It’s been on the cards for quite some time but now, according to our sources, the new PlayStation Portable is set to be revealed at Los Angeles E3 in June.
There have been many speculations as to the name of the update. PSP2, PSP-4000 have all been mentioned but the word on the street, so to speak, is that Sony is moving away from the numerical naming and going for something along the lines of PSP Slide, PSP Flip or PSP Go! The recent introduction of the Go! brand of products (such as Go!View and Go!Cam) suggests that PSP Go! is the most likely.
The new PSP is to contain either 8 or 16GB of on-board flash memory with the usual slots for expansion. Sony is also expected to forgo the UMD format and move onto purely download-able games in an effort to avoid game copying. The handheld will include a d-pad, analog nub, and face buttons as part of a sliding unit sticking out below the screen (as seen in the mock-up above). Since the demise of the Sony Mylo 2 (see right) it is reasonable to expect the new PSP to include some of it’s features, including the 800×480 pixel touch screen and rear camera.
In any case the new PSP should hold some fancy new features in an attempt to beat off competition from the DSi. There are even rumours that Sony will include a copy of the portable LittleBigPlanet onto every console! Here’s hoping
The new PSP is expected to be available in Japan this September and the USA in October or November.
It may have only been released in Japan but we got it! The new FFXIII Versus High Quality trailer is up and looks amazing!
Final Fantasy XIII is Square-Enix’s latest title in the Fabula Nova Crystallis Compilation. It’s being released on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 and is the first Final Fantasy on the new generation of consoles.
Development is well underway though and what we’ve seen of the gameplay looks good but brief. The Kingdom Hearts team have been developing the battle system so it’s probably going to be along those lines.
So far the cityscapes shown in the trailer have been fairly accurately modelled on real areas of Japan and apparently the story will include real life issues such as Global Warming. Not too much though we hope, as we don’t want it to be one big lecture
The developers have taken a large amount of inspiration from the works of Shakespeare as can be seen in the trailers; “Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This notion that good or bad is the perspective of the individual is likely to appear in the main plot of the game.
Sadly we don’t have a release date as yet but we’ll keep you posted. Anyway enjoy the trailer!!
Yes PS3 Firmware 2.70 is available to download, and it’s got some brilliant, long awaited features!
Chat rooms in game
The 2.70 update brings a new Text Chat feature which enables you to communicate online with your PlayStation Network friends, no more pausing the game to send messages. The feature has the capacity to chat with up to 15 friends simultainiously! As always you’ll be able to use the onscreen keyboard, wireless keypad or any old usb device. Ah the joys of the PS3. The chat allows you to participate in up to 3 different chat rooms at once and is all accessible in game.
Game
You can now easily search the Internet for information about your PS3 software, as well as for games you purchased from PlayStation Store. Select the icon for the game, and then select [Internet Search] from the options menu to get search results based on the game title.
Network
You can now copy and paste text from a Web page viewed in the Internet browser.
[Copy Address of This Page] and [Copy Address of This Link] have been added as options under [File] in the browse mode menu of the Internet browser.
[Browser Security] has been added as an option to the browse mode menu of the Internet browser. The websites for the Web filtering services that used to be listed under [Bookmarks] have been moved under this new option.
Other additions
Your friends list can be sorted via online status in the Cross Media Bar (XMB)
The maximum file size you can send to friends via messages has increased from 1MB to 3MB.
Video files downloaded from the Playstation Store can now be backed up onto external devices and then can be restored for future playback.
Videos purchased for PSP can be transfered and played on the PS3.
Finaly those clever people at Sony have included an audio normaliser, making sure music files such as MP3s are played back at around the same volume, no more quiet tracks leading onto loud ones and scaring the living daylights out of you!
All in all and excelent update, especialy on the chat front. Here’s looks forward to more in the future…
Final Fantasy XIII is to be released on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 in USA and UK, however in Japan, the game is only being released on the PlayStation 3.
According to an interview with the producer of the game, the demo (which has already been finished internally) uses 50% of the PlayStation 3’s hardware capabilities and the full game will likely use 100% of the processing power. Although we think these number are somewhat too broad to be meaningful in any way, we wonder what this will mean for the US and UK Xbox 360 versions. If the PlayStation 3 version will max out the capabilities of the PlayStation 3, then how does the Xbox 360 have a chance of running the game?
In addition, the producer of the game has stated that there will be no need to swap discs as is the case with other Final Fantasy games. This is due to the Blu-ray disc drive and the hard drive the PlayStation 3 is equipped with.
Square Enix released yet more tantalising teasers today with some Final Fantasy XIII screen shots! Of course being shots of FMV’s (full motion videos) they aren’t an indication of the game-play but then again who plays Final Fantasy without loving the awesome videos?
