A Perspective

Posted on Sunday, November 27, 2011 by Maisy

This article makes me uncomfortable, and also makes me laugh.

Consoles are big, important, and Sony has the best one. Why do we have a WII? Well, we do because it was cheaper, and kind of novel at the time (April 2008) … hard to find in our area, DH brought one home from a NYC business trip.

We got a PS3 in December then, why? We wanted one, more serious gaming platform, PLUS it could play Blu-Ray movies which we were deciding we’d switch to (from DVD) and finally get some real HD content on our big screen tv, which we hadn’t before December with the WII or the old DirecTv box we had.

We still love the PS3, and have 2 of them now. I have also had a PSP since 2007, and getting a Sony Console in with a PSP around already was great. It’s not that we didn’t have gaming before this either. We had a GameBoy in the early 90′s, an NES, then a SNES, then a PS One, then a PS2.

I have a super duper Smart Phone in an HTC Evo 4G … I have games on it, and on my HTC Evo View Tablet. Both Android. What kind of gaming is it? Stuff like on my PSP or PS3, the “Casual” games, like Bejeweled, FieldRunners … good games, but not heavy games. Seriously who would WANT to put Resistance or Prince of Persia or Uncharted or any other big game onto a phone or non-serious gaming device.

The point of Sony putting games on Android soon is that it’ll get more people into their (Sony’s) games and get them looking at MORE SERIOUS gaming if they haven’t yet bitten into that, or haven’t for a long time. It would be the games that can be handled on those devices. Most devices aren’t capable of heavy gaming. Even my good HTC Evo isn’t. The battery, after a year of use, needs replaced to use it for phone and browsing, other apps, AND gaming. Ha! Ha! Ha!

I do play FieldRunners HD for Android on my phone. If I get through Drylands on Medium two times, starting with a fresh battery, that’s about all I can do. That’s ludicrous! I can play FieldRunners on my PSP that has a nearly 2 year old battery and use, and I can play all day and into the night, or whatever. Hours and hours and hours.

FieldRunners HD for Android is nice, but there is no in-game-music. FieldRunners for PSP is nice, slower speed, but there IS in-game-music. All in all the play is similar, but I like touch play, like on the Android, which is why I do want a Play Station Vita in February 2012 when they are finally available here. Gaming devices with some social connection are heavy enough for one device. I can’t have my Phone be a Phone and Social Media and Games and be my Portable Music Player too.

I have a Sansa E280 that I don’t use anymore. I listen more on my computer anyhow, and sometimes on my phone when we go out. I listen less to my own stuff out and about though. Anyhow, it’s that the phone I have needs a new battery, an extended one, plus a charging stand of some kind. I do want that, and want to use it for my music player because I am a scrobbler (last.fm) and immediate scrobbling is what I love. Makes me feel good. I am not going to use a PSP or a Vita for music playing, but will use my phone for phone and music and email and such, and use my PSP or Vita for games, and the PS3.

The article linked at the top of this post is seriously funny. Seriously. What’s your perspective on this?

PSN Activations – starting from Scratch

Posted on Saturday, November 26, 2011 by Maisy

My hubby called PSN support today. They answered very quickly, but … I felt they didn’t get to the point of understanding what we wanted exactly, but eventually were going to do the ONE TIME ONLY EVER IN THE LIFE OF THE ACCOUNT wiping of all activations.

This is silly as the only reason I HAD to have them do it is that THEIR system messed up giving me devices I had labeled that were real PSP’s to be only virtual PSP’s activated with Video/Comics & Music and the real world PSP’s when I activated each one, my personal one connected to my virtual one as it should, but the other two showed up as NEW PSP’s and that’s purely nothing that I did. I couldn’t deactivate the PSP Video/Comic activations because I had no deviced tied to those virtual activations, they went into limbo even though the ones were no different from before in my house, with mine acting right, and the other two totally not connecting to those profiles online in Sony’s database, FOR WHATEVER REASON! But all I wanted was for them to fix it.

The biggest thing about it is, if they stick to their guns and say later, “We can’t do that because on November 26, 2011 we did that for you and it’s a once in a lifetime thing for any one PSN ID.” … this post is about it, and I will demand justification for it again, since they messed up my systems with their deactivation scheme in the first place.

So anyhow, I got the account wiped. Within a couple ours everything was off my account and I started from scratch and added each device in and labeled it appropriately. I only activated GAMES on everything. Nothing else. Sony automatically puts MUSIC on each device (I don’t use it though, signed into it once this year just to see what it was, but didn’t do anything with it and that’s that.)

