As you know, 1UP.com has breathed its last. Such are the vicissitudes of business. Happily, Jose Otero managed to pull together a startling number of former 1UP staff during Game Developers Conference this year for one final podcast. Not everyone was there due to the last-minute nature of this show (or because they had other duties that kept them away), but if you paid any attention at all to the site for the 10 years it lived you're bound to hear some voices you recognize in this three-hour tag-team adventure. Rather than spoil the surprise, though, we'd rather just let you hear the show for yourself.

Thanks for all the years of support. Your enthusiasm for our work fueled these shows, and we very literally couldn't have done it without you. Please enjoy this final gift to you all.

Much like their disc-based counterparts, PlayStation 3 downloadable games won't be supported on PlayStation 4. What that means is your entire PlayStation Network library is going to have to stay put, and won't be carried over to the next generation as many people were hoping it would. That's no surprise considering the major changes to the system's architecture which, other than the issue of backwards compatibility, are excellent news. This leaves gamers who wanted the PS4 to fully replace the PS3 currently sitting on their entertainment centers in an unfortunate position, although it does present Sony with an opportunity.

Backwards compatibility has never been a guarantee going into a new generation. More often than not, it's been something we've had to do without: NES games didn't work on SNES, SNES games didn't work on N64, N64 games didn't work on GameCube, Genesis games didn't work on Saturn, and so on. More recently we've had exceptions to that as the media games were delivered on became more consistent across generations with CDs and DVDs. The current generation of consoles initially promised backwards compatibility to varying degrees, but eventually Sony stopped including the hardware necessary to play PS2 games on PS3, Microsoft stopped adding Xbox games to the list of those that could be played on 360, and Nintendo left GameCube support out of the most recent Wii hardware revision. Now, with not even PSN games being playable on PS4, you can see that there is more to backwards compatibility than having a way of getting the data onto the newer system -- particularly when the system games were originally on had complex hardware. ]]>Fri, 22 Feb 2013 11:08:00 PSTNEWShttp://localhost/news/playstation-4-restore-lost-loveJeremy Parish

I used to love Sony.

Jose Otero: At the PlayStation event, Sony showed some of the best and worst kept secrets in the gaming industry. We all got our first peek at the PlayStation 4's controller and the rumored social features, like the ability to allow other users to spectate the games you're currently playing. I went into this thing unsure of how social features would help boost this upcoming generation of hardware, but I walked away impressed by all of the possibilities. Today's Internet thrives on a socially connected culture where people share pictures, video, and information at a rapid pace. It only makes sense that games would go in the same direction. The next gen doesn't appear driven by graphics and polygons like the previous one's that came before. If Sony placed their bets properly, it's more about the social features and what they bring to the table.

Marty Sliva: Yeah, one of the biggest things I took aware from the conference was Sony's push to make the PS4 the first social network with "meaning," their words, not mine. Strange verbiage aside, they said all of the right things to make me believe that this could be the first console to succeed in connecting gamers on the same level that a platform like Facebook does. The idea of being able to watch what my buddies are playing on the fly, or upload something amazing that just happened in whatever game I might be playing is promising to say the least. If "Let's Plays" seem popular now, just wait until any kid with a PS4 can record commentary without ever leaving their living room. ]]>Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:09:00 PSTNEWShttp://localhost/news/rayman-legends-goes-multiplatformChris Pereira

Rayman Legends was, for myself and many others, a major reason to pick up a Wii U early on. Although it was known more than a month in advance of the system's launch that Legends would be coming in the first quarter of 2013, rather than in November as originally planned, it had been a game touted as a Wii U exclusive for some time. It seemed inevitable that it would eventually come to other platforms, but it would still be a game that could only be had on Wii U for a period of time, and it would only be on Wii U that you could take advantage of the GamePad-specific features.

With the beginning of 2013 being so barren for Wii U releases that Nintendo president Satoru Iwata recently apologized for the drought, Legends would have been an even more welcome sight on store shelves. Much to the chagrin of Wii U owners everywhere, Ubisoft yesterday announced the game would not be coming out on February 26, as it was said to be even in recent weeks, but would instead be coming in September -- alongside Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions. ]]>Fri, 08 Feb 2013 11:45:00 PSTNEWShttp://localhost/news/sly-cooper-thieves-in-time-quiet-launchChris Pereira

You might not know it, but Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time was released today. It's a PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita exclusive that you can pick up right this very second, although you could be forgiven for not realizing it -- and not just because Dead Space 3 is the week's biggest release.

