A slimmer PS3.

It is being reported that Sony is planning on releasing a slimmer version of the PS3 console this holiday season. I have yet to see any detailed technical specs of the new unit other than that it will be lighter and smaller than the existing PS3 Slim models and will have a bigger hard drive out-of-box (250 gig or 500 gig models will be available).

I don't really see the point in this move; although, I guess if the lighter, smaller unit is going to cut production costs, then it's a smart business move for Sony. But from the consumer standpoint, I don't see any reason why someone would want or need to "upgrade" to the new model.

Maybe they'll release additional technical specs at the upcoming Tokyo Game Show?

It seems pretty apparent that EA doesn’t give a damn about releasing the best product possible. They just want to milk it for all the money it’s worth. If they really cared about making NCAA Football ‘13 the best game it could be, then they would have delayed it a few weeks in order to install the same, potentially revolutionary, physics engine that is being implemented in this year’s Madden. The game releases six weeks prior to the start of the college football season anyway, so it wouldn’t have hurt to delay it a month. It still would have made it onto store shelves before the kickoff of the season. Heck, most teams haven’t even finalized their depth charts yet, and some are still revealing new uniforms and stadiums!

Table of Contents

• Reverting back to a broken foundation
• Passing is the focus of this year’s game
  • Psychic DBs seem to be gone … for now
  • My receiver never saw it coming
  • Issues that were unaddressed
• Controls have been obfuscated to accommodate a feature that isn’t even used in most game modes!
• New career modes and augments to Dynasty
  • Recruiting loses some mystery; remains the highlight of the game
  • Trying to capture that NFL 2K5 awesomeness, and not quite making it
• Maybe next year we’ll get the college football game we’ve been waiting for? Probably not.

Some of you may remember that I wrote about my experiences (and frustrations) with trying to repair or replace a PS3 through Sony last year. It was not a pleasant experience. So when that replacement unit suddenly failed on me a few weeks ago while playing Dark Souls with a "Yellow Light of Death", I was understandably very upset. The system would not even turn back on after the failure occurred. That, combined with the sudden nature of the failure meant that I had no chance to even try backing up the data on the hard drive, let alone uploading any copy-protected save files onto the PSN Cloud. Heck, I couldn't even remove the Dark Souls disc that was now stuck in the drive! What ever happened to good 'ol latch-and-spring lids? You don't have to worry about getting discs stuck in those!

So it seemed that I was up shit creek without a paddle. I already knew, from previous experience, that Sony probably would not fix the console, and would instead just send me a refurbished replacement, and that my hard drive would, therefore, not be useable with the new system. I didn't want to give Sony any more of my money, since it is their bullshit DRM policies that prevent consumers from being able to reliably transfer saves from one system to another, so I decided to try my luck with a local repair shop instead.

Well, that hasn't worked out any better for me.

As previously reported, the Demon's Souls servers will be shut down as of midnight, May 31st, 2012 Pacific Standard Time. After only two-and-a-half years, the online functionality of this critically-acclaimed PS3 exclusive will be going dark. What a shame. Two years is nowhere near enough time for a game (particularly a console “Greatest Hits” title) to terminate its functionality. Heck, even annual released like Madden NFL and Call of Duty keep their online servers active for longer! But I guess that's the difference between having your game published and servers maintained by a little company like Atlus rather than a mega-publisher like EA or Activision.

While I, myself, have moved on to Dark Souls (Demon's Souls spiritual successor), I still know several friends who have yet to play Demon's Souls and still have interest in trying it out or buying it. But they have less than a month left to do it before the most appealing functionality of the game gets disabled permanently.

Even though the announcement isn't a terribly big deal for me (as I've already completed the game and have moved on), I still feel very sad that - if I wanted to - I won't be able to go back and be able to get that Platinum trophy with the comfort (or fear) of knowing that I'll still have the support (or opposition, as the case may be) of other online players. As such, I have compressed my feelings on the issue into a little piece of fan art:

UPDATE (June 1, 2012): Servers to stay online "indefinitely"

It was just brought to my attention that the online servers for Demon's Souls are going to remain active past the previously-announced May 31st deadline. I guess enough people went out and bought the game in the hopes of playing it before the shut-down that Atlus decided to keep things going! Keep up the good work, Demon's Souls fans!

Today is a sad day for fans of Atlus' critically-acclaimed PS3-exclusive game, Demon's Souls. Hot off the heels of my Dark Souls review, the announcement that Dark Souls will be ported to the PC, and new rumors that DLC is in the works for Dark Souls, Atlust just announced that the Demon's Souls servers will be shut-down at 11:59 PST on May 31st, 2012.

We knew it had to happen sooner or later, and the shut down was already delayed at least once (it was originally scheduled to happen shortly after the release of Dark Souls). It just seems like this is way too early. The game is only two-and-a-half years old!

It's also really too bad that FromSoftware and Atlus don't seem to have any plans to update the game to support some sort of P2P, direct IP/TCP, or proxy-server multiplayer set-up. I know it would defeat the idea behind the online components, but something would be better than nothing. Letting the fans connect to each other directly, or to set up their own servers would be nice, but I'm not even sure if it's technically possible given the structure of the PlayStation Network.

UPDATE (June 1, 2012): Atlus extends server operation indefinitely

Just found out that Atlus has extended the operation of the Demon's Souls servers "indefinitely!