So here are the shots, click a thumbnail and enjoy…
We have to admit, they look pretty amazing, with all the standard FF hallmarks. A rather hot, gun wielding, scantily clad woman, a guy with awesome orange hair, odd child in oversized headphones and goggles, even odder child in a oversized hoody and of course the traditional male character with blonde hair, strange shaving habits and fashion sense of a homeless guy… we can’t wait!!
There you have it, the latest Guitar Hero. What can we say? Well not much really, it’s not exactly giving much away is it? Let’s just hope that ‘the best songs’ will give us a better collection than World Tour which, to be honest, didn’t give us many amazing tracks… or even many we recognised :S
Lets just hope for some awesomeness on the Guitar Hero Greatest Hits release date in June.
In an interview earlier this week now-former Kojima Productions employee Ryan Payton confirmed that there will be a Metal Gear Solid 5, the next installment in the 22 year old series.
“It’ll be hard not being involved in MGS5, but I’ve got the utmost confidence that Hideo Kojima, Ken Imaizumi, and our amazing team will put together another blockbuster game,”
In another interview, MGS creator Hideo Kojima spoke of his thoughts on multiplatform development and on how frustrating the constant questions regarding Metal Gear Solid on Xbox 360:
“Because MGS4 was optimized for the PS3 it is probably not possible [on Xbox 360],”
“If the hardware technology rises then obviously, you know, [my future games] won’t be based on the hardware anymore. Probably I will first create the software and then, um, it’s a strange word to say, but port to other hardware if that technological ability rises in all areas.”
“What kind of disturbs me sometimes, because a lot of people ask me about this PS3/360 question, is that it’s not about the hardware,”
“I want people to look at the game itself. Sometimes I even feel like it should be on a PC so that people don’t ask me about hardware and platforms.”
So that’s a real blow for Xbox fans out there but awesome news for PS3 fanboys who’ll have even more ammunition in the console war.
The only thing left to wonder is will we have to wait another four years for the next game?
For some time now cheating has become a real issue in Metal Gear Solid Online. A large number of players have discovered techniques in-game which allow them to hide inside walls, shoot across entire maps and generaly mess the game up for everone else.
Well, after a huge number of complaints, with many players vowing never to return until the problem is solved, Konami sent out this message:
Konami has a firm policy regarding cheating in Metal Gear Online. It will not be tolerated. In keeping with this position, we have taken action against 113 accounts participating in prohibited behavior.
The role of the gaming community in keeping Metal Gear Online free of this type of activity cannot be overstated. You are the first line of defense. We encourage you to report instances of prohibited behavior and ask that you provide any evidence you may have regarding these events.
Violations can be reported to us at: support@konami.com
All reports will be reviewed; necessary and appropriate actions to address the issue will be taken immediately. Due to privacy concerns, we will not be able to notify you of our findings, nor of the actions taken to resolve the reported violation.
We wish to thank you for your continued support of Metal Gear Online.
Now what “action” has been taken against the fated 113 we don’t know, but it wont have been nice. It is definatly good to see a large company listening to players in such a way and letting them know what’s going on. Sadly this wont be an end to cheating in-game, but it’s likely to decrease it dramaticaly. Well done Konami!
Oops. A recent European software update removed all the blood, guts and gore from Grand Theft Auto 4. It addition, it makes the cameras swing around during sex scenes. Rockstar have admitted the distribution of this update was a mistake and they promise to revert the update as soon as possible.
Here is what an official Rockstar representative had to say on the issue:
We are aware of an error with the latest GTA4 title update and are confident the issue will be fixed within the next few hours, … We apologize to our fans for any inconvenience caused.
Whoops… I wonder if this was originally going to be a ‘gore off’ option that was later withdrawn officially but accidentally released. I guess we’ll never know exactly how such an unusual ‘error’ could occur.
Something strange is going on in Playstation Home. Players using the in-Home PDA News section have been confronted with a rather cryptic message. This is obviously an intentional message, unless Sony Offices are having some serious problems!
Although this brings to mind Dead Space, among other similar games, it is hardly likely that Sony would be campaigning a game from ‘08. Presumably this is a viral campaign, but for what? Some new game or Home-Space? Sadly we’ll have to wait and see
the usual slots for expansion. Sony is also expected to forgo the UMD format and move onto purely download-able games in an effort to avoid game copying. The handheld will include a d-pad, analog nub, and face buttons as part of a sliding unit sticking out below the screen (as seen in the mock-up above). Since the demise of the Sony Mylo 2 (see right) it is reasonable to expect the new PSP to include some of it’s features, including the 800×480 pixel touch screen and rear camera.
In another interview, MGS creator Hideo Kojima spoke of his thoughts on multiplatform development and on how frustrating the constant questions regarding Metal Gear Solid on Xbox 360:
