Playable Press

Confirmation came yesterday from project director Jay Wilson that the timely release of Diablo III would come at a price. In order to keep the highly anticipated action RPG's release in the near future it will release without any of its PVP functionality.

Konami has narrowed the release window of the impending Playstation Vita port of Metal Gear Solid HD Collection to this summer. Unfortunately, this announcement comes with the caveat that only two of the console versions' three games will survive the transition. Peace Walker will not be included in the Vita incarnation of Collection, leaving the release to rely on the strength of Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater alone... not that this should be terribly difficult considering the sales and overall impressions of the two.

Many questioned the prospect of funding a game through Kickstarter, and when Double Fine head Tim Schafer managed to do just that to drum up more than six times their requested $400,000 in short order many wondered what exactly would happen to the rest of the money. Thanks to Venturebeat's acquisition of a few photos sent by Schafer to Cliff Bleszinksi, the host of this year's Game Developers Choice Awards, we can see that the surplus $2.2 million is in good hands... and mouth... and other places.

We've said before that the PS Vita is in serious need of some quality games, but this wasn't quite what we were expecting. As part of their "Playstation Vita Game Heaven" video package, Sony along with Sega Japan announced today that Phantasy Star Online 2 will be available for Vita as well as PC.

The days of blowing into cartridge slots may soon be returning. An exclusive report from MCV confirmed that Microsoft has told its partners the next Xbox console will not feature a disc drive. Instead, the system will be compatible with some form of solid-state card storage. No news on whether the storage medium will be proprietary.

We now have news that the dystopian floating city of Columbia will be an even more unforgiving place on October 16th when Bioshock Infinite sees release. The team at Irrational Games released a YouTube video introducing the world to the game's Heavy Hitters. Ken Levine, the studio's Creative Director, was fascinated by the idea of having a mid-tier enemy that could augment the abilities of other enemies to make combat more interesting.

Even we weren't immune to the rumors swirling around the Internet concerning the possibility of Valve producing their own hardware, and while the prospect hasn't been outright denied Valve Software stated that such a project won't be coming anytime soon.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception has been out for nearly half a year now, but that hasn't slowed down the DLC train in the slightest. Today, developer Naughty Dog released a trailer featuring some details on next week's co-op suppliment, Shade Survival Mode.

Tonight, at the GDC's "The Future of Japanese Games" conference, former Capcom producer Keiji Inafune offhandedly mentioned working on a game for Playstation Vita while extolling the system's hardware and its push for developers to think creatively. Immediately after saying this he requested that the audience forget he said anything about it, a wide smile on his face. Sounds a little rehearsed for a slip, but we'll take it.

An outright apology from a game developer is an increasing rarity in a world where one can live and die by the media, but today Deus Ex: Human Revolution gameplay director Francois Lapikas did just that at his GDC conference, "Reimaging a Classic."