PlayStation Home Update 1.35 Adds Xcross Media Bar-Style Navigation

More Home news to go along with the cute new accessories! Sony announced a series of changes to PlayStation Home today that will both improve the speed of the service and make it easier to use. The login process will also change slightly, taking you from login right to the new navigator, detailed below. The update will launch tomorrow. PlayStation Home 1.35 will decrease load times and replace the PlayStation Home World Map with something that looks a lot like the PS3′s main XMB. This will organize parts of PS Home into several categories to make it easier to do things in Home with just a few selections. Categories will include: Favorites: A list of your favorite places. Personal Spaces: The personal spaces you own and the clubhouses you belong to. Friends: View the current location of your friends, and navigate to where they are. Explore: Look at every space

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Reverb’s Publishing Program Brings More to the Digital Marketplace

Reverb Communications, a company best-known for public relations and marketing (they’ve worked with RedOctane of Guitar Hero fame in the past), announced their plans to offer digital publishing today to help smaller and mid-level developers get their project to the digital marketplace. So, for any digital title, they’ll be taking care of all the little things leading up to release: ESRB submission, testing, first-party submission, and accounting. They are able to submit games to the PlayStation Store, Xbox LIVE Arcade, the App Store, and WiiWare. They’ve already done this (and had success!) with quite a few digital titles, like Greed Corp, iSamJackson and Cro-Mag Rally. To learn more about their digital publishing offerings, visit http://www.reverbpublishing.com.

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NBC and Universal Offer the First-Ever MMO Based on Battlestar Galactica

If you’re still sad that Battlestar Galactica lives on only in reruns and your DVD collection, Universal’s got a way for you to live it all over again – an MMO based on the series. The online game leads Bigpoint’s GDC 2010 showings, and will be launching what I assume is a 30-day free trial this fall on syfy.com. The game was developed using Unity technology, meaning that you get a full MMO experience without downloading a client – it’s all done from your browser, even full 3D rendering! You choose whether to fight as a Cylon or a human, and gameplay features space combat, exploration, and missions. The missions will define the game’s overall storyline, enabling the player to delve into mysteries of the Battlestar universe. Assets from the television production will also be used, to make the title as authentic as possible.

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EA Agrees to Publish Games by 38 Studios

Soon, EA will have two different kinds of relationships with Major League Baseball MVP Curt Schilling. You’ll have the obvious baseball connection, and then…this. Schilling is the founder of 38 Studios (whose CEO is Jennifer MacLean!), and they just inked a publishing agreement with EA for their single-player RPG “Project Mercury.” It’s currently in development at Big Huge Games, and will be published by EA Partners, the same studio behind Rock Band and ports of The Orange Box. Project Mercury apparently takes place in a universe created by R.A. Salvatore, with Todd MacFarlane art direction. Salvatore will be speaking at GDC 2010 on Thursday from 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM in Room 306 in South Hall at the Moscone Center. The topic? “From Fantasy to Franchise: How to Build a Universe Worthy of Devotion.” He’ll go into his time as 38 Studios’ Executive Creator of Worlds, so if you’re there

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Sid Meier to Present Keynote at GDC 2010

Co-founder of Firaxis Games (and  Sid Meier has been selected for the opening keynote address of Game Developers Conference 2010. What’s the topic of his presentation? “The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know is Wrong).” In it, he’s going to argue that the psychology of the player is what game designers should be taking into account when they work. He’s going to do this with examples from his own work. (As a psychology person, I am extra-intrigued and wish to subscribe to his newsletter.) GDC organizers have also lined up more topics and lectures, detailed below. - Ubisoft Montreal lead designer Patrick Plourde will speak on ‘Designing Assassin’s Creed 2′, discussing how “the design team faced the challenges of an enormous scope, one of the biggest development teams ever assembled and a limited time frame” for the critically acclaimed, Renaissance Italy-set action game. - In a lecture entitled ‘Get

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