I’ve met some truly amazing people throughout my 9-year career in gaming, including many life-long friends and many people that I consider family. It seems like only yesterday that I was just a bright-eyed kid, fresh out of college, ready to embark on a career in game writing. And in the blink of an eye, here I am.

I’m extremely excited to move on to the next stage of my life and career outside of gaming, but there’s no denying the saddening feeling that comes with saying goodbye to so many wonderful people, especially here at PlayStation. And then there are the journalists, the third-party publishers, developers and beyond. These are all people that made this one big, happy family.

To everyone in the PlayStation community — you truly made this job fun. When I look back on the community meet-ups, events, live chats, online games and even the quick comment exchanges…those are the little things that brought me joy on a day-to-day basis. Being a part of something that brings people happiness, and being able to go out and share that enthusiasm with you, that’s where this job truly shined. It’s what kept me going. I thank you for that, and I’ll miss you all. Yes, even those of you who thrived on pointing out my .01MB file size mistakes in the Store updates ;-)

I am leaving you in more than capable hands. Your main man Jeff, obviously, but also the newest addition to the PlayStation.Blog family, friend and former coworker Sid Shuman. Treat him well. Minimal hazing, please.

So let’s consider this farewell, but not goodbye. Cheesy? Yes. Heartfelt? Definitely. You know where to find me:

PSN: godofgwar
twitter.com/chrismorell

Best wishes,
Chris Morell, VP of PlayStation Community Awesomeness

Why bring this up? Because, as some of you more social-media-savvy readers might already know, Mashable has opened its 3rd annual Open Web Awards. If you don’t know what these awards are about, there’s an international voting competition where major online communities (blogs, Twitter, Facebook fanpages, etc.) duke it out for the top spot. I think the winner gets cookies or something.

First round in the competition is the nominations period (NOW – November 15th). The top 5 nominees in each category will move forward to the voting round (November 18th – December 13th). Winners for each category will be announced on December 15th.

Here’s where you come in: please help nominate PlayStation.Blog in the “Best Corporate Blog” category! PlayStation fans are undoubtedly the most vocal on the Internet, so show your PlayStation love and nominate the blog, and we’ll win this thing for sure.

Nominating is as simple as a few easy steps:

• Go to http://mashable.com/owa/votes
• Sign in with your Twitter or Facebook account
• Once logged in, enter http://blog.us.playstation.com/ in the “Nominate Name or URL” section
• Select the “Best Corporate Blog” category
• Hit submit

…and you’re done! You can nominate once per day per category, so vote early and vote often. The nominations period ends on November 15th. Hopefully with your help, we’ll make it to the voting round. Then we can ask you for a bit more help :-)

We don’t ask for much, right?

The next time you head over to the blog from your PSP, Blackberry, or iPhone (or probably whatever mobile device you’re running, assuming it’s newer than a Star-tac), you’ll see a specially formatted, easy to read (and load!) version of the Blog. You can even comment; now you can tell us what you think from the comfort of your office restroom!

There’s no special URL to go to, just hit up the normal http://blog.us.playstation.com address, and our patented Internet Gnomes will do the rest. Please let us know if you’re experiencing any compatibility issues, and we’ll flog the Gnomes a little harder. It’s ok, they deserve it :-)

UPDATE: aaaaaaaaand we’re back. I really expected that to take longer. We’ve now increased our server capacity, which will allow us to continue to grow and implement new features to the blog. We’ll let you know what they are when we roll them out.

In case you missed it last week, Capcom’s John D. broke the Blog. Steaming pile of wreckage, it was.

So today, we’re adding another server. Truthfully, we had planned to do that anyway. I think Mr. Diamonon wants to take credit – and since they’re adding Trophies to Bionic Commando: Rearmed, I’ll let him do so.

Either way, if you try to log on to the Blog from about 2-3pm (Pacific) today and it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean your internet is broken. Necessarily.

Note: the PSN is unaffected by this maintenance window.

We’ve been very busy with E3 and stuff, but “Yay!”

PlayStation.Blog launched 2 years ago today to a pretty huge reception. In that time, I think we’ve gone from a “good first step” to a full-fledged social media program, with a robust Facebook community, fun community meetups, and enough Twitter followers to make Jamie Kennedy jealous. Watch out, Shaq, we’re coming for ya.

But in all seriousness, the time does fly, and I think it’s because of our very involved readership (this means YOU) that keeps us motivated and busy. In the last year, we’ve redesigned and added features, spawned a new European brother, survived a 20,000 comment onslaught, and adopted our very own Chris Morell (seriously, he sleeps here at night). And we’re working on some new features and integrations that, a year from now, should make today’s blog look very… 2007.

So, yes, thank you for reading, commenting, @replying, attending, subscribing, and, in general, doing what you’ve been doing to make this site what it is.

OK, that’s enough back-patting, now we’d like to go back to sleep. Er, work.

-Jeff

You’ve probably got some questions. We’ve got answers:

What changes are being made?
Starting on Tuesday of next week in order to comment on the PlayStation.Blog you will need to use a PlayStation Network ID.

Will my PS.Blog login still work?
No, starting Tuesday you will be asked to use your PSN ID to comment on the blog. If you have a PSN ID, then you’re ready. If you don’t have a PSN ID you should grab one now.

What happens to my old comments?
They’re still there, and in fact, when you log in for the first time using your PSN you will have the option to merge your PS.Blog account with your PSN so you retain your old comments.

What about my screenname?
When you merge your PS.Blog account and your PSN ID, all your past comments will now appear under your PSN ID.

