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Thank the gawds: Three Speech is dead, replaced by EU PlayStation Blog
Sony Europe has finally seen the light and will execute Three Speech, replacing it with the EU PlayStation blog. Three Speech is Sony Europe's "semi-official" blog, written by -- we believe -- freelancing European game journos and an outside PR company who don't byline their articles. For years, the site has drunkenly walked a line between being a Sony Europe mouthpiece and something different.Thankfully, as of April 17, it appears Three Speech will finally take the mouthpiece mantel with pride and become the EU PlayStation blog. All we can do is hope the EU blog takes its cues from the US PlayStation Blog, a professionally-run site that provides good content and doesn't mince words about what it is.
SCEE: LittleBigPlanet delayed worldwide due to Qur'an references in music
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/playstation/LittleBigPlanet_delayed_worldwide_due_to_Qur_an_references'; That little, er, BIG delay that we reported earlier today? Yeah, it's now effective for the entire ... planet! In a statement published on semi-official site Three Speech, SCEE confirms that the worldwide delay is indeed due to "one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game," which references "two expressions that can be found in the Qur'an." (We've posted the full statement after the break.)No word yet on the new release date for any territory. And we're still awaiting SCEA's response to the matter, which we hope to update with shortly.Update: Media Molecule has released a statement noting that it has an official patch ready for day one, but "a decision was made within Sony that the right thing to do for quality and support of people with no on-line was to replace existing disks." The patch is still ready and the post suggests it will likely "go live at the same time as the game," which still has no new release date. Update 2: For a closer look at the music track in question, check out our report here.Update 3: (2:54PM) SCEA says the game has been delayed one week for the US, now coming the week of October 27.%Gallery-1943%
ThreeSpeech hosts Unreal preview for UK fans
A very lucky five people in the UK will be able to see an early version of Unreal Tournament III for PS3. As noted by the semi-official Sony blog, these five members of the public will be some of the first non-gaming media to see the game.Send your name to blog@threespeech.com if you would like to go in the draw and five names will be selected randomly tomorrow afternoon. Remember, you'll have to make your way to Brimingham, so only those that are in the neighborhood may want to enter.
Dates for upcoming European PSN releases and Motorstorm patch
The European PSN Store is a bit of a tragic tale, as we're sure you've noticed. According to Three Speech, however, that's about to change with two new games available to download before the end of the month. None of that Midway rehash rubbish, either. These are full, specially made for PSN, titles. Ok, I've kept you in suspense long enough, check out the list below. Calling All Cars - 22nd of June (£4.99) Super Stardust HD - 29th of June (£4.99) Not too shabby, eh? While our US cousins have had Calling All Cars for a month now, Super Stardust HD should be a worldwide release. If you're as impatient for these games as we are then you might also like to know that this coming friday, the 15th, sees the release of the highly anticipated Motorstorm patch. Looks like Sony are finally pulling their finger out with their PSN releases. Let's just hope it continues beyond the end of June.
David Jaffe interview, more downloadable games coming
David Jaffe, the revered designer of God of War and the more recent, Calling All Cars, delivers some interesting banter via an interview with Three Speech. He says the difficulty of developing a title like Calling All Cars was the inability to rely "on old tricks" to alleviate the obviousness in areas with weaker game play. In regards to arcade titles, he says "if [the] core gaming isn't working, you have nowhere to hide." Near the tail-end of the interview, when asked if he has any more ideas planned for more downloadable games, Jaffe says his team is "in the design phase with two and three." Hmmm ... Calling All Cars 2 and 3? Or maybe a redesigned remake of the original Twisted Metal? Hey, we'd buy it.
