A new PSP, PS3 price cuts, new Xbox LIVE features for WP7, trailers galore, and a 100,000 player multiplayer game – if you’re a gamer, it’s a very good day indeed.
Gamescom is happening right now over in Cologne. But don’t worry, there’s no need to go site hopping to pick the best news morsels from the mound of fanboy gushings; we’ve got all the news fit to print right here. Let’s dive in.
The Nintendo 3DS is having a tough run as of late. Following last week’s announcement that it would lower the price of the handheld, 3DS sales fell to 16,415 units down from 31,826 units the week before. The four days following the announcement represented the greatest decline. Even more surprising is that on August 11 when the price cut goes into effect, sales of the 3DS are expected to decline further.
The initial PlayStation Vita specs which suggested the console would feature 512MB of RAM appear to be off, to the tune of 100 percent. According to Novarama CEO Dani Sánchez-Crespo, the PSP successor has slimmed down to 256MB of RAM. When asked whether the move would hurt Novarama’s current Vita development, he said, “that won’t affect us.”
Sony has announced that the remaining functionality left offline since the PlayStation Network hack will finally come back online in the UK, Europe and the US at the end of this week. That means the gaming giant has missed its previous deadline of the end of May but also that PlayStation Network users will be able to get their hands on Sony’s Welcome Back package compensation through the PlayStation Store.
If you’re a PS3 owner with a PlayStation Network account that means a choice of two games from a a selection of Dead Nation, inFamous, Little Big Planet, Wipeout HD and Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty.
PSP owners meanwhile get the choice of two games from LittleBigPlanet PSP, ModNation Racers, Pursuit Force and Killzone Liberation. If you weren’t already a PlayStation Plus subscriber, you’ll also be offered 30 days free while subscribers will get 60 days free.
Out now | From £free | Sony
The Sony NGP may actually have got itself a real name rather than continuing to bobble along under its generic “Next Generation Portable” moniker.
Leaked images and digging around in domain names by Game Pundit suggest Sony is set to ditch the NGP codename and call its new device, the PS Vita. But frankly, whatever name Sony slaps on its latest portable, it isn’t going to turn around the future of its flagging handheld business…
Let’s talk tech. Let’s talk all this morning’s headlines, from 4G to animal tablet antics. Let’s talk lunchtime lowdown. Tuck in!
Straight from the file marked “Barking Mad Plans” comes this tale of Sony considering a PlayStation Move dock for the PSP. A recently uncovered patent, filed back in November 2009, shows a peripheral for the PSP with a built-in camera to use PlayStation Move controllers with the docked device. Do these plans still have any life in them?
In a surprise twist this afternoon, Sony has updated investors with revised estimates ahead of its official earnings report scheduled for Thursday. The company now expects to post a net loss of 260 billion yen (£1.98b), a far cry from its net profit forecast of 70 billion yen (£531m) for 2010 to 2011. Now, for the first time, we can put a price tag on the PSN outage which compromised millions of our identities.
