Today only Amazon.com are selling Sony PSP Accessory Carrying Case And Cloth for the PSS at $9.99, reduced from $19.99 with free shipping if you add another $15.01 to your order.

This isn’t for holding the PSP itself, but rather for a set of headphones, a UMD and a memory stick.

Today only Amazon.com are selling Final Fantasy II for the PSP at $19.99, reduced from $29.99 with free shipping if you add another $5.01 to your order.

There’s not a great many RPGs for the PSP that new games from a great series is always welcome. Although I find the hard to recommend if you’ve already played FFII on one of the other systems this has appeared on.

Joytiq is reporting that EA plans to shut down 42 servers as of September 1st, 2007, and another 7 as of November 1st, 2007. As a gamer who has not completed all of Madden 2006 yet this is a little disturbing. Not to mention that this is clearly EA’s way of pushing gamers into purchasing the latest sports game expansion pack …… excuse me I mean latest versions of all their roster changes for sports games …. Whoops slip of the tongue I mean latest full version their sports games line up and other games that have newer versions out.

Microsoft seems to be able to keep the servers up for the Xbox version 1? And it has always been a Mystery to me why exactly EA needs to maintain servers aside from the Xbox LIVE servers? It always seemed like a great way to obtain email address to send advertisements (Cough, SPAM, Cough) about their new products not to mention data mine the other information they force you to enter. Aside from Square Enix, it seems that EA is the only other company that needs to maintain redundant servers to allow online game play. Since Square Enix does this to charge extra and allow cross platform play it leaves one to wonder what EA has up their sleeve in the future, and I doubt it is cross platform game play.

I am sure there are a pages of statistics and an army of bean counters over at EA that can tell you that hardly anyone is using those servers, and that it costs truck loads of money to keep them running. But here is the deal, if we as gamers can only use these sports games for a year or two maybe we should not have to clean out our wallets to buy your game. Maybe games that require EA servers to be maintained should only cost $30.00 or $40.00 to buy. I also think that EA should be much more forth coming about the fact that you will only be able to play these games for two years or probably less in the future. I would bet that within a few years they will shut off their servers the day that the next versions are released. I honestly hope that Microsoft and Sony step in and do something about this, because I think it is really a black eye to both platforms that EA can swindle money from customers using their respect platforms. I would encourage anyone who has purchased games that are affected to send emails to EA, Microsoft, and Sony about your feelings on this matter. I hope this makes everyone think twice about buying EA games and additional EA content. Lets all hope that 2K Sports can step up to the plate and give us all a true online gaming experience.

Check out what the guys at Penny Arcade think about EA, I definitely agree! Click here!

Here is the schedule for the mass unplugging

September 1, 2007 Online Service Shutdown
Arena Football for PlayStation 2
Arena Football for Xbox
FIFA Soccer 06 for Xbox 360
FIFA Soccer 06 for PC
FIFA06 for PC
FIFA Soccer 06 for PlayStation 2
FIFA Soccer 06 for PlayStation Portable
FIFA Soccer 06 for Xbox
FIFA World Cup 2006 for PC
FIFA World Cup 2006 for PlayStation 2
FIFA World Cup 2006 for PlayStation Portable
FIFA World Cup 2006 for Xbox
Fight Night Round 3 for PlayStation Portable
Fight Night Round 3 for Xbox
Madden NFL 06 for Xbox 360
Madden NFL 06 for PC
Madden NFL 06 for PlayStation 2
Madden NFL 06 for PlayStation Portable
Madden NFL 06 for Xbox
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects for PlayStation 2
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects for Xbox
MVP 07 NCAA Baseball for PlayStation 2
MVP 07 NCAA Baseball for Xbox
NASCAR 06 Total Team Control for PlayStation 2
NASCAR 06 Total Team Control for Xbox
NBA Live 06 for Xbox 360
NBA Live 06 for PC
NBA Live 06 for PlayStation 2
NBA Live 06 for PlayStation Portable
NCAA Football 2005 for Xbox
NCAA Football 2006 for PlayStation 2
NCAA Football 2006 for Xbox
NCAA March Madness 06 for PlayStation 2
NCAA March Madness 06 for Xbox
NFL Head Coach for PC
NFL Head Coach for Xbox
NFL Head Coach for PlayStation 2
NHL 06 for PC
NHL 06 for PlayStation 2
NHL 06 for Xbox
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 for Xbox 360
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 for Xbox