I’m not putting VIDEO on any machine/device unless I need it in the future. On each PS3 we can’t do it (only 1 is allowed per account.) I don’t know if that is ONLY the PSN Store Video (I guess it is) and that the other kinds of video I can do on either/or whenever without “VIDEO” activation. (Netflix, Cinema Now, Hulu, Vudu, but Video Unlimited I don’t know.)

In the past I’ve gotten video on my computer from Amazon Unboxed. I’m not a big fan of digital renting of movie or shows as you don’t have much time with them if something keeps you from it, I prefer discs to that, plus a disc can be watched anywhere, anytime as many times as desired and sold or given away later if desired. Digital content, if you buy it, it is yours forever and limited to the program it is part of, either in their cloud service or on your harddrive. No thank you except for Digital Copy from some movie discs, that’s a back up version to watch without the disc at times, nice sometime, hardly used but a nice feature, and it’s not my only option. I like options.

That’s why Sony has me not so happy with this license change. It’s less options.

Now then, on the phone the person my hubby talked to told him about how Me as Master account with Sub Accounts works. I know how it works and how I WANT it to work, but she/he was supposedly telling him that on the PSP it DOES work the way I want, but she’s not right. I know, nothing has changed, their are no controls in Master Accounts to let them use my content. They have to be logged on as me on the portable devices. Why they don’t change that, I don’t know.

For some games they can put their sign-in PSN ID in, but for some games they HAVE to have MY PSN ID input. It’s not an easy thing, it’s a jump through hoops to do it kind of thing. I wrote about it early this year (in August) when we bought Syphon Filter Combat Ops on PSN… and then referred to it again when we got the UMD of Syphon Filter Logan’s Shadow
.

Still waiting … (theme of my life)

Posted on Saturday, November 26, 2011 by Maisy

Still waiting for hubby to call Sony about the PSP activation thing I wrote about last. He said he would that day, didn’t, nor the next, and so on.

I can’t believe it from this perspective, that their stuff is so messed up as to not recognize that those two PSP’s are the same ones as before hitting the Deactivate button. The Music/Video/Comics activation is totally annoying, as you can’t get rid of old ones that are activated with that stuff since that stuff isn’t EDITABLE ONLINE ANYMORE as it once was (I know, I took that stuff off of one of the old ones we don’t have anymore but was still connected to the account, then the DEACTIVATE from post 11-18 did take that one away totally. There is no way to take such an approach now though, cause the DEVICE section was changed, and there is no way to change the PSP Music/Video/Comics thing anymore. I’m glad I did it when I could, before, but now I’m locked with two PSP’s listed with that stuff, and when trying to activate the ACTUAL PSP’s in question, they can’t be activated for that stuff, and if I activate for GAMES they show up as NEW PSP’s, don’t connect to the ones there already, thus I refer to those on my account as Virtual PSP’s, they used to be representative of IRL PSP’s but no longer are connected. Urgh!!!!!

Sony PSN Activation Destruction

Posted on Thursday, November 24, 2011 by Maisy

PSN Activation and Deactivation is the bane of my existence right now.

I bit the bullet and hit the “Deactivate” button on the Accounts management site the other day. All was working, on all devices, sort of. We thought. We didn’t do anything on our devices but play games. No “activation” or “deactivation” at all on the devices. Whatever.

…It seemed everything worked on PS3′s and PSP’s …

Odd things started yesterday. Well the 1st oddity was the very day of the once-for-now (every 6 months) button clicking, in the vague Play Station Systems area (Accounts, Media and Devices …) there was only 1 Play Station Systems (their mistake, the “s” –not mine!) under GAME. It was FULLY unclear which device that was. Totally. And to make it even more murky than it was, it really seemed that we could play any PSN games still on all the devices. Hmmm.

Yesterday my two of my children were playing LBP2 on the PS3. They went to put on certain costumes and found they weren’t there. So I went to the Account area in my browser on my laptop and started looking at all of this again.

Still only 1 was activated. So then I went back to the PS3 and went to my User Profile (yes, I made them quit playing! So mean. ) … my Tron Evolution theme wasn’t there. Eeeek! I went to Theme Settings, and a whole bunch of themes were just “THEME” and no information as to what they were. Huh. Not every theme, just a whole bunch of them. They are all free, or PSN+ free, but only one is premium $ and that was my Tron theme.

So I then went to the PSN Store and looked at the download list (well, after trying to use it under Account Management, but it kept crapping out) and there in the store it kept working and looking at things there, I found the costumes in questions for LBP2 and my theme, and re-downloaded them.

Went to Theme Settings and found that ALL the themes were there again, lovely as they should be, able to see what was there fully. This is not a mystery, obviously that device wasn’t activated beforehand, and was afterward.

But it really doesn’t make much sense: when I went to play Warhawk with my hubby later, I was joining a game he was in and it wouldn’t let me in because I didn’t have the DLC for it. Yes I do!

