Sony's Official Developer's Blog for SCEA

Microsoft has Gamerscore, Major Nelson, and umpteen other blogs. Sony's European division has ThreeSpeech. Now, Sony's American employees have their own blog: blog.us.playstation.com

Says PR manager Patrick Seybold in the inaugural entry:

Now, what we’ve learned, perhaps the hard way, is that a blog like this is really about you and the things you want to hear, share and discuss with us. With that in mind, you’ll notice that comments are enabled - and encouraged – so tell us what you want to see here and we’ll do our best to make it happen.

"Perhaps the hard way" there would seem to refer to All I Want For Christmas Is A PSP. Transparency seems to be working for Microsoft; can Sony replicate the success of their blogging efforts?

Besides Seybold, other SCEA employees who have posted thus far include R&D director Klaus Hofrichter and PlayStation Network manager Eric Lempel. Will PlayStation.Blog truly encourage community and dialogue, or will it end up being a one-way conduit of pre-screened information? Who knows. But Sony really needs to shore up its community, so this is a positive step for them.

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It’s with enthusiasm, eagerness and, honestly, a little bit of relief that we lift the cover on our first official Sony Computer Entertainment America company blog - welcome and sorry for the wait.

PlayStation.Blog is a bit of work in progress, we see it as a place where we can share with you our company’s collective insights, opinions and perspectives on all things related to SCEA, PlayStation and the industry we play in.

At the moment, we’re thinking about sharing all sorts of things here, ranging from product news and title announcements to developer updates and industry opinion posts – all of which will come straight from the people here inside SCEA who are working, thinking and playing with this stuff every day. Look to the categories on the sidebar for some initial thoughts we have on future post themes.

Now, what we’ve learned, perhaps the hard way, is that a blog like this is really about you and the things you want to hear, share and discuss with us. With that in mind, you’ll notice that comments are enabled – and encouraged – so tell us what you want to see here and we’ll do our best to make it happen. And yes, like most blogs, we have a comment policy, please just keep this in mind when you’re leaving a comment.

We imagine it may take us a short while to find our pace with this, but bear with us as we get underway and we promise we’ll quickly make this blog a valuable stop in your daily info hunt for PlayStation news.

Like we’ve said, we’re excited to finally have a platform for conversation and connection. Much more is in the works too, so we hope you’ll consider sticking around, kicking the tires of our shiny new blog and sharing what you think.

Enjoy!

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Hi, everyone, I’m excited about this new blog so I can talk with you about all the cool things we’re doing with the PLAYSTATION®Network. To start, we recently released PS3 firmware update 1.80, which is packed with features that we know many of you have been asking for. You can read the specifics of the upgrade here. That’s one of the best things about PS3 – it’s constantly being updated with new features. With 1.80, you can now upscale PlayStation® and PlayStation®2 games and DVD movies, up to 1080p if your TV supports it. You home theater buffs are probably all over this upgrade already, but if you don’t have an HDTV just yet, check out what upscaling does for God of War II and Shadow of the Colossus – games that were already gorgeous-looking to begin with – in these comparison screens.

Firmware 1.80 also added DLNA media server capability for streaming photos/music/videos from your PC to PS3, and I want to make sure that everyone knows how simple setup is. This feature works with many programs and devices; for this example, we’ll use a PC with Windows Media Player 11. All you need to do is:

* On your PC, enable “Media Sharing” on Windows Media Player 11 and allow sharing with the PS3 (it may be labeled as an “unknown device&#8221.

* On your PS3, turn on “Media Server Connection” under Network Settings. PS3 will automatically search for media servers on the same home network, or you can scan for them manually.

Your PC and media files will pop up under the Photo/Music/Video XMB icons.

Need more info? Go here, here, and here.

The other big upgrade we’re thrilled about is Remote Play via wireless Internet. You’ve been hearing us talk about PS3-PSP interoperability for a long time, and this is a great step forward on that front. With the DLNA feature, you can access your PC’s media files remotely on your PSP, so you’re not limited to what’s on your PS3’s hard drive. Here’s a cool tip: if you’re not home on Thursdays when the PLAYSTATION®Store is updated with new content, get a head start by going to your closest Wi-Fi hotspot, turn on Remote Play on your PSP, and access the PLAYSTATION Store to download the latest games, demos, trailers, and more. Using background downloading, you can easily queue loads of content quickly. You will need to leave your PS3 on and in Remote Play, but we hear you loud and clear about wanting to power on or off PS3 remotely.

