PS Vita

The US PS Vita store currently has nine PSOne titles available for download, a number that has left many PS Vita owners unhappy. Their anger might be understandable if you consider the European PS Vita store has over 100 PS1 titles. Plus, the PS Vita's latest firmware update, 1.8, adds the ability to transfer your PS1 library from the PS3, to the PS Vita, which is great! But it does make American gamers wonder: Why only 9 games?

• NEWS: PlayStation Vita Sales Top 2.2 Million

Sony has heard the cries of their fans and made a statement. You can read it after the break but if you want the "tl;dr" version, it sounds like Sony has to go through a few extra channels to get approval for titles in America. Perhaps more permission from third-party publishers is needed here, than in Europe.

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Attention, sport-os, jocks, and armchair quarterbacks: Madden NFL 13 is on store shelves today, so get your playbooks out and huddle up.

This year, Madden is powered by the Infinity Engine and features improved physics, as well as the full NFL roster and more. Check out the first 15 minutes of the game in the video below:

Sony is making good on its E3 2012 promise with the release today of the first PSOne Classics for the PlayStation Vita, a feat made possible thanks to the device's newly launched v1.80 firmware update. There are just nine titles officially available in North America (via PS Blog), which compares poorly with the 100+ in Europe (via EU PS Blog) and the 200 in Japan (via Andriasang). You can commence your uproar now.

The nine titles available in North America are Arc the Lad, Cool Boarders 2, Final Fantasy VII, Hot Shots Golf 2, Jet Moto, Syphon Filter, Tomb Raider, Twisted Metal 2, and Wild Arms. It's not quite that simple though. A large number of other games are confirmed by the fan community to be compatible, including many of the titles that you were probably waiting for. Reddit is keeping a running list, along with instructions covering how to get that content onto your handheld.

The officially supported PSOne Classics are available as of today, August 28, 2012, though it seems like the PS Store hasn't updated for everyone yet. I see no PSOne titles listed on my own Vita, and I'm still unable to download FF7 (which I own) to my device via my account's download list.

Tearaway was one of the major announcements from Sony at Gamescom 2012. The game comes from the same studio who brought us LittleBigPlanet, Media Molecule. We sat down with Alex Evans and Rex Crowle from Media Moecule to talk about how Tearaway will change the way we play with the PS Vita.

• VIDEO: Tearaway Announcement Trailer

SunFlowers has been announced for the PlayStation Vita by developer The Game Atelier. In this bright, adorable looking game you'll have to grow over 300 types of flowers using chain reactions from the sun.

Controlling the Sun, you'll have the power to grow flowers on the ground by shooting rays of sunlight through passing clouds. This will turn the sunlight in to water, which allows the plants to grow. However, if the sunlight touches a seed directly, it will burn until a drop of water cools it off.

Check out SunFlowers in action in the video below.

For more information on SunFlowers, check out the Official PlayStation Blog.

Insomniac has released its Gamescom 2012 gameplay trailer for Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault. The galaxies greatest heroes have a new enemy to battle. In Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault you'll be tasked with exploring the battlefield, defending your base, and annihilating your enemies. Are you up for the task?

For more Gamescom trailers, check out our GamesCom 2012 site section.

According to Sony, worldwide sales of the PlayStation Vita are higher than 2.2 million. That might sound like a lot of consoles, but in comparison to the competition, it's a disappointing number.

The 2.2 million number is for sales through June. As Joystiq points out. When Sony last let people know how many handhelds sold, it was May, and the company sold 1.8 million units worldwide, which means the console has moved around 200K units each month in May and June. By contrast, before the Nintendo 3DS received its price cut to $170, it had sold 1.41 million units more than the Vita's current lifetime sales. A month after the price drop, the 3DS was at 6.68 million units sold worldwide.

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Upcoming game Lego: The Lord of the Rings will feature 85 playable characters, including some folks not seen in the Lord of the Rings movies. Sadly, Traveler's Tales has yet to release the full list of included characters, so you can't see if your favorites have made the cut.

