PlayStation News Message Board older than one year ago

UPDATE: In today's update, Ron talks football and FIFA 14.

IGN has a pretty impressive, bumper selection of gifts on offer in our…

Fully committed to its mediocrity, Saint Seiya: Brave Soldiers doesn't bring much to the table.

It’s our slightly late, exhaustingly long episode 101 spectacular! Sony Computer Entertainment America President and CEO Jack Tretton joins us to talk everything PS4 (and his favorite TV shows), while VP of Developer and Publisher Relations Adam Boyes runs through his top ten games of the generation. Plus: Doki-Doki Universe’s Greg Johnson joins us for a new chat, and we share the fully loaded schedule of new releases for next Tuesday, December 17th. Enjoy!

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Stuff We Talked About

• Doki-Doki Universe
• Eufloria HD
• Resogun
• Jack Tretton
• Adam Boyes
• PS4

Recent Episodes

• Episode 100: Not Like This
• Episode 099: Best of a Generation
• Episode 098: Greatness Awaits

Send us questions and tips: blogcast@playstation.sony.com or leave a voice message! 650-288-6706 The Cast

• Sid Shuman – PlayStation Social Media Manager
• Nick Suttner – PlayStation Account Support Manager
• Justin Massongill – PlayStation Social Media Specialist

[Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.]

• Thanks to Cory Schmitz for our beautiful logo and Dormilón for our rad (new!) theme song and show music.

UPDATE: In today's update, Ron muses about multiplayer games, and their unexpected consequences.

A diehard Dark Souls fan finally gets the chance to experience Demon’s Souls the way it was intended - and comes back with a great story.

DmC, Borderlands 2 and more are all on the way for European PlayStation Plus subscribers in January.

LEGO The Last of Us isn't real, but if it was, it'd be awesome.

Free-to-play fighter Soulcalibur: Lost Swords is now due in 2014, after originally being pinned to hit PS3 via PSN in winter 2013. The new release window was announced on the series' official Facebook page, and via two trailers from Namco Bandai Europe.

The two trailers showcase returning combatants Sophitia and Siegfried, but are essentially the same videos released by Namco Japan last month. As for the game, we do know that shirtless samurai Mitsurugi is another confirmed fighter, the game itself is limited to single-player, and that it runs on the next iteration of the Soulcalibur 5 engine. Beyond that, confirmed details are as difficult to find as the swords.

Polyphony Digital's PlayStation 3-exclusive racing sim Gran Turismo 6 ranks as Japan's biggest-selling software title in its debut week, selling over 200,000 copies since its launch on December 5, according to sales data analyst Media Create.

Gran Turismo 6 takes the top chart spot in Japan with 204,784 total copies sold to date. A revised version of Square Enix's Wii MMORPG Dragon Quest X claims second place with 117,432 units sold in its first week of release. Nintendo's Pokemon X and Pokemon Y finish at third place with 111,790 copies sold this week, for a total of 3,200,919 units sold in total.

Gran Turismo 6's first-place finish in Japan follows up on its sluggish start in the UK, where it sold five times fewer copies than its predecessor Gran Turismo 5 sold in its debut week in 2010. North American sales data for Gran Turismo 6 is not yet available.

When it comes to the newest PlayStation exclusive Doki-Doki Universe, three things are true: it's cute, it's charming, and it's repetitive.

New announcements are coming regarding SOE's free-to-play titles.

NIS America announced that its PlayStation 3 action-RPG The Witch and the Hundred Knight will ship to retail in North America and Europe next March, packaged with a CD soundtrack in both regions.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight tells a dark fantasy tale starring Metallia, an exiled witch confined to a noxious swamp by a rival coven. Players control the Hundred Knight, a legendary warrior who must expand Metallia's swampland and wreak havoc on the world that imprisoned her. Gameplay focuses on melee combat, and players can switch between multiple weapons and magical facets to take down their foes and devour them for energy.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight will premiere at retail and digitally via the PlayStation Network on March 25 in North America and March 21 in Europe.

Cue mass Zestiria: Namco's countdown ended today with the announcement of Tales of Zestiria, a new PS3 entry in the RPG series. The reveal trailer was shown during a Namco Bandai livestream (captured by Kagayaki Channel), then smiley series creator Hideo Baba divulged a little of what to expect from the newest Tales game.

As both Siliconera and Gematsu report, dragons will play a big part in the story, hence the logo and the fiery end to the trailer. According to Gematsu, the game is set in Glynnwood, a continent being fought over by the Highland Kingdom and Laurence Empire. Both factions, however, live in fear and worship of the mysterious Family of Heaven, whose supernatural power shapes the world.

