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Vita Games Discounted For Digital Distribution

By
Andy Yen
– January 31, 2012Posted in: Video Games

Andrew Yoon for Shacknews:

A Sony representative has confirmed the discount. “I can confirm that there will be a discount on the downloadable PS Vita titles from PSN. Exact details have not yet been revealed, but be on the lookout for an announcement in the very near future.”

The discount will apparently be 10% off the retail price for the equivalent retail boxed version of the game. It’s an interesting first step in the transition to a completely digital consumer experience for the games industry.

I’m not sure if 10% is enough, given that many retailers routinely offer 20% or greater discounts/promotions for new game releases. (Anyone who’s pre-ordered new video games from Amazon in the last two years is fond of their $10-$20 promotional credit offers) But the fact that Sony is willing to discount the digital version is at least acknowledgement that charging full retail price for it is folly.

If you’re able to delete and re-download games for free at will, it might actually give consumers an interesting purchasing decision to make assuming they have a decent sized memory card. One of the most annoying things about carrying multiple games on trips is physically carrying those games. Being able to load several games onto your memory card would cut down on travel weight significantly.

Now if Sony would only get rid of their comically overpriced proprietary Vita memory cards…

via Shacknews.com.

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PlayStation Vita’s AT&T Data Plan

By
Andy Yen
– January 9, 2012Posted in: Video Games

Stephen Totilo:

The data plan for the 3G version of the PlayStation Vita will run you $15 for 250 MB or $25 for 2GB. There are no contracts, the company said during a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

It’s a slightly better deal than iPhone users who have to pay $15 for 200MB, but let’s be real here. Unless you’ve got a ton of disposable income, why would you pay another monthly data plan (assuming you’re a smartphone owner) for a purely gaming device?

Even without contracts involved, it’s still a hefty price to be paid to scratch that multiplayer game itch.

via Kotaku.

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The PlayStation Vita First Edition Bundle

By
Andy Yen
– November 8, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Last week, Sony announced a bundle for its upcoming Vita handheld console:

The U.S. bundle includes a PS Vita 3G + Wi-Fi model, a limited edition case, 4GB PS Vita Memory Card, and Little Deviants game for $349.99 (MSRP). The Canadian bundle includes a Wi-Fi model, a limited edition case, 4GB PS Vita Memory Card, and Little Deviants game for $299.99 (MSRP). Best of all, you can pick up the PS Vita First Edition Bundle on February 15, 2012, so this is your chance to play before everyone else.

Lets break this down to see if its worth it in the U.S.

  • PS Vita 3G system – $299.99
  • 4 GB Vita memory card – ~$32 (The memory card price has been announced in Japan only, but we’ll assume the US price is similar. )
  • Little Deviants Game – $39.99
  • Limited edition case – $15 (unknown, but assuming it’s worth between $10-$20 MSRP)
  • Total: $386.98
The interesting thing about this bundle is that the added goods are actually useful. Sony’s unfortunately going with a proprietary memory card format and there’s no internal storage, so it looks like a memory card is going to have to be a “required” purchase. Assuming that, you’re basically getting Little Deviants and a case for $20, which isn’t a bad deal.
However, the biggest pause for concern with the bundle is whether or not you need the 3G model of the Vita. Though plans haven’t been announced yet, it’s not looking likely that we’ll be getting free service ala the Amazon Kindle. To add insult to injury, download sizes are limited to 20 MB, basically ensuring that game downloads are off limits. Even if the 3g plan is as low as $10 a month, is the ability to play multiplayer games on 3G worth that? I’m going to go with “No.”
Unless Sony comes up with a similar WiFi version bundle, I’d recommend passing on this. A $50 premium and potential monthly charges kill the value proposed by the bundle.

via PlayStation Blog.

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Sony Japan: PSP Go shipments have ended

By
Andy Yen
– June 2, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Editor’s note: This was originally supposed to be posted in early June, but WordPress pooped out on, so here it is now.

Lost in the midst of the PlayStation Network security fiasco was the fact that Sony discontinued the PSP Go:

The Japanese Playstation.com site placed “shipment ended” notices on both the black and white PSP Go listings, along with several PSP-3000 color variants. According to the site, the only PSPs currently in production are PSP-3000s in black, white, silver, pink, blue, and red.

Anyone not see this coming?

via Sony Japan: PSP Go shipments have ended | Joystiq.