Lego: The Lord of the Rings will continue with the open-world style of Lego Batman 2, with the entire world of Middle Earth recreated based on Tolkien's maps and drawings. Everything will be located in the right place, and be fully explorable on foot or horse. The game will feature a fast-travel feature, too.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified will give Vita owners the ultimate handheld FPS experience. The game will bridge the gap between Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Obviously we're excited to see how this game is shaping up. Luckily, Eric Eckstein recently had the chance to check out Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified for himself.

Of course, there are some unique Vita control methods to CODBOD, including touch screen interaction for melee, streak rewards, or grenades. The latter is actually very useful, as players can essentially point to where they want the grenades to be chucked. In addition, the back touch of the Vita will allows snipers to hold their breath more effectively as well.

Check out our full Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified Gamescom 2012 Preview for more information.

Jake "Tri-Corner" Gaskill like old timey music, cataloging exotic birds and Assassin's Creed 3. Instead of a review of the Louvin Brothers' Satan is Real or a discussion of his once-in-a-lifetime sighting of Micronesian king fisher, Jake has written a a preview of Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation.

The game is handheld, but you might forget that fact if you're not careful. From Jake's Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation preview:

Paddling through the dense bayou swamp, soaking up the atmosphere as we moved into position to attack our targets, it was easy to forget that I was playing a handheld AC game. A few seconds after returning to shore, I had a chance to test out the game’s counter system, thanks to a rather large alligator hanging out on the river bank. Just as the beast lunged at me, I managed to hit counter, causing Aveline to unleash a precision death blow to the gator’s noggin (Trophy suggestion: “Chomp vs. Chop”).

Read the rest of Jake's Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation preview.

Sony's presentation at this year's Gamescom show was top notch. Five new games were announced, and a ton of cool stuff was shown off from games we already knew about, but the announcement of "Cross Buy" is among the more interesting initiatives mentioned, and might be just the thing Sony needs to boost sales of the Vita.

Cross Buy works like this: Buying certain games on one system will give you the game on the other system for free. The first two titles announced are PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault. These games will be packaged with both the PS3 and the Vita version of the games in the same box.

I'm not sure if that is enough to get reluctant gamers to purchase a Vita, but it's definitely a good start.

New features are coming to the PlayStation Vita. Update 1.80 comes out on August 28, and it will allow users to play PSone titles on the handheld, as well as adding a suite of new features to Sony's handheld, including the Cross Controller feature that allows you to control your PS3 with your Vita.

I've posted details on all of the updates to the Vita Below the "Read More" tag.

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Sony has announced Killzone Mercenary for the PS Vita. They promise this title will deliver a FPS experience that simply would not be possible on any other platform.

Killzone Mercenary was announced during Sony's Gamescom 2012 press conference. The game was debuted with a live action trailer, showing a hostile world where mercenaries fight the battles soldiers never could. A few seconds of gameplay was shown. In it, a mercenary took out targets with motion controlled maneuvers. Each kill earned the player money, money, money.

No other details for Killzone Mercenary were announced.

Sony's upcoming brawler, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, will feature Dante, Sackboy, Spike, and Ratchet & Clank as playable characters. The announcement comes from Sony's Gamescom 2012 press conference.

• NEWS: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Release Date Pushed Back

Ratchet and Clank make sense for the PlayStation fighting game but I was surprised by the announcement of Dante. He's the main character in Devil May Cry: DMC from Capcom.

Note: If we play PlayStation All-Stars together, I call dibs on Sackboy.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale will be released on November 20, 2012.

Media Molequle and Sony, the people who brought you LittleBigPlanet, just unveiled a brand new game. Tearaway is a platformer that uses the unique controls of the Vita to deliver a new kind of puzzle-platformer. No word yet on a release window.

Tearaway involves you "teaming up" with a character called Iota, who lives in a paper world. You have to help him escape, and you do that by doing things like "poking" through the back of the screen, blowing on the screen, and otherwise using the new control scheme of the PS Vita in innovative ways. It's hard to explain, but easy to understand once you see it.