What will happen to my avatar?
As much as we loved Gravatars, we’ll now be using the PSN avatar which can be selected through your PLAYSTATION 3.

What is this merge you speak of?
Starting Tuesday if you have an existing PS.Blog login you will be asked to merge that with your PSN ID. Once linked you’ll use your PSN ID for all comments.

What if I’ve never commented and don’t have an existing PS.Blog account?
What? You’ve never commented? Say something! Seriously though, go grab a PSN ID and you’ll be ready to go Tuesday.

Where can I get a PSN ID?
You can get one here.

What if I forgot my password for my PS.Blog account?
No worries, you can retrieve it when you’re merging it with your PSN account.

How long do I have to merge accounts?
We haven’t determined how long it will be available, but at least a month or two. If/when we determine to take down that function, we’ll let you know.

We’re very excited about these changes, and we hope the migration experience quick and painless – like death by ninja. The changes will be rolled out Tuesday morning (early or late, depending on when and where you wake up), so please try it out, grab a PSN ID if you haven’t already, and let us know you made it through unscathed!

Oh, and how do you like the comment-reply counter? Seems that nearly every post has some red replies these days, which is a good thing.

The latter will be activated tomorrow morning (Pacific time). Whenever one of our authors replies to one of your comments, it’ll be indicated below the post. Clicking on this link will take you to the first reply in the comments list. This feature has been asked for by many of you over the last year or so, and I’m glad that our dev team was able to accommodate.

The other feature, PSN sign-in, is a significant and important step in the evolution of the PlayStation.Blog. Because we want all of you to continue to communicate via comments, we’re not launching the feature quite yet, but consider this your metaphorical 2-minute Warning. If you don’t already have a PSN ID – now’s the time. It’s free, it’s useful, and it not only will work here, but across PS.com, as well as on the PLAYSTATION 3 and PSP.

If, and we know this applies to the vast majority of you, you’ve already got a PSN ID, the migration process is super easy. When the time comes (we’ll let you know), you’ll you’ll be prompted to merge your blog account with your existing PSN ID. It’s just that easy, and you’ll only have to do it once.

We believe this will contribute to a better community experience, and better, more targeted discussion here on the Blog. It also lays the groundwork for further enhancement to your user experience. When we’re ready to roll-out the PSN sign-on we’ll post a mini-FAQ to cover any questions you might have.

We hope you enjoy these new features – please let us know what you think!

Over the new few hours/days we’ll be working on sorting/organizing some of the categories, so keep that in mind.

So now it’s time for us to kick back (feet on the desk) and rest on our laurels until the end of the yea- oh wait. We’ve got more good things planned (stuff you’ve been specifically asking for) to come, and rather soon. We’ll keep you posted.

OK, back to your regularly scheduled posting.

Well it’s not *that* radical (internally we’re calling it “PSB 1.5″), but it’s definitely the biggest set of changes we’ve made since the blog rolled out in summer of ’07. Take a look:

As I see it, the main problem with blogs in general is that if it’s not at the top – nobody’s going to read it. With a worldwide reader base, a post that lives at the top of the page California-time might be buried at the bottom when our European friends wake up. That’s not good.

So the aim of PSB 1.5 is to get as much info at the top of the page as possible. At a glance, you’ll see our top story of the day, the most recent 4 posts (about 24 hours’ worth, typically), and a persistent link to the most consistently heavily-trafficked post of the week – the most recent PlayStation Store Update.

Recent Twitter updates will scroll along the very top of the page, and we’ll be updating it more often in the coming months. And in the upper right, you’ll have handy links to all the places PlayStation.Blog lives, such as Facebook, Flickr, Viddler, and our full list of links. We’ve also reorganized the categories to make them a bit clearer, and put them into handy drop down menu for easy sorting of past posts.

Finally, we took some of your comments into account with some smaller features such as an “older posts” button at the bottom of the front page.

In order to deploy the new design, it’ll be necessary for us to take the blog down for a few hours on Monday morning; everything should be up and running by 9am Pacific. We hope you enjoy the “new” PlayStation.Blog, and we’ll want your feedback on what else we can do to make your experience better. I can tell you that we’re currently working on a *lot* more features, and you should be hearing about them pretty soon.

Thanks for your continued support and involvement.
Jeff

thanks for the post i always feel better after i come home from football and read these blogs.

Well, that was a nice sentiment. The Blog Bean Counters (they’ll *love* being referred to like that) informed me that jskillzball also helped us reach a milestone. And by “us” I mean “you” – comment #100,000. Seeing as how we had published about 650 posts at that time, that’s an average of over 150 comments per post! Take a look around the internet – you’re not going to see such a consistently dedicated group of readers too often. It’s like everyone in Burbank, California or Cambridge, Massachusetts posted one time each! (I don’t think that’s what happened, right?)

It’s been an interesting ride, as you readers are just as likely to point out what you don’t like as you are to let us know what you enjoy. For instance, I believe roughly 78% of the comments were demands for In-Game XMB (I kid, I kid!). Seriously though, we definitely appreciate the constructive critiques, and when you see an often-requested feature show up in a game’s patch or firmware update, I believe it’s proof that “the system works.”

And I can tell you from experience that game developers have told me the feedback they’ve received on this Blog, from readers like you, has been incredibly useful to them – hopefully as much as the post you’ve commented on was to you.

So please, keep them coming, even if it’s just to say “trophies, kthxbai!” And please continue to keep them (mostly) on-topic, as that helps make sure that the right sets of eyes are reading your opinions. I’m sure we’ll reach comment #200,000 in no time. Thank you.

Oh, and jskillzball, I’ll be contacting you when I get back from TGS, I believe a schwag bag is in order.