Before PlayStation 4’s official reveal, rumors were swirling that the console would come packing some sort of used games block, disabling a gamer’s ability to play pre-owned or shared titles. But Shuhei Yoshida, Sony’s head of its first-party Worldwide Studios, has confirmed to Eurogamer that that’s simply not the case.

In a rather strange conversation between Eurogamer’s writer and Yoshida, a back and forth ended up resulting in the following declaration from the Sony executive: “So, used games can play on PS4. How is that?” The answer came following an exchange between Yoshida and a Sony Japan PR representative, apparently seeking clarification about the particular question being asked.

We’ve reached out to Sony for official clarification, but considering that this comes from a well-established Sony executive in the know, it’s safe to assume that PlayStation 4 will indeed be able to play used games. Crisis averted?

Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.

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It’s almost as if there’s an arms race in online education. Which MOOC platform can expand the fastest? Place your bets now. On the heels of edX’s announcement that it will be expanding internationally with the addition of six new schools (bringing its total to 12), Coursera is doing some addition of its own.

Today, the massive online course platform announced that 29 universities from around the globe have agreed to bring their courses online (for free) via Coursera. The new members will join the 33 institutions already on board, bringing Coursera’s grand total to 62. And, of course, just as edX was kicking back to celebrate its five new handpicked international members, Coursera announces that its updated roster just so happens to include 16 international institutions itself.

The international expansion of both Coursera and edX is a big win for international students, who (at least in Coursera’s case) now have access to courses in multiple languages, including French, Spanish, Chinese and Italian. Of course, international expansion is also an important part of the roadmap for edX and Coursera (and online learning sites like Lynda.com as well) and could be a boon for both, exposing a whole new audience of potential MOOC adopters to courses from some of the most reputed schools in the world.

While edX is a not-for-profit organization, Coursera is decidedly for-profit and, though it has plenty of venture capital in the bank, will need to continue scaling if it hopes to become a sustainable business over the long-term.

To do that, as part of the introduction of 29 new schools to its platform, Coursera is also expanding its course offerings by subject, adding 90 new courses to bring its total to 313 courses in all. “With the addition of so many new courses across a wide range of disciplines, languages and academic approaches, we are now able to meet the needs of a more diverse student body, and give students more academic options to explore,” Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng said as part of the announcement.

Since launching in April 2012, Coursera has registered 2.8 million students and is now seeing around 1.4 million course enrollments each month. Lately, Coursera has been taking some pronounced steps to begin monetizing its growing user base as well, launching Career Services in December — an opt-in recruiting program that matches students with employers — and adding Verified Certificates in January to allow students to verify the work they complete on Coursera for a fee.

Verified Certificates marked the startup’s first steps into credentialing, a move that it has since continued. Initially, Coursera was not able to offer degrees or credits, and its courses lacked context without being able to offer them as part of a degree program. But, earlier this month, the American Council on Education approved five of its courses for “credit equivalency,” meaning that students who complete those classes are now able to “receive college transfer credit at institutions that accept ACE recommendations,” as we wrote at the time. Going forward, Coursera will be working with ACE to add credit equivalency for more of its courses.

With the addition of more universities, languages and courses, combined with certificates and transfer credit, Coursera is beginning to look and feel like a real, global online university. The only question will be whether or not this expansion dilutes the overall experience and whether or not it can maintain quality as its roster grows.

From the beginning, Coursera has vowed to work only with the most renowned and well-respected universities. That’s kind of a fuzzy standard to set and there are many ways to qualify an “elite” institution. On the one hand, the more content and the more options it can provide, the better the experience for students — or so the thinking goes.

But it will be interesting to see where Coursera eventually decides to draw the line — if and when it decides to do so. Offering the same Economics course from five different universities doesn’t necessarily improve the experience for students, but picking the best and most popular Economics courses from universities that specialize in different areas within a particular subject certainly does. But that’s a hard balance to maintain.

Below is the list of the 29 new institutions joining Coursera today.

California Institute of the Arts (CalArts)
Case Western Reserve University
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Curtis Institute of Music
Ecole Polytechnique, France
IE Business School
Leiden University, Netherlands
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat München
National Taiwan University
National University of Singapore
Northwestern University
Penn State University
Rutgers University
Sapienza Università di Roma
Technische Universität München (TUM)
Technical University of Denmark
The University of Tokyo
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Universidad TecVirtual del Sistema Tecnológico de Monterrey
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
University of California, San Diego
University of California, Santa Cruz
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
University of Geneva, Switzerland
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
University of Rochester
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Coursera, one of a growing set of edtech startups looking to combat the rising costs now endemic to higher education with smart, scalable, web-based solutions.

