keyword: Console

monster-hunter-rise-was-made-for-the-switch,-and-it’s-coming-to-pc,-too

Monster Hunter Rise was made for the Switch, and it’s coming to PC, too

Capcom finds itself in an interesting position with Monster Hunter Rise, its new title for the Nintendo Switch. 2018’s Monster Hunter World was a huge triumph, bringing the series to a Western audience accustomed to home consoles and PCs and becoming one of the company’s bestselling games ever. But in doing so, it had to abandon some of the biggest factors behind Monster Hunter’s Japanese success: portability and local multiplayer.

Since Capcom started work on Monster Hunter World, though, the Switch has become a global hit, and on paper it sounds like it should be a perfect system for the series. It’s much more capable than the PSP and 3DS hardware that made Monster Hunter a social phenomenon in Japan, while offering the flexibility to let you play on your TV or on the go. That’s where Rise comes in.

“We think that by releasing this on a portable console we’ve made it a lot more accessible, a lot more easy to pick up and play,” producer Ryōzō Tsujimoto tells The Verge. “It’s also obviously easier to play with people in your immediate environment. So it’s very well suited for playing at home with your family, and you can pick it up and play whenever you want — you can do a couple of quick quests before going to sleep. So yeah, we think it might bring back some people [who didn’t play World] because of just how easy to access it is, how easy to pick up it is.”

But the Switch presents technical challenges for Monster Hunter Rise compared to World, which used more powerful PS4 and Xbox One hardware as a development baseline. Earlier Monster Hunter games took place in small, numbered areas separated by loading screens, while World had complex multilevel stages that you could seamlessly explore. Rise manages to split the difference — you wouldn’t mistake the environmental complexity for that of World, but the graphical fidelity is impressive for the Switch and there aren’t any loading times once you’re in a level.

“In the very early stages of development, we were still kind of toying around the idea of keeping the same map system from the older games, with separate areas divided by loading screens,” says director Yasunori Ichinose. “But over the course of development, as we saw how World was doing, we basically got the request to make all of the environments open like in World. So it wasn’t something that we planned from the start, but it’s something that we are definitely happy we did.”

The stages also have a much greater degree of verticality compared to earlier games — Ichinose says that’s what the “Rise” in the title refers to — and the ability to zip around the environments with the new Wirebug or ride on the back of a canine Palamute companion offers further options for traversal. In fact, Ichinose says, that’s why Capcom decided to put the monsters’ locations on the map from the start of every quest, rather than force hunters to track them down from scratch — in Rise, figuring out how to get to the monsters could be a challenge in itself.

Still, I wondered whether Capcom had weighed the risk of losing some of its fans who jumped on board with World and might be expecting another technical leap forward. Could the move to Switch have an effect on Rise’s popularity in the West?

“We’re not particularly worried about that,” Tsujimoto says. “I mean, every time that we make a Monster Hunter game, we make sure that it is a good, proper new Monster Hunter game. It’s not that we’re less invested in our portable entries or anything like that. It’s just that Monster Hunter Rise is a game that just happens to be on a portable console, and so we’ve optimized it for that. But it doesn’t really change anything from a gameplay perspective — it’s still very much Monster Hunter, so the fans will still enjoy it.”

Besides, as Tsujimoto confirmed at the end of our interview, Monster Hunter Rise is actually coming to PC as well, with Capcom targeting a release date sometime in early 2022. That should be a good option for anyone who’s reluctant to give up World’s smooth frame rates on modern hardware. If you’re planning to play on Switch, though, there’s just one month to go — Monster Hunter Rise will be released worldwide on March 26th.

ps4-and ps5 owners-can-get-final-fantasy-vii-remake-for-free-with playstation plus-in-march

PS4 and PS5 owners can get Final Fantasy VII Remake for free with PlayStation Plus in March

Final Fantasy VII Remake, the modern retelling of the 1997 PlayStation classic, will be free for PlayStation Plus subscribers beginning March 2nd. It is important to note the PS4 version of Final Fantasy VII Remake available for users with an active PS Plus subscription will not be able to receive a PS5 digital version of the game, which was announced yesterday at Sony’s State of Play event.

