Sony has just revealed it will allow PlayStation Network (PSN) users to buy and download games before they're released, but they won't be able to play them until their on-sale date. The move mimics the way Steam distributes its game titles. The option should appeal to hard-core gamers who don't want to wait for the download on the release date.
Sony has invited the press to a conference before the E3 gaming show on its dedicated website. At the show, it plans to reveal 20 new game titles and what it calls the "future of gameplay and innovation." Exactly what that involves remains to be seen, but it could have something to do with its next-generation home console, the Orbis. That console will not be unveiled at the show, however, the company said earlier.
PlayStation Vita owners got a major feature update Tuesday with the imminent release of Skype for PS Vita. The app lets the Sony console participate in both voice and video calls using either the front or back cameras. The app not only works both on 3G and Wi-Fi but truly runs in the background, making sure that gamers will catch an incoming call.
Sony will bring its PlayMemories Online cloud storage service to PlayStation users next week, the company revealed on Friday. Unveiled at CES, the service will offer 5GB of online storage space to PlayStation Network members in six countries, including the US, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK. Users will have the ability to upload their photos taken by Sony cameras using PlayMemories Home software for Windows and OS X platforms as well as their smartphones.
Sony has made good on its promise made last month and launched the PlayStation Suite SDK beta for developers. Any interested party can download the software, letting them create software for all PlayStation-certified hardware. This includes the PS Vita console and the Xperia line of phones and tablets.
Sony triggered an upset among gamers on Sunday with notice that it would be taking down the PlayStation Network for maintenance during 13 hours on Monday. From 9AM Eastern until 10PM, gamers won't have the option of playing any games online, checking their accounts, or using services like PlayStation Home and the PlayStation Store. Websites that need PSN, even including the official PlayStation blog, would also be switched off.
Sony has quietly updated the PlayStation Vita's Facebook app to support photo uploads. At least on Wi-Fi, gamers can now post photos from the console's cameras directly to the news feed or to the Wall. Accordingly, the social app now recognizes photo tags.
Previously limited to Japan, Sony's red PlayStation 3 has made a rare leap to the UK. The Scarlet Red model comes in its namesake deep hue with a DualShock 3 gamepad to match. It sits at the high end of Sony's lineup with not just a 320GB hard drive but a second gamepad to get users started on two-player games.
New NPD data published late Thursday gave the Xbox 360 not just a sustained lead in March but a rare milestone in hardware overall. At 371,000 units, Microsoft's console stayed in the lead for overall sales for the 15th consecutive month. The $430 million spent on the hardware and its games, however, was also larger than the combination of money spent supporting the Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3.
GameStop has settled a class-action lawsuit concerning advertised downloadable content not being included in used games being resold. Under the settlement terms, the game retailer must warn potential buyers from California online and in-store that certain content may require an additional purchase.
Sony's April 12 strategy meeting might see it make its largest job cut to date. Leaks to the historically accurate Nikkei have had it slashing 10,000 jobs, or about six percent of its worldwide employee base. The Japanese trade paper added that seven executive leaders, including chairman and former CEO Sir Howard Stringer, would likely be asked to forfeit their bonuses.
Sony on Thursday made owners of its PS3 Wireless Stereo Headset aware that it was planning to fix a problem existing ever since the PS3's 4.10 firmware update. It wanted to improve conflicts between "sidetone," the inclusion of the wearer's own voice to provide feedback, and some games. The addition had produced "unintended" effects, Sony said.
Nintendo's handheld 3DS gaming console has topped the sales charts in Japan for week of March 26 to April 1. While this is the second week its was atop the charts, the week saw nearly a 30 percent boost from that earlier week, now at 121,921 units, according to numbers reported by Media Create (viaAdrianSang). The numbers were large enough that the total of 3DS sales outnumber the combined numbers of all of Sony's consoles, including the PS3, PSP, PS Vita, and PS2.
Sony in a brief message called for a corporate strategy meeting on April 12 in which it would outline the company's new direction for the media. Details were short, but it would involve just-instated CEO Kaz Hirai. Most expect the discussion to center around Hirai's definition of a "One Sony" strategy meant to eliminate the 'silos' that have kept Sony divisions either isolated or even competing against each other.