November 1, 2007 Online Service Shutdown
Burnout Revenge for Xbox
Burnout Revenge for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed Underground for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed Underground 2 for PC
Need for Speed Underground 2 for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed Most Wanted for PlayStation Portable
Need for Speed Most Wanted for Xbox

Via Joystiq

The BIGS should be sitting on store shelves today.  Why should you be excited about yet another sports game?  Well the fact that The BIGS boasts a small learning curve and delivering some of the best animations out there. 

“With The BIGS, we really wanted to put a whole new spin on baseball while still staying true to America’s favorite pastime,” said Greg Thomas, President of Visual Concepts, a 2K Sports studio. “We took all the big action plays intrinsic to the game and made them happen much more often, creating a hero-like presentation of the players and the sport. The BIGS will give gamers spectacular wall catches, dramatic diving grabs, acrobatic double plays and many more dramatic highlight reel moments to deliver a truly new, exciting brand of baseball.”

The BIGS allows players to use turbo and power-ups, which they claim adds a unique level of strategy to the game (of course Fusion Frenzy 2 promised the same thing with the use of “Cards”, and we all know how that turned out).  Now pitching, batting, or playing the outfield can utilize these modifiers to make momentous plays.  Of course real life Baseball has power ups, they are called Steroids. 

All kidding aside this looks like a great game that all sports fans should check out or at the very least give it a rental, and with the easy to learn game play try to get friends and significant excited about the all American pass time of Baseball.

Via Press Release

So when was the last time you saw a game released on every gaming console, every hand held, even the PC and MAC that was not some cheap crappy movie based game?  Well best selling author Darren Reid is about to release a point and click fantasy adventure with MMO and RPG community elements to every next generation console, handhelds, PCs and Macs.  Darren with NextGenBooks.com today announced that they are brining an all new point and click fantasy adventure to PCs and consoles. Darren Reid’s The Half Broken Crown: The Broken Kingdoms is an all new game based upon the best selling author’s upcoming novel The Half Broken Crown. The game is a point and click style adventure which incorporates MMO elements which allow all online players to communicate and solve puzzles through collaboration and cooperation.

 “Of all my upcoming projects this is perhaps the one I am most excited about,” admitted Reid, “It is a unique opportunity for me to expand upon the [upcoming] book and to tell new stories.”

Look for The Broken Kingdoms this June and will be free to play with optional micro-transactions available to enhance the player’s experience. The main game will feature over 100 unique screens.  Additional in-game purchases will open up episodic content that add hours of game play will become available over the course of the year.  Each episode prices ranging from $2.50-$5.00, depending upon the depth of the content being purchased.

The game will be launched exclusively on www.NextGenBooks.com and be playable through internet web browsers with specific and individual versions designed for Wii, DS, PS3, PSP, PC and Mac. All console and computer versions of the game will be fully featured however the DS and PSP users will have to wait for multiplayer support.

If you want to learn more about the game pick one of the following ways check Darren’s MySpace Page, or Next Gen Books Website.
www.myspace.com/darrenreidcell
www.NextGenBooks.com

For more information about Darren Reid’s books The Half Broken Crown: The Broken Kingdoms visit www.DarrenReid.co.uk.

So being a child of the eighties I saw the Transformer trailer on the Playstation Network Store and downloaded it right away.  Thanks to the 1.60 firmware update I was also able to download a couple other things all at once.  By the way Sony, Thank you very much for background downloading! 