Final Fantasy VII Remake launched last April exclusively on PlayStation 4 and serves as the first of an unknown number of entries in an episodic retelling of the original game. The game is also backward compatible on PlayStation 5, but yesterday’s State of Play confirmed that a next-gen version of the game will release on June 10th and will take full advantage of Sony’s next-gen console, with faster loading times, different graphical mode options, and a new episode focusing on the character Yuffie.

Other games eligible for download next month include the PS4 versions of Farpoint and Remnant: From the Ashes. Also coming to PS Plus is a digital copy of Maquette, which is a new game launching on PS5 on March 2nd. Destruction AllStars, one of the new PS5 titles released this year, will also be free until April 5th.

sony-winds-down-japan-studio-to-focus-on-astro’s-playroom-team

Sony winds down Japan Studio to focus on Astro’s Playroom team

Sony has confirmed that Japan Studio, its internal video game developer based in Tokyo, will essentially wind down and refocus around a single team. In a statement to IGN, Japan Studio said as of April 1st it would be “re-centered to Team Asobi, the creative team behind Astro’s Playroom, allowing the team to focus on a single vision and build on the popularity of Astro’s Playroom.” In other words, get ready for more Astro games.

Astro’s Playroom is a well-received title packaged with every PlayStation 5 console. It’s a 3D platformer designed to show off the advanced haptic feedback of the new DualSense controller. Before that, the same team developed Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, widely considered to be the standout exclusive PlayStation VR title.

VGC previously reported today that the “vast majority” of Japan Studio staff were being let go as Sony declined to renew their annual contracts, which run until the end of the fiscal year on March 31st. Some staff are said to have been reassigned to Team Asobi, while others are reportedly joining Bokeh, a new studio founded by Silent Hill and Gravity Rush director Keiichiro Toyama.

While Team Asobi’s work to date is acclaimed, Japan Studio has been an important part of Sony’s first-party PlayStation development efforts for decades. It created series like Ape Escape, Patapon, and LocoRoco, while also assisting with development on titles like Bloodborne and The Last Guardian. Before leaving last year, Toyama led a division that was responsible for the Siren and Gravity Rush games.

activision-admits-the-complete-call-of-duty-experience-no-longer-fits-on-an-original-ps4

Activision admits the complete Call of Duty experience no longer fits on an original PS4

The latest Call of Duty game collection may now be too big to fit the base 500GB PlayStation 4 hard drive (via IGN). According to the official Call of Duty blog, if you want to have the latest Call of Duty: Warzone update and the full Black Ops: Cold War and Modern Warfare package on your PS4, you’ll have to uninstall content you don’t use.

The games make that somewhat easy to do by letting you remove certain modes — for example, if you only want to play Warzone, you could uninstall Black Ops’s single player, Zombie, and arcade modes, but it seems a bit ridiculous that you can’t fit three (or really, two and a half) games on an entire game console. That’s especially true since Activision sort of treats these three games as one thing: Warzone blends the content from Modern Warfare and Cold War, acting as a bridge between the two, with players being able to add and remove the parts they want.

To be fair, PS4 Pros and the newer PS4 Slim have all come with a 1TB hard drive since 2017, so they should be able to have the full experience. The PS5, however, may have a problem sometime soon: according to IGN, the PS4 has about 400GB of usable space, and the PS5 has 667.2GB — and, unlike the PS4, that SSD storage is not upgradable (yet). While you might be able to squeeze another non-Call of Duty game onto the PS5, you may find yourself deciding what to delete next time there’s an update.

bungie-addresses-major-destiny-2-player-complaints-with-massive-changes-on-the-horizon

Bungie addresses major Destiny 2 player complaints with massive changes on the horizon

Destiny 2, Bungie’s long-running online sci-fi shooter, has a year of substantial changes ahead of it, according to a new roadmap the studio detailed in an extensive blog post published on Thursday. While the game’s next major expansion, The Witch Queen, has been delayed to early 2022, Bungie says it has major overhauls planned for nearly every aspect of the game — from the competitive multiplayer Crucible mode to how players progress and become more powerful across the game’s seasonal expansion model.

One of the biggest changes slated for Destiny 2 is a major crossplay implementation that will, for the first time, allow players on PC and players on consoles to join one another for activities. In its blog post, Bungie said crossplay is coming later this year in season 15, and most importantly, the studio confirms it will not mandate crossplay for competitive activities as many fans feared. “Don’t worry, we won’t be matching console and PC players together in the Crucible unless PC players specifically invite their console friends to play with them in the PC Crucible pools,” the blog post reads.

