This is just a reminder that Sony Computer Entertainment turned off some features of the PlayStation Network today.

Sony’s performing routine maintenance on its online service. It started today at 11 a.m. Eastern, and the repairs will continue until 10 p.m. Eastern. That’s an 11-hour window in which gamers won’t have access to the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Home.

Some can still log on to PlayStation Network for multiplayer games, but that’s only if you logged into the system at some point over the last few days. Everyone else will have to wait until late tonight before getting some Dust 514 on.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Sony is sending in the engineers to hit the PlayStation Network servers with hammers for 11 hours on Monday.

The company announced today that it plans to shut down the service from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. EST on March 4. Sony’s online service won’t sign-in gamers during that time, but if you’re already logged in, you can keep playing games online. Throughout the downtime, no one will have access to the PlayStation Store.

This scheduled maintenance will also bring down PlayStation Home … how will I go on living?

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Last time I posted about the upcoming console generation, I made a big deal about how social features might define it for consumers. I still stand by that, but I also think console gaming is hitting an important impasse regarding developer relations.

We’ve had guys like Cliff Bleszinski and the president of Sony Computer Entertainment talking a bit about it — how platform holders need to be more flexible with developers. I think this could turn out to be one of the biggest changes going into the next generation. Really, it’s been one of the most important aspects of console gaming throughout its entire history.

In an interview with Eurogamer, SCE head Shuhei Yoshida noted that Sony will allow indie studios to self-publish games on the PlayStation 4. SCE America head Jack Tretton also mentioned that they’ll allow companies to set PS4 games at various price points, ranging from 99 cents (and likely free to play) to $60. 

Trine 2 creator Frozenbyte noted awhile ago how it was able to self-publish the Wii U eShop version of the game as opposed to going through an outside publisher for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. I think that’s a pretty big deal. It’s also probably one of the biggest differences between the console digital-distribution services and other stores like Steam, iOS, and Google Play. Finding a full publisher is one of the biggest barriers for indies and probably the reason why a lot of PC and mobile indie games don’t come to consoles.

Price variation is a big issue, too. The console game market during the current generation was almost cleanly bifurcated between $60 retail games — too many of which struggled to sell — and $15 small indie games. If you look at, say, the PC during the same period, you see a lot of games in a nice place in between. You see $20 games like Amnesia and Strike Suit Zero that you don’t see on consoles at all. There are also cases of $1 iOS games like Angry Birds, which for some reason had to be priced much higher on consoles.

I think Blezinski put it pretty well at the 2013 East Coast Game Conference: “Right now, he suggested the console market is 80 percent $60 retail titles and 20 percent cheaper downloadable offerings, but it needs to embrace virtually all genres and all price points,” Gamesindustry.biz reported. “That means $20 horror games, $40 shooters, $60 triple-A blockbusters, free-to-play, and everything in between, all easy to find for the audience who would be most interested in them.”

A third important element of publisher-developer relations that’s now changing is platform-holder policies on patching. A lot of developers have complained about all the bureaucracy involved in patching console games. “When Gears of War 2 launched and we found out that our netcode wasn’t working right, it took us three months to get an update out,” Bleszinski said. “By that time, the majority of users had moved on to the next game or had traded it in.”

In contrast, Steam and Apple have put the onus entirely on the developer to QA each patch, and they let developers release those patches without charge. I think the difference shows in how often software gets patched on Steam or iOS as opposed to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The developers of Dungeon Defenders basically gave up on updating the console versions, but my Steam copy of the game seems to be receiving a patch all the time. The number of content updates Valve has released for Team Fortress 2 on PC is in the triple digits; it’s hardly even the same game it was in 2007, but the company gave up on the Xbox version after running into Microsoft’s policy on how many free updates a developer gets. That same policy has forced Valve to charge for Left 4 Dead downloadable content on Xbox 360 while offering it for free on PC. There’s also the infamous case of how Polygon declined to patch Fez on Xbox 360 because of the costs Microsoft imposed.

In contrast, developers have already confirmed that Nintendo lets Wii U developers patch for free and as often as they want. Sony and Microsoft definitely need to follow suit.

A Wired article puts all these factors together pretty well in what it and The Penny Arcade Report call “The Minecraft Test.” Basically, it asks if a phenomenon like Minecraft could have occurred on a particular game platform. Minecraft happened because Mojang was able to “release” the game in a proto state, switch up its pricing model as the company pleased, and update it whenever it wanted without having to go through approval processes. I don’t think a console will ever be as completely open as the PC (unless Ouya really takes off), but the current ones are probably still a little bit too closed.

And that’s really the whole point: If consoles really want to fight off mobile gaming, tablet gaming, and the resurgent PC, they need to be more flexible with developers. More flexibility will probably get a platform more software, and more software increases the value of the hardware.

That’s how it’s been since basically forever. Sony overtook Nintendo with the original PlayStation by offering third-party publishers a friendly alternative to Nintendo’s then-draconian certification policies.

On the other hand, platform holders should remember the reasons why they have content curators in the first place. Nintendo’s draconian policies resurrected console games after the 1983 crash, when too many crappy games flooded the market. IOS is the perfect modern example of too little management, with good games struggling to stand out in a sea of shovelware along with a price ceiling so low as to prohibit full games.

A relations system built around big third-party publishers has worked up until the current generation. With the resurgence of garage development, though — with which mobile and PC have gotten along well and quickly — consoles are going to have to find a new balance to accommodate them properly.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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LAS VEGAS — Jenova Chen got a letter from a 15-year-old girl named Sophia last month. She said that she had played Journey with her father before he died from an illness, and the game had changed her life.

“That letter made it all worth it,” said Jenova Chen, the cofounder of Thatgamecompany, which won game of the year last night for Journey at the DICE Summit. It’s a PlayStation Network downloadable title that’s unique among video games for its poetic ambiance and lack of violence and dialogue.

Chen talked about Sophia’s letter (attached at the end of story) at the close of a talk on emotions in games.

Many participants, like Shuhei Yoshida, the head of Sony’s worldwide game studios, said that Chen’s talk was the highlight of the event and that it was more like an authentic confessional. Chen got a roar of applause when he was finished.

He and his team also got a roar of applause when they won “game of the year” at the game industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, the peer-voted DICE Awards.

Journey, like Thatgamecompany’s Flower before it, was a rarity in a game industry full of violent content. The game depicts a being’s lonely journey to the top of a mountain and the spiritual change that takes place along the way. I played the game with my three daughters several times all the way through — something they’ve never done with a PlayStation 3 game (except Flower). Journey has no weapons or words, but it is full of emotion.

Journey’s unique in a business that has every kind of shooter game, but very little content such as romantic comedies, which are so plentiful in movies. The game was all the more remarkable in that it was made in about three years with a team of 13 people; major game projects typically employee a hundred or more.

In his talk and a subsequent interview, Chen revealed that not only is Journey a metaphor for life and death, it is also an apt description of the struggle that Los Angeles-based Thatgamecompany went through. During the process of shipping Journey, Thatgamecompany went bankrupt and had to idle its staff. If the team had shipped on time, they wouldn’t have had a polished game. It was a tough decision to delay it.

Chen said that the team was supposed to ship a year earlier than it did, and it had run out of money. The staff got by on half salaries for six months. When they shipped to Sony in January, the coffers were dry. The company ran out of money, gave everyone three-week vacations, and no one expected to come back.

Chief exec Kellee Santiago (in red) and designer Robin Hunicke (in black) both left the company. Chen stayed on in a minimal capacity. Eight of the company’s 13 employees eventually moved on to do something else.

But the story has a happy ending. Journey went on to become the best-selling PlayStation Network game of all time. Chen doesn’t know for sure, but presumably it will earn royalties. And Mitch Lasky, a general partner at Benchmark Capital, was so moved when he played Journey that he started talks to invest. Thatgamecompany raised $5.5 million, and it committed itself to making cross-platform games that deliver human emotion to a wider audience.

Last night, Chen won the ultimate vindication for delaying the launch of Journey. The company won eight awards out of 11 nominations, including the Best Game Director award for Chen and Game of the Year. We talked to Chen in an interview, and here is an edited transcript of the talk.

GamesBeat: Maybe you want to start with the ending of your talk, with this letter from Sophia and what it made you feel when it arrived.

Jenova Chen: Over the course of last year, we’ve been getting this kind of mail pretty consistently. I was quite moved by it early on. I think there were more than five or six people who’ve lost their family members. They contacted us to talk about how they were reminded of their passed-away family members in the game. By traveling with them, they were able to settle with their grief. Most of the mail was just along the lines of “It’s a wonderful game! I just wanted to tell you how great it is.” But very so often there’s a message that touches me, and I have to write back. I have to share it with everyone who worked on Journey. This happened to be one of the most recent ones. It’s January, so I still remember it.

GamesBeat: Did you have a conversation with her then?

