Just an 80's kid still playing video games
The Playstation Blog just announced the “Playstation Experience” tour, which will give gamers the chance to play several of their games within their awesomely equipped vehicle designed for gaming. One of the coolest things about this tour though, is that LittleBigPlanet’s been announced to be on that bus. There will be two trucks heading across the country, so to find out which one will be heading near you, check out the schedules here and here.
The company who created Daxter and God of War: Chains of Olympus for the PSP, Ready at Dawn, have confirmed on their website that they will no longer be supporting the PSP. They commented a while back that after completing God of War that “our work on the PSP has come to an end,” so we all knew it was coming, but now it’s official. The picture above are the actual PSP dev kits that they are sending back too.
So what can Sony do to stop other developers from heading in the same direction? How about some more advertising? They don’t give the PSP enough publicity. Toss some money at it, and maybe it’ll start selling. Well, it’s been a top seller in Japan for a while now, so maybe things will pick up. To be honest, I don’t think thats the reason Ready at Dawn made their decision though. I think it just had more to do with company focus.
This really blows my mind. Ryan Payton, the producer over at Kojima Productions has stated that on the Japanese version of Metal Gear Solid 4 only has enough room for the Japanese language track and won’t include the English language track. Obviously, this goes for the American version as well, only the other way around. I can’t believe this game is this huge. Looks like companies are gonna have to think of better compression options or something.
Sony has announce all kinds of good news today. Three major things really.
1. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots will come packaged with an 80GB Playstation 3 and a DualShock 3 controller for $499.99. You’ll be able to buy the game separately as well, of course.
On top of this news also comes news of a MGS4 multiplayer beta test in April for those of you who pre-order the game.
2. There will be a special edition God of War: Chains of Olympus PSP Entertainment Pack hitting stores in June. The PSP will be “Deep Red” in color and will feature Kratos silkscreened on the back, the God of War PSP game, Superbad on UMD, and a voucher to download Syphon Filter: Combat Ops for free. This will set you back $199.99.
3. The last bit of news is about the long awaited DualShock 3. Finally, the DualShock 3 Wireless controller has a release date of April 2008 in North America for the price of $54.99. I miss my rumble. I want this controller.
Just days after Phil Harrison stated his frustrations with Sony Japan, news comes that he has resigned from his position as President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios. He’s been there for 15 years; back in the days of the original Playstation. CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc., Kazuo Hirai will be taking his place.
Sony Online Entertainment has announced that they will have special Valentines Day events within several of your favorite online games. The games to check out are EverQuest II, EverQuest Online Adventures, Star Wars Galaxies, and Planetside. If you’ll be checking these out on Valentines Day…I’m sorry.
Sony has revealed that Skype, a VOIP provider, will be bringing their voice chat technology to the PSP in North America. They have not announced yet just how much of this technology will be coming though, but Sony’s CES website mentions that users will be able to “call friends, talk trash to fellow gamers, or catch up with acquaintances via Skype for PSP system.” Sounds awesome!
Short answer. No way. There was a rumor going around this weekend about Zapak Digital Entertainment purchasing Sony Online Entertainment for $300 million and relocating the studios to India in order to reduce the cost of publishing a game. Sony Online head, John Smedley confirmed that the story is 100% false and aren’t even up for sale. He did mention though that Sony Online was talking to Zapak about distribution rights to one of their games. To be honest, the story sounded pretty fake to me as soon as I heard about it. Outsourcing to India, with a huge brand like Sony, just doesn’t sound like a smart idea. I sure hope it never comes to that anyway.