There are a ton of other major changes planned, many of which address long-standing player complaints. Here’s a rundown of some of the more significant ones:

  • Bungie will no longer “sunset” weapons and armor by making older items obsolete. The studio says “any weapon or armor that can currently be infused to max power will continue to be able to reach max power permanently.” That’s a huge relief for players who’ve been frustrated at the sunsetting experiment over the last year leaving behind fan-favorite gear.
  • The Vault of Glass, Destiny’s very first raid, is coming back as part of the Destiny Content Vault in season 14 this summer. Bungie now says it will eventually launch a “master” difficult version to align the raid with the game’s hardest player versus environment (PvE) activities.
  • Bungie is planning an “overhaul” of the ultra-competitive Trials of Osiris game mode to improve matchmaking, rebuild the incentivize structure to encourage less skilled players to compete, and to figure out ways to allow solo players to participate.
  • Bungie has outlined major changes to how its Darkness-based Stasis subclass functions in both PvE and PvP activities to tone down its dominance against human opponents and bring the older subclasses up to par.
  • Destiny 2 will no longer force players to grind out 50 power level points every season and will instead introduce minor season expansions with just a 10 power level jump. That should make it easier for players to sink back into the game at the start of new seasons and not feel pressured to level up. (This is my personal favorite announcement of the day.)

Many of these changes represent Bungie’s renewed effort to listen to its diehard fans, many of whom have been playing Destiny 2 and its predecessor since 2014.

Common complaints include exhausting grinds to reach max power level and enjoy the game’s most rewarding activities, a lack of attention and focus on the competitive Crucible game mode, and inconsistencies in the depth and richness of certain expansions versus others that can result in long content draughts and little incentive to keep playing. Bungie appears to be tackling all of this with its 2021 plans, all leading up to the eventual release of The Witch Queen next year.

The studio has weathered countless storms before, including a near-constant ebb and flow between extreme player satisfaction and frenzied outrage. With last year’s Beyond Light, Bungie signaled it was ready to push the Destiny universe toward a longer-term scope with a more service-oriented model and a more cohesive vision for the game’s story and structure.

Effectively, this meant no Destiny 3; the series would move forward in its current state and evolve over time, like a proper MMO or live service game. And last week, the company also announced a major shuffle of its executive leadership and a studio expansion that includes an expansion of the Destiny universe into “additional media,” opening the door to film and TV and other formats.

Bungie has proven that it’s more than capable of listening to feedback and focusing its attention and resources where they matter most, and this most recent roadmap is making Destiny 2 look more promising than ever.

walmart-will-have-the-xbox-series-x-available-at-3pm-et-today

Walmart will have the Xbox Series X available at 3PM ET today

If you missed Target’s early morning Xbox Series X restocks today, you have another chance today to secure Microsoft’s next-gen console. A Walmart spokesperson told The Verge that the retailer will have the Xbox Series X available for purchase today, February 25th, at 3PM ET.

Walmart told The Verge you will have two options to pay for the console — with a one-time payment of $499.99 or pay with Xbox All Access, which requires a monthly payment for 24 months. Xbox All Access is a bundle that splits the cost of an Xbox console; Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which includes both versions of the video game streaming service; access to xCloud; and Xbox Live Gold.

Xbox Series X / S

  • $500

Prices taken at time of publishing.

The Xbox Series X is Microsoft’s flagship console, serving as its most powerful (and biggest) option that costs $499.99. While the $299.99 Series S is aimed at smooth 1440p performance, the Series X is focused on fast 4K gameplay.


  • $500


    at Walmart (Series X)

If you are buying either an Xbox Series X or S, there are a few additional items outside of video games you may want to consider purchasing, such as an additional controller. And unlike the PS5, you can purchase a 1TB SSD expansion to add to the Xbox’s base storage (512GB on the Series S, 1TB on the X), though it is not cheap. Alternatively, you can buy an external hard drive to store your games, but any games stored through it will not take advantage of the next-gen hardware.

If you are having trouble deciding on what games to buy, you can always buy a subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which gives you access to a slew of digital games and access to Xbox Live Gold.

pokemon-might-be-famous-for-its-games,-but-it-also-has-some-great-gadgets

Pokémon might be famous for its games, but it also has some great gadgets

Pokémon might be renowned for its cooperative gameplay, delightful spinoffs, and making an intimidating genre approachable, but the franchise also has a long history of creative and interesting gadgets.