Chen: She’s 15. I wrote back to her. I think my e-mail was probably too theoretical, talking about how it’s not the worst thing, how life will be better. I didn’t hear back from her. I shared the e-mail with Sony, though. A lot of people were moved by it. They wanted to send her a poster or the collector’s edition of the game. I think that’s what happened.

GamesBeat: As you said, that’s exactly the kind of target that you had in mind for the emotional reaction to the game.

Chen: The mission statement of Thatgamecompany, after all these years, is that we want to create timeless interactive entertainment that makes positive changes to the human psyche. If our games can help people, that’s the best reward we can get. Hearing that girl saying the game helped make her life better is all the hard work paying off.

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First of all, I wish to address something all the naysayers seem to be using as ammo against this game: the IGN review. IGN gave it a 4.0 out of 10. That is not good. But the main reasons cited by the reviewer for the low score were technical issues such as framerate, screen tearing, and “game-breaking” glitches. The version of the game that IGN and most other early reviewers played was an early version that has since been patched. I never had to restart my game in either of my playthroughs because of glitches or freezing. The framerate lags and screen tearing are still present, but honestly, it’s not a deal breaker. It’s the same problem that for some reason gets overlooked or ignored in lots of triple-A, big-budget titles (take Skyrim, for example).

I also hear complaints that the puzzles are too easy or not intuitive enough. There were a few times where I felt like the puzzles were not as challenging as they could have been, but while I was playing the game, it didn’t really bother me. I was in Quico’s world — his childlike imagination. So what if the next key I had to turn or the next cog I had to push was obvious? It was still fun. Remember fun? Remember having a nonjaded gamer’s mind, when you entered new experiences without judging them against other games? Yeah, me too.

Third, some people say that the game is “pretentious.” I’m not entirely sure how. Sure, it’s doing something unprecedented in that it is something of a nonfiction game, but it does this in a quiet way. Creator Vander Caballero has said time and again that he wanted to use video games to tell his story — a story about growing up with a monster in his family. Sure, there are lots of other emotional and meaningful games out there these days. Journey comes to mind first. And sure, its metaphors may not be as heavy-handed, but P&Y is different because it’s autobiographical. I can’t remember the last time I played a game that put me in the shoes of its creator as a frightened child. Can you? P&Y is unique in that it is the first time that I, a 30-year-old gaming vet, have ever encountered a game that let me play through someone else’s — a real human being’s — childhood.

OK. There’s got to be more to this, right? Correct. This is probably the main reason why P&Y means so much to me: I grew up with a drug addict father. He is still a drug addict. There were a few moments in P&Y where I knew exactly what Quico was feeling, and it broke my heart. My relationship with my father hurt me so much as a kid that I even cried at the end of Final Fantasy X, when Tidus — with tears in his eyes — finally tells his father he hates him. So you can imagine how I felt at the end of P&Y.

This is something that not everyone playing the game is going to relate to, and that’s fine. I know that. I think Vander Caballero knows that, too. But I also think that he realizes there are people like me out there who grew up with abusive or negligent parents who will play P&Y– who will really be moved and understand that they are not alone. Is that pretentious? I don’t think that Caballero or anyone else at Minority Media ever said that they were the first to make an emotional, symbolic game. But for me, at least, the developers are the first to ever make me feel like I’m not the only person who went through his childhood afraid.

So at the end of the day, P&Y is my choice for GotY. It’s fun, full of wonder, and emotional, and it does something brave in allowing players to experience a bit of Caballero’s childhood. The music is excellent, and the visuals are something out of a dream. It is not a perfect game — there are a few frustrating moments and graphical hiccups, but they’re nothing that will sour the experience. Some may say that choosing a PlayStation Network-exclusive title for my GotY is like picking a short film to win an Oscar for Best Picture, but I disagree. P&Y’s brevity lends itself to replay value. Its length makes it feel all the more like a child’s dream. And there was not a single “triple-A,” big-budget, $60, 25-plus hour game released last year that made me feel anything like what P&Y did.

Caballero says in this diary that he just wanted to make the game to tell his story. I think he succeeded. Here’s looking forward to your next game, mate. Hopefully, more people will see the beauty in it.

One last note: The music is brilliant. Brian D’Oliveira played every instrument live during its recording. Minority Media has made the soundtrack available via the PSN store, so check it out!

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Games journalism is not a popularity contest. It’s about writing the best, most informative content you can. But it’s always fun to see which stories proved the most appealing to our readers. That’s why we created this list of GamesBeat’s 10 most popular stories from 2012.

1. Ocean Marketing: How to self-destruct your company with just a few measly emails. We detailed one of the greatest PR blunders in gaming history. It just doesn’t pay to pick a fight with Penny Arcade. Also, this story was technically published at the very end of 2011, but since it received most of its hits in 2012, we’ll count it. This is the only article that also appeared on 2011′s list.

2. Educational outreach program Pixel Academy looking for a place to call home. Offering workshops on topics like video game design, 3D printing, film making, and app development to children ages 8 to 18, this worthy program turned to crowdfunding to help keep itself afloat. A good cause and a great story.

3. Google Zerg rush attacks your search results with this fun Starcraft-inspired easter egg. The search engine giant paid tribute to the famous real-time strategy game by swarming the computer screen with the famous Google O. It was a pretty simple gag, but the immense popularity of StarCraft helped make this one of our biggest stories ever.

4. Breaking Borderlands 2: Easy money, XP, Eridium, boss fights, and tokens. We tell our readers how to bend the world of Pandora to their wills in this popular guide. People must have found this story useful considering how many of them kept checking it out.

5. Can’t find Franchise/Dynasty mode in Madden NFL 13? Let us explain. I guess a lot of people were having this problem if this was one of our most read stories of the year.

6. Bethesda reveals Skyrim dragon mounts, house-building, Kinect shouts, and more! Developer Bethesda originally showed these ideas during a gaming conference as potential additions to its incredibly popular role-playing game — most of which became a reality in Skyrim’s downloadable content.

7. FYI: PlayStation Network down today at noon PT for planned maintenance. A lot of people were wondering why they couldn’t get online with their PlayStation 3s and PlayStation Vitas.

8. Minecraft (Xbox 360 Edition): Tips, tricks, and achievement guide. Another one of our great game guides. It helps when the title you’re writing about is as complex as Minecraft.

9. The world’s most wanted alleged pirate was also the No. 1 multiplayer player for Modern Warfare 3. You have to admire a guy who can top both an FBI most wanted list and a Call of Duty leaderboard.

10. Survive the real zombie apocalypse in an abandoned UK shopping mall. Zombies are huge in all forms of media right now, including gaming. But what can compete with the chance to fight off “real” zombies with Airsoft guns?

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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So you bought the first five Tomb Raider games that recently hit Steam, and your collection is complete. Hang on, treasure hunters. You’re still missing a few.

The early Tomb Raider action-adventure games are available on a variety of modern platforms: PlayStation Network and PC via GOG.com and most recently Steam. But previous Tomb Raider developer Core Design also released a number of add-ons and standalone expansions for PC that are nowhere to be seen. Unless you own the original discs, you can’t play them even if you find a download online.

This extra content is substantial, too. The first of the Tomb Raider Gold games for PC and Mac arrived two years after the release of the original Tomb Raider. This version contained four bonus levels on a second disc: “Shadow of the Cat,” where female lead Lara Croft searches for a tomb devoted to the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet, and “Unfinished Business,” where she ventures back to Atlantis to destroy, well, mutant creatures guarding an alien hatchery.

Tomb Raider II Gold featured five bonus levels (“The Golden Mask”), The Lost Artifact was a brief sequel to Tomb Raider III, British newspaper The Times released an exclusive level for The Last Revelation in collaboration with publisher Eidos, and Chronicles sold with a level editor.

We asked Stellalune (who goes by her pen name online, not her real name), the owner of the popular and long-running Stella’s Tomb Raider fan site, whether it’s possible to play these lost levels another way. She doesn’t think so.

“In a perfect world, all the expansions would be available on all systems,” she said. “But sadly, I don’t make those decisions.”

Are the extras even worth it? “I really enjoyed all the Tomb Raider bonus levels, and I think they’re just as well designed and fun to play as the main games,” she said. “[They're] also just as weak on plot, but I don’t really care about that much. I just like exploring, solving puzzles, et cetera. That said, I don’t think any of them are essential to the Tomb Raider experience.”

She added, “I’m still a little cranky that they never released the Xbox 360 Underworld bonus levels for other systems since those add-ons actually do add to the plot of the main game.

“Meanwhile, there are also tons of amazing user-created games done with the Tomb Raider Level Editor. I haven’t had a chance to play even a tiny fraction of what’s available, but sites like trle.net, skribblerz.com, [and others] are great places to start if you’re interested in tons of free Tomb Raider.”

GOG.com’s Trevor Longino confirmed that the site does offer the extra level in Revelations, at least.

“We signed the rights to the Tomb Raider 1-3 Pack, which is what we released,” he said. “We did not sign the Gold editions of Tomb Raider One and Two, but we’re looking into the possibility of adding them to our catalog in the future.”

