GTA 2 hitting PSN very soon?

Ahh, internet countdowns. Who'd have thought the slowly ticking away of numbers could cause so much speculation? The latest countdown to set the rumour mill on fire is one that has appeared on the official GTA 2 website.

Well, I tell a lie, there are two countdowns actually, set hours apart and both appear to be counting up. Weird. One however, (marked 2nd May 08) links to the normal site. The other connects to 'Future' section and is labelled 23rd May 08.

The strongest rumours are that GTA 2 could be landing as a PSN download. Seeing as GTA 2 was a PSOne game, that certainly isn't beyond the realms of possibility and it would be cool to see GTA's 2D roots on the network. Landing right off the back of GTA IV hype wouldn't hurt at all. If it can incorporate multiplayer modes over PSN too, so much the better.

GTA 2 (via Eurogamer)

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PSN gets another lame weekly update

Potentially, the PSN is a glittering jewel in Sony's PS3 crown. Potentially. Games like Riff, flOw and PixelJunk Monsters show exactly what can be produced on the service with a bit of invention and a lot of effort. And some forthcoming titles - Elefunk, PixelJunk Eden, Bionic Commando: Rearmed - show plenty of promise.

But it's not enough. Every week I look forward to the PSN update, hoping against hope that something good will be released. And the vast majority of weeks I look at the list and sigh. Even the PSOne games have disappointed - Sony's first console has one of the biggest software libraries of any machine, yet so far we've seen barely more than a handful of games, only about two or three of which have aged well.

There are two slight saving graces this week. Hit the jump to see the full list and find out what they are.

Classic rhythm action PS1 title Vib Ribbon heading to Playstation Store?

This isn’t 100% confirmed, but according to the PEGI website, classic PS1 Vib Ribbon has been rated and is all set to head to the Playstation Store.

Vib Ribbon, famed for its stylish aesthetics which consisted of a black background, with a simple white line filled with obstacles, achieved much love from the more hardcore of gamers thanks to its addictive brand of gameplay.

The biggest selling point of said title was the ability to ignore the included music tracks, and stick in your own CD’s to create a unique level with. Admittedly a lot of music was hugely unsuitable and created some astonishingly difficult levels, but attempting to play your favourites tunes via Vib Ribbon continues to be a huge source of fun for many gamers.

Hopefully this could be the start for a mass of PS1 classics that deserve to be enjoyed in the mass numbers they failed to wow in the first instance to arrive on the Playstation Store.

Source: PEGI
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New PS3/PSP firmware allows you to play ALL your PS1 games on PSP

Blimey. Sony certainly know how to sneak some cracking features into these firmware updates don’t they. It transpires that the combination of the PS3 version 2.10 firmware, and the PSP version 3.80 allows ALL PS1 titles to be played on your PSP vie good old remote play.

Nope, this isn’t just the PS1 titles that you download via the PSN, but also that massive back catalogue of games you’ve got hidden away in storage, waiting for a rainy day.

How cool is that? So you can play ALL your PS1 Final Fantasy titles on your PSP. And all those excellent Syphon Filter games. And Metal Gear Solid. And Vagrant Story. My word I believe my Christmas has indeed been made.

Source: Playstation Official Forums
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iPhone gets an extremely unofficial PlayStation emulator

Some clever man (or autistic maths-genius 14-year-old boy) has managed to get a PlayStation1 emulator working on iPhone and iPod Touch. He's about to start running one of those fashionable 'closed beta tests' imminently, so it's not available for public download - but will be soon.

Here's what it's looking like at the moment:

You can see how he's trying to get around the iPhone's embarrassing lack of buttons by mapping the PS controls to the touchscreen. Clever, but we'd image the end result will be a marginally useful novelty, hardly beating the thrill of replaying old PS1 games perfectly on PSP.

If you fancy invalidating all kinds of warranties and user agreements and feeling like a dead cool 'hacker' for a bit, details of the thing can be found over at ZodTTD.

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PSN goes PS1 crazy - nine titles to appear during November

It’s pretty fair to say that PS3 owners with a penchant for downloading some old school PS1 titles will surely feel a trifle disappointed by the meagre offerings currently available. We were promised the moon, but we seemed to have got lost along the way, and found ourselves in some dodgy Little Chef just outside Doncaster.

