In a recent email sent out by SCEA to PlayStation Underground members, Sony has revealed that those who purchase Qore Episode 6 and annual subscribers will receive access to the PlayStation Home Beta. Subscribers will be sent a beta key after downloading (or purchasing) the issue. The episode will be available to purchase from Thursday, November 6th 2008. With this news, it’s clear that PlayStation Home isn’t going to be released to the public any time soon.

We speculate that PlayStation Home will be released to the public sometime in December. If you are not already an annual subscriber, the episode will cost you $2.99, or you can subscribe for $24.99.

Eternal Sonata has just come out in North America and we’re holding a competition to give away a copy of the game. Eternal Sonata is a RPG about the famous composer Chopin, who, as he lies on his death bed experiences a fantastical dream where he encounters a young girl facing a terrible destiny and the boy who will fight to save her. On the border between dreams and reality, Chopin discovers the light that shines in all of us in this enduring tale of good and evil, love and betrayal. To find out how to win yourself a copy of the game, read on.

To win yourself a copy, simply answer the following question:

The PlayStation 3 version of Eternal Sonata has two extra playable characters. Who are they?

If you need some help, check out the official Eternal Sonata community: Endless Nocturne. Closing date for entry is Friday, October 31st 2008. Please submit your entry using the Contact Form, selecting "Competition Entry" as the subject. We will announce the winner on the following day and we will ship the game to the winner as soon as physically possible.

[Endless Nocturne: Official Eternal Sonata Community]

Earlier this month, we listed the trophies that GTA IV will contain once the game was patched. We have learned that the patch will go live on Monday, 27th October 2008. The bad news is that the trophies won’t be retroactive, so you will have to start the game again in order to unlock them. Now, one question remains: is it worth starting all over again just to unlock trophies? We’ll let you decide.

The game will be getting patched soon to include over 50 unlockable trophies – all of which match the Xbox 360 achievement list.

[GTA IV Trophy List]

If you are into free running (or Parkour) games, you will be happy to know that the trophy list for Mirror’s Edge has been revealed. The game will feature 45 unlockable trophies, of which 33 are bronze, 8 are silver and 3 are gold. The game will also feature the hard-to-get platinum trophy. Two of the bronze trophies are secret too. Check out the trophy list below.

Trophies:

• Bronze:
  • Back on the job: Complete the Tutorial
  • Prologue Complete: Complete the Prologue in story mode
  • Chapter 1 Complete: Complete Chapter 1 in story mode
  • Chapter 2 Complete: Complete Chapter 2 in story mode
  • Chapter 3 Complete: Complete Chapter 3 in story mode
  • Chapter 4 Complete: Complete Chapter 4 in story mode
  • Chapter 5 Complete: Complete Chapter 5 in story mode
  • Chapter 6 Complete: Complete Chapter 6 in story mode
  • Chapter 7 Complete: Complete Chapter 7 in story mode
  • Chapter 8 Complete: Complete Chapter 8 in story mode
  • Bag lady: Find all three hidden bags in one chapter
  • Ran out of fingers: Find 11 hidden bags
  • On the clock: Beat the qualifier time on any Time Trial stretch
  • Access all areas: Unlock all Time Trial stretches
  • Baby steps: Attain a Time Trial star rating of 20
  • Prologue Speedrun: Complete a Speedrun of the Prologue below the target time.
  • Chapter 1 Speedrun: Complete a Speedrun of Chapter 1 below the target time.
  • Chapter 2 Speedrun: Complete a Speedrun of Chapter 2 below the target time.
  • Chapter 3 Speedrun: Complete a Speedrun of Chapter 3 below the target time.
  • Chapter 4 Speedrun: Complete a Speedrun of Chapter 4 below the target time.
  • Chapter 5 Speedrun: Complete a Speedrun of Chapter 5 below the target time.
  • Chapter 6 Speedrun: Complete a Speedrun of Chapter 6 below the target time.
  • Chapter 7 Speedrun: Complete a Speedrun of Chapter 7 below the target time.
  • Chapter 8 Speedrun: Complete a Speedrun of Chapter 8 below the target time.
  • Chapter 9 Speedrun: Complete a Speedrun of Chapter 9 below the target time.
  • Head over heels: Complete a chapter of the game without ending up in a heavy landing
  • Untouchable: Complete a chapter without getting shot
  • Pacifist: Complete a chapter without firing a gun
  • Martial artist: Perform a melee hit from a wallrun
  • Mine!: Perform 15 successful disarms (outside of the tutorial)
  • Tango down: Knock out 20 enemies in melee combat
• Silver:
  • That’s a wrap: Complete the story mode on any difficulty
  • A for effort: Attain a Time Trial star rating of 35
  • Vrooom! Silver: Maintain sprint speed for 30 seconds.
  • Up, over, under, onwards: String together the following: jump, coil (over obstacle), slide (under obstacle)
  • Free flowing: String together the following: wallrun, jump, speedvault
  • May I have this dance?: String together the following: wallrun, turn, jump, wallclimb, turn, jump
  • Aaaand safe!: String together the following: wallrun, jump, coil (over obstacle), skill roll
  • Test of Faith: Complete the game without shooting an enemy
• Gold:
  • Pro runner: Complete story mode on hard difficulty.
  • Packrat: Find all 30 hidden bags
  • Still counting: Attain a Time Trial star rating of 50
• Platinum:
  • Over the Edge Platinum Trophy: Unlock all other trophies
• Secret Trophies:
  • Sweet goodbye (Bronze): Triggered the flip-off move
  • Hey, it’s-a-me! (Bronze): Execute a stomp move on an enemy

