Sony PlayStation becomes latest big brand to boycott Russia

By Trevor Mogg March 9, 2022

Sony has halted a major part of its operations in Russia in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Japanese company announced on Wednesday it had suspended shipments of all PlayStation software and hardware in Russia and stopped operations of the PlayStation Store there. It’s also postponed the launch of the racing game Gran Turismo 7 in Russia until further notice.

In a statement (below) shared on its Twitter account, Sony said it “joins the global community in calling for peace in Ukraine,” adding that to support humanitarian aid, it will donate $2 million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Save the Children.

pic.twitter.com/1KV95QiFHN

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) March 9, 2022

Sony’s move follows in the footsteps of a growing number of big-name brands to suspend operations in Russia imn the wake of its invasion of Ukraine toward the end of last month.

In the tech world, the war has prompted companies such as Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Nvidia, Netflix, and TikTok to suspend, scale back, or alter in some way their operations in Russia.

As for the gaming industry, Nintendo said last week it was putting its eShop in Russia into maintenance mode. In an explanation, it made no direct mention of the current conflict, saying only that the pause in sales was due to an issue with payment processing as its system was currently unable to handle Russian rubles. On Wednesday, Nintendo also said that “in light of recent world events,” it was delaying the launch of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp globally, apparently due to the game’s war-focused content.

Gaming giant EA said recently it would remove Russian teams from its FIFA and NHL games, while Cyberpunk 2077 maker CD Projekt announced last week that it would halt all sales of its games in Russia and also Belarus, which has allowed the Russian military to use its land to launch forces into Ukraine.

The Poland-based company said the entire CD Projekt Group “stands firm with the people of Ukraine” and urged its “brothers and sisters fighting for their home country” to “stay strong.”

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Gameplay from Sushi Ben, an upcoming PlayStation VR2 game.

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star wars tales from the galaxys edge psvr2 interview ilmxlab starwarstalesee screenshot c 3po and r2 d2

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Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge - Enhanced Edition | Official Trailer | PS VR2
PlayStation VR2's launch and its first wave of games are nearly upon us, and Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge Enhanced Edition is one of those titles. This is a make-or-break time for VR, which is still struggling to move into the mainstream but could become more popular if Sony's headset can offer a compelling and accessible virtual reality experience. Ahead of its release, Digital Trends spoke to Director Jose Perez III and Producer Harvey Whitney from ILMxLAB to learn about the process of crafting one of these critical "no-brainer" launch games and PlayStation VR2 will ultimately stand when it comes to the future of VR gaming.
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Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge was originally released for Meta Quest VR headsets in November 2020. It's set on the planet of Batuu, which people also explore at Dinsey parks, and follows a Droid Technician who gets caught in the middle of a grander fight against the First Order after crash-landing on the planet. At the time, it was meant with decent reviews and only got better as its story was completed and expanded with the Last Call DLC.
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The VR space is full of different headsets with unique specs, with the much higher specs of the PS VR2 standing out. The PlayStation VR2 sports some impressive specs compared to its VR peers, displaying content in a 4000x2030 HDR format at a 90Hz or 120Hz frame rate. Plus, games have the PS5's power, spatial, and brand new Sense controllers to take advantage of, rather than the 2013 console and 2010 motion controls that limited the original PlayStation VR.
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Looking at the biggest games of the PlayStation VR2 launch window lineup, the visuals of titles like Horizon Call of the Mountain and the VR modes of Resident Evil Village and Gran Turismo 7 are impressive. In our discussion, Whitney also made it quite clear that one of the real advantages of working on this remaster was not having to worry about strict limitations on the visuals or even the audio. "We got lucky in the sense that there's a lot more to PlayStation VR2 that we hadn't had previously," Whitney says. "We could really push the graphics and make it shine. But then there were also some other things that came into play. We totally redid the audio, it sounds amazing."

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