Sony's PlayStation Orbis may have had some of its specifications firmed up through an unusually detailed rumor. The next-generation combo is now believed by IGN to be using one of AMD's current higher-end processors, the quad-core 2.9GHz A8-3850, with the as yet unannounced Radeon HD 7670. While the graphics would be considered low-end by modern standards, the A8's integrated Radeon HD 6550D video might be used in an asynchronous pairing to offload some tasks.
Sony has released a software update for the PlayStation Vita, while teasing an upcoming video feature for the PlayStation 3. As part of the weekly PlayStation Blogcast, Sony's social media manager, Jeff Rubenstein, noted that the company is working on a "cool new video service" that will be available for PSN users.
A currently uncertain but unusually detailed rumor Monday has Microsoft's next-generation Xbox making aggressive decisions on hardware. Multiple tips to VG24/7 supported AMD's hints of movie-quality 3D graphics with claims there would be two Radeon HD 7000 graphics cores. Rather than simply pair them up to form a single virtual card, as with AMD's usual CrossFire, it would have each core rendering separate objects in the same scene.
The rumored PlayStation Orbis, a codename for the upcoming PlayStation 4, may use a Kinect-like motion sensor to track gamers, according to images posted online at design firm Coque. The illustrations have since been pulled, but have been saved by original rumor source Kotaku and embedded below. The PlayStation Eye, an accessory for the current PS3 console, already has tracking capabilities, though it's not as advanced as the Kinect's sensors.
Sony finished the week by providing an Android 4.0 beta for owners of the Xperia Play. The release requires users unlock the bootloader on their phone, taking the device at least temporarily out of warranty, but will give the interface boosts and support for apps like Chrome for Android. Most of the obstacles are the risks of some games not being fully optimized as well as the absence of officially blessed Google apps, including Face Unlock, Gmail, and Google Maps.
Sony has confirmed rumors from earlier in the month and appointed its Sony Pictures leader Michael Lynton as Sony Corporation of America CEO. While he will continue to lead the movie and TV studio, the company's music division CEO Doug Morris, its PlayStation group SCEA, and its local electronics group.
Gradually mounting talk of early PlayStation 4 plans culminated Wednesday with a potentially telling rumor. Believed to be codenamed Orbis or "circle," possibly to make it part of a "circle of life" with the Vita, the system outlined to Kotaku would not just break from using the Cell processor but from the entire Power and NVIDIA graphics combo. Instead, it would reportedly use a 64-bit, x86-based AMD processor as well as graphics based on AMD's Southern Island core, used in the Radeon HD 7700 series and up.
Sony's hinted at PS3 photo editing suite has reached North America through PSN. PlayMemories Studio on the PS3 both provides a more efficient, timeline-based way of organizing photos and videos than the stock interface as well as a way to edit them on the game console. Along with art filters, users can lay on captions and scripts as well as introduce slower playback and sound effects on videos.
Sony has just revealed that its PlayStation-certified Xperia S smartphone has begin shipping across the world on Wednesday. Local retailers and providers will soon get all the pricing and information for the device, which runs on Android 2.3. An update to Android 4.0 is promised for later this spring.
Results posted late Thursday by the NPD Group chalked up a significantly improved February for gaming following a bleak January. Console hardware sales were up 87 percent over what they were in January, to $381.4 million, helped not just by 426,000 Xbox 360 sales but also by the PlayStation Vita. Sony had just four days of hardware sales that weren't directly quantified, but they were enough that the increase would have been a more modest if still healthy 62 percent.
Epic Games is concerned that Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony might let Apple take over in gaming by being too conservative with their hardware, the developer's VP Mark Rein said in a discussion this week at the Game Developer Conference. The Bulletstorm and Gears of War creator told CVG his company was "constantly pushing" hardware designers to make high-end systems to give a clear incentive to pick their systems over what Apple makes. Rein liked Apple, but he didn't want TV gaming to disappear by eroding the gap in experiences.
