It’s that time again – and by “that time” I mean “the time where I put the proverbial pen to paper and let you all know what’s coming up next in the rapidly-growing world of PlayStation Home.” I think you’ll be glad to see that – whether you come into Home to game launch with your friends, unlock rewards from your favorite games, or check out free music and video content and socialize – there’s a lil somethin’ somethin’ going on in-world this week that you can get down with.

We know that you Home-dwellers just love your rewards, so we’ve worked with the fine folk over at Eidos to ensure that their next release integrates tightly with our platform. Those of you who scoop up the highly-anticipated Batman: Arkham Asylum for your PLAYSTATION 3s next week will be pleased to see that the game unlocks a special Batcave Outpost personal space. It’s safe to say that hardcore Batman fans are going to seriously spazz out when they unlock Bruce Wayne’s secondary lair under Arkham, so if you count yourself a disciple of the Dark Knight, you’d better rush to get your hands on this title when it is released on August 25th.

Hardcore gamers have yet another reason to enter into the PlayStation Home fold as we will be launching a new game-themed event space specifically to host our MotorStorm: Pacific Rift game launching parties, set to occur every Monday night between 6pm and 10pm PT. This space, which marks the first ever “Globe of Death” to publish in Home, will showcase some rad MotorStorm footage and will serve as a hub for all of you racing fanatics in the Home community to meet and launch into games of MotorStorm: Pacific Rift. This event space will only be up for a limited time (though we do have some more surprises for fans of the franchise scheduled to release in the not-so-distant future, including a bunch of awesome MotorStorm clothes, so stay tuned to this here blog thingy for more news).

Many core areas of Home will see content updates this week, with new tunes being loaded into the Listen@Home kiosk, new clothes and furniture appearing in the Mall (including animated furniture – this stuff has to be seen to be believed!), and some new videos screening in the Theater. One of these videos, scheduled to go live on Sunday the 16th, is part of the ongoing Criss Angel: Mindfreak event. Much like the Criss Angel: Mindfreak video currently screening in our new 10-Screen Theater, this clip will reward those that dare enter with another exclusive virtual item – this time, a Criss Angel custom coffin table. But you’ll have to come in between the 16th and the 19th if you want this limited item. Those of you who check out this clip will also entered into a giveaway for 1 of 2 Criss Angel: Mindfreak Coffins and 1 of 3 Criss Angel: Burn DVD’s and Book sets (5 winners total).

As a demonstration of the ever-evolving nature of PlayStation Home, there are a few updates scheduled for the EA SPORTS Complex and the Burn Zombie Burn game space. You’ll also see some significant additions to Central Plaza in coming weeks, but you’ll have to keep your eyes on this blog for all the details as they are released. In the meantime, head over to the Listen@Home kiosk and check out our updated events calendar. You’ll see that there is a regularly-occurring event scheduled for every night of every week. Whether it’s a game launching event for Street Fighter IV – or any of the other titles that launch in Home – or an official PlayStation Home forums party (like the one set to go down on Thursday night), there’s truly something for every gamer in-world. And if you want to throw your own event or attend one of the many awesome gatherings our die-hard community members regularly throw, just check out the Clubs and Events sub-forum on www.us.playstation.com.

Make no mistake, this mode is HUGE…it’s packed with unlocks, rewards and trophies, and has been designed to keep challenging you for as long as you want it to. How? Buckle up and I’ll divulge some (but certainly not all) of its secrets!

We were very pleased that the speed race events in Pacific Rift were so fantastically popular – they provided a great change of focus and pace from the Eliminator and Race events, and had the scope for repeated play, and for beating your own best score. While we’ll be the first to admit the formula wasn’t yet perfected, we all felt we had taken the first steps here towards something that would be absolutely stellar as a dedicated single player game mode. We decreed early on though that if we were going to revisit it, we had a few ideas to improve it, and we wanted to make sure it more fully realised it’s potential.

So the basic idea has survived pretty much intact; Start off with a bank of time (10 seconds) that’s counting down from the race start, make your way from one gate to the next as quickly as possible, each gate adding further precious seconds to your ‘banked’ time. Try to record as high a final ‘banked’ time as possible when you fly through the finish gate. So far, so good.

