Sinestro Corps Batman is PS3 Only

If you have been keeping up with news concerning the upcoming 'Batman: Arkham City' game, then you have probably seen all of the different character skins available via preordering.  Well, looks like people who buy the Extended Blu-Ray edition of this summer's 'Green Lantern' flick will get a PSN download code to get access to the Sinestro Corps Batman skin.

Yep, a yellow and black take on Batman's character skin.  I'm all about options and love the fact that we will see skins from pretty much every incarnation of Batman's costume from the "Adam West" color scheme to Batman Beyond.  Not to mention the several takes on Robin.  But a reference to a cross -comic story arc that only some will understand...That may be taking it a little far. 

This skin will be exclusive to PS3 owner's (but will probably show up on 360 for purchase at some point later on as most DLC seems to show up on both systems eventually).

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Sony Network Pass? What the crap?

Hey PS3 owners, are you looking forward to getting Online Pass codes in your games?  Well, looks like it's going to happen.  Later this year (with the release of Resistance 3) games part of the Online Pass program will include a code that will grant you access for the online components of the games you buy.  If you buy new games, no big deal.

But if you are buying a used game, get ready to pony up around $10.00 for the online code to let you play the rest of the game you just bought.  Much like they did with Mortal Kombat (which included an online pass code for online play).  If you bought it as Used, visit the PSN Store and purchase the access pack for $10 (USD).

So why the drive for this Online Pass crap?  Simple, game publisher's get no money from the sale of a preowned (used) game.  So while your local Gamestop is pressing for preowned game sales, the publisher's are smacking gamer's on the hand when the buy a used game.  So look at it this way, 2 years into the future, Mortal Kombat may be marked down used to $15.00 (purely for example).  So you buy preowned and wanted to play online, so you'll spend another $10 for the code.  You just spent $25 on the game.

Now look at this way, you buy a preowned copy of Resistance 3 with your Christmas money later this year for $49.99 (marked down from $59.99 new) from Gamestop.  But in order to play online against your friends, you have to visit the PSN Store and purchase the Online Pass code for $10.  Guess what?  You just paid the same amount as compared to buying it as New.  And let's face it, with online play being such a big deal with many of the current gen games.  If you are looking to get the total value from your games, than you need online play to do so.

Publishers have been trying to circumvent used game sales for some time.  Most recently Capcom decided to lock game save data in one of their new Resident Evil titles for the Nintendo DS so you can't restart the game.  Meaning, if you buy it as preowned; you also get the previous owner's game state.  Better hope they saved before that last boss.  LOL

And it will be seen how this will affect game sales at preowned game stores like Gamestop.  But it's clear that the world is changing in all aspects (business, economic, and video games to name a few).  This will make cloud based options like OnLive look all that much better.

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Tech News: PS4?, Duke Goes for The Gold, Speaking of Gold...Farming? And More!

It was confirmed today that Sony is working on what they call a "future platform".  This comes as no surprise since in all reality it is probably getting time for the "Big 3" to announce their "next next-gen" platforms and consoles.  Sony has already been dropping info on their NGP (next gen portable) system.  Nintendo has been teasing the successor to the Wii, and Microsoft is claiming their next console is slated for 2015.  So don't fret too much about not having the latest and greatest in console gaming, because the new stuff won't be coming for a while yet.

However, a note to Sony: how about you make sure your existing platforms are buttoned down before making to big of plans for the next big thing...Just something to think about.
Sources:
PS4 http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/712993/playstation-4-sony-confirms-it-is-working-on-future-platform/
NextBox http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-looking-at-releasing-next-xbox-in-2015-2011-3

For fans of Duke Nukem, go ahead and get excited.  Because this week the Duke went Gold!  That's right.  The date is locked down, gamer's all over have literally waited over a decade for this.  So for those of you lucky enough to have early beta access look for the demo on June 3rd.  For the rest of us, June 14th is our day!  And in the word's of Duke: "this game better be good."
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/228552/duke_nukem_forever_goes_gold.html

