Revitalised retailer GAME has launched a new online price checker tool for you to total up your trade-in games.

The chain is also currently offering 25 per cent extra credit on trade-ins until the end of May.

GAME's price checker forces you to enter in the barcode of the product you want to trade in, then fill in a CAPTCHA form.

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During that time you'll be unable to access the PlayStation Store on PS3, PSP and PS Vita, PlayStation Network Account management or PlayStation Network account registration.

However, Sony notes that if you log-in before 4.00pm on Thursday you may be able to continue online play.

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Something called My Little Sister Can't Possibly Be This Cute Portable Can't Possibly Continue is currently the best selling game in Japan.

It's a PSP title, it's published by Namco Bandai and it's the game that 53,175 Japanese people most wanted to play last week. We'd head to YouTube to find out more but we really don't want to wind up on a government watchlist.

In fairness, it was another slow sales week in Japan. The only other new entry worthy of note was a PSP remake of Persona 2, which debuted in third place.

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PlayStation Move game Sorcery, two-player scrolling action game Dr Who: The Eternity Clock and huge new squad-based shooter Ghost Recon: Future Soldier dominate the PlayStation Store today.

Sorcery's a lovely fantasy Move game for a younger audience. You become a sorcerer's apprentice and must flourish your wand to produce spells by waving the Move controller around - a mechanic that works brilliantly. Bit thin to hold an adult's attention, mind you. Eurogamer's Sorcery review has more.

Dr Who: The Eternity Clock spearheads a new gaming push by the BBC. The game's been developed in collaboration with Supermassive Games, and Eurogamer'sDr Who: The Eternity Clock preview liked what it saw. Don't expect a world beater, but do expect big ideas and big heart. "A little like the [TV] show itself, then," Eurogamer's Martin Robinson wrote.

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A statement on its EU community site explained that the title's adhoc multiplayer modes will still be available after that date.

Here's the blurb in full:

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Rockstar's new multi-platform shooting game Max Payne 3 has beaten Blizzard's new PC and Mac game Diablo 3 to the top of the UK all-formats chart.

This is the first Max Payne game to debut at number one. Max Payne 3 beat Max Payne 2's 2003 launch week total by almost 10 to 1.

Max Payne 3 enjoyed this year's second biggest video game launch behind Mass Effect 3.

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Nintendo's latest Wii release sold 37,353 to pip solid 3DS performer Fire Emblem: Awakening to number one.

The only new release in the top 20 is PlayStation 3 shooter Starhawk, which moved a modest 12,873 to debut at four.

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Sometimes, what looks like a frame turns out to be part of the picture. So it is with Velocity, which starts off as a scrolling shooter but soon blooms into something more akin to a puzzler. And following on from Floating Cloud God Saves the Pilgrims, it's another great PlayStation Mini - at last, that rather flat marketplace is gaining some momentum.

And speeding up is what the splendidly-named Quarp Jet, your dinky spaceship, is all about. Velocity's more complex abilities are kept back for a while, with the early stages built around the ability to speed up how fast the screen's scrolling - holding R roughly doubles the ship's pace, with a neon exhaust trail for the kids. Rapid-fire shooting and high speeds are all well and good, but you also have to be constantly hoovering up the survivor pods that dot each stage. Then things start to get trickier.

Velocity's first twist is a teleport. Hold the square button and control is switched from the ship to a reticule; put it where you want to go and release for an insta-switch. This wouldn't work nearly so well if the Quarp Jet wasn't able to bash off the side of walls (though being crushed at the bottom of the screen still means death), as the switch between controls often left me overshooting after popping out at the other end. As it is, the short hops are quickly mastered and you're soon materialising in the middle of enemy swarms with guns blazing, blinking out of certain-death situations, and navigating through sealed sections of the level like a pro.

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Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 2 headlines today's EU PlayStation Store update. Sega's latest Sonic adventure costs £9.99 and includes exclusive levels for those with Sonic 4 Episode 1.

Music-mixing title PixelJunk 4am launches for £6.49, although you'll need a PlayStation Eye camera and Move controller to play.

You can also now download a digital version of THQ's open-world dildo-fest Saints Row: The Third. It costs £29.99 and will hog 7.33 GB of your disc space.

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EA Sports has officially lifted the wraps on FIFA 13 and introduced this year's big gameplay improvements, with Complete Dribbling, First Touch Control and Attacking Intelligence all coming to this year's model.

Complete Dribbling's a feature that's partly inspired by this year's FIFA Street reboot, allowing players to dance around the ball and face their opponents at all times.

First Touch Control, meanwhile, adds a more random element when players take the ball, with player attributes now playing a larger role in the control of a ball.

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Last autumn's Deus Ex: Human Revolution and this year's Final Fantasy 13-2 have helped Square Enix return to profit making.

