SCEA posts (Subscribe to this feed)

Gran Turismo 5 cost roughly $60 million to develop

by Ben Gilbert { Nov 5th 2009 at 4:58PM }

At the annual SEMA car show in Las Vegas this week, Gran Turismo 5 creative lead Kazunori Yamauchi was on-hand demoing his game for showgoers and talking to the press. Amidst a torrent of questions from Autoweek, Yamauchi roughly calculated the cost of creating Gran Turismo 5: a cool $60 million. That's what five years of development on a single game has cost Polyphony Digital thus far, an amount Yamauchi says was totally justified in order to "get it right."

"We threw away the legacy code from GT4 and started from scratch ... It's been five years from [the release of] GT4, and that's the same amount of time it took to develop the first GT4." And rather than dodging the reasoning behind the lack of a solid GT5 release date anywhere outside of Japan, Yamauchi flatly offered, "That's more depending on SCEA marketing decisions." Allow us to venture a guess – first half of 2010, perhaps?

Gallery: Gran Turismo 5

[Via VGChartz]

SCEA files patent for interactive movie technology

by Griffin McElroy { Nov 4th 2009 at 2:45PM }

"Interactive movie technology," you may find yourself asking, "isn't that just another word for video games?" Well, grandpa, yes and no. While this recently filed patent from Sony Computer Entertainment America will likely be implemented in some form of game -- our guess is PlayStation Home -- it doesn't really resemble anything we've ever seen from a ludological offering. Basically, SCEA is designing a framework for "avatars" to interact with a film in a number of different ways, such as tossing tomatoes at on-screen actors, or climbing into the film to deliver a swift kick to one of the characters' behinds.

The patent's illustrations resemble pencil-drawn versions of Mystery Science Theater 3000, where a player's avatar can be seen sitting in a chair in front of the interactive movie. These interactions can even be scored, granting bonus points for a well-aimed tomato toss. We have no idea how well this type of technology would work, but our deep, deep fondness for Mike and the 'Bots makes us more than a little interested in how SCEA is planning on using it.

[Via Siliconera]

SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 3 also joins the Q1 party

by Andrew Yoon { Oct 28th 2009 at 3:15PM }

Just when you thought those Q1 delays were over, SCEA comes in with a surprise. The upcoming SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 3 for PSP will miss its original late November release, and will instead come out on January 12th, 2010, two weeks before Zipper deploys MAG on PS3.

SCEA Senior Producer Mark Rogers says that developer Slant Six is not responsible for the delay and "development is on schedule." Instead, Rogers blames marketing, saying "some high value visual assets (screens and video) have only recently been made available to global marketing and we have decided to move the release and allow time to get the word out to everyone." So, although assets have been available since April, marketing hasn't received them until "recently." We're not entirely sure how this makes sense, but the end result is clear: you'll be waiting longer for this game, as someone gets their act together.

Gallery: SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 3

God of War III demo included on District 9 Blu-ray

by JC Fletcher { Oct 28th 2009 at 10:30AM }

If you're interested in checking out God of War 3 early, but don't want to play the first two God of Wars again, Sony corporate synergy has a solution for you! The Blu-Ray release of District 9, due December 29 (a bit later than the God of War Collection), will include a playable demo of God of War 3. Once you've played through the demo, a making-of featurette will be unlocked (for the game, not the movie).

While District 9 and God of War 3 are united in that they're both things that people presumably want to see, it strikes us as odd that this rather random collection is the first Blu-ray/game demo pairing for SCEA. The Watchmen movie and game actually related to one another in some way, and they came on separate discs.

Banned PSN player appeals court decision, sues Sony again for $180k

by Andrew Yoon { Oct 27th 2009 at 9:21AM }

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Erik Estavillo made headlines in the gaming blogosphere last summer for his $55,000 lawsuit against Sony, launched in retaliation for being banned from the PlayStation Network. As predicted, the judge dismissed his case after determining the First Amendment did not apply to Estavillo's claim.

Estavallo isn't going to be stopped by a mere district judge's ruling, though. In addition to filing an appeal, Estavillo is also filing another lawsuit against Sony -- this time, a civil suit seeking $180,000 in damages; more than three times the amount of his original, dismissed suit. According to GamePolitics, Estavillo will once again opt out of using a lawyer, choosing to represent himself for both upcoming cases. We wish Estavillo the best of luck.*

*Ed.'s Note: While we'd normally end on a punchline, our fear of irrational and baseless lawsuits prevents us from doing so.

