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Hi everybody! This is Jakub, from Grip Games. Because the launch of our newest game, Atomic Ninjas, is getting closer, we’ve created a Survival Guide for you, which will help you get ready for the merciless world we’ve created.

Those of you who already heard about Atomic Ninjas know that it’s quite different from other seemingly similar games… and the rest of you are going to find out from the new trailer below. Atomic Ninjas is a hilarious, fast-paced, 2.5D multiplayer platformer where you cannot directly kill other players. Instead, you have to push them into various deathtraps, hazards, pitfalls and other general risks to public safety, which we’ve placed all around the game’s seven arenas for your killing pleasure.

This first survival guide trailer gives you three simple rules that will help you become a successful Atomic Ninja.

Rule number one says that you have to be smart and use all the little playthings in the arenas. Traps, moving platforms, air vents, hiding spots… nothing is too malicious in this game. Some arenas are big, open spaces; others are cramped corridors, or something in between. And each has its specific features and tricks for you to discover.

Secondly, as we all know very well, being exposed to deathly doses of radiation gives you Super Powers, and Atomic Ninjas are no exception. There are eight upgradable Super Powers for your ninja use. You can become invisible, super-fast or nearly invincible, for example. We’ve also equipped the ninjas with an arsenal of weapons and gadgets, each having its own unique twist on gameplay. And using all your weapons and Super Powers is key to victory.

The final rule of surviving in the world of Atomic Ninjas is simple: be the toughest, smartest, fastest, and the most malicious player ever — crush your opponents! Your results will be constantly measured up against other players, and also your friends. So make sure you have something to show!

Atomic Ninjas is coming exclusively to PS3 and PS Vita in just a few short weeks. We’ll have details about the release date and pricing really soon. You’ll find them right here on the PlayStation Blog, together with the second survival guide video that will tell you about another hilarious feature of the game, called “Noob Rage.”

Feel free to visit our official page, Facebook, and Twitter profiles to get updates and new content from the world of Atomic Ninjas.

Have fun!

Today's PSN update stocks the store with Overkill's heist-em-up, Payday 2, and WayForward's Ducktales Remastered, a remake of the classic NES platformer. Pre-orders are also now open for Diablo 3, FIFA 14, Lost Planet 3 and Final Fantasy XIV.

PlayStation Plus subscribers can snag their free copy of Runner 2 today and grab its Good Friends DLC at a slight discount. Meanwhile, the PS Vita gets Fruit Ninja, Open Me!, A-Men and Breakquest: Extra Evolution.

The full list of this week's content is available on the PlayStation Blog.

The next free PlayStation Plus game has been lined up for tomorrow: Gaijin Games' Runner 2. The punishing ever-runner will be a free download for PS Plus subscribers after the PlayStation Store update drops.

PlayStation Plus also gets a special bundle including Tomb Raider and select DLC, plus a copy of Quantum Conundrum, for $20.24 tomorrow.

Sony announced August's free lineup last week with Hitman: Absolution. In the remaining weeks of August, PlayStation Plus will add Star Wars Pinball, Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower and Machinarium to the Instant Game Collection.

Hi there! I’m pleased to reveal that our next game, BreakQuest: Extra Evolution, is coming to the North American PlayStation Store this week — for PS Vita!

Here’s a brief history lesson for you. The original game was released back in 2004 on PC by Spain-based Felix Casablancas and Nurium Games. It was the best breakout game of its time, as it featured something very unique to the genre: fully interactive physics. We were big fans of BreakQuest, and when Sony introduced us to PlayStation minis in 2010, we decided to bring BreakQuest to the mini platform last fall with BreakQuest: Extra Evolution, which was quite successful.

Now, we decided to bring BreakQuest: Extra Evolution to PS Vita natively, with new features, a redesigned level selection system, updated graphics, PSN support, and more.

One of the most valuable features of the original BreakQuest was 100 unique levels, each containing its own interactive physics design, layout, art, and sounds. We redesigned them all with better visuals, while still preserving the charm of the originals. Actually, we have 101 levels — there’s one secret one. Try to find it!

We also created 10 boss levels, each serving as a unique mini-game. Boss attacks can have adverse affects on your shuttle, like making it unresponsive, reversing the controls, or even killing the bumpers for a short period of time. Taking down these bosses will require some strategy on your part.

Each boss unlocks a new shuttle, which can be selected from the Shuttle Base menu. In the beginning of BreakQuest: Extra Evolution, you start playing with a basic shuttle, but by defeating bosses you can unlock up to 17 shuttles. The new shuttles comes with activated power-ups: guns, sticky bumpers, rockets, multi-ball, etc. — any of them can help you finish levels faster and get higher scores.