Well, in Speed Weekend, that’s become our qualifying race structure right there; You need to have at least 15 seconds remaining on your clock to qualify for one of the ‘easy’ races, 20 seconds for ‘medium’, and 25 seconds for the ‘hard’ race types. Beat that threshold, and that race is marked as complete on your race card. When you qualify on all 6 events for a vehicle class (2 easy, 2 medium, 2 hard) you’ll unlock a reward for that vehicle class. Work hard, get the unlocks for all 8 vehicle classes, and you’ll get a cool final pack of rewards. If you never play any further than this into the mode, you’ve just worked through 48 events! That’s probably 5-6 hours for the average MSPR player. But wait! For those willing to go the extra distance, that’s just the start…

Once you’ve qualified for an event, you unlock the Main Event version of that race. Now, as well as gates which add time, each race also features barrels strategically placed throughout the track. Any green barrels you hit are going to add extra time, 1 second per barrel. Any red barrels you hit are going to get deducted, 1 second per barrel, once you cross the finish line. This massively opens up the scoring opportunities, and the strategic decisions, facing the player. Do you straightline through those red barrels to save time now and take the penalty later? Do you veer off your racing line in pursuit of extra green barrels? Do you maybe ignore the barrels and concentrate instead on the quickest line between gates?

On bikes and ATVs, there are green bonus time barriers to duck under and buried red barrels that need to be avoided or bunny-hopped over (and duck and hop controls are assigned to L1 and R1 for this mode to make life easier for everyone)! Chances are your moment-to-moment strategy is going to need to accommodate all of those options and more, because your focus now isn’t beating our pre-defined thresholds, it’s beating your friends.

Before each main event the game presents the player with a friends-focused leaderboard. These are the up-to-the-minute times set by people on your friends list; your target time to beat is always going to be the buddy who’s directly above you on the leaderboard. Maybe he got more green barrels than you managed, maybe he went penalty-free and avoided all the red barrels. Either way, you go in, you race, race, race, and when you beat his time, the system automatically sends an update to his machine and next time he turns on the game, he’s going to see that YOU’VE now beaten HIS time! The dreaded red helmet icon on your progress chart tells you that your time has been beaten by one of your mates – which means you’ve slid down your friends leaderboard, and he’s just climbed closer to the top! This is such a compulsive feature, and makes the mode massively addictive – the months of playtesting here in the office have seen friendships turn into bitter, swear-laden rivalries as day after day, week after week, someone pushes the top score that little bit higher – and everyone else gets notified of it, and gets to work trying to beat it. The office swear-box has never had so much cash in it!

For us, this has always been the main focus of Speed Weekend. This is what’s going to keep you playing time and time again, day after day, improving your scores, and beating the best efforts of your buddies. We’ve worked hard to tune the experience so that this inter-friend rivalry as heated and compelling as possible. It soon becomes all about the strategies you pursue in each race; once you realise that you can slam into one barrel and propel it into others to get a ‘domino’ effect going, the scoring possibilities are opened wide. Of course, this also means one green barrel can hit a whole mess of red ones and scupper your best laid plans – so at the highest levels of competition there are multiple factors to take into account and the angle you hit every barrel can make all the difference to whether you’ll be the Top Dog or just a Middling Mongrel amongst you and your buddies.

So, be sure to grab a copy of Expansion: SPEED (coming soon), a couple of like-minded buddies, and warn your family and friends that you may soon be turning the air blue with foul language! Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines; the Speed Weekend is about to begin…

In each of the new expansions there are 3 brand new tracks, playable in all online modes, and offline in Time Attack, Free Play, and Split Screen. Let’s take in the holiday brochure descriptions of the new locations, pack by pack.

First off, the Expansion: Speed tracks;

Quicksands –

The sea breeze in your racing leathers, the sand in your face, crystal clear seawater in your gas tank…Quicksands isn’t just sun-kissed, it’s sun-smooched-on-the-doorstep-and-put-out-on-the-first-date. When ‘beautiful azure waters’ sits so close to ‘brutal, deadly crossovers’ in the brochure description, you’ll be saying, “Wish you were here,” while wishing you were somewhere else at the same time.

Darkfire Swamp –

No sooner was this swamp-based track completed than Mother Nature decided to do some heavy handed redesign. With fissures opened up along its length, long-stagnant pools drained and dried, and deadly molten lava rolling in for some hot pool party action, the MotorStorm organizers decided it was the best redesign EVER.

Engorged –

Through an impossibly narrow chasm where sunlight rarely shines, natures torrents carve new, untamed-able routes for her disciples to follow. Big boulders, fast waters and epic vistas; this track satisfies every appetite. One to really gorge on, you’ll need a hunger for survival – get ready to jump to the main course.

