PS3 Slim Could Be Announced Next Month At GDC

I have posted about the PS3 Slim before on this blog, it appears a number of sources have been in contact with the TheSixthAxis site and are saying a price drop and announcement on the PS3 Slim will be made at the Game Developers Conference 2009 which runs from August 17 to the 19 in Cologne, Germany. That's hope we finally find out all the details about the PS3 Slim and price cut then.

The Future Of Trading In Games

The future of retail and online games stores seems bleak at the moment due to the ever change ways of buying our games, for the PC you have services like Steam that seem very popular where you pay a subscription to play what ever games you want when you want but never actually own them, then you have Xbox live, PSN and Wii shop channel for your home consoles in which you can download games, DLC, demos and trailers. In the future i'm sure these services will grow and become even more popular meaning we will buy more downloadable games instead of buying games from stores, also other services such as OnLive our on the way and may change the way we play games using the Internet and a monthly subscription on any TV or PC, this may mean by the time the next generation of home consoles releases they may be alot different from what we have now such as a download only like the PSPGO.

There are three possibilities

Disc and download
Download only
Subscription based

The problems with disc's and download's are that they can be pirated over time but subscribution based is alot better due to you never downloading the full game which makes it less likely to be pirated. My opinion is we may see download only consoles next generation, This helps the developers and publishers save money from not producing disc's, manuals, and case's. The other thing this helps the publishers do is sell more of there games instead of losing money from people buying traded in games.

What i would like to see if consoles become download only is the ability to sell the games we download via PSN store. The way this could work is when you go to the PSN store to buy a game you receive a redeem code which you then redeem and then download and play then when you want to sell/trade the game you delete the game from your hard drive and then go on to the PSN store and list the item and redeem code on a section just for trading in games and when it sells you get a certain percentage, Sony gets a percentage and the publisher gets a percentage.

Example
Battlefield 1943 cost's £9.99 to buy new you then play and then Sell on the PSN store for £9.99 you then receive something like 25%, Sony receives 25% and the publisher receives 50%

If this could be done in some kind of way i think this would help people who like buying disc's from shops as they will be able to still sell there games to buy others and would make it cheaper then buying the disc version's as a download only service is cheaper then a disc service, which means games that are £39.99 in shops now could sell for around £25-£30. This could be done if redeem codes are used and a system that changes the code once listed on the PSN store to stop you from redownloading the game again.

As for retail stores they could also sell either PSN cards or the games using redeem codes for people who don't have there console hooked up to the Internet or for when you want to buy a game for someone else for birthdays or Christmas's

Whatever happens when the next generation comes around I'm sure downloadable content will be a huge part of how games are sold.

Home Screen Capturing Coming Soon

There as been alot of talk about picture frames in Home spaces and the ability to take pictures with in Home, according to Locust_Star (Home Manager in America) recently replied to a request about screen capturing within Home it's on it's way very soon.

"[It's] a simple feature that I know the devs are working on. My magic 8-ball says [it's] coming sooner rather than later."

Could this be coming this week? i think its more likely to come at some point this year and might be something to do with firmware update 2.90, maybe the ability to capture screens from within the game you are playing and within Home space's and then upload to a picture frame within your Home personal space.

Top 10 Selling PS3 Games Of 2009

Below is the top 10 selling PlayStation 3 games of 2009 so far, there are 5 exclusives in the top 10 (Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet, inFamous, MLB 09:The show and Yakuza 3) as of 4th of July.

28th Dec 2008 to 03rd Jan 2010
(No) (Title) (Publisher) (Weeks) (This Year)(Life Time total)
1 Resident Evil 5 (Capcom) 18 2,310,236 2,310,236
2 Killzone 2 (SCE) 19 1,728,191 1,728,191
3 Street Fighter IV (Capcom) 21 1,263,303 1,263,303
4 Call of Duty:W.A.W (Activision) 34 969,892 3,360,762
5 UFC 2009 Undisputed (THQ) 7 824,124 824,124
6 LittleBigPlanet (SCE) 37 599,457 2,268,506
7 inFamous (SCE) 6 596,088 596,088
8 FIFA Soccer 09 (EA) 40 545,396 2,249,537
9 MLB 09: The Show (SCE) 18 477,604 477,604
10 Yakuza 3 (Sega) 19 474,672 474,672

Also the PS3 as sold 3,770,886 so far this year, which brings the total PS3 sold to 22,447,800 (not 100% correct)

Battlefield 1943 Review

After not expecting much for £9.99 and being a PSN store game only Battlefield 1943 shattered those expectations within just 10 minutes of starting the game up, the graphic's are amazing for a PSN store game and competes with a full priced boxed game also the ability to destroy most objects makes this really fun to play. There are only three maps to start off with which is kind of a let down and should of opened with at least 4 or 5 maps. A forth map will open once the community reaches 43 million kills this map will be called Coral Sea and a new game mode called Air Superiority. Which brings me to the planes which are all most impossible to master due to a bad controller set up hopefully this will be sorted out soon otherwise the Air Superiority mode will be very unpopular.

The gameplay is very easy to pick up and there are only three classes - infantryman, rifleman, and scout to master, also health and ammo regenerates so there is no need to find health packs or ammo. There is only one game mode called Conquest in which there are five flags positioned around the map the aim is to take as many as possible and defend them while killing to reduce the other teams tickets to zero, this works really well. You can also drive tanks,boats,jeeps and of course fly planes there is also one bunker on each map that allows you to call in an air raid that you can control from a third person view and release the bombs anywhere you like then once the raid is complete you appear outside the bunker and the air raid then regenerates, when an air raid is incoming a siren is sounded all around the island, it is then up to you to find cover in a bunker or hope the air raid is not being droped on you.

The pros

24 player online
The price £9.99
Amazing graphics and destructibility of most objects
Easy to pick up gameplay which is very addictive
No lag (first day or so there was problems with servers but now seems ok)

The cons

Only three maps
No single player
Planes are near impossible to master

I think anyone who is into FPS games will love this game due to how simple but addictive the gameplay is, and the price is really good for what is almost a full game. This should tie you over until MAG and/or Modern Warfare 2 is released which ever one you are going for.

Score out of 10: 9

Written by: Me (Krease)