Once I watched the trailer I thought this would be cool to test the Remote Play feature.  So after playing around with the PSP and getting it connected and registered to the PS3, I was ready to start streaming content to my PSP from my PS3.  The quality of the audio and video was quite good.  Of course a fresh steaming pile of cow dung looks great on that high-resolution wide screen of the PSP.  You do not have to squint or deal with the distortion of an iPod screen. 

Unfortunately this is about the end of the positive comments to Remote Play.  I was really disheartened to see that you have to put the PS3 into a dedicated mode of Remote Play to actually stream content.  I was really hoping that I could be playing a Blu-Ray or DVD while streaming other content to the PSP.  And speaking of Blu-Ray and DVD that is a perfect segway into my next disappointment of Remote Play.  You can not stream Blu-Ray or DVD content to your PSP.  You are only allowed to stream music, video, and photo files nothing that is on disk media.  Next on my list of whines, is that you have to be connected to the same network as the PS3 to stream content to your PSP.  In my mind this makes the feature almost useless.  Really, if you are at the same location as your PS3 and your PS3 is in a dedicated Remote Play mode I do not understand why you would not simply view your content on your PS3.  The only application I could come up with is if you turned on your PS3.  Then started the Remote Play feature, and then switched you’re A/V input so that someone else could watch TV or some other media while you then viewed the content on your PS3 from your PSP.  But that seems like a pretty niche use of this PS3 Remote Play feature.  Once last complaint and this is kind of small, but if you put your PS3 into Remote Play mode the screen saver does not kick in, and the Folding@Home client does not kick in.  And as we all know PS3 owners are all about helping out their fellow man.

I think Sony has laid down a solid foundation here in Remote Play.  If they can make a couple of simple improvements to this feature I think they would see allot more customer use.  First while I am watching a Blu-Ray or DVD, if I could simply press a button on my PS3 controller and some sort of transparent menu system would start the Remote Play streaming then my wife could continue watching the movie on the couch.  While I could take the PSP that has the content streaming to it with me to the bathroom.  That would be very cool!  But what could really make Remote Play take off, and would probably sell more PSP and PS3 combinations is being able to stream content from your PS3 to your PSP over the internet.  If I could be at some hot spot and stream video or music off my PS3 onto my PSP, this would be the killer app that no Technosexual could be without.  Being able to access your media from a hotel room, lunch room at work or school, or even at your In-laws house when they are watching boring home movies or some documentary that you have no reason to have any interest in would be incredible.

While Sony has not exactly hit one out of the park with Remote Play, I think they have definitely put runners on first and second.  If they can just make a couple more improvements Remote Play may be a grand slam product. It could be so big Mr. Trenton will not have to worry about taking out a second mortgage on his house to pay off the $1200 wagers of finding a PS3 on shelves for more then five minutes.  The PSP would likely start out selling the Nintendo DS for once and that should bring a smile to any Sony Executives face!

But enough of my rant how are you currently using Remote Play?

Oxygen Games is pleased to announce a trailer of Dave Mirra BMX Challenge for the PSP® (Playstation®portable) system.

Hailed the ‘Miracle Man’ of BMX and leading the BMX freestyle scene, Dave Mirra is universally acclaimed as the greatest at what he does. Mirra has dominated the competition arena for over a decade and has achieved the most gold medals of any X Games competitor.

Dave Mirra BMX Challenge is available exclusively for the
PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) system and is scheduled for release in May 2007.

Check out all the stunts and tricks in this brand new trailer available to download here.

Renchi sent us an email asking us to remind everybody that all PS3 games and many XBox 360 are region free!  That means they can be played on consoles in Japan, North America, and Europe.  And that you can get the same game that supports English in most cases as well as Japanese, but they are the same game only cheaper.  Armed with that knowledge you should head on over to www.renchi.com and see if they have any games, consoles, or accessories that you might be interested in.  They not only have XBox 360, PS3 but also PSP, DS, PS2, as well as many other platforms.

Renchi spokes person Herman Cheng was quoted as saying “Many of our customers are telling us they want to get those region free Xbox 360 games and accessories from us” said a company spokesperson, “because they are cheaper and there are more to chose from”.

Check out what they have to offer for the PS3, PSP.