Well the Sony Playstation US Blog said this earlier on this week “Hello, I just wanted to provide everyone with a head’s up that the next PLAYSTATION 3 system software update (v2.80) will be coming soon. The playback quality of some PLAYSTATION 3 format software has been improved”. Well the firmware came out, and boy, oh boy! It’s actually a cracker! Read below to find out all the details.

Ok, so if your wondering why the heck you haven’t had your system ask you to update your console yet, even though the firmware has been out for quite a while now. Well that’s because its an optional update (Yes Sony have been listening to our rants about being forced into downloading small pointless firmware updates all the time), you can get it by going to the “System Update” option at the top of the settings list on your X-Media Bar (XMB) and download and run the update from there.

Here is whats been changed/improved in firmware 2.80 that we know of so far:

• XMB works smoother and faster while in-game.
• Wireless PS3 Controller now is auto-assigned controller number one at start up, instead of any USB devices that you have plugged into the ps3’s USB (like Guitar Hero wireless dongles and such like, this has been needed for a long time!)
• Text chat now enables 64 characters per message instead of 32.
• The official Bluetooth wireless PS3 headset now has its microphone volume locked to level 3.
• Open Remote Play (ORP) has been de-activated in 2.80 for security reasons (not Remote Play, Open Remote Play is a home-brewed application that allows you to remote play onto your ps3 via your PC or Mac).
• PS1 game titles loading times have been decreased.

Also there are a few things we haven’t been able to test and confirm ourselves yet, and they are:

• Internet browser runs smoother and loads less corrupt pages.
• Trophy card loading is quicker (in-game and out of).
• A bug which allowed friends to be displayed offline has been fixed.

Have you noticed anything we haven’t? let us know below!

Source - Official Playstation Website

Another week, another update, but this one has benefits (if you don’t already own Super Stardust HD). This weeks update comes with a new game for the the ps3 and one for the psp too, oh and the usual DLC, videos and such like. I will list everything below.

Ok so first of all lets get down to the good stuff. This week, and for one week only (until 2nd of July), Super Stardust HD gets a MASSIVE price reduction from £6.29 down to an incredible £1.59, this is to celebrate its Anniversary (yes it really has been out that long). So if you don’t already own it and fancy giving it a try, now is your chance!

Also in the Playstation Store this week is “Zuma”, a highly addictive game that  is similar to puzzle bobble, but in a completely new and unique way, you have to fire different coloured balls from a frogs mouth to match three or more balls with the same colour, and this is to stop the balls progressing around a set wiggly path to a Golden Skull, as you eliminate balls you make them retreat back down the path they came from and away from the Skull, there are many challenges and the game is genuinely addictive, especially displayed in full 1080p, this game also supports trophies.

Now here is the complete list of items in this weeks Playstation Store update:

PS3 Store Update for 25th June 2009

Game
Zuma
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (PSP)

Super Stardust HD (Anniversary Special Offer)

Packs
Motorstorm Pacific Rift - Wombat Signature Livery

High Velocity Bowling
’60s Surf Ball Pack
Tiki Polynesian Ball Pack

Little Big Planet
Jon Burgerman Original Sticker kit
Solstice Costume (1 week only)

Rock Band
Maroon 5 Pack 01
21St Century (Digital Boy)
Alive (Live: Drop In The Park)
Brother’
I Didn’t Say I Was Powerful, I Said I Was A Wizard
Little Of Your Time
Makes Me Wonder
Reinventing Your Exit
State Of Love And Trust (Live: Drop In The Park)
The Downfall Of Us All
The Flood
Wake Up Call
Warped Tour 2009 Pack 01

Rock Band Unplugged PSP
Afterlife
Dr. Feelgood
Constant Motion
Sex Type Thing

Guitar Hero World Tour
Chalk Dust Torture’ By Phish
Down With Disease’ By Phish
Sample In A Jar’ By Phish
Phish Track Pack

Videos
Mini Ninjas E3 Trailer

Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood
Story Trailer
Announcement Trailer

Wallpaper
Battlefield 1943 Wallpaper 1
Battlefield 1943 Wallpaper 2

Themes
Battlefield 1943
MotorStorm Pacific Rift Screenshot Competiton

PSP Store/Media Manager Store
Game
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Packs
Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce Additional Quests 2

Rock Band Unplugged

Afterlife
Dr. Feelgood
Constant Motion
Sex Type Thing

Source - Playstation Store Update thread

Well its that time of the week again (and I don’t mean Friday), Its Playstation network weekly downtime! Playstation Home’s downtime today will result in the return of all your long lost items.

