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Every now and then, you hear the old "can video games be art" discussion pop up, and as times goes on, the answer becomes more of a resounding "yes, stop asking," than something more nebulous. From the very first moment Thatgamecompany's downloadable PlayStation Network adventure Journey was shown off years ago, the video game world knew it would be one of those "art" games. It finally released to the masses on March 13, and not only is the game one of the best examples of video games as art, but it's one of the industry's finest instances of gaming.

Artist Natalya Netselya uses sand as her artistic medium, and since the main locale in the upcoming Uncharted 3 is the Arabian desert, she felt it provided "the perfect backdrop" for her art. Watch as she sprinkles sand and turns it into art. Nathan Drake art. The most handsome and charming kind of art. Uncharted 3 is slated to release November 1, 2011. Ten days before the next iteration in The Elder Scrolls franchise, Skyrim, drops, which happens to be only nine days before the next installment in The Legend of Zelda franchise, Skyward Sword, releases. November is going to be brutal, but look at the pretty sand art!

(via PlayStation Blog)

Probably hurting for shelf space like the rest of us multiplatform gamers, reddit user timofend took it upon himself to fix the issue and put an old 80 gig model PlayStation 3 and a slim Xbox 360 into a PC tower. Not exactly the unified console every gamer hopes and dreams of, the PC tower mod does save a significant amount of space, and though one may suspect it to be, isn't even liquid cooled, as timofend notes that when each machine is running simultaneously inside the tower, they only run at about 100 degrees Fahrenheit -- something my launch model PS3 does on its own. Head on past the break to see a few pictures of the mod.

We've seen what Microsoft had (or didn't have, depending on how disappointed you were) to offer from this year's E3. Did Sony do any better? The short of it: It was similarly predictable, though it did have a few more interesting surprises -- the price and date of the PSP2, otherwise known as the NGP, now officially known as the PS Vita have been set, and Sony matched Nintendo's flailing 3DS in price with a $249 price tag on the non-3G PS Vita model and a $299 price tag on the 3G-enabled model. An honestly stunning move, considering the Vita's tech is far more powerful than the tech inside the 3DS and must be much more expensive to produce. They also announced a 24-inch PlayStation brand 3D television and 3D glasses bundle for the (again) honestly low price of $499. As for games, everything we already knew about: Uncharted 3 looked great, the previously-mentioned God of War PSP games bundle is indeed coming to the PS3, BioShock Infinite will include Move functionality and come with a free copy of BioShock, the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD remake bundle got dated for September, and there was a bunch of PS Vita news, as well as a few new games and added Move support. Jack Tretton also gave a sincere, though kind of awkward, apology regarding the recent PlayStation Network hack mess.

Are you ready to dive into Sony's presser?

Reported straight from Sony's official PlayStation Blog, they expect the rest of the currently missing PlayStation Network services to return by the end of the week, which includes the most important part of the PSN besides online gaming -- the PlayStation Store. Sony plans to fully restore PSN services in the Americas, Europe/PAL territories and Asia (excluding Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea) by the end of this week. Yes, if the store isn't restored today, then Sony's original May 31 deadline for restoring the store will have passed, and yes, that does mean they missed yet another deadline that they set themselves regarding PSN service restoration, and yes, that means this new deadline might not mean anything either. No one would blame anyone for not exactly expecting full PSN services back by this new deadline, but hey, they've already been gone for so long, the estimated "by the end of this week" deadline seems spot on. I mean, what else is there to do, right? Right? Let me give you my money already, Sony! Jeez. (via PlayStation Blog)

Not too long after the PlayStation Network went down, Sony promised two free games from a list of PS3 and PSP games, as well as 30 days of free PlayStation Plus service. Sony has officially released the details over on the PlayStation Blog, and they're not throwaway titles after all, though they may be titles you already own.

