alex

Say what you will about the various Summer of Arcade lineups that Microsoft has put together in the years since the company launched the promotion, but one thing is undeniable: those games sell. Getting a coveted spot in that Summer of Arcade program means a hell of a lot more marketing than your little downloadable game might otherwise get. It's a huge perk, and it's helped spur the ever-growing downloadable game market on consoles.

Now, Sony has its own answer to the Summer of Arcade, in PSN PLAY. No, I don't know why the title of the promotion is SHOUTING AT YOU, but I do know that PSN PLAY aims to push four big titles launching on PSN from mid-August to mid-September by offering both marketing, as well as promotional perks for each game.

The four titles officially included in the promotion include Capcom's upcoming fighting remake Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition (August 23); Hothead Games' DeathSpank sequel, The Baconing (August 30); Majesco's 2D reboot of the BloodRayne franchise, Betrayal (September 6); and Sega's top-down shooter, Renegade Ops (September 13). In addition, players over the age of 18 (Sony repeated that part like three times in its announcement) who purchase all four titles will receive a voucher code to download Payday: The Heist, Sony Online's bank robbing first-person shooter, when it releases.

The interesting thing about this promotion is that, with the exception of Payday, none of these titles are exclusive to PSN for any announced window of time. They're all multiplatform titles. Perhaps due to this, Sony's marketing is less focused on discounts (though any PlayStation Plus member will get a 20% discount on any of the above titles), and more on pushing pre-orders. Anyone who buys one of these titles gets a free piece of DLC for each title, but those who do pre-order also get a separate theme for their console's dashboard, as well. While the notion of pre-ordering downloadable titles has always struck me as akin to preemptively hoarding oxygen in jars for fear that supply may someday run out, if you're into PlayStation 3 themes, then I guess there is some incentive.

Should you feel in a pre-orderin' kind of mood, the PSN PLAY titles officially go on pre-sale starting August 9. All four main games retail for $14.99, while Payday: The Heist will go for $19.99 when it officially releases.

@jaks: Perhaps you should read my Expendables review and re-think that position. http://www.screened.com/the-expendables/16-168884/staff-review/

As enduring action heroes go, few have endured more than John Rambo. Just as it seemed Rambo fever had tapered off entirely following an '80s decade positively bursting with tales of Sylvester Stallone going to exotic places like Vietnam, Thailand, and Oregon--not necessarily in that order--to kill indeterminately foreign bad guys and also Brian Dennehey--again, not in that order. Be it via film, Saturday morning cartoon, or video game, Rambo was everywhere, until he suddenly wasn't.

Then, in 2008, Sylvester Stallone brought us a decidedly saggier, but still stab-happy revival of the brand in the glibly titled Rambo. Suddenly, for like six months, Rambo was awesome again. We then can thank that film, as well as Stallone's 2010 tribute to all things testosterone, The Expendables, for today's news that a new Rambo video game is coming from Reef Entertainment.

If the first thing that flew out of your mouth upon reading that last sentence wasn't "FUCK YEAH, RAMBO," then it's safe to assume you probably have a couple of questions about what's going on here. Chief among them may be, "Who, exactly, is Reef Entertainment?" This is the company best known for porting ancient-ass action games like Sniper Elite and Rogue Trooper to the Wii for reasons inexplicable to anyone that doesn't work at Reef Entertainment. Now they're tackling the Rambo license, which bodes well.

Your second question might be, "Why Rambo? Now? In 2011?" That's actually three questions, but no worries. Let's have Reef CEO Peter Rezon answer that one for us:

"I am a big fan of Sylvester Stallone movies, and when we had the opportunity to secure the video game rights from StudioCanal for the Rambo franchise, we had to grab it with both hands," said Reef Entertainment CEO Peter Rezon.

"With the success of the most recent Rambo film, and an international appetite for action movies with Expendables 2 scheduled for release next summer, we felt now was a good time to do something special with this licence."

Reading between the lines on that hyperbolic statement (I don't think he literally grabbed it with two hands), it basically sounds like the rights were available, and StudioCanal was like, "Uh, yeah, sure!" Why they opted not to go with an Expendables game is beyond me, though perhaps licensing the likenesses of a half-dozen other noteworthy action stars was going to prove troublesome.

One can presume that Reef will be anxious to get this out in time for that Expendables 2 release, since Stallone's resurgence as an action star can really only last for a finite amount of time. Given his frequent cigar habit, his admitted use of HGH, and the fact that his face constantly looks like it's melting off of his skull these days, it seems unlikely we'll be seeing him in front of the camera for too much longer. Unless someone is filming him eating a delicious steak. He'd probably be up for that.

Whenever I have a conversation with someone about Atlus and the games the notoriously niche publisher puts out, the conversation always devolves into some permutation of, "Yeah, but how do they make money?" For as great as many of Atlus' titles are, the company almost exclusively deals in oddball Japanese role-playing nonsense that treads pretty far off the beaten (mostly beaten by Square Enix) path of games that American audiences acknowledge the existence of, let alone actively want to play.

After reading today's news that Catherine, the Q*Bert-meets-anime/mumblecore (animumblecore?) game Atlus mostly recently brought to American audiences, sold 200,000 units in its first week of retail, I may have to stop asking that question. Now, to be fair, this information comes from Atlus' Twitter feed, and specifically from a picture of a cake. In celebration of the milestone, this cake had the sales numbers emblazoned in icing for all to see.

Unfortunately, as we all know, cakes are by far the most unreliable of all dessert treats, known for providing consistently apocryphal information and constantly double-dealing for the pursuit of their own nefarious gains. Perhaps if this information had come on some manner of pie, or spelled out in chocolate chip cookies, then we could rely upon it. But a cake? They're like the Robert Ford of desserts.

