The Leipzig Convention has started, so here are two new trailers of two big titles directly from Leipzig. Remember these games are coming out next year, so here are more reasons to get hyped up about; that’s if you like these games at all. Oh right, I probably should tell you what games. The trailer you see bellow is for Killzone 2 and the one here is for the HD version. We also have Resident Evil 5 just follow this link for the videos. Enjoy.

“Michael Shorrock // Director of 3rd Party Relations, SCEA” wrote:

Hi everybody, Michael Shorrock, here. I’m the Director of Publisher Relations here at SCEA. I work closely with all of the publishers and developers who create games for all PlayStation platforms. While SCEA had a ton of great announcements at E3, I’m excited to say, we have one more for today, one that I know a lot of you have been asking about:

For the past several months, we have been working closely with Neversoft and Activision, Harmonix and Konami to ensure that PlayStation 3 guitars and drum sets will all feature a basic level of gameplay compatibility.

For the most part, this means that the titles with musical peripherals will work with the other’s software. A few specific examples include: Guitar Hero: World Tour’s guitars and drums will work with Rock Band 2 and Konami’s Rock Revolution software.

And yes, you guessed it, Rock Band 2’s guitar and drum set will work with Guitar Hero: World Tour and with Rock Revolution.

Conversely, Rock Revolution’s drum set will work with both Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2.

In addition, Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 will both support the SingStar microphones.

We’re still working hard to ensure compatibility between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles currently on the market, and we hope to have an announcement on that shortly.

Of course each of these great games have their own specific cool features that may not be compatible with the other controllers, but this is our first big step in bringing a level of compatibility to music games that is sure to benefit PlayStation 3 consumers.

Keep an eye out here for more information in the future.

Sick of Valve’s water-torture Heavy updates? We were. Just a little. Was starting to feel like a dojo, and boy, are we all dojoed out. So it’s great to see the proverbial floodgates open with this latest announcement, because not only are they introducing an all-new gameplay mode into the game - Arena mode - but five new maps to go along with it. Arena’s designed for small, quick, tactical engagements, and will take place on new (well, newish) maps that emphasise this new approach. Three of the maps are existing ones that have been remade to suit Arena (Well, Granary, Badlands), while the other two - Lumberyard and Ravine - are all new (and are pictured below).

Attention readers! Twenty-Four Flowers have a little announcement to make, and I’m glad to reach it out to you guys. The oh-so famous guys behind Sony’s E3 conference opening song, Burn In My Mind, are having a grand contest thanks to the apparent bombardment of mails and comments sent in by fans. (Believe me; I’ve seen them.) The fans have asked… err demanded for a video for the hit single BIMM. This have gotten the band to think of opening a contest for fans to show their skills on video editing, and narrative plot. Gamers can take advantage of this and make their little montages and whatnot. Just imagine what you can come up with: a Killzone 2 battle zone with a heartbreaking story to the side. Seems like I’m already coming up with ideas. Here is the full press release of the contest:

Twenty-Four Flowers Announces The “Twenty-Four Flowers Video Challenge”

August 18, 2008
San Diego, CA

Twenty-Four Flowers, the band whose debut single Burn In My Mind headlined Sony’s press conference at this year’s E3 video game trade show, has announced a contest in which entrants can create their own videos for the song. The winning entry will be featured on the Twenty-Four Flowers website; 10 semi-finalists will receive copies of the group’s upcoming EP.

The contest comes in response to a landslide of requests for an official video for Burn In My Mind, which has become an underground hit since a world-wide search for its identity broke out immediately after it first hit the airwaves in mid-July. Fan-made videos based around the track continue to spring up on the internet, and the “Twenty-Four Flowers Video Challenge” is meant to be a fun and interactive way of showing the band’s appreciation for such phenomenal fan response and support.

Twenty-Four Flowers’ debut EP is due out this fall. More info at www.twenty-fourflowers.com.
—-

As you can see, this guys are doing pretty well. Aside from that kick-start that video editing program, or get your pencil ready to write an amazing plot for the movie.

Remember to check out the band’s MySpace for some info, and if you haven’t gotten the hit single pick it up here.

In this months feature we were lucky enough to catch a minute with Mary Elam a.k.a. Haruka; An amazing cosplayer and photographer with a vested interest in great video games, music, and…velociraptors? One of the funnest interviews I have done, this is not one to be missed!

TripleChat: First off, tell us a little about yourself in general.

