We had not even send out email out for a while or VG247 already has an answer back.
It seems we don’t have to worry about ‘doing a Xbox Live’. Through SCEE, Kaz Hirai let the following know
SCE will further increase sales by offering users new entertainment through the combination of hardware, software, peripheral and PlayStation Network. Especially in the online area, we are studying the possibility of introducing a subscription model, offering premium content and services, in addition to the current free services
So under premium we can say Qore? MMO based subscriptions? Well as long as standard online play is free we don’t mind.
Source: VG247
November 19
Media Go updated to 1.3The portable management software has been updated to 1.3 and contains some handy features.
- Download status is now displayed, letting you know how long until you can start playing that new game
- You can also now pause your downloads allowing you to control which items in the list download first
- System update notice: when you plug your PSP into your PC it will automatically suggest you update to the latest PSP system software if you haven’t already.
- Bonus Digital Copy: Media Go 1.3 now detects if there is extra bonus copy for your PSP on a DVD or Blu-ray disc.
- Playlist transfer: Video and Music playlist transfer from your PC to your PSP in Media Go 1.3
- Media Go now supports Windows 7 and you get some nifty little features like transfer progress on the Windows task bar.
- Comics tab: This is to allow you organize all your digital comics when they launch on the Store in December 2009
Though SCE isn’t re-inventing the wheel, they’re doing a good job at catching up and making sure the software makes full use of the hardware they supply.
Source: EU PlayStation Blog
In an interview with GameSpot Nicolas Doucet talks about new IP being planned at the London Studio of SCE, and two games that were thought to be cancelled, are actually “on hold”. A while back, Getaway 3, and Eight Days were thought to be cancelled for development, but they were put on hold, because SCE London were actually focusing on their SingStar and EyeToy projects. Maybe further down the line the projects will be reborn, but as of now, no plans yet.
There new IP is a different type of concept, but no bits of detail on what the game will be have been told.
If you would like to read the interview, you click on here.
September 2
Firmware 3.0 causing freezingFirmware 3.0 consisted mostly out of cosmetical changes (thank god they fixed the battery icon over the clock ‘bug’), it has been causing some issues to games.
Several people have posted on the US PlayStation forum and Neogaf that they are unable to play Uncharted for longer then 20-30 without freezing.
The question remains, who will bring a patch to solve this, SCE or Naughty Dog (and developers of the games affected). We’re putting our money on the first.
Gamedivision.jp had an interview with Head of Product Planning for SCE, Naoya Matsui. In this interview he reveals that Sony were just waiting for the digital market to ‘mature’ a bit.
We wanted to release it when the delivery of digital content was on par with the delivery of physical media. That’s what we’ve been working on these past two years. We’ll be selling the PSP Go alongside the existing PSP models, because it’s a product targeted at those people who are more accustomed to digital content.
People still needed to get used to the digital format, but replacing an entire or atleast for now let it co-exist format will not go well with the people that stayed with an format deemed a failure from the start.
Talking about the hardware
We’d planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning. But if we’d simply released the hardware, there wouldn’t have been much for everyone to enjoy. We needed to prepare the right environment for it first, things like the transferral of content with the PS3 and PSN, and PC software to manage content like music and movies such as ‘Media Go
The content transferral is still not strong enough, especially in the SCEE region which is missing two important things which could have helped in measuring the popularity of digital downloads, those are the Video Store and PSN cards.
We hope Sony realises and do something about it before they launch the PSP Go!
It was a while since I read about the patch being send to Q&A but now there is a little bit more information out. The Q&A (of SCE) and the development team of Slant Six are working hard on resolving issues that arose during the testing.
This is taking longer then normal due to the ‘enormous amount of features’ being added. Which include the Tournament and Clan Ladder.
We’ll be hearing more once the patch has been finalized.
One of the many requests of PlayStation 3 owners is that you have the possibility to invite a friend to a game your playing. EU forum member BiosNova discovered discovered that SCE had added such a feature but with a small adjustment.
BiosNova discovered a new button in the players profile while playing Red Alert 3. We have seen this before with Resident Evil 5, but many readers on the European PlayStation forums found it strange that SCE nor EA told them about this.
When selecting this button you get a pre-written message to invite the person to the game. It’s not full automatic yet but it seems SCE is getting closer and closer to realising it to the taste of the gamers.
March 9
SCEE strikes deal with Playfire
For those of you that don’t you Playfire, it’s a social site for gamers, where they can discuss games, show their game collection and achievement/trophy collection. Though the achievements from Xbox Live were done automatically, the PSN trophies had to be added manually as SCE had not implemented this system (yet). The site is run and maintained by the same people who are behind PlayStation Universe (PSU).
But starting last week SCE has made a step in the right direction by making it possible to see you complete trophy list from you profile (US PlayStation site), though you can’t see those of your friends. The European website had yet fallen behind again, but through Playfire some interesting news came out. Very soon it would be possible to see your trophies from the European site as well, and even better Playfire will in the future automatically synch your trophies on you Playfire profile.
This means Playfire holds the premier of being the first (and only non Sony website) which supports auto synch from your PSN trophy card (you still have to synch it on you PlayStation 3 to make sure the servers have the latest info).
