Welcome back to the week in news! Once upon a time I used to do a daily recap of events linking you to various news story around the world. That got out of hand. Then I started to do a weekly recap of events. That got out of hand once again. Now, I am learning to master the web and will now provide you with a link to my saved news items of the week! Oh, and yes. I start my new week on Sunday!

What happened this week?

• PSP Minis could be playable on PS3
• The link between Michael Jackson and Sonic
• Download a 10gb game from PSN
• Gamers thoughts on micro-transactions
• Microsoft uses the ban hammer again

Find out more

Welcome back to the week in review beta! Once upon a time I used to do a daily recap of events linking you to various news story around the world. That got out of hand. Then I started to do a weekly recap of events. That got out of hand once again. Now, I am learning to master the web and will now provide you with a link to my saved news items of the week! It is very possible that next week I will do an audio recap.

What happened this week?

• PSP Minis, small downloadable games, gets mini pricing!
• LittleBigPlanet gets a new demo and ModNation Racers Beta!
• Win $50,000 developing a Xbox 360 game!
• Scene It! goes multiplatform!

Find out more

Every video I see of this game confirms my purchase. Check it out:

Not missing a beat, initial Qore subscribers should be receiving an email detailing a special renewal offer. Others can subscribe for $24.99 or purchase the July episode for $2.99

PS3

• Punisher ($9.99)

PSP

• Mind Quiz ($9.99)
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Essentials ($19.99)
• Capcom Classics Collection Remixed ($19.99)

Developer Cipher Prime has taken the top prize in the 2BeeGames competition winning $10,000  and a chance to bring their game to a console near you!

I’ve played their game several times and have gotten many friends hooked on it and I certainly welcome and want this title to appear on PSN or XBLA. More exposure can never hurt and I would love to see them do more! Congrats!

Play Auditorium

We have heard that Sony developers like to collaborate and it is pretty important for a house of 2,500 devs to share. So that is exactly what they are doing. United Front Games, the developer of the upcoming title Mod Nation Racers, has been taken underneath the Sony Ninja Wings and are being taught the way of the Cell.

Naughty Dog co-President, Evan Wells, even admitted to sharing some of their tech during the PlayStation Blog Q&A. In this admission he spoke of a team that I only heard about in old wives tales, the ICE team. They are a specialty team writing optimized code for the PS3. I immediately think of Sony Cambridge when speaking of tech teams aka Ninja’s within Sony. Wells even went on to say that they even uploaded all the source code from Uncharted for internal use and plan to do the same with Uncharted 2. Another great example of this would be Insomniac Games Nocturnal Initiative.

• Sony Shares w/ Mod Nation Dev
• Nocturnal

Fracture is up for grabs for $9.99 from Amazon. Click the image to view the product page or to purchase.

I am sure you have seen Team Ico’s next game, “The Last Guardian”, if not then you truly do live under a rock. If you did and you are in awe of what they have done thus far and you want to nerd out, then check out Digital Foundry’s annotation of the released trailer.

I always find it a bit difficult to dissect some of the Store stats that we receive. One of those items is the Top 10 Games, Top Downloads, and Popular Games section. Is the Top 10 Games list for the month, week prior, or current week? Is the Top Downloads for the month, or prior week? What is Popular Games? Is this a Top Downloads in disguise? Or could this be a “What is played the most on the network” category?

Despite all those questions we can thank GamerBytes for analysing some of the info. Take a look at the top 5 games for PSN in May and be sure to check out a further in-depth view here:

1. ZEN Pinball
2. Worms
3. Mortal Kombat II
4. Wheel Of Fortune
5. Flower

Once I get my move out the way, look forward to a run down of some very cool PSN games you must try!

We have been waiting patiently and we have been graced with a classic PSOne title. Sony released Final Fantasy VII during the week of E3 and since then it has been downloaded over 100,000 times. Here are a few more stats Sony released:

• PSN accounts have hit 25 million registrations.
• Over 500 million pieces of content has been downloaded.
• 200 PSN games
• 1,900 Movies
• 9,000 TV Shows

While it is certainly nice to see the network grow in users I feel Sony can definitely do more to promote their network and the PlayStation Store. I can’t help but to look at Valve and their use of Steam with constant deals on older and newer software. I also am missing a music store akin to iTunes or AmazonMP3. Give PlayStation users a one stop access point to grab DRM free songs so they can beef up their music collection on the PS3 for those in-game music playlists.

Coming Soon

• Wild Arms 2 (PSOne)
• Mobile Light Force (PSOne)
• Spec Ops: Stealth Patrol (PSOne)
• Punisher: No Mercy (PSN)

As we approach October 1st, which marks the launch of the PSP Go!, we should continue to see more classic PSOne titles as Sony has promised. We should also continue to see more PSP titles be offered as digital copy or digital download as we lead up to the Go release.