[I was on PS3 #2 at that point. Hubby was on PS3 #1 which was the device I was working with about Themes, and LBP2 costumes. ]

So I quit Warhawk and went to Account Management and “Activated” the PS3 #2 for GAMES.

Started Warhawk again and voila! I can play any of the matches again as I used to (but only knew for a minute that I couldn’t.)

So after that I had to do something about understanding what was going on. It wasn’t the PS3′s that were in the running for being that 1 Activated GAMES device in Accounts & Management on the pc. It ends up with what I did after that, it was MY psp.

Weird.

It gets weirder. So on each device I did a total deactivation. Then checked the website (had to logout and login again each time to see the changes each time) to see which one “changed” things. That was it. My PSP.

So then I re-upped each thing, starting with PS3 #1 … fine, 1 PSS. OK, PS3 #2 … fine, 2 PSS. OK. Next up, PSP’s: Mine … 3 PSS. OK. Next PSP … fine, 4 PSS. OK. Wait, no, not fine, what is this …

On the management site for the PSN accounts there is that other area under the DEVICES tab. There it showed me having 6 Play Station DEVICES! No, at this point I had 4 things activated for GAMES and that was it.

Now for this to make perfect sense, the PSP’s are capable of video and music and comics, up to 3 devices per account. That stuff USED to be changeable on the site before Sony changed the GAME activation stuff. I know it was because I took those video\comic things away from this old device that we no longer have that was stuck in limbo in our account.

The next part of the perfect sense is that only 1 PS3 is activated per account for VIDEO. So with that in mind, now understand what went wacko. It’s not understandable from this point of view. It’s just what is.

When I first did the big Deactivation from the website I had listed on the Devices tab 4 Play Station devices. 1 PS3 and 3 PSP’s.

My PS3 #2 disappears when Games are Deactivated since it can only do GAMES. It re-appears if I Activate it, but any label I gave it is obviously gone. Now this is the weirder: With PSP #2 Activated suddenly we go from having 5 total devices to having 6. Yes, the actiavtions for video, comic, music are tied to 3 PSP’s and only 1 of those is right. The actual devices have been in use since 2007 and 2009 and holy cow, all of the sudden the system doesn’t recognize them as themselves. It’s a mess.

There is no way to fix this on our end. It’s exactly, sort of what was going on before, that I wanted cleared up, getting rid of that old PSP that broke out of my account. Phew! That’s done, but now all this. Ugh.

Hubby was going to call them yesterday, but ended he forgot, or with my Pie making busy-ness I didn’t remind him, whichever he wishes to put the blame on, whatever, whatever, whatever. Just call them and get this straightened out!

They used to let us (if we knew about it) manage some of that extra content junk on the web, and now they don’t, and it’s given me 2 wonderful, useless devices that are virtual only. No enjoyment of any of it’s wonderful capabilities. They used to be real, but now are only relics in PSN’s database. Wonderful.

Thank goodness I don’t want Music Unlimited, or Video Unlimited, or care about Comics on my PSP or the other ones either. But, I don’t want to be locked out if … (fill in the blanks) __________, or ___________, or __________.

So, before Sony allowed 5/5 for most Games on PSN, and 1/3 for Video, Comics. Before, they’d would allow you to access your account and manage that stuff online, video, comics.

So they put the power in our hands NOW? No, just shifted the power, um, while down-shifting as well. It wasn’t much power to begin with. Then they cut it in half, at the least. Great news, we can DEACTIVATE online from our PC’s! Hallelujah! (rolling eyes)

It’s not cut and dry, it’s totally a new thing, give us less devices to use PSN content on, let us Deactivate every single device from our GAMING activations with one fell swoop, but only 1 time in 6 months. You used to be able to control media other than GAMES on devices via the web, but that’s locked up and F’d.

Don’t push the button unless you really want to, need to. Make sure you have every single device that you need activated, deactivate everything! ALL content activation bye-bye. See if that makes your device(s) disappear from the website. If so, good, hit that button. If not, maybe it’ll work, or: could be like mine, 1 will seamlessly attach again but the others make ancient virtual devices of the ones you have in the account. For some reason, they think they are different and there’s nothing different about any of them. Nothing. NothING!!!!!!!!

PSN Post-11-18-2011

Posted on Monday, November 21, 2011 by Maisy

PlayStation licensing rules changed on November 18th. To facilitate the new rules they added something to account management on the web, and re-aligned things on that site.

Back in the Spring of 2011 security issues had PSN offline for way too long, and when they finally came back on, Account sign-up couldn’t be accomplished for Sub-Accounts the usual way (as before) and through sniffing around online I came to realize that Sony’s Qriocity site could be signed into with one’s PSN ID credentials and there one could find lots of information that heretofore one may not have been aware of.

