E3 Kicks off.

So its that time of year again. Gamers around the world have this week marked in their calendar months in advance and for those lucky enough to get in through the front door have had their bags packed for weeks waiting for E3 2011.

Because E3 has just started here's a look at what has happened so far.

Last week I made some predictions and it seems one of them has already come true. I said that Microsoft might bring out another Halo game. Well not only have they done that Microsoft has also announced that Halo 1 is going to be re-released and completely remastered. Complete with Xbox live support, and some minor improvements to its game mechanic like introducing assassinations from Halo Reach. Halo 4 was also announced but its the Halo 1 remake I'm really excited about. Both have trailers out and you can watch them both below.

Mass Effect 3 now has a solid release date. It has had a release date for some time now but it was all up in the air as to a set date. Bioware have now announced a set date for early 2012. Get your pre-orders in now because it looks awesome. You can see the trailer below.

Sony has finally given a name to its psp2 that has been in the works for a while. They are moving away from the word Playstation (Not like PSN had anything to do with it.) and have simply called it the Sony Vita. Vita meaning 'life' in Italian. You can pre-order it now for around $400.

With so many big announces so far I'm looking forward to what is in store for the rest of the week. Tune in next week for part 2 of the E3 news.

Till next week, Peace.

E3 2011 Predictions

With E3 just around the corner. It seems that many of the big developers are jumping the gun and telling the world of their shiny new games before E3. With Activision announcing Modern warfare 3 and Nintendo letting slip about their next console. Whatever happened to the old days when developers would say 'we will tell all at E3.' Well enough about that. Theres still lots of news to be revealed at E3 and I'm going to make some predictions on what we may find out this year.

As we all know Activision announced that Modern warfare 3 will be released this year. This will be something Activision will have to talk about and maybe even give us some more gameplay footage and less of the fancy pants art house green outline stuff. Its a safe bet that they will give us an insight without revealing too much into the whole World war 3 theme they've got going.

The boys and girls at Sony will have to speak about PSN going down and try and offer some kind of explanation as to why it went down. However they may try and sweep it under the carpet by announcing that they've started work on the Playststion 4 and show us some pretty pictures as a way to convince people to come back into the Playstation fold.

Nintendo will show off their plans for the Wii 2 or whatever they choose to call it. Along with announcing some new titles for the Wii. Probably show some more trailers for Skyward sword and maybe a new Mario game to go with it. The Nintendo 3DS has seen a lot of talk about games made to take advantage of its 3D capabilities but very little action. The Nintendo booth will probably have Orcarina of time available to play on the 3DS as a way to show that they haven't forgotten that they still dominate the handheld console market.

Microsoft have been pretty quiet these last few months so they will have something big to show at E3 this year. Be it a new Xbox console or that they are going to make another Halo game I'm not sure but you can bet it's something big.

This last one I'm not to sure about but I think its worth saying. Apple may make an appearance this year just to show off the App store and Apple gamecenter. I doubt it but you never know. Apple have been expanding in recent years and I reckon they're going to try and compete with nintendo for the top spot in the handheld market.

Finaly if Gearbox push back the date of Duke Nukem Forever back again I'm not going to be surprised at all. I've noticed the lack of new trailers recently. Maybe they've decided to stop mucking around and start getting serious about their June release. You can be sure that they will have something to show at E3 this year.

Well thats all I've got and again these are all predictions, nothing concrete. however I'm confident that at least some of what I've said will happen. But we wont find out till E3 next week.

Peace.

PSN is online

So two weeks ago I reported that PSN was still down and in its third week of pissing off Sony PS3 users world wide and sending Xbox sales through the roof. Late last week PSN was finally brought back online (what did I tell you "I reckon PSN will be up at the latest by the end of next week.") and PS3 users around the world rejoiced as they updated their consoles and jumped back into their favourite games.

Australia is online though some users may still be having some trouble but keep trying because you will get through. 600,000 PS3 users are trying to log in all at the same time. Not many servers can handle that. Japan however is still down. Not because of Sony. The Japanese government have said that the updated security that Sony has implemented is not at an acceptable standard. Given that Japan is Sony's biggest market I'll bet they take that pretty seriously.


I'm still waiting on my welcome back package.

Comment below and tell me what game do you want as compensation?

PSN is down for the count.

Today marks the third week of PSN offline due to a security breach. Sony had stated last week that the Playstation network would be online. Sony is now before the American congress having to explain their actions leading up to this incident.

So far it is estimated that as many as 600,000 Australian PSN accounts (including my own) have been compromised. With passwords, email addresses, full names and even credit card details in some cases have been stolen. Sony has said that when PSN does go back up all PS3 users will have to update their consoles and change their passwords.

Because Sony are doing a complete overhaul of the network I had real doubts that they would have it done in two weeks. I reckon PSN will be up at the latest by the end of next week. There is so much that will need to be done seeing as they want to stat from square one and strengthen it that way. While this is an effective method its going to take time.

Of course we can't forget that when PSN went down it wasn't just gamers that were effected. Users of the Sony service Qriocity (basically Netflix for Sony TV's) have also potentially has their accounts compromised also. But this is a gaming site so lets focus.

Comment below and tell me what game you miss playing online with your mates?

Till next week, Peace.