That would mean that PSN would have been down for six weeks by the time services are restored.

Every day this outtage continues I am more and more embarassed to have put my faith on Sony. A company that has proven over and over that they dont care about their customers. Promising game vouchers for PSPGo conversions and then backing out. Charging developers for bandwidth costs on PSN, which means smaller and shorter lived demos for customers.

Go to wikipedia and count how many firmware updates that fix or add nothing there are. Firmware updates that are just “security fixes.” Sony was completely on top of hacking when it came to their data and those patches came quickly.

I am not worried about my data, but at this point I’m beggining to worry about Playstation exclusive developers like Q-Games (of Pixel Junk fame.) All of their profits come from PSN sales. Sony said theyd be helping developers out, but with such an extended period of downtime I’m sure some studios will fall on hard times.

At the same time, I am worried about those who are not involved in games like I am. Those who get their news from the local NBC affiliate that dont know what is going on. Are they going to buy the NGP? What can Sony say? At this point just hold off the launch for an extra week and announce the re-launch during E3.

This outtage hurts gaming as a whole. If we are going to move to cloud gaming and cross-platform gaming, we need everything to be secure. Hackers were there before, they’ll be there after. You have to build everything with that threat in mind. I’m not excusing the hackers, but Sony was ridiculously unprepared.

Meanwhile, I’m going through my pile-of-shame, which is holding me over until L.A. Noire. I’m almost done with Arkaham Asylum and will probably go to Dead Space afterwards.

My heart goes out to those of you who bought a PSPGo.

(source: Joystiq)

Update : Sony has said that they have not released a timeline for PSN to come back online. So instead of May 31st it is indefinite. That’s better?

“I was highly anticipating the release of The Ballad Of Gay Tony, but just found out that it is only on the XBox360. I am certain that I am not the first person to ask this, but how come it wasn’t released on the PS3?” – received via Mouthoff

We know that it continues to be an often-asked question – and believe us, we understand the frustration of PS3 owners like yourself who haven’t been able to play any of our most recent releases. All we can say is that we at Rockstar promise to be very good to you with our releases in 2010. Please stay with us and stay tuned!

I find it so odd that they decided to pick this question amongst all the other ones. I’m going to go out in a limb and say they’re trying to string us along until they’re able to release the DLC on PS3. Lost and Damned was released 17 February 2009, and if we use the same logic as other ‘exclusive’ Xbox360 titles, exclusivity lasts for a year.

Then again, maybe they’re just referring to LA Noire and Agents.

Source: Rockstar Newswire

Well, this has sucked.

In Rock Band mode the guitars just keep pressing X (green) in turbo mode, making it impossible to control the game. After some searching around it seems like this is an issue with Rock Band 2 and the way to fix it is to set the controller to Guitar Hero mode.

Now for the fun part, apparently firmware 3.10 broke the controllers. Well it didnt break them, it just made them not get their connection straight.

To fix this I made sure I had one Dual Shock taking slot 1. Then I proceeded to plug in the ‘footpedal’ in Rock Band mode, this should make the controller turn Blue. Then you need to go into Guitar Hero mode and hopefully it keeps the Blue light when it auto-adjusts. If it doesn’t then you need to keep turning the knob back to Rock Band and re-syncing until you do get the Blue light and then go into Guitar Hero mode.

This might take a few tries. Have patience. It sucks, I know!

Some have suggested using two Dual-Shocks so that the guitar is actually controller 3. This worked for me as well but i didn’t have any better luck than with just the one controller.

What if I have 2 Nyko Frontman guitars?

Its the same process for both I did one guitar first, and then the other (Blue and then Orange). It has been taking me like 10 minutes to get them to sync correctly, but once i do, they just work.

This is not the nicest of solutions, and I am honestly quite annoyed by this situation but the guitars work and I got the game for cheap. I’ll search around tonight and update this post if I find any better solutions.