That’s the place to go for the current Activation/De-Activation scheme that one needs to clear old no longer held devices, or whatever reason someone would have to do so. I decided to test this since I have 3 PSP’s in our house, 2 PS3′s and one PSP that we no longer have but was not De-Activated before we sent it for service.

On the Qriocity account management area I was able to see all the devices since early this year, but unable to do anything with that old PSP … it’d end up being trouble for us come Vita month, but we figured something could work that out. Ended up Sony really put one to us with the unveiling of 2+2 for PSN licensing. Ouch!

Totally different, so I decided we’d not buy on PSN after the change, but still have Plus through to June 2012, so maybe I’ll download the PS3 junk, that’s all, with maybe putting some of it on our main 2 PSP’s (mine and my sons) if we wish to later.

This is what I did, I logged into Qriocity, and looked at my devices.

The old system allowed me to changed Music and Comics and Video “activations” on the site. I was able to take all that off the OLD PSP we don’t have anymore. But the GAME activation or deactivation had to be done on the actual device.

So yesterday (November 20th) I got to the area for Account management (the Account tab) and chose the “Media and Devices” side tab.

This opens a page with squares for my devices by category.

There is also a main top level tag for Devices, on there it shows the actual devices, and has icons to show what is activated on each, and you can edit the name of the device to your liking.

So on the page that I spoke of previously (Account…Media and Devices …) there are these categories with the number of listed devices in each category.

This is how it looks now:

Video .:| – |:. Game

Activated Devices .:| – |:. Activated Devices

4 PlayStation® Systems .:| – |:. 1 PlayStation® Systems

Music .:| – |:. Comic

Activated Devices .:| – |:. Activated Devices

4 PlayStation® Systems .:| – |:. 3 PlayStation® Systems

On the GAME area there is a downarrow showing, click that and it pops up the information with a button labeled “Deactivate All” which you can click if you so choose.

When I first was going to do this, all appeared above as I have it except for under GAME there were 6 activated devices.

So when I clicked Deactivate All, the “GAME” icon disappeared from the DEVICES lists for each device I own, and the OLD no longer held PSP disappeared entirely. But the Music, Comic and Video all stayed activated.

On the GAME area of Accounts, Media and Devices, there initially was nothing under GAMES.

I logged off and on, and then it was as listed above, “1 PlayStation Sytems”

Now, that is the case? Which one? I don’t know since on the device tab there is not one device I own listed with a GAME icon or activation, so …

I played some pre-Nov-18 games on my PSP, also went to the PSN Store.

My son played something on his PSP as well.

Later someone played stuff on the living room PS3 and I played something on the (now in my office) 2nd PS3 then later someone played on it as well.

All in all it’s totally wishy washy as to what they’ve done. I have no idea what it is really the deal with it. Before all this I had two PS3′s activated for Games, the “living room” one for Video. Only that one shows up on Devices now, but only as activated with Video and Music. My 2nd PS3 isn’t on there at all now, but not ONE SINGLE DEVICE there, be it PS3 or PSP shows a GAME icon on it.

Yet in Accounts, Media and Devices … there on GAME it says 1 PlayStation System is Activated. FWIW which one …

All the PSN games work fine on all the devices. Since we won’t buy much or anything online again, and PSN Plus is something I’ll just put on one PS3 or maybe on two PSP’s for now, then nothing matters about this, I guess.

I read somewhere online (on a comments list from a post) that there is a caveat to “Deactivate All” … you can only do it once every 6 months. No where on the Qriocity site for account management is that listed. Right now it still doesn’t matter, as long as all the content we have already works and continues to work, Great.

One of these days we’ll get a 3rd PS3. Then it’ll be that the living room PS3 and the PS3 in my office will get the games from PSN, if we get any [of which there are a few coming in 2012 that I wanted which are PSN only ] The PSP thing is troublesome. I have 1 and son has 1 and there is a 3rd that passes around for now. I was thinking of getting one each for my other 2 children eventually (all have Sub-Accounts to my Master Account) but Sony has no care for how accounts are associated, Sub-Account means nothing in terms of what the Master Account has except for what’s in their wallet and what they’ll allow to each Sub-Account monetarily wise.

If I gave my children all PSP’s including mine, that would have been the 5 allowable. But now it’s not so simple. The way it was, all PSP’s are activated to my account. All PSN then goes to every device. If I allowed a child to activate their own PSN ID on a PSP, then anything I buy, is not available for them. If I give them allowance to my PSN Wallet, then they can buy games from PSN with that, and they can play them on the PSP, but only them.

It was and is still an UGLY system.

