Opening Glastonbury, Maximo Park took to the Queen’s Head Stage at 4.30pm Thursday after crowds had been gathering for hours in advance blocking all thoroughfares to other fields. It was a great start to a great festival!

Thursday saw rain overnight providing us all with the mud we wanted so that our new wellies were not a wasted purchase. But like all good festivals, the weather doesn’t put a dampner on the festival goers. With the dance village being one of only a handful of area’s open it was the place to be for the ultimate re-forming of East 17 followed by a night of dancing.

As the weather got better over the weekend the revellers were definitely getting worse through the debilitating lack of sleep as each night became a longer dance fest.

Saturday night was Guilty Pleasures night in the Queen’s Head stage and Ian King, the winner of the Road To Glastonbury SingStar performance, really got the crowd going as he sang All Night Long, by Lionel Richie and finished with Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen. It’s not often you can say you’ve sang on stage at Glastonbury in front of about 2000 people so we must give Ian a massive congratulations (Vodcast link to follow soon so you can see his performance).

(more…)

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Update: 20 July 2009
Hello! Great news – the new PSN Trophy features are now live! To compare your trophies with your Friends in the new leaderboard, go to eu.playstation.com, sign-in using your PSN Online ID then head over to My PlayStation Network / My Trophies. Enjoy

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Hi everyone. My name is Emmanuel (or “Manu” as everybody calls me) and I’m the Portal Manager here at SCEE, which means that I look after eu.playstation.com.

Back in March this year we released new PSN functionality on eu.playstation.com, in particular the ability to directly check your Trophies and the status’ of your friends on the website, plus a new Trophy-friendly version of the Portable ID.

Already more than half a million of you have enjoyed these new features and continued to update your Portable ID on a regular basis, so thank you very much for your support.

Since the launch of the PSN channel, we’ve been listening to the community in order to plan further enhancements to the section and I’m happy to say that from mid-July you’ll be able to enjoy two great new and much-requested features on eu.playstation.com…

First up is the new “My Trophies – Compare with your friends” page, which is fairly self-explanatory but will enable you to line up your Trophy collection alongside that of your PSN Friends.

Many of you also requested a Leaderboard, so you can see how you rank against your PSN Friends, and whether you’ve moved up, down or stayed in the same spot. So here’s a look at the new Leaderboard:

This is still work in progress and the design of these pages might change slightly, but as we get closer to the launch of these new features we’ll let you know more details on how they’ll work and the exact release date.

Back in March I said this is just the start of new exciting ways of enjoying your PSN world and it still is: keep an eye on  eu.playstation.com for even more new features coming soon. I’m also keen to get ideas and feedback from you, so don’t hesitate to post your comments here on the Blog or into the Forums.
On a final and separate note, I just wanted to remind you to keep your PSN sign in details safe: never tell anyone else your PSN Sign-In ID (email address) or password, and only use these details to log-in to official PlayStation websites.

See you soon on eu.playstation.com.

Manu

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Last week Sony let me tell you a little bit about Monster Hunter Freedom Unite and, more importantly, The Gathering Hall. If you recall, The Gathering Hall will be a drop-in centre for anyone that plays Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. Today I want to tell you a little more about The Gathering Hall, especially in light of the confusion in some of the comments in the last post.

Unfortunately, as the building is being decorated days before the opening I don’t have any imagery to share with you right now, but I can tell you that it’s going to be at 121 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0EW. It’ll be open seven days a week, from 10am till 8pm (until 10pm on a Thursday), and will be accessible to anyone who has a PSP and a copy of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. It’s generously-sized and can fit several hundred people over three floors so you’ll always find someone to play with (including our staff, who are all keen Hunters). Most importantly it’s absolutely free.

Although we’ll be celebrating the grand opening on Friday 3rd July it’s my pleasure to be able to announce a sneak preview event on Thursday 2nd July that’s especially for you guys! The day before we open to the public we’ll be giving readers of this blog the chance to see the Gathering Hall early. You’ll be able to see some of the stunning Monster Hunter graffiti art on the walls and shop front and also get your hands on exclusive downloadable quests that won’t be available anywhere else. There’ll also be secret goodies for Monster Hunter fans and refreshments served. But mostly it’s about playing Monster Hunter the way it’s supposed to be played – with other people. And in a stunning Monster-Hunter-themed building at that.

Would you like to join us? If so, email your answer to the clue below to competitions@community.eu.playstation.com “Monster Hunters Unite” in the subject line and the following information in the body of your email:

• Your answer
• Your full name
• Your date of birth
• Your PSN Online ID (if you have one)
• Confirmation that you own a PSP and a copy of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

Full terms and conditions are here.

Here’s the clue: You’re in the Great Forest on the trail of a fast Monster. From the tracks and the rusty-brown feathers left behind, you can tell that it is a bird-like creature and, as you start to catch-up with it, you see sleeping creatures lying around the trail.

Which Monster are you tracking? Consulting the Encyclopedia Gigantica might help.

Remember: email your answer to the address above; don’t put any spoilers into the comments.

Sony’s team of crack blog technicians will be on hand to select the lucky invitees for this event so flattering me personally will not necessarily help, but I don’t think it will harm your chances either

Thanks and good luck!

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It’s been almost exactly one month since we launched the PlayStation.Blog on Thursday 28 May. In those few weeks, we’ve had great fun bringing you news from E3, developer previews and interviews, PS Home updates, PlayStation Store and SingStore releases, game trailers and screenshot galleries, and oh so much more.

So a big “thank you” to all of our Blog contributors who’ve posted these updates and responded to your questions: and, of course to you guys – the commenters, readers, Twitter-followers, Viddler-viewers, and everybody else who has shown their support and helped make our first month such a success.

But where do we go from here? Looking ahead, we’re still on track to launch the new language versions of the Blog before gamescom, the videogame festival and games industry trade fair that’s running between 19-23 August in Cologne, Germany. As with E3, you can expect us to be at the show to provide you with daily updates on everything that’s going on.

In the meantime, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the Blog so far – what you’ve particularly liked, or even anything that’s left you wondering “huh?” – and what you’d like to see from us in the future. I’ve seen some requests for more interviews with the Studios and more screenshot exclusives, similar to our WipEout HD Fury update a while back – use the comments below to moot your ideas and suggestions, and we’ll see what we can do!

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You might have already seen a few bits of news around the ‘net and rumours on forums about this, but here’s the confirmation we’ve all been waiting for from the Uncharted developers:

Nathan Drake Heading to Hollywood

Posted by Evan Wells // Co-President, Naughty Dog

News in Hollywood travels fast! I am happy to confirm that it is indeed true, Sony Computer Entertainment has signed a deal with Columbia Pictures for a movie adaptation of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and it will be produced by Avi Arad, Charles Roven, Ari Arad and Alex Gartner. We have been working with Avi and the folks and Columbia for quite some time and look forward to sharing additional details on the film in the short future. Obviously we designed the game to be a cinematic experience and we too can’t wait to see it on the big screen.

So, who do you think should play Nathan Drake?

I loved Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, so can’t wait to see the game recreated on the big screen. But as for the question “Who should play Nathan Drake?”, wow, that’s a killer! Nolan North is the actor who plays and voices Nathan in the Uncharted games, so he could be great choice. What do you guys think?

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