In an effort to give third party developers a fair shot at success on their systems, Nintendo is now spacing out their releases to give other developers a chance to shine. In reality it will probably only result in Nintendo fans waiting longer between their gaming fixes, but it's nice to see that Nintendo is trying. Nintendo has yet to announce the release date of high profile games like Animal Crossing 3DS, Mario Kart 3DS and Super Mario 3DS in order to assess the third party release schedule. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata had this to say about the new strategy:
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Sony Online Entertainment servers were taken offline earlier this morning. The reason? Sony Online Entertainment announced that it has lost 12,700 customer credit card numbers as the result of an attack and nearly 24.6 million accounts may have been breached. Out of those 12,700 credit card numbers stolen, 4,300 came from Japan, with the remainder coming from European countries Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. The PSN servers and SOE servers are said to be on different networks, but this attack could very well have come from that same individuals. The moral of the story? Sony needs to tighten up their security quite a bit. Hopefully the other console manufacturers are taking notes.
After many test markets, none of which involved where I lived, redbox has officially decided to bring gaming rentals to more than 21,000 locations nationwide. The games will be available June 17 for $2 a night. This means I will finally feel good about renting games again, after having been gauged horrendously by Blockbuster's nearly $10 price for 5 days, and I won't have to sign up for any subscription based service like Gamefly. This suits me perfectly because I really only rented games to see if I liked them enough to buy, something I would be able to decide in one night anyway.
PSN gamer's worst fears have come to fruition, their personal information may be in the hands of unscrupulous hackers. The suit accuses Sony of "failure to maintain adequate computer data security of consumer personal data and financial data," as well as failing to take "reasonable care to protect, encrypt, and secure the private and sensitive data of its users."
The most damaging thing of all could be the fact that they waited too long to inform PSN users of the breach, preventing them from taking action. Had users known about this nearly a week ago they may have made "an informed decision as to whether to change credit card numbers, close the exposed accounts, check their credit reports, or take other mitigating actions." The Federal class action lawsuit has been drawn up and submitted to the Northern District Court of California by Rothken Law Firm, representing every one affected by the PSN security breach. Source: Court Document Namco Bandai is teasing something new, the beginning of a new chapter specifically. This is most likely related to the new Soul Calibur that has been teased for months, but it could also pertain to the Tales series. There is a chance we will hear about some localizations before e3, or it might even be related to something entirely different. We'll know for sure in about two weeks.
Check out the site here. Sony finally officially announced the S1 tablet we have known about for months. Most of the details, including its interesting shape, were true. It supports Android OS and features Playstation Suite, meaning you are going to see a lot of PS1 classics on the device. Unfortunately you are going to have to play them without buttons, but what can you do. Sony also announced S2, a tablet that features a clamshell design and sports two 5.5" screens. I kind of like the idea of the clamshell, that will be sure to keep those big beautiful screens safe. But that is getting dangerously close to laptop territory and we wouldn't want that!
PSN has been down for 6 days. The reason behind this is now known to be Rebug, a custom firmware that allows hackers to spoof their consoles as devkits. This enables them to add money from fake credit card accounts in order to steal games and DLC off of PSN. Luckily it seems like everyone's credit card information is safe for now. Sony will likely keep PSN down until this fiasco gets sorted out, so it could be a while. There are also rumors that Sony is considering a new, even slimmer PS3 intended to combat pirates. This is a bit disheartening for me as a gamer. I don't spend a lot of time on PSN, but it still pains me to see a small few ruining the experience for everyone else. Source: Reddit Nintendo is still making them but Gamestop isn't selling them. In an effort to bolster 3DS sales Gamestop has decided not to order any more stock of the DS lite after their current supply runs out. A bit odd, considering the 3DS is in no danger of being a failure. If that were the case they should have stopped selling the PS2 the moment the PS3 came out. Oh well, what do I care if Gamestop throws away money. They should have no problem moving 3DS units when long awaited games like Ocarina of Time 3D, Starfox 64 3D and a proper Mario title come out.
Earlier today Nintendo officially confirmed that a new home console was on the way in 2012. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata says had only this to say about the Wii's successor, “We would like to propose a new approach to home video game consoles. It’s difficult to make 3-D images a key feature, because 3-D televisions haven’t obtained wide acceptance yet.” It will be playable by all in attendance at e3. All aboard the hype train.
Source: Bloomberg A big thank you to Redditor xsp for yet another beautiful rendering of my Project Cafe controller concept! Last week I made a post featuring a crudely drawn concept for Nintendo's controller for their next console, code name Project Cafe, based upon rumors posted by other gaming sites. I posted a link to my drawing on Reddit, which prompted Redditor xsp to make an impressive 3D rendering of what I had drawn in MS paint. I then posted these renderings on NeoGaf because I thought they were pretty neat. Within a couple of days the pictures had re-emerged on GAF, this time with reports that 01net, a French gaming site known for leaking the NGP's specs early, is claiming that my concept was closest to the actual device. This is the internet, so of course we weren't sourced but I thought that people might be interested in where these renderings originally came from. The GAF-> Internet -> GAF phenomenon in full effect.
Source: NeoGaf |