With the VITA coming out, we were hoping that me and my son would each get one. Then it’d be we’d be a separated family. On the PS3′s we can all play anyone’s content, but the PSP’s are individual devices, no trophies so it never became an issue of using one Master Account on three devices. The Vita’s will be different and whoa nelly, it’s not good, the changes Sony has made, but … anyhow, UMD’s are out there, and HEN stuff, so, PSP’s have some life outside of PSN for the future, that’s it.

PSN had sold me on digital buying for many games. Not really anymore. Only select few. Thank God Bejeweled 3 is out on Blu-ray now for PS3. I hope to get that for Christmas.

All in all, whatever it is, it is. Qriocity shows stuff, but not everything, it’s really quirky, Old content plays on all devices even though no device individually shows that it’s activated for GAMES on that site, but on the Account Management area it does show 1 PS device is activated for GAMES, but it doesn’t list the name of it, and no actual device from the DEVICE tab, once again, shows GAME activation at all.

OK. Whatever.

Oh, by the way, Happy Belated Birthday to PS3. How does it feel for you to be 5, and limited more than before suddenly? It’s OK, Blu-ray is best anyhow.

Murky PSN Licensing Reality

Posted on Sunday, November 6, 2011 by Maisy

After thinking about the PSN fiasco started November 4, 2011 on the Playstation Blog(s) for awhile now, I am just as peeved seeing a definite problem with it, moreso in regard to how it’ll work with portable units. PSP and future devices. As it is, there is no trophy support on the PSP, so … it’s worked to have just my account activated on all three PSP’s in our household, especially since I was allowed to put my stuff on up to 5 PSP’s.

All year I’ve fretted about this day coming, in my head, since I knew it’d be an issue with the PS Vita in the first place, it’d have to have activation as a device differing from how one is signed into PSN ID. But … who knows if that is solved yet. Assuredly it must be, but … anyhow, only 2 devices can play something at the same time, in the portable arena. How does it work IRL though, can all three of my PSP’s stay activated for other content and have all new content, how does it really work with their proposed activate/deactivate scheme. It seems murky and hoopy.

Anyhow, you have to “Activate” a machine. When you download a game it “activates” when installing. If you sign-out of PSN some games won’t let you play unless you are signed in to PSN with the activation ID. Some games won’t let two people be signed in with the same activation ID at the same time, and in those cases they can sign-in with their own PSN ID, depening on the game. Otherwise, you need two copies of the game to play it at the same time (some online games are like that) It’s murky, not fun, already. With new stuff, it could be worse.

I don’t have devices so that I have to jump through hoops. If I liked jumping through hoops I’d have a set of hoops to jump through out in my yard.

This should be so easy, where’s the Staples EASY button when you need it?!!!

[There are 4 people that use the 3 PSP's: Me, Son #1, we each have our own. One other is shared between the rest of the family thus far, mostly 2 other people (Son and Daughter) but it will eventually become a problem when we would need to retire that 3rd one and get a couple of new ones, and then all along my #1 and me were planning on upgrading, I was going to keep my PSP on hand for UMD use mostly, so it's so really icky murky and it's gonna get worse, no doubt.]

(un)Holy Cow! PSN takes the cake

Posted on Saturday, November 5, 2011 by Maisy

Sony is depressing me terribly today. I’m glad I didn’t go to their playstation blog yesterday, when I really couldn’t have dealt with it at all. I’d have thrown all my PS* stuff out by now if so. And seriously be considering the best way to … I don’t know, live without PlayStation, get rid of my whole love of PlayStation stuff and go to Nintendo, or … no, I couldn’t go there, or there solely like I could have with PS.

The stinking part of it is, I was GOING to get the PlayStation 3D Display and a 3rd PS3 to go with it, plus a pair or two of extra 3D glasses, extra controllers, and have a great office/craft room/playroom by early 2012.

Must re-think it all now.

My eldest son is 15, he and I are PSP fans. 3 other children are younger and getting interested in PSP’s.

UMD’s aren’t really being produced much now. PSP’s will eventually have no new disc content, only PSN ability and old UMD’s.

PSN content after Nov. 18th of this year (2011) can only be on up to 2 activated PS3′s and 2 activated PSP’s/PSVita’s

How it is right now, we have 2 PS3′s and we have 3 PSP’s and (plus 1 that is still activated, but we don’t have it, it was exchanged at Best Buy with their Black Tie service, but oops, forgot to “de-activate” it right. I tried, but it’s not done according to the one place I can see that stuff, the music unlimited site. [login with PSN ID])

How about the big plan we had: For Christmas me and my son were gonna get PS Vita’s. Ha. That isn’t happening, no matter how much we want it, it’s not coming to America until practically Spring 2012. (Where we live it usually is nearly Spring by then, and it’s close a lot of places)

Now if we go with when the PS Vita will be available, will we even want one? Before today, yes, but I was wondering how they’d change activation, and it looks like it’s so frickin restrictive that I’m gonna totally puke. In our house we have more because it’s 2 adults and 4 children, we all play video games.

