December is definitely a month for celebrations. The festive season is upon us, and it’s also Home’s first birthday! We’ve got some great new updates for you this week:

The first anniversary of the PlayStation Home is rapidly approaching, and we’re rewarding everyone who has joined us in making Home an amazing community. As our treat to you, we will be giving away the fantastic new Tree House personal space for free. Available from Home Estates from this Thursday, the Tree House will be free for a period of two weeks only. The Tree House is sure to be a great addition to your estates portfolio, so make sure to get yours!

Once you have your Tree House, you may want to check out the new MotorStorm: Pacific Rift camp personal space. This is the perfect beachfront campsite for you to unwind in after a day of brutal off-road racing.

Complete with a dance tent, and your own personal dock for any incoming nautical traffic. Let’s hope the volcano in the distance doesn’t erupt any time soon. Available from tomorrow, in the Estates section of the Shopping Centre.

Not content with celebrating our anniversary, we’re also celebrating the festive season with the opening of the Winter Wonderland space. This space will evolve over time as you help Santa’s bumbling elves complete the festive decorations. Make sure to visit Santa in his grotto regularly so you don’t miss out on any of the mini-games. Finally, being the festive season, you’ll also find plenty of gifts and other rewards that will make this space somewhere to visit daily.
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Rate: (Average: 4.57 out of 5)

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As a treat for players of Motorstorm Arctic Edge, our team at Bigbig Studios is going on line tomorrow to play against the fans. It’s your chance to play Multiplayer against the guys who designed the game, built the tracks, and coded the physics on the brutal off-road racer.

We’ve got a spread of Motorstorming skills – from Andy F who’s very very fast, to me, who can just about get around the track without crashing So there should be something fun for everyone.

We’ll be setting up games on our favourite tracks, including Time Tickers. The event takes place on the EU server at 17:30 GMT until 19:00 GMT.

We’ll also be doing a live commentary on Twitter – check out twitter.com/bigbigstudios for live updates on how the carnage is going.

Rate: (Average: 4.03 out of 5)

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MotorStorm Arctic Edge – Multiplayer Mayhem and Cool Customisations Here at Bigbig, we love multiplayer games, so when we created Motorstorm Arctic Edge we really wanted to give PSP owners something cool to play against their friends.

Race against the World!
We did something a bit different for a PSP racing game – as well as ad-hoc, you can play against anyone in the world with internet multiplayer. You can race on any track in the game against 6 people, you won’t believe the crazy routes people will take to win! Also there’s Time Ticker where it’s all about staying close to the front of the pack – the first person to 999 points gets the win.

All the races are ranked, and you get rewarded for your achievements – beat a full grid, or more experienced drivers and you’ll rake in extra points. As you get better at racing you’ll climb up the leader board, and probably meet some Legendary players along the way. If you want to see the current standings, take a look on vip.motorstorm.com.

Time Trial Tactics
Another way to compete with MotorStorm players around the world is by working your way up the time trial rankings. The aim is to get the fastest lap on the track of your choice – you can race against the times set by the Bigbig team, or download the communities fastest times and ghosts. The advantage of downloading someone else’s ghost lap is that you can spot all the shortcuts, hopefully find a way to gain a few seconds and then speed ahead.

How to Look Good Racing
So that’s the racing aspect, but true Motorstorm legends want to look good whilst they’re boosting past the opposition. Sure, the default vehicles look good, but if you want to stand out, you need to create your own stylised set of vehicles!

The further you get through festival mode, the more cool customisations you can unlock. If you head over to the Garage and customise your favourite vehicle, you can use all your unlocked parts, sponsor logos and patterns to make something really unique. You can do the obvious, by changing wheels and spoilers, but if you really want to stand out, you can go into more depth.

Freak or Unique?
Not everyone’s spotted the depth of the visual customisation, so here’s a tip: From the Paint Job menu, you can scroll right to choose an interesting Pattern, then press triangle to choose some stand-out colours. If you go right again, you can choose the Side Logo and Top Logo and position them how you want – for example, putting shark’s teeth on the front of the vehicle, or stretching your country’s flag across the rear. Whether you create something sleek and stylish, or aggressively ugly, the design will be unique to you.

And finally, if you really want to stand out online, if you can track down a copy of the Collector’s Edition, you get the exclusive Mirage Rapide rally car to play with.

The Arctic Edge Challenge – Beat the developers!
For those of you who like a challenge, the Bigbig team will be racing online on Motorstorm Arctic Edge on the evening of Wednesday 28th October. There are no physical prizes, but imagine the kudos you’ll get for beating us at our own game! Check the Blog on Tuesday 27th October for the full details.

