PlayStation News, Articles and Information for the UK and Europe

E3 is just around the corner, and with it comes the excitement of what developers and studios are going to announce at their E3 conferences. Below is a list of all major E3 conferences in chronological order along with their times (in BST) and a link to a live stream of each conference.

For all the latest PlayStation news as it happens during these conferences, be sure to follow us on our Twitter account (PSFuture) to make sure you don’t miss a thing.

MICROSOFT CONFERENCE

6th June, 17:30. Streamed from Microsoft’s Xbox Site.

ELECTRONIC ARTS CONFERENCE

6th June, 20:30. Streamed live from EA’s Live Event Site.

UBISOFT CONFERENCE

6th June, 22:30. Streamed live from Ubisoft’s uPlay Site.

SONY CONFERENCE

7th June, 01:00(am). Streamed live from EU PlayStation Blog.

NINTENDO CONFERENCE

7th June, 17:00. Streamed live from Nintendo’s E3 Site.

Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty was (and still is) Insomniac’s only venture into the digital-download-only market. The game was developed to be the second instalment in the Future trilogy of Ratchet and Clank – set after Tools of Destruction and before A Crack in Time. Quest for Booty was Insomniac’s acid test for digital download – to see if it was feasible to create bite-sized titles at a lower cost, whilst maintaining the same high quality but with a shorter storyline. Compromising game length, though, has somewhat ruined the experience.

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Yup. The maintenance has finished and the store has been revived, full to the brim with new content from the last few weeks. Of course, the sheer volume of traffic on the Store at the moment means it’s a little unstable, but the Store team are working to improve that as I type.

If you do manage to get to the Store, you’ll see that there is loads of content such as: Outland, Under Siege, Alien Crush, SEGA Rally Online, Wizardry, Final Fantasy VI, more content for PlayStation Plus subscribers (including Burnout Paradise for free).

There are even demos of: The Fight, inFamous 2, LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, No More Heroes, Red Faction, Motorstorm Apocalypse and more.

Unfortunately, the Welcome Back program has not taken effect yet, so you won’t quite be able to download your free offerings just now, however we will let you know as soon as it happens.

Just in the last few days, Rockstar announced the details of the Rockstar Pass, a special voucher you can buy on the PlayStation Store for L.A. Noire. The Rockstar Pass gives you access to all future DLC to be released for L.A. Noire, at the more than modest sum of £7.99 (not yet confirmed, but this should be an accurate estimate). This method of purchasing DLC means that die-hard fans of the game will in effect pre-order all the DLC that comes out, rewarding those fans because of its discounted price.

What’s more, Rockstar will only be keeping the discounted price for a limited time (until 14th June), so only the eager fans that bought the game early on get the full benefit of the pass. It’s this way of doing things that we should see more often in the industry – content which rewards the early birds whilst not blocking any content out from the not-so-early birds. Too often have we seen companies bundling DLC together after it has all been released separately, and that’s no good at all for the hardcore fans who buy stuff the minute it comes out.

If every company adopted the same policy as Rockstar, I reckon we would see a lot more people willing to shell out for DLC, especially people who often get DLC on day one. I, for one, would love to see a Need for Speed Elite pass to get me all the packs on a Need for Speed game; or an Uncharted Treasure Hunter Pass for all the maps and skins in Uncharted 3; and I’m sure you all would too.

UPDATE2: The maintenance will now take place at 1730 BST today (1st June) and will continue until 0800 BST tomorrow morning (2nd June). If you wish to play online during the maintenance, log in before 17:30 UK time.

UPDATE: The maintenance planned for 2000 BST tonight has been postponed. There is currently no date/time for when the maintenance will now be taking place. For the latest info, check the PS Blog or look here on the PlayStation Forums.

The PlayStation Network will be down for maintenance on 31st May. The maintenance will begin at 2000 BST on the 31st May and continue through to 0200 BST on the 1st June. During this time, the following services will be unavailable:

• PC Registration
• Console Storefront
• PS3 Account Management
• PS3 Network Account Registration
• PSP Network Account Registration
• Qriocity Account Management

If you are signed in before the maintenance begins, chances are you’ll be able to continue playing through the maintenance. There’s no confirmation from Sony yet, but this maintenance could well be used to bring back the PlayStation Store. We’ll keep you posted of any updates.

inFamous is an action/adventure game developed by the masterminds behind the Sly Cooper series – Sucker Punch Productions. Developed and released as a PS3 exclusive, inFamous mixed the impressive powers and gameplay mechanics you’d expect from a superhero comic with the platforming prowess of Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted. It’s release nearly two years ago saw fairly positive responses from players, other developers and critics alike. But with a sequel to inFamous about to be released, and an offer of picking it up for free as compensation from Sony, how does it measure up now?

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One of the biggest questions surrounding inFamous 2 is how they were going to incorporate continuity from the original. Many people believed that save data would be imported in order to reflect your starting karma in inFamous 2, however they were wrong. Today, Sucker Punch have announced that loyalty will be rewarded by examining trophy data, not save data. Importing your trophy data will yield the following rewards:

• Earning the Good or Evil karma trophies from inFamous will start you with good/evil karma.
• Earning the trophy for collecting 25% of the blast shards will get you a free energy core.
• Earning the trophy for collecting 50% of the blast shards will get you 2 free energy cores.
• Earning a trophy for finishing the game (with either karma) will get you 1,000 bonus XP.
• Trophies for specific decisions in the game will affect dialog options, dead drops and side missions in inFamous 2.

Source: IGN

Ubisoft have released a teaser trailer for the latest addition to the Assassin’s Creed series – Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. The game is the third and final chapter in Ezio’s story, and focuses on his journey to find the truth by travelling in Altair’s footsteps. This trailer is a mere teaser as to the full video that will be shown on the 6th June at E3. The trailer in question is displayed below:

Here are the full details of the Welcome Back program for SCEE:
All PS3 account holders who have had an account since 20th April 2011 get to choose 2 game from the following:

• inFamous
• Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty
• WipEout HD & Fury
• LittleBigPlanet
• Dead Nation

All PSP account holders who have had an account since 20th April 2011 get to choose 2 games from the following:

• LittleBigPlanet PSP
• Modnation PSP
• Pursuit Force
• Killzone Liberation

In addition to this, the welcome back program will include the following:

• 30 days free PlayStation Plus subscription to all account holders
• 60 days extended PlayStation Plus subscription to all current PlayStation Plus subscribers.
• 30 days free subscription to all Music Unlimited subscribers.
• Some extra PlayStation Home offers, TBC.

Looks like there’s a bundle of stuff to get your hands on there. Remember as part of 30 days of PlayStation Plus membership you get up to 6 months free cloud storage of game saves which could prove very useful.

The EU PlayStation blog post detailing this information has since been taken down.

Update 3.61 to the PS3 Operating System is now available to download. This update is mandatory if you wish to continue using the PSN (when it is restored), and will require you to change your password when you next log in to the PSN. If you are not currently using v3.60, check the system software archive for details of other features added in previous updates.