Last year, Square Enix lost 12 billion yen (-£94 million). But this year, Square Enix gained 6 billion yen (£47 million).

"The Group's results were favourable due to increased sales of console games boosted by our major titles, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Final Fantasy 13-2," Square Enix noted. Expanding web and smartphone business were also picked out.

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Konami's yearly accounts are out, whoopee, and the big success story is games for social networking services (SNS).

These helped Konami's profits nearly double to 23 billion yen (£178.5 million), despite net revenue being roughly the same as last year - 265.8 billion yen (£2.06 billion).

More, more, more, said Konami, even name dropping a possible partnership with Zynga.

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It would be "absolutely criminal" for HMV not to take advantage of GAME Group's plight, CEO Simon Fox has said.

That's why HMV will perform a U-turn, and go from slimming down its games offering, to beefing it up.

"Before and during Christmas the support we were getting from the games industry in general was disappointing," HMV CEO Simon Fox told MCV.

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In the UK, northerners prefer Xbox 360 and southerners prefer PlayStation 3.

Scots spend the most time playing games and prefer RPGs. South-westerly folk spend the least time playing and prefer adventure games.

Yes, these are the irrefutable findings of a survey - one brought vividly to life as an infographic, no less!

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Update: A subsequent and soporific earnings call has revealed a new worldwide Vita sales total as well as an ambitious sales forecast for the year ahead.

Original story: Sony's full-year financial results for April 2011 to March 2012 are a frown personified.

Sony Corporation, as a whole, lost $5.55 billion (US dollar conversion supplied by Sony, accurate as of 31st March 2011, when the financial year ended). That's -£3.44 billion.

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Nintendo platforms totally dominate this week's Japanese sales charts, with a number of key titles enjoying a massive spike during the country's annual Golden Week holiday period.

Mario Party 9 took the top spot, unseating Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City and selling 144,585 in its second week on shelves.

There were six 3DS titles in the top 10. Super Mario 3D Land saw an 82 per cent week-on-week up-tick in sales to take fourth place, Mario Kart 7 was up 96 per cent in fifth, Kid Icarus: Uprising followed in sixth with sales up 63 per cent, while Monster Hunter Tri G was in seventh, with a 21 per cent sales increase.

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PlayStation 3 exclusive Datura launches on PlayStation Network today. The mysterious Move-controlled adventure costs £6.49 and allows you to manipulate your environment via a disembodied hand.

Also in today's update: Sega squad shooter Binary Domain (£19.99, 11GB) and something called the Dead Space Super Bundle, which includes the excellent sci-fi survival horror and all of its DLC suits and weapons (£23.99, 8GB).

The original Just Cause joins the line-up of PS2 Classics (£7.99, 395MB), alongside PSone title Arc Arena: Monster Tournament (£3.99, 68MB).

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PSP games MotorStorm: Arctic Edge, Everybody's Tennis and Super Collapse were all temporarily removed from the PlayStation Store because they were vulnerable to an exploit that allowed a homebrew-enabling program called Half-Byte Loader to run on Vita.

Intrigued, Eurogamer tracked down Half-Byte Loader's French author Erwan - also known as Wololo - to find out more.

What's Sony's problem - the threat of piracy?

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"Once the boxes had gone, he [the administrator] did a walk around the store. He was asking us what we planned on doing next. If I'm honest, I was a bit short with him. He was saying, 'What are you going to do now - have you got any plans?' And I was like, 'I've just lost my job. I've been doing this job for two-thirds of my working life, if not more than that, working in a game shop. And suddenly I haven't got that option. So no, I don't know what I'm going to do now. First things first, I'm going to make sure I get the money that I'm owed. But I don't know, I don't know what I'm going to do.'

David Jennings was assistant manager of Gamestation Congleton, one of 227 GAME and Gamestation stores closed by administrators. He was also was one of 2104 staff to be let go by the end of the most devastating week in GAME Group's history. "My first reaction was complete and utter shock. I was a bit devastated," he remembers. "It's incredibly brutal; I know that's what administrators do, but going from the day before, thinking well we're supposed to be safe until the end of the week, to suddenly, within a couple of hours on Monday morning, being told that I wouldn't have a job any more..." This is David's story, an account from the front line of GAME's battle for survival - the shop floor.

Roughly nine years earlier, David Jennings started work part-time at GAME in Crewe, where he lived. Working there meant combining a wage with a hobby he loved, and it meant getting out of McDonald's. "The amount of people I met," he tells me, "who said 'I'd love to work in a game shop!' - it made me feel really proud and like I was lucky to be in this position."

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Spin-off zombie shooter Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City has entered the Japanese software chart at number one in its debut week.

The Slant Six-developed dud sold 252,525 copies on PlayStation 3 to take the top spot, with a further 16,285 on Xbox 360. That's the best Japanese debut ever for a non-mainline Resi title. Earlier this year 3DS release Resident Evil: Revelations managed 160,575 in its first week.

Elsewhere in the chart, Mario Party 9 came in at second on Wii, selling 152,883 in its first week. The Vita had a rare representative in the top five with Gust adventure Ciel Nosurge: Ushinawareta Hoshi e Sasagu Uta shifting 33,324 for a fourth place debut.

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12 months ago, a no-doubt sweaty Sony communications chief sat down to pen a statement informing more than 70 million PlayStation Network account holders that their personal details - including credit card numbers - had just been compromised in one of the largest data hacks ever perpetrated.

Months of corporate hand-wringing, righteous consumer outrage, grovelling PR and over-cooked class action legal threats followed, in what was one of the biggest tech stories of the decade.

But one year on and the dust finally seems to have settled. The quality and quantity of PSN releases has held steady, PlayStation 3 was the biggest selling home console of 2011 in Europe and Japan, many of those responsible have had their day in court and there have been no verifiable reports of any account holders having actual hard cash stolen or IDs hijacked. Perhaps evidenced by its refusal to grant us an interview for this piece, Sony would rather we all make believe that it never happened.

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The Vita is currently being outsold by the both the Wii and PSP in Europe, according to sales research conducted by Nintendo.

The platform holder included a graph in its recent financial briefing showing individual system performance across the continent for the last three months.

According to the data, which Nintendo president Satoru Iwata explained is "based on sales information by market research companies in each European country," PlayStation 3 comes out on top, with 3DS and Xbox 360 neck and neck in second, Wii in fourth, PSP in fifth, Vita in sixth and DS in second.

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Nintendo strategy RPG Fire Emblem: Awakening has stormed to the top of the Japanese software chart on its first week of release.

It sold an impressive 242,600 units, more than all the other titles in the top 20 combined. It's also the best week-one total for a new Fire Emblem game since Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem on the SNES way back in 1994.

Nintendo recently confirmed plans to bring the game to Europe, though a firm date hasn't been set.

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Free downloads of side-scrolling arena dust-up Awesomenauts and PlayStation 2 classic Max Payne headline May's PlayStation Plus content.

Subscribers to Sony's premium service can download both Remedy's original Payne romp and Ronimo's colourful follow-up to highly-regarded RTS Swords & Soldiers from 2nd May.

You can also grab eight casual titles from developer Tik Games free of charge until 4th July, including Hamsterball and Mushroom Wars.

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Konami has announced PES 2013, due out this autumn. It launches on Nintendo 3DS, PC, PSP, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360. No mention was made of PS Vita.

Konami said the game sees the series returning to its roots, with an emphasis on individual skills. Included for the first time is full control over shots. The result of this, Konami said, is "the most faithful recreation of modern day football to date".

This is described as PES FullControl, or PES FC (see what they did there?). Within it are a number of key pillars: Total Freedom of Control; Dynamic First Touch; Full Manual Shooting and Full Manual Passing; Dribbling; Full Manual One-Two; Response Defending; and Goalkeepers.

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Sony's pulled another vulnerable PSP game, Super Collapse, from the PlayStation Store. It allowed an unauthorised program to run homebrew software on PlayStation Vita.

The unauthorised program is the Vita Half-Byte Loader by Wololo. It's an open source homebrew loader that enables fan-made games and applications to run on PSP (up to firmware 6.60) and Vita (up to firmware 1.67). It also allows emulators for Game Boy, N64, Mega Drive, NES and SNES.

It does not, however, allow pirated PSP or Vita games to be played, according to the maker's disclaimer.

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I can pinpoint the very moment that my appreciation of Coconut Dodge changed from bloodless admiration for an elegant, economical design into a helpless, wide-eyed joy. That's because it was the exact same point at which I was given a hat. Not just any hat, actually: this was a kind of golden Viking helm deal with huge tusks and other sharp bits.

The golden hat's a power-up that grants you a period of invulnerability in an arcade game that can otherwise be rather relentless. More importantly, though, it's also a golden hat. A sartorial embellishment that sits wonderfully well on the head of your scuttling crab avatar. It conveys a sense of power, nobility, and steely-eyed integrity. Priceless, really.

There's much more to the game than that, of course. FuturLab's iOS debut is riddled with clever ideas, although it initially seems so simple. At first, this appears to be nothing more than a 2D dodge-'em-up: you're a crab, wandering over the sand, avoiding the endless rain of coconuts that falls from the sky.

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Two PSP games pulled from PlayStation Store earlier this year after they were used by hackers to run an exploit on the Vita have gone back on sale.

As reported by Engadget, MotorStorm: Arctic Edge and Everybody's Tennis are now back on sale and the security hole successfully taped over. Those who already owned them should see them in their download lists.