We also supports “near” gifts. Some shuttles are exclusive through near, and there are free ball packs hidden there, too!

One of the new play elements added to BreakQuest: Extra Evolution is the Energy Shield, which can help you keep a ball in play. Once deployed, charging lines begin to cross the screen from left to right until they meet in the middle. Once fully charged, you can activate the shield with the L or R buttons. This shield can be especially helpful when you’re having a hard time keeping the ball in play.

Another new element, the Gravitor, can attract the ball to the shuttle’s bumper with a simple press of Square or Circle.

And of course, there are PlayStation Trophies included in this version of BreakQuest as well, designed to reward players for outstanding performance during play.

With BreakQuest: Extra Evolution, we’re testing out the “Freemium” business model. We believe that this model is perfect for our game. Consider it an advanced demo of sorts, with scoreboards and Trophies working out of the box. By default, BreakQuest comes with 33 balls. When balls run out, you can purchase more ball packs with 100, 200, 500 balls. Also there’s an Infinite Ball unlock. There’s also a mechanism in game to create extra balls by catching ball parts.

We hope you love the new evolution of BreakQuest. You can find more information on our site, or on Twitter.

The HD Remaster of Final Fantasy X and X-2 contains a bonus half-hour audio drama written by series wordsmith Kasushige Nojima, and going by this tease it delves into the events following X-2.

The audio episode also feature new characters and voices, but most importantly, it features Tidus' name pronounced in its technically-correct-but-in-reality-just-plain-wrong way. You'll always be Tie-dus to us, Tidus.

Square Enix also confirmed the Remasters feature over 60 "rearranged and optimized" tracks from the FFX soundtrack. That's lovely and all, but the one thing we're still waiting on is a date; both remasters are scheduled to arrive on PS3 and Vita later this year.

There are a couple of Vita surprises in this week's PSN update for North America, surprise being a befitting quality for both. As revealed on the PlayStation Blog, sales phenomenon Fruit Ninja will creep onto the Sony portable's PS Store tomorrow, joined by augmented reality puzzler Open Me!.

Details on the Vita's version of slice-and-dicer Fruit Ninja are currently sparse, maybe indicating a fairly straight port of the iOS and Android HD iterations. We've reached out to developer Halfbrick Studios for more info.

As for Open Me!, we knew it was coming to North America sometime this year, having first been unveiled in Japan last year. We went hands-on with the curious game at last year's Tokyo Games Show, grappling with how to pry open its AR-displayed boxes, locked away by puzzles guarded with vicious-looking traps - think Fireproof's The Room, but meaner.

Open Me! also has a co-op mode for two Vitas, each player seeing and interacting with the same AR puzzle but from their own perspective. As for what secrets are locked within the boxes of Open Me!, we've no idea - maybe it's more godly powers.

The PlayStation Blog also confirmed the rest of this week's PSN releases, which we'll briefly run through. Payday 2, Mars: War Logs, Thunder Wolves and Ducktales Remastered are all headed to PS3, while the Vita also gets Breakquest freemium follow-up Extra Evolution, and old-school puzzler A-Men, finally coming to North America after being available in Europe since the Vita's launch in February 2012.

Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD, the inevitable remaster of one of the most popular Final Fantasy games and its direct sequel, is shaping up nicely! Square-Enix just released a large number of new screenshots, teasing smooth menus, trophies, summoning and a beautifully colorful Spira.Read more...

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team on the 3DS kicks off the week of new releases, but it has company coming later in the week. Heist-shooter Payday 2 rolls out on three platforms and the Summer of Arcade continues on Xbox Live with Charlie Murder.Read more...

Cory Barlog, who you may know as the BAFTA-winning writer and game director on God of War 2, has returned to Sony Santa Monica after leaving the studio in late 2007. In his half-announcement, half-industry travel diatribe on the PlayStation Blog, Barlog reveals he's already working on a secret project he can't talk about yet - something "freaking huge."

"We're putting together a team as I type this, an Ocean's 11 kind of thing," he wrote on the PlayStation Blog. "We are searching the world high and low for the best of the BEST to come and be on the ground floor of this endeavor."

Balrog joined Sony's Santa Monica Studios in 2003 as animation director on the original God of War. His most recent work involved directing cinematics on Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider reboot.

Zen Studios' music-meets-fighting game KickBeat will launch on Vita and PS3 on September 3. The rhythm game will support PSN's Cross Buy feature, so players that pick up one copy will have access to both versions.