But, we now have a grand total of 9 classic titles to be made available during the course of November, with some cracking titles available. The best (for me) is sneak-a-thon Syphon Filter 2, which certainly deserves a purchase for those eagerly anticipating Metal Gear Solid 4.

Platforming fans suffering from a touch of the old green eyed monster with Wii owners enjoying Mario Galaxy can tuck into Crash Bandicoot 2 and 3, while racing fans can smash up their motors to their hearts weird desires in Destruction Derby. Plus, Colony Wars and G Police both appear, and are bloody fantastic games.

All in all, a pretty decent haul that should start to fill up our hard drives. Let’s hope December brings even more glorious gaming goodness.

Source: CVG
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ERSB spilling the beans on PSN titles?

The PlayStation Network, Sony's answer to the Live Marketplace could well be set for a update if the ESRB are to be believed! Wipeout XL (Wipeout 2097) is listed for both the Sony PlayStation 3 and PSP and also spotted hidden in the mountain of titles that the ESRB have listed is Castlevania Chronicles for the PS3 and PSP! Which is obviously great news.

While the ESRB site does not actually state that either of these titles are specifically for the PSN it is probably more reasonable the assume that they are ports of the original PSOne versions rather than total re-makes. I would also guess that we will not have to wait too long to find out now that they have been rated!

My only reservation would be the stability of both titles as nothing would be more cruel than giving us these two great games only to have them callously ripped from our grasp! So fingers crossed Sony and Konami have sorted out all the potential glitches and niggles!

Sony refunds for broken PSN titles

Sony's PlayStation Store has had a rough start in life. Firstly it entered the world against the Live Marketplace which had already been established. It then had to contend with gamers turning their backs on it due to lack of content but then came a shining light PSOne games started appearing! Alas this was also fraught with problems and a number of titles have since been withdrawn.

Sony, however, are attempting to show good faith to those gamers who purchased one of the ill fated PSOne titles by way of offering refunds to customers who bought Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer and MediEvil from the PlayStation Store.

It would seem Sony have sent emails directly to customers stating that they would have their purchase refunded to the PlayStation Store wallet in the next seven days. Once completed Spyro 2 and MediEvil will be removed from their PS Store download list.

MediEvil withdrawn from PlayStation Network

Sony has recalled (as in removed) the PSOne title, MediEvil, from the PlayStation Store. A confirmed crash-bug was discovered on the third level that caused the game to fail, and anyone who shelled out the £3.49 for the game to feel somewhat peeved.

Fortunately, as soon as Sony fixes the problem, MediEvil will be back on PSN and can be downloaded again freely by anyone who has already purchased it. No telling yet when that will be though.

Sony is also apparently investigating reports of an audio issue in Spyro 2.

UK young offenders treated to £15,000's worth of PlayStations

According to a story in today’s Metro paper, the government has installed 120 PlayStations in prisons in the last two years.

It reports that the government announced last night that it has spent over £15,000 on consoles for young offenders, installing them in institutions across the country.

Sure, it’s good to keep them busy, but shouldn’t games be fun, and if they are, why should teens being punished for breaking the law get to play them?

Heavenly Sword and others on Euro PSN this Thursday

You can expect a raft of new content on the PSN this Thursday, with the highly anticipated Heavenly Sword scheduled to make a demo debut. E3 trailers of Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction and GT5 Prologue are also going live, and are offered in HD. PS1 games Spyro 2, Medievil, Crash 2 and Wipeout 2097 will also be making an appearance.

Not a lot has come out over Heavenly Sword, which is surprising. It’s the type of game that helped make the PS2 popular: an action-heavy, third-person fighter. With series like Devil May Cry and God of War, it’s something the PS2 excelled at. An convincing, original next-gen revisitation of the genre would definitely help boost the credibility of the PS3's software library.

Source:
ThreeSpeech

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PS3's new 1.90 firmware adds a few geek tweaks

Sony has revealed the content of the next PS3 firmware update, with the chance to set your own images as menu screen backgrounds the highlight of this small-scale fiddle.

You're also able to change the order of games installed on your hard drive, so if you're one of the few people that owns something other than Motorstorm and Resistance, this'll be very useful.

Other tweaks include higher bit rates for CD playback, tweaked 1080p output settings, a couple of new movie rewind modes for the Blu-ray player, more bookmark options in the web browser and the power to change video settings while playing a PS1 or PS2 game.