The auto synch function is currently made unavailable until the official launch is announced by SCEE. We for one are very happy with this development, and might have feeling this is linked to the rumoured released of firmware 2.70 for March.
So join Playfire and get more people onto your friends list who share the same love for games as you do and don’t forget to join our Talk PlayStation group.
February 14
Home as addicted as chocolate?SCE in Asia is bringing something special to PlayStation Home. You will be able to buy chocolate pasted clothing and furniture and a special replica of the Square in Home. Check out the screenshots.
Industry tracker GfK Australia let know that the PlayStation 3 user base in Australia exists out of 460,000. Sony Computer Entertainment Australia let numbers out of the sold units for last year which were 213,000.
Though not all unit were sold in those numbers. ‘Only’ 70,000 were from the Bravia LCD promotion.
In the hardware market share the PlayStation didn’t do so well, but the software market share was impressive. Between the PSP, PS2 and PS3, PlayStation was responsible for 42 percent of the software sold in 2008. Most notable being SingStar.
Almost 50 percent of Aussie PS3 owners have embraced the console’s online functionality
January 22
SCEE safe (for now)With reports coming in about Sony’s upcoming $2.9 billion, SCE let word out that SCEE has not been included in the plans to cut jobs and downsize operations. Sony is currently busy trying to make a restructuring plan to safe YEN 250bn before 2010. Though the biggest hits will fall in the music and movie industry, the PlayStation brand made a loss of $338 million. But there is hope for that division as Howard Stringer believes Sony has to change it’s current direction and focus on software.
Sony needs further restructuring, not just cost-cutting but a revamping of its business operations
Sony’s Electronics division of Personal Electronics will also expect to have a loss of around $340 million. With plans to change the location of the TV production and design operations at one plant in Japan and move them to another country.
Pay cuts for high management positions are also considered in the restructuring plan that included curbing investment, closing five to six plants and cutting a total of 16,000 regular and contract jobs globally to save 100 billion yen a year in costs.
But is this all due to drop in demand. No! It’s also the dollar (and the pound in the last two months of 2008) that dropped heavy against the Yen. Thus bringing in less value for Sony per sold item.
Before this all was announced their stock dropped 2.6% and will probably drop more tomorrow.
It’s hard to believe that almost a year ago Sony posted a profit of 369 billion YEN.
Following the latest firmware announcement for the PlayStation Portable, Eric Lempel also announced the arrival of firmware 2.60 for the PlayStation 3. In this firmware the biggest additions are guest logins onto the PlayStation store and Divx 3.11 support.
But that’s not the only thing the update will include. Also included is a new Photo Gallery application. With this SCE is really focusing on getting the media side of the console to a proper level.
Digital pictures can be organized in groups according to various criteria, including the camera used to take the photos, the event date and time, colors in the photos, as well as the number, ages, or facial expressions of the people pictured. You can also create slideshows set to music and build photo playlists with an easy-to-use interface.
To use the application you will need to install it separately from the XMB after the update, just like with PlayStation Home and Life with PlayStation.
And with this announcement the PSN ID required login has gone active but it seems it’s still having some issue. People’s original blog nickname are still being shown instead of their PSN ID. According to Eric Lempel their working on it.
We hope the firmware has more features (including the cosmetic error of the battery icon over the clock) and fixes.
December 23
SOCOM: Confrontation 1.30 update out in January
As most of you were still wondering when then the update for Socom: Confrontations would be out, Seth Luisi shed some light on a possible release date. He hopes that the update will be available to us before January 13th 2009.
But this all depends on when the SCE Format QA team judges it to be ready for public release. The QA staff of Slant Six Games will be working during the holidays to further prepare a final candidate for final acceptance testing. But since the SCE team is free for the holidays this is the reason why the update will be out in 2009.
Seth Luisi hopes that this patch will finally solve a lot of the stability issues including the well known “heart attack” bug.
Once this update gets out and doesn’t have any major problems, we hope that Socom: Confrontations will finally be distributed to users outside North America.
December 10
Playstation division being reviewedWith all the economic turmoil, Sony has decided to cut at least 8,000 jobs worldwide to compensate for the hard times which are coming. While this will be going on SCE will review to current state of the Playstation group, but one of the thins that we can expect is a price increase of 33% in area’s where Playstation gear gets sold a lot.
In order to stay competitive in the accelerating global network environment, we will always carefully review and make structural changes, if necessary, in order to further expand and strengthen the PlayStation business around the world
It is understandable that the electronics department has been lacking sales as people are thinking twice about big purchases, but according to Katsuhiko Mori, fund manager for Daiwa SB Investments Sony plans won’t be enough to counter this dip.
Michael Denny boss of SCE Worldwide Studio claims that MotorStorm: Pacific Rift has sold over one million games worldwide since it’s launch.
We’re pleased with the high Metacritic rating of 82 per cent and it’s sold over a million units worldwide
Despite the hectic release schedule which resulted the game of landing outside the top 10 during this period it still managed to sell 1 million units.
The sequel to the popular PlayStation 3 launch title was released at the beginning of November, entering the charts at number 29 in the UK and then falling the following week to 35.
Look out for downloadable content as Evolution Studios is working on it.