As for the characters, so far it's a case of brains and brawn. The brown-haired fellow in the cape is Slay, a moral, intelligent type, while the blonde knight is Alicia.

"Over the past few years the 'Tales of' team has taken great strides to strengthen our relationship with players across North America and Europe. To respond to their love and support I am honored to open a new chapter of the 'Tales of' series together with Japanese and overseas fans," said Baba in a Namco Europe press release, indicating the game will head west as well to Japan.

Details are a bit on the sparse side for now, but more are set to surface in the next issue of Famitsu. We may also learn more from next weekend's Jump Festa 2014 expo in Tokyo.

The 15th core game in the Tales series has been announced. It's called Tales of Zestiria, and it's coming to PS3.

Hello again, everyone. My name is Hideo Baba from Namco Bandai Studios Inc., and I’m the producer for the Tales series. As some of you know from previous posts, I like to step in from time to time and deliver great news to our fans on PlayStation.Blog. Today is one of those special days!

I’m very proud to announce that Tales of Zestiria, the newest installment and 20th Japanese anniversary commemorative title for the Tales franchise, will be launched in North America for PS3. This is a huge moment for Namco Bandai Games, and the Tales team in particular, as it’s the first time we’ve simultaneously announced the game for both Japan and the west.

There’s not much else to say about Tales of Zestiria right now, so please stay tuned for more information in the future. In the meantime, we do have two other great Tales games coming out in North America to keep fans excited throughout next year. Tales of Symphonia Chronicles will be available on February 25th, 2014 for PS3, and features both Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Expect new HD graphics and content for North American fans, including new outfits, Mystic Arte cut-ins, titles, unison attacks, and techniques. It will also be the first time that a Tales game features both an English and Japanese audio track.

Tales of Xillia 2 will also be out across western territories next year for PS3 as well. It’s the sequel to this year’s Tales of Xillia, and focuses on two brand new characters: Ludger Kresnik and Elle Marta. One of the defining themes of the game is “choice,” and players will be able to speak through Ludger by the choices that they make throughout the game. And since this title takes place in the same world as Tales of Xillia, expect to see plenty of your favorite characters returning to help Ludger and Elle on their journey. We’ll have plenty more to talk about for this title in the coming months.

The Tales team has been working hard to strengthen our relationship with overseas fans over the past few years, and we’ve seen the fruits of our labor with the success of Tales of Xillia — which has sold over a million copies worldwide. The Tales team would like to thank all of the Tales fans around the world for their continued support, and extend a warm welcome to new fans to the series as well.

On Tuesday, we launched our second PS Mobile game, Chromatic Aberration. This is an original idea that utilizes borrowed elements from different 80’s games. Since we wanted the game to have a very unique feel, we had to get the right set of tools to give us the look and feel we wanted. After securing the use of SuperIcon’s Pixel Engine, we set about designing 64 of the most fiendish, insane levels we could think of.

Chromatic Aberration works like this: when you pick up a tesseract (little color-coded cubes), your character’s color changes to that of the tesseract, which in turn affects the platforms you can interact with. For example, collecting a red tesseract will turn you red. This means you can stand on red platforms — but will be killed by green ones (as green is opposite red on the color wheel). Conversely, collecting a green tesseract will turn you green. This means you can stand on green platforms, but will be killed by red ones.

With the most recent update to the PlayStation Mobile SDK, we were able to add in PSN leaderboards so that you can compete with your buddies online to get the best score.

For more info, check us out on our website, blog and Twitter.

PS Vita owners can download these Chromatic Aberration from the PlayStation Mobile section of PlayStation Store for $3.99; Owners of PlayStation certified devices such as the Sony Xperia Z smartphone, Wikipad or Sony Xperia tablet Z, can obtain them through the PlayStation Mobile Store for the same price.

Sony's redesigned PS Vita is slimmer, lighter, and more colorful, but are the cheaper build and inferior display worthy tradeoffs?

DCUO's newest update is coming early next year.

Try your hand at creating races and deathmatches in GTA Online.

Exclusive art book, pocket watch, and Midgar's Flower Girl outfit coming in February.

Greetings, current and future best friends. For those of you unfamiliar with our humble studio, we’re the folks behind the Bit.Trip series, as well as the recently released Bit.Trip Presents… Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien. We also invented the cheese-flavored cough drop, but due to a pending lawsuit, aren’t permitted to speak of that.

