PS3 Fanboy

[Thanks, jimb!]

Many European gamers have been frustrated by the inexplicable delays of games in Europe. Yes, there are localization issues, but when a title like echochrome, which features very little text, releases weeks after its American counterpart, people seemingly have the right to complain.

Grilled at a recent E3 cocktail, SCEE boss David Reeves told Eurogamer that "every relevant title that SCEA announced for America will also be introduced to the PAL territories - most of them day and date." Even newly revealed titles like Ratchet & Clank: The Quest for Booty (pictured, above) will arrive in Europe ... although a Blu-ray version of that game will be available in PAL regions as well.

MotorStorm Pacific Rift, LittleBigPlanet, Siren: Blood Curse, Resistance 2 are all promised to show up on European PS3 systems before the end of March 2009.

Devil May Cry 4 is up for £20 at play.com and MGS4 can be found for £30 at shopto.net. If you've missed out on either of these gems, then shame on you. Take advantage of these great offers and put that right.

[Thanks Mike_N]

Lots of Euro news today, which is unsurprising, considering the entire North American continent is on holiday. Konami's European PR rep has contacted us to let us know that the Metal Gear Solid 4 soundtrack is now available for purchase on the Official Konami Store. Check out the gallery below for the front cover, back cover and a view of the innards (which can also be seen above). The soundtrack costs £9.99 or €12.95 and includes free shipping.

Unfortunately, while the cover art is very pretty, we're going to suggest that you don't go ahead and buy it. A quick glance at the track list shows only 16 tunes - a far cry short of the 47 on the two-disc Japanese soundtrack. In fact, this is just the Limited Edition soundtrack "taster" disc repackaged for sale separately. Bit sneaky, if you ask us. Pony up the extra cash and get the full soundtrack -- you won't be disappointed.

ThreeSpeech has the scoop on when we can expect Siren: Blood Curse to hit the European PSN Store, as well as how much we will be spending on this episodic horror. We're not sure what Sony's understanding of "episodic" is, but we were expecting something a little bit different to what's been described. Siren will be split into four chapters, each containing three episodes of the game, but the strange part is that all four chapters will be made available on the same day -- July 24th.

I guess we can't complain now that we know we won't have to wait in between episodes, but we can't help but wonder why they've bothered with splitting the game up at all. Why not just release it all as one? When the game releases you'll be able to pick up each chapter for £4.99 (no sign of a price in Euros, sorry!), with all four chapters bundled together for £19.99. Pro tip: Buy them all separately and you'll save 3p. That's three penny sweets!

Yes, you read that correctly. We've just received word from Sony that the long-awaited European release of the DualShock 3 is coming soon. We'll have our hands clasped around the buzzing wonders from Friday the 4th of July and they will cost £39.99 (we've requested a price in Euros too, because we know how much you love those).

There's no word on whether any different colours will be available, so we're going to assumed that you'll have a choice between black and black. You can count on SCEE to announce something so long-awaited without a modicum of pomp or ceremony. Despite the lack of a fanfare, we're happy to see DualShock 3s finally becoming standard everywhere in the world. All that's left is to phase out the SIXAXIS models and start bundling DS3s with all PS3s. Here's hoping.

[UPDATE] To clarify: DualShock 3s will be made available on the 2nd of July on the Continent and on the 4th of July in the UK.

[Via Press Release]

Konami has revealed today that Metal Gear Solid 4 has sold tremendously in Europe since its launch. In less than two weeks a million units of the game have been sold, with strong demand coming from all corners of the continent. A large number has been shipped out to retailers in order to meet the high demand. Meanwhile, only 25,000 limited edition SKUs were made available, all of which barely touched the shelves before being snapped up by eager fans.

Ryan Payton may have been misquoted saying that MGS4 needed to sell a million copies on launch day, but it got us thinking. To be honest we weren't convinced the game would sell that fast, and we certainly never expected to see a million units sell in Europe alone in less than two weeks. Kojima Productions should be proud -- if any game deserves it, it's Metal Gear Solid 4.

So apparently Metal Gear Solid 4 sold pretty well. Are you really surprised? It's currently sitting at the top of the UK charts after having knocked Lego Indiana Jones off the perch. As a result MGS4 is the fastest selling PS3 exclusive in the region and second fastest selling PS3 game (the 1st fastest being GTA IV). It's also worth noticing that the game has beat MGS3 with regards to first-week sales, but has fallen short by 14,000 when compared to MGS2's.