We also reached out to Steam but have yet to receive a response.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Grab your giant donut or ice cream truck and get ready to stand up and throw it for your country. Vikings are attacking, see, and it’s up to the citizens of 1970s Britain to fight back. With the assistance of The Department of Vikings, you must guide your little vigilante circle around increasingly wacky environments like The Farm, The Pipe Factory, The Museum, Up On The Roof, and, ultimately, Viking Island itself.

In a world full of cinematic gaming opportunities, it’s a delight to play something that is just a lot of fun. When Vikings Attack, by Clever Beans software, is a joyful playspace dedicated to funny sounds, goofy gameplay, and furious multiplayer battling. In short, it’s the wonderful chaser to all those huge, costly triple-A titles you have on your PlayStation 3 already. It’s also available via the PlayStation Network in an on-the-go version for the PlayStation Vita.

What you’ll like

The controls are responsive
When Vikings Attack plays like a brawler, only instead of beating the enemies up, you’re tossing improbably large objects at them. Your health is cleverly represented as the number of little folks in your colored circle. The vikings toss objects and bombs back at you as well, culling your mob of cutesy little village and city folk. Moving your little group of vigilantes about the screen feels good. They dash, turn, and throw stuff easily and quickly whenever you hit the right button.  The learning curve is brief, and the levels designed to allow you to build your muscle memory for each type of control.

The art style and audio sparkle

The whole 1970s Britain theme is adorable, as are the chubby little vigilante characters and horn-wearing vikings. You collect new characters as you move through the themed environments, which have their own specific objects for throwing: shopping carts for the grocery store, planets and spaceships for the museum, and giant donuts at the fair. It’s whimsical and wacky.

The sounds of the little characters picking up different objects is laugh-out-loud funny, with vocalized grunts and “heyUP” sounds everywhere. When you make a particularly good shot, text like “Textbook!” “Good Show,” and “Cracking Good Shot” pop on the screen. My 10-year old son picked these up, repeating them aloud as we played through the entire game together.

It’s surprisingly strategic
At first, beating a level is a matter of tossing as many objects as possible, as fast as possible, at the advancing viking hordes. As it moves forward through its 15 levels, however, the surroundings become as much an opponent as the vikings themselves. The Sorting Office has what feels like miles of moving conveyor belts and buttons that you activate with well-timed shots to start, stop, or reverse direction of the moving walkways. A couple of levels, notably the Pipe Factory and Viking Island, have two players synchronize tactics to direct ordinance toward their foes.

The  three different types of bombs create a deeper gameplay strategy. One type explodes on impact, another bounces off walls and into enemies, while a third type convinces vikings to become vigilantes — or vice versa. Some characters give your mob extra skills, like moving faster, lifting heavier objects than your group size can handle, or throwing things a bit faster. Using these bombs and buffs adds another layer of strategy to single and multiplayer games.

These are instructional films worth watching
Tremendous amount of silly, dry, British humor is on display in When Vikings Attack. The instructional films, each introducing a new element of gameplay or explaining new types of items or environments,  feel like old Cold War public service announcements from the 1970s in Britain, though “The Department of Vikings” made these. They’re fun to watch even after you’ve gleaned the info you need.

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The Tokyo electronics giant said today it also sold more than 15 million units of its PlayStation Move motion-sensing controller. That’s behind Microsoft’s Kinect sales (though the publisher does not disclose exact numbers on that platform), and it’s far behind Nintendo, whose Wii motion-sensing controller comes with every console.

Sony hit the 70 million number on Nov. 4, less than six years after the platform launched in 2006. That record is worse than the PlayStation 2, which has sold more than 150 million units worldwide. (Sony uses sell-in numbers, or those sold to retailers).

Microsoft’s number for the Xbox 360 is probably above Sony’s, though not by much. And Nintendo has sold an estimated 96 million Wii consoles since 2006.

The Sony PlayStation Network has 170,000 downloadable digital content pieces, including 57,000 games. The PSN network operates in 59 countries, and Sony revamped its PlayStation Store in October for easier shopping. Developers and publishes have created 3,590 titles for the PS 3 and sold 595 million units worldwide.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Are you reminiscing about the 1980s? Well, Jordan Mechner has a game for you. The designer of the original, groundbreaking Prince of Persia has gone back to dust off his first big hit, Karateka, and he is now releasing the fighting game reimagined for today’s digital platforms.

Karateka is launching today as a downloadable title on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Steam, and iOS. Mechner has made some blockbuster games in his time, and he spent time in Hollywood writing the screenplay for the feature film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, a Jerry Bruckheimer film that was the highest-grossing video game film adaptation ever at $335 million.

So it is interesting that Mechner has turned his attention to digital platforms, including the iPhone, as the medium of the future. The reason he is doing so is creative freedom.

“We had time to experiment with new approaches,” he said in an interview with GamesBeat. “No pressure. We did more than make the game again. We rebuilt it completely, with brand-new combat mechanics.”

The original game was a karate-fighting title with a love story that Mechner first created for the Apple II as student at Yale University more than 30 years ago. It was a best-seller in 1984, selling more than 500,000 units. It influenced a generation of gamers with its rotoscoped animation and cinematic cutscenes. And it sold so well that Mechner was able to move on to his signature game, Prince of Persia. More than 17 million Prince of Persia games have been sold to date.

With his new firm Liquid Entertainment, Mechner led a team of 12 people this time and says he loved to immerse himself in the daily work with the whole team.

“It was refreshing where it was small enough where I got to talk with every member of the team every day,” Mechner said. “We wanted it small because at its heart, we wanted Karateka to be a small game that you could play in one session.”

And they could proceed through a period of experimentation over the course of a year, without the pressure of a publisher breathing down their necks. Mechner funded the game with friends and family, including an investment from screenwriter John August. They made use of graphics, sound, music, and environmental effects that could make a mobile and digital game as immersive as a $60 retail game.

The new title is a rhythm-based story fighter. That means that you match the rhythm of your opponent’s attacks and eventually earn your counterattack.

“Anyone can grasp it, but it is difficult to master,” Mechner said.

It has cinematic cutscenes and a series of escalating karate battles. It has three playable characters who seek to free the princess Mariko from her evil captor, the warlord Akuma. The first character is her True Love, the second is a Monk, and the third is a Brute. The full game lasts about 40 minutes. If you die, then the next character takes your place. Mariko is happy to be rescued, but she wants to be rescued most of all by her True Love. So you have to get good enough to make it through the first time without dying.

That makes Karateka highly replayable, Mechner said. And it also means the rotating characters means that the player stays immersed in the game in the transition from one life to the next.

“The game never pulls you out of the story the way a respawn does,” Mechner said.

Composer Christopher Tin, who won a Grammy award for his “Baba Yetu” song for Civilization IV, created the musical score. Made with authentic Japanese instruments, the music changes in real time based on how much action is happening and who is winning. Mechner said, “You can tell what is happening just by listening to the music.”

Jeff Matsuda, animator on the celebrated Batman: The Animated Series, created the art.

“On the first game, the team size was me, unless you count my dad, who made the music,” Mechner said.

Mechner said he hopes the game will appeal to the original fans as well as younger players too. The game available today on Xbox Live Arcade (published by D3 Publisher) for 800 Microsoft points. It will be out on PSN, Steam, and iOS in November for $9.99.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Taking the blood out of a game does not make it less violent. Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise might fool you into thinking otherwise, but make no mistake: Underneath all that fluff is a sadistic brown bear with severe mental problems and an enthusiastic narrator who’s even more psychotic than Naughty is. You won’t be splashing blood all over the screen, but Panic in Paradise (for Xbox 360 and PlayStation Network) is still all about the killing … and killing … and killing. And parties.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Lots of ways to die
Developer Behaviour Interactive (formerly Artificial Mind and Movement, which created the original Naughty Bear in 2010) has peppered Paradise Island with loads of ordinary objects turned torture devices. Naughty can grab an enemy bear and impale him on cacti, burn him in a campfire, or throw him in a dumpster. Each level challenges players to kill in a new way. These deaths are much more gruesome and include murdering a veteran cop with his own Magnum, pressing the local cook into an edible confection, and even giving Chubby the bear the last liposuction treatment he’ll ever need.

Since you’re constantly killing, you’ll be on the lookout for even more ways to make your enemies pay. And of course, the sweetest revenge of all is to drive them insane … and make them kill themselves.

The life of the party
The bears in Panic in Paradise love to party, and you have to admire their spirit: They act like true party animals, peeing in secluded spots and puking behind dumpsters. When they’re not wandering around, they’re flipping burgers on a grill, chatting with the other bears, and boogieing on the dance floor. These bears have a lot of personality — it’s a shame Naughty wants to tear them to shreds.