Seriously though, whatever you may have taken away from the experience of Catherine, it's always good to see games outside the mainstream norm of "shoot that guy" and "stab that dude" find success. Given the massive retail disappointments that were Child of Eden and Shadows of the Damned, this does at least give us some hope that Japanese weirdness can still succeed in America. Especially if there's marketing for it.

If you were one of the many hoping for a shiny new PlayStation Vita to be gifted your way this holiday season, today's news from Sony will probably require a bit of alternate planning on your part--unless you live in Japan, of course.

According to a report from AP, Sony's newest handheld will miss the 2011 holiday season, and launch in North America and Europe sometime in early 2012. According to Executive Vice President Kaz Hirai, the system will make it out in Japan before the end of the year, which effectively reverts Sony's plan from its most recent "worldwide launch" to the "phased global rollout" the company had initially touted.

Hirai chalked up the change in schedule to a desire to have solid launch games lined up for the respective regional launches, though he gave no indication as to what the Japanese launch lineup might look like, compared with other regions.

Elsewhere in the report, Hirai went to great lengths to specify that the Vita would not be seeing any price drops in the foreseeable future, irrespective of what Nintendo has chosen to do with its 3DS handheld device.

"We packed so much into the device and made it very affordable," Hirai told reporters at Sony's Tokyo headquarters. "There is no need to lower the price just because somebody else that happens to be in the video game business decided that they were going to lower their price."

When it does eventually launch in North America, the Vita will retail for $249, with a $299 3G-enabled model also available.

Panda warriors wearing Chinese-ish garb?

Among video streaming services, HBO Go has largely been the super-desirable, yet oddly anti-social girl at the party, preferring to keep to itself and its small, core group of HBO subscribers via basic web-streaming and select mobile devices, while Netflix and Hulu Plus whore it up with every supportable device that happens to wander into their field of vision, like the morally destitute strumpets they are.

Now it looks like after a few cocktails, HBO's morals are getting a tad looser, as the pay-cable behemoth today announced during their company earnings call today (as transcribed by Game Informer) that HBO would soon bring the service to other devices already connected to televisions, including game consoles. No specific platforms were mentioned, but one can presume that anything currently rolling Netflix and/or Hulu is a distinct possibility.

For anyone out of the know, HBO Go is essentially a collection of all the movies currently broadcasting on HBO, as well as nearly all of HBO's original programming. Everything from recent favorites like Game of Thrones, Treme, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, to classics like The Wire, Deadwood, and Oz. A few old favorites, like The Larry Sanders Show, Dream On, and Mr. Show aren't available, largely due to rights having been distributed elsewhere (you can find the entire series run of Larry Sanders on Netflix Instant, by the way).

HBO has made a big stink in recent years about services like Netflix's Instant Watch, begrudging license holders for giving away their content and cheapening the value of it. True to that notion, HBO Go is only available to current HBO subscribers, meaning you must have a cable subscription to even access it. No a la carte option currently exists.

Still, for anyone currently hooked into HBO, this is a pretty exciting prospect. Finally, you can watch all the episodes of Taxicab Confessions your parents wouldn't let you when you were twelve, and every tantalizing episode of Cathouse and Real Sex will be at your ready. Oh, and all those movies and non-pornographic TV shows too, I guess.

@DefAde:

Guess what, guys? There's going to be a second Borderlands game.

2K officially announced today that the sequel to Gearbox's breakout action role-playing shooter is very much in development, and will be headed to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC in fiscal 2012 (translation: sometime after April next year).

In addition to the basic announcement, Game Informer revealed Borderlands 2 as its September cover exclusive, dropping a few details on what we can expect from the sequel.

Don’t expect just a couple bazillion more guns this time around. Gearbox is introducing new and more diverse environments, smarter and more powerful enemies, and an improved mission system capable of delivering a better story.

Borderlands 2 will get its official live debut to the world later this month at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, and will also make its way to PAX Prime this year. Anyone heading to either of those shows that feels like letting out a big, honking squee of excitement right now will be forgiven for doing so. Just, you know...clean up your mess afterward, okay?

Just in case you've been lying awake at night, desperately anticipating the upcoming release of NHL 12 to the point where living without it has become a such a burden of living that you can barely stand it, or finding yourself looking to take out a high-interest loan for fear that the cost of Madden NFL 12's DLC would simply prove too much for your meager budget, fret no longer, for EA has come up with a subscription-based solution for you.

This is, of course, that nonsense we reported on back in April, where EA Sports decided that its suite of upcoming titles was so awesome, people would assuredly be lining up around the block to subscribe to a service where people can get discounts and free perks for all those sports games. Always known to make good on a threat, EA today announced that you can buy the EA Sports Season Ticket right this very second, if you're so inclined.

The pass covers Madden NFL 12, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12, NCAA Football 12, FIFA 12, and NHL 12, providing players with early download access to the titles ahead of retail stores (you'll still have to make a trip out to the store on launch day, if you don't want a solely digital copy), a 20% discount on all downloadable content, and special free "web perks," which are as yet unspecified, save for FIFA, which will be getting Creation Center packs, with additional assets to build custom teams and tournaments.

Terrifyingly enough, GameStop has been named "the exclusive retail marketing partner for the roll-out of EA Sports Season Ticket, with the company president quoted as saying, "GameStop is in a unique position to deliver this digital product utilizing its multichannel network. We will continue to work with progressive publishers to bring great gaming experiences to our customers." I have no idea what that means, but it's already freaking me out.

So now you know: If you've got $25 (or 2000 Microsoft Points) lying around, you can give it to EA Sports, and they'll give you some stuff...provided you like football, college football, hockey, golf, and soccer. If you like basketball or baseball, apparently you can just go to hell.

Wait, does EA even have a basketball game this year?