I guess I can only play what I can get on my Google Android tablet now (or soon). I’ll be stuck with my old digital content on my PSP and whatever UMD discs I have and hope to God I don’t get sick of them or that the machine breaks.

OR I get a Vita and so does my son. No one else can have one and no one else can have our old PSP’s except as closed off things.

I’m not so sure I’m very thrilled with the idea of playing Dust 514 anymore, or Resistance: Burning Skies, or Starhawk.

We enjoy playing together when we can. We had 1 copy of Warhawk bought recently (disc) we went and found another right away, it was a lot of fun. We were looking forward to a third PS3 and maybe a 4th eventually, playing together online. We’ll be able to do it with Warhawk, it’s an old game, lots of them available in stores for $20 and down to $8 depending where you go. That one it’s OK about it to buy it for each machine, we get enough value out of it.

Not so with how Warhawk from PSN is, only 1 account can use it. Only 1 PS3 in any 24 hr. time slot can use it. Yikes!

It costs a lot on PSN too, so no biggie, we bought it for $8 each at Gamestop.

Resistance 3 is out now. I’d like it, was gonna get it with the pre-ordered 3D Display we payed $5 for holding one for us … were gonna get it in a few weeks when the Display was in stock. We hubby had different plans than I did, and Sony is releasing it sooner than originally they said, so hubby is on a different page about it than I am, and we will not be getting it until December at the earliest, so I am NOW saying, we ain’t getting one at all. Nope.

It makes me so mad. All of it together, or just Sony PlayStation Nov. 18th crapola all by itself.

How about this quote from the future: “Sorry, children, only me and your one of you are aloud to play this game. It’s not you though. When you get a job, you can buy it for yourself.”

We aren’t paying $59 for most games. Some we do and we only get 1 copy of them. Some things we’ve bought digital but it won’t be so friendly as it is now, any PS3 it’s OK for now, but soon enough it would have been alright with the 3rd I wanted. This is just so restrictive, it’ll end up hurting them more than us, I dare say.

We’ll seek other things and other ways and Sony will have been the cause of their own demise. At least they have shot themselves in their collective foot.

Syphon Filter for PSP

Posted on Tuesday, September 6, 2011 by Maisy

I’ve known about the Syphon Filter franchise all along, was interested in it the entire time, but never got any of the games. (SF games on any platform)

Christmas 2007 I got my first PSP. I was interested highly in getting something I liked on that device, but never got much of anything useful (things being somewhat restrictive for me, I can’t just get something that costs 39.99 when I feel like it!)

Syphon Filter and Socom were both on my horizon, as well as other games, and I just never quite “got to it” to make a decision. Eventually (Christmas 2009) I got a new PSP and my eldest got one too. This made it easier for me to get some things, sharing UMD’s and all. It wasn’t “just for me” anymore.

One of the games I wanted was Jeanne D’Arc. I picked that up finally this year. There are others that still haven’t graced our presence. Brick stores have so little in the way of PSP UMD’s these days. We buy most of our stuff USED, but not always, not always have either.

Recently I wrote about Syphon Filter: Combat Ops, how we decided to get it on PSN and liked it enough that when we were in GameStop last night there was one of the packs of games (I saw them in Best Buy before) that Sony Playstation recently released (old games bundled together for one nice price) and it ended up absolutely being ours.

See More PSP Dual Packs Introduced Various at IGN.com

We also found a used copy of Logan’s Shadow. So we have Syphon Filter fulfilled on our PSP’s now.

I love the look of Logan’s Shadow, it’s so gorgeous, all the menus, it really shines in the blue theme. (Combat Ops is red, Dark Mirror is green)

The thing about Logan’s Shadow and Dark Mirror which is different from Combat Ops is: you login to the infrustructure with a user name and password, NOT your PSN ID. Hurray! (Combat Ops uses your PSN ID)

We traded-in several games to get these. We got these plus Uncharted 2 (for my husband) and still had credit leftover. (I was shockingly pleased at how much some of the games pulled in …)

On another PSP topic, I’ve seen lots about the game The 3rd Birthday, saw it in the store last night, looked at it, it seems interesting, but I don’t know if it is my thing, per se, or what. I know that online it seemed to be a lot of people thrilled with it coming, but I don’t know it’s history or anything. I guess I’m inputting this information to record my interest and that will someday force me to do more research.

Meanwhile, I’ll be busy with Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow, for awhile.

