Reports have come in that Sony's Echochrome for the PlayStation Portable (also available on the PlayStation 3) will only be available as a  digital download on the PlayStation Network.  To find out more, head on over to the full article by clicking on the "read more" link.

A lot of us God of War series fans will chew up whatever Cory Barlog news we can get hold of. It's just so hard not to be curious about what the master game maker is up to these days. In his latest interview with N'Gai Croal, Barlog seems ready to give us details on what his next project is. Read the full article and find out more about what the future holds for God of War 2's main man.

According to Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, the New York-based NPD Group will limit the data it releases to its non-paying customers starting with the October hardware sales data, which is due for release later this month. Hardware sales data will no longer be available every month, and the Top Ten SKUs charts will be cut in half. Hardware sales data as well as the Top Ten software titles will instead be released on a quarterly and yearly basis. Find out more at the full article.

N'Gai Croal is a writer for magazine Newsweek. J. Allard is a Microsoft executive, and him being bald-headed is important in this one. Because you see, the two made a bet last year that the PlayStation Portable (PSP) wouldn't reach the 10 million units shipped within 12 months like the PlayStation 2 (PS2).

Here's the gist of their bet: If Croal loses, Allard gets to cut off Croal's dreadlocks live on stage. If Allard loses, he would have to wear a dread lock for one whole month. As you all know, Sony made their target two months earlier and Allard, being a good sport, has done good on his wager.

"Admittedly, the PSP was a beautiful device with incredible specs. it had a fantastic screen and I knew that they'd sell millions of them, but I just didn't think that demand could be higher than for the PS2. Hats off to Sony for outpacing the PS2 velocity with their PSP. Dreads on for N’Gai for calling it," posted J Allard on his official blog.

If you want to read J Allard's whole blog entry, refer to the Read link below.

 

Speaking to Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, God of War's David Jaffe, noted several reasons why the planned PSP game Heartland was aborted. The said PSP game was supposed to depict an America invaded by China, and was supposed to feature a Chinese-American faced with heavy moral decisions.

Jaffe explains how Sony's response to the matter was mixed, and how the folks from Sony wished that Jaffe decide to make this game for their big black PlayStation 3. Here's his words:

The game was very much a liberal person's response to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. When I was entertaining lofty thoughts, the idea was to create an experience that would try to make the players--whom I mostly assumed would be of the Western world--feel what it must be like to have their own homeland occupied by another country. SCEA and I went back and forth over if we would ever say it was CHINA vs. AMERICA as they were a bit worried about being so literal, but that fight had not yet occurred when we pulled the plug.

As for Phil (Harrison, Sony president of worldwide studios), his biggest issue was thinking a game so epic should be on PS3. But I was always pushing for PSP, saying that Heartland should do for the PSP what Halo did for the Xbox. But as you know, Phil's a total supporter of innovation and games as art and so he was more than willing to see if I had anything worthy to say, as well as the talents to say it through the medium.

Other reasons for the cancellation of the game include manpower problems as the WarHawk team kept growing while Jaffe's team kept shrinking. He explains:

If the team would have been the right size, we would still be in production with Heartland today. That was the main reason we killed it, not enough folks to make the game. Granted, I would be 40 pounds overweight again, sad, depressed, and maybe even divorced, as it would have consumed me just like God of War did. But that aside, the main issue that made it clear that we could not continue was that WarHawk kept taking our team members as they were further along in production and were the top priority.

Jaffe then later adds that he could have worked harder in SCEA to get more people for his team, but his "heart was just not in it".

Well, we do hope that this "pop song" phase of game making that David Jaffe finds himself in at the moment becomes rewarding enough for him, so that after all the Calling All Cars and all those "light" games he's into right now, he can find the heart to move back to making those game "operas" that we loved oh so much.

For the complete Newsweek interview, feel free to head to it via our Read link below.