Microsoft’s plan to acquire Activision Blizzard is currently being scrutinized by regulatory bodies across the world, and in Brazil, Sony’s official response to that government’s questions has been published. According to those documents, Sony believes that once Microsoft owns the Call of Duty franchise as part of the acquisition, it’ll have the power to influence users’ console choices.
The funny thing about this is that PlayStation has been using Call of Duty to influence player console choice for years now by having exclusive and/or early access to content. For example, 2019’s Modern Warfare launched with a co-op spec ops survival mode as a PS4 exclusive feature.
In other PlayStation news, Sony is doing away with PS5’s accolades this fall. Accolades was a launch feature on PS5, and players could give medals like helpful, welcoming, and good sport to others in multiplayer games. In theory, Sony implemented the accolades system to reduce toxicity. But in practice, nobody really knew that this system existed, to say nothing of actually using it–a fact Sony acknowledged in the discontinuation announcement.
The Pokémon Company has announced that a new Pokémon Presents will be streamed on August 3 at 6 AM PT / 9 AM ET on its YouTube channel. The next games in the series, Scarlet and Violet, will be the main event for this week’s presentation, and it’s likely that the video will have a few more pocket monsters to reveal. As for the other games that will be shown at Wednesday’s stream, there’s a whole lot of Pokémon projects currently active, ranging from mobile games Pokémon Unite to Pokémon Masters, as well as apps for the franchise such as Pokémon Home.