The series is bursting with technology. The original in-game pokédex clearly takes inspiration from early Palm Pilot-like devices, for example. And if you think about them, pokéballs are technological marvels: they somehow transform living creatures into particles that can be transported across the world (and in the TV show, the pokéballs can even shrink). So it’s not all that surprising that there have been many Pokémon-themed toys and hardware.

We’ve collected just a few of the many memorable Pokémon gadgets in honor of the series’ 25th anniversary. The IRL devices range from gamified pedometers to custom video game consoles to actual pokéball replicas (though they can’t turn living things into particles just yet). There’s a lot of gear you can get if you want to catch ‘em all.

An actual pokédex

Tiger Electronics and Hasbro released a toy pokédex in the late ‘90s, and I still consider it one of my favorite toys of all time. It was modeled after Ash’s pokédex from the first season of the TV show, though with a few different features to allow it to actually function as a real-life toy. It had a keypad and a number pad for searching information, a small screen that showed the pokémon you were looking at, and could show information about each pokémon like its height, weight, type, and some attacks it could learn. It made me feel like I was a bona fide pokémon trainer, and I remember spending hours reading up on different pokémon with my pokédex.

Pokémon Pikachu

My Pokémon Pikachu was a staple of my childhood. Released in 1998, it was a pocket-sized gadget that was kind of like a Tamagotchi, except you took care of a digital Pikachu. But it also had a built-in pedometer that you could activate just by shaking the device up and down. (Or, like in the commercials embedded above, jumping.)

That shakeability meant that I was constantly bouncing the little device to earn a currency called watts. You could gift watts to Pikachu or, oddly, gamble them away at a slot machine. You can learn more about it on this delightful Nintendo Japan website that’s still around.

Nintendo released an upgraded model, the Pokémon Pikachu 2 GS, in 1999 in Japan and 2000 in North America and Europe, according to Bulbapedia. It had a color screen and could connect to Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal via the Game Boy Color’s infrared port, allowing you to trade watts for items.

A pokémon-themed camera

Just look at this point-and-shoot camera. It has a giant Pikachu on one side, two poké balls hold the flash and the lens, and an adorable Diglett is the shutter button. The camera shot 35mm film, and each photo would also have a pokémon-themed border, according to the manual. (You can see that border, which featured Pikachu, Meowth, Squirtle, and Blastoise, in this album.) A couple eBay listings peg its release date as 1999.

The box art for Hey You Pikachu
Image: The Pokémon Company

Hey You, Pikachu’s “Voice Recognition Unit”

Hey You, Pikachu was a Nintendo 64 game that let you talk to Pikachu with the help of the Voice Recognition Unit, or VRU, that was bundled with the game. It was released in 1998 in Japan and 2000 in North America.

You can see the VRU in the picture above — users clipped a large microphone to their controller, plugged that into a special module (which stored Pikachu’s 256-word vocabulary, according to Popular Science), and then plugged that module into the Nintendo 64 itself.

And speaking of Pikachu-themed hardware…

The Pikachu-themed Nintendo 64s.
Image: Nintendo.co.jp

The Pikachu-themed Nintendo 64

The Pikachu-themed Nintendo 64, released in 2000, put a fun twist on the console’s design by making the on-off switch a poké ball and Pikachu’s right foot the reset button. I love how giant Pikachu is — it dominates almost half the console. And while I can’t remember ever actually using one of these myself, I imagine it must have been very satisfying to press Pikachu’s little foot to reset a game.

Pokémon mini

The Pokémon mini was a tiny handheld console designed specifically to play Pokémon-themed games from cartridges. It was released in 2001 in North America and Japan and 2002 in Europe. It was 74mm x 58mm x 23mm — described on the still-active Pokémon mini Nintendo UK website as “well under half the size” of Nintendo’s iconic Game Boy Advance — and came in three colors. It even had motion sensing and rumble built in.

Pokéwalker

The Pokémon Pikachu devices were succeeded by the poké ball-themed Pokéwalker in 2009, which was bundled with every copy of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. Like the Pokémon Pikachu, the Pokéwalker was a pedometer, let you accumulate watts, and allowed you to take care of pokémon. But unlike the Pokémon Pikachu, you could transfer pokémon back and forth from the Pokéwalker, meaning you weren’t forced to only care for Pikachu. You could also find new wild pokémon and items directly on your Pokéwalker by spending watts to play mini-games.

