To coincide with this week’s PlayStation Store update, Sony Computer Entertainment America has announced that it will adjust the prices on the Canadian store to reflect the current American to Canadian dollar exchange rate.

We are continually looking for ways to enhance the player experience on the PLAYSTATION®Network, and downloadable content through the PLAYSTATION Store is just one of our areas of focus,” said Grace Chen, Senior Manager for the PLAYSTATION Store. “We anticipate that this price adjustment will meet the expectations of our Canadian consumers and provide them with a better PLAYSTATION Network experience.

That means all content on the Canadian store should be a few bucks cheaper tomorrow, thanks to the ever-depreciating U.S. dollar.

Valve’s Steam digital distribution service has grown immensely since its launch in 2003, now with nearly all major PC game publishers signed up to release new titles on the service. Would the service have been as successful if Valve launched it with the aid of a larger company such as Microsoft and Yahoo?

That’s what Valve originally planned on doing, but surprisingly, both companies rejected the concept of Steam, according to marketing VP Doug Lombardi:

You know, we went around to Yahoo, Microsoft…and anybody who seemed like a likely candidate to build something like Steam.

We basically had our feature list that we wanted. We wanted auto-updating, we wanted better anti-piracy, better anti-cheat, and selling the games over the wire was something we came up with later.

We went around to everybody and asked ‘Are you guys doing anything like this?’ And everyone was like ‘That’s a million miles in the future…We can’t help you.

I don’t even want to imagine how the service would’ve ended up if either MS or Yahoo took the bait.

Microsoft and Yahoo rejected Steam, says Valve [GI.biz]

Update: A minor update to FuSa has been released. In addition to the usual bug fixes, changes in build 011 include enhanced game compatibility along with the ability to enable and disable the “SPEED BOOSTER” feature. The updated release archive can be downloaded below.

Homebrew developer OldPrisoneR has released the initial beta of FuSa, a custom firmware plugin that enables Slim owners to play PSP games on their television over standard composite cable.

Under normal circumstances, the PSP would require that you use a component cable, so this plugin neatly removes that restriction. For compatibility information and usage instructions, refer to the included readme file.

Download FuSa Beta

FuSa Project: Play via composite cable with FuSa! [PS2Dev]

Developers M@x and Sleepper have released another update to their popular Java virtual machine emulator PSPKVM. The emulator can run both games and applications compiled with Sun Microsystems’ Java 2 Platform Micro Edition toolkit (J2ME) on any PSP that has custom firmware installed.

Version 0.3.2 introduces virtual keyboard support, along with the usual round of bug fixes and usability tweaks. For the complete changelog, hit the jump. more »

Uh-oh. Florida attorney and anti-video game violence activist Jack Thompson sent an email over to none other than Game Politics with the subject line “Evidence.” Enclosed in the body of the message was a picture of him holding a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV.

Wonder what he’s up to now. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made his teenage son go out and purchase the game for him, just to ramble on about how easily minors can get their hands on a copy.

Scariest Pic You Will See Today (or all week) [GP]

California-based developer Left Field Productions, responsible for the 64-bit recreation of Nintendo’s Excitebike franchise, has revealed that it is working on an original WiiWare game entitled Battle Poker.

Boasting 4-way multiplayer support on a single Wii, the game challenges players to make the best hand possible in a five-card Poker game. Battles are waged across multiple rounds, with points awarded for each round based on the quality of the hand. At the end of a battle, points are tallied up and the winner is determined.

A release date and pricing details for Battle Poker will be announced at a later date.

Left Field Confirms Battle Poker for Nintendo WiiWare [Cubed3]

SCEA senior producer Deborah Mars has confirmed that Q-Games’ upcoming Encore expansion for PixelJunk Monsters will hit the PlayStation Network this May.

Alongside the official confirmation of a release window, Mars gave a brief overview of all that is included in the expansion. Encore features the inclusion of Toki Island, 15 all-new levels, 5 new music tracks by indy artist Otograph. Additionally, players will be able to purchase Ice Towers as a stock item and the cost to buy Tesla Towers has been reduced.

Pricing details have yet to be announced, but we’ll keep you posted.

PixelJunk Monsters Encore details + interview [PlayStation Blog]

Speaking in a recent interview with PC Play magazine, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli stated his belief that piracy is a core problem surrounding the current generation of PC gaming.

Yerli noted that Crytek is suffering huge losses as a result of piracy and as such, the company does not plan on releasing PC exclusives like Crysis in the future. Future titles will be multi-platform, which isn’t all that surprising given that Crytek demonstrated its CryENGINE 2 running on PS3 and Xbox 360 during this year’s GDC.

We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy. To the degree PC Gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.

Good to hear that they will still support the PC platform. Multi-platform game releases are a win-win for consumers, really.

PC PLAY - Magazine For The Next Level Generation [PC Play]

According to online retailer GameFly, PSP titles Star Ocean: First Departure and Star Ocean: Second Evolution are both penned for a stateside debut this fall. The rental site actually goes as far to date the pair of remakes, listing a September 30 release date for each. However, we assume this date is nothing more than a placeholder, so don’t rush to mark your calendars just yet.

Now to patiently wait for the official announcement from Square Enix.

Ubisoft today announced that it is opening up a new development complex based in Kiev, Ukraine. With the new studio representing its third location in Eastern Europe, the publisher expects to employ an estimated number of over 800 workers in the region by early 2009.

“We have had a very positive experience in Eastern Europe, as the quality of the upcoming Tom Clancy’s HAWX™ developed by our Bucharest studio can attest,” said Christine Burgess-Quémard, executive director, worldwide studios at Ubisoft. “Having seen the potential demonstrated by the Sofia studio’s first projects, it was only natural for us to pursue our expansion in this region and attract a new pool of highly-skilled talents to the group.”

The Kiev studio will collaborate with Ubisoft Bucharest on the development of upcoming aerial combat game Tom Clancy’s HAWX for PC.

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