Unprecedented Action
If anyone can pull off a 256-player online shooter, it’s got to be the developer behind the PlayStation’s SOCOM franchise. Learn more about this upcoming PS3 exclusive and see how good Veronica is at taking orders…

Ninja Hijinx
Tecmo’s Team Ninja has added three new playable female characters, new bosses and an online co-op mode to make the latest game a new experience for PS3 owners. Veronica talks to the game’s director about what it took to make the definitive Ninja Gaiden title.

Tekken it to the Next Level
Namco’s storied fighting franchise returns to the current generation of consoles with a new online co-op “scenario campaign” mode. Audrey Cleo visits Namco Bandai’s headquarters to see the greatest roster of characters in the series to date.

Having a Ball
The Katamari franchise keeps rolling along—this time featuring HD visuals, a remixed soundtrack and a few gameplay twists to keep things fresh. Veronica finds out how the unique sounds were created and re-discovers the joy of collecting things.

All subscribers and purchasers will receive an exclusive Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 PS3 theme this month, and we’ve also got a new Rune Raider level pack in the Qore Arcade.

Our thanks to all of our original subscribers from June 2008 who renewed their subscriptions last month. If your subscription ran out with the July 2009 episode, please check your e-mail or visit the PlayStation Store upon the release of Episode 15 for a special renewal offer. When you see what we’ve got for you in the near future, you may be sorry if you let your subscription lapse!

Oh! If you’re planning on going to San Diego Comic-Con this week, stop by the Namco Bandai Games booth and play Katamari Forever!

Locust_Star here jumping in with a quick heads-up regarding today’s content update. Long story short: We’ve managed to push a few extra goodies out the door at the last minute. The first of which is the Namco Bandai Arcade, which is live as of right now. And if you mosey on over to our Mall, you’ll notice a huge change in both layout and inventory. Of special note is the new Costumes store, which we are launching packed full of new costumes for you. Each costume in our inventory – from old community favorites (Ninjas and Pirates and Guiles, oh my!) to brand-spanking new get-ups – has found its way over to this new locale.

In the revamped Threads store (Threads II), you’ll see that we have rolled out some awesome animated t-shirts. And in the Costumes store, you’ll find the new Killzone 2 Helghast Tactician outfits as well as Samurai, Medieval Knight, Spartan, Luchadora, Robot, and Geisha costumes all waiting for you to collect. We’ve even bundled them together at special discount prices, so go check ‘em out and let us know what you think over at the official PlayStation.com Home General sub-forum.

We think you’ll be stoked to see that the long-awaited BUZZ! HQ is launching. Here, you can meet up with friends new and old and take part in a massive 64-player game of BUZZ! trivia. This content is fed into the space via MyBuzzQuiz.com – a site where you can create your own trivia questions for your fellow BUZZ! fanatics to tackle. So be sure to create an account and start uploading your trickiest trivia. Then get your butt into Home, hook up with your brainiest peeps, enter the BUZZ! HQ, and start racking up the prizes. Rest assured that we’ll be taking advantage of this sweet new space by regularly scheduling some truly awesome events. Keep your eyes on the Home Clubs and Events sub-forum over at PlayStation.com for more info.

EA SPORTS continues to demonstrate their leadership in the world of sports competition by updating their fan-favorite EA SPORTS Complex. This week they are dropping some new goods on us and opening up a space for their hit Fight Night franchise. This swanky boxing-themed night club space launches with an interactive DJ game, rewards, and plenty of places to chill with your nearest and dearest Home-boys and Home-girls. Note that this is just phase one of the Fight Night space (there are tons of mini-game updates and the new virtual items scheduled for near future deployment) so you’ll need to make sure that you check in on this here blog for the latest updates.

Those of you who pick up the Namco Museum Essentials from the PlayStation Store will find that these games are unlocking a bunch of rewards in Home. We’re talking Dragon Spirit and Xevious: Resurrection arcade cabinets, for Crom’s sake! And, yes, the Namco Bandai Arcade will be coming to SCEA Home at a later date, so have no fear. We’ll keep you updated on this here Blog thingy when the space is ready to launch.

See you in Home!

Since his job has finished, and he has so much free time now, I thought I would let him take over for the rest of this post. Enjoy reading his profound comments.

Hi everyone! Having a good time? I’m Yuu Miyake, the sound director for Katamari Forever.

Katamari Forever’s soundtrack consists of remixes of past Katamari songs. Let me briefly talk about why this is. Since the first game, Katamari Damacy, was originally only released in Japan, we wanted Japanese singers who were well-known in Japan but nobody had heard from in awhile for whatever reason. For the second game we wanted to do the same thing but with foreign artists. However, this didn’t happen because of our lack of foreign friends and ability to negotiate. For this game we thought it would be a good idea to have those tunes remixed or arranged by Japanese and non-Japanese artists as sort of a musical trilogy (Oh, did you notice that Katamari Forever is the third title for a PlayStation console? Not that it really means anything though.).