They wear tons of great costumes, too, giving you a good excuse to take them into the woods and steal their clothing, hairdo or mustache, and accessories. Grab someone recognizable and you can mingle with the crowds without scaring them (hearts appear above the heads of those who think you’re their friend) … at least until you start massacring everyone. The game gets creative with how you can use these disguises, too, often requiring you to take out a target while masquerading as someone else — including wearing their face as a mask.

Things to break, people to kill
For a downloadable action-adventure game, Panic in Paradise packs in a good amount to do (expect around 15 hours or more, depending on how much of a completionist you are). You can finish side challenges for extra points, master different equipment (for your head, face, body, arms, and legs) to gain more experience, unlock timed doors with a secret key, and mug bears for new outfits and weapons.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

Dead on arrival
Panic in Paradise is troubled from the start. It not only rushes the opening scene (just saying “Not again!” is not enough of an exposition), but it also bombards players with wordy tutorials before they even have a chance to really play. I sat through explanations about enemy punishment, mission objectives, item-based experience, the in-game shop (which actually sells you the content you’ve unlocked), stat and progress screens, and a recap of Naughty’s trip to the island and his first target — all before I could beat the first level. And every time I died, I had to listen to those introductions all over again until I got a few levels in.

You’ve been here before. …
It doesn’t take long for the game to establish itself as a repetitive exercise: As cool as the areas are — with their garden gnomes and a cantina blasting Star Wars music (complete with bearified versions of Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Greedo) — you’ll be playing the same five or six the entire time, only with different challenges and themes. And sometimes those aren’t even different. I fed two botanists to their giant, demonic plants, for instance, and turned friends on each other more than once.

The game tries to pass off these levels as new by giving them different names, but they’re the same handful.

Teddy tedium
At its best, Panic in Paradise is mindless killing of living, feeling stuffed animals. At its worst, it’s an exercise in frustration. The game is set up much like Hitman: You assassinate these bears in a certain way, and it doesn’t take much for enemies (especially those with guns or in a group) to eliminate you as a threat.

That makes for a laborious process. You spend much of your time keeping to the woods and sneaking around, taking out bears one by one, finding a disguise, or creating mass chaos. You think it would be easy to complete an objective, considering you’re invisible to enemies when you’re hiding in any of the forest patches scattered around a level — even if they saw you seconds before. Regardless of how clever and calculating you are, botching your objective is a common occurrence. From there, you can either continue your murder spree and collect as many coins as possible — and risk taking a few too many blows — before exiting and banking your goods, or you can restart the level. The first option makes more sense, since you need as much money as you can get your paws on, but it’s also what causes missions to last so long.

The obscurity of some objectives only makes things worse. Sometimes you won’t have a clue how to progress, and other times, the game makes it unnecessarily difficult. On the levels where you have to kill a bear with his own weapon, you’ll need to unlock it first. That means you have to kill the bear, steal his weapon, kill at least one other enemy with it, leave the area to save your earnings, buy the weapon in the shop (for a price you might not be able to afford right away), and then return with it equipped so you can kill the target properly.

Other times, you’ll enter a level thinking you’re prepared to meet its specifications, only to find out that you should be naked or you need to wear a certain item. These are easily avoidable problems, but instead the game force players to handle them in a roundabout way.

Glitchy the Bear
I also encountered a number of glitches during my playthrough: loading screen freezes (at least three times), A.I. that talked to no one, bodies that wouldn’t vanish from the fire (rendering it unusable for destroying party invitations), a radar map that went haywire, and more.

CONCLUSION

Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise is a weak attempt to make its homicidal bear more interesting after the fairly negative reception of the first game. It’s hard to feel compelled to kill bears for sport when the narrator is a little too convinced that murder and violence is the answer and that the other bears deserve what’s coming. It’s not like Assassin’s Creed or any other game where combat is your chief concern — this is just mindless brutality with nothing else at its core.

To top it off, the game pastes the same levels together, gives them a new name and objective, and calls it “content.” But all you’re doing is killing, breaking stuff for money, and dressing in fancy clothes.

Sorry, the other bears are so much cooler than you are.

Score: 40/100

Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise was released for the PlayStation Network on October 9 and Xbox Live Arcade on October 10. The publisher provided GamesBeat with an XBLA code of the game for the purpose of this review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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A console maker may be starting to understand digital releases after all. Sony announced plans this week to offer downloadable games on the same day as retail — and at a lower price — with the PSN Day 1 Digital service.

Sony doesn’t have a great history when it comes to selling digital versions of retail games. Anyone who owned a PSP Go felt that heartache. Games were often released late or not at all, and that upset many of the fans who owned the handheld. It’s not clear whether this was a result of Sony not being aggressive enough with third parties or if the company simply didn’t care. That may be changing.

Offering games digitally on the day of release may open a few doors for Sony. The discount could mean a rise in PSN game sales and PlayStation Plus subscribers (which is what they want). However, retailers may not take kindly to the idea of Sony undercutting their sales, and they will have to find their own ways to offer the more appealing product. It’s either that or just be happy selling PSN cards.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter believes that publishers will like the service because it means more options for consumers, which is “always a good thing.” Retailers will hate it, he says, because “more options for consumers is bad for retail if one of the options is to avoid retail.

“Sony can’t really help itself more with the publishers, as they all like Sony a lot. I think that this runs some risk of alienating retail,” says Pachter, adding that retailers may retaliate by cutting back on in-store advertising. “They might find retail uncooperative with point-of-sale display and promotion if the download business becomes a meaningful part of the overall sales.”

I asked Pachter if he thinks Sony’s push for digital distribution could lead to timed exclusives or content, but he says, “I don’t see how this gets Sony any more exclusive content as it’s not really that leveraging for retailers.”

When asked whether such a service will earn Sony more PlayStation Plus customers, Pachter said, “I agree that the value proposition of PlayStation Plus is enhanced by the discounts, but I don’t see how … people who are not yet [subscribers] will suddenly join just because full game downloads are available.”

That said, it’s important to note that all of the announced releases, which are only a fraction of what will be available in October, arrive on a Tuesday. That’s the usual PSN update day. We’ve contacted Sony to ask whether users will have to wait until a regularly scheduled time to begin their download. If that’s the case, that aspect won’t be very different from before.

Only a handful of games are available at the lower-than-retail price, and customers must subscribe to PlayStation Plus ($50 per year) and preorder the game to receive the discount. Other games will be available at a 10 percent discount to Plus members for the first week of release.

Previously, those who wanted to buy a game on PSN had to wait until the evening of a game’s release for Sony’s scheduled online store update. Not only were those consumers paying retail price, but they were waiting for the update and the extra download and install times, which could take hours. Because factors such as shipping, packaging expenses, and physical shelf space were out of the equation, consumers didn’t see the logic in purchasing a digital copy at full price when they could have the actual disc in a plastic box.

Meanwhile, rival console makers like Microsoft and Nintendo may take a cue from Sony in the future and offer appealing deals for customers going the download route. Microsoft already offers digital downloads of some games on the Xbox 360’s online store, but Nintendo only began selling downloadable versions of retail games this year.

Pachter thinks that both rivals will respond, but they will be more careful about it. “My view is that Microsoft is going to move very slowly here, and Nintendo even more slowly. The risk of backlash from retail is great, and I think both companies will wait to see the response. Sony offered Mass Effect 3 as a download day/date with the packaged game release, and Microsoft did not.”

The great PSN crash of 2011, in which the service went completely down from April 29 through May 14, could also affect gamers’ adoption of Day 1 digital. Some gamers forever lost trust in Sony’s capability to keep systems secure, but hacks happen. If anything, hacks of this magnitude are less of an issue than before, because we can all be sure that Sony now makes it a top priority to ensure that security on PlayStation Network is tighter than ever . Not everyone sees it that way, and many PlayStation owners will choose to stick to physical media for fear of sharing credit card information with an online service.

Sony recently announced a newer, ultraslim PlayStation 3. Perhaps in the hope of boosting digital sales, the company has upped the base model’s hard drive to 250GB and the higher-end SKU to 500GB.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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October is the greatest. Autumnal leaves cover the ground, it’s a great sports month, and Sony gives you $20.

Well, OK, that last one doesn’t happen every year, but the consumer-electronics company is giving $20 back to everyone who spends at least $100 on their PlayStation Network digital store next month.

Unless you had an unhealthy habit of purchasing $200 worth of Rock Band downloadable content every month, spending more than a Benjamin Franklin on PSN in a single 30-day period used to be kind of difficult. Serendipitously, this promotion coincides with the service’s new Day-1 Digital program.

A few days back Sony announced that it is selling new games on PSN on the day and date of their retail availability. Customers can purchase titles like Assassin’s Creed III, Resident Evil 6, and Dishonored from the comfort of their couch and without a delay. Pretty much any two of those releases will push players over the $100 threshold — then bang: $20.