UPDATE (11/29/2009) :

If the controllers come up SOLID RED in Guitar Hero mode, turn the knob back and forth (to Rock Band and then back to Guitar Hero) this will toggle the controller and make it try and find a new open channel. Wait for it to go to a new solid color, if it goes red again just turn the knob once more, repeat this until you get a different color. Its really not a pretty solution. *sigh*

I guess that’s just the problem though. While everything else has moved towards customization like in Forza where you can make your own paint styles. Gran Turismo has kept its ‘real driving simulator’ idea going and while I like it… I just don’t think that its going to sell me another game. I paid for GT5:P which they said they’d provide updates and they’ve kind of held their part of it. Most of the updates were for the GT TV thing. Where are the new cars? Where is the car damage? You know what, forget all that, where are the trophies?

I love cars. I love Gran Turismo. I want something new though.

I play the license tests, and go through all the races at least once. After that, it just ends up being trying to get the perfect line and I enjoyed Burnout Paradise too much to actually go back to this. Oh and the overturning of cars and the new crash physics just make me think the game will be more of a pain than it will be fun.

List after the jump.

Cars
- Over 950 Cars

Courses
- Over 20 Locations
- Over 70 Variations

Physics
- New Physics
- Overturning of cars
- Damage
- Movable objects on the course
- The newest Hybrid cars and electric cars

Arcade Mode
- Single Player
- Split Screen 2 Player

GT Mode
- World Map
- My Garage
- Car Dealer
- Tuning Shop
- Championship Race
- License Test

Online
- Open Lobby
- Text / Voice Chat
- Private Room
- Online Photo Album
- Online Replay Album
- Export of replays to YouTube

Photo Mode
- Photo Drive
- Photo Stage

Gran Turismo TV
- Improved UI
- Export of video to the PSP
- Progressive downloading

Source: gran turismo blog

Now in what must obviously be Guerilla Games telling me I should either go work or go back to Street Fighter IV, I have also gotten the glitch in the retail version.

Well, I guess I’ll have to restart. Luckily its not that far into the game that this happens, it just scares me that it might happen again later.

• You have been a Netflix member since July 2007 and have returned 133 titles to date
• You most recently returned a movie on 10/Feb/09 i.e. 8 days ago
• You keep titles at home for an average of 12 days
• You see 4.7 titles by DVD and 9.3 titles by Instant Watch each month
• You’ve indicated that you are on the 3 at-a-time (Unlimited) plan which costs $17.99/month (including the $1/mo Blu-ray fee)
• Your cost/DVD rental is $3.86. Your cost/movie (including Instant Watch) is $1.29
• You’re in the 34th percentile. i.e., 34% of FeedFlixers pay less than you per movie 

Yeah, give me Watch Now on my console and I’d be watching so much more stuff its not even funny. Actually, I guess its best for Netflix that I don’t have access to it or I’d be breaking the $1 mark per movie watched.

If you want to checkout how much you pay for your Netflix rentals go to FeedFlix. It’s fast and easy. Let me know your results!

This last article is exactly what I’m talking about. Sony needs to stop pretending like they know whats best for everyone and start listening to what the people are saying. If we want Netflix streaming… give us Netflix streaming. It is of no cost to you, and I already have a Netflix account. How else do you think I would be watching the Blu-Ray movies you say I should be watching? Buying them at $35 bucks a pop?

RIIIIIIIIIGGGHHTTT….

Why is there no video podcast download function in the PS3? If I could get home and just sit on my couch and watch TekZilla it’d be awesome. This is something the PS3 -can do- right now, yet they are not letting it do it. They are concentrating on selling us movies through the PSN video store that are DRMed to hell and therefore useless unless you plan on only watching them on your PS3 or PSP. Yes, they wont play on your iPhone, so sorry.

If Sony figures out that the future is in open DRM standards and interoperability (or no DRM at all) and on accessibility to all the forms of entertainment that there are available and not just to your walled garden. IF they figure this out before Microsoft does, the PS3 has a fighting chance.

Sony needs to give us everything. Talk to the PlayOn guys and get half those streams on the PS3. Netflix, Blockbuster, Amazon Video On Demand. Give us choice by having too many choices, not by ‘selecting between the movies on the video store’. As long as they do not give us all the options that there are out there for video delivery, not because of software/hardware limitations but because it is a business desicion to try and force you to buy videos through their store, they need to The Fuck Shut Up.