Snakeball, Super Stardust HD en route to PSN
Sony has officially announced the impending arrival of two more PlayStation Network titles, each of them boasting hyper-rainbow visuals that are likely to induce a mental state similar to that following ingestion of a hallucinogenic substance. Not that we have any experience with that sort of thing. We do have some familiarity with Snake though, which you may remember as that slithering self-extension exercise available on every electronic device known to man. In Snakeball, you pilot a "bizarre hoversnake" across an "outlandishly dazzling disco floor," all the while devouring delicious spheres, blasting other players and whacking them with your bizarre hoversnake tail. The game supports online multiplayer, as well as the newly announced PlayStation Eye camera, ideal for plastering a face over your bizarre hoversnake pilot. Three Speech expects the game to arrive in July. %Gallery-2812% Super Stardust HD, to which the Sony blog gives a 15 June release date in Europe, is an arcade shooter built around the high concept of blasting defenseless asteroids to smithereens. A two-player co-op mode (it's unclear if this is local, online, or both), online rankings, 1080p resolution and a "seriously catchy soundtrack" are mentioned in the game's list of features. No word yet on what it costs to shoot at space rocks or pilot bizarre hoversnakes. %Gallery-2813%
Three Speech presses Harrison about PS3 porn
We still can't make heads or tails of the anonymous writers at the "semi-official" Sony blog Three Speech. In an interview with Phil Harrison, which took place at GDC, they laid on the porn questions with the Sony bigwig pretty thick. It appears the "semi-official" blog was trying to semi-irritate Harrison.The interviewer asks if Home will allow for "adult content" between the avatars? Harrison dismisses that. Then the interviewer presses by asking if players will be allowed to upload porn and invite people into their private space to watch. Harrison tries to end the line of questioning, "I'm disappointed that you would use those as the first questions. I think Home should be used for a much wider and more beneficial scope than that, but I think that people can express their creativity inside Home in a wide variety of ways and it's not necessarily for us to dictate what that should be. However, if somebody feels uncomfortable about an encounter on Home, it's very easy for them to ban that person from their friends list"Well, the semi-official blog certainly got away with asking some very off-message questions. Although, for all we know, it's some strange twist in Sony's European PS3 marketing to plant the idea of porn in people's minds. We do know that a majority of Three Speech's information is Euro based, but our requests for the name of their editor and a list of their writers have been ignored. We still have no idea who Three Speech is and what they represent. These porn questions would certainly not be the most bizarre tactic we've seen implemented in the European campaign.
Sony dismisses European launch rumors, but...
Okay, so, this is going to be a shot in the dark and most likely 100% wrong, but we've got an idea to present. First, though, the news. ThreeSpeech has been circulating some rumors regarding the European PS3 launch -- the actual date, firmware updates, add-ons, etc. The firmware update rumor is the most interesting (and most viable): the update would allow multi-tasking and the Remote Play option (or... increased functionality of that option). Multi-tasking would be great. Waiting for those downloads is a pain. Also of note is the idea that only the 60GB version will be available at GPB 425 or less. To all of these, Sony has dismissed as speculation or declined to comment. Take your pick.What's the idea? It's true. Maybe not all of it, but the multi-tasking and the availability seem likely. Why? Well, ThreeSpeech gets a lot of crap for the "semi-official" nonsense, but think about this: if they are affiliated with Sony, would Sony have the guts to leak info, deny it, then "surprise" people when it's actually true (and good news, for a change)? Maybe. Maybe not. Cash in your two cents, we'll see what happens!
ThreeSpeech event news unveiled -- straight from Ben/Sony to you!
A while back we talked about Ben, that lucky guy who got to attend the ThreeSpeech event out in London, thanks to Sony and apparently some divine powers. What did he find out? Well, if he were allowed to question Phil Harrison ruthlessly rather than a tight 15-minute Q&A shared with everyone else, probably a lot more. A short list to summarize: Sony currently has no plans to allow homebrewers access to the RSX graphics chip. Don't hold your breath for any sort of VGA cables. You weren't? Okay. As we've reported, Gran Turismo HD will be free to download in Japan on December 24th. More free content will follow -- so that's cool. Just send it stateside, Sony! And... Europe-side? The Remote Play feature is going to allow acces to your PS3 from you PSP via any WiFi spot on the planet. I personally thought it was just the PS3's wireless that the PSP would read -- so to me, this is great news. Phil Harrison's favorite non-Sony game is Nintendogs, which interestingly enough got a perfect 40 score in Famitsu -- a coveted score indeed. Just a little fun fact. We were promised some insight as to how Lair was shaping up. Poor Ben. Poor us! Lair wasn't available for play. Why? Since Ben is a smooth individual, he flirted around and found out that the current build of Lair is extremely unstable. To quote the lady he spoke with, "The problem is there's something very wrong with Lair." Oh no! I'm going to go ahead and speculate they've been working on it since the Tokyo Game Show and have too many loose codes hanging around that would seize the game -- or didn't get to complete some graphic models that are fairly integral to the game (like, oh, dragons). Whatever! In any case, check out Ben's experience. It sounded like a blast... now I just have to find a damn PS3 now that finals are over! Hooray for college.[thank you very much for the news, Ben! Seriously!]
