During the Develop conference (via Eurogamer), Sony Europe R&D manager Phil Rogers outlined some possible interactions between the PlayStation Vita and the PS3. The systems are already known to share saves across compatible games, and share some interoperable games like Wipeout 2048, but Rogers discussed some other capabilities, including some not yet seen in Vita/PS3 interaction.

"PS3 can send data down to Vita and Vita can display it," he said. "You could use the unique features [of Vita] - gyroscope, touch front and back - as a control device for a PS3 game." In what could be a veiled dig at the Wii U, he also said that because you can have games running on both systems, each using its own processor, "You're not sacrificing the PS3's CPU to be able to have a rich experience on Vita."

At launch, the Vita will have some cross-platform features, including scoreboards and PSN user data. "For launch we'll also have Remote Play, which does look good on Vita - I saw an early version of it running recently." Remote Play, also available on the PSP right now, allows video of compatible titles to be streamed from the PS3 for play on the PSP. Continuation Play, through which a game can be saved on one platform and played on the other, will also be available early on. The first known game to use that is Ruin.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/02/so...play-together/ ...

Action role-playing game The Lord of the Rings: War in the North will be released in November, Warner Bros. has announced.

This bloody, limb-loosing game takes a trio of adventures - human, dwarf, elf - on an adventure parallel to that made famous by Tolkein's book and Peter Jackson's films.

You'll head north to the snowy lands of Gunabad and face the forces of arch-villain Agandur, Sauron's "crulest ally", according to the LOTR: War in the North website.

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance dev Snowblind is at the helm, crafting a loot-happy action-RPG that relies heaviliy on co-op, either with AI bots, friends in the same room or friends online.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North was announced in March 2010, and so appears to have had a healthy amount of development time.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...h-release-date ...

Sony has announced plans to start releasing US and Japanese PSone emulations in Europe via the PlayStation Store.

While the firm hasn't confirmed any specific titles or release dates yet, Ross McGrath of the PlayStation Store team said a few are "already in process".

Here's a handy guide explaining what it all means for you guys:

Publishers who own the rights to release PSone titles that were previously only available in the US and/or Japan will now be able to apply to have them released on the SCEE PlayStation Stores (providing they are rated by the appropriate ratings boards for each territory).
All titles will be published 'as is', with either English or Japanese language game content where available.
All titles will run at 60 Hz and you will need a 60 Hz capable display to play them properly.
This also means that if a PAL version of a title has been unable to pass QA in SCEE, but the NTSC version is already available on the PlayStation Store in SCEA or SCEJ, we can look at publishing that version instead. We cannot simply take the US version and publish it immediately, as it has to be reprocessed for SCEE, but at least we know the title should already be relatively bug-free.
Sony added: "With this news in mind, we'd love to hear from you what titles you'd like to see available in Europe for the first time - make yourself heard in the comments and with the most requested titles we will speak to publishers on your behalf."

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...ing-to-europe/

Finally a very smart decision ...

Eight Days, a PlayStation 3 exclusive cancelled in 2008, would have been "jaw-dropping", according to one developer who worked on the game.

Richard Bunn, who left Sony earlier this year to co-found Crazy Horses developer Nice Touch Games, told Eurogamer some of Eight Days' unannounced features "would have definitely impressed" had it made it out the door.

Eight Days was a third-person action game in development at Sony Computer Entertainment's London studio.

It was first shown at E3 in 2006 as one of the hot prospects on PS3 for the future. Its unveiling was handled by a suitably juicy trailer that showed plenty of driving action with exploding gas tanks in a desert-style location.

But in mid-2008 Eight Days, alongside fellow SCE London-developed PS3 exclusive The Getaway, was cancelled.

Some thought it was canned because of a lack of online multiplayer, but Bunn told Eurogamer Eight Days was misunderstood in this regard.

"It was going to have online co-op," Bunn said. "The entire concept behind the game was based around buddy gameplay. Imagine Uncharted, where you have two Nathan Drakes, and you can cover swap between each other and chuck ammo between each other. That was pretty much the game.

"We fully intended to have online co-op support. No multiplayer, but online co-op. We definitely didn't have any plans to do multiplayer modes."

