It’s that time of week again, when we stop by the blog and highlight upcoming updates for PlayStation Home. We’ve got plenty for you to see and do, with some great new spaces coming your way. This week’s highlights have to be the Loco Island personal space and brand new Mui Mui Ship public space, along with the MotorStorm Carrier.

That’s right, the stunning new MotorStorm Carrier has arrived in PS Home! Hinted at a few months back in the MotorStorm Sphere, the new MotorStorm space is a decommissioned aircraft Carrier. Bought by a wealthy, anonymous, rock star and donated to MotorStorm, the spaces comes complete with a number of mini-games, quests and funky rewards.

Check out the trailer below of this fantastic new space:

Try your hand at Lunatic Launcher arcade game or help out some of the ‘Stormers roaming about the space for your chance to win a prize. Or, if the mood takes you, spin some tracks at the DJ decks, where you can also play around with the smoke machine and lights. There’s plenty to do, and the choice is yours.

Once you’re done in the Carrier, we have possibly the best personal space out there! The brand-new (and incredibly cute) Loco Island. Watch the trailer below to see what’s coming:

This personal space comes complete with a swing, slide and hammock (for when you want to rest those weary virtual feet), as well as an array of LocoRoco characters including Mui Mui and Chuppa. Incidentally, the Chuppa can send your avatar soaring to the top of the tree house if required.

There are also lots of hidden features in this personal space. Try dancing in front of the LocoRoco for a nice surprise… You’ll also have the option to assist with renovating, or maybe even take part in a spot of farming: this isn’t one you want to miss out on! The Loco Island can be yours from Home Estates for the bargain price of £3.99.

The Mui Mui Ship is the perfect place for you to take a virtual cruise, from where you can look out at Loco Island and participate in a variety of activities. Sit down to a strategic game of LocoReverse, or have a bet on the hourly Domingo race with the pickories you’ve located.

Sodium updates this week, bringing new rewards for the Salt Shooter mini-game. These fantastic Tank Accolades – in Salt, Bronze, Silver and Gold variants – will unlock as you play through the Salt Shooter levels. For those who have purchased to Chilli Pilot jacket, tomorrow you will receive the full pilot outfit along with any jacket upgrades you have earned. VICKIE will also be updated with new content for purchase with your hard-earned credits!

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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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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.

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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.

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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

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