What won’t be easy to follow along with is the story and dialogue — but referring once again to Star Ocean 4, maybe that’s not the worst thing.

Resonance of Fate demo available on Xbox Live and PSN in Japan originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If the box art doesn’t get you excited enough, they also posted some stats that they gathered over the last month of the beta’s run.

• More than 42,000 matches were played over the course of the full public beta (August 17 – December 5).
• During October’s beta period alone nearly 534,000+ miles were traveled in-game by MAG players each week.
• During the final month of the Beta 4 and 4.5 periods (November 9 – December 5):
  • Of the more than 65,000 players that logged on, 17,000 of them qualified for Squad Leader, 3500 people qualified for Platoon Leader, 1100 folks made it all the way to OIC, and 206 dedicated warriors made it all the way to the level 60 experience cap.
  • Nearly 18 million kills were made and an excess of 700 million shots were fired.
  • The Top 3 most played maps all belonged to the Sabotage mode. They were, in order, Syr Darya Uplink, Darien Network, and Copper Hills Relay.

To see this, and more stats collected from the beta as well as a list of MAG’s star players, visit MAG’s Official Blog.

They said it couldn’t be done — and for good reason, considering how difficult it must be for a creature to stretch its own body to a length of 576,682,810 miles. However, thanks to a little help from Namco Bandai, Noby Noby Boy’s community-driven “Girl” has managed to extend her torso from Earth to Jupiter, unlocking a new playable planet for all of the game’s inhabitants.

Make sure you check out the video after the jump to get a sense of what eating your own butt whilst aimlessly traversing a gas giant feels like. We can’t believe we just had a reason to write that sentence. Thank you so, so much, Noby Noby Boy.

Continue reading Noby Noby Girl has stretched her way to Jupiter

Noby Noby Girl has stretched her way to Jupiter originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve downloaded firmware 6.20 for your PSP, you’ll be able to access the Digital Comics service, featured under the new “Extras” section of the XMB. While the PlayStation Store won’t offer comics until next month, Sony is offering fans an early sneak peek at the service by offering free codes through the official PlayStation Comics website. Americans will be able to get the first issue of Transformers: All Hail Megatron, while Europeans can download the first issue of Aleister Arcane.

Each issue will take about 40MB of space on your Memory Stick / PSP Go. To get your trial codes, visit the PlayStation Comics website.

[Thanks, Simon R.!]

Try PSP Digital Comics with these free codes originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The PlayStation.Blog has been kind enough to make a walkthrough video of Sony’s brand new adhocParty service for PSP/PS3. With this program, games that don’t have Infrastructure multiplayer modes on PSP can be played online through the PlayStation Network. Essentially, the PS3 uses some evil voodoo magic to trick the PSP into thinking it’s playing Ad-Hoc with others.

The program is available for free on the PlayStation Store right now. To see the video, click past the break.

Continue reading This is how you throw an adhocParty

This is how you throw an adhocParty originally appeared on Joystiq Playstation on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“They support the living sh*t out of it, and they support it really well,” Capybara’s Nathan Vella told Gamasutra when talking about Sony’s free PhyreEngine. “Any of the parts that are inside Phyre that we didn’t know how to fix or we had an issue with, they would fix it for us in a day. Overall, I think Sony’s doing a lot of right stuff for small independent developers.”

Vella’s praise echoes similar sentiments from other PSN developers, like Shatter’s Mario Wynands. In addition to free development tools, Vella noted other benefits by partnering with Sony. Critter Crunch was promoted heavily on the PlayStation Network via the PlayStation.Blog, Pulse and banners on the PlayStation Store. Most importantly, though, Sony “treated us like we weren’t a small nobody developer from Toronto.”

In spite of Sony’s best intentions, though, Vella notes that sales aren’t quite where they should be on the PSN. “It’s still a fraction of what XBLA is doing, and we know that,” he admitted. “But that’s okay for us because they let us do what we wanted to do.” Apparently what they want to do now is work on a zombie game.

Critter Crunch dev praises Sony’s support of indie games originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some of those eager to immerse themselves in Altair’s portable crusade in Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines have allegedly been denied entry into the Animus. This has, in turn, led to animosity being expressed on Sony’s message boards and our tips line. According to complaints, the downloadable version (the game is also available on UMD) freezes during its initial loading screen, regardless of PSP model.

Based on user comments, the hobbled file originated from the European PlayStation Store and has since been bumped off — to be replaced with a working version soon, hopefully. We’ll keep an eye on things (and your comments below) while we await a response from Ubisoft.

Source — Official PlayStation Forums
Source — EU PlayStation Blog comments
Source — Youtube video [Thanks, Gian]

Users report faulty digital copies of Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s taken a while, but Just Add Water’s play-create-share dual-stick shooter Gravity Crash will be landing on both the American and European PlayStation Stores next Tuesday, November 24th.

The game has certainly come a long way since its E3 showing, especially in terms of visuals. Unlike so many other PSN games, Gravity Crash will launch with a free demo which will include access to four levels and the in-game level editor (seen after the break). The demo will give you nearly unrestricted access to the editor, with one caveat — you’ll only be able to publish levels online by buying the full game.

Gravity Crash will be available on PS3 for £6.29 / €7.99 / $9.99. A PSP version — which also includes a level editor — is also in the works, and is likely to arrive in December. For more details on the game, check out Episode 140 of the PS Nation podcast.

Source – PlayStation.Blog Europe
Source – PS Nation podcast

Continue reading Gravity Crash lands a global PSN release on Tuesday, November 24

Gravity Crash lands a global PSN release on Tuesday, November 24 originally appeared on Joystiq Playstation on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though yesterday’s Sony investor’s conference featured a concerning reference to the PSN’s “new revenue stream from subscription,” another slide from the presentation seems to indicate that the platform is already making money hand over fist. According to the slide (seen above), the company has set a lofty goal for the current fiscal year: It expects the PSN to bring in ¥50 billion (roughly $561 million) in revenue by the end of FY 2009. That’s three times the amount of cash collected by the platform in the last fiscal year.

Exactly how Sony plans to boost its revenues so drastically is outlined by other statistics on the slide. According to the company’s calculations, the PSN currently has 33 million registered users, 1.4 million of which visit the PlayStation Store on a daily basis. We fall into the latter group — but only because we can’t stop window shopping for celebrities we can fling into oncoming traffic. We confess: It’s one of our dirtiest, guiltiest pleasures.

Source – “Media / Investor Conference – November 19th 2009″ [PDF]

Sony expects PSN to pull in 50 billion yen in FY 2009 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Additionally, Hirai told Business Week that Sony hopes to get the service into other devices next year and, “Earlier in the year would be a lot more preferable.” In the interview, Hirai said that the Sony Online Service would take the iTunes-like approach of registering users as soon as the device is powered on, to register their accounts immediately. Once invested in such an account, the implication is that users will be more likely to continue purchasing media on that same account and buy more Sony devices to get additional use out of it — much like iTunes users are driven to continue buying iPods to play iTunes Store’s AAC-format music.

Hirai also looked to social networking elements, along with the cross-device connectivity, to push Sony’s future offerings. “What are your friends watching right now? There’s a screen that says all the programming that’s available. It highlights all the things that your friends are watching, for example. It’s a community experience.”

As for sharing the actual content (not just the experience), Hirai wasn’t so sure. He concluded that the “debate is still going on” about how many devices will be able to share content.

Sony Online Service aims to achieve brand loyalty originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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