Rate: (Average: 4.33 out of 5)

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Welcome to our second blog post to celebrate the launch of Motorstorm Arctic Edge. As a treat for the millions of Motorstorm fans, The team here at Bigbig decided we’d let you into some exclusive secrets about the game. This is the first time we’ve let this info leak out – but remember, you didn’t hear it from us .

Skills = Badges
The badges look cool, and are the equivalent to trophies for experts at Arctic Edge. Some of them need skill e.g. Win a race without boosting and others, such as getting a 1080 spin on the bobsleigh corner are just plain fun. The question is – can you get them all?

15 More Maniacs
Some of you may have noticed that the enemy racers in Arctic Edge have real personalities, and you’ll see them challenging you over and over again in the Festival. Each of the 15 maniac racers has their own recognisable vehicles, so when you get smashed into the wall or overtaken on the last corner, you know who to blame!

You may also have spotted the empty slots in your character select, and if you put the time into getting golds in the Festival, all15 characters and all their paintjobs will be yours.

Show it off with Photo Mode
Photo mode is a cool addition to Arctic Edge, here at the team we’ve used a special version to create all the screen-shots you see in the magazines and online. It’s also great for showing off your crazy or cool vehicle customisations – share the pictures with your friends and see who can come up with the most awesome vehicle!

Top Secret – Killzone, Pursuit Force, Wipeout and Little Big Planet in Motorstorm Arctic Edge!
Here’s the big reveal for this post – we’ve hidden some extra special prizes in Motorstorm Arctic Edge for true arctic explorers. We’ve got custom paintjobs for some of the vehicles, game themed stickers and emblems, and even a couple of characters from these classic PlayStation games.

And how do you get a piece of that action? 20 of the 24 tracks in the game have an emblem hidden somewhere in the scenery. You’ll have to look all around you in Photo Mode, and if you can photo 5 of a particular emblem, you’ll get a prize. Watch out though – some of them are really well hidden. Get together with your friends and see if you can track them all down, then get on Multiplayer to show off your rewards!

For our third and final post, we’ll be giving you some tips on customising your off-road vehicle, and how to get the most out of Multiplayer. And remember – I want to see some of those secret paint-jobs in the online games when I get back

Rate: (Average: 4.59 out of 5)

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Hi guys, to celebrate the launch of Motorstorm Arctic Edge on PSP the team decided to get together and come up with some exclusive info for fans of the Playstation blog. As the Art Director on Arctic Edge, I’ve got top secret full access to the team so I thought I’d do the rounds and find out what they think…

What makes the game stand out from the crowd on PSP?

Motorstorm fans will love it because it’s a full-on Motorstorm game you can take anywhere (I was playing it on the train yesterday). Racing fans new to the series will love the sense of freedom (there’s a great choice of vehicles and routes) but there’s still a big emphasis on finding the best line amidst all the explosions, crashes and aggressive mayhem. – Richard Ogden, Game Director

What did you enjoy most about making MotorStorm Arctic Edge?

The fast cars, the women, the rock and roll lifestyle…. were not available while working on Motorstorm (well, the cars were!). With that in mind we had to console ourselves with the fact that we were bringing a widely respected and loved PS3 franchise and making it portable. That alone was quite an awesome task that had the team ready to give 110% to ensure we did the fans, and indeed ourselves, proud.

I personally enjoyed working to the PSP’s hardware specs and trying to push the console to its limits. 6 player On Line and Ad-Hoc races, uploading and downloading of ghost vehicles, 10 racers on screen during single player, over 100 events, full vehicle customisation, Photo Mode, Avalanches, Ice Bridges, Weather effects and so on. A complete Motorstorm package where ever and whenever the players want it. That is what I enjoyed making, and more importantly that it is what the fans expected – and I feel that we have delivered that and more!

– Robert Shaer, Game Designer

Any cool stories from the research trip to Alaska?

After seeing Alaska’s stunning scenery and witnessing the unpredictability of the terrain and weather we were certain that this was the perfect location for the next Motorstorm festival. The Denali range contains one of the highest mountains in the world, being set down by our plane amongst some the peaks thousands of feet above sea level, in the middle of winter was a very memorable moment, especially as we watched out ride home disappear off in to the distance without us! Luckily he came back, and we used our thousands of stunning photos as an inspiration for the game.

– Matthew Brown, Environment Artist

As you can see, the team is really proud of Motorstorm Arctic Edge. If you’re lucky enough to own a copy, we’ll be telling you about some hidden secrets in our next post. If you just want to check it out, look out for the demo hitting PSN soon!

Simon Bursey, Art Director – Motorstorm Arctic Edge, Bigbig Studios

Rate: (Average: 4.42 out of 5)

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