A very rare, highly sought after PlayStation classic, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, is now available on the PSN Store in North America, for PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, and PlayStation Vita. Previously, physical copies of the game commanded prices north of $200 on eBay- now, it can be purchased for $6.

The game was released as a spin of the Mega Man Legends series, which, in turn, was a spin off of the mainline Mega Man games. It is an adventure game with role-playing and puzzle elements, and a little bit of of Servbot management.

Currently, the game is only available in North America, and Capcom has confirmed to Eurogamer that there are no plans to bring the game to Europe and PAL territories as of right now: “Currently the game is only available for North America.”

It’s a bit of a shame, but in the worst case, you could always just set up an American PSN account and get the game on your system that way.

The diminutive, TV based PlayStation Vita microconsole, the PS Vita TV, dubbed simply the PlayStation TV for the west, is out now in North American territories, available in a black color that wasn’t available in Japan.

The console, which launches in the US nearly a year after its launch in Japan last year, comes in two packages- a basic $99 package that includes the console, with 1GB of on board memory and all the requisite cables to get it hooked up to your TV, and $140 bundle, that includes all of that, plus a DualShock 3 and an 8GB memory card to expand the storage options, while also coming with a free game (The Lego Movie Video Game in most packages, although Walmart is selling bundles with Sly 4 in them).

The PlayStation TV is compatible with a limited range of PS Vita games, alongside all the PSP, PS Mini, and PSOne games that are digitally available to play on Vita; additionally, it can also play PlayStation 3 games over PS Now, and PlayStation 4 games via Remote Play. All told, there are over 700 games available to play on the device, and it’s a pretty neat thing to own if you’re already firmly embedded in the PlayStation ecosystem.

The Metal Gear Solid franchise has become a phenomenon in gaming unlike any other, often labeled as the definitive stealth action series, and we’ll see this expand into the open world next week with Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes. However, when series creator and director Hideo Kojima first started out on the PlayStation One with Metal Gear Solid: Tactical Espionage Action, he never expected it to sell well.

“I had to do pretty much everything for that game, which was very tough. It was a very difficult time, but at the same time it was really fun,” Kojima revealed on a recent Twitch AMA (via Siliconera).

“Neither I nor anyone else expected Metal Gear Solid to sell at all, so I was fortunate, because I didn’t have to think, ‘I have to sell this game this much’ so pretty much all I did was put in that game all the things I liked.

“I didn’t think at all of how to sell well because I didn’t expect it to sell. Also, people surrounding me didn’t have expectations. I didn’t have the pressure of ‘you have to sell this much,’ so that was really good.”

Of course, the rest is history with classic Snake returning as DLC when Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes launches on March 18th in North America and March 20th in Europe for PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PS3. The MGS Classic DLC will be limited to PlayStation platforms though.

Sony’s PS Vita TV, the recently announced Vita hardware based microconsole that plays PSP, PSOne, and PS Vita games on an HDTV with a DualShock 3 (and also has media functionality) is a genius move to provide the market with a great console for the lower end (and to thus effectively counter the relatively diminutive and insubstantial libraries of the multitude of Android and iOS consoles in one fell swoop), but if this Nikkeibp story is to be believed, Sony may be getting even more ambitious with the system.

SCEI CEO Andrew House said in a round table conference that the system is ‘technically capable’ of playing PS3 games through the same Gaikai powered cloud functionality that will bring PS3 backwards compatibility to the PS4 console.

Eventually, over time time, it is entirely possible that the PS Vita TV becomes the ultimate PlayStation console for those looking to play the bulk of the PlayStation library at an insanely reasonable price. Of course, a lot depends on how the market reacts, and how Sony handles the thing, but it’s off to a great start by being a compelling product at an attractive price point.

Not bad for a handheld once doomed to a slow death, huh?

Persson recently posted on Twitter that he had received a VIP invitation to Sony’s E3 press conference in the form of a gold-coloured PlayStation One. See it to believe it.

Got a vip invitation to an e3 event from sony in the form of a gold colored psone. Wow. 😀 twitter.com/notch/status/3…

— Markus Persson (@notch) May 27, 2013

With the success that Minecraft has seen on Xbox Live Arcade – and the success it brought to the digital platform in return – it only makes sense that Sony wants a piece of that sandbox style pie. We’ll see if this turns up any fruitful collaboration between the two parties in the near future, but for now, Microsoft’s decision to snub indie developers is just appearing more and more asinine as time goes by.

Fortunately, playing Home is not the only way to celebrate the PlayStation Family’s 15th birthday. Sony, in celebration of the said event, have opened a dedicated section on the US PS Store, where several PlayStation One games are being sold for discounted prices. These are only valid for a week.

Super Rub A Dub, the sorry excuse of a game, being the first playable thing (let’s not call it a game) to release on PSN for the PS3, will be sold at a price half of it’s actual one till September 20th.

You will also be able to get free themes for your PSP and PS3.

Sony Computer Entertainment America, or SCEA for short, are celebrating the PlayStation family’s 15th birthday in North America. And damn, in fifteen years, PSOne, PS2, PSP and PS3 combined have scaled unimaginable heights, selling a total of 377 million units, and selling a total of 2 billion software copies. In the States alone, the PS family has generated a revenue of $63 billion- that amounts for a 40 % of the total video game market share in the country.

“When you look in the rear-view mirror at what was happening in 1995 you see that the video game industry was an entirely different animal,” said SCEA CEO Jack Tretton.

“Cartridges were still the preferred medium, and the market was a modest $2.6 billion in sales revenue annually. Many critics thought that a disc-based console with a lot of horse power would shoot over the heads of consumers, but our users proved them wrong.

“Now, we are seeing a convergence of video games and home entertainment, and a market that is a robust $20 billion in revenue. In the next 15 years and beyond, PlayStation will continue to bring new and more immersive experiences, like stereoscopic 3D, augmented reality as well as genre-defying gameplay into consumer living rooms.”

To celebrate the 15 year anniversary, this is what Sony will be offering all PS owners:
-Free downloadable PS3 & PSP static themes available for download on the PlayStationStore starting today

-Weekly discounts on select PS One titles within the PlayStation 15th anniversary collection page, available in all SCEA territories on PS3, PSP & Media Go Storefronts. In addition to a 50 percent sale on Super Rub A Dub (Super Rub A Dub offer good from Thursday, September 9, 2010 – through Monday, September 20, 2010).

-A PlayStation Home commemorative Original PlayStation (PS One) ornament for personal spaces available starting today.

You can check out more on this on the US PS Blog.