The PlayStation Vita, the successor to the PlayStation Portable, has released firmware version 1.80 which allows PSOne Classics to be played on the device. The list from SCEA shows the following games to be playable once the PlayStation Network Store updates:

  • Arc the Lad
  • Cool Boarders 2
  • FINAL FANTASY VII
  • Hot Shots Golf 2
  • Jet Moto
  • Syphon Filter
  • Tomb Raider
  • Twisted Metal 2
  • Wild Arms

Sony PlayStation VIta 1.80 Firmware Update

So we’ve been waiting on this for 6 months now. The really unfortunate news is that despite the compatibility of this short list of games for North American (SCEA) players, the list of games for European players, SCEE, is exponentially longer. Here it is and what you can expect, at least, in the future:

Cool Boarders SCEE
Cool Boarders 2 SCEE
Crash Bandicoot SCEE
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back SCEE
Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped SCEE
CTR: Crash Team Racing SCEE
Destruction Derby SCEE
Everybody’s Golf 2 SCEE
G-Police SCEE
Jet Rider SCEE
Jet Rider 2 SCEE
Jumping Flash SCEE
Kula World SCEE
Kurushi Final SCEE
MediEvil SCEE
Motor Toon Grand Prix 2 SCEE
Rally Cross SCEE
Syphon Filter SCEE
Syphon Filter 3 SCEE
Twisted Metal SCEE
Wild Arms SCEE
WipEout SCEE
40 Wink ATARI EUROPE S.A.S.U.
A Bug’s Life DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
A Bugs Life and Monsters Inc bundle DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Abe’s Exoddus ODDMOBB INC
Abe’s Oddworld Oddysee ODDMOBB INC
Airboat XS GAMES LIMITED
All-Star Boxing MIDAS INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD
Arc Arena: Monster Tournament MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Arc the Lad MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Arc the Lad II MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Arc the Lad III MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Arcade Hits: Shienryu MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Arcade Hits: Sonic Wings Special MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Atari Anniversary Edition ATARI EUROPE S.A.S.U.
Atlantis DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Atlantis and Hercules Bundle DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Bishi Bashi Special KONAMI DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT GMBH
Blockids MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Bugriders ATARI EUROPE S.A.S.U.
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Centipede ATARI EUROPE S.A.S.U.
Cho Aniki MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Constructor SYSTEM 3 SOFTWARE
Critical Depth ATARI EUROPE S.A.S.U.
Dezaemon Plus MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Disney’s Action Game ft. Hercules DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Dodgeball MIDAS INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD
Driver UBISOFT ENTERTAINMENT SA
Eagle One: Harrier Attack ATARI EUROPE S.A.S.U.
Fear Effect SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Fear Effect: Retro Helix SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Fighting Force SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Fighting Force 2 SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Final Fantasy VIII SQUARE ENIX (2009) LIMITED
Final Fantasy IX SQUARE ENIX (2009) LIMITED
Final Fantasy V SQUARE ENIX (2009) LIMITED
Final Fantasy VI SQUARE ENIX (2009) LIMITED
Final Fantasy VII SQUARE ENIX (2009) LIMITED
Front Mission 3 SQUARE ENIX (2009) LIMITED
Gaiaseed MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Galaxy Fight MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Gex SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Gex 3: Deep Under Cover SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Gex 3D: Enter the Gecko SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Grandia GAME ARTS CO., LTD.
Gubble MIDAS INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD
Guilty Gear SYSTEM 3 SOFTWARE
Gunship ATARI EUROPE S.A.S.U.
Hardcore 4X4 URBANSCAN LIMITED
International Track & Field KONAMI DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT GMBH
Jigsaw Madness XS GAMES LIMITED
Judge Dredd URBANSCAN LIMITED
Junior League Soccer PS1 XS GAMES LIMITED
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Lilo & Stitch DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Little Mermaid 2 DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Little Mermaid 2 and Winnie The Pooh bundle DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Metal Gear Solid KONAMI DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT GMBH
Mickey’s Wild Adventure DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Miracle Quad Racer MIDAS INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD
Miracle Space Race MIDAS INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD
Missile Command ATARI EUROPE S.A.S.U.
Monsters Inc DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Motorhead URBANSCAN LIMITED
N20 URBANSCAN LIMITED
Namco Heritage bundle NAMCO BANDAI GAMES EUROPE S.A.S.
Pandemonium SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Pandemonium 2 SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Parasite Eve 2 SQUARE ENIX (2009) LIMITED
Peter Pan DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Pong ATARI EUROPE S.A.S.U.
Pooh’s Party Game DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Rageball MIDAS INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD
Rainbow Six UBISOFT ENTERTAINMENT SA
Rascal Racers MIDAS INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD
Rayman UBISOFT ENTERTAINMENT SA
Rayman 2: The Great Escape UBISOFT ENTERTAINMENT SA
Reel Fishing NATSUME INC.
Re-loaded URBANSCAN LIMITED
Resident Evil 2 CE EUROPE LIMITED
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis CE EUROPE LIMITED
Resident Evil: Director’s Cut CE EUROPE LIMITED
Ridge Racer Type 4 NAMCO BANDAI GAMES EUROPE S.A.S.
Sheep EMPIRE INTERACTIVE EUROPE LTD
Silent Hill KONAMI DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT GMBH
Snowboard Racer MIDAS INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD
Sorcerer’s Maze XS GAMES LIMITED
Spin Jam EMPIRE INTERACTIVE EUROPE LTD
Sports Superbike MIDAS INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD
Streak ATARI EUROPE S.A.S.U.
Street Fighter 2 Alpha CE EUROPE LIMITED
Super Star Dance Club XS GAMES LIMITED
Tarzan DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Tekken NAMCO BANDAI GAMES EUROPE S.A.S.
Tekken 2 NAMCO BANDAI GAMES EUROPE S.A.S.
Tomb Raider SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Tomb Raider Chronicles SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Tomb Raider 2 SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Tomb Raider 3 SQUARE ENIX LIMITED
Toy Story 2 DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Toy Story Racer DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Toy Story Racer and Toy Story 2: Woody and Buzz bundle DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS, INC.
Vagrant Story SQUARE ENIX (2009) LIMITED
Alundra MONKEY PAW GAMES INC.
Urban Chaos SQUARE ENIX LIMITED

