Monthly Archives: August 2009

A SCEE rep has confirmed to VG247  that the PSP Go will retail in the UK for £224.99.

It comes as the platform holder gutted the price of the fat Playstation 3 tonight down to £249, while also sticking on the same price tag for the newly revealed PS3 Slim.

We see some special bundles coming for this and the PS3 Slim.

Some very lovely shots of the slim can be seen over on Flickr.

The folks at Sony brought a slim to the offices of the PlayStation: The Official Magazine and that’s basically what you’ll see. Lovely photos of the thing.

Did we mention that it was lovely? No? Well it is lovely.

Have a look.

There’s also a video of GamesRadar and PTOM opening the box after the break.

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Amazon UK is now taking preorders for PS3 Slim.

Says it’s 32 percent smaller, 36 percent lighter and consumes 34 percent less power than the original.

Has it up for £249.99 coming out September 4.

By the way, only five units per household, so that means you can put 4 on eBay like the Wii fiasco, remember?

Guitaroo Man dev legend Mitsuru Nakamura and Harmonix boss Alex Rigopulos have both given clear indications that instrumentless music games are on the way with a bomb, speaking at a GamesCom Microsoft after-party tonight.

“First of all it’s very, very exciting,” Nakamura said of Natal. “I think we all feel the same way,” he added, indicating the Rock Band boss, saying the Microsoft system “has the big potential” to “be the broadening interface” in the next wave of games.

“I think peripherals until now have tried to make the experience of making music a lot simpler,” he added.

“With Natal we’re try to [it] one step further” and let the player “feel empowered when they stand in front of the device.”

Rigopulos went further.

“I think an interface like that will change people perceptions of what games are, he said, saying Natal will, on a “very deep psychological level,” affect how people view games in general.

Molyneux up next. Fancy a bit of Milo?

MediaMolecule has announced an upcoming downloadable bit of goodies for LittleBigPlanet.

Water will be added via a kit basically.

Shows it in the reveal trailer posted after the break.

Wonder if sackboys are drownable. Hope so.

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SCEE’s confirmed to GI that the sterling price-point for the fat Playstation 3 will be reduced to £249.

It comes as the US and EU recieved price-cuts of up to $299/€299 tonight in SCEE’s GC presser. Meanwhile, the PS3 Slim will retail also for £249, according to MCV.

More info through the links.

Harmonix boss Alex Rigopulos said in Cologne tonight that creating Rock Band content is now just part and parcel of route to market for many serious musicians.

“It turns out that many major artists have taken advantage and are moving quickly to bring content to the platform,” said Rigopulos in a talk and Microsoft’s HQ in the city.

“Creating Rock Band levels is just part of what they do now.”

Rock Band Network, an open service to allow musicians to upload their own tracks for play by others was a measured move “in order to eliminate Harmonix as a bottleneck,” said the exec.

He banged on about Natal for a bit. Instrumentless Rock Band confirmed.

Comedian Danny Wallace has lent his voice to Assassin’s Creed II.

His likeness and voice will appear as Shaun Hastings a guide and source of information for the player.

“When the UK suggested Danny to us, we were completely open to the idea,” said script writer Corey May. “Danny has been fantastic to work with, and his manner and particular style of humor has worked out perfect for the role of Shaun.”

“Going right back to my days of working on Sega Power, I’ve always been a keen gamer, and being involved – and actually being in a game like Assassin’s Creed II is amazing! I have to say, I’m rather excited,” said Wallace. This should make more than a few rather happy at the news.

More over on CVG.

Yesterday, Sony let the cat out of the sack concerning a Game of the Year edition of LittleBigPlanet, topped off with such bonuses as 18 new levels and a ModNation Racers beta code. One problem, though: the announcement only mentioned a North American release for the game.

We asked Sony about this glaring omission, and — unfortunately — were told that Europe’s just going to have to make do with the plain jane version of LBP, as there are “no plans” for a European GOTY edition.

“Unfortunately there are no plans currently to release a LBP GOTY edition,” Sony UK’s Laura Bentham told VG247.

Cue that totally heartbreaking Sackboy cry-face. You know the one.

Title says it all.

It’s after the jump. It’s out next year.

Thanks, Joystiq.

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SCEA president Jack Tretton has spoken out on the PS3 Slim and the PS3 price-cut  in a video interview with the US PS Blog for the first time.

“We’re extremely pleased that we’ve been able to meet production efficiencies that have allowed us to pass on those savings onto consumers,” said Tretton.

“As you know, the original Playstation and the PlayStation 2, we announced revisions of the hardware in the third and fourth years, we’re very pleased that, short of it’s third birthday, the Playstation 3 has achieved tremendous milestones which have allowed us to bring out this new form factor and pass those savings onto consumers, giving them the opportunity to buy this state of the art gaming system at half the price it originally debuted at in October 2006.”

The video is after the jump. Both the price-cut and Slim were announced tonight after months of speculation.

Thanks, Wonderwall Web.

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Sony’s taken its PSP 3000 factory and parked it under a rainbow, resulting in three new, eye-scorchingly bright PSP colors.

