PlayStation News, Articles and Information for the UK and Europe

If you’re as excited as we are for the next instalment in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, you’ll be very pleased to know that an announcement is imminent. How imminent depends on how good the web community are at spreading word of the reveal. Simply go to this page on Facebook, ‘Like’ Assassin’s Creed and then either post, tweet or email about the game on Facebook, Twitter or your email program and you’ll automatically contribute to the effort.

This news comes just hours after a contributor on N4G posted a rumour of an imminent Assassin’s Creed reveal – under the name Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. If the source is to be believed, this next title will release at the end of this year and put you in the shoes of Altair – the protagonist from the first game. The fact that the title is not rumoured to be of the main series seems to be very logical – the main titles are part of a trilogy, and with the ‘present day’ events in the series taking place in 2012, I’d put a good bet that we’ll see Assassin’s Creed III in 2012. Don’t let that dismay you though, as any players of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood will realise that a spin-off title in this series is in no way a bad thing.

We don’t often pubish rumours on PlayStation Future but these are simply too delicious to pass on. First up, according to PlayStation Lifestyle there is now actual evidence that trophies for Metal Gear Solid 4 are coming soon. They cite the box art of the US re-release of Metal Gear Solid as part of the Greatest Hits Collection, which lists the content of the game as including Multiplayer, Voice Chat and Trophies. Can it be true? Well, this is certainly the most convincing evidence we’ve seen yet, so fingers crossed this one’s on the way.

The other little rumour we mentioned? Well, it seems that remakes of non-specific games in ”the Metal Gear” and “Final Fantasy” series may be on their way. The use of the word may is deliberate however, as this rumour seems to have a bit less substance. It comes from The Game Headz, an infrequently cached, Google PR0 website, which cites an unnamed Sony source who claims that “When fans see what Konami’s doing to the Metal Gear series, and what Square’s doing with Final Fantasy, they’re going to be very happy.” Read more

James Stevenson, Senior Community Manager of Insomniac Games has stated that a HD collection of the Ratchet and Clank games on PS2, although not yet in existence, would be 100% supported the Burbank-based developer, as long as Sony gets a development team on it.

In a recent post on the EU PlayStation Blog showing off new gameplay of Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One, James Stevenson responded to several questions by a member of the community, the last one being:

- Lastly, when are you releasing the Ratchet & Clank HD Collection?

If Sony decides they want to get a team to do that, we’d support it 100%. It’d be really cool!

Of course, this far from confirms the existence of a HD Collection of Ratchet and Clank, in fact it shows more that Sony has yet to start development on one, but it’s good to know that Insomniac Games would fully support the idea, should (when) it finally sees the light of day.

As we all know, Criterion Games have been working tirelessly on the new Need for Speed, although there has been very little word on the development of the game at the moment – until now. Criterion have placed a countdown on their website set to hit zero on Monday 14th June 22:00 BST. But what will they announce, will there be details of the new Need for Speed game? Or have Criterion been secretly working on another project such as another instalment for the popular Burnout series or even an addition to the SSX franchise?

Criterion have had a knack recently for revealing small titbits of information via various social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. The British developer has obviously been building up to E3 for sometime with tweets along the lines of “Clock is ticking @Criteriongames.com. Cat has been placed into bag.” and “All will be revealed in the city of angels…” which is clearly a reference to Los Angeles, where E3 is being held this year. Either way, we will soon find out what Criterion have been up to in the past year or so…

Top news site The Examiner has a very interesting story about rumoured improvements coming to the PS3′s XMB (XrossMediaBar) at E3 next month. Although a series of upgrades since the PlayStation 3′s launch have made the current XMB a solid interface, there are several areas that leave room for improvement, not least the messaging interface.

With a very high chance of the ‘Premium PSN’ service being announced at E3 (£50 a year is the cost current estimate), it makes sense that tweaks to the XMB could also be on the cards. Whether the highly desired cross-game cChat function will be part of the rumoured XMB upgrade is anyone’s guess, but one thing we’re sure of is that there will be some excellent developments from E3 this year.

Fresh off the Yahoo news press comes a rumour that a next-gen PSP in currently in the works and will be officially unveiled at this year’s E3 in June. There’s only very slight evidence to suggest this but poor launch of the PSP-Go coupled with sightings of the phrase ‘PSP 2′ are starting to set rumours flying around the web.

Our impression? Sony have enough on their plates with the fantastic line-up of 2010 exclusives, the forthcoming 3D support and of course the launch of PlayStation Move in the Autumn without adding a PSP 2 into the mix. Either way, June 2010 should be a very interesting month for PlayStation fans!

We’re not sure if this is a delayed April Fool’s Day joke or what but according to Kotaku, a Japanese third-party hardware developer is planning to release a slightly cumbersome looking add-on TV screen for the ‘PS3 Slim’, turning the console into a quasi-portable gaming machine. The add-on will be released in Japan on May 27th for around 25,000 Yen, which is roughly £180.

Maybe a few real hardcore gamers will be interested but it’s difficult to see this taking off here in the UK.

As reported on CVG, highly anticipated racing game Gran Turismo 5 may support both PlayStation Move and 3D, according to the developers Polyphony Digital. When asked about both forthcoming technologies, Kazunori Yamauchi, the developer’s boss, went on record stating:

“We’re always attuned to new technologies. If there are display devices or peripherals that seem interesting, I’m sure we’ll work to support them.”

 Although not a definitive yes, Move and 3D support are clearly a possibility for Gran Turismo 5 – perhaps that’s one of the reasons for the game’s substantial delays. No release date for the UK/Europe has been announced yet but it’s likely that Gran Turismo 5 will be released in the late Autumn this year. As with previous Gran Turismo games, it will be exclusive to PlayStation and this will be the first full-blown Gran Turismo game released for the PS3.

A rumour originating at Dutch PlayStation website PS3Clan this morning claimed that, in an interview with Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai, they were told that all users, not just ‘Premium’ users, would be charged to use the PSN. However, the original story on PS3 Clan has now disappeared and it seems highly unlikely that the Sony Computer Entertainment CEO would let such a massive cat out of the bag in an interview with a Dutch PS3 website without letting anyone else know.

The story has spread pretty quickly around the internet but until there are some hard facts and official statements just take story as an unlikely rumour.

The good folks over at PSN at Home have recently heard from a ‘trusted source’ that PSOne Classics may be getting Trophy Support some time in the near future, though the only other information on this is that the titles will only be getting 5 – 10 trophies per title. It remains unclear whether this would be retrospectively applied to existing PSOne Classics or just games released in the future.

While many SCEE gamers would welcome such a move, a bigger issue for many is the low number of PSOne Classics on the EU PSN Store, with the US and Japanese stores having many more titles available. In any case, this story is a rumour and with no official word from Sony or anyone else, don’t hold your breath waiting for PSOne Classics to get trophies just yet.