The lineup for SCEE is quite nice and includes a majority of Square Enix Limited Final Fantasy games, including Final Fantasy VII. We’ve tested it out personally on games we’ve copied on to our PS3 before the PlayStation Store update and see the ability via Content Manager to copy many games on the list as well as games not on the list. We’ll keep you posted via Twitter @TurkReno.
20120828-091002.jpg
Personal thanks goes out to @Eramo88 for letting us know as soon as the update was live.

The PlayStation Vita

The PlayStation Vita

After watching the PlayStation UStream today and in much anticipation of the PlayStation Vita, we were very disappointed to find out that the PS Vita being sold as a console capable of playing PSOne Classics won’t play PSOne Classics on day one. We covered this as a potential leak, but now it’s much more. Now you may disagree with our position, but we’ve got plenty of proof that what the sales ad Amazon displays for the PlayStation Vita is false advertising:

Vita can play PSP titles, minis, PS one classics, video and comics from the PlayStation Store

As I understand it, and I’ve consulted legal aid about this, the Vita should be able to play PSOne Classics as advertised. And as you can correctly assume, we’ve invested quite a bit of money into purchasing Final Fantasy and other Squaresoft / Square Enix PSOne Classics to play. All of them except for Legend of Mana and Chrono Cross.

We decided that this wasn’t fair. And it isn’t fair. You should complain. We did. To the FTC. What did we say to the FTC? Glad you asked.

