Grave Gamer News & Views — sony

Man From Future Enslaved By PlayStations Destroys PS4

Having witnessed his entire family captured and assimilated by the PlayStation 4’s sentient descendant – known in 2084 as “KillStations” – this Montreal man braved a wormhole through time in order to arrive at a Best Buy midnight event for Sony’s newly launched console.

With the images of his loved ones’ pained expressions still flashing before...

PlayStation 4 Will Support CD and MP3 Playback… Someday

Following fan outcry over the PS4’s inability to play MP3’s and CD’s as well as its lack of support for DLNA, Sony’s Worldwide figurehead Shuhei Yoshida confirmed the features will be worked into the system post-launch.

Gabbing it up on Giant Bomb’s Interview Dumptruck, Yoshida admits his entire team was surprised to hear such vehement feedback over a feature that, apparently, nobody really talks about.

“It’s not like we actively decided ‘let’s not do this feature so people will have to subscribe to Music Unlimited,’” said Shuhei. “The focus has been more on the game features. Some of the features we wanted but we couldn’t get in on day one.”

Yoshida goes on to say “the system guys” in Japan are already figuring out when to incorporate the omitted feature.

Sifting through IGN’s comments section on the issue, there seems to be some confusion as to why MP3 and CD playback, in particular, is a big deal; one user even quips that Sony was correct in thinking nobody cared about the feature, that they simply saw the other guys had it and demanded their fanboy informed console decision house the feature, too.

Let me clarify why MP3/CD playback is important to me: motherfuckin’ custom tracks, son. That’s it. I love jamming to my own tunes while I game. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not like I’m masking Jack Wall’s score on Mass Effect or overlaying Stone Temple Pilots where Nobuo Uematsu should be. If I’m kicking on music, it’s usually to spice up the humdrum military anthems that accompany online sessions of Call of Duty or circumvent the head-on collisions caused when Skrillex splits my ear canal in Need for Speed.

Music Unlimited’s ability to play tunes during every game session leads me to believe that gone are the days of the PS3’s brutally selective custom track feature. Thanks for listening, Shuhei. Now knock your team’s heads together until the patch goes live.

“Hadouken Cabs”…? What the Hell Is Sony Up To?

Sony’s been dropping this odd viral caveat off at different gaming junkets, and I’m just damned stumped trying to figure what it’s really for.

The mock ad features “Hadouken Cabs,” a taxi company that’s apparently been “knocking the competition out since 1987.” The 30 second spot is, obviously, filled to the brim with Street Fighter references, an...

PS4 @ TGS: PS3 Games Streaming by 2014; External Capture Devices Welcome

The PlayStation 4 is making the rounds at this year’s Tokyo Game Show event and just as you’d expect/hope, Sony’s been releasing little caveats of information regarding the soon-to-be launched console.

Interviewed during a roundtable discussion with press, Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony Worldwide Studios, spoke on the planned Gaikai cloud streaming which, when announced that it’d be a part of the PS4’s suite of services back in February, was said to be a way to dip into previous system’s back catalogs.

Yoshida confirmed the Gaikai cloud streaming will begin for the North American region sometime in 2014 and that a decent selection of PS3 titles will be available to browse through from the get-go. These very same PS3 games will also be compatible for the PS Vita. Gaikai’s good graces don’t extend to European territories, sadly, due to uneven broadband speeds across the continent. The service is delayed in Europe until sufficient deals are secured between Sony and local ISPs.

Though the PS4’s on-board ability to record and upload short spurts of gameplay opens up a brave new world to casual gamers looking to share with friends, those with more than a few “Let’s Play’s” notched into their belts have wondered if the next-gen console would support external capture devices for extended sessions.

Well, friends, today you have your “Yup.” Sony’s Third Party Relations man, Brad Douglas, confirmed PS4 video capture support via HDMI. Now there’s no halting your ridiculous goddamn gaming feats in glorious HD. 

PlayStation 4 Release Date Finally Announced

Sony’s Gamescom conference today brought much in the way of news for just about everything slapped with the PlayStation logo today.  I’ll get to the notables in a tic, but I wanted to get it out of the way since Sony’s hour and a half conference was an hour and fifteen minutes of too much foreplay:

The PlayStation 4 is launching November 15th in North America and November 29th in Europe.

We were already treated to the revelation that a PS Plus subscription is the new requirement for online play (but, gracefully, little else, meaning services like Netflix won’t be barred from use without Plus).  With your PS4 purchase, however, Sony is throwing in a 14-day trial of the service at no cost.

Additionally, Music Unlimited – the PS3’s, uh, unlimited music service – is back in a modified form where you can easily access it by pressing the DualShock 4’s PS Button, allowing you to play music in the background of any and all games.  As someone who is swayed by a custom tracks option even if the PS3 version of a game is technically superior, this is a triumph (I’m sorry Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3, I cannot listen to your bullshit loop indefinitely in my eardrums).

Also, those looking for style in their accessories will be pleased as a plum to see the Magma Red and Wave Blue DualShock controllers (above) releasing alongside the console, priced at $59.99.  You’re gonna earn yourself a hard, squinted look from me if you ask which one I’m springing for.

PS Vita’s Price Dropkicked

The thing that needed to happen, thankfully, went and happened.  Sony’s impressive yet struggling handheld, the PlayStation Vita, has taken a $50 price cut, dropping its tag to $200.  Additionally, Sony promised the bloated pricing found on the system’s proprietary memory cards will see a significant reduction in the future.

Remote Play functionality, in which PS4 games can be remotely streamed via WiFi to the handheld turning the Vita into a second-screen controller, will be found on “almost every” title according to the company.

Increased affordability and unique compatibility with PlayStation’s next household device, along with an up-spike in third-party support – yes, Borderlands 2 on the system is a humongous win –  may just surge some life into the Vita (it’s a pun if you know Italian; it’s also a bad pun if you know humor).