In Sony’s PlayStation press conference today, social connectivity and quick access to games were all the rage. The PlayStation Network is brushing up on its social skills, while Gaikai’s cloud-based gaming service will allow quick access to games. And once the PlayStation 4 comes out, the PlayStation Vita will allow you to game anytime, anywhere, in a way that hasn’t been possible before.

Hit the break for details.

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I may be just a fanboy of a dying franchise, but Final Fantasy has been around for twenty-five years. To celebrate its longevity, Square-Enix has granted us with a nice little sale for select titles that will last two weeks. 

While this may not awe many of you, I think this is a great opportunity to re-spark the much heated debate of which Final Fantasy is the best. Maybe the new generation can comes to terms with the old-school RPGs? 

In any case, the full list is after the cut.

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In honor of its 30th anniversary this year, Capcom is bringing many of its classic arcade games to PlayStation Network and Xbox LIVE. The collection is called “Arcade Cabinet,” but its official list of games is yet to be released. Expect hits like Commando and Black Tiger.

As perfect ports, these games are going to be as difficult as the originals were — if you want them to be. This is sure to be a welcome challenge for gamers who remember when these arcade games were first released, but you’d prefer an easier time of it, Capcom should be adding new modes so players can adjust the difficulty.

Brace yourself for more details from Capcom on February 7.

[Capcom Unity, Geek]

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PlayStation Plus’ value for its $49.99 annual membership just keeps getting better. It already gives PS3 users 12 free regularly rotating games and discounts and, starting next week, subscribers with a PS Vita will be able to access free content as well.

Another classic game of the last generation is headed to PSN, so everyone who missed out the first time won’t be able to fathom skipping over it again.

Priced at the usual $9.99, Tim Schafer and Double Fine’s legendary action-platformer Psychonauts will become available on PSN beginning on August 28 and officially enshrined as a “PS2 Classic” from hence forth. The game will only be on the North American PSN store to start, but it will likely be headed to other PSN regions before long.

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There have been several rumors about Sony getting into the cloud gaming market since early June, but nothing came to fruition. Now Sony has officially acquired the company giving them an edge in the next generation of game consoles and beyond.

And it might even mean that you don’t even need to buy that new PS4 anytime soon.

More info after the break.

Coming straight from the official page of Japan Playstation, Sony has announced today that it will soon be reducing the activation count for PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Network titles, as well as downloadable content, on the 18th November.

So far, only the Japanese site has put out information about this reduction. No news yet on the NA and EU front.

The EU Playstation Blog has announced the same news now, together with instructions on the new activation and deactivation process. It’s safe to assume it’ll be the same for NA.

More information below the cut.

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Sony has announced that someone out in the Internet has again gotten hold of a list of usernames and passwords from “another source and not from our Networks” and is trying to match “a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database”.

What does it mean, besides bad news? Hit the break to find out.

Continuing the news of the PSN fiasco, Sony announced earlier this week some services of PSN would come back within the week.

Sony recently confirmed that within a week that online gameplay for the PlayStation 3 and PSP, as well as PlayStation Home, friends lists and chat functionality will be back.

Account management will be back but all users of PS3 can expect a mandatory system update that will require PSN password changes.

“The update will also require that players either change the password on the PS3 on which their account was activated or change it through a validated e-mail confirmation.”

PlayStation Store will not be back next week, and will is scheduled to come back later this month.

The company will present a special “welcome back” initiative for users.

“As a make-good to the now-78 million PSN users across the globe, Sony will be initiating a “welcome back” program as a token of appreciation for its customers’ patience. This program will offer every PSN user a free month of PlayStation Plus, with current PlayStation Plus members getting a complementary month of the service. Each territory will also be getting free “entertainment content” downloads as part of the program, although details on exactly what the content will be is currently not available.”

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During a special press conference in Tokyo, apologies were of course offered by Sony Corporation Executive Deputy President Kaz Hirai as well as details on the attacks, and the revelation that user credit card numbers may have been exposed.

“Sony also laid out the specifics of the attack and what it is doing to prevent further such intrusions. The company said the attack happened at the company’s data-center located in San Diego, California, where Sony reportedly enlisted the local branch of the FBI’s cybercrimes division. Today, Hirai confirmed the FBI was on the case.

Hirai said that some 10 million credit card numbers may have been exposed as a result of the breach. He told a reporter that it was unclear what the motive behind the attack was.”

Still the company has said it’s taken measures to beef up the security.

 ”Sony reps said that in response to the breach, the company has implemented additional firewalls, added “enhanced levels of data protection and encryption,” and implemented extra measures to detect software attacks on the network. Sony is also creating an all-new position of chief information security officer, directly reporting to Sony Corp. chief information officer Shinji Hasejima.”

Via (Gamespot)

If you’ve played online with your Playstation 3 in the past week, you’ve probably noticed that something is wrong. That’s because of a not-so mysterious outage on PSN. Having seen this myself, the only messages that you can find are “Error” and “Playstation Network is currently undergoing maintenance”.

Why you ask? Well, the hacker collective group “Anonymous” did claim they would attack the PSN with a DDoS (Denial of Service) attack, which appears likely to be the cause for the huge network problems.

What does this mean for you? No online gaming, no friends and activity, no Playstation Store, no video store and some PSN games (like Bionic Commando 2) will not work at all because of DRM. There’s still no hard timeline to get the service operational but a Sony Rep has said that it could take another day or more. For now, just try to hold out on single player games or other platforms until all the problems get fixed up.

Edit: While Anon did cause some problems for PSN, the current issues are apparently not directly related to the attacks. Something else does appear to be afoot in the PSN. More updates as they are made available.

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