Haruka: When I grow up I want to be a dinosaur. Hopefully a raptor, but I’d take any kind of dinosaur at this point. Currently I am living in Denton, Texas, working towards my degree in photography. I’m a pure Texan through and through, but I’m not sure if these boots are right for me. I’m a pretty geeky girl, however there is more to me than just playing dress up and video games.

TripleChat: Haruka huh? From what I gather it is pretty common for cosplayers to have a second name. Why did you pick that name? What significance does it hold?

The PSN Video Store is nice and is certainly coming along with the weekly updated movies and TV shows. But the PSN Video Store does have a big problem that will affect TV show buyer’s big time.

What are you talking about?

To understand what I am saying I will use iTunes to demonstrate my point.  On iTunes, you can buy individual episodes of shows or buy the whole season, as seen in this screen shot below.

Click here to see a larger image.

As you can see, you can buy individual episodes or buy a full season at a discount.  Like in this case, in an American Dad season, there are 16 episodes priced at $1.99 each; that would come out to $31.84 plus tax. So iTunes allows you to buy a full season instead of buying up each episode individually.

Why Do You Bring This Up?

Well simple.  After I was updating the movie, TV shows, and Anime PSN Video Store threads on TripleChat.com (which by the way are up to date too), I was going to buy a season of an Anime show, since I am an anime lover after all.  But I noticed for a show like Burst Angel that has 24 episodes in a season, I could not do a buy all option.  For some reason they do not have a buy all or group option so you are forced to buy each episode individually at $1.99 per episode.  You count 24 episodes and that is a whopping $47.76 for one season alone. To me that is nuts, considering I bet I could go to Best Buy or Fry’s Electronics and buy it for less.

So How You Suppose They Fix it?

Simple.  Two ways to do it in my book.  First, you add a basket option.  Not the same basket you are thinking of either, no this basket would allow you to pick episodes you want and get a discount when you buy in bulk.  Example, let’s say I add five episodes of Trinity Blood to the cart, now the basket could allow you to get a discount of 20% for buying in bulk.  So if you buy 5 episodes at $1.99 each that comes out to $10 bucks and with a 20% discount you knock off 2 dollars, so it’s like buy five for the price of four.

Second option is an iTunes style, and that is adding a buy all option with a discount.  Back to the reference of Burst Angel that has 24 episodes in season one, you could buy all of them for let’s say $30 to $40 dollars then. That way you are not so much raped in the wallet and can still afford to buy games too, I mean they have to give us a break here.

Other than that, the PSN Video Store is very nice and coming along just great.  It just needs this minor tweak to be just right.

So, Infinity Wards isn’t making the newest Call of Duty installment; seems like the only difference from this two is the time period. Treyarch claims Call of Duty World at War is the best game they’ve made so far. The guys at 1Up feel no difference between the intensity and gamplay from CoD4 to CoD:WaW. Note, this is a good thing since CoD4 has great controls and gameplay. There are of course great differences to take notes on, one of which is the flame thrower. They also go on saying that the music is great. The intensity that Call of Duty 4 had, is present on CoD:WaW with added rock on music extravaganza. There are of course bigger additional things in this game such as the Co-Op campaign. Treyarch said that all the points you get in Co-Op will be applicable to the multiplayer perks. To check out the gameplay and some more additions to the game you guys should check this weekends 1Up Show.

If you aren’t interested in going back a couple of years back in the to the past, you will also want to check out the talk the 1Up guys have over Dead Space. Dead Space, in case you don’t know, is a very interesting game. Aside from not having a HUD at all, you can change surfaces with the use of antigravity and whatnot. Give it a check, see if you like.

PS: At the end of the show one of the guys takea a line from one of our staff members. Take a guess at who it is.

Hmm, have you ever knew someone that just made you laugh with every word they say? Have you known a robot? Have you ever met a robot that made you laugh?

His name is AwesomeMans

He was BUILT in 1994 inside Mount Vesuvius as the ultimate gaming bot, and was also built with a little something for the ladies. He began his climb to videogame domination by playing with Super Mario Brothers 3 for the SNES, along with the Power Ranger Game, some wierd game (He thinks it was Lemmings), and Zombies Ate my Neighbors. He also started playing guitar and drums, and now he pwns at both.

Now, what he sent me to write down was funny but I had to edit some of it because it was too much. However he is a funny guy and also if one of TripleChat’s most active members. So with that I, along wih the rest of the TripleChat Staff, would like to give a ShoutOut to AwesomeMans!

