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Halfbrick Studios, the Minis-producing development factory in Brisbane, has announced a new title: Age of Zombies. Not to be confused with the Age of Aquarius or the beloved children's film Ice Age, Halfbrick's game is decidedly more macabre -- with a pinch of cute tossed in. (We never thought we'd call zombies both those things, but there it is.)

Age of Zombies follows time-traveling protagonist (and delicious side dish) Barry Steakfries, doing his best to eradicate the hungry undead looking to get a mouthful of his tasty vittles. The debut trailer nestled above gives us a vibe akin to a cross between Robotron and Zombies Ate My Neighbors, which kinda sounds like a good time. There's also the promise of zombified T-Rex dinosaurs, which hardly seems possible in the real world, but, hey, we'll take it.

Age of Zombies will be available to download from the PlayStation Store on Thursday, February 25 for $4.99. In the meantime, fight your way through a horde of new screens in our gallery below.

PSP owners can expect a lot of new sports games this year, including Steve Davis Pool, Ronnie O'Sullivan Snooker and Phil Taylor Darts. Developer GameShastra announced a partnership with PI Sports to adapt their mobile games -- including titles based around pool, cricket, rugby, snooker, golf, tennis, darts, fishing and poker -- for the Minis platform on PlayStation Network. All in all, "over 10" games will appear on the PlayStation Store this year. In addition, GameShastra is promising visual improvements and enhanced controls over the original smartphone versions.

"With some of the biggest names in sport attached to the biggest names in mobile gaming, this agreement is brilliant news for all PSP owners," GameShastra's CEO said in a press release. Considering how few new releases are announced for Sony's handheld, the addition of more than ten titles to the service certainly does sound appealing.

For a limited time, select Minis (playable on PSP and PS3) will be on sale in the European PlayStation Store. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe will discount these eight games from February 4–18:

• Fieldrunners - €3.99/£3.49
• Kahoots - €1.99/£1.74
• Vempire - €1.99/£1.74
• Breakquest - €1.99/£1.74
• Pinball Fantasies - €3.99/£3.49
• Bloons - €2.49/£1.99
• Mahjongg Artifacts: Chapter 2 - €1.99/£1.74
• Dracula - Undead Awakening - €1.99/£1.74

SCEE is also promising to update its YouTube channel with new videos of the Minis. It's not quite as good as playable demos, but it's better than nothing, right?

As promised, the PlayStation Store has been updated with Minis that actually work on your PS3. The process of finding new and old Minis to play on your PS3 system couldn't be simpler; but, just in case you're a little baffled by firmware 3.15, Minis developer Halfbrick has created a tutorial video explaining the process.

If you've already purchased Minis and want to play them on your home console, all you have to do is go to the Download List of the PlayStation Store. We tested a few Minis on the PS3, and we'd have to say that the PSP upscaling is good, but not perfect. While the games are very playable on a TV, it's clear they're still low-res games being played on a high-res screen. Still, it's a good value-add for those that have both a PS3 and PSP system.

Check out the walkthrough after the break.

Did you download last night's optional 3.15 firmware update on PS3 only to find that none of your PSP Minis were working on the PS3? You're not alone! The team at PSN Stores has compiled a list of all the Minis that work on Sony's home console -- a whopping five: Blast Off, Echoes, Kahoots, Stand O' Food and Zombie Tycoon.

But what about the remaining Minis? Unfortunately, you'll have to wait a week before the whole lineup is expected to work on the PS3. That means, at least for one week, your copy of Sudoku will remain exclusively on your PSP. Why Sony decided to release the firmware update so long before the feature, ahem, works is beyond us.

PS3 is getting yet another firmware update -- this time optional -- "very soon" according to a post on the European PlayStation.Blog. The pre-Christmas update brings a feature we reported on earlier: support for PSP Minis on the PS3. Like PSone classics, a single purchase from the PlayStation Store will work on both platforms. If you've bought a Mini and want to play it on your PS3, you'll be able to access it from the Store's archived Download List.

In addition to adding Minis support, update 3.15 will simplify the process of moving data from one PS3 to another. For example, if you own both a PS3 Phat and Slim, you'll be able to connect the two systems via a LAN cable and transfer data from one system to the next. For more details on how to do just that, visit the PlayStation.Blog.

Since the launch of the PSP Minis digital platform alongside the PSP Go back in October, Sony has showed little more than a passing interest in promoting its bite-sized game service. After playing a decent chunk of games at launch and then barely hearing a whisper since, we've been wondering when the company would show more support for Minis. If what we're hearing from a handful of reliable sources is true, however, the PSP Minis will finally get some attention in the near future as they become playable on the PlayStation 3.

It'll happen "before Christmas," says one source (confirmed as "this month" by others independently), allegedly with the entire selection of Minis (and presumably upcoming releases) to be playable on PlayStation 3 consoles -- with a resolution bump to boot. As for Sony: "We don't comment on rumor or speculation.", so we'll have to leave it in the rumor department for now.

Posting on the PlayStation Blog, Creat Studios has detailed the release plans for its upcoming PSP Mini, Bubble Trubble. Featuring both survival and challenge modes, the bite-sized burst-'em-up will launch on PSN this Thursday, November 12, for $4.99.

The color-matching gameplay has you connecting (presumably trubblesome) bubbles together, with similarly colored spheres fusing, expanding and then exploding in space-clearing catharsis. The commentary on humanity's self-destructive propensity for greed and the dangers of corporate conglomeration is perhaps a little too obvious, but the colors are nice.