The most important thing about the remixed music is that it’s clearly meant to be for a Katamari game. That includes Katamari-themed lyrics and an overall Katamari feeling. We selected fan favorite tunes and ones that we have special feelings for, and started to narrow down the most attractive singers for each remix. All the artists I asked to remix the songs for in Katamari Forever were ones I listen to, know and respect. I wish we could have artists from all over the world take part in the game but I only have Japanese friends, so most artists are Japanese. Professional musicians and sound experts in the US, please be my friends!

What I think is important in this consuming society is not to stick to one genre. I maintain this philosophy throughout the entire Katamari series. Since Japan has a long history of games I included chiptunes like YMCK. I also added “organic” tunes like SOFT’s remix of “You Are Smart.”

As a result of the tune selection, Katamari Forever has two streams of music, “electric” and “organic.” I guess if I had one more thing to say it would be…maybe…Check out Noby Noby Boy, too!

Last time I spoke with you, I covered some of our basic game features. Today, as promised, I’d like to share some of our development secrets with you so that you can learn about how we made this incredible game.

We began work on the game in January 2006, while most of our company was still working on the .hack//G.U. series for PlayStation 2. We hand-picked a team of our 10 most obsessive developers which constantly grew in number as the project progressed. The team expanded from 10 to 20, 30 and eventually 65 people, which were all working on the game for the last 9 months of development. Our basic concept for the game was to eliminate the lines between traditional animation and video games. This is a pretty serious goal! We knew that to meet this goal, we would have to produce a game the likes of which nobody has ever seen.

Fundamentally speaking, I think CyberConnect2 is good at action games. After gameplay, we pay a lot of attention to graphics. With Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, we knew we couldn’t just advance our graphics technology by just one step – we had to aim for two steps. Everyone here is a fan of every type of animation such as cel animation, cartoons, CG, and flash. Of course, the NARUTO TV series was our biggest influence for this project. I know a lot of fans feel that Japanese animation is unique because it has a special hand-drawn look to it. It’s hard to totally nail down exactly what it is, but we studied a ton of animation to make sure our game had these same qualities.

We also upgraded our development environment to take on this game. We started using LCD graphics tablets which allow us to use a stylus to create hand-drawn textures. We also installed round tables over the artists’ workstations to prevent light reflections from interfering with their work. This is an example of some of the steps we took to create CG graphics with a hand-drawn feel.

Our animation team regularly watched the NARUTO animated series while they worked to keep the same sort of tempo of movement and frame progression. As you can see, each animator has three monitors at their desk. The one on the left allows them to see the graphics as they will appear in the game, the one in the middle is the CG tool program, and the one on the right plays animation throughout the day as inspiration and reference material.

Of course, we have a lot of reference material beyond animation. We have almost 1,000 NARUTO comic books and NARUTO-related magazines and books in our office library.

We also have a huge DVD collection. The list of these little animation secrets go on and on, but the key one is that everyone working on the game loves NARUTO. I really believe this group loves NARUTO more than any other group in the world.

These are some of the elements that helped us create NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM. I think the game will really satisfy fans and also be accessible to people who may not know much about NARUTO.

Thank you all for this great opportunity to talk about the game. It comes out tomorrow – Tuesday, November 4th – so I really hope you all get a chance to check it out!

I’m sure some of you that have seen our trailers for the game have thought “I bet this is just a pre-rendered movie” – but it’s not! Everything from all of our trailers is 100% real-time footage from the game running on PLAYSTATION 3 hardware that you will all be able to experience when the game is released next week.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm features two main game modes for players to enjoy – “Free Battle Mode” and “Ultimate Mission Mode.” In Free Battle Mode, you can play as one of 25 characters from the animated series. The battles aren’t strictly one-on-one either – you can bring two support characters into every battle, who will help you out in short bursts. This is the same three person team structure as the TV series, but now you can create your own teams with all sorts of original combinations. We’ve put a lot of effort into our battles to make sure they match the look and feel of the animated series. You can perform all sorts of amazing moves with your favorite characters and even fight on walls and run over bodies of water.

Ultimate Mission Mode lets you take on 101 missions across Naruto’s Hidden Leaf Village, which acts as a hub for the game. Here, you can acquire new Jutsu moves, purchase items, and even chow down on a bowl of noodles at the Ichiraku Ramen shop! The game’s storyline covers episodes 1-135 of the Naruto animated series, so it’s incredibly comprehensive. In addition to the head-to-head battles, you’ll encounter huge boss battles, races through the forest and tree-climbing battles in this mode.

At the strong request of our fans in North America, the game offers full voicing in both English and Japanese with all the original actors from the animated series. We’re also going to be releasing downloadable content for the game well into next year. It will mostly focus on new support characters and missions and best of all, it will all be FREE!

These are just the basics of the game, but if you want to check it out for yourself, we have a playable demo that you can download from PSN right now. In my next post, I’m going to give you an exclusive look at how we made the game, so check back here soon!