While we are speaking about "gold", if you have ever played an MMO (massively multiplayer online game) you have probably seen and no doubt heard of gold farmers/sellers.  This has typically been a huge business behind the scenes.  The market for gold selling within MMO games has been the bane of the game developer's and players.  Due to in-game gold being ill gotten and trading hands by means of real world cash, the in-game economy can go crazy.  Which causes things to go nuts for those in game who are actually playing.  Players who are in the practice of buying this in-game currency will usually purchase the gold from the seller, who would transfer the currency to the buyer's character accounts.  The buy can then use this currency to progress through the game at an unfair advantage.  Developer's have been cracking down on these practices, but it is near impossible to actually halt this operation.  Other questionable methods of playing are "power leveling", where a player pays a service/website to level up their characters so the actual player doesn't have to.  Both gold farming and power leveling are unfair, and usually are huge account security risks for the owner of the character accounts in question.  Now that the principle behind gold farming/selling and why it is bad for games has been cleared up.

We go on to why we're talking about it.  It appears as though some Chinese prisoners are being forced to be gold farmers in some MMO games at a labor camp in China.  The former prisoner stated that among 300 other prisoners, they were forced to play online games in 12 hours shifts.  This would be after a days worth of physical labor in the camp.  Apparently the guards were using the in-game currency as a means to sell and make money off of the prisoner's online labor.  And if they didn't meet their "quota" they would be punished or beaten.   For more of this man's story, swing by The Guardian for the full article.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

Sony has now made the free theft protection for PSN user's available.  If you are a PSN user, you should be getting an email soon about this service.

And on a final note, swing by The Deadbolt News for some quick previews an video footage of X-Men: First Class!  And yes, they are awesome!
Source: http://www.thedeadbolt.com/news/1000082/x_men_first_class_5_new_previews.php

Until next time.  Happy Surfing!

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PSN Is Back Up...Partially.

Well, Sony has finally pulled through.  Looks like the PSN is back up as far as online play is concerned.  Other features like the Playstation Store are still down.  But I'm sure it'll be following very soon.

So, what now?  Well I'm sure there will be plenty of people ready to flame Sony over when their free games are going to be available.  But as far as I am concerned I can now return to Unreal Tournament 3 and Mortal Kombat's online play.

So what's required to get online now that PSN is back up and running?  Simple, a fairly quick console update is required, and once installed it will require you to change your PSN password.  After that, you're done.

So go forth and play to your hearts content PSN users!

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A little ventilation over the whole PSN Scenario...

Here is my take on the PSN Outage.  Please read the post all the way through before jumping to conclusions.

Last week millions of Sony Playstation 3 gamers became shocked to find out that the beloved online service 'PSN' (Playstation Network) was offline. And not only was the service down, but it was apparently suspended without any time frame for when it would return. As of this writing (4-29-11) the service is still offline.  But don't be fooled into thinking that is as bad as it gets.

The service interruption for PSN seemed to follow awfully close to Sony dropping the lawsuit they brought against Geohot for modding the PS3 console.  It was very apparent that Sony wanted to make a rather large example out of George Hotz (dubbed 'Geohot').  For those who don't know Mr. Hotz is very well known within the modding communities.  Sony agreed to drop their lawsuit if Hotz would quit modding Sony's products.  The whole GeoHot lawsuit took the web by storm.  There was a distinctive line where loyal PS3 owners felt they shouldn't alter the hardware because it promotes piracy, which in turn drives up the price for services, games, and consoles for everybody else.  Meanwhile, the modding communities were sounding off to the tune of our products should work the way we want them too.  Why buy a product if you are restricted to only doing what the manufacturer allows.  Both sides honestly have very valid points. However, neither will be appeased regardless of what Sony does (reference back to Sony removing 'OtherOS' from the PS3 to see what I'm talking about).

Now, fast forward to the current PSN outage.  What do we know?  We know Sony realized their system had been compromised on Tuesday, April 19th.  The next day the service went offline (both PSN and Qriocity services are affected).  Sony still didn't tell their customer's that the services had been compromised. It wasn't until April 22nd  that Sony posted what had actually happened to their system.  I realize that they had to have time to investigate what the intrusion involved.  But seriously, a system that contains not just personal information but also credit card numbers for online transactions; and they didn't disclose this to the public?  That's crazy.  And better yet, the daily updates Sony was giving were about as vague as they could be.