Just remember, only October purchases count towards this promotion.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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GamesBeat is giving away a signed copy of The Art of Journey, a book highlighting the visual wonders of PlayStation Network title Journey. Interested in winning our unsealed edition signed by Art Director Matt Nava and Game Director Jenova Chen from thatgamecompany? Then enter the giveaway by doing one of the following:

1. Leave a comment below stating your favorite thing about Journey.
2. Tweet the following message: Follow @GamesBeat and RT this for a chance to win The Art of Journey. Rules: http://wp.me/p1re2-2enn #GamesBeatGiveaways

You can enter twice: once in the comments and once via Twitter. Read these quick rules before entering:

• To enter via Twitter, you must follow @GamesBeat.
• This contest is limited to the continental U.S.
• Feel free to share on Twitter as often you like, but please only comment once. Duplicate entries on Twitter will only count as one vote.
• Our winner must supply his or her full name and mailing address (duh).
• The contest starts right now and ends in exactly one week (September 24, 9:59am PST).
• Void where prohibited.

You can read more about The Art of Journey here. The winner will receive The Art of Journey book signed by Matt Nava and Jenova Chen and a download code for the Journey original soundtrack.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Journey, the best-selling Playstation Network title, is considered one of the most artistic games released this year. It’s the tale of a wandering vagabond traversing a magnificent desert and, through a unique multiplayer system, meeting with one other player at a time to harrow through the massive levels hand-in-hand. Sony is commemorating exactly that with an art book of Journey, and the company held an event in Los Angeles to show off the visuals from the game as well as the artists behind it. I had a chance to attend and see the art that helped create the game, its unique character and landscape, and the public reaction to it.

Oh, and we’ll also be giving away a signed copy of The Art of Journey, which you can read more about below.

The event, which highlighted the visual design of Journey from the artwork of Matt Nava, Art Director at thatgamecompany, featured dozens of different pieces, including screenshots, pre-game renders, drawings, and even live paintings courtesy of BlueCanvas, which co-hosted the event. You can see pictures from the event in the gallery below, which includes much of the artwork that is in the The Art of Journey book. The spectacle was completely open to the public in the heart of downtown, and anyone over 21 could come in and see the gallery or even play the game on one of three stations. Many patrons clearly demonstrated that they had no idea what the game was — some likely didn’t know what a Playstation 3 was — but even then, viewers exhibited a certain fascination with the sparkling desert, the strange armless character that always seemed to stare into the distance, and the odd portraits of creatures unknown.

The gallery was a success. Nava and Jenova were busy signing copies of The Art of Journey most of the night, and a constant stream of newcomers shuffled in to see what was happening or to purchase the first copies of the art book. You can learn more about the creation of the book in the video below.

The Art of Journey will release later this month for $60 through BlueCanvas and other retailers, but the publisher has not set a hard release date yet. The book includes over 150 pages of art from the game, most of which aren’t screenshots, as well as a number of 3D augmented-reality simulations through a free smartphone app. Some pictures of those in action are in the gallery below. Finally, every copy of The Art of Journey includes a free download of the Journey soundtrack through the Playstation Network.

Interested in winning a copy of The Art of Journey, signed by Art Director Matt Nava and Game Director Jenova Chen? Click here to learn more!

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Thunder Wolves has no time for drama or pathos. As the debut trailer makes abundantly clear, Ubisoft’s upcoming shooter is mainly looking to mix its distinct sense of humor in with a healthy amount of explosions.

Announced today for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and PC, the helicopter shooter wastes no time trotting out old standbys like, “Get to the ‘choppa!” But it’s fairly extensive list of features suggests that it may have some appeal beyond action diehards.

Among the promised features are a large range of offensive and defensive weapons, multiple mission types, and two-player co-op. Also included are recon, support, and attack-type helicopters, with eight machines available in all.

Hungary-based studio Most Wanted, which is mainly known for its tower-defense title Defenders of Ardania, is developing Thunder Wolves. Up until this point, it has mostly stuck with strategy and puzzle games. The Nintendo DS title B Team: Metal Cartoon Squad is one of the company’s few pure action titles.

Most Wanted’s game joins a selection of Ubisoft titles that includes a new Call of Juarez and Spartacus Legends (which Dean previews here), all of which look to push the traditional bounds of digital platforms with advanced 3D graphics and a substantial number of features. All three are slated for release in Q1 2013.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The third installment in Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead series lands on PlayStation Network today and PC, Mac, and Xbox Live Marketplace tomorrow.

Those looking to buy the episode on the App Store will have to wait a little longer. But this week, players can purchase Walking Dead: The Game for $4.99, which includes the first episode, A New Day. Buyers also have the option to preorder parts two through five as an in-app purchase for $14.99. Telltale will release those on a rolling basis.

The new Episode 3 — Long Road Ahead will deliver the most heartbreak so far, senior director of marketing Richard Iggo told GamesBeat earlier this month.

A New Day isn’t so easily forgotten, though. Telltale Games announced today that the debut release is a nominee for “Best Downloadable” in this year’s Golden Joystick Awards. The game is contending with the likes of Journey, Skullgirls, and Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. Voting ends October 22.

Last year, Minecraft won “Best Downloadable,” with Limbo and Dead Nation following close behind.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Supercross and motocross legend Jeremy McGrath has pledged to donate “his profits” from Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad, a downloadable racing game developed by 2XL Games and released on June 27 for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

The act of charity comes after McGrath’s wife (who survived her battle with breast cancer two years ago) found a marrow donor to help treat her recent Leukemia diagnosis thanks to the efforts of the Be The Match Foundation. McGrath’s donations will go directly to bethematch.org.

“First, thank you again to everyone who has helped, donated, gotten tested and sent well-wishes to our family,” McGrath said in a public statement. “Your responses to my initial call to action have been incredible and the support and love just seems to continue to pour in. The fact that Kim found a match is really great news for us, but it is our hope that people will still get tested and join the Be the Match Registry. I would also ask that companies that have charitable donation programs and those in the position to do something, please think about making a donation to Be The Match at any time throughout the year.  This organization provides a service that literally saves lives every day of the year … it’s pretty amazing.”

A trailer for the game is below:

Top image via Wikipedia

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Dyad is fast. Really, really fast. The speed at which it zips along initially reminds me of the exhilaration I’d felt back in 1995, when I fired up PlayStation classic Wipeout for the first time.

Then Dyad gets faster.

This PlayStation 3-exclusive downloadable title is about more than just speed. Wearing its gaming influences proudly on its sleeve, Dyad draws inspiration from sources such as the cult classic Dreamcast shooter Rez and Atari’s 1981 arcade hit Tempest, artfully transcending these roots to create something that is both fresh and blissfully addictive.

Developed by Shawn McGrath (Chain3, iOS) , Dyad is best described as a merging of the racing, puzzle, and shoot-’em-up genres, presented in a stunning psychedelic visual style and accompanied by an off-beat electronica soundtrack (from composer David Kanaga). Controlled using only the left analog stick and two buttons, Dyad puts spins on this simple control scheme to mix up gamestyles across its 26 tunnel-like main levels.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

It looks and sounds amazing
Dyad initially presents a fairly basic and clean menu system, and the first few levels of the game are similarly minimalistic. Pretty soon, the combination of colors, speed, and surrounding psychedelia assaulting your eyeballs becomes staggering. The sense of velocity the game creates is incredible, and I think I played a fair few levels without actually pausing to blink, let alone look away.

While Dyad is not a music game per se, the soundtrack is so intrinsically linked to the gameplay and visuals that the three things almost become one. Each level has sound to match its design, and this is further tweaked by your performance, as different actions and interactions subtly alter what you are hearing. The sound really comes into its own on two levels that limit lifeforce; traveling becomes a kind of survival horror experience. As the situation looks more and more bleak, the soundtrack builds to a tremendous crescendo, eventually leaving you with a deafening cacophony of sound to accompany your inevitable demise.

The remix versions of the levels, which become available once you complete the main challenges, allow for further tweaking of the visual and audio properties of Dyad, along with a relaxing of the rules. Turning off collision, turning up visual distortions, and matching sound to speed create something that you can play for relaxation (or to help bend your mind, if you’re inclined that way).

Gradual layering of gameplay
With its basic one-stick, two-button control system, Dyad appears to be a simple tunnel shooter, but it slowly morphs and transforms as it progresses, layering in gameplay mechanics that shift the focus of each level so that every new run feels like a fresh challenge.

It’s testament to Dyad’s constantly and subtly changing rules and mechanics that the game still throws new elements at you on level 22 of 26. It always introduces new features in a controlled manner though, so that the player feels like they’re evolving along with the game, rather than being thrown an unfair and unwelcome curveball every five minutes.

Trophies that are a real challenge
Dyad is not one of those games that gives you a trophy “ding” for simply loading up the title screen. Instead, each level has a separate trophy run that unlocks only after successfully completing the main challenge. Anyone who gains the platinum trophy, which requires you to overcome each individual trophy level, will hold it up as a badge of honor for a long time.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

It’s not all that long
Dyad is a gripping and singular experience, something to share just between you, your console, and your TV. Sitting down to play the first level, I didn’t leave my seat until I had completed the game. While this indicates what an all-encompassing draw the game had over me, I was only sat down for three hours, which was long enough to clear all the challenges and pick up my first couple of trophies.