Thives in Time is the series' first entry not to be developed by Sucker Punch Productions, which is now better known for its work on Infamous. When the game was revealed back at E3 2011, Sucker Punch's name was conspicuously absent from the trailer. In its place was that of Sanzaru Games, a relatively new developer whose credits included The Sly Collection and a port of Secret Agent Clank, the former of which helped put it in a position to make what amounts to Sly 4. ]]>Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:19:00 PSTNEWShttp://localhost/news/cry-less-annualization-more-breathing-roomChris Pereira

It is something we see far more often than many of us would like: A game hits it big and the publisher responsible for it proceeds to annualize it or, at the very least, provide each subsequent release with little breathing room before yet another follow-up is released. The short-term rewards for doing so promote a temptation to exploit series in a way that can be harmful to the quality of the games in question and the series as a whole. Not only that, the interest in backing games with this sort of potential can make it more difficult for certain games to be released -- just look at the way Activision dumped games like Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters because they didn't "have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises."

Ignoring sports games, the franchises that likely come to mind first when thinking of this sort of thing include Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed. The last time we went a year without a Call of Duty game was 2004, and the last year we didn't see a new Assassin's Creed game on consoles was 2008. (It's no coincidence that, in both cases, that year was the gap in between the first and second entries of the series.) Although it probably doesn't jump to the top of your list, Prince of Persia is another series to fall victim to this sort of treatment. Though not as extreme an example as CoD or AC, the Sands of Time reboot for Prince of Persia began a six-and-a-half-year stretch that saw five games released, not counting those released for handhelds or the remake of the original. No matter how you slice it, that's a lot of games for one series to see in a relatively short span of time. ]]>Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:16:00 PSTNEWShttp://localhost/news/respawn-debut-game-speculationChris Pereira

This spring will mark three years since Respawn Entertainment was established by Jason West and Vince Zampella, the founders of Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward. While you wouldn't expect development to have begun immediately at a brand-new studio, enough time has now passed that it seems reasonable to assume Respawn is fairly deep in development on -- well, whatever it is they're making. Over the past few years, we've gotten almost zero indication of what the studio is at work on. Besides some teaser images, early indications that the game would be on the scale of a "huge, summer blockbuster," and EA's statements that it will be a sci-fi-oriented shooter, there has been nothing of substance to go on. Knowing it's a sci-fi shooter limits the scope of possibilities to a degree, but let's be honest -- neither of those details is specific enough to tell us much beyond the fact that it won't be a historically accurate World War II RPG.

There are a limited number of conclusions we can safely jump to. Given this is an EA-published game and multiplayer is what made Call of Duty into the phenomenon it has become, it's OK to assume Respawn's mystery project will not be a single-player-only affair. Presuming it will be a first-person shooter, considering West and Zampella's past with Call of Duty, and Medal of Honor before it, might be a stretch, though. For all we know, they, along with the many former Infinity Ward employees that followed them to Respawn, are interested in getting away from what they're used to and, as a result, would prefer to make a third-person game. Gears of War might not be as big as Call of Duty or Halo, but it's done very well for itself with that perspective. ]]>Fri, 25 Jan 2013 11:04:00 PSTNEWShttp://localhost/news/thq-breakup-south-park-ubisoft-darksiders-abandonedChris Pereira

Four years ago, Ubisoft was heavily advertising its games around episodes of South Park. In the next few months, it'll likely be doing that once again, only this time it will be doing this as the publishers of the newest South Park game, The Stick of Truth. Ubisoft was among the companies today to acquire assets that formerly belonged to THQ, a company that is now all but dead following an auction that kicked off yesterday and concluded today.

THQ has been in a very poor position for some time now. Even with Jason Rubin being named president, its eventual collapse was, in many people's eyes, an inevitability following the uDraw disaster, Homefront's failure, and a number of other factors. Yet it's difficult not to be reeling today when accounting for the human factor; many former THQ employees are finding themselves out of work today, and those numbers may continue to grow as the new owners of the companies acquired through the auction evaluate their needs. ]]>Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:19:00 PSTNEWShttp://localhost/news/interview-lara-beginsJeremy Parish

After spending some time with a huge demo of the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot, I had an equally massive conversation with the game's producer, Crystal Dynamics' Karl Stewart. Beside discussing the studio's inspirations for Lara Croft's latest adventure, we also explored some of the more advanced game mechanics -- things that the first few hours of the game only hint at. Below is the entirety of our conversation... just be aware that it includes some minor spoilers for the game's first few hours, if you're sensitive to that sort of thing. Be sure to check out our new impressions of the game as well!