Sony has also added the option to eject the disc from the menu screen. It's this kind of attention to detail that could turn things around for PS3.

The full list of what's changed in PS3 firmware 1.90 can be found by clicking the below link. Yes, it's so dull it has been relegated to a sub page:

PlayStation playing President will lead to a more peaceful world, says Id

Sensationalism and misunderstanding are to blame for the current controversy over games like Manhunt but there are reasons to be optimistic about the future, id Software recently said in an interview.

"I believe that as our generation and our kids get older and older, eventually we will have a president that had a PlayStation growing up," id lead designer Tim Willits said. “It's just going to happen."

"I believe that when our kids get older and become the politicians of the future, it will probably be a more peaceful world because they have grown up knowing that they can just play with people from China or Russia and everyone's the same and everyone solves problems together."

Source
GamesIndustry.biz

5 things Sony needs to do to save the PS3

Things are looking tough for Sony: redundancies, missed shipment targets, poor financial results; so what's a giant mega-corporation to do? Take advice from bloggers, of course:

1. Cut the price, now, stupid! And not just a measly amount either. We'd like to see £125 at least off the UK price. Ideally even more. That would give away the Blu-ray portion of the console for free, as a bonus, and put the gaming portion of the console at too tempting a price to refuse up against the Wii or even a discounted Xbox 360. Sony right now desperately needs to shake off its "loser" image, or it risks that bleeding into the PS4, in the way Microsoft has had to fight twice as hard just to gain a little bit of ground with the move from Xbox 1 to 360 – the only way for Sony to do this is not by edging out Microsoft, but by utterly trouncing them.

And the other four below...

Now US gets PS3 compatible PS1 games - still no sign of European version

Sony has rolled out a network update allowing US PS3 owners to play PSOne games downloaded from the PlayStation Store on their console and as well as on the PS3. This follows a simliar Japanese launch of the service and will have give an immediate advantage for Sony in that it will allow non-PSP owners to enjoy the downloads as well. Helpfully, it also tackles issues of whether some of these games are actually that well suited to a handheld platform.

Ten games are now compatible on the PS3, check out the full list on the turn. In the mean time, it leaves me wondering where on earth the European version of the service has got to. A quick check of the UK’s PlayStation Store reveals, yet again, a depressing lack of anything worth downloading, much less buying (with the exception of flOw). Now that the console has been available for over a month in Europe, and with only the barest handful of decent full titles, the PlayStation Store would have been an excellent space to try and fill the gap between the launch games and the more technically impressive titles due out later in the year. This is doing little to convince me that Sony considers the European region to be anything other than a fifth wheel in the games industry.

Downloadable PS1 games coming to Europe and playable on PS3 courtesy of new firmware?

Rather excitingly, the latest firmware update from Sony paves the way for PS1 games to be playable on your PS3 and PSP in the UK. Playing PS1 games via the download service was previously a privilege only afforded to American or Japanese PSP owners. As reported by IGN, the latest update allows American and Japanese PS3 owners to download and play PSP games on their PS3. The fact that the update's an international release hints that it's a feature that might be rolled out across Europe. An added cool little feature is the ability to share save game data between your PSP and your PS3. The upgrade also increases periphery support, adding rumble to the GT-Force pro steering wheel.

I was never fully convinced by the PSP/PS3 games playing functionality. Although a lot of PS1 games are classics, they weren’t really designed for the portable platform and often suffered a little in transition. Being able to play PS1 games on the PS3 would be much better in my opinion, and help to differentiate Sony’s already promising service from Xbox Live arcade. At the moment, Xbox Live has a few new games and a lot of much older retro. There’s a bit of a gap when it comes to console exploits the mid to late nineties, a gap that Sony would do well to capitalise on.

PSOne games "on way" for PSP, via PS3

PS3 owners hoping to download PSOne games from the PlayStation Network Store to their PS3, to then copy across to their PSPs, have thus far been disappointed. But according to GamesRadar.com, a Sony UK executive says they are "on their way" and may be here within a month. Although the launch line-up is yet to be decided (the US one included Tekken 2, Cool Boarders and Crash Bandicoot). Let's hope that "more love" promised for the PSP arrives soon.