SCEA ad campaign continues with Ratchet & Clank (with bonus montage!)

by Andrew Yoon { Oct 23rd 2009 at 6:30PM }

We do not tire of SCEA's new ad campaign for the PS3, "It Only Does Everything." SCEA is rolling out two more for TV use, one specifically for the upcoming Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, and another that highlights a variety of PS3 games in an exciting montage featuring Uncharted 2, Killzone 2, Gran Turismo 5, Assassin's Creed 2 and more. Kevin Butler's convincing performance as a 80s guitarist has us asking just one question: can he be our friend?

Continued →

Rumor: PAIN developer Idol Minds lays off more than half of staff

by Andrew Yoon { Oct 21st 2009 at 4:35PM }

Idol Minds, known best for the PS3 downloadable game PAIN, has laid off more than half of its staff, according to a report by Kotaku. The original team of 46 has been reduced to a mere 20 through a series of layoffs, the latest of which affected seventeen developers.

Kotaku's sources point to budget cuts from long-time publishing partner Sony Computer Entertainment. However, it's hard to ignore the irony of the team's namesake: other than a few expansion packs to PAIN, no major releases or game announcements have come out of the studio since 2007. What this means for the future of the PAIN franchise is unclear for now. Calls to both Idol Minds and SCEA were not returned.

PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe gets DIY compatibility fix

by Xav de Matos { Oct 17th 2009 at 5:00PM }

Recent connection issues have marred European PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe owners from participating in rousing online games against North American and Asian players. Thankfully, the PlayStation Blog has released a two-part DIY guide to help fix the PSP game's issues. The process is simple:

Delete your game through the PSP Home Menu (select Game>Memory Stick>press the triangle button with PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe highlighted and select Delete).
Connect to PlayStation Store > Select View Downloads and re-download PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe from the Download List.

Users will still retain their previous progress and now (hopefully) be completely problem free in their quest for online Deluxe dominance.

Gallery: PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe

Europeans won't get God of War III demo before 2010

by Griffin McElroy { Oct 16th 2009 at 3:15PM }

While Americans who purchase the God of War Blu-ray Collection and the Japanese gamers who pick up Infamous will be spending the harsh winter of 2009 behind the helm of a demo for God of War III, our European pals won't be so lucky. Sony recently confirmed to Eurogamer that the sneak preview of the Grecian action title wouldn't appear in the region until 2010.

Yes, unless you check out God of War III at the Eurogamer Expo in late October (or import one of the two games listed above), you'll have to do without this holiday season. Don't worry, you should be able to live vicariously through our highly exuberant tweets.

Interview: SCEA's Eric Lempel on PSP minis, scrapped UMD conversion

by Andrew Yoon { Oct 8th 2009 at 5:20PM }

In the second part of our interview with SCEA's Eric Lempel, we chatted about the simultaneous release of PSP Go and PSP minis. In addition to discussing the hands-off approach Sony is taking with the pricing of minis, we talked about the possibility of the minis program moving to PS3, and eventual Mac support for the PSP's MediaGo application.

Joystiq: Are any Sony first-party studios working on PSP minis?

Eric Lempel: Right now, to my knowledge, they're not. That could change, again, but right now, I don't believe any of the studios are working on minis.

What determines the pricing of PSP minis?

There are a couple of rules, or maybe there's just one rule. They have to come in at $9.99 or under.

If someone wanted to release at $1.99, they could?

Yes, absolutely.

Continued →

Interview: SCEA's Eric Lempel on Amazon's PSN offerings

by Andrew Yoon { Oct 8th 2009 at 2:30PM }

Yesterday, SCEA announced a partnership with Amazon.com to sell PSN codes through the online retailer. We chatted with Eric Lempel about the deal and how it came to fruition. Lempel revealed to us that the program had been in the works long before Amazon started selling XBLM codes, and said that Sony would be "looking into" offering direct access to the PlayStation Store on the web. Read on for more.

Joystiq: Is Amazon.com an exclusive retail partner with Sony, or will we see this program expand to other retailers?

Eric Lempel: Amazon offers a lot of great benefits, but we're definitely open to exploring other retailers in the channel. There's nothing exclusive about this. If it makes sense, and works for both sides, yeah, we'd definitely be open to exploring this with other retail partners.

Which party was responsible for getting the project rolling? Was it Sony, or was it Amazon?

