All the headlines that mattered from the last seven days
1. 1TB PS4 Ultimate Player Edition unveiled
This week saw the announcement of a new version of PS4, which doubles the amount of storage from 500GB to a terabyte. Look out for it on shelves from 15th July.
2. DRIVECLUB PlayStation Plus Edition launches
PS Plus subscribers can get their hands on a streamlined version of Evolution‘s excellent racer this week, at no additional cost. Thanks for your patience over the delay – we hope you enjoy the game.
- Find out more from Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida
- Download DRIVECLUB PlayStation Plus Edition now
3. Pick up some Japanese classics in our enormous PlayStation Store sale
A tonne of Japan-made fan favourites saw the prices slashed this week in our latest store sale, including the likes of Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, Final Fantasy VII, Catherine and Dragon’s Dogma.
4. Batman: Arkham Knight swoops onto PS4
The third entry in Rocksteady‘s phenomenal ‘Arkham’ series arrived on PS4 this week, effortlessly living up to the hype. Are you playing this weekend? Let us know how you’re getting on in the comments below.
5. New Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 trailer makes its debut
After a few years on hiatus, the much-loved skating series returns this September on both PS3 and PS4. See how it’s shaping up in the brand new trailer.
6. More news on the forthcoming Shadow of the Beast PS4 revival
Any grey-haired gamers out there will no doubt have fond memories of Psygnosis’ classic Amiga side-scroller. The developer behind the impending 21st-century update stopped by PlayStation Blog to let us know how the PS4 remake is coming along.
7. Naughty Dog looks back at that brilliant E3 Uncharted 4 play-through
We caught up with Naughty Dog‘s Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann to get the full lowdown on the brand new Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End footage that debuted at E3 last week.
8. Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition elbows its way onto PS Store
Capcom‘s classic action adventure returned to screens this week with a fistful of additional bells and whistles. Just the thing to chase Arkham Knight down, for those who’ve already reached the finish line.
- Get expert Devil May Cry 4 tips from director Hideaki Itsuno
- Check out the rest of this week’s new releases
9. Strategy JRPG sequel Disgaea 5 gets a release date
Word came down this week that the next entry in NIS America‘s reliably addictive role-player lands on PS4 from 9th October. Mark your diaries!
It seems I’ve missed the PS Plus announcement… OH WAIT. Europe is irrelevant, it’s all about USA now. USA has a holdiay? European blog has ‘Merican day off. European holiday? Lol, you guys are irrelevant! Playstation Plus would have a week delay in ‘Merica? It seems Europe needs some Freedom! Witch Rockets, lazorz and a weekly delay, because Europeans are irrelevant. It was always like this. Europe had better PS Plus games? Nope, ‘<erica brings some freedom to Europe and now it's parity. 'Merica had better deals and events? Well, no parity here, Europe is irrelevant. All that 'Mericanism just serves the media, since whatever happens in 'Murica is always in the news of all gaming sites, but not when it's in Europe. It's absolutely annoying.
PS. Media Player is horrendous, no in built subtitle support or high5.1/10-bit whatever for anime needs. Currently it's less useful than even what a 7 year old Samsung TV offers.
/endrant
Dont forget to add that in the PS3 era, it was us, Europe, the ones that suported Sony wen US was all around Microsoft’s Xbox360. Yet they get to be the golden child this generation. What a shame…
I beat that parity drum so hard the skin split, you rarely see any sensible answera. To my knowledge though nobody from SCEE has ever explained why the “announce last Wednesday, release first Wednesday” promise goes out of the window each and every time the Wednesday happens to be first of the month.
I’d be interested to hear what possible reason there could be for placing an arbitrary delay on our region for PS+ for the third time in 8 months.
Hey folks. As of this month, Plus games go live in both EU and US on the first tuesday of the month (no longer Wednesday in EU). The first Tuesday in July is 7th July, hence why the games aren’t launching this week.
This is great news Fred. I’m glad to see that common sense has prevailed at last. Here’s hoping this is just the first policy gap of many that SCEE are going to close to bring us in line with what I think we can all agree is a much better offering in the US.
@Fred Dutton
Thank you for letting us know. This is a step towards the right direction.
Fred, is that going to affect their announcement date? If i’m not mistaken lately it’s been the Thursday before they come out. Is that still the case?
Do we have an actual ETA for when July’s titles will be announced or is it still, “This week”?
Alas, I can’t confirm an announce date. We generally announce on the Wednesday prior to release, but occasionally that isn’t possible. Suffice to say we’ll have the news for you soon.
@Fred, are there plans to move the Store Update to Wednesday along with ‘Murica’s update?
Fred what nonsense, this has happened before where we’ve simply have to wait. Don’t pretend you were all going to send this on Wednesday as it was the first wednesday of the month for the EU. It was going to be delayed.
Welcome back Fred, I hope you have recovered well from the mania that is E3. I just want to bring to your attention what I believe is a bug in the PSN download servers which appears to be capping speeds on a per file basis. I have tested this and hope itbis a bug and not a trafficnmamagent policy but maybe you can clarify.
