#sony-gaming-policy

#sony-gaming-policy

Sessions featuring Howard Wright (Nvidia), Rob Chu (AWS), and Eric Benhamou (Benhamou Global Ventures) cut through the noise to examine where AI is genuinely deployed at scale and where the real risks lie.

Sony's new age verification policies will require users to confirm their age to access communication features, including joining parties and voice chatting, starting June 2026.

"Beginning June 2026, if you have not completed age verification, you can continue playing on PlayStation, but some features won't be available until you verify your age."

Sony's Ace robot is the first to hold its own against top-ranked human players, winning three out of five matches against elite competitors during test matches in April 2025.

Panasonic's new QR code system allows workers to present codes for entry instead of undergoing facial recognition scans, which had become a bottleneck in access control.

Sales of gaming hardware in the US during March 2026 rose by 69% compared to March 2025, reaching $500 million. Circana said the Switch 2 'drove the overall gain' for March 2026.

Marathon has sold 1.2 million copies since launch across console and PC, with an estimated 70 percent of those copies sold on Steam compared to 19 percent on PlayStation 5 and just 11 percent on Xbox Series X/S.

The console wars died down not because any side won, but because it became irrelevant. Major games, seeking to make their gigantic budgets back, went platform agnostic. Where once companies had splurged on making consumers identify with specific console platforms, suddenly where you play games had become a much less defining factor.

According to Bloomberg, Sony decided to shut down the studio following "a recent business review." Around 70 employees will lose their jobs as part of the studio closure, which will officially happen in March. "Bluepoint Games is an incredibly talented team and their technical expertise has delivered exceptional experiences for the PlayStation community," Sony said in a statement to Bloomberg. "We thank them for their passion, creativity and craftmanship."

Sony and Nintendo are reportedly feeling squeezed by RAM shortages as demand from AI data centers takes up an increasing share of memory chip production. In response to rising costs and dwindling chip supplies, Sony is considering pushing back the release of its next PlayStation console "to 2028 or even 2029," according to industry sources cited by Bloomberg, while Nintendo may increase the $450 price of its Switch 2 console this year.