PlayStation

GameStop is entering the end of an era.

The company told The Verge in an interview published recently that the PlayStation 2 is starting to be removed from store shelves to make room for the hardware that will be launching in the coming years.

"The PS2 is a unique one -- we still generate a whole lot of profit off PS2 sales, but we're going to keep PS2 where PS2 does sell, and we won't put it in stores where we see really lapsed sales," Mike Dzura, GameStop's senior vice president of store operations, told … Read more

Developer Square Enix announced today a mega box set celebrating the 25th anniversary of the legendary role-playing video game Final Fantasy. The 35,000 yen ($446) compilation, due December 18, costs a pretty penny, but it offers hundreds of hours of classic gameplay plus a few extra bonuses. … Read more

Late August doesn't usually mean much for video gamers...unless you're playing Madden. Like the swallows of Capistrano, the arrival of the next Madden has become inextricably associated with the start of football season for us...and, the start of Scott's endless obsession over the NFL Team We Shall Not Name. Madden as an actual game doesn't really merit much to talk about year in and year out...new rosters, slight tweaks that only a veteran player would appreciate, or game modes that few might spend the time to discover. Still, the NFL fans buy it, … Read more

Today's laptops, smartphones, and tablets are smaller, thinner, and lighter than ever before. But to build today's ultraslim, ultraportable devices, designers and engineers often make their creations more difficult, if not impossible, to repair.

On this special episode of Cracking Open, I show you five ways manufacturers are making our gadgets harder to fix and give you a few tips on working around these self-repair roadblocks.… Read more

Sony representatives couldn't stop talking about the Vita during the Gamescom gaming expo today in Cologne, Germany, ushering in the most announcements ever in one day for the handheld since its debut. In fact, most of the first half of the press conference spoke exclusively of new Vita games and features coming before the end of the year.

The event introduced new games for the Vita such as Tearaway (from Media Molecule, creator of LittleBigPlanet) and Killzone Mercenary, both of which look visually stunning. We also learned about some new features coming down the road for the Vita, including … Read more

Tuesday's top tech headlines are formatted to fit your second screen:

At the Gamescom conference in Germany, Sony announced several new PlayStation games and new methods for playing. Sony talked more about PlayStation Mobile for Android devices, but we still don't know exactly when it'll hit the market or how many games will launch in the store.

And there are some perks for those that own both a PS Vita and the PS3. For one price, you can get a game for both systems, starting with "PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale," "Sly Cooper: Thieves in … Read more

Despite Sony's focus on mobile games via the PlayStation Vita, there's been a second, parallel path in the mobile game front taken via PlayStation Suite. That initiative, now called PlayStation Mobile, was detailed with additional hardware partners and promises of indie-friendly openness at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany.

PlayStation Mobile aims to take small-scale gaming to a wider variety of devices: Sony Xperia phones and tablets, select Android devices, and the PlayStation Vita. These games will download on all formats and be cross-compatible, in an attempt to build an ecosystem that can extend beyond traditional handheld game systems like … Read more

The PS3 has a solid collection of streaming-video apps, but the lack of a dedicated YouTube app has always been a conspicuous omission.

That ends today, with Sony and Google rolling out a new YouTube app for the PlayStation 3. The new app features a big-screen-friendly layout with controls optimized for the PS3's controller. You'll be able to log in to your YouTube account, giving you access to your subscribed channels and other YouTube community features.

There's also an option to use your smartphone as as a controller for the app, letting you take a video you'… Read more

I know I've used this tired cliche a few too many times, but the summer really does suck if you're a gamer. It used to be that the summer was reserved for indie titles on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network to rise to the top in, but in 2012 it's seemed that's not necessarily the case.

With just about a month to go before the industry begins to pick up again, Vigil Games' Darksiders II may just be the piece of software that saves your gaming summer. The follow-up to 2010's sleeper hit, Darksiders II delivers a lot of what I'd expect to see in a proper sequel.… Read more