KickBeat tasks players with defeating enemies using timed button-presses to the beat of licensed musical artists such as Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson and Pendulum. The game also features a track generator, which allows players to turn their own music into KickBeat levels.

I initially had some problems with Valhalla Knights 3 with its Sexy Time system. Still, that didn't keep me from clocking in well over 120 hours of gameplay time. Just a 120 hours! Read more...

Kickbeat, Zen Studios' cool-looking music/fighting game, will be out on PS3 and Vita on September 3rd.Read more...

We set up an tough-but-fair Cloudberry Kingdom level and turned our editors loose. See who won, and who gave up in a hail of curse words.

Tomorrow will mark one full year of existence for Sound Shapes and to celebrate this milestone, the game and all its DLC will be half-off until August 13. If you already own the cross-buy enabled PS3 and PS Vita game, you can grab some free DLC - the Car Mini-Album and Entity Pack - by posting in this special thread.

Sound Shapes is a quirky platformer with a distinct musical hook, where players can create and share their own custom levels online. It's a game we absolutely enjoyed, an experience a few of us found to be among the best of 2012.

This week's PSN content jamboree is headlined by a pair of Japanese games: the beautiful beat-em-up Dragon's Crown from Vanillaware and Namco's surprisingly charming JRPG, Tales of Xillia. Rounding out this week's high-profile games is ibb & obb, the long-awaited co-op puzzler with an emphasis on gravity from Sparpweed Games.

PlayStation Plus members can snag a free copy of Hitman: Absolution, which kicks off a solid month of free content on PS Plus. Subscriber discounts extend to the Rayman series today, Escapevektor, Superfrog and more - the full list of content can be seen over on the PlayStation Blog.PSN Tuesday: Tales of Xillia, Dragon's Crown, ibb & obb

Hello everyone!

I hope you’ve been enjoying the free Soul Sacrifice episode “Heretic Savior,” and the new map “Luna Wastes,” that we released on July 23rd via patch 1.20! If you haven’t downloaded that content yet, please update your game to version 1.20 from the LiveArea.

There’s no need to download unlock keys from PlayStation Store to start playing this episode. After installing the update, simply go to Read Journal > Mad Chronicle > Inside Avalon > Fellow Sorcerers > Heretic Savior to play the episode. Download now and find out more about the secret society “Sanctuarium,” and its member “Sympatha!”

But we’re excited to announce that there will be eight more quests and two new boss characters — “Cat Sith” and “Beelzebub” — added today! For this content, be sure to download the free unlock key after the PlayStation Store updates to play these quests.

To access them, go to Mad Chronicle > Inside Avalon > Avalon Pacts > Forgotten Pact > Hour of Cypress. Game progress to a certain point may be required.

Read the back stories of the two new bosses below, and be prepared for some fierce battles!

About the Cat Sith
There once was a small kingdom, and in it lived a mischievous prince. He was the apple of his parents’ eye; he was afforded every luxury. The prince, however, felt nothing but pressure from their lavish attention. He took every chance to slip away from the castle and down into the city.

The city folk knew his face well, though, so it was never long before he was discovered and whisked back home. On one such day, the prince was walking the city’s back alleys when he found a small kitten. From that day on, the prince kept the cat in secret. He envied the kitten. It lived a free life, one that the boy so longed for…

About the Beelzebub
Once there lived an aristocrat of exceptional pride. He left all but the most important matters of his daily life to his servants. “How ought a man of my station be expected to perform such menial tasks?” Such was ever his refrain. But that opulent life would not last forever.

Struck barren by disaster, the fields of his lands produced no grain, nor could his people pay their taxes. The aristocrat was ruined. The fallen noble’s manor soon fell in turn, degrading into a mountain of rubbish. A den of flies. Perhaps due to this squalor, the aristocrat took ill. Still the same refrain continued. “Someone bring me medicine. Someone fetch the finest doctor in the land.” The man’s pride would soon be the death of him…

More to Come!
After these quests and boss characters, there will be more new content added throughout the summer (exact dates subject to change)!

• August 20th: “ The Cobbler Triplets and the Old Master”
• September 3rd: “The Iron Lady’s Tears of Red”
• September 17th: ” The Fall of the Gods”

The August incentives for PlayStation Plus subscribers have been revealed, starting tomorrow with a free copy of Hitman: Absolution. IO Interactive's latest entry in the stealthy kill-em-up series deviates from the established formula, our review says, but offers a "healthy dose of stealth and creative assassinations."

Other free games up for grabs in August are PS3 games Runner 2 and Star Wars Pinball, Machinarium on PS Vita and Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower, compatible with PS Vita and PSP. Tomorrow's PSN update will also yield discounts on Rayman content and a few new games - all of which you can see listed over on the PlayStation Blog.