Nintendo has uploaded the Pokéwalker’s manual online, if you’d like to learn more about it.

Poké Ball Plus

Nintendo released another poké ball-themed device in 2018 alongside Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee!: the Poké Ball Plus, an actual, functional game controller that’s compatible with the Nintendo Switch. You can play both games with the controller and catch pokémon by making a throwing motion with your arm. Similar to the Pokéwalker, you can also store pokémon inside the Poké Ball Plus, and they’ll even cry from inside it if you shake it around. The controller is also compatible with the huge mobile hit Pokémon Go.

This Poké Ball replica that “must never be thrown”

This only barely counts as a gadget, but I had to include it. Last November, The Pokémon Company International and The Wand Company announced this $99.99 die-cast replica of the Poké Ball. As realistic as it looks, don’t go throwing it at your cat as a joke; it weighs 10.5oz, which is double the weight of a baseball. And in fact, The Wand Company says that it “must never be thrown” and that “throwing the Poké Ball will damage it and may injure someone.”

But if you’ve ever wanted to actually hold a poké ball, buying one of these might be the closest you can get. It even glows.

ps5 is-again-in-stock-at-target

PS5 is again in stock at Target

The PlayStation 5 is Sony’s latest gaming console and just like Microsoft’s Xbox Series X / S it’s in high demand and limited supply. If you are looking to buy a PS5, you have a shot at securing the $500 model with a disc drive right now at Target, while supplies last.

PlayStation 5

  • $500

Prices taken at time of publishing.

Sony’s flagship next-gen console, priced at $499.99. Compared to the $399.99 PS5 Digital Edition, this console includes a disc drive, allowing you to play both digital and physical games.


  • $500


    at Target

After you secure your PS5 (or if already own one), you should consider picking up a few items that will help you get the most out of your next-gen console. One such accessory is an additional DualSense controller in the event one controller’s battery dies and you want to keep playing but prefer not to be tethered by the charging cable.

A one-year subscription to PlayStation Plus is also good to pick up if you have yet to renew your membership or are new to the service. There are a few benefits to having an active subscription to Sony’s online gaming service. Most notably, PS5 users have access to the PlayStation Plus Collection, a digital library of “generation-defining” games released on the PS4.

hgig-explained:-what-is-hgig?-how-do-you-get-it?-and-should-you-use-it?

HGiG explained: what is HGiG? How do you get it? And should you use it?

(Image credit: LG / Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Sony)

While gaming formats such as 4K@120Hz, VRR and ALLM are now getting plenty of attention, one that you may not have heard of is HGiG.

That might partly be because HGiG isn’t really a format (at least not yet), but rather a set of fairly loose guidelines designed to make HDR gaming better and more consistent. Nevertheless, a number of consoles, TVs and games now boast HGiG integration, and it works really well.

So, what is HGiG? How does it work? And how do you get it?

What is HGiG?

‘HGiG’ stands for ‘HDR Gaming Interest Group’. As the name suggests, rather than a format or spec, it’s a consortium of companies that have come together in order to create guidelines and best practices for the implementation of HDR in gaming. Console-makers Microsoft and Sony instigated the creation of HGiG, and members include TV manufacturers such as LG, Samsung and Panasonic, and game developers and publishers such as Activision, EA, Rockstar and Ubisoft.

Broadly speaking, the idea is to create a level of understanding between your TV, console and the game you’re playing so that HDR is displayed as the game creator intended. Because HDR plays a big part in the overall presentation of a game, getting that right gets you much closer to a properly authentic experience.

How does HGiG work?

Essentially, HGiG is all about tone mapping. Every TV has limitations in terms of contrast and colours, and tone mapping is the technique used to tailor content to the limitations of a specific TV model. The problem is that each TV manufacturer implements tone mapping in a different way, and it can often work against the tone mapping that’s being employed at the source, resulting in a picture that doesn’t look right and is missing important details.

The PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X all have HDR calibration menus. Go through the fairly straightforward process contained within and you’re essentially teaching the console the upper and lower contrast limitations of you TV. The problem arises when your TV then attempts to tone map the already tone mapped image. The aim of HGiG is to prevent this so that once your console has learned the parameters of your TV, it outputs all games accordingly.

