The PlayStation Network Store has returned in the US, Europe and some other territories, although it remains offline in Japan. Content which had been scheduled to go on sale during its six-week absence is being gradually added to the storefront.

However, the free games and PSN Plus membership being offered to customers as part of the 'Welcome Back' compensation package are yet to become available, with Sony saying that the offer is in "the final stages of testing".

Nonetheless, a large list of new content has been published on the US and EU PlayStation blogs, with a further round of content becoming available tomorrow.

Some UK users have been experiencing problems with accessing PSN, receiving an 807 error code when trying to reset passwords or download content. Sony has attempted to allay those concerns by explaining that the problem has been caused by enormous demand, rather than any remaining technical issues.

"There are so many of you accessing the store at the moment that due to the excessive load, it is a little slow," wrote Nick Caplin on the EU PlayStation Blog.

"We are improving it as I write this, so you will see improvements in speed as the day progresses."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-hitting-store ...

Sony's worldwide studios head Shuhei Yoshida has said he's well aware that the successor to the PSP, currently codenamed NGP, will face the same preconceptions over games pricing that has dogged Nintendo's 3DS.

In a market where smartphones dominate portable gaming with titles at the low price of 59p, full-price handheld console games must convince customers they are worth more than the comparatively astronomical £30-plus price tags.

"The problem is the same. We are dealing with the same issue that Nintendo is," stated Yoshida.

Nintendo's 3DS has suffered from lacklustre sales, with software titles thin on the ground after an initial launch of games failed to have a long-term impact on the charts.

There's no one clear competitor in terms of what NGP offers
Shuhei Yoshida, Sony
"It's up to content publishers, including ourselves, to show people that this is worth £25 or £30 as opposed to 59p. You cannot release the same content that you put on the iPhone for a dollar on to NGP or some other consoles and expect people to pay 20 times that."

But that's where the comparisons end for Yoshida, who believes there is no competitor that compares to the NGP on the mobile and handheld market. The console is purely for high-end gaming, with few additional features to distract from the PlayStation brand.

"There's no one clear competitor in terms of what NGP offers. NGP's going to establish itself as the unique thing that people want to have. NGP cannot be placed against smartphones. You can't make phone calls on it and it's too big to fit into your pocket."

Discussing Nintendo's latest handheld, Yoshida said he believes the 3DS is just an update of previous DS hardware, despite the glasses-free 3D selling point.

"When we were designing the NGP we had no idea what Nintendo was going to do. Aside from the 3D stereoscopic display, they seem to be keeping the same theme that they had with the DS – it feels like an update of the DS to me.

"So what we're trying to do, lots of choices that we made were so different from their choices. It's kind of hard to compare the two, aside from the fact that both of them are dedicated gaming platforms," he added.

The NGP, which comes in two different models, will take centre stage at Sony's E3 press conference next week, where the company is expected to announce the name of PS Vita, pricing and possible release dates.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...roblems-as-3ds ...

Patently-O and Ars Technica report that Lodsys has filed suit [here's the complaint] in the Eastern District of Texas against seven iPhone developers, asserting that the defendants are infringing two patents. Apple had previously indicated their belief that all iPhone developers are protected by a licensing agreement that Apple had made with the patents' former assignee, Intellectual Ventures. But Lodsys insists that the defendants are nonetheless liable for infringement. Still an open question is whether Apple will go beyond the mailing of strongly worded letters in defending third-party iPhone devs."

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/0...ngement-Claims ...

Sony has candidly admitted that it got PSPgo wrong. No ifs, no buts.

According to SCE Worldwide studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, the platform holder has learnt from its catalogue of mistakes with the ill-fated digital-only console - and NGP is reaping all the benefits.

Speaking to OPM's Leon Hurley, reporting for CVG, a bold Yoshida admitted: "I could spend 30 minutes talking about what was wrong with PSPgo".

The console's launch in November 2009 was met with respectable reviews, but the price - just $50 less than the PS3 at the time - was widely criticised. The system struggled to sell, despite a relaunch last May that saw the hardware bundled with 10 free games in the UK.


Reports emerged in April this year that production of the device had ceased in Japan.

"There are lots of lessons we learned from the PSPgo," Yoshida told us. "Definitely we didn't do something right with [it]. So there are lots of things like the hardware didn't have the compatibility with the UMD library and not all the PSP games were sold on the PSN store.

"Hardware wise we made it our highest priority to make it small and portable but that's not what people really wanted. Because when we made it too small the screen was smaller, the buttons were thinner. It's kind of difficult, cramped into a smaller body.

"That's one of the things we learned when making the decision about large we want the screen for NGP. The five inch OLED screen and the size of the body meant we can fit the real analogue sticks."

Yoshida added that Sony was "not trying to replace smartphones" with NGP.

"We cannot make calls on NGP," he commented. "So we have to provide enough reason why, in addition to smartphone, they would want to purchase something else.

"Another analogy is that these days smartphones have pretty good camera, but they can also use an SLR and when they see the kind of pictures they can take with larger, more expensive devices they still prepared to spend the money to buy them. So it's all about what unique things you are doing with NGP."

