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Sony is bulking up its Greatest Hits collection for the PSP, dropping the price on 10 select titles starting April 5. Available for the lowered price of $19.99, the majority of the new batch of Greatest Hits games are third party, though there are still some delicious first-party nuggets included, such as Chains of Olympus. Here's your next wave of Greatest Hits:

• Fight Night Round 3
• God of War: Chains of Olympus
• Medal of Honor Heroes 2
• Mortal Kombat: Unchained
• Patapon
• SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Tactical Strike
• Sonic Rivals 2
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Yellow Avenger
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter® 2
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Vegas

Judging by last week's torrent of PSP headlines, clearly Sony has big plans in store for its handheld in the coming year. One popular rumor making the rounds of late centers on a possible redesign in the works for the portable, one which purports to drop the UMD format altogether. It's an idea that Ready at Dawn boss Didier Malenfant seems wholly in favor of seeing, if only because it looks to point towards a platform dedicated to digital distribution.

The exec admits that he doesn't have the inside track on what Sony is up to with the PSP, though he told Edge in a recent interview that he'd "love to see anything that can help distribution move quicker toward a 100 percent online model." Like Bungie's Marty O'Donnell before him, Malenfant has been feeling the financial crunch put on the industry by the used game market, and confessed that "it's not piracy but used games that are killing us."

Ready at Dawn may have a more personal stake in a possible PSP redesign as well, with rumors of a PSP sequel to God of War: Chains of Olympus in the pipeline at the Irvine, CA studio. Unfortunately, Edge wasn't ably to pry any details out of the company co-founder, with Malenfant saying only that "the PSP was a great platform to work on and it's certainly been really good to us, so we have no complaint there." However, if Ready at Dawn is back to working with the PSP, we suggest maybe holding onto a few of those dev kits after the project is out the door instead of spending all of the company profits on stamps.

GameFly's sixth annual Q Awards have bestowed Fallout 3 with "Game of the Year" and "Xbox 360 Game of the Year" honors. The winners were selected by tallying over 100,000 votes by the rental service's subscribers. The winners across platforms:

• PS3 game of the year - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
• PS2 game of the year - Kingdom Hearts: Re-Chain of Memories
• PSP game of the year - God of War: Chains of Olympus
• Xbox 360 game of the year - Fallout 3
  
• Wii game of the year - Super Smash Bros. Brawl
  
• DS game of the year - Final Fantasy IV
  

To see the runners-up in each category, check out the Q Awards page at GameFly. Looking at the list (and taking into account GameFly's demographic), is anyone surprised?

Spike TV's 2008 Video Game Awards will be kicking off next month and the nominees and categories have all been set in place. Both PSP-exclusive titles God of War: Chains of Olympus and Patapon have been nominated for Best Handheld Game. Unfortunately, that's all these two have been nominated for. There can only be one winner and it's going to be a tough call between these two -- oh, yes, and the other nominees, of course. The PS3, on the other hand, has a huge amount of nominations -- so check out what's happening on PS3 Fanboy.

A snippet from the latest issue of GamePro claims that Daxter and God of War: Chains of Olympus dev Ready at Dawn has ditched PSP development in favor of producing Wii-only titles. Joystiq contacted RAD (pretty cool acronym, huh?) president Didier Malenfant, who was quick to squash the report (although we can't be sure he didn't thwap it with a Wii remote left over from porting Okami to Nintendo's console).

Malenfant further tells Joystiq that his company "[doesn't] have any Wii titles currently in development." RAD had previously hinted at plans to create games for current-gen consoles after finishing Okami Wii, and just today confirmed that it has two all-new games underway. So, two new games in development, none for Wii ... rumorong!

When it comes to developer Ready at Dawn, creating games for the PSP is just so last week. But while the company has closed the book on any PSP aspirations, going so far as to mail its entire stock of dev kits back to Sony, the developer of both Daxter and God of War: Chains of Olympus has played the reason for abandoning PSP development close to its chest.