Moving onto Expansion: Adrenaline;

Reef Runner – The world’s downright-prettiest boat graveyard, Reefrunner combines hard, fast sand flats, wide coastal shallows and a lightning-fast, foliage-packed jungle sprint. Lightweights should look to hop over the sand banks, heavyweights can tear through the shallows, and everyone else can stick to the middle routes while trying to apply the sunblock and get their swimming trunks on for the post-race beach party.

Brimstone – Spurred on by a love of all things stupid and deadly, the hardcore lunatics united and set up this battlefield of a racetrack. Located inside an unstable volcanic wasteland, Brimstone offers smoking craters, sulphurous lakes, and deadly underground lava tubes. Hell above and Hell below makes this a hell of a good place to stage a race.

Hollowed Earth – At the top of the Island lies the racetrack at the bottom of the world. Built in and around a cavernous and complex natural cave system, Hollowed Earth demands fast reactions, racing discipline, and the ability not to think about the millions of tons of unstable volcanic rock directly above your head. A torch and a mining helmet probably wouldn’t go amiss, either.

As you may well know by now, each expansion pack also re-introduces familiar tracks in entirely new ways. Dubbed as ‘Track Variants’, there are 8 in total, selected from the most popular online tracks, and all given the ‘Volcanic’ subtitle. Rather than just tweaking the tracks by adding a few routes here and closing a few others off there with barriers or fencing, we’ve chosen to theme these redesigns around the idea of the Island going fully volcanic! Imagine lava Bombs spattering the track, erupting volcanoes, ash falling in the air, lava spewing across racing lines, the whole works! Each of these tracks features different degrees of ‘natural interference’ ; at one end of the scale we have The Edge Volcanic, which as an Air track isn’t going to see too much direct Lava interference, but is going to have its racing lines significantly affected by huge chunks of molten rocks smashing all over the track. At the other extreme, Earth and Fire tracks like Rift Volcanic and Scorched Volcanic show just what can happen at ground zero when the fires of hell spill out over the raceways! Lava levels rise, mud fields bake and crack, standing water evaporates, and tracks you think you know all too well suddenly provide an altogether different racing experience! We’re hoping you’re going to love the variety and surprises these new tracks provide, and that you’ll all enjoy getting your head around the new strategic racing approaches they require!

Next time, we’re going to take an in-depth look at the massive new single/multiplayer experience that is Speed Weekend, debuting in the Expansion: Speed pack! Keep those motors running!

As ‘Stormers’ worldwide continue to collect their FREE Signature Liveries every week, all eyes are turning towards the coast of the setting sun to see what’s in store next. We’re well aware of what you’ve all been wishing for – Tracks, Modes, fresh Rides and a few surprises on the side. All wishes, we’re very happy to report, that we’re about to make come true.

If you’re one of the fortunate 40,000 attending E3 at the LA Convention Center on June 2-4, and you’re a MotorStorm fan, then you’ll be able to count yourself amongst the first in the world to witness our 2 new major downloadable content packs, ‘Expansion: SPEED’ and ‘Expansion: ADRENALINE’. Rammed bumper-to-bumper with new content, you’re going to need to set aside some serious time to investigate them both fully.

• Expansion: SPEED will be the first off the start line, and screams into view fully tanked up with MotorStorm goodness; 3 brand new tracks (Quicksands, Engorged and Dark Fire Swamp), 3 brand new track variants, 4 sweet new vehicles (sporting 3 paint jobs each) and a whole brand new 48-event Mini-Festival, ‘Speed Weekend’, packed with unlockable rewards, trophies and Microbadges.
• Expansion: ADRENALINE is racing along beside it, neck-and-neck, and bringing with it even MORE content! 3 MORE new tracks (Reefrunner, Brimstone and Hollowed Earth), 5 new track variants, 4 more exclusive new race machines (each with 3 liveries to choose from), 6 brand new characters (each sporting 3 different costumes), and a whole big fat stash of fresh new paint jobs for your existing vehicles.

Let’s look at those numbers for a moment – between these two packs, we’re almost DOUBLING the track count in the game, giving you plenty more locations for online races, plenty more Time Attack ghosts to chase, and plenty more settings for split screen fun with your buddies. And you’ve got to believe me guys, these new tracks and the new track variants are some of the best-looking, best-racing tracks we’ve ever made.