They are defending themselves by claiming that the consumer (which already spent more than enough money in their over-priced box) would not want to use the subscriptions he/she has already and would prefer to spend more money in the solutions that Sony deems worthy. This is foolish and I’d rather if they just said nothing, and started talking about all the great exclusive games they are getting to the platform instead of these media choices.

Exclusive games like Tekken, Final Fantasy XIII, Killzone 2.

I have seen what I can do with the current incarnation of the system and here are my overall thoughts.

1. The Stack System is quite interesting, but lacking.
   The way that you move between ‘spaces’ in Home is that there are a set of stacks. There is your main Home stack which includes your apartment, The Arcade, The Mall and the Central Plaza. Then there is also a stack for every other property. For instance right now you can go to the Farcry2 space and the Uncharted space. You zoom out and there are 3 stacks on a ‘grid’ and you can select which of them you would like to be joining. I think it is sad that you can’t just walk around the central plaza and find a space (All along I had this dream that it would be like Disney World, you would just walk from the Indiana Jones set to the Muppet’s Theatre, I guess that was just  me.) I understand why they made the decision but what when there’s 20 – 30 spaces? They have to figure out a better way to organize things.
2. Pricing needs to be re-evaluated.
   Everything you buy in Home you do with real money. Unlike Microsoft’s Live service, where you buy credits (or as Shane Bettenhausen calls them ‘Spacebucks’) PSN is 100% grounded on real money. This is awesome because you know exactly how much you are paying for any game (or item in Home’s case) and you don’t have to figure out what the conversion is (I believe 800 points is $10.00 right now), and Sony can’t just depreciate your credits (or increase their value) artificially. $1 == $1 on PSN. Which means those jeans you just bought at the Home Mall really cost $1, it wasn’t a joke, and you did not buy a ‘set’ of things. You bought a different colored pattern on the legs of your avatar. You can also purchase new ‘living’ spaces. Although right now the only other living space that is available is a ‘Summer Home’ for $5. I’d really like for them to stop doing this, but they are being very successful and they won’t. In reality I believe what I should be pointing out is that I would like them to start coming out with these items as packs and for them to revise how much each item costs. $1 per item is preposterous. Which brings me to…
3. Make the sponsors more involved.
   If i got to a Diesel store in my Local Mall, I should get a coupon for that same pair of jeans on the PS3. Cross-world promotion like that would only increase the visibility of the PlayStation 3 to the mom and dads that shop in malls and are not buying PS3s right now yet all looked for Wiis. Also there should be a way that you can win the items (or at least some) by doing PSN/Home related activities.

With all this said. I have a final thought.

In order for PlayStation Home to succeed. It MUST be a game.

There, I said it. If PlayStation Home is not a game the confusion of what is the ‘PlayStation 3′ will continue. I should be able to decide, “I’m going to play Home today”. It should be somewhere that I can win points, gain levels, do quests or tasks. It should be a free, sponsored, Everquest. I really would not mind going through the Coca-Cola valley (which obviously has a Coca-Cola waterfall + river) and finding 4 hidden bottle caps and returning back to the wise Polar Bear for a cool Coca-Cola jukebox in my apartment. I know this is possible too! Since Red Bull’s area will have a Red Bull Air-race mini game, where you can fly a prop plane. It is yet to be said how you will fly the plane however, right now if you go to The Arcade you can play bowling with other people but because the bowling lanes are not instanced you have to wait till somebody ends a game before joining it which is very dumb and does not solve any problems.

Those are my thoughts on Home. I will report back when I read that Red Bull’s area has been added, but honestly there’s just nothing to do there since all the imaginary arcade machines and bowling lanes are always taken.

With that said if you have a PS3, you should go get LittleBigPlanet right now. The rest of us who already have the game need to be talking about what we will create once the servers are back up. Yes, seriously because playing through the Canyon levels was just way too much fun and I’m afraid we need more online content to bring the servers down again.

<3 Sack-Morouxshi