Good news for fans of grind-tastic dungeon crawler / strategy RPG hybrids: Rainbow Skies is headed to the PlayStation 3 and Vita in 2014. A sequel of sorts to last year's Rainbow Moon, Rainbow Skies promises "countless hours" of content and features new combination attacks and a monster taming system. The game is coming exclusively to PSN and will feature cross-save support, allowing players to begin a game on PS3 and continue it on Vita, or vice versa. Whether the game will be cross-buy is still being determined, publisher Eastasiasoft tells us.

Eastasiasoft also tells us that Rainbow Moon will arrive on Vita later this year. More details will arrive "in the coming weeks." We found Rainbow Moon to be a passable RPG, though its dependence on unrewarding grinding was disappointing.

Hi PlayStation.Blog readers! Well, it’s been six months since we originally revealed that Superfrog was making his return in glorious HD on PS3 and PS Vita, and in that time we’ve been super busy over here at Team17.

We’re really excited to announce that Superfrog HD will launch tomorrow on PSN for $9.99! As a bonus, PlayStation Plus members will receive a 20% discount.

Superfrog HD features 24 reimagined levels based on the original designs, spread out across six differently themed worlds: Magic Woods, Spooky House, A Day at the Circus, History Lesson, Ice Caverns, and Factory Failure. Fans of the original levels needn’t fear — the 24 original levels can be unlocked by winning a spin on the Fruit Machine!

We’ve added several new features for Superfrog HD, including an endless runner mode, Frog Trails, and a Level Editor for players to create their own crazy courses for our favorite amphibian to navigate!

Those playing Superfrog HD on both PS3 and PS Vita can use their Vita as a controller while playing the PS3 version. Doing so will give you the added benefit of uncovering secrets, which are displayed on the PS Vita screen! Go through a portal on the PS3 version, and Superfrog might end up in a hidden area on your Vita!

Similarly, you can move your save file between your PS3 and PS Vita, so you can keep Superfrog moving — even when you’re on the go!

We hope you enjoy Superfrog HD. Don’t forget that if you purchase it on PS3, you get a copy free to play on PS Vita! And vice versa!

Today's release of Pikmin 3 on Wii U, plus Tuesday's Tales of Xillia on PlayStation 3 and Dragon's Crown on PS3 and PS Vita, wake the video game release calendar up from its usual midsummer slumber.Read more...

Hi RPG and indie fans! We’re excited to announce that Rainbow Skies is coming exclusively to PS3 and PS Vita in 2014.

Rainbow Skies is an indirect sequel to our RPG from last year, Rainbow Moon, which was nominated as the “Best Indie Game” in the PSN Gamers’ Choice Awards 2013.

Taking a lot of fan feedback into consideration, we’ve been working on Rainbow Skies for nearly a year and are now eager to tell you more about the project. First, Rainbow Skies is a new game that takes place in a new world, with new characters, monsters, and a story that isn’t linked to its predecessor. The world of Rainbow Skies stretches over two parallel worlds, with strong visual variety, and 50 dedicated background music tracks.

Rainbow Skies is more than just a sequel. We’ll be introducing many new features, including monster taming, an advanced battle system with new combo attacks, new dungeon action elements, a new dialog and emoticon system, new treasure hunt quests, an improved side quest system, explorable buildings, and new mini-games.

Apart from providing the new content and features, we’re absolutely staying true to our roots. Fans of traditional RPG play can once again look forward to turn-based battles, free world and dungeon exploration, extensive character development, and lots of optional goodies. Including the ability to play across both PS3 and PS Vita.

I hope that I’ve sparked your interest in Rainbow Skies! If you have any questions, post them into the comments and I’ll get back to you. For updates, make sure to check out Rainbow Skies’ official website, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Thanks for all your amazing support!

Sony, the company responsible for the walkman, the PlayStation and lots of very odd ads, is trying to sell the PS Vita and PS3 in Argentina. And they are trying to do it with a most unusual tagline.Read more...

Dragon's Crown scaled to heights of 300,000 shipments in its first week at retail, a welcome boost for publisher Atlus amid the financial struggles of its parent company.

Those figures are restricted to Japanese shipments (including download purchases), and could rise dramatically after Tuesday, August 6, when the PS3 and Vita brawler will be available in North America. At the very least the game proved more than popular with our Danny, who deemed Dragon's Crown to be developer Vanillaware's best effort yet.

"While it scales back the complexity that defined Princess Crown and Odin Sphere," said Danny in his four-and-half-stars review, "its focus on deep, varied fighting mechanics make it one of the best beat-em-ups released for any platform in recent years."