Hope you’re having fun ripping it up in the jungle on Pacific Rift because starting this Thursday, May 14th, we’ll be sending a downloadable vehicle livery pack your way every week for the next eight weeks exclusively via PlayStation Store. Each pack features new paint jobs for three vehicles, and the full set will give MotorStorm: Pacific Rift players a cutting-edge new look for every single vehicle class in the game: Mudpluggers, Quad Bikes, Monster Trucks, Rally Cars and more. Each new livery has been designed by one of Evolution’s top studio artists and the result is a collection of some of the craziest and out-there vehicle sprays ever seen in a racing game!

And to top it off, all these liveries are FREE!

Additionally, Game Update #2 was just released, and provides a number of useful fixes and updates for MotorStorm Pacific Rift. These include:

• Sugar Rush short-cut removed – The short-cut to the left of the “keep right” arrows going into the sugar field was not intentionally included and has been removed
• Sugar Rush respawn point fixed – Crashing at a certain point on the track no longer respawns the vehicle in a generous position
• Inclusion of Microbadges

Actually, wanted to focus on these new Microbadges as these are very cool ways of giving each player a distinct identity when online in MotorStorm Pacific Rift. Microbadges are in-game displayable ‘medals’ which let you flaunt your proudest personal accomplishments and your off-road racing prowess to every other racer online.

Microbadges go beyond the usual Trophies that MotorStorm Pacific Rift already awards; the idea is that they should be dedicated to things you’d want other players to know about while you’re racing online. Here are some examples:

• Gold Festival – Completed Pacific Rift Festival with all Gold medals
• Immortal – Win an Online Ranked race without wrecking
• Flame and Fortune – 20 Boost explosion wins
• Time Attack Master – Record an impressive Time Attack time on any Leaderboard
• Supreme Victor – Win any Online or Offline race by a margin of 15 seconds

Microbadges are displayed beneath each Online ID, and players can display up to three badges from the get-go. Three more badge slots (there are six slots total) can be earned by working up the online ranks, and players can unlock 40 microbadges total. Players can choose which badges to show off and highlight what they’ve achieved in the game. Microbadges will also provide retroactive credit, so if you’ve already put in the hours, you’ll be reaping the rewards.

Last but not least, we wanted to give you a heads up on the photo contest we highlighted earlier.

Well we have finally gotten our winners, and they will be officially announced later this week on the official MotorStorm VIP site: vip.motorstorm.com. Keep an eye out to see if you are one of the lucky winners!

With the MotorStorm: Pacific Rift version 1.01 game update, we launched a new and improved Photo Mode to enable you to take even more stunning pictures of your brutal off-road experiences.

Now, in an exclusive competition on VIP.MotorStorm.com, we want to give you the chance to show off your best snaps in superb style.

We want your best shots using the improved photo mode that capture the brutal thrills of race action and the savage beauty of the island. The more action packed the shot the better.

The 20 best pictures will each be considered for inclusion in one of our future updates as a loading screen image (with your PSN Online ID signed on it as the credited creator), and the photographer will also win a MotorStorm t-shirt!

Imagine how sweet it would be to start up a race, with your friends sitting around on the sofa, and seeing your photo displayed (with your name on it) on the loading screen before the race!

To make your mark in your favorite game and to take your place in MotorStorm history, either post up to three of your best pictures into the competition thread on the VIP.MotorStorm.com forums or email them to competitions@community.eu.playstation.com, with “MotorStorm Photo” in the subject field. Please ensure that each photo is named after your PSN Online ID (such as “MusterBuster_01.jpg”). Also please indicate that you are submitting from North America as we will be selecting 20 winners from Europe and 20 from North America.

To submit a photo:
1. Pause the game and take a photo using Photo Mode.
2. Export the photo from your Gallery (in your Garage) to your XMB.
3. Transfer the photo from your XMB to your PC (and email it or host it on a website and post it in the competition thread).

Your entries must reach us by 11:59 pm pacific time on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 to be eligible. You must be 16 or older to take part. Further terms and conditions are listed below.

Terms and Conditions

1. The Competition is open to residents of the United States and Canada ages 16 or over except employees of the Sony Computer Entertainment companies, their families, agents or any other person professionally connected with the Competition.

2. Maximum of 3 photos may be submitted per household.

3. All entries must be received by 11:59 pacific time on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 (the “Closing Date”).

4. Winners will be notified via email within 28 days of the competition Closing Date and must respond within 28 days of receiving the notification to claim their prize.

