Another fusion event displaying the highlights of music and gaming will be held this May 4 and May 5 at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) will be spearheading the event for The Bamboozle Festival 2008 and will feature several of its well loved game titles for both the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Portable. For more details, check out our full article.

Here's some more good news for Sony gadget owners. It seems like the company has taken a cue from the genius Bars at Apple stores and has unveiled Backstage, Sony's very own in-store tech support.

This new addition to the Sony Style retail shops will support both technical help and consultations. Owners of Sony-made gadgetry such as Vaio laptops, PSPs, and the like can take them in for diagnosis or parts replacement. According to Electronista, Sony says that Backstage can also help customers choose the system that's perfect for their needs.

Prices for the services have yet to be announced, but Electronista mentions that for an extra fee, out-of-warranty service will be available. You can check out Backstage at Sony Style outlets in New York and New Jersey. More stores will be getting the Backstage treatment in the following weeks.

"I choose you Homebrew!" Valve's marketing director said. Okay, not really, but Doug Lombardi did point out that the next-gen game console should embrace user-created content. Because the viewpoint of the world's marketing experts say that games on any platform would primarily be online, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo might want to open up their doors to content from users.

 

"I would argue that it's the biggest component those guys have to get over if they want online to matter," said the PC gaming platform advocate. The PC already has adapted to accommodate the creativity from average users. Valve's own Half Life and Team Fortress Classic were very good multiplayer games.

But when a college student from Canada and a high school student from New Jersey got hold of Valve's code, they created Counter-Strike which simply kicked the life out of Half-Life and Team Fortress formerly on top of the multiplayer game list. Lombardi sees that the PC has the ability to outlast the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, because it allows user-created content.

"The PC has that great advantage; has had that great advantage, and it comes from multiplayer and modding starting in the early '90s and [online] multiplayer only showing up on consoles in 2000 or 2001," said Lombardi. He noted that it has had more that a decade's worth of advancement that the restrictive next-gen consoles have to catch up with.

Games that originate on the PC with level editing tools are often repackaged without the customizability on consoles. Xbox Live Arcade's Eets was cited as an example. Valve even admits that a console port of Portal will probably also reflect the same restrictions.

But Sony is slowly getting there with Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet, though it still comes with a certain limitations. "I would love to see [user-created content capability] happen, but I think the platform holders are always going to need certification, which means it's usually going to have to be a commercial thing," Lombardi concluded.

The independent game development studio Saber Interactive, who is responsible for video games like TimeShift and Will Rock, is happy to announce that it just hired one of the industry's veterans to head Saber's game content division. That guy is Rick Raymo and he sure has a lot under his belt.

Raymo has been working in the video game industry for 19 years now, and about 30 titles are credited under his name. Some of the more notable ones include Duke Nukem 3D projects, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Death Rally and Max Payne. The creative director also used to work with companies such as I.D.G., GT Interactive, GameSpy, Red Jade, Interactive Studio Management, and Hudson Soft. Before Rick Raymo accepted his new post at Saber, he was working with HBO Interactive Entertainment as a production executive, and was responsible for spearheading efforts to create interactive properties out of the company's internal licenses.

Saber's new guy wasn't able for comment, but the company mentioned that Rick Raymo is more than happy to join them. He will be stationed at Saber's HQ in New Jersey and from time to time, he will also be making his rounds in Saber's production studio in St. Petersburg, Russia. Most of his work will be focused on the design and production team who are working on current and upcoming next generation titles.

Welcome aboard Saber's ship Rick Raymo!