Sony today released the long awaited SEN (Sony Entertainment Network) Web Store which is basically a web based Playstation Store. Currently the store is only available in PAL (European) regions but is expected to arrive in other regions soon, also some browser like Opera are not supported.
The SEN web store greatly resembles the recently updated Playstation Store, and will allow you to purchase games and content directly via your browser. You can later download your purchased content onto your devices.
Sony has been very kind to it’s fans over the past few months with it’s PlayStation Plus scheme. And this months listing for PlayStation Plus is simply further proof of that.
According to the PlayStation Blog, from November 6th, PlayStation Plus subscribers will be getting Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition for free! The Gold Edition contains two bonus chapters featuring Jill Valentine. Extra costumes and other content is also included.
But the fun doesn’t just end there. They will also be getting a 30% discount on Portal 2 and Portal 2 In Motion, the prices for which are $13.99 and $6.99 respectively. Lastly, subscribers will also be getting “When Vikings Attack” for $6.99 (30% off) and Absolute Supercars for $7.99 (20% off).
Great news for gamers who grabbed a PS Vita on Black Friday as looks like Sony is planning on discounting a few PS Vita titles in the next US Playstation Store update.
CVG reports that Little Deviants, Reality Fighters, Hot Shot Golf: World Invitational, MLB 12: The Show, Reality Fighters, Wipeout 2048 and ModNation Racers will be available for $17.99 while Unit 13, Resistance Burning Skies and Smart As will be discounted to $26.99, while Uncharted: Golden Abyss will go down to $35.99.
We don’t know if these discounts are permanent on just temporary, guess we’ll know more tomorrow (Tuesday) when the US PS Store updates.
What is this Sony Ericsson? What happened to your old crew? This news came to us as a shocker to us all. SE who said their flagship Android phone the Xperia X10 won’t be getting any updates after Eclair but today they announced that it will be indeed be getting Android 2.3 Gingerbread this Summer.
So if you decide to upgrade your Xperia X10 be prepared to lose the following functions:
The current plan is that the XperiaTM X10 will get the Android standard Camera user interface and therefore features like e.g. face recognition, smile shutter etc will be lost.
Moxier is replaced by the gingerbread native EAS functionality.
Mediascape is being replaced by the media experience widgets and music player included in our new 2011 products.
DRM keys for protected content on your phone will be lost in the upgrade process.
The Sony Ericsson Backup and Restore client is not supported in the Gingerbread version and will therefore be lost.
Support for bi-directional languages will be reduced compared to the latest version of the 2.1 version of the XperiaTM X10.
But don’t worry guys you would recieve a lot of new features in return! Also all of you wondering that if X10 mini, X10 mini pro or the X8 would be getting Gingerbread, well the answer in no.
We have finally got the PSN back up and working in the West and the rest of the world except in Japan. Playstation Store is also going to most likely resume its service starting tomorrow. What did this whole deal cost Sony? Read more after the break.
Sony has officially estimated the total costs of the breach and restoration at about $171 Million. This will provide a major blow to Profits of Sony in this fiscal year. Sony has said this in their official earning forecast and we quote:
“Based on information currently available to Sony, our currently known costs associated with the unauthorized network access are estimated to be approximately 14 billion yen in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012,”
This is just the estimated price, the final actual costs are not yet known.
Seems like Nintendo’s new gadget’s dominance over the Japan Sales shall be short lived as it managed to top this week’s Hardware Sales chart by only a couple of hundred pieces. PSP sold 50,479 units last week compared to 50,710 3DS purchases. Up till now Nintendo’s 3DS has sold 792,954 pieces in Japan. PlayStation 3 was third with 28,973 sales, DS fourth with 19,094 sales and Wii fifth with 11,808 sales . The Xbox 360 was able to find 1963 customers . We are still waiting for the 3DS American sales.