PSN ID workarounds

Posted on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 by Maisy

So here’s how to solve SOME of the Account problems with PSN on a PSP … it’s a work-around I found online for Syphon Filter Combat Ops.

My 15 year old and I have been looking for a PSN game we’d like to get for our PSP’s and decided on Syphon Filter Combat Ops yesterday. We did an Ad Hoc match last night, then this morning tried Infrastructure … and we both couldn’t play at the same time with My Master ACCOUNT being the one that buys the game … so frustrating –the PSN crap about Accounts. When I first started with PSN I had a Master Account, I would be the one buying everything on PS3 plus I was the only one with a PSP. Then later I got a new PSP and my son got a PSP too. Things got dicey. He couldn’t use his PSN ID on his PSP … well, in the end it only mattered … not really.

This new (for us) game is the first thing that REALLY got us though. Other games it didn’t matter for (online play) to have separate PSN Activatation/ID sign in. It was managed somehow else, I guess, or else we didn’t do anything with it, or it’s not really connected to the PSN ID for scores and such. I don’t know, it’s confusing, but the point is, it became an issue absolutely today with Syphon Filter Combat Ops. So, I started looking and found that if you:

Have games on a PSP that is Activated by the Buying Account of those games and you want to use another PSN ID to play a certain one of those games …

On the PSP XMB go to Account Management, press the triangle button and choose “DELETE” on the menu that pops up to the right.

Then click the new “Sign Up for a PSN Account” icon that replaces the Account Management in the XMB.

Assuming you have another PSN ID already, sign in as an existing user …. and that is that.

The PSP stays ACTIVATED via the previous PSN Account that was the buying account for all the games.

Now, you cannot go to the store and BUY OR DOWNLOAD ANYTHING from that point, or else the PSP will be un-activated and re-activated with the NEW PSN ID.

To buy games or even free stuff … demos and such, you will have to download via your PC and Media Go or use the PS3 PSN store to buy and download to the PS3 then connect your PSP to either the PC or the PS3 with a USB cord and tranfer the content over. Buying or Downloading as the Buying Account that is associated with the PSP activated content is the important fact to remember … it must be downloaded via that person’s PSN ID. It will work on the PSP that has the OTHER PSN ID signed in, keep it working with the PSN games that need that login ID to work the way one wishes, plus keep ability to play all the PSN content that was downloaded before, plus after with the “sideload” way of getting content on the PSP with the Buying Account Associated with the ACTIVATED PSN ID. So games ACTIVATED as PSN ID #1 will work on PSN ID#2′s PSP because only the Sign-In information was changed, NOT the Activation.

We have been concerned with this stuff for a long time because of issues of leaderboards, and medals, rewards, trophies, etc. being connected to the player and the associated PSN ID … and the “buying account” having the ability to put games on more than one device is a family friendly thing, but the PSN ID part of it convolutes it totally.

The upcoming PS Vita is a murky idea … all because of this PSN ID stuff. At least I know how to make it work for the now, on the PSP, with it’s current ACTIVATION methodology and PSN Sign-In separately.

One hitch though is some other “online entitlement” sort of games that had a certificate with a UMD purchase. If you have that associated with a buying account it has to be played with that as the sign-in account. So … you then have to jump through more hoops to sign-in as the Buying Account … or just give more $ to PSN with the person’s “OTHER” PSN Account and buy separate Online Entitlement. (worth … something, if it makes it easier to deal with plus makes the online play a better experience on that end [somehow, someway as they say the $$$ makes the piracy go away, which makes the experience online cleaner, better, tighter, whatever-er. FWIW, a small charge is worth the ease, but that's pretty much the thing, you buy a disc for a reason then can only use it certain ways in a certain machine (signed-in a certain way) ... uh, that's not so great. But whatever, this is how they are doing it more and more ... online entitlement purchase. Each user of the game must have a different sign-in PSN ID, and it has to be tied to the actual online entitlement.

I can rip UMD games so they can be played on any of our PSP's, I have Pro Hen installed. [no, don't ask for me .iso's and such, I don't share except for with my husband and children who live with me.] It’s very nice. But for my children it’s not fully, for Patapon 3 came with a certificate to redeem for online entitlement. It was done with my Master Account, of course. Well now that ugly thing has reared it’s head. Son #2 wants to play ONLINE with Son #1, both using a ripped copy of the UMD, both can’t do it with my Master account being the account on their machines, and now today Son #2 thinks it’s possible and Son #1 thought so for awhile. Patapon 3 won’t go online with my Son #1′s PSN ID, it’s not the one tied to the entitlement. He can’t just “sign-in” so easily either.

