And guess what? The policy change is probably legal thanks to the Supreme Court.

Back in April, the Supreme Court ruled that AT&T–and any company, for that matter–can use service contracts to block class action lawsuits and force customers into binding arbitration. Lower courts had argued that such clauses were “unconscionable” under state consumer protection laws, but the Supreme Court overturned those decisions in a 5-4 ruling. The Federal Arbitration Act was designed to promote arbitration over costly and lengthy lawsuits, the court’s majority argued, so allowing class action lawsuits to proceed would be at odds with what the federal law is trying to accomplish.

As Ars Technica’s Chris Foresman noted at the time, the ruling allows AT&T and other companies to “quietly settle a few individual claims instead of being faced with larger class-action settlements which might include punitive awards designed to discourage future bad practices.”

But what’s wrong with arbitration? As GamePolitics points out:

Generally these third parties are hired from companies that specialize in corporate arbitration and – most of the time – side with the company that used their services because they want the repeat business.

Granted, class action lawsuits aren’t so great either. They’re costly, they can take years to resolve, and they rarely result in big monetary awards for the plaintiffs. But they can also prompt changes in company policy, such as Skype eliminating expiration dates on calling credits or Verizon Wireless pro-rating early termination fees.

In Sony’s case, Playstation 3 users have sued to restore “Other OS” functionality to the system. That lawsuit that will continue because it began before the policy change, but if Sony ever wrongs Playstation Network users again, their options are now limited.

Cross-game voice chat is the ability to speak with multiple players at the same time, regardless of what they’re doing on the console. On Xbox Live, it’s one of my favorite features, because allows you to coordinate a play session with a friend with ease or have a conversation while playing different games.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida said memory restrictions preclude the PS3 from ever having cross-game voice chat. Games gobble up all of system’s available RAM, leaving none for voice chat at the OS level.

“Once a game gets RAM we never give it back,” Yoshida said. “It’s not possible to retrofit something like that after the fact.”

Sony wasn’t always so pessimistic about the possibility of cross-game voice chat. In 2009, Sony Europe’s James Thrope told a reader on the official Playstation blog that “as soon as I hear from ‘up top’ I will be shouting about it and making myself the most popular person on the blog.” Last year, a Playstation blog post acknowledged that PS3 users are passionate about the feature, and said “we’ll continue to look at as a viable offering for the PlayStation Network.”

From those comments, it sounds like Sony tried to implement the feature, but couldn’t make it happen. And yet Yoshida’s comments make it sound like the feature was never technically possible in the first place. In any case, Yoshida says cross-game voice chat will be available in the Playstation Vita handheld. At least Sony realizes it’s too good of a feature to ignore in future hardware.

Unlike most multiplayer shooters, whose individual matches live in a vacuum and don’t support any overarching goals, Dust 514 is tied directly to the massive multiplayer game EVE Online. By fighting on the ground, players try to capture planets on behalf of EVE’s major corporations. In other words, players’ actions in Dust 514 can have a ripple effect throughout the EVE universe.

That may not mean a whole lot if you don’t know anything about EVE Online, but understand that EVE is serious business for the 400,000 people who play it. Coalitions have formed and crumbled over the game’s 8-year history, and player alliances have rich histories that read like something out of a text book.

Not surprisingly, EVE players have already taken an interest in Dust 514. Some have set up websites to recruit strong players, offering to bankroll them with in-game credits. For less coveted players, Dust 514 won’t require a subscription, but will require an up-front purchase of in-game currency. After that, players can play for free, buy more currency or hope to attract the attention of EVE players and get funded.

It’s not clear exactly how the battles in Dust 514 will play out, but Thomas Farrer, the game’s producer, said during a press briefing that it can take hours to capture a piece of planetary infrastructure, of which there are several on each planet. Players will also be able to fight against computer opponents fight in missions generated by computer-controlled corporations (Correction: at this point, CCP is saying that all opponents will be human), but the risks and rewards will be lower. The game will go into private trials at the end of this year and launch next spring.

The thing about ambition is that it doesn’t always work out. CCP has never published a first-person shooter, and if the game isn’t fun, it’s not going to draw many more people into the EVE universe. But I can’t fault CCP for trying. “What we wanted to create with this is an experience that’s about more than shooting people in the face,” Farrer said.

Amen to that.

Although the Playstation 3 has become a multimedia powerhouse — Sony dropped the nugget that its console accounts for 30 percent of all Netflix streaming — Sony’s E3 press conference was almost entirely about games. The requisite parade of exclusives came first, followed by launch details for Sony’s next-generation portable, now known as the Playstation Vita.

The Vita is a handheld gaming device with a 5-inch touch screen, a rear touch-pad, dual thumbsticks and a quad-core processor, but we knew that already. On Monday, Sony announced that the Vita will launch this holiday season and will cost $250 for a Wi-Fi model and $300 for a model with AT&T 3G.