Square Enix’s Final Fantasy IV: Complete Collection topped the Software charts. The chart was as following:
Final Fantasy IV: Complete Collection (PSP, Square Enix): 104,173 / NEW
We hate to be the bearer of bad news but that isn’t happening this year.
Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida, at Gamescom, said the Vita won’t be getting a price cut any time soon.
Of course, cost reduction is one area our engineering team is working on. But we just launched the platform earlier this year. It takes time to do so… At a certain point in the future we would like to address the pricing issue for some of the people who are waiting. But this year we are trying to add value by creating different types of bundles. We announced we will provide LittleBigPlanet PS Vita bundle pack. That’s affordable for people who are looking for a good deal.
So we won’t be getting a PS Vita price cut, only bundles. The cheapest variant of PS Vita will cost you around $250 and that doesn’t even include the proprietary memory card with it.
If you’ve been following the handheld world, another criticism that Vita faced was the lack of games on it. According to Yoshida, Sony has taken that into consideration and now is focusing on adding more games and content to the Vita’s library, making this their “number one” priority.
With the revelation of titles which are spin-offs of big franchises including Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation, Call Of Duty: Black Ops Declassified, Killzone: Mercenary, Little Big Planet: PS Vita and the all new PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale, Sony hopes that these titles will boost sales in the wake of their release.
If you were waiting for a price cut this holiday season, you’ll have to wait more or you could just grab a PS Vita bundle to get more value for the buck.
You got another reason to get a PS Vita and a copy of Street Fighter x Tekken on PS Vita. Today at Sony’s Conference Capcom announced that the PS Vita version of the Street Fighter X Tekken shall feature Cole from the famous InFamous franchise. Capcom played a short demo of the game and in the Demo Cole had it’s whirlwind and electricity attacks. Cole seems to be a pretty good character to play with. We are curious to see how the game shall be using the touched based controls of PS Vita or will it use them at all.
Qriocity is the cloud based digital music streaming service from Sony which offers a selection of upto 7 million songs. Sony is offering a free trial to every PS3 user for a period of about 180 days or 6 months. The rules on how to obtain this free trial are pretty simple.
Every PS3 user can enjoy the basic Qriocity membership free simply by logging onto PS3 system and then clicking on “Music Unlimited” which is located in the Music option under XMB.
Some rules apply though:
You are 18 or over
You own a Playstation 3 system
You do not currently hold or have not previously held a Music Unlimited subscription to the premium or basic plan
You are in a supported country/region (US)
Note: you will not be able to take advantage of the 180-day Subscription Free Trial on PS3 if you purchase other subscriptions.
Sony has revealed another short video, titled “The Arrival”.
Just a few days ago, Sony revealed “The Reload” video and this new short video seems to be a continuation of it, or a direct link.
You can watch the video here:
First thing’s first, the date that is show at the end of this video and the end of the Reload video was initially speculated to be a reference to the introduction of the new PlayStation Store in North America. But since the premise of the store has been delayed, this speculation is now invalid. Therefore, we can now easily assume that this is either a continuation of Sony’s “Michael” advertisement or a promotional video for PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale. The dates at the end could be for the release of the complete video.
In “The Arrival”, we see the same woman at the same desk as in “The Reload”. This time, she is typing a letter with symbols from the Ratchet and Clank series, which have been identified to read:
“Dear Copernicus we have received your letter and regret to inform you captain…”
Copernicus could be Copernicus L. Quark, a character from the Ratchet and Clank series. This character did not make it to the roster of PS All Stars Battle Royale, so perhaps that’s why this letter was being written to him. He does appear as a NPC in one of the maps though. This further supports the speculation that this video could be for PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale.
A jeep is later shown in the video which has a propane tank, similar to that in the Uncharted series, stored at the back. Then, a silhouette of a figure is seen, who can easily be identified as Nathan Drake as he gets out of the jeep.
The previous advertisement had us thinking about inFamous 3. But with this, it’s pretty clear that we were wrong. Everything points towards PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale, but can we be completely sure? It’ll all come to light soon.
