Features// SPOnG's Review of the Year 2011: May

Let’s leave that little PR gem behind and look at some good news. The Smithsonian Institute is one of the world’s greatest repositories of culture and knowledge, so was great news that is had decided that video games deserved a place in its archives.

It was even better that it had chosen some decent titles. As we reported, Smithsonian's Video Games Museum List is a Cracker!.

The games in the list included Super Mario Bros 3 on NES, Goldeneye 007 on N64 and Shadow of the Colossus on PS2. The Dreamcast selection includes Shenmue, which will no doubt spark even more calls for a third entry in the adventure series.

On top of the publicly voted games, the Smithsonian has selected five titles for attendees to play in a special exhibit. The games on show will be the arcade version of Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst and World of Warcraft. As we pointed out at the time, these are “all games that have had a dramatic impact on the industry in one form or another.”

Check out the full list here.

The bad news for Sony with its timeline and letter was that the US Senate was far from impressed with the company’s efforts to make things right.

“US Senator Calls Sony 'Half-Baked and Half-Hearted' in PSN Response” we reported.

Representative Mary Bono Mack, who chaired the House Committee on Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing into the PSN “problems” was not happy.

"I hate to pile on," she said, "but in essence, Sony put the burden on consumers to 'search' for information, instead of accepting the burden of notifying them. If I have anything to do with it, that kind of half-hearted, half-baked response is not going to fly in the future.”

Ouch.

On the Microsoft front, an acquisition was announced that could bear fruit for Xbox Live users. we reported: “”With a purchase price of $8.5 billion in cash when Microsoft finalises its purchase of Skype it's not 'buying to close' rather that it's 'buying to build' especially for Xbox 360 users.”

But that wasn’t all. Remember when there was no PayPal with Xbox Live? It was shortly before this happened.

Still, the big news was that PSN ‘Challenge’. Sony reported that a, 'Select Group' of Users Currently Testing PlayStation Network but no one was that impressed.

What must have lead to some amusement in the Sony offices, however, was the fact that one of the websites related to the Anonymous hacking group blamed by the Playstation makers for the PSN outage has itself been brought down by hackers in an apparent leadership war.

We reported a message on the Anonops.in site that stated, “We are profoundly (sic) sorry for this drama, and we can't give you a an estimate on when service will resume normally.”

The message continued, "We regret to inform you today that our network has been compromised by a former IRC-operator and fellow helper named 'Ryan'. “
Whoops.

Before we leave May 2011, however, there was also a snippet of Nintendo news that was to cast a shadow over the future.

”UK Wii Now Under £100” we reported.

“UK retailers have begun starting to sell Nintendo's Wii console for less than £100. Asda, Game and Gamestation are listing a bundle that includes Mario Kart Wii and a wheel peripheral for £99.99.”

As May moved into June, Sony really was counting the cost: ”Sony 'Currently Estimating 14 Billion Yen Cost for PSN Intrusion”was the news from a Sony presentation.

In terms of the UK and the game that was to change everything forever (it didn’t) LA Noire topped the charts and gave no clues as to the fallout that was to follow for Team Bondi and its founder Brendan Macnamara.

What of the PSN though? Well, on Tuesday May 31st, we reported that, “Sony Promises Full PSN Restoration by End of Week” - let’s see what happens ‘next month’.

Now, farewell to May as Sony’s traditional failure to stop pre-E3 leaks kicked in. Yes, PSP2 was going to be announced and named. It was going to be named ‘PlayStation Vita’ in June... at E3.

See you in June.... 2011!