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These Are The Games To Pick From Sony’s List Of Free PS3/PSP Titles For PSN Outage Reparations

By
Andy Yen
– May 31, 2011Posted in: Articles, Features, Video Games

Sony’s finally begun the process of rolling out reparations for its millions of consumers that were affected by the Great PlayStation Network Hack Of 2011. Whether or not you’re happy with Sony’s response to the whole fiasco, they’re still offering up free stuff, so you may as well take advantage of it. Before we get to the fun stuff, be sure to enroll in the AllClear ID PLUS identity theft protection that Sony is paying for all PSN users. If you’re a PS3 user, you get to pick two out of the following titles: (We’ve included a quick one line description of each game)

  • Dead Nation – 2D twin stick action shooter kind of like Robotron or Geometry Wars with zombies
  • inFAMOUS – Third-Person open world action game. Think Grand Theft Auto if you were the only super hero in town.
  • LittleBigPlanet – A 2D platforming game (Think Super Mario Bros.) with up to 4 player cooperative play. You can design your own levels and play ones designed by other players.
  • Super Stardust HD – Traditional 2D twin stick action shooter in space with lasers and powerups.
  • Wipeout HD + Fury – A fast paced futuristic racer with weapons. Think Mario Kart meets F-Zero with even more speed.

All things being equal, we would pick up the titles in this order:

  1. LittleBigPlanet
  2. inFAMOUS
  3. WipeoutHD + Fury
  4. Super Stardust HD
  5. Dead Nation

For what it’s worth, inFAMOUS and LittleBigPlanet were originally $60 retail titles, while the other titles were downloadable games ranging  from $9.99 to $19.99. Despite that, all of the games Sony offers are all quite good and hit a wide variety of genres. At the end of the day, you can’t really go wrong with any of the titles – they’re all good games in their respective genres. If you’re in the mood for a racer, definitely pick up WipeoutHD because it’s quite possibly still the most thrilling racer on any video game system. If you’re looking for something to play with your kids or someone who doesn’t play video games all that often, be sure to pick up LittleBigPlanet because it’s essentially a cute 4-player Mario-like platforming game. PSP owners can choose from two of the following games:

  • LittleBigPlanet (PSP) – A portable version of the PS3 game – it’s got completely different levels if you were worried about getting both LittleBigPlanet titles.
  • ModNation Racers – A GoKart racer (Think Mario Kart), but with the ability to create and share your own racetracks like LittleBigPlanet levels.
  • Pursuit Force – An arcade combat-racer where you’re a rookie cop chasing criminals.
  • Killzone Liberation – A top-down isometric view action title with cover-based gameplay similar to Gears of War.

In full disclosure, of the available PSP titles, we’ve only played Killzone Liberation. However we can wholeheartedly recommend that title if you’re an action fan — it’s surprisingly provides similar gratification to playing a third-person shooter on a console. We’ve also read up on reviews for the other titles and if it were up to us we’d rank them in this order:

  1. LittleBigPlanet
  2. Killzone Liberation
  3. ModNation Racers
  4. Pursuit Force

Again, feel free to pick by your desired genre, though we think there may be a marked quality difference between the first two titles and the last two ones. Other than the games, Sony is also offering a package that includes the following:

  • A selection of “On Us” rental movie titles will be available to PlayStation Network customers over one weekend, where Video Service is available. Those titles will be announced soon.
  • 30 days free PlayStation Plus membership for non PlayStation Plus subscribers.
  • Existing PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive an additional 60 days of free subscription.
  • Existing Music Unlimited Premium Trial subscription members will receive an additional 30 days of free premium subscription.
  • Additional 30 days + time lost for existing members of Music Unlimited Premium/Basic subscription free of charge for existing Premium/Basic members.
  • To welcome users Home, PlayStation Home will be offering 100 free virtual items. Additional free content will be released soon, including the next addition to the Home Mansion personal space, and Ooblag’s Alien Casino, an exclusive game.

Since Sony hasn’t announced which movies will be available through the “On Us” program, we can’t really give any recommendations on that front. We can, however, still say that PlayStation Home is still a complete waste of time.

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Anyone Surprised With How Sony Still Refuses To Take Responsibility For PSN Fiasco?

By
Andy Yen
– May 30, 2011Posted in: Articles, Video Games

It’s been about a month since Colin Campbell’s take on how Sony should have responded to the PlayStation Network fiasco was published, and its pretty eerie how some of his predictions are playing out:

Here’s a little test for you. Which of the following statements are you most likely to agree with in one year’s time.