MusterBuster (PSN Community team leader), has today confirmed that the Home downtime will bring back most of your long lost reward items from games and events played in Home since the Extended Closed beta trial (but not the closed Beta). He states that not not all items will be recoverable, and any items that do not re-appear after the work is done today, will be lost permanently.

Downtime to Home while the work is done will be approximately 8 hours and will be down from 8am this morning. The next Home content update will be on the 2nd of July.

Source - Playstation Home update thread

That’s right, we kid you not! At some point during the next few months you will be blessed with the mother of all music services direct onto your PS3, thousands upon thousands of music videos for free at your fingertips for you to surf through and play at any time of the day whenever you feel like it. But there is a catch.

Its ok, don’t panic! The catch isn’t that big really, unless you live outside of Europe then you might as well just pretend you never saw this article. As far as we know the Vidzone service will only be available to SCEE users, but for those SCEE users out there, the catch will be very minimal. The service uses little advertisements to pay for itself, but they are not intrusive and don’t get on your nerves, in fact it has less adverts than watching music television or using youtube, so two happy thumbs up!

The Vidzone service which is bought to the PS3 by Vidzone Digital Media in London has been around since around 2001 and now has distribution agreements with Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI and more than 7,500 independent record labels, so you can expect to see a fair stack of music videos old and new on your PS3 at launch, with more being added all the time.

The service which arrives on our PS3 this summer will be accessible via the music section on your PS3’s XMB menu, once installed and launched you can instantly start viewing music videos, you can set up playlists, just play a random tune or you can just let it do what it wants, its like music TV only better and more interactive. The video quality is very high and even though it streams the videos to your system apparently there is hardly any loading or buffering at all. If that is still the case once the service goes live is yet to be seen, but it all sounds very promising so far!

And finally for any PS3 users out there which own a PSP (I would hope all of you), you will have the ability to create playlists on the move using your PSP and then when you get home you can listen to them, whether a remote play feature will be added so you can watch the videos on the move is yet to be seen, but we can only imagine that if it isn’t, it soon will be.

The PS3 looks more and more like the ultimate home media device all the time, with digital TV, web browser, Music video service, Blu-ray, DVD, CD, media server accessible and a whole bunch of other features, what other device could offer you all this except a PC which certainly isn’t as simple, cheap or as fun to use. The only thing the PS3 is missing in the SCEE region is a decent Video/Movie service, but I think we will be seeing one of those aswell before too long.

Sources:
Vidzone Digital Media
-
Playstation Site

So riding onto the PS3 at the fall of this year is a wheely good looking wild Western (in game form), it doesn’t carry much over from the previous game (Red Dead Revolver) which came out on the PS2 and Xbox. Different story, different hero, different console, different game. Bigger, badder and a whole lot better than before!

Details about this game are still a little bit sketchy, but it seems this new title from Rockstar San Diego seems to be bringing more of a Grand Theft Auto style approach to the old gen game. The game is set in the wilderness and towns of the Southern United states and the Northerns sections of Mexico. This is how Dan Houser (co-founder of Rockstar) described the Red Dead Redemption environments setup:

“There’s three linked bits of map. You start in what we’re calling the Frontier area and these are all counties or states or regions…meant to be one of the last wild patches still being brought under the yolk of modern America. Telegraph poles are everywhere, people are starting to play around with big telephones in their offices, but on the other hand people have hardly ever seen any other form of modernization. The trains have been there for a while, but it’s still pretty primitive, and still pretty lawless, and still has a Marshall rather than a police force…Then you get sent to Mexico to a province that is on the point of civil war. You get to see some of the characters there including the local, somewhat overly zealous political leaders and there will be rebellious leaders and some other people hiding out south of the border from life in America. Then you eventually end up back in the Northeastern part of the map which is a contrast geographically with the other two which are different styles of more desert and scrub, and this is much more verdant with pine trees and hills and mountains in there and also a bigger town which is a lot more modern…so you end the map with a lot more of the modern world in your face.”