[UPDATE] Looks like PS3Fanboy.com picked up on this news (they copied it from us, I swear!) and got word straight from Lucas Arts that the demo is hitting the PSN Store this week. Look for impressions this weekened.

Numerous sites, including PlayStation Universe, StarWars.com, and PSXExtreme.com are reporting that the demo for Star Wars: Force Unleashed will be available for download on the PLAYSTATION Network next week on Thursday August 21. A word of caution would be to take this with a grain of salt until PS3Fanboy.com, JoyStiq, or Kotaku can confirm this with the official sources.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed is scheduled for a Septemer 16, 2008 release date.

The newly unveiled 80 GB PLAYSTATION 3 SKU’s are already available for pre-order on SonyStyle.com. Soon-to-be available at a price-point of $399.99, the new 80 GB SKUs will use the same hardware as the defunct 40 GB SKUs–no PlayStation 2 backwards compatibility–except with twice the hard disk drive space.

Also, it looks like the 80 GB backwards compatible Metal Gear Solid 4 bundles are sold out on the SonyStyle.com website. However, with Amazon.com getting restocked with MGS4 PS3 bundles fairly recently, they currently still have the backwards compatible models in-stock.

With Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, SIREN: Blood Curse, Warhawk, and now Burnout: Paradise making full releases onto the PLAYSTATION Network, we can only imagine that a heavily online-oriented entity like LittleBigPlanet would make its debut on the PSN as well. As it turns out, LittleBigPlanet will be a Blu-ray exclusive game upon release. Scott Goryl talked with Joystiq recently and confirmed this:

LittleBigPlanet is a Blu-ray Disc product exclusively for PS3. LBP will utilize much of PlayStation Network’s vast functionality for online and community features, but the game will indeed be distributed as a Blu-ray Disc.

Although the game itself will be released on Blu-ray, of course the user-generated content and multiplayer will utilize the PLAYSTATION Network’s capabilities (unlike a certain game). Look out for LittleBigPlanet this October–available for preorder at Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, and Gamestop.

If you have been playing on your PS3 non-stop for the last couple of days, chances are you have one (or more) of the following betas: Resistance 2 Closed Beta (for now,) PlayStation Home Closed/Opened Beta, or SOCOM (the game not the gun or the US Special Operations Command) Confrontation beta - which you shouldn’t have because it isn’t even out yet. Although, people can pull the strangest things off their sleeves, so who knows. If you are in one of those betas, consider yourself special; lets exclude PlayStation Home since there isn’t anything special about it. It still looks the same. Just more people in the same boring place. (Do your duty as a tester and find some glitches though!) If you are not on one of the betas and you are still playing your PS3 non-stop, you most likely have trophy fever. How about putting your desires of leveling up your PSN Level down for a bit, and educate yourself in how to get on these betas before its too late. You wouldn’t want to end up like this girl kissing her hard, long looking trophy…

Exhibit A:

Yeah, imagine what I said when I saw this picture…

Anyways, Sony has or will be having three very important betas at the exact same time; which causes some problems since usually we aren’t accepted in all of them if we are already in one of them. (PSU rules I think - not so sure.) So, lets get on with that educational speech I promised you…

Lets start with PlayStation Home. PlayStation Home closed beta has been active for oh… one eon? Okay, so I’m exaggerating, a little. Either way, Home is opening its doors to more testers as it nears version 1.00 (current built is 00.097 - which has a slight difference than 00.094.) Lets begin.

PlayStation Home Beta:

As you know, Europe and Japan were the firsts to receive their invites to this “expanded beta.” US territory must have gotten the mails by now, including exiting beta testers. The new beta requires existing testers to delete the old beta and download the new one with the respective code. If you aren’t one of the old beta testers you are probably still excited about home you just follow the instruction on the mail, and you’ll be set. Remember this beta access is based on your PS3’s region not your PSN account, so if you bought a US PS3 and you are in Colombia or Panama, chances are it will not work. If this happens that code can only be used once, so do not, I repeat, DO NOT use it to download something that wont work. Instead, try giving it to a friend or someone that can make good use of it. (Keep away from more trophy glory… err, don’t give it to people that will not respect Beta policies.) Furthermore, move out of Colombia. EC has posted few things about Home, so you may want to check that out. There are a few screenshots and the full edited mail which for the sounds of it, he was super exited to get into Home of the boring beta; poor kid. I know I would… (Ellipsis is necessary, yes.)

