Despite being previously announced for a July debut last month by Sony Computer Entertainment president Kaz Hirai, SCEA company senior development manager Noam Rimon has revealed that Life with PlayStation will launch in August.

Rimon attributed the unexpected delay to “a few procedural matters.” From what was shown to Japanese press, the service will allow PS3 owners to interact with a virtual Google Maps-esque globe presented in 3D, offering convenient access to weather data and news headlines from around the world.

Life with PlayStation update [PS Blog]

Developer Insomniac Games has announced that PlayStation 3 title Ratchet & Clank Quest for Booty will arrive on PlayStation Network next month on August 21.

Initially unveiled at Sony’s E3 2008 press conference as the first-ever downloadable Ratchet title, Quest for Booty promises to deliver all the intensity of Insomniac’s triple-AAA efforts in a shorter, high-quality gameplay experience priced at $14.99.

This week’s PlayStation Store update highlights the release of Q-Games’ highly-anticipated organic platformer PixelJunk Eden. Joining Eden are playable game demos for LEGO Indiana Jones The Original Adventures, Madden NFL 09, and FaceBreaker.

Rounding out this week’s lineup of notable offerings is add-on content in the form of customization equipment for Soul Calibur IV and four rockin’ new downloadable Rock Band tracks. No PSP/PC store update this week, folks. Hit the jump for the full list of content. more »

At this year’s annual QuakeCon event, id Software programmer and co-founder John Carmack revealed that the company’s forthcoming post-apocalyptic first-person shooter title Rage will ship on multiple DVDs for the Xbox 360.

However, what’s still up in the air is how many discs the title will ship on. Without sacrificing texture quality, three discs will be enough, but the issue is that adding a third DVD into the equation would cost id “millions of dollars” in royalty fees, according to Carmack. If Microsoft does not agree to make a concession, id plans to ship Rage on two DVDs instead, with lower quality textures.

Obviously, the storage capacity of the Blu-ray discs makes this a non-issue on PlayStation 3. We’ll see how Microsoft responds.

QuakeCon 08: No Digital Distribution for Rage or Doom 4; Rage will be on Multiple DVDs for Xbox 360 [Max PC]

Publisher Atlus is hinting at yet another game announcement for the Western market. This time, they’ve sent over a picture zoomed in at least 1000x along with the letters T, S, and L shown above in hangman fashion.

The picture of course doesn’t help much, if at all. If we had to guess, the first word in the mystery title might be “Eternal.” But the second? No clue. Most likely though, this will be a localization of a game already released in Japan.

Attention Europe! Sick of localization delays? Sony Computer Entertainment Europe head David Reeves feels your pain, but you’re going to have to bite the bullet and put up with it. SCEE takes localization seriously, wants it done properly, even if that means making folks wait 4-5 months in all English-speaking European territories after the U.S. release of a title.

Might be illegal, but if you’re that upset over waiting, you can always download the games over BitTorrent. Uh, what? Says Reeves:

We are a PAL market and we are going to do [localization] in PAL and we are going to do it properly, you can wait for it and you can have it in good quality. You know you can get the stuff from BitTorrent if you want to and download PSP games, it’s up to you.

more »

Homebrew developer Chilly Willy has released an update to the initial PSP port of Basilisk II, a 68k Macintosh emulator supporting OS 7.01 through 8.1.

Now at version 1.1.1, Basilisk II features a new and optimized underlying code-base, giving a six percent increase in emulation speed. Additionally, 4.01 M33 compatible IR keyboard drivers are now pre-included and two new 16:9 video output modes have been added for LCD/HDTV owners.

Download Basilisk II PSP v1.1.1

Release Thread

Microsoft and Silicon Knights jointly announced today that the action RPG Too Human has officially gone gold and is being sent off to manufacturing in preparation for its August 19 release date in North America.

Additionally, the Too Human demo has amassed 900,000 downloads since its release on July 14, making it the most downloaded action title in its first week of availability on Xbox Live, according to Microsoft. more »

Following Activision Blizzard’s decision to move the Ghostbusters video game off its fall release slate, license holder Sony Pictures has revealed that the title’s launch date may be pushed back to next year, possibly to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original live-action film.

This [Activision's decision] has presented [Sony Pictures Consumer Products] with an opportunity to reevaluate the game release marketing strategy to potentially coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original film in ‘09.

That of course still leaves the obvious question: who will publish Ghostbusters if Activision isn’t? Although it depends greatly on the terms of the agreement Activision made with Sony, there’s always the possibility that they will end up selling off the license to another party, or even publish the game under one of its other labels.

Ghostbusters game delayed to 2009, but who’s publishing it? [Variety]

Homebrew developer Raphael has released a maintenance-focused update to JoySens, a highly-configurable custom firmware plugin that allows users to adjust the sensitivity of the PSP’s analog stick.

Notably, version 1.42 fixes compatibility issues with Sony’s built-in UMD driver and packs a reduced module size, in order to help further alleviate the memory issues users were experiencing with the previous release. For the full changelog, hit the jump. more »