Since releasing Runner2 for console and PC, we’ve had countless people ask us about a potential Vita version. This was, as you can surely imagine, very flattering. We were stoked that people enjoyed the game as much as they did, and even more stoked that they wanted to see it on additional platforms (I promise not to use “stoked” again in this post). This inspired us to give it our all with the Vita version, and to make it just as good as its console counterparts. As it turns out, this wasn’t such a difficult task. As any Vita owner can confirm, it’s an incredibly powerful platform.

Whether this will be your first time playing the game or you’re a seasoned vet, rest assured that no expense was spared in achieving total parity between the Vita and console versions. You can expect the same amount of content, the same beautiful graphics, the same drunk pickle, and the same awesome platformer gameplay. Also, the same DLC. That’s right: The Good Friends Character Pack DLC will be available at launch.

All that said, we’re aware that some of you waited a lot longer than you wanted to for the game’s release. We can’t thank you enough for your patience, and if we could we’d hug each and every one of you. You know how sometimes a relative or friend will hug you just long enough to where it’s kind of awkward? That’s what we’d do. In lieu of hugging, however, we can offer up some tasty details about pricing! In the very next paragraph! Directly below this one!

Runner2 will retail for $9.99 on the Vita, and PS Plus users can expect a 20% discount at launch, bringing the price down to $7.99. Additionally, The Good Friends Character Pack will be 30% off for PS Plus users, bringing the $2.99 price tag down to $2.09. In other words, you’ll have a couple bucks left to spend on fun things like Lunchables and seasons of Fraggle Rock!

I’m going to shut up now, but feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comments. Unless, of course, your question is about the aforementioned cough drops. Please don’t ask us about those.

Hi there, Tommaso De Benetti from Housemarque and Alexey Menshikov from Beatshapers speaking. After a minor Q&A setbacks caused by a prank our little furry friends conjured up, we are finally able to confirm the North American release of Furmins on PS Vita!

In Furmins, players will attempt to guide the eponymous and loveable creatures across fiendishly designed levels by rearranging a variety of items in real time with well-coordinated precision. Strategically placed items create pathways and physical chain reactions that guide the Furmins to a basket at the end of the level.

Wondering what happened to the Furmins Kingdom to justify a whole gaming adventure? Here’s a quick overview:

The Furmins are a happy race of creatures living a happy, peaceful existence.

Things were rolling along great until the fateful day their benevolent (yet rather large)…

… King fell asleep, rolled over a river forming an impromptu dam and blocked their flow of water!

When it comes to puzzle games, levels are what make (or break) a title. This holds true in Furmins, too. The ultimate judges will – as always – be players around the world, but we are confident in the 100+ unique levels included in the game.

Solving each puzzle is a two-step process. First, players enter Setup mode, where they strategically place items and contraptions to create safe pathways while the world stands still.

There are plenty of items the player can place around levels: small and large bumpers, flippers, conveyor belts, rotating gadgets, blocks of ice, ropes and vines, cannons and even vehicles!

The second phase is called Action mode, where the stage comes to life while physics take over. During this phase, players can interact with certain contraptions (using PS Vita’s touchscreen or rear touch pad) and help the Furmins reach their destination unharmed.

Switching between modes at any moment will let you test various ideas quickly, until a solution is found. Each level has multiple solutions, so be creative and use items in unusual ways!

To see Furmins in action, check out the gameplay trailer at the top of this post. For more information, check www.beatshapers.com/furmins and follow @beatshapers and @Housemarque on Twitter.

With Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues hitting screens this week, we've persuaded Ron Burgundy to introduce the latest games news on IGN.

We are halfway through our Festive Giveaway promotion now, and I hope that you have been enjoying the free games. After giving you four great titles over the last two weeks, we are going to give you two more awesome titles this week to carry you through New Year’s: Super Crate Box and Fuel Tiracas!

In January, we will announce four more PS Mobile games for our promotion. So keep checking back on the PlayStation.Blog over the winter to find out which games will be free during the remainder of the Festive Giveaway.

Super Crate Box by Vlambeer

Vlambeer’s smash hit SUPER CRATE BOX brings back the glory of classic gaming when all that really mattered was getting on that high score list! Hold onto your baseball cap and loosen your pants, it’s time to fight endless hordes of enemies and collect every weapon crate you can. Prepare for an arcade delight with tight controls, refreshing game mechanics, cracking retro art and a terribly hip chip tune soundtrack.

