Sony and Microsoft have both said that it will be difficult to put the system in place in a short period of time, but as of the 18th of November, we know that Sony will be blocking access to PSN for those under 16, and will not allow new accounts to be made for underaged players.

Microsoft is a different story. They don’t collect age data for all of their players, so will have a hard time sorting out the underaged from the rest of their players. Microsoft may just completely shut down Xbox Live in South Korea during the shutdown time frame, in order to comply.

[via Kotaku via Ubergizmo]

The new Terms of Service force two things significant new things on you. First, Sony wants you to agree that you will not be involved in a class-action suit against them. The lawsuit line is one at a time only in PSN-land. Sony also wants you to agree that it gets to pick the arbitrator of the suit if you were to sue them individually.

The wild part is that if you don’t agree to the terms you face being banned from entering PSN. Apparently, you can opt out of agreeing to the new TOS by snail-mailing Sony a letter stating as much. That little tidbit is reportedly hidden in the fine print though and most won’t see it. I wonder what they will do if a kid too young to make a binding decision agrees to the TOS. Do any of you actually read the full TOS before you accept terms?

[via BBC]

I just received the following e-mail from Sony:

Valued PlayStation(R)Network/Qriocity Customer:

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011,
certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account
information was compromised in connection with an illegal and
unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this
intrusion, we have:

1) Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;

2) Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full
and complete investigation into what happened; and

3) Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our
network infrastructure by rebuilding our system to provide you
with greater protection of your personal information.

We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding and goodwill
as we do whatever it takes to resolve these issues as quickly and
efficiently as practicable.

Although we are still investigating the details of this incident,
we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following
information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country,
email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login,
and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data,
including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip),
and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may
have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your
dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have
been obtained. While there is no evidence at this time that credit
card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have
provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity,
out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit
card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have
been obtained.

For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email,
telephone and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive
information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email,
asking for your credit card number, social security number or other
personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information,
you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking. When the PlayStation
Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that
you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation
Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or
accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them as well.

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we
encourage you to remain vigilant, to review your account statements and
to monitor your credit reports. We are providing the following information
for those who wish to consider it:
- U.S. residents are entitled under U.S. law to one free credit report annually
from each of the three major credit bureaus. To order your free credit report,
visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call toll-free (877) 322-8228.

- We have also provided names and contact information for the three major U.S.
credit bureaus below. At no charge, U.S. residents can have these credit bureaus
place a “fraud alert” on your file that alerts creditors to take additional steps
to verify your identity prior to granting credit in your name. This service can
make it more difficult for someone to get credit in your name. Note, however,
that because it tells creditors to follow certain procedures to protect you,
it also may delay your ability to obtain credit while the agency verifies your
identity. As soon as one credit bureau confirms your fraud alert, the others
are notified to place fraud alerts on your file. Should you wish to place a
fraud alert, or should you have any questions regarding your credit report,
please contact any one of the agencies listed below:

Experian: 888-397-3742; www.experian.com; P.O. Box 9532, Allen, TX 75013
Equifax: 800-525-6285; www.equifax.com; P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
TransUnion: 800-680-7289; www.transunion.com; Fraud Victim Assistance Division,
P.O. Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790

- You may wish to visit the website of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission at
www.consumer.gov/idtheft or reach the FTC at 1-877-382-4357 or 600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580 for further information about how to protect
yourself from identity theft. Your state Attorney General may also have advice
on preventing identity theft, and you should report instances of known or
suspected identity theft to law enforcement, your State Attorney General,
and the FTC. For North Carolina residents, the Attorney General can be
contacted at 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; telephone
(877) 566-7226; or www.ncdoj.gov. For Maryland residents, the Attorney
General can be contacted at 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202;
telephone: (888) 743-0023; or www.oag.state.md.us.

We thank you for your patience as we complete our investigation of this
incident, and we regret any inconvenience. Our teams are working around the
clock on this, and services will be restored as soon as possible. Sony takes
information protection very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that
additional measures are taken to protect personally identifiable information.
Providing quality and secure entertainment services to our customers is
our utmost priority. Please contact us at 1-800-345-7669 should you have any
additional questions.

Sincerely,

Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment

Thanks, Sony, you’re officially on the shit list of 77 million of PSN (and dozens of) Qriocity members. And to the asshats who hacked into Sony’s network, you suck too.

As fans of the comic can see, the game’s graphics are very similar to O’ Malley’s art. Astute citizens of the Internet will also be familiar with the graphics –  Paul Robertson, who made Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight and Kings of Power 4 Billion%, is supervising the art direction for the game.

