Prinny’s heroic efforts have not gone unrewarded. Developer Nippon Ichi announced today that the lovable penguin mascot, formerly only known as a secondary character in the Disgaea series, will continue his road to stardom and return in a second outing on PSP.

Unfortunately, Nippon Ichi is staying coy on details for the time being, revealing only a portion of the game’s title as pictured above. For whatever reason, part of it is covered in question marks. We’d expect the sequel to expand on the simplistic yet addictive gameplay of the original while keeping the difficulty meter high to the point of frustration. That’s how we like it, dood. more »

Headlining this week’s PlayStation Store is Frozenbyte’s enchanting fantasy-action puzzler Trine. Joing that is a couplet of PSOne classics, namely Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus. For those looking to test-drive some PSN titles, Ratchet And Clank Future: A Crack In Time, Critter Crunch, and Dragon Ball: Raging Blast are all available in demo form.

For the frugal deal hunters among us, Lumines Supernova has been permanently marked down to $9.99 while Burnout Paradise and Siren Halloween have received a temporary reduction down to $14.99 and $29.99 respectively.

With 18 newly added UMD legacy titles, portable offerings are also in surplus this week, which should put a grin on the faces of early PSPgo adopters. See the complete list past the break. more »

While Sony seems relatively pleased with the retail performance of PSPgo in Europe and the US, things seem to be moving at a snails pace in Australia. In a week following the handheld’s debut, industry sources say that slightly more than 1000 units were shifted. By contrast, the PS3 Slim moved more than 10,000 units in a week. more »

Piracy is dampening Q Games’ faith in the PSP as a viable platform, with company founder Dylan Cuthbert expressing intent to drop support for the handheld entirely in a Twitter tweet.

Apparently, sales of their latest offering – PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe – an enhanced port of the cult hit PS3 classic on PSP, aren’t up to par. However, BitTorrent downloads are depressingly sky high, which is leading Q Games as a whole to question the value of investing further in PSP projects.

I don’t think we’ll port anything else to the PSP, we have to see how PJMD does as there’s a *lot* of piracy.

It’s a shame, but not entirely unexpected. As a platform, the PSP has been hit hard by piracy over the years, and with subsequent firmware updates doing little to alleviate the problem, it doesn’t look like Sony will ever be able to pull through and topple the pirates. Until PSP2, that is. more »

The NPD numbers for September are in and for the first time ever, PS3 is leading the pack in console hardware sales. This is no doubt thanks to the price cut and introduction of a slim model. While the Nintendo DS took reign as the top selling platform, this is still a significant victory for Sony, having outsold both the Xbox 360 and Wii by a fairly large margin.

See it all after the break. more »

SNES emulation on PSP is back in the limelight as homebrew developer Zack has announced the release of his latest project, SNES9X Euphoria R1. Building off the already robust codebase of SNES9xTYL, it is focused on pure optimization, aiming to increase overall emulation performance.

Zack reports of significant frame rate gains in Kirby Super Star, one of the more demanding SNES titles, recording 50 FPS average. The previous Ruka build usually managed 30 FPS or less on the same title. That’s quite a substantial increase and should push most games into the playable category, even at lower frameskip values. more »

It has come to light that Sony is not mandating that third-party development studios release their UMD titles on PlayStation Network. According to PSN director Eric Lempel, Sony is merely encouraging studios to go digital. While most are on board, it’s a little nerve-wracking to invest in a PSPgo and not have the assurance that all titles going forward will be made available digitally. more »

Sony serves up an eclectic mix of offerings to the PlayStation Network storefront this Thursday, spearheaded by interactive music experience .detuned. Developed by demoscene group .theprodukkt, it fosters creativity by allowing players to create dynamic artwork by means of manipulating various scenes in a highly stylized experience. Other notable mentions are Mushroom Wars, BUZZ! Junior: Monster Rally, and topatoi: The Great Tree Story. more »

If Hideo Kojima’s expectations pan out for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Sony is going to be very, very pleased. Speaking to Famitsu, he mentions that a certain aspect of the game will make people want to rush out and pick up a PSP, albeit vaguely:

I’m putting everything I want to do on a portable console into this game,” said Kojima. “I haven’t announced this yet, but there’s another feature in here that will surprise people, to the point where they’ll want to go out and buy a PSP right now!

more »

It appears Konami’s survival horror title Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a reboot of the first SH entry, will drop outside the Halloween release window.

Numerous retailers are now hinting at a holiday release, with GameStop pegging down a December 8 date. Online outlet GameFly is listing an even further out December 31 date for the PSP and PS2 versions. Oddly enough, according to their site, the Wii version is still on track for November 26. In all likelihood that’s probably an error. If history is any indication, we’d side with GameStop’s dates as they seem to be the most accurate. Take it as pure speculation for now though, as Konami has yet to officially confirm a delay.