Earlier this week I saw one of Veronica Belmont's twitter updates in which she referenced her "new project" that had to do with the Playstation Network.  I own a PS3 so I was immediately intrigued, so I hit the link she provided to her blog containing further information.  The project as it turns out, is called Qore.  Qore is an interactive video service that you download from the Playstation Store for $2.99 an episode ($24.99 for an annual subscription), and you get a bunch of information about upcoming releases for both the Playstation 3 as well as the PSP.  Along with game previews you also get some downloadable content such as themes for the Playstation's XMB interface and access to betas for certain games.

qorelogo In this first episode you'll be able to get in on the SOCOM: Confrontation beta, which is one of (if not the) most anticipated multiplayer games coming to the PS3.  Unfortunately, as of right now the beta isn't available so...you get a SOCOM theme for $2.99 which is alright I guess.  I'm assuming that down the road they'll unlock the access to the beta officially so you're not missing anything if you wait a while to take a look at Qore.  This episode of Qore also features a few other games - Secret Agent Clank for the PSP, Soul Calibur 4 and Afro Samurai for PS3, as well as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  You'll notice that three of the five games they preview aren't Sony platform exclusives, which is kind of a bummer.  Sony really needs to get proactive about hunting down exclusive franchises...that's a discussion for a different post though.

socom_confrontation Veronica's involvement in this project is kind of puzzling to me.  She's only seen in a total of 3 video features for two of the games plus a preview telling you what Qore is all about, and it only ends up being five minutes of video in all.  It seems to me like the people at Sony wanted to get a well-known internet celebrity to do the video and pull in some viewers who might have otherwise ignored Qore (it worked on me).  Regardless, what I was hoping to get out of Qore was some insight to future PS3 games I might want to pick up and the ones they showed that I was interested in, for the most part, are games that I'll probably check out but I'll get for the 360.  After seeing the "making-of" videos for SOCOM I'm definitely excited to try out the beta for it (coming to a Preview post near you soon, I'd imagine) but other than that there wasn't much for me to look forward to that I didn't already know about.

oldsnake One cool thing is that if you decide to pay the $24.99 for an annual subscription of Qore you also get to download the arcade game Calling All Cars for free.  It's one of the PSN games with the highest amount of acclaim so it's definitely a nice bonus.  In fact, the prospect of me getting free arcade games down the road was almost enough to persuade me to pony up for the subscription.  Still, the rest of the service (so far) is a little too thin for me to invest in at this point.  Another thing about Qore that bugged me was that they show you ads in between the different videos and slideshows.  Sure, you can skip them in many cases and they're game or blu-ray related most of the time but still I found myself wondering "Didn't I just pay for this?  Why are you showing me ads right now?"  Also I'm surprised that, aside from one advertisement, it was completely devoid of information about the hottest PS3 game coming out - Metal Gear Solid 4.  MGS4 drops on the 12th and I really think they could have generated a lot of buzz if they would have devoted the debut episode to it.

All in all the first episode of Qore was solid.  If the SOCOM beta opens up anytime soon I'll feel like my money was much more wisely spent I think, but it shows promise for the future.  If you own a PS3 and you're looking for a way to get excited about playing games on it again and not just using it as a blu-ray player, I'd recommend giving Qore a look.  If nothing else you get to pay to beta test a piece of software, and that's pretty neat right?  Right???

P.S. - I finally beat Grand Theft Auto 4 today.  I want it to marinade in my head for a little while before I throw up a review though, which is why I focused on Qore this weekend.  Expect the review next Saturday!

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