Dyad’s real depth, though, is not in the mere completion of the initial challenges but in the quest for perfection, which is an element missing from a number of current games. The trophy list is a daunting one, and many could take hours of practice before you obtain them. A decent number of friends playing Dyad will also foster some healthy competition on the scoreboards

Dyad is a tease
There were times playing Dyad when I thought I was doing very well. Heck, I even managed to grab the top slot on one the global leaderboards (for fastest time, at 97.75 meters per second). Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite as good as I thought, as the game well knew. Despite offering positive appraisal of my achievements by giving me 2- and 3-star successes on the main levels, Dyad was just building me up for a fall. As I attempted and failed the trophy challenges, I was led to think might be within my abilities. What a tease.

CONCLUSION

Few console games in recent years are as special as Dyad. It can captivate with its beautiful synthesis of visuals and audio while delivering a gameplay experience that grabs hold of you and simply won’t let go. Drawing on decades of iconic gaming influences, Dyad takes some classic ideas and uses them to produce something truly original, something that deserves to be played and loved for years to come.

Score 87/100

Dyad comes out Tuesday for the PlayStation 3, via the PlayStation Network Store download service. The publisher provided a download code for this review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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“At a place like this, you’re hearing the [conventional wisdom] right now,” said Blow, the indie-darling creator of puzzle-platformer Braid during a panel about the present and future of independently developed games at today’s GamesBeat in San Francisco. “If something seems like a good idea, if that’s the theme of the conference, then that’s not what you do. Because if you do that, you’re playing the odds that your game is the one word game that breaks out from 30 crappy word games.”

With this console generation grinding to a close and buzzwords like “mobile” and “social” gaming flying around thick and fast, Blow and SpyParty developer Chris Hecker in particular stood firm in the need to create high-quality content over following current trends.

It was a common thread in a discussion that saw Blow, Hecker, Nicalis’ Tyrone Rodgriguez, and Super Meat Boy’s Tommy Refenes alternately rail against the failure of platforms to properly promote smaller titles, praise those who they believe are getting it right, and expound on the current state of indie development.

Among the platforms the group believes is “getting it right” is Valve’s digital download service, Steam. It received praise for promoting smaller titles and making it easy for indie developers to turn a profit.

“It can be a little harder to get on Steam. But once you’re on there, it’s pretty easy to make $50,000 or $75,000 in a weekend sale, and you do that a couple times a year,” Blow said.

Hecker was effusive in his praise for what he sees as a “golden age” in which “triple-A indie games” are rewarded with strong sales on platforms like Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, and PlayStation Network. He used Magicka as an example — a little-known action-adventure game developed by eight Swedish students that managed to sell 200,000 copies in its first two weeks on Steam: “If you make a game that’s high quality, you’re totally set.”

Other platforms took the brunt of the criticism. While Hecker referred to Steam as a “healthy market for a certain kind of game” and included XBLA in his “golden age” statement, he was critical of Microsoft for “being more intent on having car ads than on featuring games that will make them money.”

Hecker was forceful throughout the panel in touting independent development as a new artform, wondering why Microsoft doesn’t do more to help the medium grow. “They have no interest in helping with that. They would rather chase what is popular now,” he said.

Blow had his own criticism for the certification processes of XBLA and PSN. “There’s a long list of rules that you have to follow. It doesn’t look that bad until you try to actually follow them,” he said, adding that they aren’t “testing your game for actual bugs, so you have to do that yourself.”

All four developers cut a wide swath through the industry as the panel went on. While Rodriguez praised Nintendo’s eShop for being a feature-driven system with much larger numbers, he was critical of WiiWare for requiring too many clicks to navigate and failing to highlight all but the latest games. Refenes criticized the PlayStation Vita, Sony’s most recent handheld, for not making it clear that it’s possible to download complete games and being afraid to “step into the new territory [of digital downloads] and take the plunge.”

Hecker and Blow were both harsh in their assessment of free-to-play games.

“Free-to-play is kind of a slum,” Blow said. When Hecker agreed that free-to-play “warps game design” by weaving incentives to buy items into the gameplay, Blow added, “It fundamentally shifts your relationship with the player, and it’s very easy for that to become ugly.”

Nevertheless, Blow said that he wants to do a free-to-play game at some point. However, it won’t have premium items like “hats.” He instead envisions a system in which players pay a dollar for a level to explore with a friend. According to Blow, “That’s a respectful way to treat players. Tweet this game to your friends is not a way to treat players.”

As the discussion ended , the panel examined ways in which to promote independent games to both the press and gamers at large. Blow was blunt: “You don’t want to try and expose [the press] if they aren’t going to care when they play it.”

Braid was a game that got a lot of press despite having a marketing budget of “zero dollars and zero cents” because “enough people that I sent the game to found it interesting…that did the work.”

The press and gamers are “starving for interesting content,” Hecker said. “If you give them something interesting to talk about, they will love it.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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UPDATE: Jenova Chen’s original comments below were in reference to the PlayStation Network, not to the PS3 platform as a whole. We left out that context and apologize for the oversight.

Jenova Chen, Thatgamecompany‘s lead designer for PlayStation 3′s Journey, sees a striking difference between the PS3 and its competitors. “Sony has a more artistic and adult-focused taste,” Chen said in an email conversation with GamesBeat, in reference to the PlayStation Network’s portfolio of digital software when compared to Xbox Live Arcade and WiiWare. “They care about how grown-ups feel toward their games.”

The top sellers on the respective platforms may support his claim. While plenty of adults surely enjoy Castle Crashers and Trials Evolution (two best-selling Xbox Live Arcade games), the cerebral crowd hasn’t rallied around those like they have with Journey (PlayStation Network’s fastest selling title).

GamesBeat contacted Microsoft and Nintendo to see if either company wished to respond, but both declined. Sony, however, was very willing to agree with Chen’s assessment.

“Our primary PSN audience is indeed more adult, and many of our best-selling titles appeal to this demographic,” senior director of PlayStation digital platforms Jack Buser told GamesBeat. “Many PlayStation and PSN games have themes that require a user to think and feel about a deep, immersive gameplay experience, and we see that exemplified in the success of titles like Flower, Journey, and Heavy Rain. Titles like these can only be found on PlayStation, and our users enjoy the emotional and thematic sophistication of their games, especially with our digital offerings.”

Chen takes it one step further. “The player who owns a PlayStation 3 [and is playing PSN titles] is more likely to be interested in artistic games compared to Wii and Xbox 360,” the designer wrote.

Sony won’t release its PSN sales numbers, so it’s difficult to verify Chen and Buser’s claims. The success of the digital service’s more cultured products could be coincidence. The most artistic offerings may simultaneously be the most well-made, and consumers are drawn to the quality rather than any perceived artiness.

But we do have to take issue with the claim that Sony somehow cares more about adults than the other hardware manufacturers. Titles like I Am Alive and Alan Wake’s American Nightmare are recent releases that serve a mature audience on the Xbox 360. They may not fit Jenova Chen’s definition of “artistic,” but not everything will.

Besides, some of us prefer the beautiful audio art that opens up each game of Trials Evolution.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The maintenance will last approximately 13 hours, ending around 7 p.m. Pacific time on Monday. During that time, players will not be able to access their accounts or play online. They also won’t be able to shop on the PlayStation Store or visit PlayStation Home, said Matthew Harper, a member of the newly formed digital platforms community management team at Sony.

“Our mission is to keep you better informed about everything that is going on in the wide world of the PlayStation Network, to make your voice heard within the company, and to ensure that you, the gamer, are at the heart of every development across PSN,” Harper wrote. “Together, we will help guide the future of this platform.”

That’s a pretty long time for the service to be down, but it’s not unusual. Sony fans pay a lot more attention to these routine announcements ever since Sony had a six-week outage last year in the wake of a hacker attack that compromised thousands of accounts. Sony said it will post updates on its blog and the PlayStation Twitter account.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Qore Host Veronica Belmont

Remember Qore? Yeah, most of us probably don’t. It’s a digital magazine by Sony in conjunction with Future Publishing U.S. that’s distributed exclusively on the PlayStation 3 (PS3) through PlayStation Network (PSN). The company is ending Qore’s four-year run in April and killing it off.

“With this April episode, Qore concludes its run on the PlayStation Network,” the company announced. “Our thanks to all involved in the creation and production of Qore and to the many fans who regularly watched each month.”

Qore was a paid service that allowed PS3 owners to watch preview videos of upcoming games, access demos, and more. It launched on June 6, 2008.