I purchased the PS Vita First Edition Bundle with the anticipation that the console would be able to use PlayStation One Classics as it is advertised on this link: http://www.amazon.com/PlayStation-Vita-3G-Wi-Fi-Launch-Bundle/dp/B0071NH8B8/

Today Sony announced on their webcast that the PlayStation One Classics feature was “coming soon”. This, as I understand it, is false advertising. As stated on the LA County Department of Consumer Affairs, “If they say it will do it, it should do it. If the advertisement says a product can do something, it must be able to do it. For example, if a manufacturer advertises that their product can cure cancer, then it must be able to cure cancer.” I have made a significant investment into PlayStation One Classics on the PlayStation network that meets or exceeds the amount of money that I am paying for the PlayStation Vita. I feel ripped off as I have traded in my PSPGo to Amazon in the trust that the PSVita would do what it said it would do on Amazon.

Want an FTC Complaint Number to go look up our complaint? Sure. 35014256. Want to make your own FTC Complaint? Go ahead, make our day. And you should too because IT’S FALSE ADVERTISING. Need to see why? Here’s a link to the Los Angeles Department of Consumer Affairs website in which they state:

If they say it will do it, it should do it. If the advertisement says a product can do something, it must be able to do it. For example, if a manufacturer advertises that their product can cure cancer, then it must be able to cure cancer. The next time you’re at the grocery store, look in their vitamins section. Most dietary supplements won’t tell you what the product does unless they can find evidence to support it.

Sure. Get mad at us, call us “Microsoft Fanboys” (that was a really funny tweet, thanks), don’t alter the Amazon site to make our claim even more legitimate. It just sucks that we relied on a retailer and Sony to say one thing and then they promise it as a soon “eventuality”. Yeah. Eventually the Mayan calendar may be right too. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what Amazon and Sony does because they have TWO DAYS to fix this before it turns into a legitimate legal claim.

PlayStation Vita

A lot of commotion has stirred up (see comments) lately from the differences between the PlayStation Vita First Edition bundle, which includes a 4GB Memory Card, PlayStation Vita title Little Deviants, a case and the 3G/Wifi version of the PlayStation Vita – comes out on the 15th of February if you pre-order now, and the release day version that was announced recently on the PlayStation Blog which is $50 USD cheaper and includes an 8GB card. Both versions recently got a AT&T DataConnect Pass that also includes a free PlayStation Store download. No details have been released on the specifics of the download you can get, but that’s neither here nor there. The real topic people have been begging to know is can the PlayStation Vita play PS One Classics.

A recent January PlayStation Blogcast said that their “engineers” have not yet opened up the Vita to be able to play PlayStation One games. That’s what we were told… and that’s what we know, until yesterday. Because we got word the Release Day bundle had a 8GB card, which if you’re counting 8 is more than 4, and a case is not that big of a deal to pick one up later or have it shipped out the same day, we took a look at Amazon to compare the difference.

Here’s a link to the PlayStation Vita First Edition Bundle and here’s a link to the WiFi version of the Release Day bundle. Figure it out yet? No? We’ll tell you.

“Vita can play PSP titles, minis, PS one classics, video and comics from the PlayStation Store”.

Need a screenshot? No problem.

PS Vita - can it play playstation one games

Looks like it’s time to sell or trade in your PSP’s and PSPGo’s ladies and gentlemen BEFORE they drop the price on the trade-in value at your local game store… Unless Amazon is wrong, in which case we’re not pleased and hope the feature comes as soon as possible.

Update on Trade-in prices: GameStop is offering a whopping $25 dollars for your $169 investment as a standalone trade-in. Wow. RIP OFF. eBay Instant Sale is offering at the moment $55.88 for a like new PSPGo. And the winner for trade-in is Amazon at just under $83.00 for a “like new” condition PSPGo.

Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Amazon are considering a day of blackout to protest the “Stop Online Piracy Act” or SOPA. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss SOPA and what kind of impact this protest would have.

