According to the Sony Europe PSN release schedule, on the 19th March William Shatner is set to follow in the hallowed footsteps of David Hasselhof by appearing in Sony PSN title, PAIN.
» Read More 

There are many people that are new to PAIN and its various expansion packs. The "Abusement Park" add-on is corrupted for anyone that downloads it right now. Many are blaming the recent 2.53 patch, which adds a free character and YouTube support to the game. "If you did not have the Abusement park addon downloaded from PSN prior to the update the level is destroyed and unusable, Items fall through the landscape the background image is blank white and the level is unusable."
» Read More 

ps3fanboy.com writes:"The latest episode of Pulse reveals the top PSN game downloads of 2008. At the top of the list is Idol Minds' PAIN"
» Read More 

You've heard this kind of thing before from the PAIN team at Sony and Idol Minds. But this time, everyone wants to believe that they have ironed out some of the delay issues and this will be released as scheduled.

Travis Williams, SCEA Producer of PAIN, commented on the game's blog yesterday:

The YouTube editor is in Format right now along with Ed and Kutso they will be available before Christmas.

That means you should see the new patch and new characters (including a free one) released either this week or next, as PAIN tends to update on Thursdays to advertise new content on the PlayStation Store. It is also worth noting that the game is being updated daily with new PAINLabs content every day until Christmas.
» Read More 

The Hoff has confirmed the release of the Pain Movie Studio for later today...
» Read More 

Looks like the cause of the PAIN expansion pack delay has been resolved. If you looked carefully, you would've seen that there was a PSN Trophy involving a Street Fighter character. (Street Rider - Use any Street Fighter® character to travel 2 miles while grabbing a vehicle) Looks like licensing took longer than expected, and that feature has been removed from the upcoming Hollywood Studio expansion.
» Read More 

People.com writes:

"Attention America's Got Talent castoffs and former Knight Rider bad guys: here is your chance to finally get revenge on The Hoff.

PEOPLE.com has an exclusive first look of PAIN Movie Lot, a new PlayStation 3 video game being released Nov. 6 in which players get to smash, bash and trash characters including David Hasselhoff – with the former Baywatch star in on the joke. "
» Read More 

David Hasselhoff writes:
Hello everyone, it's your friendly neighborhood David Hasselhoff here. I know you're probably wondering "What in the KITT am I doing on the PS Blog?" right? Well…settle down…settle down! I'm here to let you know straight from the Hoff's mouth – I'm coming to PAIN! And it hurts so good! Don't believe me, PEOPLE Magazine just broke the story and I'm talking about it on my blog.
» Read More 

PlayStation Blog: "I remember telling some employees before that game development isn't a democracy. I said at best development should be a benevolent dictatorship. I held that opinion because oftentimes when you get too many cooks in a kitchen, it does spoil the soup. Oddly enough I haven't felt that way with PAIN for quite a few reasons. This message board has had a lot to do with how we design PAIN.

PAIN design is liberating. We don't have to worry about context, story, logic, or even reality. In a lot of ways, PAIN development is about as chaotic and creative as you can be. So before I dig into what's next, let me thank all of you for buying PAIN because it really has granted us freedom to try new concepts."
» Read More 

Playstation.blog writes:

"The Amusement Park is OPEN FOR BUSINESS! I'm really happy to announce the release of PAIN Amusement Park today. If you have been on the "PAIN Train" since the beginning you know this has been a long time coming. If you have never played PAIN before, it's about time you found out why we have so much fun hurting ourselves and others."
» Read More 

PS#Fanboy reported today that long-awaited PAIN trophy patch is now available to download. Simply load up the game and you will be prompted to download the 325MB patch. Don't forget, PAIN's trophies have been retooled, to make them a bit easier than originally intended. The patch also adds a bunch of content to the game -- but only if you pay for it. Three new characters are available to purchase, along with the new "Abusement Park" (though none of these are available on any region's PSN Store as of yet). There are also new game modes which, we assume, come with the Amusement Park expansion.
» Read More 

Pain Blog:

"The Bad News: Amusement Park will release in September, but not 9-4 like we originally planned. The reason for this delay was at least in part due to our retooling the PlayStation®Network trophies."
» Read More 

FeedonPS3 has some cool new details and screenshots of the PAIN Amusement Park. Check it out in the full article.
» Read More 

New characters and game modes are now available for the PSN game, PAIN.
» Read More 

PAIN producer Travis Williams from the Playstation Blog has some new information about the upcoming PAIN trophies and the new amusement park coming on 4th September.
» Read More 

In addition to PAIN Labs, the PAIN Amusement Park, Trophies, Online Multiplayer, and other features all hitting the PLAYSTATION Store simultaneously this summer, the crew at Idol Minds is churning out even more content that should be making it your way soon!