Shortly after the PlayStation Store has returned (rumored to return by the end of this week), the following list of titles will be available to choose from for 30 days:

• Dead Nation (PS3)
• inFAMOUS (PS3)
• LittleBigPLanet (PS3)
• Super Stardust HD (PS3)
• Wipeout HD + Fury (PS3)
• LittleBigPlanet (PSP)
• ModNation Racers (PSP)
• Pursuit Force (PSP)
• Killzone Liberation (PSP)

Along with two of the above titles of your choice, Sony will be offering a free 30 days of PlayStation Plus membership, existing PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive a free 60 days, PlayStation Home will be offering users over 100 free virtual items, existing Music Unlimited Premium Trial subscription members will receive an additional 30 days, existing members of Music Unlimited Premium and Basic will receive an additional 30 days of service as well as additional days to cover time lost from the outage, and a selection of "On Us" movie rentals will be made available over one weekend that has yet to be named.

The PlayStation Network is back, thus ending a monthlong nightmare of having to play the passionately-crafted storymode of games and being forced to buy our games in tangible form at retail stores, having to put on clothes and interact with people. As of last night, Sony rolled out firmware update 3.61, which, after downloading and forcing users to change their previously hacked PSN passwords, allowed us back onto the network so we could obsessively compare our trophies with buddies on our friends list and finally get to PS3 Portal 2 co-op. The soothing green in the map above represents which regions have had PSN service restored. Last night when the announcement first hit the Internet, only a small portion of the northeastern United States was illuminated, though as one can see from the above map, service should be restored to rest of the country as of this morning. The official PlayStation Blog reports that if you are within a region that is supposed to have regained PSN service, but do not currently actually have PSN service, nothing is wrong, and the rollout may just take a bit of time to hit your area. The PlayStation Blog also reports that if there are certain features that are still down, such as the PlayStation Store, they are working on getting said feature(s) up as soon as possible. And what about those free games and service subscriptions Sony promised us as an apology for the PSN outage? Well, they haven't been announcement yet, but Kaz Hirai himself assured us the packages will be announced within the coming days, and that they will be region specific. Head on past the break to see Kaz Hirai's official announcement of the PSN's restoration, then quickly hop into Portal 2 and get testing. GLaDOS can't wait all day.

The saga of the PlayStation Network outage will be coming to a close within a week, according to Sony. Having built new security measures into the network, Sony will begin a phased restoration of the network's services, which includes online game-play, Qriocity services, account management and password reset, access to download un-expired movie rentals, PlayStation@Home, friends list and chat functionality. Along with restoring the default PSN functions as well as the added security features, Sony will be creating a new position within the company, Chief Information Security Officer, whose sole purpose is to monitor the safety of user data, as well as to supplement existing information security personnel.

With the service going live again, Sony will force a password change for each user in the form of a required system software update that will only allow users to update and change their password on the same PlayStation 3 console on which their account was activated. Also, like a certain blogger may have predicted, Sony will be offering a variety of free downloads and services based on region, in the form of the "Welcome Back Appreciation Program." The program will provide free content downloads based on territory, all existing PSN customers will receive a free 30 day membership to the PlayStation Plus service, all PlayStation Plus members will receive a free 30 days of the service, and Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity subscribers will receive 30 days of free service as well.

So, it looks like we can put this business behind us soon enough. Hopefully PSN users didn't experience any kind of credit card or identity issues from the hack, and hey, hopefully the free content Sony will be offering will be something worthwhile.

(via PlayStation.Blog)

The external intrusion, as Sony is wont to refer to it, into the PlayStation Network is kind of a big deal. Straight from their Q&A about the situation, Sony confirms that there are 77 million accounts that could possibly have completely compromised data. All data from the profile, such as name, email, birthday and address, plus maybe more, is in the hands of those who hacked the network. Smooth move, Sony. That said, they have finally announced that they have no evidence that credit card information had been gleaned. Unlike their personal data tables, they’d deigned to encrypt all of that. That hasn’t stopped people from coming out of the woodwork to blame Sony’s data leak for their own financial issues however. As other outlets have pointed out, that’s possibly due to being on high alert for such things.

