Per Grace Chen (Senior Manager, PlayStation Store) today:
Hey, everyone. It’s time again for the PlayStation Store weekly update.
Add-on Game Content
LittleBigPlanet Sack in the Box Costume (free)
A community costume for SackBoy!
File size: 1.04 MB
LittleBigPlanet LocoRoco Costumes ($2.99)
A costume kit for SackBoy! Contains 5 different costumes.
File size: 1.04 MB
BioShock PS3 Challenge Rooms ($9.99)
Experience the intense, terrifying world of Rapture like never before with the all-new PLAYSTATION 3 exclusive Add-On Game Content featuring three unique Challenge Rooms and some very cool extras. In “A Shocking Turn of Events,” rescue a trapped Little Sister in a disturbing carnival in Rapture. In “The I in Team”, defeat a Big Daddy using only your wits. In “Worlds of Hurt” plow through eight rooms filled with the worst Rapture has to offer.
File size: 402 MB... More »
Nintendo released a recent update that once again tries to secure some existing bugs on the console, breaks some things, deletes others. This time they’ve also gone around and modified the TOS. As usual, mass panic ensues.
The people who are panicking can be divided roughly into two groups (non exclusive):
- The pirates
- The clueless
This should go without saying, but we don’t want to have anything to do with the former group. Nintendo is obviously going to fight piracy (and that’s going to hurt homebrew). We’ll have to deal with the homebrew part, but don’t expect that to help piracy in any way. It may, or it may not. And if it doesn’t, pirates will have to deal with fighting nintendo themselves.
The usual messages about WADs, “backups”, and all that crap are going straight to /dev/null, and we’re seeing... More »
There's general agreement that Sony stumbled out of the gate with the PlayStation 3. Months of intense hype were followed by a late launch (fully a year after the Xbox 360) and a staggering $600 price tag for the deluxe model.
Even worse, the PS3 didn't initially have any real must-have exclusive titles, and despite the power of its vaunted Cell processor, multiplatform games from third-party developers didn't look appreciably better than the respective titles on the Xbox 360.
Since then, the company's been modifying the PlayStation product line to better fit the competitive market landscape. As of August 2008, a new "bargain" PS3 is available with a larger, 80GB hard drive, and a "deluxe" model is due in November, doubling the capacity to 160GB.
Both, however, lack backward compatibility with PS2 games and do not come with flash card readers. If those features are a must, it might be best to pick up the 80GB "Metal Gear" bundle version on eBay w... More »
The New Xbox Experience, a.k.a. the new Xbox 360 Dashboard, hits today. If you've got an Xbox 360 that's connected to the Internet, you're going to be prompted to update your console as soon as you turn it on.
No exceptions; this is what your machine will look like until either it dies, you die, or Microsoft decides to make ANOTHER Xbox Experience.
Unfortunately, unlike Batman, you didn't have time to prepare. Here are the ten things you should know about the new Xbox experience so you can be set for today.
1) Installation is quick. Owners with hard drives that aren't 100% full will be able to update with no problem, but Xbox 360 Arcade fans that rely on memory cards can get in on the free 512MB card deal from Microsoft. We'd recommend you go for the 20GB hard drive for $20 if anything.
The update won't be as fast as the 10-second patches you're used to for standard Xbox Dashboard upgrades, but clocking in at somewhere between five... More »
Recently GameTrailers have examined and compared the online services offered for current game consoles, and today Bonus Round Episode 28: Part 2 - Online Services HD spotlighting PlayStation 3's Home is available.
To quote from the video's caption:
"With Home just around the corner we take an inside look at the PSN."
PS Blog's Social Media Manager Jeff Rubenstein shared some recent event video footage courtesy of Resistance 2 developer Insomniac Games today.
To quote: With a couple of fan-based events last week, the Burbank-based developers renewed their relationship with their biggest fans.
Just a few days ago, Insomniac threw open their doors to the whole of Southern California, and close to 200 members of the Insomniac community took the day off work or school and trekked into the valley for a full day of gaming, autograph schwag sessions, and an inside look at how they made Resistance 2.
If you weren’t able to make it - here’s what you missed:
At PlayStation Experience 2008, it was time for Round 3 of GamingIndians vs Atindriya Bose, Country Manager of Sony Computer Entertainment India.
This time around, he sheds some light on the new 80GB PlayStation 3 set to hit stores in December, the post warranty situation for the PS3, the long-awaited PSN launch, and news of Activision moving its PS2 game manufacturing to India.
To quote: GamingIndians: Can you tell me a bit about Sony’s policy towards post-warranty PlayStation 3s?
Atindriya Bose: Currently, we are giving you a new console at 50 per cent discount in case something goes wrong with your console after warranty has expired.
GamingIndians: Won’t there be a service facility?
Atindriya Bose: Not on an immediate basis. I think currently we are just touching figures of 20,000 with the PS3. Both the PS3 and PSP have quite complex service requirements, but at the moment, the PSP numbers allow us to go ah... More »
A short time ago Sony Computer Entertainment executive Ray Maguire was quoted in response to a question about a PlayStation 3 price cut.
"Well the pressure comes from the consumers obviously and so therefore there's always pressure on price," admitted Maguire, "but you know we have a business to run, and we have to make sure we're doing the right thing for the shareholders as well."
I am sorry, what? I know I am not a CPA, a high ranking business analyst, nor a senior executive at a multi-billion dollar company, but I can do basic math. Microsoft recently had some major price cuts on their hardware and has seen a big hardware surge in North America and especially Europe as a result. So let’s break out some hypothetical numbers shall we?
(1) 