Although it should come as no surprise, the game seems to be targeted towards people who’ve already read the comic book. There will be four playable characters, Scott Pilgrim, his girlfriend, and Scott’s bandmates. Each character has a unique set of moves, which can be augmented by leveling them up and by buying stuff at “Rivery City Ransom-esque” shops. It’s not all brawling either; one sequence of the game involved a “Guitar Hero-style bass-off”.  Ubisoft also promises lots of unlockable content, like characters, modes and levels, so all in all this game should have quite a bit of replay value.

Check out Game Informer for the full article. I really don’t get why this is a timed exclusive though – the interest for the game will be at its peak in August, when the movie is released. Why risk losing buyers by releasing the Xbox version later? Or will this game be enough for Scott Pilgrim fans who don’t already have a PS3 to give in and get one?

As I’m sure some of you will remember, Earthworm Jim first came out in 1994.  This remake not only upgrades the game’s cartoony graphics, it also has additional levels, and even four-player coop action.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Four ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-space-cyber-suit-wearing worms? Queen Slug-for-a-Butt won’t know what hit her slug butt. Follow Jim on twitter for more details. Yep, that’s how awesome he is – a worm that tweets.

Things are simple here. You’ve got four characters (why does that seem so familiar?), ten different weapons, and a life that lasts only so long as you can preserve it. That means killing a lot of zombies, but really, what else are you going to do in the middle of an apocalypse–knit?

Zombie Apocalypse will be available this week for about ten bucks, or whatever the equivalent price is in irritating game-console-currency.

[via Joystiq]

In Trine, a wizard, a thief, and a knight are stuck together fighting an army of undead. Throughout the game, the player can switch off between heroes, using their strengths to help traverse puzzles, platforms, and legions of, well, undead. Because the legions of the undead are always the bad guys.

Trine got such a good reception that the PC game is expanding; this week, it moves to the aforementioned PSN store–at least, in Europe–and Atlus is working on a version for the Xbox 360, so you’ll have a chance to wield your characters in a variety of ways if you are so inclined. Trine sports lush visuals and well-received gameplay, so it might be something worth looking into.

[via IndieGames]

While Fat Princess has two single-player modes, this game really shines in multiplayer, in a 32-player 2D fracas centered on capturing, instead of flags, fat princesses. Unfortunately for  you (or perhaps your opponents), cake grows on trees around these parts, and fat, cake-munching princesses are a lot harder to maneuver than flags.

Start stuffing princesses this Thursday on PlayStation 3.

[via Joystiq]

flower (lower case “f” preferred) is game-as-art-project (or perhaps vice versa) in which players guide petals through abstract landscapes. Each “level” is a new dream, with its own rules and objectives, and there’s no handy, helpful guide to explain what those are. In dreams, we drift along, struggling to gain a grip; in flower, we do the same. If that doesn’t sound like much of a game to you, that’s okay. As flower is a PlayStation Network release, the downloadable game will be less than $20, and maybe even less than $10 (though that’s unlikely).

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

flower has been scheduled for a release in the United States on February 12, though pricing has not yet been determined, and we can expect one more title, at least, from ThatGameCompany on the PlayStation Network.

To what end do you roll and stretch? There’s no telling, but it looks like good destructive fun from this clip, so perhaps rolling and stretching is a purpose unto itself.

Oh, to live such a simple life.

Noby Noby Boy is currently set for release via the PlayStation Network early next year, and while it has not yet been priced for North America, the European download will drop at the ridiculously-low rate of 3.99€.

[via Game|Life]

Spotted at the recent 2008 Tokyo Game Show, Gomibako is best described as “Tetris with Trash”. But it’s not just another rehash of the classic block-stacking puzzle format. Nope. Instead of dropping blocks, you’ve got to carefully arrange piles of (difficult to stack) falling debris in order to clear the board.

In addition to some beautiful graphics, the best part of the game is its amazing physics model. Every object in the game is completely 3-dimensional and has life-like properties. This makes the gameplay so much more dynamic than the classic colored block puzzle games of yore.

Items can crush each other, and you have to think quick to grab heavier objects to smash more fragile objects before the trash bin fills up. Items can be bent, broken, get wet and even catch fire and burn. Cool. To check out some actual gameplay footage, check out the 1up video clip below:

Gomibako is expected to be a downloadable game on the PlayStation Network, so you won’t even have to head to the store to get your hands on it when it comes out. No word yet on a release date (or if it’s even slated for North America). I’ve certainly got my fingers crossed for this one.

[via PS3 Maven and Blu-Ray Forum]