot To Add 15 Levels As DLC

Gabriel Stanford-Reisinger 0 Comments

Astro Bot launches today, with more to come from Team Asobi. New DLC will seemingly make its rounds with some stuff being geared toward speedrunning and general challenges.

During a studio visit, VGC shared that the Japanese studio has plans to introduce 10 challenge levels as well as five speedrun levels. It’s also possible the number of levels may differ as a month time can make a difference. There’s no concrete timeline, but we do know the game itself has a wealth of content full of cameos and passion, with Sony’s full marketing support.

If you haven’t already, Team Asobi has been actively updating Astro’s Playroom with new content to celebrate Astro Bot’s release, including some new bots, two of which we’ve covered in the past.

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