This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about the PS5 exclusive, Ghostwire: Tokyo from Bethesda, the next-gen version of GTA V, Sony’s acquisition of Jade Raymond’s Haven Studios, the new Playstation Plus subscription plans, and Samsung’s new Neo QLED 8K televisions.

Sony’s got a three-tiered subscription plan and VFS has renewed its scholarships for women looking to get into the video game industry.

Sony announces new Playstation Plus subscriptions

Sony is combining its two subscription offerings into one.

The initiative gets rid of Playstation Now, which provides subscribers with access to about 1,000 old Playstation games mostly through cloud streaming, and creates three levels of Playstation Plus.

The basic plan is Playstation Plus Essential, which is what PS Plus has been until now. It provides access to multiplayer gaming, two free games a month, and cloud storage for saved games, for a cost of $10 USD a month or $60 USD a year.

For an additional $5 a month or $40 a year, you can subscribe to Playstation Plus Extra, which opens up a library of about 400 PS4 and PS5 games that you can download.

The top tier, Playstation Plus Premium, costs $18 a month or $120 a year and adds more than 300 games to the library, including titles originally released for PS1, PS2, PS3, and Playstation Portable.

Unlike Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, which is $12 CDN a month for the basic plan or $17 CDN a month for Ultimate, the Playstation Plus plans will not include new games like the upcoming God of War sequel.

Scholarship at VFS for women funded by Vancouver developers

Vancouver Film School’s Game Design program is, for the third year, offering full and partial Women in Game Design scholarships.

Three $10,000 and five $5,000 scholarships will be awarded to women looking to enter the game industry. Recipients of the full ride also get mentors from The Coalition (Gears of War) and Blackbird Interactive (Homeworld 3) as well as six-month paid internships after graduating.

Submissions are due by April 10.

There’s no 8K video being created, but having 16 times the resolution of a standard HD screen gets you bragging rights.

Samsung reveals new Neo QLED 8K televisions

4K video is so yesterday.

Okay, I’m being facetious, but the fact that Samsung held an event today to promote new televisions and focused on its line of Neo QLED 8K screens tells you where things are headed.

And I must say that from a distance, these new televisions are very slick indeed. The are also priced accordingly.

The QN800B, for example, is $4,600 in 65-inch, $6,300 in 75-inch, and $8,500 in 85-inch.

The premium QN900B is $7,000 for the 65-inch, $9,000 for the 75-inch, and $12,000 for the 85-inch model.

Samsung’s QLED screens use mini LEDs with a proprietary backlight dimming system that delivers darker blacks than standard LED screens.

And while there’s virtually no 8K programming (there’s precious little 4K programming, to be honest), these televisions upscale the image to approximate 8K. That’s more than 30 million pixels and its four times the resolution (7680 × 4320) of a 4K screen (3840 × 2160), which is four times the resolution of high definition (1920 × 1080), which didn’t really become popular until the mid 2000s.

We’re at the very beginning of the shift to 8K so there’s no need to rush out and get one of these televisions. But it’s neat to see what the manufacturers are doing.

Explore a Tokyo filled with ghosts, expand your GTA to next-gen, Sony snaps up Haven, and Halo comes to TV.

Eerie Ghostwire: Tokyo thrills with supernatural flair

Steeped in Japanese culture, Ghostwire: Tokyo is an action adventure blended with a ghost story. Exclusive to PS5 and Windows, you’ll explore a strange Tokyo that is suddenly empty of people, battling ghastly demons who have taken up residence in the city.

Shibuya, with its intersection that stops traffic in all directions so people can flood across the multi-directional crosswalks, is one of the most recognizable districts of Tokyo, so it’s a smart starting point for Ghostwire. Even though I’ve not visited Japan, and my knowledge of the country and culture are limited, I still knew where I was as the game began.

I did not, however, know what was going on. Solving that mystery is at the heart of the game’s story. A mysterious fog has descended over the city, causing people’s bodies to disappear, stranding their souls which float in the air as clouds of spirit.

You are Akito, a young man whose body has been possessed by a spirit with unknown motivations.

That spirit does help you protect yourself from nightmarish creatures who roam the streets collecting the disembodied souls. Those creatures are in the service of a master who wears a hannya mask like those worn by Noh actors. In the Japanese theatre tradition, these masks represent demons.

Hannya masks are also part of Shinto tradition, and Tango Gameworks draws deep from that rich culture in Ghostwire. To clear the map you need to remove corruption from Torii gates that are found throughout the city and you’ll also find and interact with yokai and kami, the cat-like nekomata and the amphibious kappa among them.