Got questions for Phil Harrison? Let your voice be heard!
Ben Furneaux is lucky. He gets to take an all-expenses paid trip to London courtesy of Sony and ThreeSpeech to attend a meet and greet event. He will meet Phil Harrison, and he will greet Phil with some hard-hitting questions submitted by you! Hopefully! Ben also gets to check out unreleased titles in their latest build, such as Lair and Motorstorm. If you want to know anything about those games, let him know on his blog in advance and he'll get back to us. Hopefully! Personally, I just want to know if the games are fun -- I don't care about graphics or SIXAXIS functionality or if Phil Harrison's teeth are straight -- I just want the games to be fun. Anyway, comment on his blog your questions or concerns -- or here. Whatever. It's your comment.
Phil Harrison says: PS3 will be well-rounded (and very shiny)
The new, semi-official Sony site Three Speech has lifted up some comments from Sony's Phil Harrison regarding the PS3 and its launch title library -- and B3YOND, er, beyond. What'd Phil say? In response to a question asking about which title Sony is relying on to sell the PS3, he said "a lot of people talked about the 'killer app' and actually it's the killer catalogue you want. It's not about having a single title like a Mario or a Sonic on which you rest the entire platform personality on. It's about having a wide catalogue that satisfies a number of different consumer tastes and styles." Yes, it so is.When asked about what changes the PS3 will spark in the gaming industry (PSX, sorry, PSOne brought 3-D, PS2 brought free-roaming games like GTAIII), Phil actually didn't go the graphics route -- instead, he cited artificial intelligence and physics as well as the whole push to this 1080p HD thing. Asking first about the best use of the SIXAXIS so far and then if rumble is gone forever, Phil didn't cite a "best use" for the SIXAXIS, but said what he liked. As far as rumble is concerned, it's probably gone. Sorry, mates, let's leave that to a third-party mod and software developer support.Interestingly, Phil Harrison said that Sony is working on a way for you to record your own gameplay footage, save it to the hard drive, then upload it onto the web. That's pretty cool, especially if you really like to show off your madd skillz.Firmware updates? Will they be few and far between or a weekly plague like Windows updates (sorry, but I'm sick of that little icon popping up each time I boot up)? Phil says they are focusing on the day one update and will probably have another one in time for the European launch.There are a couple more questions that yield surprising and interesting answers, but you'll have to check out Three Speech for yourself. Or you could get the full interview in the upcoming Official Playstation Magazine, on sale November 15th.[via Three Speech]
Sony recruits journalists for "semi official" blog [update 1]
If you can't beat the blogosphere, then you might as well join it, secretly, and pick up a few established writers along the way. That's what Sony is doing with website ThreeSpeech.com. The website states: "Three Speech isn't part of PlayStation, but it does get to speak to PlayStation. You could say we're 'semi official.'" Yeah, you could say you're a semiofficial advertisement. Respected games journalist Simon Carless points out that something is rotten in the state of ThreeSpeech, citing an exclusive interview with Sony's Phil Harrison that first appeared on ThreeSpeech and then on GamesIndustry.biz. The technical quote from GI.biz, "Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz' Rob Fahey as part of an interview being serialised on semi-official Sony blog Three Speech." To boil this down to its simplest form: When you're good to mama, mama's good to you.Yes, Major Nelson is the Microsoft equivalent to ThreeSpeech, but typically "journalists" aren't involved in his glorified press releases. Everyone involved knows what Major Nelson is and who he represents. Sony is sneaking into the blogosphere and pocketing some writers with promises of "exclusives" to promote their agenda -- and their bottom line.[Update 1: Apparently there is confusion regarding Major Nelson -- added link]
