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*

Well, well, look who seems to be waking up fighting. The Sony seems to have gotten tired of being beaten up every which way by the Xbox 360 and decided to come out swinging by adding Netflix to its repertoire.

The PS3 Slim and subsequent price drop increased sales by 300% in September. This was quickly followed by Naughty Dawg’s Uncharted Two which is selling beyond expectations. Now the Playstation Blog announcement that Netflix is coming to the console. This should get s ready for God of War 1 and 2 re-release, Modern Warfare 2 and Ratchet and Clank in November.

Microsoft announced that they had an exclusive partnership with Netflix earlier this year. This, to me, signifies that they have a partnership to be in the firmware since the PS3 implementation is disc based (BD-Live). I would not be surprised if we see a firmware based (or software based like the EYE Toy application and Home) implementation by E3 next year.

The news that make me the most happy however, is that there is no additional cost to using Netflix on the PS3. I’m sure this will change soon, but Microsoft requires a Xbox Live Gold membership ($50/year) in order to use Netflix (Twitter and Facebook as well). I wouldn’t be surprised if they open some functionality to Silver members and keep viewing rooms for Gold members only or something similar.

With the inclusion of Netflix, it seems that Sony really is trying to mark this year as a W. They still have a lot of work to do, but this is not a bad place to start.

Source: Playstation Blog

If you haven’t been following me on twitter, then you  might not know how awesome I think Bayonetta is. I just love how completely ridiculous the game looks, it’s like they started it and somebody stopped checking on them then a few months later they had this conversation:

Manager: “so whats with that DMC clone?”
Developers: “well… about that… a few of the guys are recovering sex addicts… plus, that new you must be drunk policy we gave them… might have backfired”
Manager: “lets see it… oh god… well the only way to ‘fix’ this is to make it more over the top and hope for a ban”
Developers: “Yes sir, right away, sir”

If you have not had the chance to get the demo from the Japanese PSN store, I highly recommend you stop reading right now and go and get it. The gameplay is fast, and furious. You do combos that are just a joy to execute and look amazing on screen. SEGA did a pretty great job of porting this over from the 360 version.

Now, I know what you’re saying. I’ve seen that trailer, it looks like nothing but crotch shots. I ask you, what’s wrong with that? According to Famitsu, NOTHING. Famitsu just gave the 360 version a 40/40 and the PS3 version a 38/40. The discrepancy is in the port graphics. (Kotaku on Famitsu score: link).

Devil May Cry was fun, the series lost me after the second one. This seems like it is once again genuine fun and I intend to really give it a go. Did I mention her outfit is actually her hair and it randomly leaves her semi-naked during combat?

Bayonetta should hit japan this November and the states sometime in early 2010.

Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait for FFXIII. However, I spent 2 years of my life in Vana’diel and loved every second of it. I cant wait until I get to adventure in Eorzea. I love that most of my FFXI friends that have since moved on to WoW or other worlds are all also considering FFXIV like a return home. Soon my friends, soon!

Square-Enix just announced a special edition FFXIII PS3 Slim bundle that brings a 250GB hd, FFXIII and a white/pink Lightning theme. I would love to just import this directly from japan (Available December 17th, 2009) but I will most likely just wait until it is inevitably  announced for the US like they did with the MGS4 gunmetal gray bundle.

Via Kotaku

Advertising by itself is not bad. I have no problem with advertising and I even work for an advertising company, but I am not learning anything from these ads. I am getting no benefit from them other than the annoyance of having to click past them. It is really the main reason why I also unsubscribed from the Playstation Store newsletter. All of the news for the PSN store I get from Joystiq and Kotaku days before the Thursday update. They send the newsletter on Saturdays. It’s old news.

I am all for them to keep the ads there, as long as they let me turn them off. If I care enough to go through the menu system to turn them off then they must know that I am also somebody who already spends well over $15/month on Playstation Store games.

“Oh, but let them advertise because PSN is free”

Absolutely not. The fact that I do not pay for PSN like people who pay for Xbox Live does not mean that Sony can just advertise on it. In fact, I would totally love it if Sony makes a premium PSN service that gives people actual features that would not be available if you didn’t pay. Features like backing up of game saves on their servers and integration with some of the more popular Social Networking websites around the web. Oh and paying for Xbox Live doesn’t stop you from getting ads either.

Why are you spending so much time on the XMB anyways?!

I don’t really spend that much time on the XMB, but I spend enough time on it that they’re starting to bother me every time I’m just browsing. Again, its more of the aesthetics of the whole thing, it just makes it seem cluttered and its also pointless since I know what I’m going to buy before the Playstation Store is even updated.

I honestly never thought this was “missing” but its so great that its a DLC pack that I can get for Little Big Planet, the game I always keep going back to for some reason. I need to get my platinum trophy on it sometime, I’m so lazy.