Random PS3 News Thread

[jefXfree]

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe have announced that they are hosting a We are PlayStation photography competition that has now launched in Europe. Electronic Theatre ImageThe team?s jubilation at getting a BUZZ! question right; the laughter of a room full of SingStar fans; the entertaining journeys playing your PlayStation Portable! They?re all classic PlayStation moments that you?ve seen or experienced hundreds of times - but can you capture them in a photo? If you can, your name could be in the hat to win some great prizes. There?s also the possibility of a serious cash prize, the possibility of the images being used in future PlayStation campaigns as well as a new Sony D-SLR a350 digital camera and lens. Get snapping and upload your photos by the 16th March 2009 for a chance to win.

The rules are simple ? capture the perfect image of you, your friends or your family enjoying a PlayStation moment with your PLAYSTATION3, PlayStation2 or PlayStation Portable and upload it to www.weareplaystation.com. There are different categories your photos could enter: Caught in the Moment, Unexpected Places, PlayStation Parties, True Love and Endless Play. A panel of guest judges will assess top user-rated snaps on their merits and work out which photographer deserves the top prize of 1000 euros and a Sony D-SLR a350 camera. Ten runners up will receive cash prizes of 100 euros each, while the next best 100 entries will get their hands on a top PlayStation game or vouchers for the PlayStation Store. All entries have the chance of being used in a future PlayStation marketing campaign.

Of course, PlayStation is all about its community ? and that?s why we?re asking you to judge the first round of the competition. PlayStation fans can visit the website and decide which shots will be put before the judges by rating each photo with a score from one to five. Also, every time you Electronic Theatre Imageenter the site, you can give your favourite image a secret ?Super Vote? which will be used to determine the finalists in case several entries generate the same overall rating. The images with the highest average score and, in the event of a tie, with the highest number of ?Super Votes? will go before the judging panel ? so it pays to get everyone you know onto the site and voting.

With so many great moments for so many different PlayStation communities, this is the chance not only to show off your natural eye for a photograph, but also to show the world just how much fun you have with your friends ? and a PLAYSTATION3, PlayStation2 or PlayStation Portable. Visit www.weareplaystation.com for competition terms and conditions and get snapping!
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PRILOSEC DEATH

 

[jefXfree]

Sony acknowledges "frustration" over Euro PSN releases

Sony has moved to reassure punters in European territories that the company is only too well aware that folk are becoming increasingly frustrated over the lack of titles available on the region’s PlayStation Store.

Despite this, however, the platform holder was keen to point out that the staggered release schedule is down to third party publishers, and not something Sony has any form of control over.

Said Angela Madronero, European PlayStation Store manager: "The decision about whether and when to release a game for sale is in the hands of the individual publisher. In the same way that the publisher decides when to launch the disc version of a game, they also decide if and when PlayStation Network content is made available.”

"We know that there is a lot of frustration when content is released on one store but not another. I can confirm that from a PlayStation Store point of view, we are committed to supporting our third party partners in bringing as much content as possible to the European Store."

Madronero went on to underline a number of reasons as to why content is delayed in various regions, highlighting various hiccups such as technical glitches, digital rights issues and localisation requirements.

 

[jefXfree]

What's the Deal With World War II?

"Another WWII shooter" has long since passed beyond the point of being mere cliché; to becoming something almost entirely meaningless -- so common there's little point in even pointing it out. The sun came up in the East today, the ocean is kind of wet, and we stormed the beach at Normandy for the five hundredth time this week. It's not until we remember, based on the minimal attention we paid in history class, that there were a crapload of other wars fought over the last century or so that it starts to feel a little odd that the second World War gets such disproportionate representation in gaming. In fact, performing a casual census of game releases since 1980 and checking them against 20th century American conflicts is more than a little startling:

The obvious question is, "Why?" Part of the answer lies in the dates the games were released, which reveals a huge spike in WWII titles around the late '90s. While games were always heavily weighted toward WWII before that point, over two-thirds of the titles on the list were released after 1998, and almost all of them have been first-person shooters. It's true that more games of all kinds were being published by then than in the industry's younger days, but the number of titles set in other wars actually decreases at that point. Perhaps more tellingly, a large percentage of the games on the list represent only a few franchises:

But none of this actually explains why. The obvious answer would seem to be, "Because they're popular." As long as a certain kind of game sells well, it'll be followed by sequels and imitators, and WWII shooters sell very, very well. But why would they be so much more popular than shooters set in, say, World War I or Vietnam?

At least some of that has to be a practical consideration. No war has actually been much fun for the people involved, but there are certain elements that make for a fun game. In the case of the first World War, gamers probably wouldn't have a particularly good time spending hours sitting in a ditch waiting for either someone to take off their head the instant they look up, or for their entire team to be wiped out by poison gas. Think of it as a version of Team Fortress in which Sniper is the only class and everyone randomly dies for no reason occasionally. In fact, nearly every WWI game ever made has been either a strategy game or a flight sim. Nobody actually seems to have much interest in dying in a trench.

In the case of Vietnam, the difference is probably mostly psychological. First, it probably helps that WWII is a war that we "won." Second, though history is a bit more complicated than we'd like to think, it's very easy to believe that WWII may have been an example of the mythical "just war." There were good guys and bad guys. Nazis, in fact, rank above robots and zombies on the list of evil things we can guiltlessly cap in the head. Meanwhile, conflicts like Vietnam, where you don't really know exactly what you're trying to accomplish or even who the bad guys actually are until they start shooting at you, don't make for a very satisfying experience, at least in the context of a shooter. Nobody wants to play a game where you don't know who to shoot, other than "everyone, including the women and children," and winning means coming home despised, unemployable, and possibly maimed.