As for Atlus, it'll wait to see how the situation with parent company Index shakes out. Index is expected to sell its subsidiary options after effectively filing for bankruptcy protection. Atlus has reassured fans that its games, including Dragon's Crown, are "shipping on time."

Point-and-click survival horror game Lone Survivor has been delayed to September, Curve Studios announced via Twitter. The game's designer, Jasper Byrne, recently noted that Curve Studios' port of the game to PS3 and Vita has led to "hundreds of tiny little changes and improvements." It was originally planned to arrive on Sony's consoles this summer.

Since the game "has a lot of new hidden, dark corners" and "even looks and sounds pretty different," Byrne said the PS3 and Vita version will be known as Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut. Curve Studios said it would "rather release an amazing game later than a good game early."

Sony profitable fiscal 2012 continued into the first quarter of 2013, the company posting a net profit of ¥3.5 billion, which converts to $35 million, for the three months ending in June. The company's modest Q1 profit came on the back of a 13 percent year-on-year rise in revenue, attributed largely to currency exchange gains due to the depreciating yen; on a "constant currency basis," as Sony noted, Q1 revenue saw a year-on-year dip of 3 percent.

Despite the gains on the yen's value, Sony's PlayStation division saw almost zero change in its year-on-year revenue in the first quarter, this due to declining PlayStation hardware sales. The company shipped 1.1 million PS3 units and 0.6 million Vita and PSP units in the three months of Q1, compared to 3.5 million PS3 and PS2 units and 1.6 million portable units for the corresponding period of fiscal 2012. Sony still forecasts it'll ship 10 million PS3 units across the fiscal year ending in March 2014, and 5 million Vita and PSP units.

Research & development on Sony's upcoming console was primarily responsible for a marked increase in the PlayStation division's operating losses, rising to ¥14.8 billion in Q1, or $149 million. The company again declined to post projections for the PlayStation 4, due to launch sometime this holiday.

It took more than two years for BioShock Infinite to go from announcement to release. That’s a pretty long time. But it might be even longer to get Irrational Games’ successful first-person series onto the PlayStation Vita. Why? Studio head Ken Levine says, “I can’t personally green-light the thing myself.”Read more...

Polytron producer Marie-Christine Bourdua said she was surprised to learn Fez 2 was canceled, telling Joystiq she wasn't even in Montreal - the studio's home base - when company co-founder Phil Fish announced the game's fate on Twitter.

"But it's ok," Bourdua told Joystiq at Torontaru July, a new monthly meet-up for game players and developers in Toronto, Canada. "It was weird and special to learn it that way, but I respect and trust Phil a lot, so that's totally fair that he decided that and he has his reasons."

"We learnt it the same minute you did," original Fez programmer Renaud Bédard said, referring to the Fez 2's abrupt cancelation announcement on Saturday.

"The development of Fez 2 is up to him. If he decided [to cancel it] now or he decided it at the end of development, it's easier to cut it out now, than it is to say 'Hey, we've been working on this for years and I'm not feeling able to finish it.' So in that way it just makes more sense," Bédard, who joined Capybara Games at the tail-end of 2012, added.

Sony profitable fiscal 2012 continued into the first quarter of 2013, the company posting a net profit of ¥3.5 billion, which converts to $35 million, for the three months ending in June. The company's modest Q1 profit came on the back of a 13 percent year-on-year rise in revenue, attributed largely to currency exchange gains due to the depreciating yen; on a "constant currency basis," as Sony noted, Q1 revenue saw a year-on-year dip of 3 percent.

Despite the gains on the yen's value, Sony's PlayStation division saw almost zero change in its year-on-year revenue in the first quarter, this due to declining PlayStation hardware sales. The company shipped 1.1 million PS3 units and 0.6 million Vita and PSP units in the three months of Q1, compared to 3.5 million PS3 and PS2 units and 1.6 million portable units for the corresponding period of fiscal 2012. Sony still forecasts it'll ship 10 million PS3 units across the fiscal year ending in March 2014, and 5 million Vita and PSP units.

Research & development on Sony's upcoming console was primarily responsible for a marked increase in the PlayStation division's operating losses, rising to ¥14.8 billion in Q1, or $149 million. The company again declined to post projections for the PlayStation 4, due to launch sometime this holiday.

If you're going to make a video pitching your new indie game, might as well go full-infomercial with it. Read more...

Vanillaware's tribute to classic side-scrolling action role-playing games has garnered a lot of attention over the past few years for its exaggerated, overly-sexualized character designs. An hour into playing the actual game, I stopped noticing. Read more...