Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood has been nominated for seven GAME British Academy Video Game Awards.

Along with Call of Duty: Black Ops, Brotherhood is up for Action, Artistic Achievement, Multiplayer, Technical Innovation and Use of Audio awards. Assasin’s Creed is also nominated for Best Game and Gameplay, with Black Ops also in the Story category.

That puts Black Ops at six nominations, the same as Sony’s Heavy Rain, which is eligible for Artistic Achievement, Best Game, Gameplay, Original Music, Story and Technical Innovation. continue to read »

Sony formally revealed the heavily-rumored PSP2 in Japan today. The device has been codenamed NGP for “next generation portable.” It is set for release by the end of 2011. Pricing information was not provided.

Details

NGP will use a new game medium, a small flash memory based card, dedicated for NGP software titles. The cards will store full game titles and add-on game content or save data. Sony notes that they’ll be able to provide higher capacity cards in the future to allow developers to store more game data. The device also supports PlayStation Network Trophies.

The NGP contains a touch screen on top and a touch pad on the bottom. This will allow players to interact with games through “touch, grab, trace, push and pull” moves of the fingers.

Release Dates

Sadly, the release date and price were not revealed. However, Sony did say that the NGP would be out for the 2011 holiday season.

Games

The NGP’s debut party saw Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet and Call of Duty take the stage, but most were just tech demos. So far, more than 10 third-parties are listed a supporting the NGP.

Interface

NGP, the successor to the PlayStation Portable, is getting an all-new interface. Dubbed LiveArea, the program acts as a hub page for games, and like the XMB before it, LiveArea allows users to hop between the different parts of the PlayStation space.

The best ‘PlayStation Phone’ pics yet have appeared online – and the device definitely looks set to use Sony’s gaming brand.

The device – of which the man in these photos has two (announcement soon?) – appears to be running a version of Android 2.3.

It’s the first time we’ve seen the PS Phone (or whatever it’ll end up being called) with PlayStation-themed and Xperia engravings, plus refined touch surfaces.

Source: Engadget

Japan’s PSP sales figures shot up last week, thanks to the release of the new Monster Hunter, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd.

The game sold 2,146,467 copies in its first five days of availability, helping lift PSP sales from 75,689 units the week prior to 326,639 units, Famitsu reports (via Andriasang).

These figures are recods for PSP in both the harware and software area.

A wise owl has noticed that last year Sony filed for seven patents all of which suggest that the next generation of portable playstation will feature a touch sensitive panel on its underside.

One patent suggests that the front-mounted display precisely reflects actions on the rear panel, overcoming the traditional touchscreen problem that “the user’s fingers often obscure the part that is to be selected.”

Microsoft also seems to have its nose in patents as they have begun patenting variations of touchscreen controls, in this case using ultraviolet light to create a “topography changing layer” which provides varying tactile feedback – such as “serving as a virtual button.”