Lets move onto the famous Metal Gear Solid left over from Meryl gun known as SOCOM; although, this time we are talking about the game not the gun. One of PlayStation’s first voice enabled is debuting on “next-gen” - which is current, and has been for oh… 2 years? Sony said they would say when the next-gen starts, so I’ll go with that. - SOCOM Confrontation is the name of the game. I never had much excitement for this game, but ever since I saw it at E3 it blew my mind. Lets check it out.

SOCOM Confrontation:

This beta is dated for September 1st launch. Dammit, everything starts when school does; gay. The first things you need to know about this and Resistance 2 beta are the ways to get in. The first way is to purchase Qore episodes. SOCOM is the first episode of Qore, hosted by the beautiful Veronica Belmont. The second course of action is to drop $5 on a pre-orders at your local Gamestop, or pay the whole thing - your choice. You will get three invites when you do so. So, you and two of your friends can enjoy good-old Crossroads. Yes, the beta will have Crossroads as a playable map. There will be a 16 or 32 players version of the famous Crossroads. Also, different game modes such as: Extraction, Elimination, and Suppression. You can also unlock new weapons and weapon classes, body armor and whatnot. You can check all of it in their website. There are a lot of features abailable for a little beta, seems like a fun time. Clan support, stat tracking, headgear, camo, etc. but much like the MGO beta this will be reseted once the game launches.

Resistance 2 Beta:

Got a friend who is playing a game by the name of “Girl With A Stick”? Watch out! He is totally not watching a porno! (James…) Some lucky people (PSU members) are currently enjoying the Resistance 2 close beta thanks to who knows what, but don’t worry there is an open beta on the way. Much like SOCOM beta you will have to have an issue of Qore to get a valid Resistance 2 beta code. This issue is number three. This open beta will also happen on September along with SOCOM. You may want to give a check to the new Resistance website. There is not much information we can give you for now; we would love to tell you, but you’ll just have to check back later.

Only Sony manages to have three important beta running at the same time - that kind of sounds like a bad idea. That is it for the betas for now. If you have any questions, leave some comments. If any more betas come, we’ll sure be glad to report. Until then, you can go back to your trophy licking hunting pleasures. Have a nice one!

The latest issue of Famitsu has some new details on the Final Fantasy XIII demo along with a full report from the DKS3713 event. The upcoming Final Fantasy XIII demo which will be bundled with the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Blu-Ray, will be on a separate Blu-Ray disk meaning it should be region free (importers rejoice!).

The amount of gameplay on the demo is promised to be longer then Advent Child which is over 90 minutes long. So, that means the Final Fantasy XIII demo will be over 90 minutes which will make it the longest demo in history. The demo will start at the begining of the game, so you won’t have to worry about any spoilers.

Source: Playstation Lifestyle

Avid listeners of the Full Moon Show know that, although last week was the first Thursday of August, there was no Full Moon Show for us Insomniac fanboys. However, last night (August 14, 2008), episode 31 finally hit the light of day. With Brian Intihar back on the show as a regular, episodes 30 and 31 of the Full Moon Show, listeners have heard a ton of enlightening details on Resistance 2–which is upon the eve of completion and looks to only have quality assurance and debugging remaining in the development cycle.

Interestingly enough, Brian Intihar at several ocassions brought up the "secret project he is working on, on top of playing Resistance 2. Now that review editions of Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty are going out to major gaming journalists everywhere, spoilers look to be running amuck soon (so watch out ;)). But An interesting detail emerged on PS3Fanboy.com :

So is this the secret project that Brian Intihar was hinting at? Who know. Anyways, we look forward to all the Ratchet & Clank we can have. As for now, I still need to beat Secret Agent Clank before the Booty hunt begins next week.

New contest for forum members : tell me in the comments where the title quote came from and get 5,000 forum credits.

The newly updated Home has already made a huge leap from the first beta. Each time a small update is released there are a bucket load of changes and additions that improve and impress the quality of Home and it starts to shape the way the PS3 will be used in every games involvement on the PS3 system.

However there are some downsides to the beta that should be addressed with the screenshots taken.

First off, each section of Home has to be downloaded separately. This means that if you want to go from your Harbor Apartment to the Theater, you must download the Theater by walking into the doors. A screen will pop up asking to download and then the section will be added to the locations that you can visit. Each space (Theater, Game Room, Home Square, Market, and second Homes) must be downloaded separate and each one ranges between 40MB and 50MB. This game could start to eat away a nice little space of HDD.

But that is just a little thing that I have not liked about it, and remember it is still only a beta. Here are  the rest of the Screenshots of PlayStation Home: