Key events
26th August 2010
19th February 2009
27th January 2009
10th December 2008
19th October 2008
10th September 2008
7th May 2008
6th May 2008
13th March 2008
Motorstorm Pacific Rift and Arctic Edge shutting down servers
SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3 and The Eye of Judgment: Legends also getting the boot.
PS3 exclusive Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (2008) and its portable PSP brethen Arctic Edge (2009) are closing down their servers come 1st October, Sony has announced.
Shank and MotorStorm 3D in PSN update
Plus MAG "Persistent Beta" and more.
Sony has updated the PlayStation Store with a range of treats including Shank, MotorStorm 3D Rift and a new "Persistent Beta client" for MAG.
Klei Entertainment's Shank, published by EA, came out on Xbox Live Arcade yesterday as well and costs Ł9.99 / €12.99 on PSN. You run around a vibrant 2D world killing people, which is alright with us.
MotorStorm 3D Rift, meanwhile, allows you to play 10 of Pacific Rift's tracks in 3D if you have the equipment. It's a free trial but then you need to fork over a tenner.
MotorStorm 3D Rift on PSN this week
Cut-down 3D version of Pacific Rift.
Sony will release a cut-down 3D version of PS3 off-road racer MotorStorm: Pacific Rift through the PlayStation Store this week.
Maguire: People will buy 3D content
"People who bought iPads will buy 3D TVs."
Sony Computer Entertainment's UK boss Ray Maguire has told Eurogamer that he has no worries about people buying into the company's 3D dream because there will always be early adopters.
PS3 3D titles priced, out this week
Patches free to owners, 3D TV buyers.
Sony has announced launch details for PlayStation 3's early stereoscopic 3D line-up.
Digital FoundryThe Making of PlayStation 3D
How WipEout HD and MotorStorm gained an extra dimension.
Last week Sony revealed that it is due to launch its new range of 3DTVs with a small range of stereoscopic-enabled PlayStation 3 titles. PAIN, Super Stardust HD and WipEout HD get the full treatment, while a single-level demo of MotorStorm: Pacific Rift is also in the offing. All will be downloadable from the PlayStation Store.
Sony 3D TV buyers get free games in June
3D PS3 firmware to precede HX803 launch.
Sony has announced that people buying its new Bravia HX803 3D TV in June will receive a PSN voucher entitling them to four 3D versions of PS3 games.
But downplays connotations.
Sony has registered motorstorm3.com and started pointing it at PlayStation.com.
Sony extends PS3 Platinum range
MGS4! MotorStorm 2! Resistance 2! KZ2!
Sony has added four more PlayStation 3 heavyweights to the Platinum Hits range of games.
Home gets new MotorStorm functionality
Plus a Fat Princess mini-game with prize.
PlayStation Home has been updated with a new MotorStorm Pacific Rift game launching option.
E3: MotorStorm 2 expands again
SPEED and ADRENALINE packs.
Evolution Studios has announced two new downloadable expansion packs for MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, called SPEED and ADRENALINE.
Evolution repaints whole of MotorStorm 2
Free livery packs for next eight weeks.
Starting today, Sony and Evolution Studios plan to release eight free livery packs for MotorStorm: Pacific Rift at the rate of one per week.
MotorStorm 2 gets weighty patch
Evolution wipes dirt from windscreen.
Sony has rolled out the first serious MotorStorm: Pacific Rift game update.
The most substantial changes are back-up saves, icons indicating when critical saves are taking place, boost exploit fixes, more coherent online rankings and nicer-looking photos thank God.
You'll be prompted to install the update when taking MotorStorm: Pacific Rift Online.
Data fixes, exploit squashed, etc.
Evolution Studios is finally preparing to pump out one of those "major" updates for MotorStorm: Pacific Rift that were mooted at the back end of October just prior to the game's release.
This one's mostly concerned with squashing bugs and exploits. Once it goes live, it will be possible to copy save data, said data will be less likely to become corrupted, and a little helmet will appear on-screen when critical data is being recorded so you don't make the mistake of turning the system off.
Not only that, but the team has identified a boost exploit and will soon be deleting illegitimate leaderboard entries, while time attack and ranking information in general will now update correctly for everyone.
Motorstorm 2 sales hit 1 million mark
Downloadable content being worked on.
More than a million copies of Motorstorm: Pacific Rift have now been sold around the globe.
That's according to Sony exec Michael Denny, speaking in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
The game was released at the start of November and debuted at number 29 in the UK all-formats chart, before falling the following week to 35. It was a busy week for big releases, mind. Sales have since grown and Evolution Studios is already at work on new downloadable content for the game.
Evolution pledges MotorStorm 2 DLC
"A lot of it is free."
Evolution Studios is planning to follow up the release of MotorStorm: Pacific Rift with a range of downloadable content, including "a lot" of free add-ons for the PS3-exclusive racer.
Cloudy.
Released alongside PlayStation 3 in March last year, MotorStorm was a raw, single-minded distortion of the successful WRC series that gave Evolution Studios the opportunity to make it in the first place, introducing multiple vehicle classes to the same track and playing host to the seemingly cunning technical innovation of persistent surface deformation. But while the rutted surfaces left in the wake of each lap's storm of thundering metal - and the implications for those that followed - made for easy headlines, given that they planted a flag for things that the then-four-hundred-quid console did over and above its predecessor, they never defined the first game. Instead we eulogised sensations dormant since the heyday of EA's SSX, which are now enjoying a renaissance best exemplified by the critical success of Black Rock Studios' excellent Pure a few weeks ago.
For MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, the sequel of only 18 months' construction, Evolution has left surface deformation alone to the extent that it's completely anonymous, preferring to spend its time delivering a measured response to criticisms of the first game. That means more definition for each each vehicle class, a tweaked boost system, and alternative routes designed to emphasise these changes across more numerous circuits. Impressively, the developer also finds time to repatriate split-screen racing after the former genre staple's spell in the downloadable wilderness.
This is always-on racing, another 16 tracks of constantly fighting for grip, dodging obstacles, searching out the optimal route, and straining for speed across grass, mud, rock and water, where you can never resort to autopilot because smashing your vehicle up inevitably follows, and having to rebuild speed is a price too high to pay often and still succeed. Making the most of your vehicle's turbo boost is still vital, and fiery lava levels and pooled water elsewhere play into the way you approach each track. Water has implications that taper from the biggest to the smallest vehicle classes, uncorking relentless top speed for big rigs ploughing the pacific surf and easing but not eliminating the heat build-up in other, faster classes like bikes and racing trucks, while nearby lava accelerates overheating considerably.
MotorStorm: Pacific Rift dated
Three weeks away.
Sony has announced that PS3 exclusive MotorStorm: Pacific Rift will be released in the UK on 7th November.
MotorStorm and BIA demos on PSN
DLC for TW09, EoJ, other abbreviations.
Sony has updated the PlayStation Store with PS3 demos of MotorStorm: Pacific Rift and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, neither of which ask you for a penny.
Plus: soundtrack announced, explained.
Sony America has announced that the MotorStorm Pacific Rift demo will be released for free on PlayStation Store this Thursday, 16th October.
Elemental, my dear Watson.
Elemental, my dear Watson.
MotorStorm 2 ploughing into October
In the US. Euro date lost in bushes.
Sony will be unleashing MotorStorm: Pacific Rift on the North American public from 28th October, but Europe has lost its date in the bushes.
MotorStorm: Pacific Rift demo details
The contents of this week's taster.
Sony has confirmed the contents of the MotorStorm: Pacific Rift demo due to be distributed to Qore subscribers in the US and randomly selected European PSN users starting this Thursday, 11th September.
The track you get to play is Rain God Spires - an Air Zone track that takes you along a bumpy coastal mountain circuit with plenty of ups and downs to highlight the game's massive draw distance.
There's no online play in the demo, but you will be able to play it in two-player split-screen as well as single-player.
Truckulent.
Given Evolution's strong and oft-overlooked history developing rally games, it was no surprise when MotorStorm skidded into view on a slick foundation of variable surfaces; specifically, surfaces that remembered your path through them, bearing the scars to those who followed. But it was a surprise that it wracked up so much debt to the likes of SSX.
Randomly selected European gamers to receive US MotorStorm 2 demo
No need to pay for Qore over here.
Randomly selected European PlayStation 3 owners will be able to get their hands on an upcoming demo of MotorStorm: Pacific Rift previously thought to be exclusive to US gamers who bought an episode of PSN show Qore.
Tropical dirt and volcanic scenery.
Tropical dirt and volcanic scenery.
Jungle fever.
The lengths some people will go to for a laugh. Paul Hollywood, garrulous creative director of MotorStorm Pacific Rift - you might remember him from Tom's preview - knows all about it. He put Evolution, developer of the Sony-published PS3 racing sequel, through months of painstaking work and agonising waiting just so he could relive memories of a misspent youth.
Playing along with Evolution's creative director Paul Hollywood.
MotorStorm! It's the bad boy of off-road racing games, and now with monster trucks! And a creative director called Paul Hollywood! Who slags off competitors during David Reeves's PlayStation Day speech! "This is not Redneck Racing, Baja or rally," he told the audience, which sounds like fighting talk to us, and we should know - we start fights all the time. "It wasn't putting them down," Hollywood tells Eurogamer afterwards, as we shove people off a cliff Coyote Revenge-style to get in front of him. "We exist in a genre all of our own... I have a lot of time for those other racing games - obviously I've played them and I've learned from them - but I just want to say we like to think of ourselves as unique."
MotorStorm 2 demo before launch
Game to be locked at 30fps in 720p.
Evolution Studios plans to release a playable demo of MotorStorm Pacific Rift prior to the game's launch in autumn.
"Yes, there'll be a downloadable demo on the PSN Store before launch," Evolution creative director Paul Hollywood told Eurogamer at Sony's PlayStation Day event last night.
Asked to elaborate, he said: "Autumn 2008 is when we're coming out. I don't know the date or what we're going to do with the demo - that'll be forthcoming."
Fun in the tropical sun.
Fun in the tropical sun.
New MotorStorm 2 details emerge
New subtitle, AI, monster trucks.
More of the sequel to hit PS3 racer MotorStorm has been revealed at the SCEE PlayStation Day conference.
Titled MotorStorm Pacific Rift, it's said to be no ordinary sequel. According to creative director Paul Hollywood the game will feature "ultra-aggressive AI" and loads of attack maneouvres. The environment will act as "a dangerous and unpredictable foe".
"The island is now your greatest enemy, challenging you to hack your way through thick vegetation; teeter on the edge of towering cliffs; plough through tropical waters; and escape the deadly volcanic interior," Hollywood said.
PlayStation Gamers Day content revealed
MotorStorm 2 gets a name.
Sony has provided a list of all the games being shown at its PlayStation Gamers Day taking place later today.
16-player online, first rendered trailer.
Sony has officially unveiled MotorStorm 2 with a brief trailer and some information echoing the stuff leaked earlier this week, and says it's out on Blu-ray this autumn.
The trailer, which you can see on the SCEA blog, is comprised of rendered footage - something Sony has confirmed to Eurogamer - and is designed to give us an idea of where we'll be going in this one.
The answer to that question being, as the press release puts it, a "solitary tropical paradise in the Pacific Ocean", rather than the previous game's MotorStorm Festival in Monument Valley. This new location throws up very different tracks with "thick swamps, dense jungle, towering peaks and steaming volcanoes" to traverse.
MotorStorm 2 steering for Christmas
Set in the Tropics.
Sony plans to unleash a MotorStorm sequel on us this Christmas, if you believe the BBC and its words.
Evolution wants MotorStorm to dominate
"We'd never aim any lower."
MotorStorm developer Evolution Studios has said that it wants to "dominate reaction racing for a long time".
Bargain.
Sony's acquisition of MotorStorm developer Evolution Studios and its PSP satellite Bigbig Studios cost the company GBP 16 million (EUR 22.9m / USD 32.6m), GamesIndustry.biz reports.
