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Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary

Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Sony Entertainment Network Sale

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Twenty-five years ago, our company launched a game called Final Fantasy. It was the result of a lot of hard work and dedication. It was also the start of a franchise that would go on to capture the hearts of millions of players around the world.

As we celebrate Final Fantasy’s 25th anniversary, we look back on a series that contains 14 installments, numerous spin-off games, and all sorts of merchandise. We are always impressed by the love our fans show for this franchise.

To celebrate this amazing milestone in the history of Final Fantasy, we’re putting a number of Final Fantasy titles on sale on PlayStation Network, starting when PSN updates tomorrow. For two weeks, the following titles will be on sale in PlayStation Store for 50% off.

We hope you enjoy these classic titles — the memories they evoke, and the new memories they will create.

Via: Posted by Shinji Hashimoto // Senior Executive Managing Officer, Square Enix // Sony PlayStation Blog

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Final Fantasy VI Now Available on the PlayStation Network

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Final fantasy vi

It’s finally here! Final Fantasy VI, also known as Final Fantasy III back in 1994 when it was first released on the SNES, launched today on the PlayStation Network. Many reviewers, including us, have this RPG on their top 10 favorite games of all time.

Square-Enix had this to say about the Square (aka SquareSoft) classic: “Winner of numerous awards and a fan favorite, Square Enix’s FINAL FANTASY® VI role–playing game is now available for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and the PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) system via the PlayStation®Network.

First released on the PlayStation® as part of the FINAL FANTASY ANTHOLOGY in 1999, FINAL FANTASY VI captured the hearts and minds of gamers and critics alike, and has been lauded as one of the best in the series.”

The PlayStation Blog cited that Final Fantasy VI has “made it all to #9 on IGN’s top 100 games of all time back in 2007. And in 2009, Game Informer went one better and named it #8, while G4TV named it #1 in their “Top 5 Must-Own RPGs.” The music, the story, the characters and so much more makes this a game that we’ve all loved and are so glad to be able to enjoy it yet again on a modern console.

For many of us as gamers, this brings back tons of memories. It may even be the reason we started loving the Final Fantasy series to begin with. Memories of the infamous Maria and Draco opera scene, the “octopus royalty” Ultros or the villain, Kefka, stand out most. Perhaps it’s the artwork from Yoshitaka Amano or the music from Nobuo Uematsu. The list of what’s to like about this game goes on and on. And what’s even better is that this is the Final Fantasy Anthology version so it has all of the updated full motion video (FMV’s) that were added to the PlayStation version.

Some more history on the game from Wikipedia shows: The game was known as Final Fantasy III when it was first released in North America, as the original Final Fantasy III had not been released outside of Japan at the time. However, later localizations used the original title. Final Fantasy VI was originally directed by series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, but he eventually stepped down as director after becoming Vice President of the company. The director role was passed on to Yoshinori Kitase and Hiroyuki Ito. Yoshitaka Amano, a long-time contributor to the Final Fantasy series, returned as the image and character designer, while regular composer Nobuo Uematsu wrote the game’s score, which has been released on several soundtrack albums.

Not only that, but at Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds, a large majority of the music can be heard live. Dancing Mad, Terra’s Theme and the Maria and Draco Opera – beautiful pieces. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out. Don’t pass up the chance because it’s amazing.

Arnie roth final fantasy 6 opera distant worlds atlanta

For us, this makes our PSPGo even more enjoyable. We can now say that we’ve got Final Fantasy IV through IX on one handheld system. Hopefully they’ll launch Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII with the upcoming PlayStation Vita. That will be a good day. So go! Find yourself in the middle of one of the most enjoyable Role-Playing Games in history!

Final fantasy vi famicom box art

“Imperial Magitek Armor? Not even Narshe’s safe anymore!”

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DC Universe Online Now Free To Play and Download on PS3

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DC Universe OnlineSony Online Entertainment released in January of 2011 DC UniverseTM Online on both the PlayStation 3 and the PC. As of today it’s free to play. Even better news for Sony PS3 owners. Users can login to the PlayStation Store, grab the 122MB download client and begin installing the game immediately. Fair warning though if you’re a heavy media user – the game requires 18GB of free space to install. Despite the size, we’ve seen a lot of positive feedback on social media sites like Twitter. And it’s usually pretty entertaining stuff to read.

Here’s the rundown on DCUO:

DC UniverseTM Online is the only next-generation massively multiplayer online action game that delivers unparalleled physics-powered combat set in the DC UniverseTM. This genre-defining game puts the power of the DC Super Heroes and villains into the palm of your hands…The next legend is YOU!