We have a lot of meetings with [Amazon] on a regular basis, because they are one of our customers for all of the physical product. So, we're talking with them all the time. I've been in meetings with them for years, so I can't really say who brought this up but we've all been talking about this for a long time. And I will say we've been talking about this way before the Xbox integration as well, so it wasn't one of these, "Hey, we're doing this, do you guys want to do this as well?" We've thought about this, we've been talking about it. We've kind of had to get the right timing where all of us can do the implementation. We thought now would be a great time just in light of PSP Go being released and the surge of digital content that's become available over the last few months.

Continued →

PSP Go launch generates 'platform' sales boost

by James Ransom-Wiley { Oct 8th 2009 at 11:00AM }

Without disclosing actual sales figures, Sony has found a way to trumpet last week's launch of the PSP Go: In its first three days at retail (October 1–3), North American PSP platform sales soared by 300 percent over the previous week's figures. Again, we don't yet know the numbers -- but that's not even the most important part of the equation.

Read it again: PSP platform sales soared by 300 percent. Whether the Go tanks or not, it's got the PSP brand on consumers' wish lists again. "With several blockbuster games launching digitally and on UMD in the coming weeks -- from LittleBigPlanet to Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines -- we expect this momentum to continue and look forward to a strong holiday season for both the PSP Go and PSP-3000," SCEA corp. comm. director Patrick Seybold told Gamasutra.

The PSP Go currently retails for around $250, and its most compelling trait could be that it highlights what a great deal the only $169.99 PSP-3000 model is -- it plays all the same games, after all; from Minis to full-game downloadables.

Broodworks: new Santa Monica studio with focus on Sony handhelds

by David Hinkle { Oct 7th 2009 at 5:30PM }

Santa Monica-based development studios interested in "medium casual video game development" for Sony handhelds, watch out! There's a new cat in town and, even though it lacks opposable thumbs, this kitten can code.

Enter: Broodworks, a new independent studio headed by former Sony Santa Monica executive producer and director of internet development Shannon Studstill. Given Studstill's previous position with Sony and the location of Broodworks, superannuation surmises that Broodworks is a second-party studio working closely with SCEA. We'll keep you posted as the story (and the company's website) develops.

[Via superannuation]

SCEA: Developers responsible for keeping PSP minis prices competitive

by Andrew Yoon { Oct 7th 2009 at 5:15PM }

PSP minis are supposed to introduce bite-sized iPhone-esque games to Sony's handheld. While minis feature small file sizes and reduced functionality, they certainly don't carry smaller price tags. The first batch of minis have all been priced between $4.99 and $9.99, making them no cheaper than the average PlayStation Network exclusive. Which sounds like the better deal for $9.99? Yet another version of Tetris ... or the 3D online multiplayer shooter Syphon Filter: Combat Ops?

Even worse, many of these minis are priced higher than their iPhone counterparts. While Hero of Sparta costs $1.99 on iPhone, it costs $5.99 on PSP. Fieldrunners costs $2.99 on iPhone, but $6.99 on PSP. We chatted with SCEA's Eric Lempel to talk about the lack of apparent value in the minis program. He explained that Sony has no hand in determining the prices of minis. "As far as pricing goes, the publisher of the title sets the pricing," he explained. When quizzed if publishers were allowed to create a $1.99 game on PSP, he told us: "Yes, absolutely."

Lempel agrees that publishers must seriously think about the kind of prices they're setting on the Store, to ensure their content offers the same value as other PSP titles. "I think they have to carefully look at that, carefully price their content. Minis was intended to be something a little different and we wanted to see a lot of different types of content through minis. If it's not priced correctly, consumers may be turned off at the proposition and say 'I'd rather just go for this kind of stuff instead of minis.'"

EyePet won't see a holiday release in the US

by Andrew Yoon { Oct 6th 2009 at 9:15AM }

"EyePet is now out of holiday," a SCEA representative told us rather succinctly, confirming an initial report from Gamervision. The PlayStation Eye-enabled virtual pet has been stealthily pushed out from its planned November release into the increasingly crowded waters of 2010. SCEA explains that its marketing team "will spend additional time to continue educating consumers and retail channels, setting the table for a successful product launch." Essentially, not enough people are excited about EyePet yet for it to warrant a holiday release.

Initial plans had EyePet releasing in two varieties: alone; and bundled with the camera. However, considering another big Sony product -- also coming in early 2010 -- requires use of the Eye, Sony may pursue a completely different marketing plan altogether.