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If you’re a lover of Sgt. Rock, The War That Time Forgot, or just dinosaurs eatin’ dudes, chances are Chronos Commandos is your cup of tea. While the debut issue suffers a great deal from its lack of character focus and a reliance on too many familiar beats, its bouncy dialogue, pretty digital paints, and wacky (though sparse) time travel plot might be enough to warrant your cash.

Writer/illustrator Stuart Jennett seems less concerned with building his cast here – most of them serve as cannon fodder anyway – and is happy to rely on the reader’s familiarity with the archetypes. Think about Sgt. Rock’s Easy Company and you’ve got an idea of every character in Chronos Commandos #1. In lieu of notable character work, Jennett offers a fast-moving romp through a dinosaur-ridden island on a hunt for Nazis. Just as character work isn’t a concern, neither is plot, though it works well enough. We understand that these soldiers are on the hunt for time-disrupting Nazis, and the rest is pure spectacle.

Hopefully future installments can move beyond the gimmick and flesh out the characters and their world, but for an action-packed first issue, it works just fine. There is a problem with repeating beats, however, as we see the same moment essentially play out twice but for two different characters, and the surprise is less impactful both times because of the repetition.

Jennett’s art is the real star here, though. While human figures often suffer from a lack of emotion and a rather robotic quality of movement, his atmospheric detail and rendering of dinosaurs and non-human objects within the world are quite stunning. The opening sequence of dino-on-dino violence will get you riled up in no time; Jennett’s storytelling flow is flawless in this instance. Ironically, it’s only when the soldiers go on the run from the dinos that things feel a bit lifeless as the static quality of the characters lessens the illusion of movement within the panels.

One other gripe I have to point out is the lettering for the sound effects in this issue. Most are simply a bland white in a font that looks dangerously close to Comic Sans, making some of the lettering stand out like a sore thumb and look rather amateurish. Hopefully this can be corrected before this book goes to print in July.

In all, though, Chronos Commandos #1 is an enjoyable, if somewhat hollow, romp through time.

Joey is a Senior Editor at IGN and a comic book creator. Follow Joey on Twitter @JoeyEsposito, or find him on IGN at Joey-IGN. He will love Star Wars until he becomes one with the Force, and then he will continue loving it as a blue ghost.

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Publisher has confirmed months of rumours and revealed its next-generation console.

Sony has unveiled the PlayStation 4.

The announcement was made during the publisher's PlayStation Meeting 2013, broadcast live from New York.

Current president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Andrew House and lead system architect Mark Cerny presented the new console, which will have an X86 CPU, an enhanced PC GPU graphics processor, 8GB of system memory, local storage HDD, and a graphics card with GDDR5 memory.

The PS4 will also feature a new DualShock 4 controller with enhanced rumble capabilities, a touch pad, a share button, a headset jack, and a dual camera that senses the position of the controller.

Stay tuned to GameSpot for more updated coverage on the new PS4, including a breakdown of the new controller and hardware specifications.

The first concrete evidence of the PS4's existence came from Sony chief financial officer Masaru Kato, who confirmed in May 2011 that a PlayStation 3 successor was in development.

← Find out everything we know about the PS4.
Source : gamespot[dot]com

Late last year, Marvel teased a new X-event called X-Termination. With that story about to hit next month, the publisher has revealed our first look at X-Termination #1. Starting in this debut chapter and continuing through Astonishing X-Men, Age of Apocalypse, and X-Treme X-Men, X-Termination focuses on the Age of Apocalypse Nightcrawler, who's on a mission to get back to his own world, possibly at the expense of our own.

Written by David Lapham, Marjorie Liu, and Greg Pak with art by David Lopez and a cover by Ed McGuinness, X-Termination #1 goes on sale March 20.

Joey is a Senior Editor at IGN and a comic book creator. Follow Joey on Twitter @JoeyEsposito, or find him on IGN at Joey-IGN. He will love Star Wars until he becomes one with the Force, and then he will continue loving it as a blue ghost.

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During its live press event in New York City today, Sony announced that MotorStorm developer Evolution has a new first-person racing game headed to PlayStation 4 called Drive Club.

The project has existed as a concept at the studio for a decade. The name was trademarked nine years ago, and the game revolves around "driving the very best cars in the world in the very best locations in the world."

It features collaborative gameplay with friends in teams. Players can interact with the club anywhere, and cars have been "recreated with intense love." The studio has "gone borderline insane" with real-world details and subtlety.

The news follows a tease from Evolution last week, which included a countdown to today’s event as well as the mention of a “super secret project” on the Twitter pages of employees.