Sony did not go into detail about the reasoning behind the shutdown of the magazine, but recent restructuring at Future Publishing U.S. may have affected the online-only publication. On top of that, Sony’s is in the midst of belt-tightening, too, and it is expected to lay off 10,000 employees to help stave off losses, which amounted to $6 billion in the most recent fiscal year.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

[via GameIndustry.biz]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Sorry weekend gamers. Sony’s PlayStation Network will be down today starting at noon PT for scheduled maintenance and will last until approximately 2 a.m. PT on Monday, according to a Sony announcement.

“Unlike typical maintenance events, consumers who are already signed-in to PSN will be signed-out, and consumers will be unable to sign in for the duration of the maintenance window,” Sony wrote on the official PlayStation Blog. “During this time, users won’t be able to access the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Home, Account Management or play online. PSN enabled websites will not be able to service users, including this one.”

Sony had originally planned the downtime for last Thursday but postponed it to today for some reason. Frustratingly, Sony did not detail what exactly it was hoping to accomplish during the maintenance period.

In light of the recent PlayStation Vita launch, this downtime does not look good. I certainly would be upset if I wanted to spend the weekend playing matches on a new console and they took it down on a Sunday. Many users on the PlayStation Blog responded unfavorably to choosing daytime weekend hours instead of, say, overnight on a weekday. A few choice selections from the blog:

“That is an awful time period,” wrote user jayrockslife. “Why not start at midnight instead of noon? Less people are online overnight than during the evening.”

“Looks like the Killzone 3 double xp weekend just got a lot shorter,” wrote user LongbowAVRiL.

“You do realize that your customers are actual, you know…people, right?” wrote user Sponge-worthy. “No explanation as to what this maintenance will achieve, how it will benefit the community, nor why this MUST happen during the weekend.”

Let us know in the comments below if you’re agitated with Sony too.

Construction workers on motherboard: Amy Walters/Shutterstock

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The new multiplayer maps, Liberation and Piazza, are the first of 20 DLC drops scheduled during Call of Duty’s 9-month-long Content Season. However, due to an exclusivity deal with Microsoft, PS3 owners have been left waiting for an entire month to access the content, even if they’ve paid for an Elite Premium membership.

Many CoD fans have voiced their displeasure over the situation on the game’s official community site. Some say the delay isn’t fair, while others say paying for Elite and not getting promised DLC at the same time as Xbox users is a scam. One member called Creeker writes, “I play on PlayStation and I paid just as much for my Elite as anyone on Xbox so I don’t see why they should get their map packs a month before I do.”

Patrickrh7 adds, “What I don’t get is, why the eff did you guys sell this Elite with the promise of not waiting so long for new content! When PS3 users are pretty much now waiting almost four months for two maps that we already know all about!!! This Elite package is a joke!!!“

Community site member D3TON1C sums it up with a simple, “this is bull ****!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -_- [sic]“

The latest Call of Duty Elite content drop, a multiplayer map called Overwatch, is scheduled to land on the PlayStation Network on March 29.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Super Stardust HD saved the PlayStation Network at a time when Sony’s downloadable lineup was severely lacking. The dual-stick shooter gave Xbox Live Arcade’s beloved Geometry Wars a run for its money and managed to bring some fresh elements to basic score-driven gameplay that has been at the epicenter of arcade games for decades.

Super Stardust Delta doesn’t make any leaps or bounds over its predecessors, but it does inject a few interesting twists and turns. For the most part, everything is business as usual: You pilot a ship on the atmospheric grid of a relatively tiny planet (what is this–a planet for ants?!) and shoot everything you see. Screenfuls of asteroids and alien enemies will drop down every few seconds, requiring you to efficiently swap between your ice- and fire-based weapons while navigating the treacherous onslaught of moving obstacles.

Typically you’d be equipped with a special bomb attack in these types of games — particularly useful for those emergencies where you’re backed into a corner — but Delta ups the ante with two new super weapons: a blackhole (which sucks all enemies and asteroids into a swirling vortex of destruction) and a 360-degree homing-missile barrage (somewhat reminiscent of the same attack in Treasure’s Bangai-O). Your use of these special weapons is very limited, but they do add some nice visual and strategic variety to the already excellent Super Stardust formula.

By default, Delta requires the use of various Vita hardware gimmicks (touchscreen, accelerometer, rear touch pad, etc.) to deploy the super weapons, but you can thankfully reroute them all to the directional pad or face buttons. Or purists can disable the new features and Vita-exclusive controls altogether during Arcade mode. The game is so frantic to begin with that trying to rub your screen or shake your Vita when facing impending annihilation from all directions turns out to be more trouble than it’s worth. Plus, if you’re like me, you rest your fingers on the back of the Vita (this is also known as “holding”), but with the rear touch pad activated, this will cause you to unintentionally launch a black hole, usually when there’s no one even around to get sucked into it.

To further “showcase” the Vita’s various annoying tricks, you unlock bonus modes each time you complete a planet in Arcade mode. If you were wondering just how much the Vita can imitate a bunch of crappy iPhone games, look no further than the Crush!, Disc Slide, and Orbit Bomber minigames. Two of the more interesting ones, however, transcend mere tech demo status: Rock & Roll, where you tilt the Vita to steer an asteroid toward green cores while avoiding hazards (think Marble Blast Ultra), and Trucker, where your ship must latch onto asteroids with a tractor beam and use momentum to swing around and destroy targets for points. These minigames aren’t going to replace the main attraction, but at least two of the five are worth getting sidetracked when you’re looking to spice things up.

Visually, Delta’s dated PSN aesthetics aren’t particularly sharp, but the effects are still satisfyingly flashy, with non-stop explosions, lasers, and asteroid chunks flying everywhere. The soundtrack in the original Super Stardust really stood out for me, and the same can be said of Delta. The thrilling techno tunes are as frenetic as the gameplay, effectively fueling the entire experience and adding several whole levels of immersion in a way that few soundtracks do.

Conclusion
Fans of Super Stardust should know what to expect by now. Super Stardust Delta does not reinvent the genre, but it does offer a few new tricks on top of an already immensely enjoyable package, all for an extremely reasonable price. If you own a Vita, there’s no reason not to add this stimulating twin-stick shooter to your collection. Score: 80/100

Super Stardust Delta was released for the PlayStation Vita on February 15, 2012. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Mechner’s Prince of Persia game series has sold more than 17 million units, accounting for well over $500 million. In 2010, he joined with Jerry Bruckheimer to adapt his own work for a Disney film, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The film was the highest-grossing video-game-based movie to date with more than $335 million at the box office.

Mechner created Karateka in 1984 on the Apple II computer. He made the game while attending Yale University and won kudos for the title’s realistic animations. The game sold more than 500,000 units, which is outstanding for the early days of video games.

“It is amazing to me how many people still remember Karateka and talk about it after all these years,” Mechner said in an email. “Somehow, the 1980s seem to be in the air again. People ask me about Karateka on my website all the time, and I keep seeing videos and retrospectives of the original game posted online. I was astonished when I was in Moscow at a press conference for the Prince of Persia movie opening in 2010, and Russian journalists asked questions about Karateka.”

But Mechner never revisited the property for a remake until now.

“Strangely, I think that’s part of its appeal,” he said. “People’s childhood memories of it have remained pure. It’s like it’s been in a time capsule.”

Broderbund published the title, which got its name from the Japanese word for a practitioner of karate. In the game, the evil warlord Akuma has kidnapped the lovely Princess Mariko, and the player must defeat Akuma and his karate-trained guards to rescue the princess. It’s not a brawling or fighting game like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. It’s more like a cinematic, story-driven game with a love story and a fighting gameplay mechanic.

“Making the original Karateka was a labor of love,” said Mechner, who lives in Los Angeles. “To have so many people embrace it and share their stories of playing it has been really rewarding. I am always surprised to hear how much impact that game had. In remaking Karateka, I want to honor the original game with a compact, pick-up-and-play game that is fluid, atmospheric, and beautiful.”

The return to games comes after a long hiatus. Mechner also spent time in recent years writing graphic novels such as Solomon’s Thieves, and Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm. He also wrote and directed a documentary, Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles story. For the first time since Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003), Mechner will take an active day-to-day role in making a video game as creative director of Karateka.

Asked why he’s going back into games, he said, “Whether I’m doing a game, movie, or graphic novel, my goal is to create a world in which a story and characters come alive. I love working in all those media, each has its own special strengths, and I’d hate to give any of them up. I’m working as hard as ever as a screenwriter, but when I thought about bringing back Karateka, I felt very strongly that it should be a game. And that now was the time.”

Mechner said he is working with a small team and has a very hands-on role as creative director. He talked to publishers early on, but decided that it made sense to make the game independently as a modestly budgeted downloadable game. Karateka will debut for the PlayStation Network (The Sony Entertainment Network) and Xbox Live Arcade in 2012. Funding came via angel investment.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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But back to the family’s arcade debut, which just made a comeback on Xbox Live today. Now, there are great arcade games — Street Fighter II would be an example. Those are the kind that stand the test of time, regardless of any personal attachment we have to them. Then there’s what we might call great bowling-alley games. The Simpsons is one of those.

