Good morning PlayStation nation! I just wanted to stop by and pass on an exciting piece of news for those who’ve been following thatgamecompany‘s acclaimed adventure, Journey. After winning numerous awards worldwide we are bringing Journey Collector’s Edition to Europe due to popular demand.

Available from today on PlayStation Store, priced at €19.99/£15.99, Journey Collector’s Edition is a compilation showcasing the work of thatgamecompany. In addition to Journey, it also includes the studio’s other creations Flower and flOw. These are the titles that made the studio’s name and undoubtedly deserve a play. The simplicity of flOw and the beauty of Flower will capture gamers’ attention in just the same way that Journey did.
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So, in a couple of days’ time Team Sony decamps to Cologne, Germany for the annual gamescom show. I’ve already discussed our plans for the event at length, but to get everyone in the mood it seemed only right and proper to clumsily pin today’s debate topic to next week’s proceedings.

As publicised, we’re hosting a panel of top industry bigwigs immediately after Tueday’s press conference, who’ll be musing over the ‘games as art’ debate, Question Time-style. Sony’s own Shuhei Yoshida will be there, as will LittleBigPlanet man Alex Evans, Flower mastermind Kellee Santiago and Ian Dallas, who’s currently hard at work finishing up tantalising PSN curio The Unfinished Swan.

With that in mind, your talking point this week:

You can invite four game industry figures over to dinner. Who would they be, and what would be the topic for discussion?

The 10 best responses snag themselves a PSN voucher for quirky 2008 PSN gem The Last Guy. Refresh your memory via the trailer below.

Oh, and just to clear up the confusion from last week, anyone from the following territories is free to enter: Austria, Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Right, I’m off to dig out my elastic-waisted jogging pants in anticipation of all that schnitzel and sauerkraut. See you on Tuesday for the main event…

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Great video games are generally remembered for a variety of different things – compelling gameplay, stunning visuals, stirring music, rock-hard bosses – take your pick. However, it’s rare that they stick in the mind for their dialogue.

For many games, dialogue is an afterthought often penned by developers for whom prose is not their primary talent. That said, in the same way that I might unconsciously drop one-liners from my favourite movies or TV shows into conversation, I also occasionally find myself whispering “Fresh blood is coming in” (remember that sinister gem, ISS fans?) whenever a substitution is made in a football game, or “What are ya selling?” (yep, Resi 4) when, say, I’m picking up some salami at the deli counter in Waitrose.

So, this weekend’s debate topic:

“What’s your favourite line of video game dialogue?”

I’ve a nice prize for the 15 best suggestions this week – a download voucher for lovely thatgamecompany PSN effort Flower. Trailer below to refresh your memory.

Enjoy your weekend everyone!

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Hello, PS Blog readers. It has been an exciting two weeks for us since we launched Journey on the PlayStation Store. We see the personal connection between our work and the players, which is the most real and priceless reward for us. For that, we thank you so much for your support, for spending time and money to play our game, and for spreading the word about Journey to your dear friends and family. Thanks to you all, Journey has officially broken PlayStation Network and PlayStation Store sales records, surpassing all games ever released on the PlayStation Network to become the fastest-selling game ever released on PlayStation Store, in both the SCEA and SCEE regions.

After we released Flower in 2009, players sent hundreds of emails about their experience with the game. They varied from a 9-year-old girl to a 65-year-old man, from a marine serving duty overseas, to a soldier returning from Iraq. There were even stories about a mother’s memory of her two children in the wheat fields, a surreal butterfly fantasy from someone’s grandmother who passed away, and a young man who spoke about his brother who has Down syndrome. Those kinds of letters are what drive us at TGC to keep working.

And now, the reaction to Journey has been even more overwhelming. We have received more letters from fans in the two weeks since Journey’s launch than we did for Flower over the past three years!

We owe a lot to our fans. In fact, the idea of forming the thatgamecompany team to create games with Sony Santa Monica originated from several dozen emails that players sent in after playing our first student game, Cloud, from our time at USC. It was the players who told us how moving the game was and how it was important that we keep making these types of games so that more people in the world will realize what video games can be, and can grow to love games through our work. To me, that was a life-changing moment. I knew making games was my life calling.

This art piece expresses our gratitude.

Lastly, a lot of you have seemed to really enjoy the music in the game, which was composed by Austin Wintory. And we’ve received a lot of requests to release the soundtrack of the game. Well, I’m happy to announce that the soundtrack will be hitting the PS Store and iTunes on April 11, and there will be a limited CD release in the near future as well.

Thanks, again, for all your support! We’ll see you online!

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It’s been a little over three years since we launched our last game, Flower. It was a difficult game to describe, but a game that we took great pride in. Many of you took a chance with it and were as moved by it as we hoped people would be. Now we’re here, three years later. We can’t wait to let you experience our latest PlayStation exclusive game, Journey.

It has been heartening to see the reactions from the press so far.We’ve had editors tell us how much the game moved them emotionally, or fundamentally changed the way they think about multiplayer in video games. Our goal was to change the impression players have towards each other over the network. We wanted to bring a thatgamecompany-style adventure to our players and create an emotional connection between them. And it’s been great to hear we might have achieved this goal.

We get very nervous before the reviews hit. With the early access for PlayStation Plus subscribers last week, we started getting reactions from the players. We couldn’t be more moved by what reviewers and players are saying about Journey on the web. Thank you for sharing your Journey experiences with us, they are what keep us going and make all of our hard work truly worthwhile.

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