Developing…

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.

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Pinterest, the content discovery website that has achieved massive mainstream popularity by letting people clip and share their favorite photos and videos online with virtual “pinboards,” is making it very clear that it is much more than just a pretty face — it’s a big business.

Pinterest confirmed to TechCrunch today that it has secured approximately $200 million in a new funding round led by new investor Valiant Capital Management. Also participating in the round, which serves as Pinterest’s Series D, were existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital. The news was first reported this afternoon by AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, who cited anonymous sources.

We’ve heard from two sources that the Walt Disney Co. had also been expressing interest in taking part in this latest round, which has been buzzed about in tech and VC circles for a couple of weeks now. But it now seems as if those talks did not end up leading to an investment in the end.

The new funding was raised at a valuation of $2.5 billion, a Pinterest representative has confirmed in an email. The money will be put toward the typical growth-oriented initiatives: Hiring, new product and technology development, better infrastructure, international growth, and M&A. Pinterest, which is based in San Francisco, currently has a staff of about 100.

The company has also issued the following quotation by CEO Ben Silbermann:

“Our focus is on helping millions of people discover things they love and get inspiration to go do those things in their life. This investment gives us more resources to help realize that vision.”

Pinterest is a social networking site with a visually-pleasing “virtual pinboard” interface. Users collect photos and link to products they love, creating their own pinboards and following the pinboards of other people whom they find interesting. The site has experienced rapid growth in recent months.

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Gaikai’s Dave Perry took the stage at the PS4 event today to describe how Gaikai would be adding cloud gaming elements to the PS4, which will make it possible to jump in and try games in the PlayStation store, make sharing with your friends a snap, and also invite spectators and get friends to help you by remotely taking over your game.

The PS Vita will also finally get a lot more useful, thanks to Remote Play. Perry said that the team has dramatically reduced transmission times, turning the PS4 into a server and the Vita into a client allowing for remote play of titles run on the PS4 direct to the Vita. It’s exactly like the Wii U, but with a controller you can walk away with and use as a standalone mobile console.

Developing…

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Barriers to international manufacturing and high fuel costs have long made overseas production painful for small businesses. Now, an economic trend towards American manufacturing has created a timely entrance to the market for Maker’s Row. The startup, a finalist in last week’s Women 2.0 Pitch Competition, says it wants to become a go-to resource to create, well, anything.

Co-founders Matthew Burnett and Tanya Menendez launched Maker’s Row in November to act as a sort of Match.com with Kiva.org-like profiles for factories and facilities. The site enables recognized designers and amateurs alike to partner with manufactures that are searchable on the site by state to create a range of items, from handbags to sportswear. It charges manufacturers a subscription fee to post.

By commissioning their work to be made stateside, brands can then more closely guide processes and prevent their orders from being stuck in transit abroad or in customs, Burnett says. Facilities are using the platform to communicate with one another and find materials, interactions that have surprised even the co-founders.

Maker’s Row sees a sweet spot in getting orders placed by small to mid-size businesses — “people who are serious about making things” — and has raised $75K to date. It is looking to raise $1.25 million to hire backend developers and create more tools to track connections.

Burnett said that cultural and language barriers complicated his work with overseas manufacturers when he was a watch designer for the likes of Marc Jacobs and Izod. ”I felt like I was taking a gamble every time I worked with a new manufacturer,” said Burnett. He then started his own collection of domestically made accessories, The Brooklyn Bakery. That is when he met Menendez, who started working on the brand with him when she wasn’t at her day job at Goldman Sachs working on automation projects.

The combination of Menendez’s experience with trying to replace legacy processes and the difficulty the duo faced when searching for strong production partners led to the idea for Maker’s Row. Scott Weiner helped launch the company as tech lead, and the concept for making sourcing more accessible led its three co-founders to the Brooklyn Beta summer incubator program to build the first version of their product.

Alibaba does similar work in China, but connecting designers with domestic sources seems to be a space that Maker’s Row owns. The DUMBO-based company has visually broken out the steps involved in physical goods production, including ideation, pattern-making, and tooling. For manufacturers, this comes with the hope of qualified leads (read: people who want to make things and actually know what they need).

What’s the output so far for Maker’s Row? A “hackathon hoodie” is coming soon from Subrational Clothing Company, which was started by a pair of entrepreneur friends who are commissioning the work of a manufacturer in San Francisco (likely launching the first “slim-fit performance” gear intended for an audience of weekend hackers). Jasmin Aarons’ MadeByVoz apparel and accessories line has moved production from Chile to NYC thanks to a connection made through the site. And a Kickstarter campaign for Black & Denim may help the startup begin production with Maker’s Row suppliers and contractors in their goal to help revive American textile manufacturing.