In 1989, Konami created a money-sucking black hole with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a pioneering four-player side-scrolling beat-’em-up that is probably the greatest bowling-alley game of all time. Is it a good game? From a modern perspective on design, no. It’s a shiny cartoon skin wrapped around a repetitive button-masher designed to rapidly separate 10-year-olds from their quarters. But if you were 10 years old, hanging out at the local bowling alley with a pocket full of quarters? Gamers of a certain age remember how much fun they had.

The Simpsons followed a couple of years later, serving up the same kind of gameplay with a heavy Matt Groening makeover. It is, once again, not a very good game, in the sense that it is not fair, balanced, or especially varied as far as what kind of challenges it throws at the player. Homer, Lisa, Bart, and Marge start out on the left, they walk to the right, and they hit whatever shows up along the way. Every so often a boss appears and does three or four lives worth of inescapable damage. No matter how skilled at twitch gaming you might be, the action is tuned so that it’s impossible to clear the game without spending a ton of credits (which is to say money, if you were playing in the bowling alley instead of on Live).

So what makes it worth playing? Well, personality goes a long way. Like so many Konami side-scrollers from the late ’80s and into the ’90s, this is a clinic in old-school pixel artwork and animation. It does justice to the signature Simpsons style and then some, backed up by sharp sound effects and voice clips. Nearly every character from the Springfield canon gets to make an appearance somewhere – there are even a few goofy cameos from the heroes of Groening’s old Life In Hell comic strips, who stick their surly heads up to throw out extra health. The boss battles are nasty, brutish, and much too long, but they look awesome, culminating in a massive throwdown with towering cyborg Mr. Burns.

Simpsons followers will notice that not everyone is entirely in character. Mr. Smithers is the big head-scratcher, appearing as a vicious bomb-throwing villain instead of the nebbishy closet case he usually seems to be on TV. Maybe we can chalk it up to cross-Pacific miscommunication. (The Simpsons may symbolize the all-American family, but their video game was 100 percent made in Japan.) Or maybe we wouldn’t have the heart to hit him otherwise.

Even with all that personality, cruising through The Simpsons alone can get pretty dull. The screen isn’t crowded enough to hide the too-simple gameplay. But with four players hammering furiously on the buttons while cartoon madness bounces all over the screen, it’s hard not to get caught up in the chaos. This is exactly the effect Konami was going for – back in the arcades, it helped distract from the fact that we were dropping a quarter down the slot every 30 seconds.

Konami’s downloadable revival is a first-rate production with some nice extra features. It includes both the American and Japanese versions of the game – the Japanese ROM has extra pick-up weapons and some other subtle differences – plus a gallery of old promo and production art. Online multiplayer support is obviously a welcome addition too, although you really have to play with four human beings on the couch to get something close to the proper bowling-alley experience.

Conclusion
The Simpsons is a classic of its kind, but some players aren’t going to understand why. That’s perfectly fine. Not everyone playing games today was 10 years old in 1991. For retro arcade fans who want to relive happy memories, or Simpsons fans hoping for a flashback to the days when the TV show was a cultural phenomenon, this is a fine little nostalgia fix. The 10-dollar download is a pretty good deal, too – beating the arcade game used to cost at least that much. Score: 75/100

The Simpsons Arcade is now available on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This review is for the Xbox 360 version. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review. 

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Update: A spokeswoman for Sony has added clarification behind the change:

Back at IFA in September, we announced that we would be changing the name of Sony’s online entertainment services from Qriocity to Sony Entertainment Network. The reason for this change was so that there was more unity between the services and the multiple Sony devices where they can be accessed. The goal is for there to be one networked log-in for all Sony services. By changing the name ‘PlayStation Network account’ to ‘Sony Entertainment Network account’, helps clarify the unity between PSN and other Sony Entertainment Network services. Users can enjoy the same services continuously without being required to change their username and password. However, this change will not affect the naming of “PlayStation®Network accounts” when viewed on a PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) system.

She also explicitly stated that “PSN is not changing its name or going away.”

Original story: Sony has announced that the PlayStation Network will be joining the Sony Entertainment Network (SEN) on Tuesday.

It’s important to note that this change currently only applies to PSN “accounts,” and includes a number of Terms of Service updates. But it has caused rampant speculation: Is Sony planning to rebrand the PlayStation Network altogether? Is it hoping to distance itself from last year’s security breach and month-long network outage?

Newly appointed CEO Kaz Hirai has stated that there will be no PlayStation 4 reveal at this year’s E3. His careful wording has led others to question whether the next Sony console will even carry the PlayStation name.

The Sony Entertainment Network was revealed last year and wraps many major Sony services, including Video Unlimited (previously Video on Demand by Qriocity) and Music Unlimited, into a single platform.

We have contacted Sony for further details.

The email is included below:

On February 7, 2012, Sony Network Entertainment International LLC (“SNEI”) will update its Terms of Service and User Agreement and its Privacy Policy. As a part of this update, your “PlayStation®Network account” will be renamed a “Sony Entertainment Network account”

The first time you sign in to your Sony Entertainment Network account on or after February 7, 2012, you will be asked to agree to the new Terms of Service and User Agreement and Privacy Policy with SNEI if you wish to continue using your Sony Entertainment Network account. Please review all changes to the Terms of Service and User Agreement and Privacy Policy carefully before indicating your agreement.

In particular, these are some of the additions and changes we have to these agreements:

New terms for parents of minor, subaccount holders regarding the limitations of chat parental controls. Your reacceptance of the Terms of Service and User Agreement and Privacy Policy affirms your consent to the sharing of your child’s data that may occur if your child utilizes certain communication functionalities on PlayStation devices such as PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita systems.

New terms that explain the location-based services offered through the PlayStation Vita system. For parents of minor, subaccount holders your reacceptance of the Terms of Service and User Agreement and Privacy Policy affirms your consent to your subaccount holder’s user of these services on the PlayStation Vita system.

A description of our “What’s New” section, which provides topical information about our services and advertisements.
Information about pre-ordering content.

The name of your “PlayStation Network account” is changing to a “Sony Entertainment Network account.”

You may click here to review the changes to the Terms of Service and User Agreement and you may click here to review the changes to the Privacy Policy.

The rebranding of PlayStation Network accounts to Sony Entertainment Network accounts is a change in name only. Your username or password will not change, nor are we asking you to change them. On Sony Computer Entertainment’s PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita systems, this rebranding will occur in connection with software updates for these devices. (Note, this change will not be applied to the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) system at this time.)

This transition is based on Sony’s goal to enhance its unique digital entertainment offering. As a series of these activities Sony started last September, PlayStation Network will be aligned with “Sony Entertainment Network.” This helps us get closer to our goal of establishing a global comprehensive network platform of services across games, movies, music and more, all accessible from one convenient account.

The Sony Entertainment Network account also enables use of Sony’s compelling non-game services such as Music Unlimited, Video Unlimited and PlayMemories Online (currently called Personal Space) across a variety of network-connected devices. If you do not agree with the new Terms of Service and User Agreement or Privacy Policy, you may decline to accept them, and you will no longer be able to access your account.

If you wish to close your account or request a refund of your wallet balance, or have any questions, please contact Customer Service by clicking here. For more information, please click here.

Thank you very much for being a customer!

You can check out the Sony Entertainment Network website here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Season 3 of Sony’s online-only reality show The Tester premieres tomorrow, Feb. 7  on the PlayStation Network.

The show features a cast of 12 hopefuls who want to work in the game industry competing in a variety of challenges, many of which have nothing to do with game testing. But three seasons in, it apparently makes for interesting viewing as Sony says their viewership for season 2 increased 46 percent over the first. It’s produced by 51 Minds, which is responsible for shows like VH1′s Rock of Love.

This season, the winner gets the opportunity to work as a Production Associate at Sony’s Santa Monica Studio (best known for the God of War series). On top of that, they get a $5,000 signing bonus, a 55-inch 3D Bravia, a PlayStation 3 and a 2012 Ford Focus Titanium. A job, a new ride and a nice TV? Man, they’re set. Of course the real challenge starts after their show. Let’s just hope the winner is ready to be a production associate (whatever that is) at a AAA studio.

The show does feature guest panelists throughout the season, all of which work in the game industry in some way:

• John Garvin – Game Director, Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Director, Product Development, Sony Bend Studio
• David Jaffe – Co-Director “Twisted Metal” and Co-Founder of Eat Sleep Play
• Dylan Jobe – President, LightBox Interactive
• Seth Killian – Special Combat Advisor, Capcom
• Greg Miller – PlayStation Executive Editor, IGN
• Nolan North – Actor, Author, the Voice of Nathan Drake
• Todd Papy – Design Director, God of War III

If reality shows are your thing, you can download The Tester directly from PlayStation Network starting tomorrow. You can view it by downloading from the PSN store, view it on TheTester.com,  Crackle.com, or in PlayStation Home.

Check out the show’s main website here, it includes profiles and bios for the cast and panelists.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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