The games had apparently been used to run unsigned code on the Vita, facilitating the release of a homebrew loader on Sony's new handheld.

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Floating Cloud God Saves the Pilgrims is a new PlayStation Mini from Dakko Dakko, the developer behind previous Mini highlight, The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character. Minis is a queer category on PlayStation: launched with much fanfare by Sony, now compatible with three consoles, but yet to find a firm identity among the multitude of download portals out there. If it had more games like Floating Cloud God, that wouldn't be a problem.

The Mini concept isn't about small games - it's supposed to be a banner for simple and original ideas executed with a bit of class. Floating Cloud God is exactly that, a 2D shooter built around the eponymous deity (controlled by the player) and his quest to protect eight pilgrims as they trek through each stage.

Your own shots just knock their hats off, but getting hit by anything else will kill a pilgrim and send their spirit floating off with a sad little wail. This is bad not only because the pilgrims are a de facto health bar (losing them all ends the game) but powering up Cloud God depends on harvesting their love - juicy little hearts that pop up whenever you kill an enemy and increase in size as you blast more.

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Vita sales continued to slide in a slow week for both hardware and software sales in Japan.

Sony's new handheld shifted just 8250 units, down from 8931 last week.

Numbers were down across the board though, with a dearth of new software releases to fuel sales. The 3DS comfortably held onto the top spot, selling 63,796, compared to 72,115 the week prior, while PlayStation 3 held on to second place despite sales falling from 19,370 to 17,765.

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New Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 maps and FIFA 12 expansion UEFA Euro 2012 are the headline attractions on this week's updated EU PlayStation Store.

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: Collection Pack 1 won't release until tomorrow, 19th April. Inside are four maps and two Special Ops challenges.

The FIFA 12 UEFA Euro 2012 expansion won't release until Tuesday, 24th April. This offers the 53 national teams and eight stadiums of this summer's real-life tournament, and represents the best chance England have of winning it.

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PSN goes dark from 2pm today until 2am on Tuesday, 17th April.

During this scheduled maintenance you won't be able to access the PlayStation Store on the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Portable, PSN Account Management or PSN Account Registration. Neither will you be able to sign in to PSN from eu.playstation.com.

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Anime strategy role-playing game Blazing Souls Accelate launches on PSP and on PSN on 27th April, Rising Star Games has announced. The PSN version works on the PS Vita, too.

Blazing Souls Accelate is developed by Japanese studio Idea Factory, the team behind Record of Agarest War. It has anime visuals, item crafting and a protagonist called Zero. He finds a stone, infused with magic, on the way to learning the secret of his existence.

Screenshots are below.

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They've been funny little things, these PlayStation Minis. Set up not exactly as an alternative to the App Store but certainly an analogue of it, the initial promise was clear; here was a place where you could find the kind of sugar-sweet candy bar snacks that have slowly taken over the world through iOS. The results, though, have been disappointing - too many thoughtless ports of mobile games, and too many opportunistic cash-ins.

There've also been some brilliant curios - Die Gute Fabrik's Where Is My Heart was a delightful platformer and a true highlight of 2011 - and it's provided a place for smaller, sparky outfits to prove their stuff. Mediatonic showed its worth with Who's That Flying, and Brighton-based developer FuturLab's been doing much the same.

It already had a crack with Coconut Dodge, a brutally simplistic game in which you - a crab that seemed to have scuttled out of Rare's character design lab circa 1999 - dashed from left to right in order to avoid some falling fruit. And that, quite simply, was that, though its basic premise belied a devilishly taut arcade experience.

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The game's producer Shuhei Yoshida - who is now Sony Worldwide Studios boss - broke the news in a post on the PlayStation Blog.

"I still occasionally hear from fans of The Legend of Dragoon, and many want to know if there is a sequel," he wrote.

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Weekly Vita sales have plummeted to an all-time low in Japan, with Sony's new handheld dropping below 10,000 for the first time since launch.

The system managed to shift just 8931 units in the country last week, down from 12,105.

How much lower can it go? The next software launch of any consequence is a remake of PlayStation 2 favourite Persona 4 due on 14th June. That should offer a bit of a spike, but it's hardly Mario Kart.

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Sony is planning to cut six per cent of its global workforce - around 10,000 jobs - in a major restructuring drive, according to a number of Japanese news reports.

As detailed by the Associated Press, the redundancies will play out over the next 12 months and form part of incoming CEO Kaz Hirai's strategy to return the electronics giant to profit.

It's not known what departments will be worst hit.

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3DS sales saw a significant jump in Japan last week thanks largely to the release of a new entry in Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts action RPG series.

Nintendo's portable sold 121,921 units, compared to 94,011 last week.

It continues to totally dominate the Japanese hardware market - its nearest rival was PlayStation 3 with 23,771 sales. The Vita continues to slum it, but saw a small bump to 12,105, up from 10,302.