A: “Sony handled that situation amazingly. They held their hands up and took appropriate share of blame. They outlined a clear plan of action to remedy the situation and they made sure all stakeholders were recompensed beyond reasonable expectations. They showed their human side and came out of this a stronger company.”

B: “It just kinda went away, didn’t it? Sony entirely laid the blame on the hackers, launched a lot of legal flak, refused to take any responsibility, offered the minimum clarity and token recompense. But no-one cares any more. At least they’ve encrypted my personal data now.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that answer B is looking a whole lot more likely than answer A.

Sure, Sony has offered up some free games and enrollment in an identity theft program, but has it really made you believe that it’s truly sorry for what’s happened and that it will do its best to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

I didn’t think so.

Wired had a pretty funny list of ridiculous things that Sony could have used to compensate users for. It’s a silly read, but you know what? If Sony had the balls and/or humanity to take responsibility and show off their human side, why not pull off one of the stunts listed in the article? Pay the Kevin Butler actor to go to someones house and personally apologize. Make a whole media blitz out of it. Everyone has a laugh and Sony comes out with some great PR.

Instead, we get reports that Sony CEO Howard Stringer still doesn’t believe he has anything to apologize for.

From an interview last week:

Sony believed it had “good, robust security,” Stringer said. He rejected suggestions that the company is paying for a lack of vigilance and said he was unaware of the 2008 intrusion on the PlayStation Network.

“We have a network that gave people services free,” Stringer said. “It didn’t seem like the likeliest place for an attack.”

When the April incursion first started, he didn’t know how serious it was, Stringer said. “I really don’t think I could apologize for not knowing,” he said. “It’s a whole new experience for everybody at this scale.”

Seriously, dude? You didn’t think that a service with over 77 million users whose target demographic also happens to include the most computer savvy and vocally active people in the world could be the target of an attack? Sure it may be a whole new experience for your company at that scale, but you’re not the first people to have a massive database of users to take care of. If anything, you should have been more cautious and vigil because networked software solutions has not been your company’s strong suit in the past.

We may be forced to live on with Sony due to game developers being obligated to support a platform with such a huge userbase, but you can bet your ass that if we could still enjoy all of the exclusive content on the PS3 elsewhere, we’d be gone in a heartbeat.

via Gamasutra

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Sony Confirms Massive PlayStation Network Breach – What You Should Know

By
Andy Yen
– April 26, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Originally posted on Lalawag

Sony just confirmed on its PlayStation Blog the worst case scenario for its recent PlayStation Network downtime/security breach – massive amounts of customer personal data was compromised by hackers. There are over 70 million PSN accounts currently. This is a security breach of disastrous proportions.

From Sony’s PSN Outage FAQ:

Q.6     Does that mean all users’ information was compromised?  Tell us more in details of what personal information leaked.

In terms of possibility, yes.  We believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, zip or postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password, login, password security answers, and handle/PSN online ID.  It is also possible that your profile data may have been obtained, including purchase history and billing address (city, state/province, zip or postal code).  If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, it is possible that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may also have been obtained.

That, my friends, is quite a Happy Meal of personal data that is out in the hands of someone “unauthorized.” Not only do they have your contact information and birthdate, but they have your friggin’ password and password security answers! Does this mean that Sony stupidly stored your passwords in plaintext somewhere? How dumb/cheap/lazy must your company be to store 70 million passwords in plaintext?

If the hackers had just gotten access to password hashes, I would have expected Sony would have mentioned that in order to allay some fears. Nowhere in Sony’s statement does it leave the possibility for password data to not have been compromised which leads many people to suspect gross negligence on Sony’s part. What else would you expect from a company that announces new Playstation/Qrocity branded tablets on the same day that it reports one of the worst breaches of consumer personal data in history?

There is some good news, though, as Sony did confirm that Steam account information was not compromised during the hack. Last week, PS3 players could link Portal 2 to their Steam account to gain access to extra features prior to the PSN going down. I was one of those players, but you can bet your sweet ass that I changed my Steam password ASAP. I suggest you do the same.

Hopefully the leaked information isn’t used maliciously, but obviously you can’t count on that so here’s what you can do right now to deal with Sony’s giant fuckup:

  • Change any passwords to your accounts that are similar to your PSN password.
  • Double check your credit card activity to make sure that nothing out of the ordinary is going on.
  • Be extra careful clicking links in emails – the most likely outcome of all this personal information getting out there is an increased amount of phishing attacks on unsuspecting people.
  • When the PSN comes back up, change your password.