The Red Dead Redemption environment is meant to be the largest environment Rockstar has ever created in any of their games, and this is essential to the feeling they are trying to portray in this game, the big old wild west, go anywhere and do anything, if you can see it, you can go there and explore!

“The sense of scale, and the sense of riding across these big areas and exploring these weird corners of the map, that is part of the experience, just as much as having the shootouts and part of the story and adventure. The act of seeing these beautiful views and discovering them for yourself and feeling like it’s enormous and I can go over there and see what’s up that hill and see for miles in the distance, that is part of the beauty and fun of the game.”

Even though the map is supposedly huge, apparently none of it is lacking content or interaction with all different kinds of random events, random brawls and encounters of the wild variety, all of which you can interact with and all of which can affect you for better or for worse depending on how you treat the situation, villain or hero - you decide.

Putting Red Dead Redemption into perspective, its like Grand Theft Auto but at the start of the 20th century, you don’t hold up a shop, you hold up a bank. You don’t steal a car, you steal a horse or a stagecoach, you hunt animals, you herd cattle and use your lasso to catch things. The game seems as if it will be a lot more involved and varied from the Grand Theft Auto experience, it would be absolutely no surprise to me if the game reached Game of the Year 2010, but most definitely into the top 5 if not top spot.

Make sure you check out the IGN interview with Rockstar’s co-founder Dan Houser for in depth information about this game -here-

Sources:
IGN

-UPDATE-
This game has now been delayed until the first half of 2010 by Take Two.

Well this weeks update has seen the long awaited inFamous demo finally appear in the store, so no doubt the servers will be crippled by the eager PS3 community in no time at all, we also see a whole heap of new game content for the likes of Little Big Planet, Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Resistance retribution and so on.

Its not often we get two fully loaded store updates from SCEE in a row, but it seems they really are bending over backwards to improve, you can view last weeks update here.

Here is this weeks update list:

PS3 Store update for 21st May 2009

Game
Creatures - Raised in Space

Demo
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 Demo
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 Demo
Killzone 2 Bullet 4D interactive Ad
Red Faction Guerilla - Multiplayer Demo
inFamous Demo

Packs
MotorStorm Pacific Rift Patriot Signature Livery Pack
Pain: The Ded Baron Character
F.E.A.R.2 Armored Front Map Pack

Guitar Hero World Tour
Disconnected By In Flames
Look Good In Leather By Cody Chestnutt
Oh Yeah! By Housse De Racket
European Track Pack 05

Rock Band
Billion Dollar Babies (Live)
I’m Eighteen (Live)
Liar (It Takes One To Know One)
Makedamnsure
Poison
School’s Out (Live)
Under My Wheels (Live)
Vengeance Is Mine
What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?
Kids Don’t Follow
Alice Cooper Pack 01
Taking Back Sunday Pack 01

Little Big Planet
Monster Level Kit
Bride of Sackula Costume
Sackula Costume
Werewolf costume
Zombie Costume
Monster Costume Kit

Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
Premium Multiplayer Map Pack

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X
Russian Falcons Pack

Videos
Fat Princess Drop of a Hat Trailer
Uncharted 2 Multiplayer Trailer

Resistance Retribution
The Dream Team Trailer
Mode Makers Trailer
From Vision to Reality Trailer

Infamous
Open World Power Trip Trailer

PSP Store/Media Manager Store
Game
Fading Shadows

Videos
Resistance Retribution
The Dream Team Trailer
Mode Makers Trailer
From Vision to Reality Trailer

PS3 In-Game
Little Big Planet
Monster Level Kit
Bride of Sackula Costume
Sackula Costume
Werewolf costume
Zombie Costume
Monster Costume Kit

Source - Playstation Store update thread

So are you happy with this weeks update? Do you feel as though it was missing something important? Have you downloaded inFamous yet, if so what did you think of it? let us know, we would love to hear any opinions you have on this update!