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Once in a while, we all get a bit drunk and say something inappropriate.

It used to be that this only came back to haunt us when we said that inappropriate something via text message to a gitrl ew relly liek and we shudl get a drnk sometiem. But nowadays, thanks to the miracle of the internet, we can say it to potentially thousands of people at once.

Now, there's no suggestion that OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter was drunk when he told his followers on Twitter that former employee Shay Pierce was "the weakest one on the whole team", "selfish" and one of a "number of failures who try to ride on your back" - indeed his comments had the lucidity of immaculate sobriety - but it would have made more sense if he were. Otherwise he was just making very rude, ill-judged comments in public.

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GAME Group's new owner Baker Acquisitions has hired some familiar old faces to drag the video game shop-chain out of the mud.

Martyn Gibbs, former managing director of Gamestation and subsequent bigwig at GAME until mid-2011, has been crowned CEO. Gibbs also worked for HMV, WHSmith and Blockbuster.

David Hamid, former Dixons and Halfords big-shot, will be chairman.

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The GAME and Gamestation websites are back online, following a three day outage as GAME Group entered administration.

"GAME is back online!" announced the GAME Twitter account. "Website Reward functionality returning shortly. Watch this space!"

Both GAME and Gamestation are running sales. On GAME there's a Spring Sale, and on Gamestation, "Shop Prices Smashed".

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Update: Gamestation Elite Cards and GAME Reward Cards have both now been reactivated.

Both work in the same way: points are earned when buying all products, but can only be used/redeemed on pre-owned products.

Original story: GAME administrators have reactivated Reward Cards. Reward Points can be redeemed on pre-owned games and earned on all products.

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Update: Comet parent company OpCapita has bid again for GAME, according to a new report by The Independent.

OpCapita is apparently after the 333 stores (211 GAME, 122 Gamestation) that remain open.

OpCapita reportedly bid for GAME before GAME entered administration, but this was blocked by GAME's lending syndicate of six banks, lead by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

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GAME Group has published a list of Gamestation stores still open and trading in the UK.

There are 122.

GAME Group moments ago confirmed the names and locations of the 211 GAME stores that are still open and trading in the UK.

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GAME has published a list of all GAME stores across the UK that are "still open and trading".

They number 211.

They're reproduced in full below.

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It wants $500,000 "to help pave the way for a hybrid digital/deluxe physical release for the first of many Japanese RPGs."

Acquire's PSP dungeon crawler Class of Heroes 2 will kick things off, with MonkeyPaw hoping to fund additional improvements to the original Japanese release and offer a premium Deluxe Pack physical release in both the US and Europe. It'll be teaming up with special edition packaging experts Gaijinworks for the latter.

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On the PlayStation Store today you can fork out £50 for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, and £48 for 280,000 coins to use in the game. A bargain at £98.

There's similar lunacy applied to the newly available Battlefield 3 "shortcut" items. Among the cheapest is an Assault Kit Shortcut that costs £5.49. All seven Kit and Vehicle shortcuts bundled together cost £32.

There's a demo for Vita game Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen (7/10 Eurogamer). And PS2 game Full Spectrum Warrior and PS1 game Arc the Lad 2 are now up for grabs.

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PSP games Everybody's Tennis and MotorStorm Arctic Edge have been "suspended" from sale on PlayStation Network, Sony has confirmed to Eurogamer.

Unofficially, they've been removed because of an exploit to the limited PSP mode on Vita. This allows homebrew games and apps to run.

Sony Europe's official line to Eurogamer was this: "We've suspended sales of Everybody's Tennis and MotorStorm Arctic Edge for software stability improvement."

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The PlayStation 3 version of Mass Effect 3 debuted at number 20 on the weekly Japanese sales chart, shifting just over 8000 copies.

That might not seem like much, but it's well up on the 5885 that Mass Effect 2 managed in its debut week last year.

DS franchise spin-off Pokémon + Nobunaga's Ambition took the top spot with 172,027 copies sold, followed by Sega's PSP strategy RPG Shining Blade with 122,257.

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The Vita recorded its first weekly Japanese sales upswing in some time last week, albeit a miniscule one.

Sony's slow-off-the-blocks handheld shifted 10,041 units in the country over the last seven days - that's an increase of 18 units over the week prior.

The 3DS was the top-selling system yet again with 68,951 sold, down slightly on the 70,744 it managed last week.

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EA's jumpers for goalposts game FIFA Street launches this Friday on the EU PlayStation Store, the same day it hits the UK high street. It costs £49.99.

Flower developer thatgamecompany's glorious Journey arrives today. The 9/10-scoring adventure is priced at £9.99.

To celebrate Journey's launch Sony has cut the price of thatgamecompany's Flower and flOw. Savings can also be found on top titles such as ICO, Shadow of the Colossus and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, with even more savings for Plus members.