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PixelJunk Monsters will getting patched soon to include new features and improvements to the game. The patch is already available to download in Japan but will be heading to North America and Europe on October 30th 2008, if all goes to plan. The update will include trophy support, new game difficulty settings, changes to the tower selection menu, YouTube video upload support and custom XMB soundtrack support. See below for details on the new features and improvements

Game Difficulty settings

You can now choose between three different difficulties of gameplay! There is a Casual mode, the Regular/Ranked mode, and Hard-core mode. The great news here is that you can use any combination of difficulties to complete your progress through the islands! Is there one particular map that’s too hard? Try it in Casual mode. If you Rainbow the level, that rainbow counts and will remain on the map no matter what difficulty the other rainbows were achieved at! Only the Regular difficulty will register on the ranking boards, though.

Tower Menu selection

You can now set the default menu to appear when selecting a tower! How many times have you sold off a tower and run over to another tower to quickly upgrade it and accidentally sell it by mistake?Now you can choose which option appears as the default, instead of the last action you selected.

Tower Balancing

Those of you who have purchased Encore know about the reduced cost on the Ice Tower, and balanced functionality of the Tesla tower. This patch applies those changes to BOTH islands, not just the Encore island.

Video Recording / YouTube Support

Ever since Q-Games included this feature into PixelJunk Eden, they knew it needed to be in Monsters as well. You will be able to record up to 10 minutes of gameplay and upload it directly to your YouTube account, or send it to your video folder on your PS3’s XMB.

XMB Custom Soundtrack Support

You can now make your own custom soundtrack to listen to as you play PixelJunk Monsters and Encore! I’ve personally been enjoying listening to the PixelJunk Eden soundtrack while I play Monsters, as well as listening to the PixelJunk Monsters soundtrack within Eden! It’s great how well those fantastic soundtracks work in other games.

Trophies

Trophies are now added for both PixelJunk Monsters and Encore. Trophies won’t apply retroactively to the previously played data, but Q-Games didn’t want to force people to play everything all over again. They came up with a great idea by creating Trophy Challenges. These challenges have specific maps with set rules or objectives that will reward you with Trophies if you complete them properly. There are 14 challanges meaning there are 14 trophies to unlock.

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Hi everyone. We have upgraded the XTREME PSP website to be available over a secure HTTP connection (or HTTPS). If you prefere, you can now access the site using https://www.xtremepsp.com. We hope you feel more secure using the new URL. Of course, if you prefer to use XTREME PSP as normal, you can still access the website using the regular address (without the HTTPS).

In other news, we are approaching the public beta of PSP M4M. We will be opening up the website for full public access within the next few days so be on the look out for that.

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With the recent PSP Firmware update (v5.00), a few bugs were found on the system, notably when downloading from the PSP PlayStation Store to large Memory Stick PRO Duos (8GB or 16GB), which reports that you don’t have enough free space available. As a result, Firmware v5.01 is now available to download to fix the problem. A message on the PlayStation.Blog confirms that the update will fix the aforementioned bug.

"PSP firmware update 5.00 added direct access to the PlayStation Store, and we’ve since found an issue related to larger-capacity Memory Stick PRO Duos, which we’ll be addressing with a new update (5.01). When downloading content from the Store to a PSP with an 8 GB or 16 GB Memory Stick Duo media inserted, you may see a message indicating that the media does not have enough free space, even when sufficient space exists."

You can download the update using the Network Update feature from the PSP [Settings] menu.

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