NGP is due for launch in at least one global territory in the fourth quarter of this year. It's looking increasingly likely that the hardware will carry the name 'PS Vita'.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

We're live from Microsoft Windows president Steven Sinofsky's keynote at D9, and there's something rather exciting on stage -- a pair of experimental Windows 8 dev boards running an OS that looks very much like Windows Phone 7's Metro UI. All Things D sat down with the man earlier today and got a sneak peek at what to expect starting with the live tiled screen you see above -- and yes, like Windows Phone 7, this OS is designed for touch.

There'll be two kinds of applications for Windows 8, one that runs in a traditional desktop, and the other pseudo-mobile apps based on HTML5 and Javascript, but both environments -- rather, the entire OS -- have been designed from the ground up for touchscreen use. Keyboard and mouse will still be options for both sets of programs, but there are multiple virtual sets of keys for different form factors, including a split keyboard for vertical slate use. Multitasking is simply a matter of swiping running apps into the center of the screen, and you can pull windows partway to "snap" them in place alongside other windows -- even mixing and matching traditional desktop programs with web apps simultaneously (like Twitter alongside your spreadsheet). There's a new version of Internet Explorer 10 (which runs Silverlight) and an app store built into the touchscreen interface. Microsoft says the new OS will run on laptops, tablets and desktops when it appears -- whenever that might be.

All Things D didn't have any details on when we'll get pricing or availability, but we're looking at some Intel Atom-based demo units on stage right now, and Microsoft says it will have ARM designs (the OS will support NVIDIA, TI and Qualcomm) viewable on the Computex show floor, and more will be revealed at a developer conference in September. We should note that "Windows 8" is just a codename for what we're seeing here -- "we'll figure out the real name in due time," Sinofsky told the crowd -- but we don't see much harm in calling it Windows 8 for now.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/01/m...et-prototypes/ ...

News via http://www.psp-ita.com/?i=4357

The developer shall submit to SikeWS his homebrew PSP Genesis Competition entitled p0rtal 2d: maker. As the name suggests it is a 2D clone of the highly popular first-person puzzler Portal, which is distributed by Valve and now in its second chapter testify.

The game mechanics are almost unchanged, except for the "limitation" to the two dimensions. The goal is to reach the level exit by overcoming the obstacles with the help of a gun only shoots portals. A simple gameplay that is the basis of a game / puzzle not easy. Welcome addition concerns the level editor through which we delight in creating and sharing levels with friends.
The project is totally open source, so that SikeWS decided to make available the source code (found at the end of news).
More info about the commands and download link after the screen

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ... ...

Newly released for Dingoo:

my port of pokemon mini emulator for dingux, original author "justburn".

key

D-PAD Left -> D-PAD Left
D-PAD Right -> D-PAD Right
D-PAD Up -> D-PAD Up
D-PAD Down -> D-PAD Down
Key A -> Key Y
Key B -> Key B
Key C -> key A
Shock Detector -> key X
Power Button -> Select

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...0,0,0,0,71,508 ...

News via http://gbatemp.net/t295239-super-bat...r-nes-homebrew

A somewhat rare treat today with a new NES platformer homebrew; although always welcome we see a fair few total conversion hacks and things of that magnitude as well as NES styled games on modern systems but true NES homebrew is somewhat more rare. It is still a demo and even though we only knocked out the first few levels and watched the video we feel confident in calling it to first rate NES platformer. Great mechanics, nice level design, a nice chiptune score and more await you in this.

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

...

New release from Hardhat

Time for a battle royale with a bit of online fun.

Post compo version 1.10: http://www.adamcon.org/~dmwick/psp/pspftw2d110.zip (unsigned)
pspftw2d110 signed (and shrinked) pspftw2d110 signed (and shrinked).rar - http://wololo.net/
- many improvements to move the frame rate from 25 fps to 75 fps (a much smoother experience)
- should fix the initial "Choose your network" dialog a bit (although it is still flickery for some reason).
- replaced the little squares with animated characters by Trent Gamblin (Modified BSD) to improve the frame rate
- changed the hud from drawn text to graphical (to improve the fps) with graphics from NightStar3
- changed the background to a light color and the text to a dark color to elimainate draws a drop shadow (to improve the fps)

PSP FTW is an online game where you use fireballs, collect mana, and visit waypoints to win the game. The twist is that the rules can be changed by the players, who vote on the change.

- Chat online with other players from the lobby
- Join games created by other players
- Create your own game, and have others join

Players take turns to have 30 seconds to propose a new win condition. If you create a new rule, all players vote on it, a majority changes the win condition.

- barriers are bright green.
- players are red, orange and yellow
- waypoints are blue
- mana is dark green and always appears on waypoints

Initially the goal is to collect 3 mana. Shooting a fireball uses up 1 mana, if you have any.

Across the bottom are the stats for all participating players:
M: mana collected
H: hits you've made to another player with a fireball
B: fireballs that you've successfully blocked
W: waypoints touched in the game so far.

I also am willing to release the server with source. It has been tested on Windows, Linux and Mac OS, but I'm unclear from the rules about whether it is allowed to be posted here or not. Currently it connects by default to my server (the Team Sushi PSP FTW! server) which is hosted in the US at AdamCon - Coleco Adam Convention News and Adam News Archives so if you want to check your ping times you can.

For this version the screen updates only when the server transmits an update, so eventually we will want to have multiple servers with low ping times for different parts of the world. Eventually I will release a version with smoothing, so that that FPS rate is fully used (instead of having the server update 10 times per second with chunky movement on the client side).

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ... ...