Yes, 3G. I’m still skeptical that people want a data plan for a gaming device, but perhaps we’ll see some innovative pricing instead of a flat monthly rate. Those details weren’t announced. Sony says that more than 80 games are in development for the PSVita, but only showed a handful at its press conference. The highlight was Uncharted: Golden Abyss, an adventure shooter that stays faithful to its PS3 counterparts while adding some touch screen and gesture controls. I was also interested in Ruin, an action RPG that will let players continue their progress on a companion PS3 version. I plan to get some hands on time with the PSVita later this week.

Except for the new handheld, Sony’s E3 press conference was more of the same, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While Microsoft’s E3 press event was filled with lofty statements on the future of home entertainment, Sony’s press conference was more like a celebration of video games. We saw demonstrations of Uncharted: Drake’s Deception and NBA 2K12, with Kobe Bryant on stage to show off the basketball game’s optional Playstation Move motion controls. We donned 3D glasses for Resistance 3. And to boast the Playstation 3′s Blu-ray player, Sony announced that the upcoming Bioshock Infinite will include the original Bioshock on the same disc. Same goes for EA’s Battlefield 3, which will include Battlefield 1943 on a single Blu-ray disc.

There was one hardware surprise at Sony’s E3 press conference: This fall, the company will sell a Playstation-branded 24-inch 3DTV, bundled with a pair of glasses, an HDMI cable and Resistance 3 for $500. The goal is hook college kids on 3D as they equip their dorm rooms with televisions. These TVs will also allow for cooperative gaming without splitting the screen, realizing a patent that surfaced last year.

Oh, and Sony didn’t ignore the security breach that brought down the Playstation Network for nearly a month in April and May, but didn’t dwell on it either. Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, apologized to gamers, opined on the importance of third-party publishers and retailers, and gave a snarky “you’re welcome” to the press for providing them (er, us) with weeks of controversy.

And with that, it was on to the games.

The result is rather generous. Playstation 3 users get to choose from two of the following: Dead Nation, inFamous, LittleBigPlanet, Super Stardust HD and WipeOut HD + Fury. PSP users get two games from another list: LittleBigPlanet for PSP, Modnation Racers, Pursuit Force and Killzone Liberation. Everyone gets a free weekend of selected movies, 30 days of Playstation Plus (or 60 if you’re already a subscriber) and 100 free items in Playstation Home. Music Unlimited users get 30 free days.

I assume most people are mainly interested in the free games, which make up the bulk of the retail value in this apology package. And while I have a hard time faulting Sony for giving away so much — the PS3 package has a maximum $60 value — I also can’t shake the feeling that Sony’s best customers are getting a raw deal.

After all, Infamous and LittleBigPlanet are both popular Playstation 3 exclusives, which means a lot of PS3 owners are going to own one or both. Wipeout HD was one of the original, high-profile offerings in Playstation Plus, Sony’s VIP membership that includes free games and other perks. So if you’re an avid Playstation fan, you might be stuck with two other games whose combined value is $23 — less than any of the other individual games in the selection. The games themselves are fine, but they’re much smaller in scope.

But again, it’s hard to complain about free stuff without sounding like a brat. To me, the best way Sony can make up for lost time is by returning with a more reliable and secure network, and adding new features that customers have always wanted. I’m pretty sure that if PSN got cross-game voice chat in the next few months, Sony’s biggest customers would instantly forgive and forget.

Sites and services go down all the time. Just ask Amazon. And all their customers. But they weren’t the only ones to suffer a massive outage this week, as Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) has been offline for several days now. After a long period of silence, Sony has finally provided some situational insight:

An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th.

Of course what they’re saying is that they’ve been hacked. And until Sony figures out what’s going on and how to stop it, they’ve pulled the network plug. So the forensics team has probably been doing their thing, maybe law enforcement too, as the engineers bolster PlayStation Network defenses.

Unfortunately, Sony hasn’t provided an ETA for PSN service restoration. And I know several of my work buddies with PS3s are suffering from Call of Duty, Black Ops withdrawal. But I’m not sure they appreciated my repeated mocking suggestions to join me on the superior Xbox Live.

(This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.)

“While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage, we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running,” Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold wrote.

Europe’s Playstation blog previously said the company was investigating “the possibility of targeted behavior by an outside party,” but that message has since been removed. Hacking group Anonymous, which attacked Sony’s servers earlier this month, claims no involvement.

Talk about terrible timing. This week saw the launch of Mortal Kombat, Portal 2 and SOCOM 4, all of which have an online component. SOCOM 4 is a Playstation 3 exclusive geared mainly towards online play, and includes big incentives to buy the game new. In addition to disabling online play, the PSN outage affects the Qriocity music service, Netflix, MLB.tv and any other service requiring a PSN login.

