I made myself a promise for News Blips today. See, I've gotten in kind of a rut, and I wanted to see if I could do an installment without any Mass Effect 3 news at all. I managed to do it, too! It was actually kind of hard, since today the PlayStation Blog announced that BioWare's much-anticipated RPG will be launching as a PSN download complete with pre-order bonuses.

Well, crap.

News Blips:

The PlayStation Vita version of Street Fighter X Tekken has been delayed but will include 12 additional characters. Street Fighters Blanka, Cody, Dudley, Elena, Guy, and Sakura will be joining Tekkeners Tekkenites Tekken alumni Alisa Bosconovitch, Bryan Fury, Christie Monteiro, Jack, Lars Alexandersson, and Lei Wulong to punch and kick each other, while you just sit there on the bus, when the portable version launches sometime this fall. [Joystiq]

Starting today, the Starhawk multiplayer beta is open to the public. If you're like me, you've been spent the past three months reading accounts of the real-time-strategy-ish shooter's closed beta on Twitter and wondering when you would get a chance to jump in and get completely annihilated by players far more experienced than yourself. According to an announcement by Harvard Bonin, Senior Producer at Sony Computer Entertainment America, the wait is over. Bonin even included a little poem with his post, entitled "The Starhawk Serenade":

If you don’t try Starhawk you’ll be sad,
While your friends are having fun you’ll be mad,
It’s such an easy download,
Your head may explode!
There’s so much d&*#*! fun to be had!

That's really more of a limerick than a serenade. The love is very real, though. [PlayStation Blog]

Atlus announced today that it's bringing Persona 4 Arena to North America this summer. While you're waiting to play Street Fighter X Tekken on your Vita (or while you're taking a break from playing it on your PC, Xbox 360, or PlayStation 3), feel free to pass the time by engaging characters from Persona 3 and Persona 4 against each other in frantic 2D combat. Arc System Works, makers of BlazBlue and Guilty Gear, is developing the project, which may potentially contain the most intense and confusing assist characters ever.