Sony will reveal new game titles for its new PS Vita portable games console as soon as March 9, according to Andriasang. It promises to do so during a web broadcast on March 9, for which invitations were sent out. The invitations invited gamers to "PlayStation Vita Game Heaven," the implications of which were only partly clear
Many had written off Sony from the mobile gaming arena not long into the PSP's history: high prices and a lack of major games kept it on the sidelines as the Nintendo DS took over. Apple and Google have seemingly been poised to deliver a killing blow with much better general abilities and cheaper games. The PlayStation Vita, then, is a chance at redemption. We'll gauge in our PS Vita review whether it has accomplished that goal or at least made a valiant effort.
A homebrew software loader for the PS Vita that allows older games and those from other systems to be loaded onto the portable console has been shared by hacker site Wololo. Sony has already taken steps to reverse the exploit, though, which first requires users to load the existing PSP title Motorstorm: Arctic Edge (Raging Ice in Japan) first. Sony has simply taken the downloadable title off its PS Vita store, however.
Sony is said to be considering retiring its Cell processor that is utilized in the current PlayStation 3, and moving to a different type of chip for the upcoming PlayStation 4 console. Unnamed sources have told Kotaku the company will not continue to develop the processor architecture for its gaming platform, contradicting early rumors.
Imagination Technologies outlined some plans for its far and near futures after Electronista stopped by its Mobile World Congress booth on Monday. The PowerVR developer showed a demo of a real-time raytracing graphics engine, where an app calculates the paths of individual light beams in a scene, that it expects to reach mobile devices. As shown in a demo running on a Mac, it could use surface properties rather than unchanging textures to generate the chrome effect on a car, even reflecting another car which in turn had a reflection of the sky.
Sony has finally launched a Facebook app for the company's PlayStation Vita handheld game console. The native app enables users to take advantage of the social networking feature without using the web-based interface in the Vita's browser.
iFixit on Thursday posted a teardown of the just-launched PlayStation Vita that provided a handful of surprises about its construction. The gaming handheld is unusually easy to open, with standard (if small) Philips screws throughout, few adhesives, and a battery that's relatively easy to replace. Much of the design is modular, and even the screws are color-coded in a way that helps identify which screws belong to the mainboard itself versus the parts that attach to the mainboard.
Sony on the eve of the PlayStation Vita's first US wave has kicked off a record $50 million ad campaign to recapture its place not just from Nintendo but from Apple. The most Sony has ever spent on any PlayStation launch in the US, the campaign includes both online spots as well as traditional billboards and TV spots. Where PSP ads focused on younger gamers, though, Sony's new Vita ads (below) will focus on adults, where the allure is to "never stop playing" PS3-level games while on the road and with others.
HTC might be the first company outside of Sony itself to get its devices PlayStation certified. A rumor from Pocket-lint sources had them being cleared to use PS1 and PlayStation Suite-specific games sometime this year. The approval would come in the second half of the year, likely ruling out a Mobile World Congress mention in two weeks' time.
Sony is mulling the possibility of extending is PS Vita operating system to other devices, according to AV Watch. Incoming CEO Kaz Hirai reportedly mentioned the idea to reporters during a Japanese Q&A session suggesting that, in addition to Android, the PS Vita OS offered additional scope for the company beyond gaming. The view was also given further credence by Sony Computer Entertainment Senior VP Yoshio Matsumoto, who suggested that as the OS was designed to run on the ARM architecture, that porting it to tablets and smartphones was possible.
The early run of the aptly-named First Edition bundle of the PlayStation Vita has just received an official unboxing from Sony's US team. The system is due to arrive on February 15 to those who preordered it, or one week before its widespread launch in stores. Included in the bundle is a 4GB PS Vita memory card, a unique PS Vita carrying case, and a physical copy of the Little Deviants game.
An incidental rumor floated next to talk of a purported iPad 3 case back has raised the possibility that Apple's expected A6 chip isn't quad-core. Citing unnamed sources, The Verge claimed that it would stay dual-core but have a "significantly more powerful" graphics core. Although not mentioned, it's presumed the clock speed, architecture, or both would be upgraded with the new chip.
