Want to know what’s in store for the PlayStation Network this year? You’re not alone, and Sony hears you. Peter Dille, Senior Vice President for Marketing and the PlayStation Network dropped a bunch of information over at PlayStation.Blog.
Along with some more PSN games, we can expect a media download service sometime this year.
Ultimately the goal of the PLAYSTATION Network service will be to break through the overwhelming clutter of digital media to give you the TV, movies and gaming content you want.
I can only hope that Sony makes this so you can transfer purchased items to your PSP and possibly your PC. That’s one of the biggest issues I see with media downloads right now. If I buy something, I want to be able to watch it where and when I see fit.
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Over at PlayStation.Blog, a whole heap of details about the upcoming Metal Gear Online Beta were let out of the bag. Starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to download the beta game if you have a special code from preordering MGS4. The Beta will be playable from April 21st through May 5th.
You’ll need two Konami IDs to participate. Yeah, almost like friend codes. Pretty annoying. I thought we had one PSN name for a reason. Anyway, you’ll be able to customize your character with all kinds of attire and facial differences. Once you make your character pretty, you can pick four skills to specialize in, all of which can be upgraded through play in the game.
Close Quarter Combat (CQC), knife fighting, quickness, alertness, heavy weaponry mastery, demolition, and sniper mastery are just some of the skills you can specialize in.
Konami dropped a huge list of weapons and such that you’ll be able to use as well as detailing the two maps, Blood Bath and Groznyj Grad, that will be available in the Beta. The best part about the maps? Huge man catapults to shoot you across the map. You won’t have to run or sneak your way when you can fly. Good stuff. Can’t wait until next week to start playing.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Dylan Jobe, the director of Warhawk, officially priced and dated the upcoming expansion pack for Incognito’s online shooter. Operation: Broken Mirror has gone gold and will be available in the PlayStation Store on April 17th for $7.99. Same price as Omega Dawn, which is what we expected.
Here’s what you get with Broken Mirror:
- 10 layouts on a brand new winter battlefield, Vaporfield Glacier.
- 2 new Armored Personnel Carriers (Chernovan and Eucadian styles).
- 10 bonus layouts for battlefields from the original game so that you can play with the APCs.
There’s a lot that went into this expansion, from crazy layouts to weather effects, etc. If you want all the juicy details, hit up PlayStation.Blog.
Sony dropped a note over at PlayStation.Blog letting everyone know that firmware 2.01 is coming soon for the PS3. No word on what to expect in the firmware, other than this:
Firmware v2.01 is a minor update that will improve the stability of PLAYSTATION 3.
I guess Sony figured out what part of v2.00 was causing lots of issues with the PS3. Hopefully this will be out very soon to stop the grumblings from gamers.
Since it’s Thanksgiving here in the US next week, Sony will be giving us an early update to the PlayStation Store. So fire up that PS3 on Tuesday night to grab all of next week’s goodness.
The news came from Grace Chen, the Senior Manager of the PlayStation Store, on PlayStation.Blog. Grace left a comment in the post on this week’s update dropping the info:
Hi everyone. Just to let you know, we’ll be updating the PS Store next Tuesday, instead of Thanksgiving Thursday.
Sounds good to me. Hopefully we’ll get a Haze demo on Tuesday…
PlayStation.Blog sent word that new firmware updates are coming for both the PS3 and PSP in the next few days.
The PS3 will get updated to v1.93. Don’t expect anything major here, as the only update is a fix for network connection issues that some users have experienced since v1.92.
The PSP, coming with v3.71, is going to get “many features that readers of [the] blog have requested.” The biggest (and only announced) feature is a more in-depth theme system for the PSP. You’ll be able to download themes from the PlayStation site, both on your PC or the internet browser on the PSP.
Glad to see Sony is giving information for the upcoming updates. Hopefully more features will come soon to both systems.
Everyone and their mother has heard about the hardware issues that have plagued the Xbox 360 since it’s launch. Microsoft has done a lot to combat this, from warranty increases to added heat sinks. But what about it’s major competition, the PS3? (The Wii is it’s biggest competition by sales numbers, I know, but that’s a story for another day)
David Karraker, Sony’s PR Guru, dropped a line on PlayStation.Blog bragging a bit about some recent stress tests performed by PS3 Vault.
They put it in a freezer at zero degrees for up to 108 hours and they put it in a sauna at 120 degrees for up to 64 hours — all the while running games and Blu-ray Disc movies on it. Did it fail? Nope. Like the Energizer Bunny, it kept going and going and going.
Definitely impressive. I haven’t heard of many people having trouble with their PS3. I’ve personally only had 1 freeze up, and that was because of a scratched disk.
I think we need some Wii vs. PS3 stability tests. Who wants to volunteer their precious consoles to be put through the ringer?
Sony sent out word that Warhawk for the PS3 has gone gold via PlayStation.Blog. The game will be available on August 28th.
Pricing for the title was also announced. The retail version will run you $60 and include a Jabra Bluetooth headset as well as some behind the scenes footage from the game. The PlayStation Store download will be $39.99.
I’m thinking it’s a pretty fair price for the downloadable title. I know some critics have said $30 is the maximum they should charge, but I think $40 is a good value. The game is online only and will include a multitude of maps and game types to provide hours of fun.
After played the beta extensively, Warhawk is one of my favorite online titles of late. There’s a lot of ways to play, whether in flight, in ground vehicles, or just running around shooting. I would highly suggest picking this one up if you can.
Today has been a clusterfuck. There’s no other way to put it. Sony has some explaining to do, because what they’re come up with doesn’t work too well.
If you haven’t heard, earlier in day, SCEE President David Reeves told GamesIndustry.biz that once the current stock of 60GB PS3’s sells out in America, they’ll be gone forever. Vamoose. No more. To further confirm this issue, a Norwegian site posted a video of Kaz Hirai stating the same thing. Here’s a transcript of what he says (around 1:50 in the video):
Well, again, just from a hardware perspective, the 499 dollar price adjustment that we did for the 60 GB version, for the American market, uh, we’re no longer in production for that product, so uh once that product is gone from the retailer shelves, then we’re back to the $599 SKU only, so it’s not like we have a two price strategy here in the US market. We found out very early on, you know, consumers react mostly to just having one SKU as opposed to two.
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Sony Releasing Wordpress Plugins Now
Now only has Sony entered the blogosphere with PlayStation.Blog, they’re also giving back. Not content with what’s already available for Wordpress (the software platform running Loot Ninja as well), Sony wrote some plugins of their own and are distributing them for everyone to enjoy.
The first plugin allows comment replies, which allows you to directly reply to someone else in an article. The second is an image rotator that changes a header image every time the page is refreshed. Both plugins have all kinds of customization as well.
We’re going to be testing and, if everything goes well, implementing the comment replies plugin here at Loot Ninja. We think it might clean up the comment section a bit and make it easier to follow.
Glad Sony is giving back to the community with PlayStation.Blog