DC Universe Online Gameplay

Key features:

  • DCUO is and action focused superhero game in a fully realized 3D universe
  • Players can experience the intensity of a 3D world created in the artistic vision of legendary comic-book artist Jim Lee
  • DCUO uses a state of the art physics engine that turns the world into your weapon
  • Players will be able to create their own custom hero or villain
  • Players will embark on story-driven adventures penned by famous DC writers
  • DCUO game play is optimized for PC and PS3
  • DCUO’s depth spans the entire DC Universe

DC UniverseTM Online is being developed by Sony Online Entertainment LLC for the PLAYSTATION® 3 computer entertainment system and PC in collaboration with DC Comics and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

DC UNIVERSE ONLINE software © 2010 Sony Online Entertainment LLC. All other elements © 2010 DC Comics. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

DC UNIVERSE and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © DC Comics.
WB GAMES LOGO, WBIE LOGO, WB SHIELD: TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

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PlayStation Network Down

Sony PlayStation Network Outage; Amazon Brings Countless Millions Offline

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Sony has released a Questions list that can be found here: http://us.playstation.com/support/answer/index.htm?a_id=2356

  • April 19th – Amazon:

Dear Amazon Web Services Customer,

We’re excited to announce the launch of live HTTP streaming for Amazon CloudFront, AWS’s easy-to-use content delivery network.

Using Amazon CloudFront with Amazon EC2 running Adobe’s Flash Media Server and Amazon Route 53 (AWS’s DNS service), you can now easily and cost-effectively deliver your live video via AWS. And, we’ve made it simple to get started by creating an AWS CloudFormation template that handles all of the provisioning and sequencing for all the AWS resources you need for this live streaming stack.

Portal 2 on Steam, XB360 and PS3, SOCOM 4 Launches.

  • April 20th – GigaOm:

The first graph gives an idea of normal Amazon EC2 response times over the last 30 days, but notice the US-EAST region start to spike at April 20.

The outage that affected a hundreds of applications running in the provider’s US-EAST region is almost resolved, more than 24 hours after a “networking event” took down a number of popular services, including EC2, Elastic Block Storage and Relational Database Service.

We continue to see progress in recovering volumes, and have heard many additional customers confirm that they’re recovering. Our current estimate is that the majority of volumes will be recovered over the next 5 to 6 hours.

First 24 hours of outage (worldwide)

EC2 Outage

Foursquare, Quora, Amazon, Sony, Apple, Reddit, Hootsuite, Wattpad – All went down.

  • April 21st – Sony:

While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage, we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running.

  • April 22nd – Sony:

An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services.

  • April 22nd – ZDNet:

Amazon’s Web Services outage: End of cloud innocence?

  • April 24th – 1:42 AM Amazon:

Service disruption: Database instance connectivity and latency issues

In line with the most recent Amazon EC2 update, we wanted to let you know that the team continues to be all-hands on deck working on the remaining database instances in the single affected Availability Zone. It’s taking us longer than we anticipated. When we have an updated ETA or meaningful new update, we will make sure to post it here. But, we can assure you that the team is working this hard and will do so as long as it takes to get this resolved.

At the time, Amazon’s AWS Service Health Dashboard was at red.

  • April 24 – 2:08 PM Amazon:

The number of Database Instances without access continues to reduce steadily. As the access to these remaining database instances is restored, they will become usable without additional action on your end. If your Database Instance is not yet available, you also have the option to initiate a Point-in-time-Restore operation using the steps outlined in our previous post at 10:08 AM PDT. We are in the process of contacting this small set of customers who still do not have access to their Database Instances.

  • April 25 – 8:20AM Sony:

I know you are waiting for additional information on when PlayStation Network and Qriocity services will be online. Unfortunately, I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time.

As we previously noted, this is a time intensive process and we’re working to get them back online quickly. We’ll keep you updated with information as it becomes available. We once again thank you for your patience.

  • April 25 – 7:39PM Amazon:

We are digging deeply into the root causes of this event and will post a detailed post-mortem.

Amazon and Sony appear to be taking a very similar approach. So was the attack on the PlayStation Network, on Amazon Web Services, or are they one in the same? The answer is: No, they are not.

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Others blame Anonymous who had taken credit for a separate hacking attempt earlier in the month towards SCEA. Some believe that this is also partially motivated by Geohot’s impending court rulings. First IANAL, but it would seem there’s a certain level of legality that has been crossed. Clearly he’s not getting hired right now by Sony at the moment because he’s probably being prosecuted by the US DOJ because he’s IN FEDERAL COURT. When a Corporation files a complaint of that caliber, especially one with a DMCA, Copyright Infringement and allegations of Computer Fraud and other crimes, that could be the act of a number of different things including faking the identify of Sony, misuse of the Sony logo or other things that we’ll never hear about. “Geohot” may deserve what’s coming to him just like any one who has walked across a line that fine. He alone will decide what he does with his life at that point.

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PlayStation Network Down

PlayStation Network Crash Confirmed

We’ve seen our own confirmation of the PlayStation Network crash this evening.  From reports from Mashable, Kotaku and Engadget, it would seem that this is affecting all types of PS3 systems.  A later tweet from the SonyPlayStation stated the following:

PSN status update (part 2): Readers/followers are confirming that “slim” units (120/250 GB models) are connecting normally.

After reading the web, we’ve seen that the problem can accompany the 8001050F error code – turning your PS3 into a brick.  Even the newest games such as Darksiders, Heavy Rain and Bioshock 2 can trigger this problem corrupting saved data, trophies and more.

We’ve also seen that attempting to play DLC games like Final Fantasy VII or VIII that a Copyright/licensing error occurs. WTF. We bought this, it should work!

We hope Sony the best and hope things return to normal soon!

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