It’s pretty much all you can do at this moment in time other than pray no one messes with your information. Yes, it’s a big pain in the ass, but it’s better to do this now than have to deal with getting your identity back or dealing with credit card fraud.

We can all thank Sony for being inept in network building and security for that inconvenience. For all Sony’s posturing on how the PSN was “free” compared to Microsoft’s Xbox Live, you can bet your ass that Microsoft is having a laugh at Sony’s expense right now.

We’re not even close to looking at the long term fallout of this disaster yet, but you can probably look forward to getting some more compensation in the inevitable class action suit. Time will tell just how big of a hit Sony is going to take in consumers’ eyes for future console and online content sales.

Oh, and for anyone who still cares, Sony hopes to have the PSN back up “within a week.” At this point, the last thing I’m sure people want to do is play their tainted video game consoles.

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Sony Draws The Ire Of Anonymous

By
Andy Yen
– April 6, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Ohhhhh shit. If it’s one thing you don’t want on the internet it’s the scorn of internet hacker group Anonymous. Previously responsible for taking down Mastercard/Visa websites in defense of Wikileaks as well as the Church of Scientology, Anonymous is a loosely organized group of individuals dispensing online justice as they see fit.

A couple days ago they issued this video statement stating their intent to fight Sony for suing PS3 hacker, Geohot:

I particularly liked this line: “You saw the hive, and you stuck your penis in it.” As a large multinational corporation, i’m sure Sony sticks its penis in lots of hives.

But some people in Anonymous were not satisfied with merely taking down Playstation.com and the Playstation Store via DDoS attacks. They’ve decided to take vengeance to the next level by obtaining personal records of Sony employees and family members:

Sebastian Moss for PlaystationLifestyle:

For example, Robert S. Wiesenthal, Group Executive, Sony Corporation, leading Corporate Development and Mergers and Acquisitions at Sony headquarters’ family history is currently being released onto the internet. His marital status, age, place of address, education and even whether he has children has been discovered. Other main targets include Nicole Seligman and Sony boss Howard Stringer, but multiple Sony employee emails are noted as future targets. In fact, one anon complained “No one found ANY info on Stringers kids?”

Meanwhile, both OpSony and SonyRecon have targeted those involved in the actual lawsuit against Geohot, with members of OpSony singling out the judge of the case.

SonyRecon founder randomtask stated:

sony , the judge and sonys lawyers are all valid targets

I’m not so sure going after individuals and their families is the best way of advancing your agenda, but it’s certainly some frightening shit. Imagine if you were an innocent Sony employee caught in the crossfire of this “war.” The amount of harm that could befall someone by releasing their personal information online is staggering. Hopefully the damage will be limited to juvenile pizza pranks and fake craigslist ads and not something more sinister.

Kinda makes you reflect just how helpless you can be on the internet, doesn’t it?

via PlayStation LifeStyle.

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Sony NGP (PSP2) Announcement Reaction, (Or How I Got A Nerd Boner Last Night)

By
Andy Yen
– January 28, 2011Posted in: Cutting Through The Potty, Features, Reviews, Video Games

Originally published on Lalawag

Last night during their Playstation Meeting 2011 event in Tokyo, Sony announced their next portable gaming device, the PSP2 “Next Generation Portable” (NGP).

This baby’s got almost every gaming and technological innovation from the past 5 years, including dual touchpads, dual analog sticks, dual cameras, six-axis motion sensing, a high resolution OLED display, 3G and WiFi connectivity, and heck why not throw in that built in GPS. There’s a laundry list of features so we’re going to windmill slam that spec sheet right in front of you here:

Read the rest of this entry »

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Sony’s NGP (PSP2) Press Event

By
Andy Yen
– January 27, 2011Posted in: Video Games

Hideo envisions using the exact same game on the PS3 and the NGP. You play the game on your PS3 at home, and out and about you play the same game and same save on your NGP. A beautiful dream, indeed. “This dream is going to come true in the near future, and right now I’m working on this project. I’m sorry right now I can’t disclose further information, but I’d like to present what we’re doing at E3.”

I think I just soiled myself with delight. That would be so goddamn cool.

Read: Live from Sony’s Tokyo event — Engadget.

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