Because Ghostwire is so entrenched in these Japanese traditions, I suggest you try to play the game with the Japanese actors for a more authentic experience. It’s tricky in the early part of the game when the story is being set up and you’re learning how to play to pay attention to the subtitles, but later on when you’re more familiar with the controls this is easier to do.

As you explore Tokyo, navigating the haunted spaces and collecting spirits and the game’s currency, Magatama, you’ll be able to upgrade your powers that make it easier for you to battle with wind, fire, and water.

All of this is made better by incredible visuals and a vibrant colour palette, and a fantastic score by Masatoshi Yanagi (which is available on YouTube).

Ghostwire: Tokyo is developed by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda Softworks. It’s available on March 25 for PS5 and Windows. Rated teen.

GTA V looks great on next gen consoles

The latest game in the Grand Theft Auto franchise has just been released in a version for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and GTA V looks amazing.

I picked it up for PS5 where I can play with a refresh rate of 60 frames per second or with stunning visuals at 4K and 30 fps. The load times are noticeably faster, especially when starting up an autosaved game, which is about 20 seconds on the PS5 but more than two minutes on a PS4.

Rockstar also did some work to make use of the PS5 DualSense controller, so there’s some feedback on the triggers when you’re driving or firing a weapon, and when you’re getting a call on your mobile, the audio comes through the controller.

And to encourage people to upgrade, there is a method to migrate your save files to your new console.

But if you’ve already got or played GTA V, I don’t know that you need to upgrade. If you want to replay it and you want it to look better, and you’ve got $40 to spare, you’ll be satisfied. If you’re playing a lot of GTA Online, you might appreciate the better graphics.

But this is a game that was originally released in 2013 for PS3 and Xbox 360 and a year later was updated for PS4 and Xbox One. GTA V still plays like a game from 2013.

If you do want to upgrade, the next-gen versions of GTA V are steeply discounted at the moment: $12.50 on PS5 and $25 on Xbox Series X/S. And GTA Online is free for Playstation Plus subscribers until June.

Jade Raymond’s Haven Studios picked up by Playstation

Video game industry veteran Jade Raymond, who has worked for Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Google’s Stadia division, is adding Sony to her resume.

Raymond founded Haven Studios with an investment from Sony Interactive Entertainment. The announcement this week that Sony has agreed to purchase the developer is an indication that what Haven is working on shows promise.

In a statement, Raymond said, “Our first new IP for Playstation is on track to deliver a AAA multiplayer experience with a vision to build a systemic and evolving world focused on freedom, thrill, and playfulness that will keep players entertained and engaged for years.”

Haven Studios becomes Sony’s first video game developer based in Canada.

Halo, the live-action series, premieres March 24

The Halo television series premieres tomorrow on Paramount+, which is a streaming network that Canadians can get a subscription to for $6 a month.

But if you’ve got a subscription to the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service, you can grab a month of Paramount+ right now thanks to a Perk from Microsoft and Xbox. This offer is available until May 23.

The first season of the series, which stars B.C. actor Pablo Schreiber as the Master Chief, has nine episodes that will be released weekly. It’s already been renewed for a second season.

Common Sense Media research shows a dramatic increase in screen time for kids and Samsung’s Galaxy A53 is its latest entry-level handset.

Tweens and teens had a lot more screen time in the last two years

A new report from U.S. based Common Sense Media shows that media use by kids aged 8 to 18 increased faster since the covid-19 pandemic began than it did in the fours years prior.

“Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021” shows that media use increased seventeen percent, to 5:33 for 8 to 12 year olds and to 8:39 for 13 to 18 year olds, not including time spent on devices to support school work.

Common Sense is careful not to make judgments about whether this trend is good or bad, but does suggest that parents know what their kids are doing with those devices and screens, and help children “make smarter choice online”.

What the organization does warn about is the increasing use of social media among the tweens, who technically are not allowed to have accounts. Thirty-eight percent of 8 to 12 year olds surveyed said they were using social media.

The data come from an Ipsos survey of U.S. kids. In Canada, where mobile data rates are much more expensive, it’s possible that the amount of time on screens is lower, but I suspect that the trends are the same.

Samsung announces new edition of entry-level Galaxy A handset

If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, the iPhone SE is your choice for a full-featured smartphone that gives up a few bells and whistles for a lower cost.

But if you prefer Android, Samsung has you covered with the Galaxy A series, and last week the company revealed the latest model, the Galaxy A53 5G ($590).

The new model gets a slightly larger battery – Samsung claims two days of use on a charge – as well as 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage that can be expanded with a micro SD card.

It’s also got a quad-camera system including a macro, an ultra-wide, and depth lenses, and a 32 MP front camera.

You can preorder the Galaxy A53 5G; it releases on April 1.