BradNicholson

When appointments to see Team ICO's The Last Guardian at the Game Developers Conference this year were cancelled without warning, maybe we should have seen this coming: The Last Guardian and HD releases of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, bundled into a collection, have been delayed. Neither game will be hitting in their respective release windows of winter and spring 2011. Even worse: a new release window hasn’t been set.

This news comes via a posting on the official PS blog, which also carried a message from Team ICO’s game director, Fumito Ueda, amounting to “sorry about the delay, but we need more time for polish.”
     

I announced at last year’s Tokyo Game Show that the release timing of The Last Guardian, which is currently being developed, would be holiday 2011. However, to provide more challenging and better quality of content to users and to fulfill First Party Studio’s obligations, I decided to postpone its release timing.

All the members of my production team are working together at a fast pace to develop and release the game in First Party Studio quality. I sincerely apologize to all the customers who have been waiting for The Last Guardian for so long, but I beg for your patience. I will also announce the new release timing at a later time.

The PS3 version of Mortal Kombat has a special character: God of War’s colorful anti-hero, Kratos. The fury-filled Spartan (obviously) doesn’t appear in the Xbox 360 version, but the platform doesn't have its own exclusive fighter, either. But it’s not like Ed Boon and the rest of NetherRealm didn’t think about it.

"I'm not allowed to talk too much about it, but I can tell you we certainly wanted to do an exclusive for 360, but that's all I can say,” Boon told Eurogamer in a recent interview. “It was not a decision we made where we said, oh, let's not do one for the 360,” he said. 
  

If this Japanese Sony Shop staffer-turned-breaking news blogger, as translated by typically reliable Japanese gaming website Andriasang, is to be believed, Sony has ceased production of the PSPgo. Buy ‘em while they’re... well, not so hot, folks. Yes, this story sounds slightly ridiculous, but stay with me.

The post tells the story about an alleged Japanese Sony Style Store employee being told by his sales manager that production of the PSPgo has folded and his shop will no longer receive new units. Additionally, the Japanese Sony Style Store isn’t selling the device anymore because it’s out of stock and there’s no indication on when the digital download-exclusive handhelds will return.

The US Sony Style Store lists both the white and black models as in stock. Sony Style Europe, however, shows a “temporarily unavailable” tag on the black model but not the white model. GameStop lists both models, but both are "currently unavailable online." Using the US Sony Style product search tool, which pings 16 different online retailers, nine different retailers were showing the black PSPgo as out of stock. The same search produced six out of 11 online retailers listing the white PSPgo as out of stock.

"It is a very exciting time for PlayStation portable devices. Before the end of the year we are launching NGP, our next generation portable device, which we believe will revolutionize portable gaming. 

“In the meantime, the current generation of PSPs continue to be in demand, especially since the introduction of our value for money, Essentials range of games and we will continue to meet that demand."

Shocker: before Uncharted 3 launches this November, you’ll be able to get your hands on the game’s competitive component via an open beta, Naughty Dog announced on the PlayStation Blog today. Bonus double shocker: showing loyalty to your Sony overlords will get you into that beta about a week quicker.

Here’s the deal: Naughty Dog is planning to kick off the beta on June 28 for all PlayStation Network Plus members and "specially marked copies" of Infamous 2. On July 5, the beta will open to all PSN members. You don’t even need to beg at a blog’s doors for codes--you’ll get your shot as long as you have a PSN account. 

News that Metro 2033 was getting a sequel called “Metro 2034” broke in mid-2010, so it isn’t much of a surprise to see that publisher THQ is moving to secure domain names. What is surprising is these domain names are suggesting the first follow-up might not be Metro 2034.

THQ has registered, according to consistent Internet super sleuth @supererogatory, lastlightgame.com, the particularly descriptive metro2033lastlightgame and last, but not least, metrolastlight.com. If you throw all these domain names together into a game name that makes sense you get Metro 2033: Last Light. 
  

On April 1, Valve launched the Potato Sack on Steam, a $38 bundle that contains a total of 13 middling-to-awesome indie titles. Today, it’s been revealed that the Potato Sack is more than just a cost-efficient means to get your hands on a lot of games: it’s also the key to unlocking Portal 2 on Steam before the title’s actual release date.

Nestled inside the Potato Sack was the beginning of an elaborate ARG that spanned e-mail, the games’ files, and the web. The supposed last piece to solving the puzzle was available at this Aperture Science Web site, which once had a countdown timer that ended at around 9:00AM PST this morning. Most fans believed, due to several not-so-vague hints, that when this timer was finished ticking down, Portal 2 would be unlocked on Steam. Oh, how tantalizingly close they were to the truth! 
  

So, this morning I used Kinect at home for the first time since around launch. That’s great. But I wasn’t using it with a game; I used it with Netflix. As Xbox Live guru Major Nelson noted on his blog earlier today, the long-awaited support for Kinect on the streaming service’s channel is now live, allowing Kinect owners to pick and choose movies, and fast forward and rewind content without a controller. Voice is also thrown into the mix, too, so prepare to talk to your TV like crazy men do.

The support, as a whole, is extremely limited. For starters, you’re restricted to the suggestions tab, which whittles down your hands-free content options if Netflix doesn’t have your interests pegged. Also, in this lone menu, you only get a total of four movies to choose from per tab. You’ll need to wave your hand around to get to another set of four, and then another, and then another.