With the PS2 having been out for three years before MGS2's release (whereas the PS3 has been out for only half that), we're very impressed with MGS4's figures so far. Long may it continue.

Jeux France has the scoop on the Metal Gear Solid 4 Limited Edition box for Europe. Previous to this we've priced it, dated it and located its seller and contents, but we've never actually seen it. Thankfully, it looks as great as we hoped. The box contains a copy of MGS4, a making-of Blu-ray, the game's soundtrack and a 6" tall Old Snake figurine. With only 25,000 copies being made available worldwide, we feel this is worthy of the £80 price tag. Hit the jump for a close up on the action figure.

Retailers in the UK are not adhering to the suggested retail price for the Euro Rock Band kit and are selling the whole thing for 40 quid cheaper than it was supposed to. The game disc alone costs a staggering £50 while the instrument set originally tacked on an extra £130. Listening to customer disapproval of such inflated prices, places like Play have dropped the price for the disc down to £39.99 and the instrument set down to £99.99. That's a huge difference with all things considered.

Now, before you get all excited, just remember the PS3 version is yet to come out in Europe and doesn't even have a solid date -- this new pricing scheme is related to the Xbox 360 edition that came out last Friday. However, it should follow logically that the PS3 version, when it gets a release date, would see a similar discount. At least, we're hoping so for the sake of our UK readers.

Sony is announcing today that the Gran Turismo Academy competition, unveiled during PlayStation Day, will be opening soon as well as detailing exactly what will take place over the coming months. The official website is now open for all prospective competitors to check out and registration will be taking place soon. The competition is open to residents of the UK & Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Germany & Austria, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark and the first phase, which begins on June 2nd, will last for seven weeks.

During these seven weeks players can register their PlayStation IDs on the official site, which will give them access to the GT Academy Time Trial within Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. Players will then compete to be the fastest around the Eiger Nordwand track in a Nissan Fairlady 350Z. The twenty fastest racers from each country will go on to phase two, the national finals, which begin in July. These players will then be whittled down to just three per country, who will go on to the final phase: the real world GT Academy at Silverstone on the 25th of August.

The final phase is a real life driving academy. "Competitors will not only have to prove their driving skills in a Nissan GT-R but will also be tested for their mental and physical skills in a series of tests." So make sure you know your stuff. As if that wasn't exciting enough, the two fastest players at the track will go on to complete a four-month training course for their racing license and then race in the 24 hour endurance event in Dubai in January 2009. With a prize like that, it's definitely worth a punt. We'll let you know exactly when registration opens; in the meantime, get practicing.

[Via Press Release]

Sony has confirmed to us today that SingStar Vol 2 will be released in Europe on June 20th. Those lucky Australians will get it on June 19th -- technically almost two days earlier, thanks to the time difference. Vol 2 will feature a new pack of thirty songs, none of which are currently available on the SingStore. Sony is careful to tell us that licensing songs for a disc and licensing for the SingStore are two very different things, so don't expect to see these tunes available for download day and date with Vol 2's release. There's no reason why they won't be up eventually, however.

If you fancy seeing the really rather excellent tracklist for Vol 2 then take a peek after the jump. Sure, changing discs mid-party is a bit of a pain, but Sony has made is as painless as possible. We're particularly excited about the Killers, Kaiser Chiefs and Nirvana tracks. Good stuff, indeed.

Looking forward to some Summer-time quiz gaming on your PS3? You don't have too long to wait as Eurogamer has discovered, via SCEE, that Buzz! Quiz TV will be out in Europe on July 4th. Check out our hands on impressions from Play.com live as well as our huge amount of screenies to whet your appetite. We've enjoyed Buzz! on PS2 in the past, so seeing it come to PS3 along with a load of online bells and whistles so soon has us very excited. As for the US, there's still no word on when it will be released there.

This won't come as a huge shock, we're sure. Metal Gear Solid 4 is out in just over three weeks and we hadn't heard word one about a limited edition gunmetal PS3 bundle for UK. So it comes as no surprise to hear, definitively, that they won't be made available for the region. A Konami UK PR Rep confirmed it with Gamespot yesterday. We're assuming the same will be true for the rest of Europe, but don't quote us on that.

The only MGS4 hardware bundle available comes from SCEE and contains a 40GB black PS3, a copy of the game and a black SIXAXIS controller. Considering Konami UK has been so good to us with other aspects of the MGS4 launch (extra action figure in the LE version and open Metal Gear Online beta for the region) it's a shame they couldn't make it a hat trick and bring the gunmetal PS3 over to Europe.