Jim S Squires, esq here. Myself and Ted Ryan Newsome Hewson had a most excellent adventure yesterday. No, we didn’t get to travel back in time and help stop Hitler. Even better — we went to the future (which was conveniently located in downtown Toronto). What did we see? What did we play? Put on your safety helmets and shin guards, kids. You’re in for some lengthy exposition on this biggest PlayStation games to come out during the upcoming holiday season!

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I think that most gamers will still argue that despite it’s $50 a year price tag, Xbox Live is still the standard for measuring a console’s online service. While they are getting set to launch the New Xbox Experience late this fall there is still plenty of room to improve the service’s capabilities and that’s in areas that Sony and Nintendo (hell, even Apple) are excelling: mobile devices. Continue Reading »

I may not have talked much about it thus far, but Buzz: Quiz TV for the PlayStation 3 is easily in my top five most anticipated games this fall.  Not only am I a bit of a trivia junkie, but Buzz will be delivering something that I’ve been demanding for years — the ability to make and share your own quizzes.

Creating a new quiz couldn’t be easier.  Just visit mybuzzquiz.com, sign in with your PSN ID, and get creating!  The quizzes you create can be taken both on the My Buzz site and in the game, and are accessible to everyone.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — Sony knows exactly what Velocity Girl is looking for.

The Euro-centric E3 kind of snuck up on us this year. Maybe that’s because only one of the three platform heavies is doing a conference at all – that would be Sony, and that would also be right damn now. (Or at least, a little while ago.)

Here’s the cliff notes version on what has surfaced from the various liveblogs of the event:

• A new PSP, the “3000″ model. An enhanced, brighter screen; a built-in microphone; generally rounder overall appearance, Home button. They’re introducing it in Yurop with the Go! Whatever stuff that we’ll probably never really see here in North America
• Live demos of the latest Sony Online Entertainment stuff – Free Realmz (which sounds like a horrifically casual/gratis MMO); The Agency, and DC Universe Online
• a 160 GB model of the PS3 is launching on Halloween; not sure if that’s here as well, or not (EUR 449)… it will also come with Uncharted and a voucher for PAIN
• PlayTV, the magnificent TiVO-like attachment for the PS3 that will never work in our ass-backwards North American cable environment, is getting some…er, play
• There’s a detachable Blackberry-style minikeyboard coming, sort of like the 360 Messenger pad, although I think this one attaches on the top…
• some Tamagochi-like app called EyePet…sounds like it incorporates some of the drawing-recognition tech they demo’d earlier in the year
• a brief Heavy Rain demo (!!)
• something about SingStar, kebabs,and Turkish parties
• some awkwardness involving a native and the LittleBigPlanet demo
• and still no motherfucking Wipeout HD

(Updated the post with image links to the new PSP and keyboard pad)

In a recent interview with Joystiq’s Chris Grant and the team from PS3 Fanboy, Sony Worldwide Studios presient Shuhei Yoshida confirmed the worst: Sony’s short-lived experiment with episodic content is over. Rat Race has been cancelled.

“We really liked the concept; it’s like The Office TV series. It was kind of funny but we were not quite happy with how the game was turning out and there was some difficulty in development.”

Rat Race was planned as a sitcom style adventure game. Writers involved had written for SNL, Conan, Flight of the Conchords… The list goes on and on. A ton of them were supposed to be premiere New York comics. My guess was Judah Friedlander was somewhere in the mix, but who knows?

I’d love to hear from some of the writers involved. If anyone knows of any specific faces, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

More on the now abandoned Rat Race can be found at last year’s game announcing blog post here.

On a side note, not everybody was as excited about this as I was. As I was crafting this post, Dan sent the following gchat: “joystiq is saying that terrible rat race game for the PSN has been cancelled… thank god.” Dan, why do you hate comedy?

1UP is reporting that the Sony Home project has been delayed again, fortheluvagod, until “Fall”:

“We understand that we are asking PS3 and prospective PS3 users to wait a bit longer, but we have come to the conclusion that we need more time to refine the service to ensure a more focused gaming entertainment experience than what it is today,” said Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. “Our overarching objective is to provide users with new gaming experiences that are available only on PlayStation Home. Spending more time on the development and on the Closed Beta testing reaffirms our commitment to bringing a quality service, maintaining the PlayStation tradition.”

Asking? We don’t exactly have much of a choice.

At this point I’ve almost forgotten what Home is even about. It sounded magical when they announced it. I do remember that it was way back in that same year that we learned to extract sap from the nearby trees to fortify our huts, an important task to be completed before the daily mammoth hunt.

Sony has let the cat out of the bag, or at least one particular cat. (The others are still suffocating in a corner. Sony likes to keep lots of cats in bags.)

The new PlayStation Store:

According to CVG and Eurogamer, the new store is set to launch April 15. There is a downside: Sony says there will be no store updates for the two weeks prior, so we can’t expect any new content on April 3rd or April 10th. If the leaked PSN release list making the rounds is correct (some of this is confirmed on the PS Blog), we should see Warhawk’s Operation Broken Mirror expansion pack and Gran Turismo 5: Prologue debut in tandem with the store. Other potentials include a Super Stardust HD add-on, Dark Mist, and maybe a Resistance 2 trailer.

Looking at the released screens, I note that there is navigational use of the SELECT button. This tells me that this is no longer a web-based front end but rather an actual PS3 application, which means it should be snappier. The design certainly leans more heavily toward a console game’s menu interface than v1 of the store, by using button highlights rather than a pointer. I do wish they had found some way of using a letterbox television’s space more appropriately – the proportions look rigid and locked to 4:3 safe area. (I refer now to Kevin’s erudite explanation of television overscan and title-safe area in our latest podcast, coming soon.)

(Click images for larger versions)

(UPDATE – Harmonix says the PSN hiatus will also stop downloads in the in-game PS3 Rock Band store. “Still Alive” comes out this week! Curses!)