Bunn worked on Eight Days for four months, but Nice Touch Games co-founder David Green built the tools that powered it and the AI that ran it.

"The game was looking spectacular," Bunn continued. "A lot of what was shown off publicly had a bit of a mixed review. But what was going on in-house at the time was looking quite spectacular.

"I designed a new opening level for them. My goal there was to make the opening level every bit as good as something you would see in God of War. We had that fully playable in prototype form and it was jaw dropping. It was exceedingly good. All of the other level designers on the team were doing great work.

"It's just what had been shown publicly was a bit hit and miss. And then the amount of work that needed to go into finishing the game was phenomenal. But it had some great features in there."

Bunn went into some detail on Eight Days' gameplay – destined never to make it to gold master.

"It had directed moments, which were big cinematic scenes similar to God of War," he said. "It had driving sections. It had duck and cover style gameplay. It was pretty spectacular. Some of the stuff that was never shown publicly would definitely have impressed if it had ever made it out into the public."

When Sony ceased production of Eight Days and The Getaway, it said it took the decision because "it was deemed that with the incredibly strong list of exclusive first party titles coming up both this year and in the near future, resource should be reallocated to enhance those projects closer to completion".

"It had been in pre-production for a long time and had soaked up a lot of money," Bunn said. "You have to think back as well, this was when the PS3 was in its infancy and was considered overpriced and it wasn't doing as well as Sony had hoped.

"Eight Days had already cost a fair amount of money. They'd done their maths and said, 'it's going to cost this much to finish the project,' which I'd rather not disclose. It was quite a bit. It was about another year's worth of development, so you can probably work out roughly for a big game how much that might have come to. And then they basically said, projecting forward what the PS3 user base is going to be a year from now, you're going to have to be way above the trend on user tie-in to make a profit.

"At the time tie-in for a very good game was about ten per cent of the user base. They said we needed to be two or three times above that to be able to make a profit. It's not the sort of thing that ever happens.

"And plus, Uncharted had just come out. So, they already had a third-person action game in the stable. At that point they decided they were going to re-purpose the Sony Soho studio as being an EyeToy, motion gaming studio and move away from doing games like The Getaway and Eight Days, at that location.

"It was a crying shame for a lot of people," Bunn recalled. "There were a lot of people who had worked on it a lot longer than I had. So it wasn't a huge blow for me personally. Some people had put several years into it. It was really sad to see those guys have lots of work go."

It seems Eight Days was farther along the development line than The Getaway, which at one point was headed up by L.A. Noire chief Brendan McNamara. "They were just building a tech demo," Bunn revealed.

He also noted that both cancellations occurred shortly after Phil Harrison was replaced as Sony Worldwide Studios boss by Shuhei Yoshida.

"He [Harrison] left and Shuhei Yoshida came on board as head of worldwide development," Bunn said.

"He did the rounds basically doing a big shake-up. He saw where the successes had been at ...

Call of Juarez: The Cartel is numero uno on the official UK PlayStation 3 sales chart for the second week in a row.

Dirt 3 moves up two places to No.2 ahead of LA Noire, which climbs an impressive nine spots from No.12 to No.3.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is at No.4, LittleBigPlanet 2 at No.5 and InFamous 2 at No.6.

Movie tie-in Cars 2 makes its top ten debut at No.7, Sniper: Ghost Warrior is at No.8, while Fight Night Champion and Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows Part 2 round off the top ten.

GfK/Chart-Track PS3 Top 10 (week ending July 30):
01. Call of Juarez: The Cartel (Ubisoft)
02. Dirt 3 (Codemasters)
03. LA Noire (Take 2)
04. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision)
05. LittleBigPlanet 2 (Sony)
06. InFamous 2 (Sony)
07. Cars 2 (Disney)
08. Sniper: Ghost Warrior (City Interactive)
09. Fight Night Champion (EA)
10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (EA)

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...-up-the-ranks/ ...