Maker’s Row will be riding a wave of word-of-mouth recommendations among designers in the hopes of making 750K new connections over the next 12 months. Parsons The New School for Design recently tweeted, unasked, that its students should post their work to the site. The company has since started collaborating with design schools whose faculty and students want to develop their concepts into professionally-crafted products. School of Visual Arts, California College of the Arts, and Rhode Island School of Design are among its current partners.

“When I went to design school [for industrial design at Pratt, now a partner] I left being employable by others but not myself,” Burnett said. “We want to help students launch their own ideas.”

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Sam Malone and Diane Chambers. Sam Malone and Rebecca Howe. Sam Malone and his hair. American sitcoms have had their fair share of legendary lovers over the years, some of them even from shows other than Cheers. But 2013 is all about the Pawneean power couple, Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt, who are getting married on this Thursday's highly-anticipated, and appropriately named, episode of Parks and Recreation, "Leslie and Ben."

Yes, I'm well aware that Valentine's Day was last week, but it's not my fault that NBC decided to cliffhang us and split up all the feels over two weeks. So I hope you guys still have your love hats on (that's a thing now!) because it's about to get mushy up in here.

Assistant Parks Director Leslie and former kid-Mayor turned budget slashing bureaucrat Ben started their relationship off in the traditional TV fashion - as bitter enemies. Ben came in to clean house and trim the fat while Leslie was determined to show him the importance and majesty of community parks. Needless to say, many arcs were arc'd.

So consider this feature a pre-wedding toast modern television's most adorable, loving and hilarious couple. Two peas in a pod who, defying most conventions, are better together than they are apart. To Super Nerd and Panic Attack (if we're to use their Wamapoke names). To Leslie and Ben! Here's why they rock:

Characters hooking up on TV is always a bit of an unstable rope bridge. Most will tell you the the real meat is in the courting. In the flirting. In the time-honored trope called "Will They?/Won't They?" But more and more these days (Chuck, Nikita), it's become "Will They?/They Will!" and the two characters who fans want to see come together become a couple and then stay a couple. Sure, they squabble and for a few episodes they'll be on the outs, but typically storylines fizzle out and interest wanes once the prize is no longer a prize. Most often, people reference the ABC '80s series Moonlighting as an example of a TV show that was hot when the masked sexual tension between the two leads (Bruce Willis & Cybill Shepherd) was in play, and then experienced a major freeze up once they landed in bed together.

But Parks and Rec has created something magical. They've given us a couple that have made the show better by them being together. Their story isn't coasting, it's thriving.

There was a moment when these two did the predictable TV thing of splitting up, but it was against their will. And then the two of them, romantic as all s***, put their careers on the line to be with one another. Ben even sacrificed his own job to be with Leslie, and since then the writers haven't had to scramble to figure out what to do with them. Not only did Ben manage Leslie's campaign for Pawnee city council, but their projects and interests regularly criss-cross with one another showing us a loving support system like no other. The show not only survived the two of them predictably falling into one another's arm, but it was all the better for it.

The notion of soul mates isn't that far-fetched when you think of Leslie and Ben. Neither is the phrase "Who would love me but for you," which I just totally made up for the sake of this piece. But it sounds right. Feels right.

Though it took time to get to know Ben, he was slowly revealed to be a cop-fearing, claymation-creating, Calzone-loving, incredi-nerd who loves to sit on benches alone and eat soup. He might be a sorcerer with numbers, but he completely melts into puddles on national TV and radio.

Ben writes Star Trek fanfic, he can't dance, he makes painfully awkward small talk and has a penchant for sobbing while wearing a full Batman costume.  Namely, he is us.

Meanwhile, Leslie, as we all know, is a hoarder/organizational freak (???) who gets easily rattled by conflict, forgets to breathe when she rants about neighboring town Eagleton and has an unhealthy confidence in our broken political system.  Oh, and she totally wants to do it with VP Joe Biden.

But even though Leslie thinks calzones are about as pointless as Ron Swanson sees cats, she's always there to support Ben.  Even if it means uttering sexy phrases in Dothraki.

So while he geeks out on sci-fi and fantasy fare, she revels in sugar highs, strong female leaders and color-coded idea binders.  And neither one gets annoyed with the other's idiosyncrasies.  They're both beautiful disasters - a match made in Tumblr heaven.

More from Leslie and Ben on page 2, including the MOST ROMANTIC LINE OF ALL TIME!

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