But hold on to your hat, it gets better.  Over the following weekend Sony posted on the PS3 Blog that they were actually having to rebuild their infrastructure.  So let's get this straight, Sony offers a pretty good premium online experience without cost to their customers.  This service allows customer's to purchase games and content directly through the internet.  This service gets attacked from an outside party/parties; this attack causes Sony to realize that their system needs not only a major security maintenance job done, but a complete rebuild?!  What the hell did the hackers do or have access to?

It wasn't until Tuesday, April 26th that Sony posted on the PS3 Blog that customer's information was stolen.  Over the next several days we have seen reports that this information contained credit card information along with names, addressed, and phone numbers for millions of people.  Then reports of a database containing this very information was up for sale to the highest bidder.  Now word is that some of the information contained in the database was encrypted (including credit card information).

Okay, that's a little better.  But seriously Sony; you're dealing with hackers here.  They acquired access to your system to take the data in the first place, what it keeping them from getting around this encryption too?  All the while, if you read through the numerous postings on the PS3 Blog, you'll see people more pissed off that they can't play games.  Or they are trying to guess how Sony will repay all of their loyal customers.  Seriously people, take a breath and look at the bigger picture.  Much more than access to Modern Warfare is at stake here.  Some people were suggesting that Sony "make up" for the outage and data leak by providing credit monitoring for it's customers for a year or two.  Whether that's a valid option or not, Sony is definitely in the hotseat as far as their Public Relations go.

During the whole course of this outage numerous media outlets and websites have been pointing the finger at Anonymous.  Meanwhile, somehow someone from Anonymous has said it wasn't them who authored the attack on Sony.  According to an article at: http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/85857/hacker-group-anonymous-condemns-psn-attacks/ the person said that the attack was "against the Anonymous principles".  Regardless of who is behind the attack, the attack has not only dealt a huge blow to Sony's online service/e-retail outlet, millions of customers are potentially at risk now as well.  Not to mention all of the customer's of their online MMO (which is subscription based), those guys have every right to be upset at the service's downtime.

My personal opinion, the PSN access is provided free of charge.  If the service is down, ok I won't be playing online until service is restored.  Big deal, I'm not paying anything extra for the service; so who am I to scream and jump up and down when it's unavailable.  I also understand that anytime online security is compromised (whether it be personal or business related), this can be devastating to the entity compromised and/or all of the customers or clients.  It is very unfortunate that Sony has to go through such great lengths to get their service back up and running, but on the same lines.  If you are rebuilding it, make sure it's rock solid second time around.  From a business standpoint, I don't think Sony could get away with their Public Relations if this were sort of outage were to happen again. In the meantime, Sony has made it public knowledge that they are planning on making good on this with their customers.  Somehow, I have a feeling whatever is done won't be quite what everyone is wishing for.  If you read their forum, people are asking for everything from free Playstation + access to cross game chat, and some are even asking for the return of OtherOS (personally I'd opt for either the crossgame chat or OtherOS myself).  But nothing has been confirmed yet from Sony on what they are planning to do.4

My only quarrel is how long it took Sony to publicly acknowledge the problem and to what extent the problem covered.  And I hope Sony realizes that their customer's will not forget this outage.  And before someone tries to flame me for speaking my peace on the matter, yes I have been affected by the outage.  Albeit a minor issue for me, my birthday was the weekend the outage started and my wife bought me 'Mortal Kombat' so I haven't been able to play online.  But for now, big deal.  I've been playing Mortal Kombat offline for years anyways.  So, hopefully Sony is on the upside of this issue and we can all get back to playing online again safely soon.

Thanks for listening and Happy Surfing!

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Sources:
http://bit.ly/jMKXye -Hacker Group Anonymous Condemns PSN Attack
http://bit.ly/lnH9HI    -Sony Considering Make Good for PSN Subscribers, Too
http://blog.us.playstation.com/ -Playstation Blog

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