PlayStation News, Articles and Information for the UK and Europe

As we all know, Criterion Games have been working tirelessly on the new Need for Speed, although there has been very little word on the development of the game at the moment – until now. Criterion have placed a countdown on their website set to hit zero on Monday 14th June 22:00 BST. But what will they announce, will there be details of the new Need for Speed game? Or have Criterion been secretly working on another project such as another instalment for the popular Burnout series or even an addition to the SSX franchise?

Criterion have had a knack recently for revealing small titbits of information via various social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. The British developer has obviously been building up to E3 for sometime with tweets along the lines of “Clock is ticking @Criteriongames.com. Cat has been placed into bag.” and “All will be revealed in the city of angels…” which is clearly a reference to Los Angeles, where E3 is being held this year. Either way, we will soon find out what Criterion have been up to in the past year or so…

Top news site The Examiner has a very interesting story about rumoured improvements coming to the PS3′s XMB (XrossMediaBar) at E3 next month. Although a series of upgrades since the PlayStation 3′s launch have made the current XMB a solid interface, there are several areas that leave room for improvement, not least the messaging interface.

With a very high chance of the ‘Premium PSN’ service being announced at E3 (£50 a year is the cost current estimate), it makes sense that tweaks to the XMB could also be on the cards. Whether the highly desired cross-game cChat function will be part of the rumoured XMB upgrade is anyone’s guess, but one thing we’re sure of is that there will be some excellent developments from E3 this year.

Fresh off the Yahoo news press comes a rumour that a next-gen PSP in currently in the works and will be officially unveiled at this year’s E3 in June. There’s only very slight evidence to suggest this but poor launch of the PSP-Go coupled with sightings of the phrase ‘PSP 2′ are starting to set rumours flying around the web.

Our impression? Sony have enough on their plates with the fantastic line-up of 2010 exclusives, the forthcoming 3D support and of course the launch of PlayStation Move in the Autumn without adding a PSP 2 into the mix. Either way, June 2010 should be a very interesting month for PlayStation fans!

We’re not sure if this is a delayed April Fool’s Day joke or what but according to Kotaku, a Japanese third-party hardware developer is planning to release a slightly cumbersome looking add-on TV screen for the ‘PS3 Slim’, turning the console into a quasi-portable gaming machine. The add-on will be released in Japan on May 27th for around 25,000 Yen, which is roughly £180.

Maybe a few real hardcore gamers will be interested but it’s difficult to see this taking off here in the UK.

As reported on CVG, highly anticipated racing game Gran Turismo 5 may support both PlayStation Move and 3D, according to the developers Polyphony Digital. When asked about both forthcoming technologies, Kazunori Yamauchi, the developer’s boss, went on record stating:

“We’re always attuned to new technologies. If there are display devices or peripherals that seem interesting, I’m sure we’ll work to support them.”

 Although not a definitive yes, Move and 3D support are clearly a possibility for Gran Turismo 5 – perhaps that’s one of the reasons for the game’s substantial delays. No release date for the UK/Europe has been announced yet but it’s likely that Gran Turismo 5 will be released in the late Autumn this year. As with previous Gran Turismo games, it will be exclusive to PlayStation and this will be the first full-blown Gran Turismo game released for the PS3.

A rumour originating at Dutch PlayStation website PS3Clan this morning claimed that, in an interview with Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai, they were told that all users, not just ‘Premium’ users, would be charged to use the PSN. However, the original story on PS3 Clan has now disappeared and it seems highly unlikely that the Sony Computer Entertainment CEO would let such a massive cat out of the bag in an interview with a Dutch PS3 website without letting anyone else know.

The story has spread pretty quickly around the internet but until there are some hard facts and official statements just take story as an unlikely rumour.

The good folks over at PSN at Home have recently heard from a ‘trusted source’ that PSOne Classics may be getting Trophy Support some time in the near future, though the only other information on this is that the titles will only be getting 5 – 10 trophies per title. It remains unclear whether this would be retrospectively applied to existing PSOne Classics or just games released in the future.

While many SCEE gamers would welcome such a move, a bigger issue for many is the low number of PSOne Classics on the EU PSN Store, with the US and Japanese stores having many more titles available. In any case, this story is a rumour and with no official word from Sony or anyone else, don’t hold your breath waiting for PSOne Classics to get trophies just yet.

Rumours abound this morning after a screenshot has started circulating which shows a PS3 XMB with an icon for “GT5 Demo 2010″. Gran Turismo 5 is currrently scheduled for release this year but an exact date has not yet been set for the UK/EU. A downloadable ‘Time Trial Challenge’ for GT5 was released on the PSN store just before Christmas last year but contained just one track and one car (in two guises) and was never intended to be a full demo. Perhaps the appearance of this screenshot indicates that a demo may not be too far away – see for yourself below:

Sony recently registered the domain www.playstationplus.com, giving rise to questions about the exact nature of this website. Could this be the site for the recently rumoured Premium PSN? Often web domains like this are bought by cybersquatters or hoaxers but after doing research, we have confirmed that the domain is actually registered to “Sony Computer Entertainment Inc” .

If this is nothing to do with the Premium PSN, then that begs the question of what it could instead be used for? Of course, it could be just another case of Sony covering themselves incase they want to use the domain for something in the future, but if that’s the case then why now? Perhaps only time will tell. Watch this space for more info…