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GAME has extended its firesale to hardware, and launched its "Spring Clean" promotion.

The shop has slashed prices across the board - for games new and pre-owned, hardware new and pre-owned, and accessories.

There's a raft of deals on hardware as part of the Spring Clean promotion. Catch 'em while you can.

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There won't be any more Sega-published Marvel games.

That's according to TQ Jefferson, vice president of games production for Marvel.

Sega has published five games based off of Marvel movies in recent years: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Captain America: Super Soldier and Thor: God of Thunder.

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The London rioters who stole a PSP and 10 games from 20 year-old student Ashraf Rossli after his jaw had been broken and bicycle stolen have been found guilty of various crimes.

John Kafunda, 22 - the man videoed helped a bleeding Ashraf Rossli to his feet - was found guilt of robbery at Wood Green Crown Court.

Kafunda appeared to be aiding Rossli as 24-year-old Reece Donovan strode over and began rifling through Rossli's bag. But instead of preventing Donovan, Kafunda joined in.

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PSN was set to go offline from 4.00pm on Thursday 1st March until 7.00am tomorrow as part of "significant maintenance".

But it's now not happening - you will be able to game as normal this evening.

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New Capcom action IP Asura's Wrath has got off to a sluggish start in its native Japan, entering the weekly software chart at five.

The eccentric CyberConnect2-developed title sold 30,308 copies in its debut week. It arrives in the UK on 9th March.

Namco's PSP RPG Tales of the Heroes: Twin Brave took the top spot, selling 85,309, followed by 3DS farming sim Harvest Moon: The Land of Origin with 81,131.

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PlayStation 1 Classics Resident Evil 2 and 3 will be available to download on the EU PlayStation Store from today.

Each costs £7.99, while PlayStation Plus members get both free for one week.

Like your shooting more up to date? Killzone 3's multiplayer portion is available for everyone to try. You can test the online shooter for free until you reach the rank of Sergeant I. Playing further will cost you £11.99, although Plus members receive a half price discount.

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New sales figures have revealed how PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS are doing in Japan.

Statistics released by Japanese sales tracker Media Create (via Andriasang) show figures for the 3G Vita model compared with the Wi-Fi only Vita model.

Surprisingly, when Vita launched in Japan in December, the more expensive 3G unit had the greater share of sales. Since then, however, the imbalance has levelled off and both numbers have sold in equal measure.

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A new 3DS iteration of Konami's popular dating sim Love Plus took the top spot, selling 104,969 copies, with Binary Domain shifting 73,683 at number two.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy debuted at three, with sales of 67,206. Elsewhere on the chart, PSP button masher Samurai Warriors 3 Z Special entered at seven and Tekken 3D Prime Edition at a lowly 11.

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As reported earlier this month, a program in Japan that lets users download digital versions of their PSP UMD games to the Vita won't be offered in the US or Europe.

Why? According to Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida there just isn't sufficient demand to make it worthwhile for the platform holder.

Speaking in an interview with Wired, Yoshida explained that UMD transfers are more of an issue for Japanese gamers because the PSP has enjoyed much greater popularity there than it did in the West and titles are still being released.

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The Malaysian student who was brutally assaulted before having his PSP stolen during last summer's London riots will see justice done.

17-year-old Londoner Beau Isagba, who broke Ashraf Rossli's jaw and stole his bicycle, will go to jail.

Isagba's brutal assault on Rossli, 20, left him bleeding and dazed.

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Sony sold just 13,939 Vita units from 6th to 12th February, despite the release of new Vita exclusive Gravity Daze.

Sony-developed Gravity Daze still managed to perform well, however. It secured second spot in the software chart with decent sales of 43,462 copies.

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The comic tab will no longer be accessible from the PlayStation Store interface from then, Andriasang reports.

Sony will stop adding new content to the service from 15th March. You'll be able to re-download already purchased content until the end of the year. The Comic Reader app will also be available to download through the end of the year.

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As detailed on the PlayStation Blog, the game is a traditional top-down shooter with a twist - you can teleport your ship around the screen to evade enemies, collect power-up and solve puzzles. See the trailer below for a better idea of exactly how the mechanic works.

"It sounds incredible and is a genuine, high-quality homage to the classic games we older folk remember fondly," wrote James Marsden, boss of the UK-based studio.

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SoulCalibur 5 has entered the weekly Japanese software chart at number two, but sales are well below its predecessor.

The latest entry in Namco's beat 'em up series sold a modest 34,328 copies on PlayStation 3 in its first week on shelves, compared to the 74,607 SoulCalibur 4 managed back in 2008.

It was beaten to the top spot by last week's number two, Resident Evil: Revelations. Capcom's 3DS adventure saw sales drop 70 per cent week-on-week to 43,575, but that was still enough to take the chart crown.