Just when we were really starting to wonder, Frima Studio dropped a note on PlayStation Blog to cease our concern. A new PSP mini, Frima's Zombie Tycoon, will be released later today as part of SCEA's weekly PSN update. Zombie Tycoon breaks a four-week dry spell for minis releases in North America and is the first new mini since the massive PSN update that coincided with the launch of PSP Go on October 1. [Correction: Zombie Tycoon is the first new announced mini since the October 1 update. There have been a few mini releases that have appeared on the PlayStation Store despite not being mentioned in SCEA's official release listings.]

"Let's be clear, Zombie Tycoon isn't a port from a phone game, it's a whole new strategy game designed specifically for PSP," executive producer Martin Brouard proclaimed on the European PlayStation Blog. "This unique tale of intrigue and betrayal spans over 10 challenging levels, allowing you to attack humans AND the places they call home."

Zombie Tycoon isn't priced like a phone game, either. At $7.99 (£3.99/€4.99), this particular mini is on par with previous minis' costs, which have been the topic of much discussion. Perhaps you'll form a value judgment of your own after checking out the Zombie Tycoon trailer posted after the break.

Speaking at Austin GDC, Justin Cooney from Sony Computer Entertainment spoke about the upcoming PSP minis program to a crowd of developers eager to start creating games and applications for the system. They promise an extremely fast process to get onto the PlayStation Network: no stage one or two approvals, and very light Q&A. They're hoping to average three to five days for approvals, which contrasts with up to two weeks for normal-sized PSP games.

The minis program is also fairly limited. You can't develop network or online features for it (goodbye multiplayer), it doesn't support DLC, and you can't use it to work with peripherals. Developers will also have to have their game approved by the ESRB, which costs money. You can also release your titles in all three territories, but you need to sign agreements with each territory (North America, Japan, Europe) in order to do so.

Sony is definitely taking an iPhone App Store approach to this process, and Cooney himself dropped the iPhone name a few times. We're wondering if they've considered that there are over 20k games now on the App Store, and if they've prepared themselves for the onslaught and how they'll be devoting a lot of time to minis approvals. So, look for PSPFart to be available for download sometime soon.

For its PSP Minis service, Sony is doing away with many of the fees associated with other digital networks to attract the attention of developers. As discovered by GamerBytes, the PlayStation Network's bandwidth fee -- for which publishers are charged per gigabyte of data transferred over PSN -- is revoked for the PSP Minis service. It's a somewhat odd decision, considering each Minis game will be limited to under 100MB. Certainly, a bandwidth charge would be one of the smallest fees a PSP Minis developer would have faced.

The PSP Minis program also does away with many of the practices common to WiiWare and Xbox Live. Unlike WiiWare, there is no minimum sales quota for developers to reach before they get paid. Additionally, PSP Minis publishers are allowed to choose their own release dates, instead of joining the growing queue of games awaiting release on both the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Arcade.

It's clear that Sony is taking measures to make the Minis service appear lucrative to third-party developers, especially indie studios. The question is: Will PSP gamers buy into this new platform, or will Minis be a retread of the floundering Xbox Live Indie Games project?

According to the UK's Pocket Gamer, Nintendo is launching a new initiative to reinvigorate the DSi's digital distribution platform, DSiWare. Though prices will stick to the current model ($2, $5, $9), the piece reports that developers will have a lower barrier to entry for publishing their games on the DSiWare store. Nintendo apparently still has some say over developer pricing, as it will charge developers different rates based on a game's file size -- the example given being a $5 game must be under 200MBs, otherwise Nintendo charges a higher royalty rate.

After Sony announced the upcoming Minis for the PSP this week, it appears as though Nintendo has responded. Considering the fairly light support that the company has offered in the way of DSiWare -- that is, if you're not into themed clocks and, um, more clocks -- we're hoping that this effort will revitalize the downloadable game catalog on Nintendo's newest handheld.

Last time we talked to Halfbrick Studios, the company was gearing up to assault Xbox Live with a suite of Indie Games (then called Community Games). Now, with the unveiling of Sony's Minis, Halfbrick has announced it's developing for the PSP platform. In fact, a few of its titles were even in the debut trailer for Minis. We talked to Phil Larsen, community manager at Halfbrick, about these new products and Sony's bite-sized games service.

Sony had two big announcements for the PSP at GamesCom today. First up was the "PSP Minis" service, which opens the platform to bite-sized, iPhone-esque applications under 100MB in size. Launching the same day as the PSP Go, the service will greatly expand the content available on the PlayStation Store. The initial lineup of games, seen in the video above and gallery below, include a variety of little-known titles like Break Quest, Melody Bloxx, Circles, Flexis, Puzzle Scape, Sudoku, Tetris, Zombie Tycoon, Little Track. This is but a small sampling of the Minis' launch lineup.

Additionally, Sony made the Digital Comics service for the PSP official. The first announced partner is Marvel, but many more are to be announced in the future. In a chat with Eric Lempel, we found out that details like pricing and placement on the XMB are still being determined. You can check out a video of the service after the break.

Sony has announced a new line of downloadable titles for the PSP and PSP Go, confirming rumors that first surfaced last week. Dubbed Minis, these titles have a 100MB size limit and are exclusive to the PSN Store. The lineup will launch on October 1st, the same day as the PSP Go. These titles will reportedly cost less to develop and, more importantly, cost less for gamers. Sony plans to have 15 snacktivities ready for the PSP Go launch, though 50 games are slated for the rest of 2009. A few titles mentioned during the company's GamesCom keynote include Tetris, Field Runners, Hero of Sparta and Minigore.