Fuel Tiracas by FuturLab

Fuel Tiracas fuses “Whack-A-Mole,” “Spinning Plates” and “Simon Says”‘ gameplay in a vacuum-pressurized sci-fi setting. It’s the ultimate test of fast reactions, memory and time management ability! The game takes place on Planet Tiracas, and currently has no atmosphere. Your sole purpose is to use Tiracas’ natural resources as Fuel to power the planet’s atmosphere systems.

In addition to our free game giveaway, here are some other updates from PlayStation Mobile…

New Releases This Week

Chromatic Aberration by Hiive LLC ($3.99)

You are the last hope of the human race. In this game, you have to solve challenging, color-coded puzzles in order to prove to your alien captors that humans are worthy of surviving. If you fail, the destruction of mankind is all but assured.

Quiet Christmas by Nostatic Software ($0.99)

It’s the day before Christmas and all you want to do is go to sleep and see what Santa brought you over night. But the Christmas tree is not up, Mr. Peabody’s tacky Xmas display is annoying and your brother won’t go to sleep. Interact with your environment and solve puzzles in this old-school styled adventure game.

Updates This Week

Blinkin Blobs by Alan Davies ($0.99)
Snake by Carrot Creations ($0.99)

PS Vita owners can download these games from the PlayStation Mobile section of PlayStation Store; Owners of PlayStation certified devices such as the Sony Xperia Z smartphone, Wikipad or Sony Xperia tablet Z, can obtain them through the PlayStation Mobile Store. Click here for a full list of the certified devices or here for installation instructions.

Featured New Releases

See what’s new on Sony Entertainment Network! For full details, head over to the SEN Blog for the weekly Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited updates.

Music Unlimited Highlights

• The 12th studio album from R&B legend R. Kelly, featuring appearances by 2 Chainz, Ludacris, Kelly Rowland, Juicy J and more.

Community star and rapper Donald Glover’s sophomore effort under his moniker Childish Gambino.

Three original soundtracks from highly-anticipated holiday movies – American Hustle, Saving Mr. Banks & The Hobbit.

Pretty Lights’ summer album, A Color Map of the Sun, remixed by the likes of Datsik, 12th Planet, Eliot Lipp and more.

For further exclusive access to all the new album releases – click here for this week’s full Music Unlimited update: bit.ly/1bBeVXP.

Video Unlimited Highlights

It’s a pretty busy release week on the Video Unlimited service, with amazing holiday deals in our annual Holiday Sale, plus new releases like Insidious: Chapter 2 and Prisoners.

If you haven’t seen J.J. Abrams’ latest blockbuster, Star Trek Into Darkness, then now’s the perfect time! It’s this week’s Big Holiday 99¢ Rental. Watch as the ruthless mastermind known as Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch) declares a one-man war on the Federation. Captain Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), and the rest of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise set out on an explosive manhunt. Rent it today and make sure to check back next Tuesday for another Big Holiday 99 Cent Rental of the Week.

Don’t miss this week’s Holiday Sale with action packed films like White House Down, After Earth and Olympus Has Fallen, along with gripping TV series like Chicago Fire and Heroes all at super low rates. Visit www.sony.com/HolidaySale for more info on what Games, Movies and TV Shows will be on sale through December 31st!

Want more info on this week’s new releases? Get the full Video Unlimited update here: bit.ly/1hKGCBD.

UPDATE: Ubisoft has issued a statement to anyone affected by YouTube copyright claims, advising you to get in touch to get videos cleared.

Serving drinks and snacks straight from Lordran. Praise the Sun!

A new Sony patent was published earlier this week detailing a controller that looks like a cross between your TV's remote and Sony's underloved Move controller.

Dubbed "Flat Joystick Controller" for the purposes of the patent filing, the device is described as having a Move-like ball attached to its end, a small complement of buttons on its handle and a touchscreen that "provides an area for receiving directionality control in response to interfacing by a finger of a user." Translation: The touchscreen doubles as a joystick for games that require directional input.

With the Move already in existence, why create another, very similar device? Sony's summary explains: "Broadly speaking, the present invention allows for three-dimensional with a multi-positional controller. The multi-positional controller enables control for a variety of applications and simulations while providing an intuitive interface to interact in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional renderings of the computer programs being executed through a game client."

This being a patent, there's no telling when or if this Flat Joystick Controller will ever be released to retail, or for that matter, what name Sony will choose to replace "Flat Joystick Controller." Whatever happens, it's clear that motion control is key in the minds of Sony's engineers. Expect many more years of flailing your arms at and near expensive electronics.

Telltale Games is making Walking Dead: Season 2, Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands, and Game of Thrones? Can they all be good?