Is HGiG any good?

In short, yes. LG was the first brand to add an HGiG setting, and it’s absolutely worth using. When playing an HDR game and with the HDR Game preset selected, the Dynamic Tone Mapping setting will have three available options: On, Off and HGiG. Let’s go through these one by one.

Switching Dynamic Tone Mapping on will tell the TV to analyse constantly the picture and boost it as it sees fit. Typically, it results in a really bright and punchy picture, but it also tends to flatten and blur bright elements, over-exposing them and removing detail. The black level tends to be lifted, too, which can reveal more detail but often also washes out the image.

Switching Dynamic Tone Mapping off disables only this on-the-fly element of the processing. The TV is still tone mapping the already tone-mapped image, but it’s doing so in a fixed manner. If you go through your console’s HDR calibration with Dynamic Tone Mapping switched off, you’ll actually end up telling the console to output images at a much higher brightness than the TV can really handle. In game, the TV will then bring bright highlights back down to within its limits, crushing bright detail and shading in the process.

The image below, supplied by Microsoft and Sony Interactive Entertainment, illustrates the issue of incorrect tone mapping in regards to the brightest part of the picture. Notice how the end of the tunnel is more or less flat white, revealing very little of what’s ahead.

(Image credit: Microsoft / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Switch Dynamic Tone Mapping to HGiG, though, and the TV essentially stops doing its own tone mapping. Instead, the image will be output based on the parameters set in the console’s HDR calibration process.

It’s worth pointing out that when switching between these three options, HGiG might look comparatively dark but, generally speaking, it’s also more accurate and closer to the creator’s intent, with the correct amount of detail and shading at the bright and dark extremes.

The second image from Microsoft and Sony illustrates the improvements to the brightest parts of the picture when tone mapping is implemented correctly. Now you can see that there’s a corner at the exit of the tunnel.

(Image credit: Microsoft / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

What’s more, while the image might look less bright than when either of the other two options is selected, the deeper, correctly set black point provides a great base from which bright highlights can punchily emerge. In other words, overall contrast is at least as good, and the picture tends to be more luscious and solid, too.

How do you get and use HGiG?

(Image credit: Samsung / Demon’s Souls, PlayStation)

As mentioned, LG was the first brand to add an HGiG setting to its TVs. If you have an OLED from 2019 (such as the C9) or from 2020 (the CX, for example), you’ll find it by selecting the HDR Game preset, opening the Advanced Controls picture menu, and clicking on Dynamic Tone Mapping. You’ll notice this is off by default – just select HGiG instead.

Samsung added an HGiG setting to 2020 QLED models such as the Q90T via a firmware update released in October of last year. You’ll find it by opening the General settings menu and clicking on External Device Manager.

We’re not aware of other manufacturers having added dedicated HGiG settings, but if you can find a way to turn tone mapping off entirely, you might achieve a similar effect.

The most important thing is to have HGiG selected (or tone mapping disabled) before you go through the HDR calibration process on your console, otherwise the tone mapping will be incorrect.

When and if HGiG becomes an official standard, all of your games will then use this console-level calibration to define their HDR characteristics, but only a handful of games (Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Dirt 5, for example) do this now. Most still have their own HDR calibration screens, and these are worth checking, too. They will still generally look better and more correct with HGiG selected, even if they weren’t developed with HGiG in mind.

What’s next for HGiG and HDR gaming?

While the degree to which HGiG is being adopted, despite it being only a loose connection of guidelines, is impressive, it would be nice to see it become an official specification that becomes more widespread and more consistent. Having to calibrate your TV to your console just once and have every game use that to tailor the picture will be a vast improvement on having to tweak the picture for each game individually.

But even that one-time calibration might be unnecessary in the future. In the land of PC gaming there’s a technology called VESA DisplayHDR, which takes HDR standardisation to new levels and, as David Seperson from LG tells us, even “includes a way for the display to signal its capabilities to the OS”. In other words, we may get to a point when your console and TV talk to one another and the performance is tailored to your specific setup without you needing to do anything at all. Sounds like gaming nirvana to us.

MORE:

Check out our list of the best gaming TVs you can buy

Here’s our PS5 review

Still hunting for a PS5? Here’s the latest PS5 stock information