At risk of injecting a double dose of envy into the comments thread, as you read this, Japanese gamers have their hands grasped firmly around PlayStation Vita and I was there to capture the excitement of the launch event. I also met up with a few of our top execs and Japan Studio developers (including the minds behind Everybody’s Golf and Gravity Daze) so look our for interviews between now and the European launch on 22 February.

I’ll have lots of photos and info to share on Monday when I am back in the office but, in the meantime, let’s all admire this beautiful view over Tokyo, the city where PlayStation was born in 1995.

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This week, Final Fantasy XIII-2 for PS3 is hitting stores across Japan with critical praise, garnering perfect scores from respected gaming magazines Famitsu and Dengeki PlayStation. Granted, the original FFXIII is the best-selling PS3 title in Japan by a wide margin, but this direct sequel isn’t resting on the laurels of its predecessor. For starters, it will offer a dynamic narrative, addressing one of the main complaints about FFXIII – linearity. The new game also has a darker and more serious tone, in line with the conclusion of the previous game, putting the glitter and glam of FFX-2.

When FFXIII-2 reaches stores in February, making it the fastest localization cycle among numbered episodes of the franchise – it will also deliver an improved combat system, an area full of mini games, branched dialogue trees with NPCs, and even multiple endings based on your time-travelling journey. To learn more about how Square Enix plans to “exceed Final Fantasy XIII in every aspect,” we reached out to Motomu Toriyama, who is reprising his role as director for Final Fantasy XIII-2. Read on for more details about Serah’s quest to find out what happened to her sister Lightning.
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Coming this February, EA SPORTS FIFA on PS Vita will be the first true next generation sports experience…right in the palm of your hand. With console gameplay and HD graphics, FIFA delivers the largest feature set ever created by EA SPORTS for a handheld device.

The same physics-based, data driven technology that powers FIFA gameplay on PlayStation 3 drives FIFA on the Vita across eight different game modes, including authentic 11 versus 11, Be A Pro, Tournament Mode with over 50 real-world competitions, a full in-depth Career Mode, and head-to-head online. The game definitely looks and plays like the award-winning FIFA console game.

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First of all, we’d like to thank the PlayStation.Blog and its readers for supporting Amy for several months now. As we get closer to the release of the game, which will be early next year, we wanted answer a question that has been asked many times: what kind of survival-horror game is Amy? How do players cope with enemies? What kind of weapons can you use? To answer those questions and more, we created the following video just for you:

As you can see, Amy is not about giving you huge power against enemies and giving players an action-oriented experience. Amy goes back to the roots of the survival-horror genre, and provides edge-of-your-seat suspense that will keep you wondering what’s around the next corner.

While most games in the genre choose to either be action- or combat-based, or instill fear by making players feel vastly less powerful than their enemies, Amy combines the best of both worlds. Paul Cuisset, the man behind Amy (and classic games such as Flashback), wanted to a new dimension, which is the cooperation between Amy and Lana .

Playing as Lana, you will have to decide whether you want to hide and avoid combat, or fight by using whatever weapons you can find. As highlighted in the last video, you can use Lana’s vulnerability to the infection to walk amongst enemies undetected, or use Amy’s special abilities, which you can see a glimpse of at the end of this video.

This makes you consider many options before trying to fight: hiding, asking Amy to go away, or using her special powers to defeat your opponents. But as we like to encourage players to exercise their right to choose, if you want to fight, go ahead and try. You won’t always be able to win, but those who don’t try will never know…

If you want to be get all the news about Amy, videos and goodies, please follow us on Facebook and click on Like. Thank you.

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Sorry for the title, just my attempt at Skyrim based humor… actually made myself laugh, sad I know… Anyway…

Merry Christmas one and all!!! As the sleigh bells are well and truly jingling and the chestnuts are pretty much perfectly roasted it seems like we are all set up for a truly magical Christmas. We have already heard from many many of our users using our Christmas Zone to kick start the festive feeling and because we want to spread the festive love as far as we can, we would like to show you that we have a Christmas playlist for everyone, plus everything non festive too of course!

SPOTLIGHT ZONE

From old to new from classic to alternative we have Christmas magic to suit all tastes! Below is just a taste of what we have!

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