A few days ago, Sony spoke out about the PlayStation Network breach in great detail, delivering potentially devastating news. It looks like there is finally some good news regarding the fiasco, though, as Sony assures us that trophies, friend lists, PS+ cloud saves and account download history remain intact and will be restored when the network goes live once again. As for the worst potential piece of news that came out of this whole nightmare -- users' credit card information being stolen -- Sony claims that the credit card information was indeed encrypted, which, even if the info was stolen and decrypted, removes some of the negativity surrounding Sony, as anything can be hacked regardless of its encryption and security, so at least Sony was responsible regarding the most sensitive information they guard.

After the earlier news of Sony shutting down the PlayStation Network indefinitely hit the masses, Sony posted their official press release, one which they claim they will be sending out to all users with a registered PSN account. We've all been following the harrowing collapse of the PSN since it began just over a week ago, with rumors swirling regarding the safety of the sensitive information the network contains. Well, as detailed in the press release, one of the worst scenarios possible seems to have come true: Just about every bit of sensitive information users provided the PSN could've been compromised, including the usual menagerie of account creation details, (name, address, birthdate, login, password, etc.), along with profile purchase history, billing address, and security questions and answers. Thankfully, Sony claims to have no evidence stating that users' credit card information has been compromised, though they aren't ruling out the possibility. Check out the full press release after the break, as it contains more detail regarding the situation, as well as cautionary advice from Sony about how one should handle the compromise.

Sony has shut down their free online service, the PlayStation Network, indefinitely. In this case, thankfully, "indefinitely" doesn't mean forever, it simply means indefinitely. While dealing with the recent outage, Sony discovered that the "external intrusion" that compromised the PSN could have compromised secure user information as well, so they shut it down and are currently "rebuilding" the service to ensure the PSN's integrity.

Update: Sony has explained the outage in an unprecedented level of detail, described at the link: Basically, the personal, login, and possibly credit card information of PSN's 69 million accountholders are at risk.

Sony's PlayStation Network mysteriously went down a couple of days ago, with Sony delivering the horrifying news that the network could be down for a few days following the beginning of the outage, depriving everyone of the wonderful co-op modes of a couple of recently released, highly anticipated titles. Over on the PlayStation Knowledge Base, Sony has posted the cause behind the network's outage, an "external intrusion" that caused Sony to shut off their network as a safety precaution while they investigate.

A mysterious outage hit the PlayStation Network last night, inconveniently coinciding with the release of a certain highly-anticipated game. The PSN is still down, and Sony has issued a statement regarding the outage:

While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage, we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running. Thank you very much for your patience while we work to resolve this matter. Please stay tuned to this space for more details, and we’ll update you again as soon as we can.

The PSN outage was confirmed to be an international matter, as consoles around the world experienced the issue.

Federal magistrate Joseph Spero has given permission for Sony to subpoena electronic payment provider PayPal as part of the consumer electronic's lawsuit against George Hotz, the hacker who published the PlayStation 3 jailbreak program. The subpoena would cover all transactions made over PayPal between January 1, 2009 and February 1, 2011. Sony is hoping that the information in Hotz's PayPal account will show that he accepted money from northern California residents. Were they to find any, it would bolster their claim that the trial should be held in San Francisco and not Hotz's home state of New Jersey. Readers will recall that this was the same intent behind Sony's early subpoenas aimed at Google, Twitter, and the hosting service for Hotz's website. Many internet privacy advocates have already registered their concerns about Sony's subpoena of social networking services. Of course, simply finding transactions will not be enough. Sony will have to prove that Hotz accepted money for his jailbreaking tool, a claim that Hotz denies. Hotz faces charges under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the federal law which prohibits, among other things, posting tools that subvert copyright protection. The tool Hotz created gave PS3 users complete control over their systems, allowing them to do everything from playing pirated games to installing alternative operating systems. This is only the latests salvo in the ongoing lawsuit, and surely not the last. Remember: The trial hasn't even started yet. The real fun is yet to come.