Turquoise blue, lilac purple, and blossom pink PSPs were announced, with turquoise and lilac being bundled with LittleBigPlanet and Hannah Montana, respectively.

This could very well be one of the hardest decisions you’ll ever have to make. Needless to say, we plan on meditating for hours before choosing which bundle to buy. Lord, grant us strength.

The new colors are launching in November.

Day one is rounding up at GameCom and if you missed out on any of it, we’ve got you covered.

It’s all here in one lovely post. From Peter Moore sporting shorts and chatting on stage with Katarina Vitt, to Ray Muzyka not giving us a Mass Effect 2 date – that was the EA side.

From the day purchase of a purple Hannah Montana PSP 3000 to Kaz’s mega-fucking-ton but anticlimactic announcements of PS3 Slim and it’s pretty price – Sony’s all right here as well.

Hit the links and see for yourself.

EA PRESS EVENT

• GamesCom: EA press conference liveblog

• EA’s GC Press Event: Pictures from the floor

• Bernabau stadium to release as DLC in FIFA 10

• EA Sports Active moves 1.8 million units

• More workouts coming in November to Sports Active

• Sims series sells over 100 million units

• FIFA 10 demo dated for September

• Battlefield: Bad Company 2 dated for March 2010

• Brutal Legend demo for September 17th

• Tim Schafer talks multiplayer in Brutal Legend

• Dante’s Inferno releasing in February

• Mass Effect 2 trailer posted online

• Everyone in Star Wars: TOR will speak three languages

• GamesCom: Dragon Age: Origins video shows Darkspawn

• Battlefield: Bad Company 2 video and shots from GamesCom

• GamesCom: Mass Effect 2 screens are a sight to behold

• GamesCom: Loads of Dragon Age: Origins screens

• Brutal Legend GamesCom video from EA Press Event

Sony Press Event

• Sony Press Event liveblog

• SingStar and Audi Home spaces announced

• PSN’s made $280 million

• BBC iPlayer coming to PS3

• PSN cards coming to Europe

• Last two characters for Heavy Rain revealed

• Gran Turismo PSP free with registration of PSP Go in October

• PS3 Slim announced!

• PS3 finally gets official price cut

• The first pics of the Slim

• First official shots from PS3 Slim

• PS3/PSP video-on-demand service coming in November

• Digital Reader announced for PSP

• Minis announced for PSP Go

• PSP 3000 painting the town pink, turquoise, and purple this November

• Tretton on the PS3 Slim

• Watch the new Heavy Rain trailer

• Watch the moment the PS3 Slim is revealed

• Uncharted 2 GamesCom trailer from Sony Press Event

Sony announced during their GamesCom conference this evening that a set of mini-games, known simply as Minis, will be available from October 1: the day the PSP Go launches in Europe. They are 100Mb in size and will be available from the PS Store at launch and downloaded directly from the PSP.

SCEE president Andrew House promised that an extensive line-up of the games will be available, all the way from the PC and mobile game markets.

It’s unclear if this will work with older PSP models.

Read what happened during the conference here.

Codemasters has announced the soundtrack for Colin McRae: DiRT 2.

It will include songs from White Lies, Queens of the Stone Age, Ladyhawke, Friendly Fires, You Me at Six, The Qemists, and loads more which we have posted after the break.

Games out September 8 and 11 in the US and Uk respectively.

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The PS3 Slim may have stolen the show, sold it, and used the resulting cash to buy an offshore island and a small armada, but the PSP was there too! Honest!

Soon, Sony announced, its diminuitive marvel will be able to read books. The service is set to launch with “hundreds” of digital comics, including a number of classics from comic book powerhouse Marvel.

“Spiderman, X-Men, the Hulk, Wolverine, Daredevil, Thor, loads more,” as we said in our liveblog.

The service is coming to both Europe and America this December.

Dwarfed by the blinding light of the megatons dropped during Sony’s press conference was the news that Sony’s video-on-demand service is on track for a November 2009 roll-out.

At first, it will be limited to films only, and you’ll be able to rent or purchase flicks in HD and SD.

The service is coming to UK, France, Germany and Spain in November. If you don’t live in any of those places, your PS3/PSP’s upgrade from lowly game console to Lord of All Cinema will have to wait until 2010.

As if our pics straight from the event weren’t good enough for you, Sony’s revealed the first official shots of the Ps3 Slim.

They’re at elhabib. Go get them.

It’s the worst kept secret ever, but’s it’s all over at last. You can sleep easy tonight.

Well, there you have it.

The worst kept secret ever – yes, worse then the PSP Go – has finally been revealed. Kaz Hirai came out to show us it and now we have it as of two weeks time.

Catch our first shots of the Slim, straight from the floor taken during the press event posted after the break.

You can also review the whole thing through here.

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SCEE’s just annoucned the long awaited PS3 price-cut for the Playstation 3.

The new prices are €299 in Europe, $299 in the US and 29,980 yen in Japan, nothing yet as far as we know on sterling. The price-cut is effective as of tomorrow.

More soon.