If you've been feverishly coding away on a PlayStation 1 game for the past, say, eleven years in the hope of becoming the next Devil Dice, you should go ahead and shelve the project. Next month, Sony will finally shut down the European server for the Net Yaroze project.

The Net Yaroze is a special black PlayStation console that allowed homebrew developers to run their own code on the system, interfacing with a computer via a serial connection. The mail-order-only system also included development software. Sony's servers allowed Yaroze users to discuss PlayStation development and even share their creations.

"We plan to make a copy of the site available for our original members," said SCEE's Paul Holman, who also said that some kind of get-together would be held for the Yaroze development community, all of whom are now left with nothing but extremely rare PlayStations.

If PSP Go is considered a "ripoff" in America, what do our friends in the UK call it, where it may retail for more than double the cost of the current PSP? The official UK price has yet to be revealed, but the leading national retailer Game is taking pre-orders at a "guide price" of £230, a significant jump over the average retail price of £100 for the current PSP.

The sticker shock may be scaring off customers, as independent shops are telling Edge some frightening pre-order stories. "I don't have a single pre-order for PSP Go at the moment," Chips' Don McCabe told the outlet. "We haven't got any [PSP Go pre-orders] at all," repeated Grainger Games' Chris Harwood. While the head of SCEE believes consumers will pay an early adopter premium, McCabe believes otherwise. "We can't see where that price justification comes in when effectively it's a lighter, slimmer PSP. It's got a bit more memory, but memory's not that expensive. It can't handle UMD so part of the mechanism disappears, so where does the price come from?"

Retailers are not getting an added benefit for stocking the PSP Go. Margins on game hardware have been historically low and PSP Go looks to follow suit. In America, SCEA's Eric Lempel noted retailer enthusiasm due to the sale PlayStation Network cards at retail. UK retail partners currently don't have an equivalent revenue source, a problem that may hinder retail enthusiasm. "You need to see some sort of revenue streams coming off the back of these machines, otherwise from a retail point of view it's just not worth it," said McCabe.

Rack 'em up ladies and gents because Hustle Kings is heading to a PS3 near you. First showcased at E3 2009, the upcoming pool title is planned to hit the PlayStation Network exclusively this winter. Hustle Kings sports "photo-realistic" graphics, up-to 256 online-player game lobbies, YouTube uploading, Trophies and in-game video chat. Virtual pool sharks will be happy to hear the final product will launch with a plethora of game modes, including 8-Ball, Black-Ball (UK 8-Ball), 9-Ball, Trick-Shots and more. Hustle Kings will also support custom music from the XMB, but we're pretty sure you'll only be able to listen to Rick Ross while you play the game. Selecting any other tracks will cause your PS3 to explode ... probably.

Michael Pachter retracted one of the most correct statements he's ever made: the PSP Go is a "rip off" for consumers. The PSP Go takes away the expensive-to-manufacture UMD drive and replaces it with cheap flash memory -- and yet it still costs more than the current PSP-3000. Fun fact: You can buy a standard PSP and 16GB Memory Stick Duo Pro right now for less than a PSP Go.

Sure, the new form factor looks nice, but Sony should have no manufacturing costs to pass down to the consumer. MCV asked SCEE's Andrew House if R&D or retailer markups were the reason behind PSP Go's high price. "Those aren't the factors," House admitted. "When you introduce a new piece of hardware you have the opportunity to say there is a certain premium that is associated with it, and we took that into account."

Essentially, House is admitting you can charge more for technology when it's new. It's unsurprising, but it certainly leaves a bad taste knowing Sony can easily charge less for the PSP Go. Perhaps Sony will follow the iPhone's footsteps and suddenly drop the price of the PSP weeks after early adopters pay their "premium" price.

Choosing to title it "Schrödinger's Cat and Heisenberg's Dog: The Change from Offline to Online," former Sony Computer Entertainment Europe prez David Reeves will deliver his keynote address at Germany's Games Convention Online, which runs July 31 through August 2. The speech "will provide a view of when online sales of games overtake classic retail distribution," Reeves told Develop.

It had been (wrongly) rumored that Reeves left Sony for a gig at APB dev Realtime Worlds, but we now know the hobbies he'll be taking up in his retirement: theoretical physics, quantum mechanics and watching The Big Bang Theory. We can't wait to hear how he manages to work those topics into a talk about online games. (10 bucks says Reeves' friends submitted the keynote's title without him knowing it.)

LittleBigPlanet-developer Media Molecule is "expanding." Stop looking surprised! After winning more gee oh tee why awards for it's maiden voyage than they probably had room for in their small Guildford-based studio, it's expanding! But, if a "job listing" is to be believed, this expansion isn't limited to an awards wing – it's also hiring a "Gameplay Programmer."

This code wizard is expected to not only have 2+ years industry experience, but also to have "shipped a console game with an online component," an unsurprising requirement considering the studio's (admittedly singular) pedigree. The job listing states that MM is "working on a ground-breaking, AAA, PS3 title for Sony Computer Entertainment" – as much as we'd like to announce "LittleBigPlanet 2 totally confirmed" we're not convinced this description necessarily means a followup game. After all, with DLC still in production on LittleBigPlanet – which is a ground-breaking, AAA PS3 title for Sony Computer Entertainment – this could be related to maintaining LBP as a platform.

But, of course, it's working on other games – expanding the PS3 development team to maintain the already shipped LBP doesn't make sense ... and the job listing does say the applicant "will be expected to maintain and improve the existing code and data structures." Existing code? Data structures? Oh emm gee! LittleBigPlanet 2 totally confirmed!

[Via PS3center.net]

Richard Leadbetter – Director of HD consultancy Digital Foundry and author of Eurogamer's multiplatform comparison Face-off features – tweeted that playing Ghostbusters on the PS3 was like "time-warping back to the dawn of PS3 development." Ouch! That's especially painful to read considering the high hopes Terminal Reality – developers of the just-released Ghostbusters game – have for their multiplatform Infernal Engine.

Internet reports of a less-than-stellar PS3 version of the title originated at Lens of Truth on Monday, were later corroborated by Gamezine.co.uk and, following tomorrow's publication of Leadbetter's most recent Face-off feature, will be further corroborated by Eurogamer. Confusing the issue even further is the following quote from Terminal Reality's Mark Randel, who told VG247 last year, "We're one of the few developers who love the PS3 and have a great time with it. We have great technology for the PS3 and we want to show it off."

Instead of leaving it up to internet Matlocks, we asked Terminal Reality to comment on the controversy. A spokesperson for the developer told us, "For the record, the PS3 version [of Ghostbusters] is softer due to the 'quincunx' antialiasing filter and the fact we render at about 75% the resolution of the 360 version. So you cannot directly compare a screen shot of one to the other unless you scale them properly. The PS3 does have less available RAM than the 360 – but we managed to squeeze 3 out of 4 textures as full size on the PS3."

So: is the PS3 "maxed out"? Or is Terminal Reality's engine – despite comments to the contrary – just not up to snuff on the PS3? With most recent multiplatform titles performing comparably, if not identically, on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles, we'd be inclined to agree with Mr. Leadbetter: it's like "time-warping back to the dawn of PS3 development" when PS3 games were routinely outperformed by their Xbox 360 counterparts. Let's hope the irony of the situation is lost on Ghostbusters' exclusive European publisher ... Sony. As well as the franchise's owner ... Sony Pictures.