Sony is one of the biggest names in gaming holding some of the most critically acclaimed franchises on the market today. Uncharted, Infamous, and Resistance are just the tip of the iceberg. Sony has unvieled their new handhelds name and price along with some very cool looking games and ways to connect it to your PS3. You can check out a full bulleted list of the new announcements from Sony this year. I would love to be snarky, but I have to tell you there is very little to be snarky about.

Sony’s welcome back initiative has finally been rolled out on the PSN store. Sony is offering a choice of two PS3 games from a list of five and two PSP games from a list of four. The program works on an account by account basis so if you have two accounts made before the outage then you can do what I did and grab almost everything being offered.

In addition to the free games Sony is also offering 30 days of Playstation Plus which gives you access to free games, discounts, and cloud saves for the duration of the 30 days. The network is being hammered right now by people attempting to get their free stuff, so you might want to try later. You can get more info and trouble shooting help over at the Playstation Blog.

I noticed a whole lot of trailer came out this week for games that may not have huge followings on the site, but still should atleast have small ones. So in preperation for Monday I have decided to round them up in this convieniant news post. If any new trailers come out that don’t exactly warrant their own post I will place them in here after the fact. Enjoy these trailers after the jump.

Takashi Miike, most well known for his unsettling films Ichi: The Killer and Audition, is being put behind the helm of the live action Pheonix Wright movie. While I have never seen a movie by him in the same light hearted fashion that I associate with Pheonix Wright I have seen him do comedic films before.

Takashi Miike is one of the most experienced directors around having directed around fifty four films since 1991 when he started. The movie is going to be foriegn language of course and may not come out in America, but I am sure fan subs will rear their head soon after it’s japanese release in spring 2012. I am incredibly excited to see both Takashi Miike doing a light hearted movie and Pheonix Wright come to life on the silver screen. For more information on casting check after the jump.

Source (Giantbomb)

This is the first of the TSG Live: Occasionally streams that hopefully will start going. Unfortunately we still do not have access to the TSG channel to stream it so as for right now we are streaming on my personal channel here http://www.justin.tv/cosmoid. Starting out we are going to be doing sessions Bi-Weekly so the next stream will be on June 4th. Playing are Phil, AtrenXevious, Basch, Kairamek, Oneearth, Altore, and me Cosmoid. For more specific information about this weeks session and links to the archived videos check below.

Starting today they are allowing us to login to PSN and change our passwords, which is a mandatory security measure, and soon we will be able to play and buy games once again. Sony has a priority list and have even put together a video where Kaz Hirai himself explains exactly what this gradual restoration means and why it took them so long. PSN has been down for 3 weeks and has not only been hurting consumers but also effecting beta’s such as the Infamous 2 beta and stalling developers from working on their online components for PS3.

Sony has a long road ahead of them regaining the trust of the public and restoring the Playstation brand to it’s former glory. They seem to understand that and have all kinds of things planned such as two free PSN games from a list of five, two free PSP games from a list of four, and a years subscription to an identity theft protection service in countries that have it. The real question is, is this enough? Go ahead and say what you think in the comments.

Priority of Services Restored

• Sign-in for PlayStation Network and Qriocity services, including the resetting of passwords
• Restoration of online game-play across PS3 and PSP
• Playback rental video content, if within rental period, of PlayStation Network Video Delivery Service on PS3, PSP and MediaGo
• Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity, for current subscribers, on PS3 and PC
• Access to 3rd party services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and MLB.tv
• ‘Friends’ category on PS3, including Friends List, Chat Functionality, Trophy Comparison, etc
• PlayStation Home

You can check out the video over at the Playstation Blog.

*It may already be up in your area. Check here to see if it’s available for you yet.

Unfortunately the Nintendo 3DS e-Shop did not launch with the system. It promises a handheld system based Virtual Console, Updated Nintendo Classics, and downloadable titles from 3rd parties such as the planned version of Nnooo’s escapeVektor and Capcom’s Mega Man Legends 3 Prototype. Nintendo originally said that the service would be available in late may. The actual date is in fact so late into May that it’s 7 days into June. June 7th, the first day of E3, is the new launch date for the Nintendo 3DS e-Shop. This could tie in to the expected announcement of their new system or perhaps they have something special to show off that will be available on the e-Shop. This is all speculation, but it’s pretty exciting and I really hope that Nintendo can get more hype behind the 3DS e-Shop that the DSiWare shop just didn’t have.

PSN is down and no one can buy anything or play online games. Sony has been telling us to wait constantly for the past few weeks and pushing back dates over and over. It looks like they have finally just given up on specific dates, but they are saying that it should take a couple more days. Which is what they said the time before and the time before. If you don’t know about the current issue over at Sony, they were hacked by an unknown group and had a lot of their networks security compromised. Information such as names and passwords are confirmed stolen, but they continue to say that they aren’t sure any credit card info was gotten.

The first aspect of PSN that will be coming back up will be online games and to compensate for the wait Sony is going to be offering 2 free games off of PSN from a list of 5 and to PSP users another 2 free PSP games off of PSN from a list of 4. We can only assume that these games will be first party Sony releases most likely, but not much more than that. You can read the full quote here as well “I know you all want to know exactly when the services will be restored. At this time, I can’t give you an exact date, as it will likely be at least a few more days. We’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work through this process.”.

(Gameinformer)

We had known for a while not that Ubisoft wanted to annualize the Assassin’s Creed series. So we knew that there would be a new game coming this year and now we finally know what it’s going to be. It still isn’t Assassin’s Creed 3, but it is being billed as the last chapter in Ezio’s story. Ezio is going to travel over Constantinople and do a little adventuring there. The game promises though that this time you will not only be playing as Ezio and Desmond, but also Altaire from Assassin’s Creed.

The Assassin’s creed games have been some of the most popular and well made open world games right after the Grand Theft Auto series and their last one was just as good as Assassin’s creed 2. It seems like a scary proposition when a studio tries to annualize a game. We have seen it go sour with many franchises, Guitar Hero and currently Call of Duty. Ubisoft seems aware of the danger and is putting as much backing as they can behind each game. Utilizing multiple studios to ensure that they can keep up quality while also being able to have one year after year. As long as they can keep the games fresh, there shouldn’t be much of an issue.

(Image and Story Courtesy of Gameinformer)

Nintendo took some heavy fire from critics and fans for not including any type of internal storage in the Wii. It looks like they haven’t taken it into account as reports coming in form Kotaku are hinting at the next console lacking a hard-drive as well. Reports say that it will instead come with a measly 8 GB of flash storage. It is leaps and bounds ahead of the Wii’s 512 MB, but it still isn’t up with the times. There are also reports saying that their new disc format will be able to store up to 25 GB and support up to 1080i or 1080p. It seems a bit strange that they would stop at 1080i, but really 720p is all you need unless you are playing on an insanely large TV so it isn’t a huge deal. I suspect if the reports of no hard-drive are true it may be a cost issue. Considering the system may have a controller with a screen in it and possibly greater than current generation graphics. This may be a way for Nintendo to keep their consoles selling at a profit. Also as an extra note I do know that the controller image is fake.

(1up)