Jeff Litchford of Idol Minds gave us a little more info on what we can expect. We've taken the liberty to highlight some info you may not have already known about. But we still can't find out what exactly PAIN Movie Lot is!!

New features in development:

* Amusement Park
* Online (multiplayer) gameplay
* PSN trophies
* Advanced Replay Editor
* PAIN Labs
* Theme 3 (just about at Alpha)
* Theme 4 (we're in early prototype/concepting on this)
* Celebrity playable characters
* Video Game IP characters
* Chinese/Korean localization

After seeing the Kratos sackboy, I'm pretty excited at the prospect of cross-game Sony characters. Looking forward to what the PAIN crew will dish out next!
» Read More 

Nestled deep in the comments section of the official PAIN Blog, Producer Travis Williams has been busy responding to the community. There's plenty of back-and-forth banter, but there are also some hidden gems of info which we thought you might be interested in. PAIN's expansion pack, the Amusement Park, will be available this Summer for "less than $6.99" and a video of it in action will be shown on the official PlayStation Blog at some point tomorrow. A European release will happen simultaneously.

With regards to trophies, this will be included in the expansion pack and won't end there. Travis says that "new trophies for PAIN will come out as long as we continue to add content." Hopefully this is a common occurrence, with future game expansions for existing titles bringing more trophies. Could this mean more Super Stardust HD trophies are coming at some point in the future? Considering there's no Platinum trophy, we're guessing so.
» Read More 

The Amusement Park has had many different incarnations before we decided on the final format. It had to represent what we know of the PAIN play style and add layers to it. It wouldn't do to have another level like Downtown. We needed to move beyond that area. We needed to step it up. That meant¿
More ways to move around.

More community Interaction

Different ways to move around

A different launcher

A multi-leveled environment

Longer PAINful runs

MULTIPLAYER

Oh and¿.less time between new content updates
» Read More 

Greg Miller: "This afternoon, Sony updated the PlayStation Network with a wealth of trailers, demos, games, and content, but it would appear that the latest PAIN patch is messing up the game's online options.

After we downloaded the update -- which adds the ability to play music from your hard drive during the game, gives you a few new layouts for downtown, and more -- we started PAIN and were presented with an error.

"A network error has occurred, you must restart PAIN and reconnect to access any online content," the message stated.

We restarted several times and kept getting the error. Even with the error message, you can still play the game, but the store and any other online functionality are locked to you. Other IGN users are reporting the problem on our message boards, and a Sony rep said the company is investigating the problem.

We'll keep you updated.

UPDATE (5:15 p.m.): "We are aware that some users are receiving a network error message and are working to rectify this as soon as possible," a Sony rep said. "We expect this situation to be resolved withing the next 12 hours.""
» Read More 

Travis: "Whatup!

My name is Travis Williams and I am the Senior Producer for PAIN for the PlayStation Network. It's been a while since I last posted on the Official PlayStation blog. Every time I have it's been a great experience. You all have shown me "da-love" so I wanted to make sure that when there was something cool to share with you that I would be back. I want to tell you what we've been doing with PAIN and why you should pay attention to us in the months to come.

Tomorrow, the 19th of June we are releasing our next free update to PAIN. This will be a two-week process where each week we release new features and content to PAIN. This is a two-week process because we are perfecting our content delivery process. We have always had this goal with PAIN that we should be able to move faster with our content delivery than most games. If you are a normal PAIN blog reader you might laugh at that comment. They have been waiting for months for us to pick up the pace. Some of them were wondering where I've been lately. "
» Read More