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An array of discounts see everyone get money off 2K mob tale Mafia 2, while a gun barrel of Grand Theft Auto games and content comes cheaper on PSP.

Cel-shaded beat-'em-up Shank 2 also launches, plus there's a new co-op mission for Uncharted 3 which sees series villains Zoran Lazarević, Eddy Raja and Harry Flynn team up.

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Last week's release of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection poses an interesting question - why is the assemblage of Snake's adventures incomplete? While MGS2, MGS3 and Peace Walker are all present and correct, the original Metal Gear Solid is conspicuous by its absence - and what of its Nintendo GameCube remake, The Twin Snakes?

It's this latter release that is the most intriguing. Released in 2004 in collaboration with Nintendo, The Twin Snakes was the original Metal Gear Solid remaster - an alternative take on the classic PS1 game, featuring a bounty of graphical improvements, re-recorded audio with new translations and gameplay elements from MGS2 - such as first person shooting - retrofitted into the original game.

Konami and Nintendo masterminds Hideo Kojimo and Shigeru Miyamoto were said to be involved in honing the gameplay, while Canadian outfit Silicon Knights were drafted in for the main coding duties. As The Twin Snakes was released after MGS2, which did get included on the HD Collection, we couldn't help but wonder... how would it look rendered in high definition? A remaster of a remaster, if you will.

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Final Fantasy 13-2 has entered the UK all-formats chart in first place, ending FIFA 12's reign on top.

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, a trilogy of classic MGS games now made a little prettier, arrived in second.

Fellow new entry SoulCalibur 5 was fifth, behind Battlefield 3 and FIFA.

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Update #2: Sony has contacted Eurogamer to amend the earlier statement, which we now know to have been missing a word.

Unfortunately that word, "account", changes the meaning when added.

The statement becomes: "It's just an account name change and will be called SEN from now on. Should make it clearer and easier for people to associate the service with all Sony products and have one log-in."

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Incoming Sony CEO Kaz Hirai has admitted the ailing electronics manufacturer needs to turn things around quickly or it could face serious problems.

Speaking in an interview with The Wall Street Journal ahead of the company's troubling quarterly financial report yesterday, Hirai said that returning Sony to profit will be the biggest challenge he's faced in his career to date.

"I thought turning around the PlayStation business was going to be the toughest challenge of my career, but I guess not," he said.

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Embattled retailer GAME has confirmed it is in talks with its lenders over its current credit troubles.

Its lending syndicate is reviewing the company. In a statement GAME hinted it may sell its overseas operation.

GAME has a strong presence in Europe and Australia. It has 94 shops in Australia, 197 in France, 288 in Spain and Portugal and 67 in Scandinavia.

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Sony made a gargantuan £1.3 billion loss during October to December 2011.

Sales of its many products decreased "significantly" year-on-year because of the floods in Thailand, the "deterioration in market conditions in developed countries" and "unfavourable foreign exchange", Sony said.

Sony made a profit in the third quarter of its previous financial year.

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From Software's mech battler Armored Core 5 and Capcom's Resident Evil: Revelations both scored big debuts on this week's Japanese sales chart.

The PlayStation 3 SKU of Armored Core took the top spot, shifting 163,906 units, with Resident Evil close on its heels at number two, with 146,559 sales.

That's a solid debut for the 3DS title, outstripping first week Japanese sales of Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube.

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The ascendency of former PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai has been made official - he is to replace Sir Howard Stringer as president and CEO of Sony Corporation from 1st April.

He's also expected to become a Board member in June.

Stringer will be offered the Board chairmanship position in June when Yotaro Kobayashi retires.

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PlayStation Plus subscribers can pick up the impending re-release of 1991 coin-op classic The Simpsons Arcade free of charge for a limited time this month.

Konami's cartoon tie-in is available at no charge from 1st February to the end of the month.

It's a bumper few weeks for PS Plus members, with Far Cry 2 and Final Fantasy V among the other freebies up for grabs. There's also substantial savings to be had on Rayman Origins, Sonic Adventure and House of the Dead 3.

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As announced on its official EU forums, housekeeping is scheduled from 2.00pm on Thursday 2nd February until 8.00am on Friday 3rd February.

The PlayStation Store, customer account management and user registration will all be "affected" and Home will be completely out of action.

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Sony has announced a wide-ranging Final Fantasy sale on the EU PlayStation Store this week, with nearly every early release in the series cut down in price.

With the exclusion of Final Fantasy 3, the entire numbered series up to Final Fantasy 9 is now available for just £3.99 a pop. PlayStation Plus members get an additional 10 per cent off that.

Final Fantasy 5 will be completely free for Plus subscribers on February 8th - "for at least a week", Sony told Eurogamer.

