It’s Tokyo Game Show time which means it’s time to hear about some Sony news! Nintendo and Microsoft don’t really have a presence at TGS, so it’s always impressive if Sony manage to ‘lose’ this event. While there was no news on Last Guardian or Final Fantasy Versus XIII (Shocker!) they did have a bunch of announcements that we’ll run through here:
Red and Blue Vitas Heading to Japan
There was no mention of a price drop but at least in Japan, two new versions of the Vita are on their way, a red model and a blue model. Sony didn’t mention if they were coming to the west, though we are getting a white Vita in the Assassin’s Creed Liberation bundle.
Playstation 3 Gets a Redesign
There have been rumors of it for a while now (like every piece of Sony hardware) but Sony have finally announced the redesign of the PS3. A white version has been announced for Japan but no other territories. It is half the volume and weight of the original system, and 20/25% of the volume/weight of the Slim model. In North America there will be an Uncharted 3 Bundle that also comes with $30 worth of content for Dust 514. Looking at pricing, we have:
North America
- 250GB – $269 (Uncharted 3/Dust 514 Bundle) – September 25th
- 500GB – $299 – October 30th
Europe and PAL Territories
- Flash Memory 12GB – 229 Euros, AUD $299.95, NZD $399.95 - October 12th (September 27th AU, October 18th NZ)
- 500GB – 299 Euros, AUD $399.95, NZD $519.95 - September 28th (September 27th ANZ)
Japan
- 250GB – 24,900 Yen – October 4th
- 500GB – 29,800 Yen – October 4th
(Thanks IGN for the chart)
PS Store Gets a Redesign
On the Australian Playstation site, in a post about the new PS3 model there was also this little nugget:
To tie in with the launch, PlayStation Store for PS3 is set to get a new look from October 2012 too, making it even easier for you to find and download the content you love from the comfort of your sofa.
No word if this is just for Australia or what it will entail but there’s not long to wait until we find out.
Vita Game News
There was a couple of announcements in terms of software heading to the Vita, we can expect a sequel to PSP series Valhalla Knights with Valhalla Knights 3 being announced. The first two games made it out of Japan so fingers crossed that this one will too.
More exciting is a port of Muramasa: The Demon Blade, a visually stunning side scroller than hit the Wii in 2009. Here it will see new content, a visual update and new control schemes utilizing the Vita’s functionality.
Next up is a sequel to God Eater, a very popular PSP gamein Japan. This should help the Vita get some momentum in it’s home territory which a large fanbase for the original game.
That’s it for new games, previously announced games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified, Playstation All Stars and Legend of Heroes were being shown. Sad news is that the much anticipated Soul Sacrifice has been delayed until 2013.
Muramasa was beautiful on Wii. On Vita it should look incredible!
Sony – Gaikai Partnership
This one isn’t so much news but it’s worth mentioning because Sony have been very quiet on the Gaikai front. CEO Andrew House stated that the partnership would result in a new cloud service using Gaikai’s tech to expand Playstation beyond games and it should be arriving soon.
Playstation Plus Comes To Vita in November
At E3 Sony announced that PS+ would be coming to Vita, at TGS they said it would be coming with the November update to the service and that your existing subscription would be valid on both PS3 and PS Vita. The list of features will be very similar to whats offered on PS3, including: free and discounted games, exclusive content, cloud saving, automatic updates, automatic trophy syncing.
Playstation Mobile Launches in October
Sony’s bid to get Playstation games onto mobiles and tablets is arriving on October 3rd. 30 games will be available at launch with pricing between around $0.63 to just over $10. In November they will be releasing the SDK to allow developers to create their games for distribution on any Playstation certified devices, the service will cost $99 a year.
That’s all the news from Sony’s end. There are a lot of smaller announcements or updates on things we know are already in the works with nothing to rival the announcements of either E3 or Gamescom. The lack of Monster Hunter Vita was certainly noticeable. How do you feel Sony did? Was there anything glaringly obvious that they’re missing or are you happy with the way things are panning out? Let us know in the comments.
Source: IGN
S#*! TALKING CENTRAL