Most any other war has some combination of the above problems, coupled with the fact that WWII looms so large in both history and collective memory that it's sometimes hard to remember that any other wars happened.

Source:

 

[dk3dknight]

I offer this to somewhat support what you said it was taken from a magazine, and someone quoted it on a forum..

From Bohemia Interactive Studio

BIS: "Our first idea was Vietnam, we had 300 pages of a Vietnam design document. We went very deep...but we got stuck. Some moral issues were too deep, and we just didn't want to compromise the reality. And there wasn't really much game there, for many reasons. We spoke to so many people from the Vietnam war and we realised that you just can't do that kind of game"

PCGUK: "As the subsequent array of Vietnam-based shooters demonstrated, Vietnam is hardly the easiest of wars to bring to a game. When you're actually trying to make a realistic setting, which Bohemia's raison d'etre, then its simply impossible."

BIS: "The Vietnam war was just frustration, Marek says, it was just nasty. We hardly found anything positive at all. The only good thing you could do in the game was for the first mission to just leave and go home."

BIS: "Its always a problem for us...... but in the Vietnam war, its a real conflict, so its worse. You have a lot less creative freedom. If you work in a real conflict then you don't have any other choice than trying to describe what happened. We didn't feel as if we achieve this level of bitter feeling in the game."

 

[Glen-BoB]

I'm still waiting for COD or BF: Korea, lol.

 

[jefXfree]

Sony patents emotion recognition tech

GI.biz reports that Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) has filed patents for software that has the capacity to recognise various human emotions such as laughter, sadness, joy, anger and boredom.

Apparently, the technology is not just limited to home consoles, though it’s worth pointing out that the artwork filed by Sony clearly depicts a PlayStation 3 as well as a Bravia TV. It is believed the patents are most likely related to the platform holder's ‘wand’ peripheral unveiled back at E3 in June.

Interestingly, the tech bares a striking resemblance to Microsoft’s Project Natal, specifically developer Lionhead’s demo of Milo and Kate, which demonstrates the ability to detect not only movement, but also various emotional response based on both facial and voice recognition.

 

[BlueCali]

Insomniac working on next PS3 Exclusive

We've found a job listing from Insomniac Games which reveals that the Ratchet & Clank and Resistance developers are working on their next title, and as expected, it's a PlayStation 3 exclusive.

The job listing is for an FX Artist, and states that "Insomniac Games is looking for an artist to create effects to work and assist in gameplay, environment, and the cinematics of the game."

The developers latest title, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time was only released in November last year, so it's unlikely to be the next instalment of the R&C series. A few months ago though, a picture of a billboard with the logo of Resistance 3 sprung up on the internet (top of page), so we expect this is the next title in the FPS series.

 

[mobius387]

i hope its R3!!!!

 

[DaMexiRican]

Me too! And I hope it's not the end of Nathan Hale

 

[Seboist]

I would be stunned if it wasn't R3.

 

[Horhay]

New Ratchet and Clank!

 

[Jon D]

Me too! And I hope it's not the end of Nathan Hale

I was so depressed after I had played R2 "whyyyy!?... poor Hale!"

 

[the_ps_hero]

ass...i hope hale didn't die in resistance 2 i haven't even beat the game yet!

 

[DaMexiRican]

ass...i hope hale didn't die in resistance 2 i haven't even beat the game yet!

My bad. The game has been out so long I thought anybody who had interest would have played it by now.

 

[Jon D]

Sorry ps hero... I assumed everyone here played it.

 

[mobius387]

Aaron Butler, the senior designer for the excellent PlayStation 3 exclusive Killzone 2 is working on Insomniac Games' next project.

If Butler helped design the former best looking game ever (in our eyes, before Uncharted 2), imagine what help he could bring to the Ratchet & Clank creators' next title, expected to be Resistance 3. He's also worked on 2K Games' upcoming shooter Spec Ops: The Line.

We're sure we'll be hearing something about Resistance 3 this year, and who knows, may Killzone 3. Definitely two to look out for.

connectedconsoles.com/ps3-Killzone-2-Snr-Director-Working-On-Insomniacs-Next-Title.cfm

 

[DaMexiRican]

I'd like both

 

[jefXfree]

Insomniac Games working on new titles

Insomniac Games has something up its sleeve (or, somethings, we should say). The studio’s Community Manager, James Stevenson, says there are several titles under development.

He wrote, “If you’re hoping that I will announce a future title here, you will be disappointed,” he writes on Insomniac’s blog. “That will not prevent me from telling you that we are busy working here on some really cool stuff that we can’t wait to show you.”

Of course, his comments are timed perfectly with the recent announcement that Sony will reveal a “surprise” sequel this week.

He went on to write, “What we will tell you is that after the launch of A Crack in Time, there was some well-deserved time off for folks. We began to ramp up on other projects, and are currently underway on more than one game right now (which will be no surprise to anyone who knows how our production pipeline works). We’ve been trying to evolve our production pipeline to give us more time for iteration, as well as better efficiencies along the way,” he further added.

Let the speculation begin.

 

[mobius387]

an insomniac dev said it wont be the gametrailers announcement.

 

[DaMexiRican]

You know it's gotta be Resistance 3

 

[mobius387]

You know it's gotta be Resistance 3

yah, thats prolly what the announcement will be, but you also know that they are working on an R&C game as well.