As of tomorrow users inside of Playstation Home will no longer be able to run along the rooftops and float in mid-air, well at least in some cases anyway.

As you wonder around Playstation Home you do quite often notice users who have managed to get into the most unusual places, floating in mid-air, running along rooftops and walls, standing on tables and chairs, walking on hand rails, standing on poster-boards and the list goes on and on. Well it seems Sony have got fed up with all this “mostly” harmless frolicking in Home and have decided to put an end to some of it.

In the update scheduled for tomorrow Home will actually be upgraded to Home BETA v1.21, this update will bring along a whole bunch of bug-fixes and changes/improvements of which quite a few will most likely put an end to certain styles of glitching, they are as follows:

•  ”Adjusted the way characters get up from seating to make them less prone to popping in and out of seats that are close together”
• “Fixed a bug that would result in characters standing on top of certain types of seating after standing.”
• “Fixed a bug that would allow character to run or slide while performing spot idle animations.”
• “We’ve slowed down the speed at which you can rotate furniture”

So by the sounds of it you will still be able to do the “wiggle” glitches, but any of you who want to explore the areas such as the FarCry train station I suggest you do your glitching tonight, and any of you wanting to explore the land around your Apartments or just want to place furniture on top of your apartments then I suggest you do so before the end of tonight. I would believe that the furniture rotation speed change is a way of preventing these glitches, but on that I could be wrong.

You can view all the changes coming to home tomorrow in this article here

What do you think of Sony’s tactics on reducing glitching? Do you Glitch and will you miss it? Let us know any opinions you may have on this!

Sources:

Home Forum
PS3 Daily

Well SCEE Home have kept their word, TedTheDog has been on the Playstation Home forums to tell us of all the planned updates and changes coming to home this Thursday coming, thats right folks, BEFORE the updates are actually applied. It’s a first, and hopefully not a last! The SCEE Home team, I salute you for following through on your promise! Now lets try and keep it up from now on.

You can check out our article about what SCEE Home has got planned over the next few months here
And here is what TedTheDog had to say this week:

Here we are with our first bulletin in which we discuss changes to Home well in advance, as promised in our recent discussions. It’s an interesting one to start with as it coincides with the release of patch 1.21

We’ll come back to 1.21 in a moment, but first let’s detail what else will arrive on the 21st

General

Threads will have another relatively small influx of fun and varied clothing for those of you who like to mix and match, and you’ll also find a few more hairstyles available to you in the wardrobe. And we can’t resist listing them: Sleek Crop, Crop, Forward Spikes, Short Hair, Spiky Hair and last but not least, Shaggy Sleek.

Edit: My mistake, these are, it appears, existing styles being changed purely on how they are delivered and not new styles at all.

Home Square

Some elements of Home Square have been updated behind the scenes and as a result you’ll need to download the new version of the space. We are assured you will not notice the changes but for those of you interested the elements updated are Draughts, Chess and Helicopter Hit.

EA Sports Complex

The EA Sports complex is receiving an update to add the following:

Poker
- Leader Boards
    The two screens attached to the roof support pillars in the space will now have leaderboard information for daily winners, and season leaders

- Ranking
    The top 100 players for the season and for the day will be ranked and you can see if you have a ranking by looking at the bottom of the leader board

- Red Tournament Table
    The middle table will now become the Red Tournament table
    You will need to have a positive bankroll to play on this table which means having at least 1000 points in your bankroll

- Point Rewards for Winning
    On the tables your rewards will vary based on the number of players and how you finish
    Green payouts for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd
    Red tables pays out more than Green

- Improved camera system (L1 to change, L2 to reset)
    You now have 4 different views of the table you play on - standard, over head, table top view 1, table top view 2
    You can look at the leader board to see how many point the daily and season winners have posted
    Watch 1 of 3 video screens
    View the Scoreboard slide show
    Check the Ticker for updated event information

- Table placement
     By moving the location of the tables we will be able to reduce the cross chatter between tables that occurs while texting
            This change should also eliminate the annoying “video screen in my ear effect” that occurs on certain seats