On Thursday I attempted to download 3 pieces of free Witcher DLC, the latest patch for Witcher and the patch for Borderlands and all of them had the same speed, the total however was less than actual speed. I wanted to play Witcher so I paused everything else, the speed did not increase, I reinstated the other downloads as I might as well, when the smaller piece of DLC finished, the others remained the same speed.
This isn’t the way that downloads would normally work, the servers here were clearly capable of delivering my headline speed but an artificial cap prevented them from doing so.
I understand this may be outside of your area but if you can at least refer it to the tech team so it can be resolved I’m sure everyone will be grateful.
Not sure how anyone could have missed Arkham Knight, it’s one of the biggest games of the year and has had massive marketing… Fantastic game all the same. Story is a bit disappointing but the gameplay is a return to form. Just like Arkham City there’s a ridiculous amount of stuff to do in Gotham. It’s just an incredible game. Proof that nobody can do that series better than Rocksteady.
No love for J-Stars? As much as I love Naughty Dog, that’s a little bit more exciting than going over the same Uncharted 4 footage over and over. Considering the headline is about stories people might have missed, you’re really letting the little guys go under the radar in favour of AAA games that get constant exposure in the first place.
Point taken, though I’ll point out that J-Stars has been pinned to the front of the site all weekend ;)
I guess that’s fair.
Fred. I got and email today from playstation talking about 5 year ps+ anniversary and also referring to a gift to members who have been around since the start….which i have. I cant seem to find any further details on it. Do you have anything to share?
I don’t I’m afraid, no. My advice would be to keep an eye on your email for more on that.
Must be from Sony Australia then, I have no such email nor does anyone on my friends list which includes people in the US as well as Europe.
@Brirtanz, be sure to let us know what happens.
@TrueMorton I’m from Russia and got the similar e-mail. It was the usual line-up of Ps plus news and recommendations along with the piece about 5 year anniversary but then you click the link “learn more”, it simply redirects you to current ps plus games in store. I guess, there will be some additional game for the loyal ones. I wonder if you have to be a non-stop subscriber of plus for the past 5 years to get it or some pause in service is acceptable.
Look out for a bit more news here on PS Blog later this afternoon.
Can we please talk about the download speed in Europe’s PSN? There are people saying that its so slow to the point where it took 3+hours to download 30 mb from the PS store… And yes it not about the internet provider we are all pretty sure that it’s Sony’s EU servers that are lacking like hell.
Where is PSn money going after all? Not the games since they are going downhill. Not the servers since this is happening. But hey…at least there’s someone getting the money. Priorities, right?
Our PS+ money goes to the money-starved publishers so we get exclusive Hitman/Destiny/CodBlops3/Batman/Star Wars/FF7 Remake/SFV missions, weapons, timed releases and other disposable trinkets. I LOVE YOU SONY
The download speeds are either a bug or traffic management. In my testing I had 5 downloads each running at approx 1MB every 5 seconds, if it was the servers then pausing 4 of them should have left the remaining on at 1MB per second but it stayed the same. When the smallest one, a 30mb DLC for Witcher finished the other should have gone up to 1MB per 4 seconds but they also stayed the same.
I have no doubt that if I had enough stuff to download and we could have more than 5 active downloads I can max my 60mbps download speed, but due to an artificial cap on each separate download this is impossible. Which is a shame because I just bought Handsome Jack Collection and its 9gb+ patch was being reported at 23 hours, last month this would have taken less than an hour.
If it is a bug, it can be fixed. If it is traffic management, then it is being applied in a way that is counterproductive to the network and should be stopped, immediately. Downloads are temporary connections which are best managed by keeping concurrent users down, the beat way to do that is serve every client as quickly as possible and get them disconnected. This is why ISPs are forever throttling streaming services but never touch http or ftp traffic.
Yeah New Zealand has also be really bad for a bit, only on PSN downloads though so I guess there is some sort of data management going on or something has unintentionally messed up.
The issues reported last week have now been addressed. Anecdotally, I downloaded Arkham Knight in just a few hours last night. Let me know if you’re still experiencing issues – we’re monitoring it closely.
Still having issues on my end, games from EU Psn download at about 200 kb/s where just a week ago i had an average of 5mb/s. Read reports i am not single outed. Feels like getting in touch wit customer service will not resolve anything.
A reviewer from a Dutch site said it took him forever to download Arkham Knight’s review code and made an article about that instead of the game. It is infuriating how lacking the store experiance is.