5. Please click here for further terms and conditions.

Time to rev up your engines guys, because the MotorStorm: Pacific Rift Game Update 1 is finally here! More than just a patch, there’s a load of new features in there that will make your time playing MS: PR that little bit sweeter. Here’s a peek at a few of the major elements:

• You can now back up your save data for later restoration to the User Account it was created under (on any PS3 system, so you shouldn’t ever need to lose your personal progress).
• A ‘MotorStorm Helmet’ icon is now displayed on-screen during critical data saves. This is in addition to the HDD Access Indicator, which currently flashes while the game makes a critical save.
• We’ve fixed an exploit that was recently found where pausing and unpausing during critical boosting would grant you an extra second or so of boost. Repeated over and over people have been able to shave seconds off the top leaderboard times. Seems like a lot of work for someone just to cheat at a leaderboard time, but it’s all fixed now. Anyone who has used this exploit please be warned – we’ll be clearing down your times off the leaderboards shortly.
• We’ve made the online rankings easier to understand, and made the whole Online experience even smoother and easier.
• You can be confident that Photos taken in Photo Mode will now look their best, because we’ve tuned the graphics up a notch in this mode.

There’s plenty of other stuff in there too, so make sure to grab the new patch next time you take the game online (don’t worry, you’ll be prompted!).

To give you an idea of the sort of great action shots you can take, we’ve included our examples here. Think you can do better? Get posting those snaps at VIP.MotorStorm.com and prove it! For those of you new to the delights of virtual photography, there’s a great tutorial to get you started here.

Game Update 2 is also on the way soon, which has some very cool new content in it, especially if you have a bit of a penchant for collecting cool stuff, or if you’re the type of person who enjoys PS3 Trophies and the like. I’ll say no more for now, and leave that one hanging there…

Keep on MotorStorming!

Paul Pierce with a custom Celtics-green Obama PS3

In addition to getting early hands-on time with games like MLB 09 The Show and Killzone 2, some of the players showed some real skills with the games. Teammates Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook took each other on with MLB 09 The Show, moved over to MotorStorm: Pacific Rift to race, and then played each other in NBA 09 The Inside. Dikembe Mutombo practiced Pacific Rift before taking on his kids in a race. And Nate Robinson showed some skills in Killzone 2 as he marched his way through a couple of levels.

Of course the weekend wouldn’t be complete without having two of the PlayStation Skills Challenge players at the lounge to play as themselves in NBA 09 The Inside’s Skills Challenge event. Derrick Rose had no idea what the competition was like prior to playing himself virtually in the competition, and we like to think his training helped him win the real event. After the actual competition he said that it was fun playing as himself in the game because it gave him a chance to truly see how the event would run.

The Royal PS3 of LeBron “King” James

Current and future NBA stars that stopped by the lounge included:

Nate Robinson
Shaquille O’Neal
Paul Pierce
Kevin Durant
Yao Ming
Dirk Nowitzki
David West
Michael Beasley
Derrick Rose
Devin Harris
JR Smith
Dikembe Mutombo
Luis Scola
Russell Westbrook
Jeff Green
Brook Lopez
Thaddeus Young
Daequan Cook
Gary Payton
Brian Shaw

Like the previous demo we are offering you both a single player and a split screen multiplayer race, but this time we let the veterans of MotorStorm.com choose their favorite track, Razorback. With its thick jungle, colossal waterfalls, dank caves and a multitude of routes, the Razorback is an ideal taster of the off road thrills and spills MotorStorm: Pacific Rift has to offer, so grab it and give it a whirl.

There are few more entertaining things you can do with your pants on.

Details of the first update:

• Restrictions to the copying of Saved Data have been removed. This will make it possible for Saved Data to be backed up and then restored to the User Account it was created under (whether that’s on the same PLAYSTATION 3 or not).*
• Changes to the way the game handles data. These changes will help to prevent Saved Data corruption.
• Visual notification of critical save progress has been added. A ‘MotorStorm Helmet’ icon will be displayed on-screen to warn users that critical data is being saved. This is in addition to the HDD Access light which currently flashes while the game makes a critical save.
• The glitch which enables a player to exploit the Boost system has been removed. The development team are working to identify which times have been achieved using this glitch; Action will be taken to ensure that the Leaderboards become genuinely competitive again.
• Time Attack times and Rank information will update correctly for all players. Any pending Time Attack times will begin to filter through systematically and the online Ranks should display correctly once the update is released.
• Additional fixes and improvements to gameplay. Many thanks for your feedback on these and other issues so far; we are still investigating the other issues that have been brought to our attention.

Should you notice anything about the game that you feel needs to be brought to our attention, please let us know via the VIP.MotorStorm.com forums.