Most people are completely oblivious as to what SOPA is. We hope that a tech blackout DOES occur so you can whine and call and complain that your cat photos aren’t viewable on the Internet. The Young Turks, no affiliation (yet), explain it above pretty well, but we’ve added some additional information below. We’ve given several examples of who is supporting it in past blogs and highly encourage you to go take a look before you logon to the Internet one day and have a stroke because you can’t look at cat photos on Facebook.

More info about it states on this pastebin:

Stop Online Piracy Act(SOPA) is a bill that would create America’s first Internet censorship system. In a nutshell, its similar like the censorship in China, Iran, etc.

Time Magazine’s Graeme McMillan wrote this about it:

SOPA: What if Google, Facebook and Twitter Went Offline in Protest?

Can you imagine a world without Google or Facebook? If plans to protest the potential passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) come to fruition, you won’t need to; those sites, along with many other well-known online destinations, will go temporarily offline as a taste of what we could expect from a post-SOPA Internet.

Companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, Yahoo! and Wikipedia are said to be discussing a coordinated blackout of services to demonstrate the potential effect SOPA would have on the Internet, something already being called a “nuclear option” of protesting. The rumors surrounding the potential blackout were only strengthened by Markham Erickson, executive director of trade association NetCoalition, who told FoxNews that “a number of companies have had discussions about [blacking out services]” last week.

According to Erickson, the companies are well aware of how serious an act such a blackout would be:
“This type of thing doesn’t happen because companies typically don’t want to put their users in that position. The difference is that these bills so fundamentally change the way the Internet works. People need to understand the effect this special-interest legislation will have on those who use the Internet.”

The idea of an Internet blackout should seem familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention to the debate so far. In addition to a blackout already carried out by Mozilla, hacking group Anonymous proposed the same thing a couple of weeks ago, suggesting that sites replace their front pages with a statement protesting SOPA. That suggestion itself came a week after Jimmy Wales had asked Wikipedia users about the possibility of blacking out that site in protest of the bill.

As a way of drawing attention to the topic, it’s something that will definitely work. Just Google alone going dark would cause havoc online, but the idea of it happening at the same time as Facebook, Twitter et al. follow suit seems almost unimaginable.

The question then becomes how to translate the inevitable confusion and outrage from those who don’t know what SOPA is into activism. The key, I assume, lies in the execution of the blackout: Will the sites that voluntarily go down be entirely unavailable or will they follow the Anonymous-proposed model of replacing the front page with a statement explaining what is going on, why and how users can best become involved in the discussion? If the sites do go entirely dark, is the hope that the resulting outrage will be enough to fuel news stories about the reason behind the decision? And that users will not transfer their frustration to the sites themselves, as opposed to the bill they’re protesting?

The fact that Facebook and Twitter are both said to be considering taking part in the blackout is simultaneously heartening and worrying. The former because, well, they’re standing up for what they collectively believe in — and that’s a good thing. But the latter because the lack of availability for social media on the proposed blackout day feels like it’s giving up the best chance to harness the frustration and energy people will feel about the temporary loss of the Internet as they know it, and a great possibility to focus and direct that energy into productive activism against SOPA. Then again, it may take losing Facebook and Twitter to really drive home how dramatically SOPA could affect the Internet.

All of this may come to nothing, of course. The companies may decide not to black out their sites and find other ways to protest SOPA. That could be for the best; collectively closing down the most trafficked sites on the Internet to prove a point will certainly garner a lot of attention, but the effects it’ll have beyond that (and the reactions it’ll cause as a result) are difficult to predict and could easily end up causing a backlash against the sites responsible at a time when they least want it. But still … just try to imagine an Internet without Google, Facebook or Yahoo. Even for a day. Almost makes you want it to happen, just to make people realize how reliant we are on the Internet as we know it now, doesn’t it?

PlayStation Network Down

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.

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.