Pooh, pooh, pooh, it’s a mess. Anyhow, everything else works to have the games activated to my account, and have a sign-in for their accounts, and side-loading new content is possible. Not bad, we do have to plugin a PSP to charge it, so just having it charging while side-loading occassionally, why not. It’s just that older online games will work with this, but some newer ones won’t, so if you really want it, then you have jump through hoops. I think ultimately Patapon 3 Online isn’t really something Son #1 is desirous of that much, so he’ll live without it for multi-person play with Son #3 and others, for now. I’ll have to fund him to get online entitlement in any case, it’s my deal to give him the money for the sub-account, plus if we gave him Patapon 3 and he put it on my account, then I owe him the online entitlement for his own account.

Now that brings up something else, if anyone plays anything online with a PSP, I don’t WANT them using my PSN ID … that’s full circle to in the beginning when I first started all this PSN stuff, if I have a Master Account, then any sub-accounts will have top down flow … my money flows, and if I buy it they can play it on their own ID’s on PSP’s right? Nope, wrong.

It’s half-assed. Just fix it Sony/PSN … buying can be activation tied another way, it can be. Signing-in to play on a device should be personal, and ALLOWED activation can be in the system some way that is easy, foolproof, not hoops to jump through, or anything to hack…something totally within the legal requirements of licensing as it goes with an immediate family of Sony Playstation device users. And games should cost less if we each have to buy separate copies of everything, btw. You’ll find we will buy less if not, or nothing at all.

Like with Playstation Plus. On the PS3 it’s beneficial to everyone that I am PS+, but they don’t get EVERY benefit that I get.

They can play any game on the PS3 I buy. They just can’t use certain Plus benefits, like the newer game save uploads, free avatars, etc.

A PSP is a personal device. PSN ID tied to a PSP, one can play the games the same way, right, with me as the Master Account, the Sub-Account below me should be granted privelages of PSP games that I own, bought however, and anything that can be done with them. But it’s not that way. So living with the system is like everything else, it can be seen from a million perspectives and not every way will suit every one, but something has to be put into place and let’s just hope that something better is created with PSN ID’s in the future with Sony Playstation things.

(It seems easy to also do things this way: turn off “automatic login” for the account. Then when you have a game to play online just change the login info … unfortunately it means you have to physically change things atimes, but it seems to work alright, so far)

The Glory Days: Galaga

Posted on Saturday, August 27, 2011 by Maisy

Galaga: Destination Earth is an old game I used to love so much. I have it on a PSOne disc and as a PC disc.

Long before those I first played it on NES [I swear I did] not the exact same thing, something so very similar though (my husband and I had an NES and later an SNES back in 1992-1995.)

Back in those glory days we’d sit on the floor in front of our tube tv and have Nintendo Thumb so bad. That little rectangular piece of plastic digging into your hands, who cares!

I also played Tetris and Roger Clemens Baseball a lot.

The thing is, the Galaga game, as a ship going through the planets to the Earth, it’s what we played, it is absolutely what we played then. I don’t have any pictures of what it was, I can’t find info on it at all.

Back then all I had for a camera was a Canon p&s, and film and processing were part of it, of course, so I did not take just anything as a record or for memories unless it was something important. I just didn’t know back then how important this was! [kicking myself.]

Where are all those things we used to have? If they are in a box I hope they are in our possession somewhere … there are other things I’m looking for, old junk, not just those games, but a Zip drive, I have a cable, some of the Zip Disks … a card to connect in a parallel fast manner with a pc … but the Zip drive is hiding. Maybe it’s in the box with my NES games, my SNES games that are missing (have some of them) … oh Galaga, my Galaga.

FWIW I got the PSOne disc and used a few computer programs and successfully ripped it and ran it through to be an eboot file for my PSP, works great, except for, no music. I have to work on it more. Anyhow, I just don’t get some things about Galaga, like what was it that we played on NES before? What was it we played on NES before? And what was it that we played on NES before? Yes, repeating the question. Over and over and over. It’s like that, so “in there” digging at my brain.

The next idea that bugs me is, of ALL the PSONE games PSN could put on the store, why not Galaga: Destination Earth? It works alright as a PS3 remote play on PSP, works on PS3 just fine (to me) so please SONY PLAYSTATION, get it on PSN!

I’d pay for a better copy to download. Otherwise, I’ll have to spend more time researching and fixing it up … ugh. Not that it’s that bad, but it would be SO MUCH SIMPLER for PlayStation to do it.

Maybe it’s not up to snuff, so then how about getting it rebooted to some awesome game. Retro, sure, but updated.

The soundtrack though, I love that, and it’s the one thing I can listen to on the computer or the PS3, as both recognize 7 tracks as being CD songs. The songs are ripped on both. I’m still going to try to figure out how to get the music in the psp eboot version I made. I didn’t put much into it, so I owe it to myself to do more.

Hyperthinking

Tag Archives: PSP