On that note, we’re always evaluating ways to enhance your PS3 experience, so now’s your opportunity to have your voice heard! Submit your number one most wanted addition to the PS3’s feature set here. We’ll post a list of the top 10 suggestions next week.

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Digital-Nitrate

Here is a decent post from the director of PSN Operations:

PS3 Goes Upscale
by Eric Lempel // Director, PlayStation Network Operations
June 6, 2007


So Duck... now's your chance to be heard regarding your demand for more movie trailers...

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nteresting theory. Midway also confirmed to us this afternoon that a new PS3 and Xbox 360 demo will be arriving ahead of release, including a new campaign level and online multiplayer.

"All we intended to do [with the first demo] is show a teaser, but the next release we have will be a full blown demo with multiplayer and everything. It'll be on 360 and PS3."

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BMW318ciC

Wonder if I put a link to my petition in the blog

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3) If your game has heavy online use:
XBL provides more and better standard libraries for online gaming to developers. For the same features on PS3, developers have to do some extra work. We’re catching up, but there is a difference.

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Duċk;2686009

It's about time. Threespeech was a half-baked solution, so I'm glad there's a full-fledged one now. Now all we need now is a Nintendo blog.

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Jeremy Ricci

More of that GAF coming out in you

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Duċk;2688477

It was! It was an SCEE-centric blog that wasn't official, but only "spoke to Sony". This lets Sony speak directly without a middleman – and that's only a good thing. And it personifies them, which is what they needed.

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Duċk;2688477

It was! It was an SCEE-centric blog that wasn't official, but only "spoke to Sony". This lets Sony speak directly without a middleman – and that's only a good thing. And it personifies them, which is what they needed.

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Jeremy Ricci

You're a gaffer through and through

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Jeremy Ricci

I'm not saying it wasn't, I'm saying that your verbiage, "half baked" is basically a regurgitation of the common consensus at GAF. That's how pretty much the entire community refers to it. You have a strong sense of GAF (think the Force from Star Wars).

Believe. Confirmed. "Wallet am cry".

You're a gaffer through and through

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ALPHA

Duck, a GAF’er? Nowhere near enough triology, not my problem, and things break, etc…

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Hey everyone, you may recall last month we wrapped up our reader poll asking what features you’d like to see added to this here blog.

Downloadable high-resolution images, a desktop widget and a subscribe-via-email option were the top 3 requests - and that’s exactly what we’re adding here today. Take a quick peek at the sidebar —–> [available on site]

Multi-Megabyte Images Await
We have a growing collection of images and artwork from PlayStation games available via Flickr. Each image is available for download at multiple resolutions, most of which scale up to 1280 x 720 and/or 1920 x 1080, and a few that are even bigger than this for you bandwidth gluttons. We’ll be adding new pictures to this collection fairly regularly, so we’ve also created a separate image feed (RSS) that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be notified of updates.

You Love the Blog, Now Get the Widget Too!
We’ve created a PlayStation.Blog widget that lives on your desktop and automatically pulls in all of our latest blog posts. We’ve got two flavors for you guys: one for the Mac, the other for the PC. The Mac widget is your standard OS X Dashboard Widget (download here), and the PC version uses Yahoo! Widgets. Note that you’ll need to first install Yahoo!’s Widget app before you can download and use this PC version.

You Can Never Have Too Much Email
We’ve added an option to subscribe to PlayStation.Blog updates via email (this is in addition to our RSS feed and is provided via the same service, Feedburner). Simply click on the email icon, enter your email address and hit “subscribe.” Once you verify that you’re indeed human and your email works, you’re all set. As we publish new posts here, you’ll automatically receive updates via email.

That’s it for now. It bears mentioning, while info is - and will always be - our priority and focus for you guys here, how you access this info is a matter of preference that can take a lot of different shapes. Hopefully these new features give you a few more options to consider, and at very least, make this blog a little more useful. We’ll be looking into some additional blog bling down the road, most of which involves things you’ve commented or emailed us about, but if you have any additional ideas, let us know. Thanks everyone.

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