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GameStop shops in Northern Ireland have closed, as the company continues transferring all UK business online to the GameStop website.

Pictures of closed GameStation stores in Northern Ireland were taken at the weekend (and posted on TheGamingLiberty). Apparently staff were told on Sunday.

"We are transferring all of our UK business online to www.gamestop.co.uk," read a post by GameStop UK on Facebook. "We will honour all outstanding deposits and gift cards on www.gamestop.co.uk please contact - help@gamestop.co.uk for further assistance. Have a lovely day!"

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FIFA 12 has now made more money in the UK than any other sports video game ever.

Naturally, that includes any other title in the FIFA series to date.

EA's annual footy fixture notched up a fifth consecutive week at number one this week, its seventh since launch.

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A spin-off of popular Japanese visual novel Fate/Stay Night, it sees your hero battling for survival in a mysterious parallel universe, while also trying to track down The Holy Grail.

The publisher promises a fast-paced combat system, multiple story paths and a story penned by series creator Kinoko Nasu.

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What are you doing between 4pm GMT today and 6am GMT tomorrow? If you thought the answer was "accessing a range of PlayStation Network services", then think again, because Sony has said that PSN will be down for maintenance throughout that period.

What does that meeeean though? It means that you won't be able to access the PlayStation Store, PSN account management or registration, PlayStation Home, or the Music and Video Unlimited services. Nor will you be able to sign in through the PlayStation.com website.

According to Sony's US blog, users who are signed in before the start of the maintenance won't get booted off, but won't be able to use any of the above services. Don't worry though - you can still collect Trophies in your games, and your profile will be updated when PSN comes back online.

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It's a localised version of Japan-only release Growlanser 4: Over Reloaded, which originally launched back in Summer 2011, and will be available both as a PSN download and as a boxed UMD.

Atlus promises a number of enhancements to the original title, including new characters and scenarios, improved loading times and a message skip option allowing players to move the story on at a faster pace.

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Sony's new handheld sold 18,361, down from 42,915 the week prior. That put it in fourth place in the hardware chart, with 3DS in first, PlayStation 3 second and PSP third.

It was a slow week all round, with the Christmas/New Year sales bump finally winding down. The 3DS sold 100,668 to take the top spot, down from 240,819 last week.

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The AIAS shortlist for the 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards - i.e. the game Oscars - has been revealed.

Game of the Year 2011 contenders are Batman: Arkham City, Portal 2 (Eurogamer's Game of the Year 2011), The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception.

Uncharted 2 scooped an incredible 10 AIAS awards two years ago, including Game of the Year 2009.

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The 3DS has started 2012 with a bang, seeing a significant hardware sales bump and a raft of software in the top five.

Nintendo's handheld was, yet again, the best-selling console of the week, moving a very healthy 240,819 units. That's up from 197,952 last week.

Its nearest competitor was the PlayStation 3, which sold 74,459.

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Modern Warfare 3 was the best selling video game in the UK last year, UKIE and GfK Chart-Track have revealed.

Call of Duty games have now topped the annual pile three years on the trot.

FIFA 12 finished as the second best selling UK video game of 2011, followed by publisher sibling Battlefield 3.

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Eerie survival horror game Amy headlines this week's European PlayStation Store update.

It's a game about a troubled child who can make things happen with the power of her mind. Oh my god! Amy's also out on Xbox Live Arcade today.

"Neither quirky enough to be forgiven its unfinished feel nor polished enough to satisfy the base gaming itch, Amy is a crushing disappointment with little to recommend it," Dan Whitehead wrote in Eurogamer's just-published Amy review.

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Sony sold an impressive 500,000 PlayStation 2 units over the Christmas period, the platform holder has announced.

It pointed to "emerging countries and regions such as Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South America" as the main markets for the decade-old warhorse.

Anyone care to hazard a guess at how many new GameCubes or original Xboxes were snapped up over the same period?

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The best-selling UK video game during the first week of 2012 was FIFA 12. It was also last week's final top title of 2011.

Battlefield 3 edges past Modern Warfare 3 to claim second, with Call of Duty close behind in third.

Ubisoft boogie title Just Dance 3 was fourth, while Skyrim, the UK's Christmas number one, was fifth.

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It's thought that he could formally replace current president Howard Stringer as soon as April, with details to be finalised at a board meeting next month.

Welsh-born American Stringer, who has been president since 2009, is apparently expected to stay on as chairman and chief executive officer.

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Green and white supermarket Asda believes there are 12 million "outdated" games consoles lurking in homes up and down the UK.

But what does "outdated" constitute?

"We asked people to quantify how many items (from a list) they owned but no longer used," Asda explained to Eurogamer.

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Only seven per cent fewer boxed games were sold last year compared to 2010.

The take for all boxed video games was £1.42 billion. The take for all console video games - excluding PC - was £1.35 billion.

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