Great way to sent future buyers to the excelent and speedy service of the Xbox One, or steam or Gog or iTunes or any other download store except for PSN.
to me e3 won by bethesda
love eso
can not wait til fallout 4
from you companie only ff7 remake was very nice news in jears ( how far = the remake , we are gone need o wait 4 jears ?)
horizon maby = med intrested ( need more to convice )
the last guardian = bfff not intrested in a game wo takes this long ( al intrest away )
other games i like
mass effect :andromeda
dark souls 3
ps+ not intrested like ith is now
ps+50€ mony need to be
1 -savety
2-speeding up you stuf ( jes you get a mega problem ath moment whit download speed see extra info )
3- i want instead of free rental games ,new standart edition games ath 59€ in Benelux store ( more = not corect + in real store we also pay tax !!! , give peopel 2 options on psn + service free games ore corect prices then i now i go option b )
en jes i do hate excl. dlc ( give a trinket = extra like dol ore other stuf = np .)
i not suport next games
cod – destiny …..
so quit sony /ms by buying dlc en geting on the nerves of 1000000000 gamesr around the world .
dit sony not say we do not need excl. dlc ?
make you own games like you always did , wy you are so strong .
to speed problem
eso 70 hr pauze 32 hr – 16 – 4-32- after 10 x 3.5 hr
batman patch day 1 = 3 hr -1 x pauze = 30min
what in gods name is whith you download system speed ( al other divice ath home do not have the problem )
I bought the Batman Arkham Knight Season Pass at launch at I’m supposed to have the Batman Flashpoint skin as a season pass exclusive but I don’t have it and there is nothing in my download list. Saw other people having this issue and no one at WB Games is helping them and I just want to know if I have wasted £32.99. I’ve seen it works in US but the problems are in the EU. Any help here would be appreciated.
It took 15 hours to download Batman, then a further 3 days to download in game. Madness.
@Fred
This wednesday is 1st of July, will the PS plus games be announced on monday and released on Wednesday?
Nope. Games announced this Wednesday / Thursday and released on the 8th July.
Wow a full 6 weeks since the last announcement.
The rule is rather simple:
We get the PS+ games on the day after the first Tuesday of the month, which is the 8th July this time. Why that? Because US is prefered and it’s not “allowed” that they have to wait for their games (first Tuesday of the month) longer than EU (which should have been first Wednesday of the month).
After recent offerings I am hoping this month is good
Excuse the extra post, but there is another important question that needs asking.
Witcher 3, its still costs £50 on the PSN store, but “the other console” has it for £45 on its marketplace. Both companies claim that the publisher sets the price, so can you offer any explanation as to why this price difference exists?
So we’re going to keep pretending that the UK price issue doesn’t exist then. I can understand that, I mean its difficult to explain that SCEE sets the UK price independently of what the publisher wants after all these years of claiming they set their own prices…
Who? Where? What?… Sorry i still haven’t recovered from the E3 News yet :D Keep up the good work all at SONY ;)
plus updates now on tuesday?
yeah, because god forbid we get something before the us does.
if it was the other way round, and the timing of the dates meant we got it a week later than the us, would sony be making this change?
unifying the dates?
do bears work out quantam mechanics equations in the woods?
so, the apart from making sure the yanks are always first, because that’s who sony cares about, you’re unifying an area of the store update.
shame you’ll continue to ignore other areas.
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2015/02/17/superhero-tv-series-powers-coming-soon-pal-region/
and because you clearly have a different concept of what “soon” means when it applies to Europe, here’s a little lesson
soon
suːn/Submit
adverb
1.
in or after a short time.
“everyone will soon know the truth”
synonyms: in a short time, shortly, presently, in the near future, before long, in a little while, in a minute, in a moment, in an instant, in a twinkling, in the twinkling of an eye, before you know it, any minute (now), any day (now), any time (now), by and by; More
four months and NOTHING, is not soon.
Uhm, actually, Powers has been released a long time ago on PSN via the app under TV options.
not here it aint.
maybe you’re in one of the very few regions where they managed to sell it to some other network to force you to download their app to watch, but most of the rest of the world hasn’t even got that.
i don’t recognise your flag so i don’t know.
i don’t think Canada even has it yet.
you did give me a moment of doubt though.
did they actually deign to release it outside the us, and just not bother telling anybody?
as if.
no, i did check the store, not there.
what app exactly did you find the series under?
It’s available in France and the Nordics via a dedicated app and New Zealand CIA a third party subscription service called Lightbox.
As yet the closest we have to Sony even acknowledging the fact that practically the entire PAL region is still missing this content is Fred’s claim that there be more news “soon”
Will the 1TB PS4 come in Glacier White too? I’m in the market for a PS4 but the white one fits my setup a lot better.
I want to thank you for DRIVECLUB PlayStation Plus Edition.
It only took me 2 days and god knows how many files to download the most anticipated racegame ever.
When I could finaly start I found out this was just a very limited demo and the game isn’t even that good.
It looks ok but not stunning and I desided to wipe it of of my HDD (it went much quicker than putting it there.
Thanks again Sony for waisting my time when I could have played the excelent The Witcher 3 instead.
I think one of the July’s plus games is Pneuma: Breath of Life it’s coming to PS4 on the 7th.
Thank goodness you guys told me about this Batman game in the “news we might have missed”. It nearly flew under the radar, it was so underground. Ads everywhere I go, it being on Pizza boxes, busses, billboards, TVs, YouTube, Twitch, etc. It was definitely an easy to miss news. So, thanks guys.
*rolls eyes*