In a press release today, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) announced that it had acquired leading game developer Media Molecule, creator of the multi-million selling and multi-award winning PlayStation 3 exclusive title, LittleBigPlanet. Media Molecule will join as part of SCEs global development operation, SCE Worldwide Studios (SCE WWS).
While the upcoming Splinter Cell: Conviction is exclusive to the PC and Xbox 360, Ubisoft Montreal’s Creative Director Max Beland told Edge that the next instalment in the series could “be a PS3 exclusive if there’s a deal that makes people happy there”.
It’s the beginning of March and we’ve been treated to a huge selection of titles to buy or rent on the UK PlayStation Store. A total of 26 titles are up for keeps including Stan Helsing, the action-packed hit The Bourne Ultimatum, and the stomach churning Saw III: Extreme Edition. Alternatively, there are 18 titles available for rent including Push and Smokin’ Aces 2: Assassins’ Ball.
The Heavy Rain glitches caused by the patch we reported last week are having some unusual consequences in the game. Kotaku reports a glitch one gamer experienced in which Madison Paige was completely in the buff. We have a clip and description of the glitch below for your viewing pleasure but be warned that the clip is NOT SAFE FOR WORK and contains SPOILERS.
Its safe for you to boot up your PS3 today and resume using it as normal. Sony’s fix for yesterday’s problems were to simply wait until March 2nd 2010, so the PS3 thinks its the March 1st. Sony’s original statement indicated that a patch would be released to resolve the issue, but it seems Sony were simply stalling, “We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours.”
Contrary to today’s issues with the PS3, your trophies are safe providing you recently synced your trophies to your PSN account. All your trophies are backed-up with your PSN ID so if you did lose some trophies, resyncing with the PSN will restore any lost trophies. However, if you earned any trophies since your last sync and you were affected by today’s events, then your trophies may be lost.
With its unique gameplay and critical acclaim, Heavy Rain has sold over 500,000 units in its first week on shelves. Although the game received great reviews, many feared that the game would not do well in terms of sales. Preliminary sales data from VGChartz show that Heavy Rain is doing well so far. In key markets – around 200,000 were sold in the Americas, nearly 100,000 in the UK, over 50,000 in France and 25,000 in Japan.
Sony has issued an official statement on the recent PlayStation Network downtime attributing the issues to the “possibility of unauthorized access to personal information on the PlayStation Store through PCs.” Sony indicates that a small possibility that password may have been changed, making it possible to view personal information and use the PlayStation Wallet.
Today marks one of the biggest fails in PlayStation history, with thousands of PS3 units experiencing issues due to a system clock issue. The PlayStation 3 was released in North America and Japan November 2006 and has passed four years without the March 1st issue causing an issue. Unlike we previously reported, the issues are not entirely related to the PlayStation Network.
The US PlayStation Website was updated over the weekend sporting a new look. Among the changes, some interesting information was added to the list of features for the PlayStation 3: Cross-Game Voice Chat. Reading up on the In-Game XMB features, the Friends section states “Talking with friends or other players in the middle of a game is easy. Chat by text or use your headset to voice chat.”