Sony in a quick brief has warned that North American gamers won't have access to the UMD Passport program for the PlayStation Vita like their Japanese counterparts. A spokesperson told Kotaku that gamers with legacy, physical PSP titles will have to buy them again if they're available on the PlayStation Store. Japanese gamers can currently register their UMD-based games through the PSP and then pay a much smaller fee to download the digital version.
Sony has filed a patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a tablet-like game controller. The Position-Dependent Gaming, 3D Controller, and Handheld as a Remote in many ways conceptually resembles Nintendo's Wii U's tablet-like game controller. Sony actually began the application process for the technology in July 2010, almost a year before Nintendo showed the system.
Sony has teased an update for the PlayStation Vita that should significantly expand its features just a week before the North American launch. The 1.6 firmware patch will add a mapping tool with both driving and walking directions. Likely based on Google Maps, it has the options of satellite and traffic views as well as sending locations out on the Vita's own group messaging for a meetup.
Sony in its results call Friday was confident that the PlayStation Vita was selling well so far. Having moved slightly more than 535,000 units in its first three weeks, according to Media Create data, company CFO Masaru Kato didn't see "any problems" with results so far. The comment came even after shipments had dipped to just over 18,000 in January and had been mostly steady since.
GameStop stores as promised have started carrying PlayStation Vita demo units. Depending on which of the 3,300 stores showing the Vita gamers visit, they should have access to a handful of the 25 launch titles to try. Among the mix will include FIFA, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and Wipeout 2048.
Sony has given notice that the unification of its online entertainment services mentioned during its CES keynote would affect the PlayStation Network on February 7. A terms of service change will see the service renamed as part of the Sony Entertainment Network. Actual functionality should stay the same.
A profile of Sony's soon-to-be CEO Kaz Hirai has revealed that he may have been instrumental to getting a credible iPad rival into the market. The Wall Street Journal look showed that, under Sony's traditional structure of independently operating divisions, four different segments of the company were developing their own tablets. The User Experience group, formed while Hirai was an executive deputy to Sir Howard Stringer, culled all but one project and started focusing on the speed optimizations and PlayStation Suite support that would define the Tablet S.
A quick investigation has confirmed that PlayStation Vita owners in the US will get a discount on games if they buy through the PlayStation Network. Shacknews heard that, as in Japan, games will not just be available the same day as a download but will be price-cut over their retail versions. The discounts are about 10 percent over boxed copies, or about $4-5 for games like Uncharted: Golden Abyss.
Sony has hoped to lure gamers to the PlayStation Vita with another bundle for the official February 22 US arrival. The Launch Day bundle mates the 3G version of the console with a free month's pass for 250MB of AT&T data. While most of the accessories aren't present from the First Edition bundle, gamers get a twice-as-large 8GB memory card to encourage more game and add-on downloads.
A new hack demoed on video (below) has shown that the PS Vita can play full PS3 games through Remote Play. A jailbroken and modified version of the PS3's 3.55 firmware, lower than the most recent official build, can pipe through full games such as Battlefield 3 and the Mortal Kombat remake without having to get official support. Sony only allows its current list of PSP-aware Remote Play games to work.
The PlayStation Certified program will soon get a number of new titles, according to a number of new ESRB ratings. Thus far, the program, which was designed to bring legacy PlayStation games to PlayStation Certified devices such as tablets and smartphones, only offered a few PS1 titles. The Entertainment Software Rating Board names a number of other PSP titles that will be made available on Certified Devices.
Sony has quietly updated its PlayStation Vita 3G plan page to reflect the AT&T plan shakeup from this past week. While the $15, 250MB plan stays intact, the top-end plan has been bumped up $5 to cost $30 and provide a larger 3GB. As before, both are 30-day prepaid plans and can be managed entirely from the Vita.
New Media Create data has made clear that the PlayStation Vita isn't yet threatening most other consoles or smartphones. After a blockbuster launch in December, it has tapered off for a second time in a month to just 18,361 systems as of January 15. Every console's sales dropped off sharply in the same period, but it still sat behind Sony's seven-year-old PSP, the PS3, and Nintendo's 3DS.