After Progskeet and PNM, Judges, members of a forum Psx-scene, comes an adaptation for teensy + +. Quote:

Here is my initial version of a flash for the PS3 called "Norway." I know there are other projects, but I'm impatient, so I decided to create my own solution. It is a port of "noralizer" Hector Martin (marcan), a very good job done to flash the PS3, based on another FPGA (programmable logic circuit).


To use this installation, you must retrieve the archive that contains the elements necessary to flash your NOR: \ teensy \ NORway.avrsln - Source code for the Teensy + + 2.0 (AVR Studio 5.0) \ teensy \ default \ NORway.hex - compiled hex file for Teensy + + 2.0 (AT90USB1286) \ serial_install.exe - Drivers for Windows Teensy \ NORway.py - Python Client You must also have: - Python 2.7.2 - pyserial 2.5 (win32) Use: 1) Install Python and pyserial. 2) Install the drivers. Connect the Teensy. 3) Flash with the "NORway.hex" and restart when finished. 4) Go to Device Manager, expand the line (COM & LPT) you should see something like "USB Serial (Communication Class , Abstract Control Model) (COM4) " Remember the port number. dump procedure: - PS3 off - At the command prompt, type: NORway.py

- Turn on your PS3, it should not start
- At the command prompt, type:
NORway.pyflash.bin dump
- When the dumping is finished enter:
NORway.pyrelease
- Turn off your PS3 (Teensy disconnect it from the PS3 it does not start on reboot) Author's note: Before you flash anything, always check your backup dumps, compare for example CORE_OS_PACKAGE.bin dump your version of PS3update effect on your console. Tested on seven X86, should work under XP. Does not work in 64X, pyserial problem with. Should work with Linux. A tutorial for the downgrade will be released soon. Homepage: PSX-Scene deaphroat Thanks for the information .

http://ps3.gx-mod.com/modules/news/a...p?storyid=2870 ...

Fans of the PS1 classic Breath of Fire 4 can breathe a sigh of relief, or fire, or fiery relief, or reliefery fire, or... never mind. Breath of Fire 4 is scheduled to launch August 16 on PSN in the United States, according to a forum post from Capcom Senior VP Christian Svensson. Svensson also revealed that Breath of Fire PSN avatars will be available for purchase on launch day, "to celebrate," probably because fireworks would be too predictable.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/30/br...psn-in-august/ ...

XCM has announced a new update to their XFPS Rateup Adapter for the PlayStation 3. XFPS Rateup Adapter II Advanced is the same as its predecessor but now comes with a mouse.

• Comes with XCM brand high-sensitivity precision mouse
• Compatible with all PS3 games
• Compatible with all versions of PS3/PS3 Slim (NTSC/US, PAL, NTSC/JAP)
• Can map the controller button keys to any key of the Keyboard
• Compatible with 95% of different kinds of mouse and keyboard.
• High sensitivity, precision and smoothness.
• Can adjust the mouse sensitivity from 2 extra wheels with 16 levels of adjustment for X and Y sensitivity to adapt perfectly to every mice.
• Built-in Turbo (Auto Fire) functionality. Independent Auto fire buttons: Eight customizable auto-fire buttons (no soldering required)
• Plug & Play - Just connect the XFPS RATEUP II Advanced to PS3/PS3 Slim (NO PC required).
• Ease of use: Just use the original PS3 controller to re-map itself to the keyboard.
• Both controller analog stick keys can also be mapped to the keyboard.

You can purchase this from Play-Asia and Amazon when it is released. No word on release date or price. ...

Sony has revealed that the financial losses caused by the cyber attacks in April are less than originally predicted.

In its official presentation of its Q1 earnings, executive vice president and chief financial officer Masaru Kato revealed ""the [total] cost may be smaller than the original cost estimate."

In May Sony predicted that the attacks would cost cost ¥14 billion ($171.2m / £106.1m) by the end of the 2012 fiscal year.

"That was the May forecast," said Kato. "The first quarter cost was within our expected range."

He also revealed that user numbers are returning to the levels seen before the cyber attacks.

"Most recently, user logins to the PlayStation Network in North America have returned to a similar level as before the cyber attacks."

"Many customers have already returned to our service. At one point people were concerned, [but the] impact will not be as great as we originally estimated."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...nancial-losses ...