Tag Archives: PSP

Details on Persona 3 PSP’s downsized upgrade are finally* starting to roll in, and the game’s looking like much more than a simple port.

Most notably, all that female main character jazz is choice-driven. At the game’s outset, you decide rather you want to be a soft-skinned, purty-lookin’ Japanese girl or a boy who, well, looks just about as a pretty as his female counterpart.

Depending on your main character’s gender, certain events within the game’s story will change. For instance, if you charge out the gates as a girl, a male attendant replaces Elizabeth in the shadowy Velvet Room.

Other changes include new difficulty levels, more effiecient methods of travel, and the ability to directly control your party members in battle.

The game’s launching day and date with the PSP Go in Japan. Odds are, it’ll reach our shores eventually, but for now, Atlus isn’t talking.

*It’s been, like, less than a day since it was announced. We’re very impatient when it comes to Persona, it would seem.

Thanks, 1UP.

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.

OhGizmo! snagged a few new details on the portable Duke Nukem trilogy, which appeared at GDC in a more or less corporeal form.

Apparently, the trilogy will not only exist, but exist in two different forms: three games on the DS and three on the PSP.

However, the DS versions will see Duke spewing a few less bricks from his potty mouth en route to a T rating. The PSP version, meanwhile, won’t replace Duke’s fiery tongue with the joyful laughter of children, instead of opting for an M-rating.

More through the link.

Oh, it’s big – no doubt – but John Koller, director of hardware marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment of America, told Kotaku that Sony’s smallest, most wayward son will be receiving “a number” of equally important, as-of-yet-unannounced games as 2009’s full head of calendar pages grays and dwindles.

“At Destination PlayStation we announced about half of the line up for the PSP this year, some fairly major, triple-A titles are coming for the back half of the year that are going to be announced in the coming months and at E3,” Koller said.

“LittleBigPlanet is going to be one of the top three but a number of others that are coming are just as big.”

He also revealed that LittlerBigPlanet will likely be able to connect to its PS3 counterpart in some way – possibly to share levels – but specifics are still being ironed out at the moment.

More through the link.

We’re pretty sure it’s still a game, though – and by the looks of things, a damn good one. Siliconera opened up their Nihongonomicon and gave us the scoop.

According to a translated listing from Japanese retailer Rakuten, Persona’s PSP edition will include new animated movies, a soundtrack rearranged by Persona 3’s composer, and new dungeons.

The game’s difficulty, on the other hand, is feeling a wee bit less fierce after getting hit with the shrink ray, and will further be utterly emasculated by extra save points and a quick save option.

Still sounds rad, though. More through the link.

New shots of Resistance: Retribution have popped up over on IGN — eight of them to be exact.

The shooter’s releasing on March 17, so get your PSP battery charged.

More pretty pictures through the link.

For those of you in the US eagerly awaiting Sega’s Phantasy Star Portable for PSP, your months of pining are almost at an end. According to Joystiq, the game is slated to be released on March 3.

Expanding on the RPG’s 360 version, Phantasy Star Universe, the game will feature four player ad-hoc missions, over 150 new weapons and exclusive items, as well as a new partner NPC named Vivienne.

Players will be able to select between three class types and four different races.

More through the link.

If you’re one of the 140,000 who already snatched up a brand new PSP-3000, you’ve probably noticed a troupe of ugly scanlines on the handheld’s screen, skewering clean through your favorite games. Unfortunately, according to SCEI and SCEA, those scanlines are here to stay.

“PSP-3000 has a new LCD device with vastly improved picture quality, achieving a more natural and vivid picture than older models. By improving LCD response time to reduce ghosting, the horizontal-line phenomenon becomes more visible,” read SCEI’s statement.

“Since this is caused by hardware characteristics, there is no plan to fix it with system software update.”

Heartbreaking. Your eyes have our condolences.

Thanks, PSP Fanboy.

By Nathan Grayson

This week’s issue of Japanese game rag Famitsu brings word that Level-5 is developing a brand new RPG. Oh, and it’s on the PSP. Neat!

Titled “Ushiro,” which roughly translates to “behind,” the game will slip you into the oh-too-trendy garb of a shinigami (Japanese grim reaper), who will “cling on behind people that have exhausted their lives to experience their lives.”

Once you’ve Yoda-ed your way onto your quarry, it’s apparently up to you to “observe, possess, and fulfill the wishes” of that person. You’ll also do battle with a monster that embodies “a person’s malice.”

Sounds fascinating. Consider our interest piqued.

The game hits Japan sometime in 2009.

Thanks, Gamekyo.

By Nathan Grayson

In case you can’t work out how to make something as drop-dead simple as Skype work, this man from PSP marketing in the US is here to walk you through the entire process of attaching an earpiece to the PSP headphones, putting them into the console and making a call. It all looks very nice. Just make sure you’re in a “wireless environment” when you try it.

According to this, Sony’s dropped it’s 07/08 PS3 hardware sales target from 11 million to 9.5 million, citing a slow start to the machine’s life-cycle as a reason. The news comes as part of the freshly released Q3 financial report.

“On the other hand, Sony said it was raising its PlayStation Portable sales target for the current business year to 13 million units from 10 million,” said the Reuters story.

Right here. It’s exhaustive stuff. This is the important slide, saying PS3 hardware and software sales for the quarter ending December 31 were up 195 percent and 391 percent respectively over the same period in 2006. It’s worth noting that PS3 hadn’t launched in the PAL regions in the earlier period. There’s a note at the bottom of the chart that says, “Beginning with Q1 FY07, the method of reporting hardware and software unit sales has been changed from production shipments to recorded sales.” This seems to suggest those figures would be even higher had Sony’re recording criteria remained the same.

Sony’s UK site is listing odd water puzzle game flOw as a PSP release, although with a release date for the download as “January 2008″ a slip may be on the cards. The game will be available from the PC-PSP store and will feature ad-hoc multiplayer for up to four people.

Patapon will release for PSP on February 22, four days before the US release, Eurogamer reports. The quirky title is a side-scrolling, rhythm-based thing involving real-time strategy and crabs. You can’t say fairer that than. Read a review here.

Speak of the devil.

“Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) today announced the immediate availability of the latest system software update for PSP™(PlayStation®Portable). Version 3.90 will enable all owners of the new PSP Slim & Lite*(PSP 2000 series) to make and receive phone calls, adding a whole new raft of functionality, highlighting the true portability of PSP.”

Full press release after the link.

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According to this, Skype is now out for PSP via the new 3.90 firmware update. We’re unsure if this applies to Europe as well. You’ll need a specific headset to make the internet telephony magic happen, but this is cool nonetheless. Unless you live in Japan.

American? Have a PSP? Well then, lucky you. Sony’s dropped the price of three fair-to-average titles on the US PlayStation Store, meaning you can now take advantage of the following:

• Gangs of London is $19.99 $12.99
• SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo is $14.99 $10.99
• Wipeout Pure is $14.99 $10.99

Best day ever. If you’re American. And own a PSP.