Still, this isn’t quite as severe as the PSN problems that occurred in March 2010, when a leap year issue caused some users to lose data just by turning on their consoles. Sony didn’t relay that message to its customers until 16 hours after the first reports emerged.

[UPDATE: Sony says that the outage--still ongoing--is due to it taking down the network after a security breach.]

[UPDATE 2: Still no end in sight. Sony now says it's rebuilding the network for added security.]

[UPDATE 3: Sony now says all users' personal information was compromised, and credit cards may have been compromised as well. More details here.]

The kid-centric game, which first launched on PCs in April 2009, gives players an open world filled with minigames such as kart racing, fighting and cooking and fishing. Players’ experience levels are capped in the free version; the premium version costs $5 per month, $13 for three months, $24.50 for six months, $30 for a year and $35 for life. Virtual goods are also available for purchase.

I’m only half-surprised it took this long. On one hand, free-to-play MMORPGs are a lucrative market. DFC Intelligence, a market research firm, estimated last August that free-to-play games, which earned $250 million in 2009, could become a $2 billion industry by 2015. On the other hand, console makers spend years losing money on every system sold in hopes of making that money back on software. Giving the software away could be an unpalatable risk.

But the Playstation 3 is more than four years old, and now’s the time to experiment. Free Realms is another example of Sony’s kitchen sink approach, which to date has included Blu-ray movies, the Playstation Move motion controller, 3D and an expanding streaming video selection.

Free Realms itself isn’t my cup of tea — and actually, I haven’t been able to try the PS3 version at all due to server problems — but I hope the experiment goes well for Sony. Free-to-play MMOs have belonged exclusively to PCs for too long.

Sony is adding Cloud Save to the Playstation 3 on Thursday. The feature provides Playstation Plus subscribers with 150 MB of online storage for up to 1,000 save files. This allows users to load their game progress on other PS3s — for example, unlocked costumes in Street Fighter IV — or just keep their files online for peace of mind. The feature will be available for most existing and all future PS3 games, and supports game saves that can’t be transferred by physical media due to copy protection.

This is the first new Playstation Plus feature that isn’t content-oriented. Other features of Sony’s premium service — which costs $50 per year or $18 per month — include exclusive demos, discounts and free downloadable games. Cloud Save, on the other hand, is a service. More features like this could help attract PS3 owners who aren’t interested in Playstation Plus’ rotating grab bag of goodies.

The other interesting takeaway, as MTV’s Adam Rosenberg notes, is that Cloud Save is an incentive for players to go online. PS3 hackers were warned that they face a permanent ban from the Playstation Network if they show up on online, so perks like Cloud Save could be a way to dissuade potential hackers.

In any case, it’s a welcome feature for anyone who’s brought a game to a friend’s house, only to realize that everything they’ve done in the game is stored on a hard drive back at home. I look forward to trying it out.

Man, I was way off.

With 2011 well underway, console makers aren’t even talking about a new generation of hardware. And in an interview with PC Watch, translated by Kotaku, Sony Computer Entertainment head Kaz Hirai said the Playstation 3 is “not even at the halfway point.”

“That’s why,” he added, “we’re not deliberating on a PS4 or a next generation machine, whatever you call it.”

The idea that Sony or other companies have no immediate desire to create new hardware might seem obvious now, but it wasn’t always that way. Video game systems used to refresh like clockwork on five- or six-year cycles, and within a couple years, the last generation of consoles was long forgotten. (One notable exception: the Playstation 2, which continues to be a viable platform in its 11th year).

Here’s what has changed:

• Video game systems have turned into full-blown media hubs. The Xbox 360 has the Zune Marketplace, ESPN and Last.fm. The Playstation 3 has its own video store, plus Vudu, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball. All three current-gen game consoles have Netflix. Console makers can simply tack on new media services to make their machines more desirable.
• Sony and Microsoft, and to a lesser extent Nintendo, are building big ecosystems for downloadable games, and moving to new consoles would be really complicated. To that end, they’ve updated their consoles to allow bigger hard drives or external storage, so they can accommodate the boom in downloads.
• Motion controls have given Sony and Microsoft a second wind. Kinect was a huge holiday hit, and the Playstation Move, while not selling quite as well, has earned some gamer cred with Killzone 3′s assault rifle setup.
• In general, the need to update hardware isn’t as urgent as it once was. Dead Rising had no problem fitting dozens of zombies on the screen at once. Call of Duty: Black Ops hums along at 60 frames per second. The Playstation 3 gained 3D support through a firmware update. In the past, the goal of new technology was to better convey realism, but I don’t think current consoles are having problems with that now.

At this point, the only console maker who could really use a refresh is Nintendo, whose Wii is handily outperformed by the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and whose motion control now seems a bit stale. I’d make a prediction as to when we’ll see the so-called Wii HD, but would you even trust me?

(PS4 concept by Tai Chiem)