It's a mystery, but mysteries give us headaches, so we tracked down Ready At Dawn's president, Didier Malenfant, to find out why exactly the studio has turned up its nose at developing for Sony's sexed-up portable. "We feel like we've done everything we wanted to do with the PSP," admitted the exec. "We have new projects on other platforms and we like to focus on one thing at a time."

Even so, Didier championed the state of PSP development, stating matter-of-factly "Good games sell. Who would have thought?"

Developer Ready at Dawn has turned its back on Sony's handheld, with a short post on the company's website confirming that the studio is "now officially done with PSP development." Ready at Dawn is best recognized for two of the PSP's more landmark titles, namely Daxter and last year's God of War: Chains of Olympus, though the company's recent success in bringing Capcom's Okami to the Wii may have more than a little to do with the dev's shifting priorities.

Calling the decision "the end of an era," the move has an air of finality about it, with Ready at Dawn packing up all of its PSP dev kits and sending them back from whence they came. The news echoes comments from Ready at Dawn's Ru Weerasuriya earlier this year, with the Chains of Olympus director noting back in March that "our work on the PSP has come to an end." As for what the devs have in store for us next, your guess is as good as ours, though we've dispatched Joystiq ninjas to the Santa Ana-based studio for more information.

[Via Aeropause]

Need every bit of God of War merchandise ever? Well, this one's going to be hard to get. That is, unless you live in Japan. A special event in Akihabara later this month (June 20th) will promote the still-unreleased God of War: Chains of Olympus, and those in attendance will be able to get this special keychain. In addition, artist YOU THE ROCK will make an appearance.

Although the God of War franchise is incredibly successful in America and Europe, it hasn't managed to break through in Japan. God of War II managed to sell about 40k units total on PS2. While PSP is quite the hot system in Japan right now, it's unclear how the Japanese populace will respond to this incredible, but American-developed, game.

[Via PSPHyper]

The God of War Entertainment Pack is available in stores today (even earlier, if your local Wal-Mart decided to break the street date). For $200, you get the limited edition red PSP system, a copy of God of War: Chains of Olympus, a code to download Syphon Filter: Combat Ops, and the UMD version of Superbad. All in all, a terrific value.

If for some reason, the color turns you off, you may be interested in the next available PSP Entertainment Pack -- the blue Madden pack.

You know you want it. The limited edition God of War Entertainment Pack is finally available for pre-order. The package includes an awesome red PSP, a copy of God of War: Chains of Olympus, and a number of other goodies, like Syphon Filter: Combat Ops and Superbad UMD. Entertainment Pack, indeed. The pack releases on June 3rd for $199.99. Check it out at amazon.com. We'll update this post when other retailers begin offering the system as well.

Yahtzee, popular narrator of the video game review series "Zero Punctuation" has a new review this week for the system-selling Grand Theft Auto IV God of War: Chains of Olympus. PSP fans may be unfamiliar with the host's brutally honest (and hilarious) takes on today's most popular games -- you're in for a treat. Watch, and tell us if you agree.

[Thanks, Outinthedark!]

Dios de la guerra en Español! Hopefully, that translated well. Our Spanish-speaking readers will have to point out the possible (read: probable) butchery of their language. Apologies are to be arranged. Anyway, what makes this TV spot so special? Aside from being in a foreign language, this God of War: Chains of Olympus advertisement has blood rain down from the sky. Why is that happening? Haven't got a clue. This ad is pretty interesting to watch, even if it doesn't directly relate to anything that happens in the game.

No Wal-Mart! Perhaps trying to capitalize on the recent announcement of Sony's real PSP God of War bundle, Wal-Mart has created its own "exclusive" bundle for those interested in picking one up.

Not only is it hideous, but it actually costs more than Sony's upcoming official bundle, doesn't include any extras (such as UMD movie, downloadable game). But, unlike the official bundle, this is available now.

[Via GT Forums]