- Music (R2 to change volume)
     We have added a music track to the Poker game to make things a little more interesting
            Volume control will also be added so you can toggle between 3 volume levels or turn it off completely (R2)

- Blind Timers
           Now increment based on the number of people remaining at the table

- Blind Time on Status board
   When you walk up to a table you now see how high the blind is and when it will double

Bug reporting

As a point of interest we are investigating ways of gathering bug reports from you in the future. Forum threads simply don’t work for this as duplicate reports and general chat complicate and greatly increase the amount of work involved in simply finding the facts. In the meantime we will continue to look to our long term beta testers to report through our existing process. We hope to have something usable by all by the next patch.

Patch v1.21

And now onto v1.21 of the Home core client and the changes it brings. The major difference between ourselves and SCEA is that they will be releasing Picture Frames with 1.21. Whilst the moderation hurdles have been overcome our senior management (for better or worse!) are still reassessing their approach to user owned or generated content.

Until these concerns can be tackled we will hold back on releasing Picture Frames here in SCEE. However, our intention is to release this feature as soon as possible and we will let you know how things progress behind the scenes from time to time.

And now onto the lists of changes and fixes:

 Improvements

• The chat log has been updated with a number of new enhancements:

 - By clicking the left stick you can toggle the chat log between three modes: normal, expanded and minimised.
• It is also possible to switch the chat log directly into expanded mode by pressing up or down on the controller d-pad.
 - While minimised the chat log is reduced to a small icon in the corner of the screen.  This icon will still fade in and out to indicate whether new chat is being received.
 - While expanded you can scroll through individual lines of text in the chat log.  By pressing [CROSS] with a line highlighted they are able to open an options menu for the user who spoke.
 - Lines of text are coloured in the chat log to reflect the colour choice of the user who typed them.
 - Your friends will now have an icon placed beside their ID in the chat log.

• Emotes are now available when text communication has been disabled.
• It is possible to target things while sat on the floor.
• The process of moving between spaces has been streamlined which should make relocating a bit faster.
• The loading time for smaller images, such as thumbnails, posters and map chips, has been reduced.

Changes

• We have reduced loading times when using the virtual stores to browse and purchase items.
• We have changed the way furniture is saved in a Club house. This should stop furniture going missing if the player placing the furniture exits Home immediately after changing the layout.
• When you log in to Home, if there is a problem retrieving your commerce information then you will be returned to the welcome screen with an error message.
• When you attempt to telephone a friend that has voice chat disabled you will now see the warning in an alert message instead of a pop-up.
• If you choose not to download an update patch for Home and then attempt to log on you will be returned to the welcome screen with an appropriate error message.
• We’ve swapped the dark grey and dark blue pop-up colours for magenta and turquoise to make text easier to read in the chat log.
• Club ownership is now indicated by a crown icon instead of a star.
• We’ve slowed down the speed at which you can rotate furniture.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug that could cause items of furniture placed in the Club house to go missing (this is separate from the change to make saving the layout more robust).
• Fixed a problem that could cause Home rewards to be lost after a network error.
• Fixed a bug that would cause a crash when the user is signed out of the PSN while logging on to Home.
• Fixed a bug that would send users to the wrong place if they accepted an invitation to a Personal Space just as its owner relocated elsewhere.
• The option to make cross regional telephone calls from public spaces is no longer greyed out.
• Fixed a bug where spawning inside the trigger radius of certain mini-games would result in the user automatically joining them.
• Fixed a bug that would result in a “typing” chat bubble being displayed permanently if the user muted someone while they were typing.
• Changed Game Launching error messages so that line breaks show up correctly in them now.
• Fixed a bug that would cause alert messages to remain on screen after being disconnected.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a crash if the user was disconnected while making a purchase in Home.
• The furniture placement camera will now respect the control inversion settings specified in the Menu Pad.
• Adjusted the way characters get up from seating to make them less prone to popping in and out of seats that are close together.
• Fixed a bug that would result in characters standing on top of certain types of seating after standing.
• Fixed a bug that would cause certain parts of some animations to “stick” if the character stood up while playing them (for example if the user stood up while yawning, their mouth would be stuck open).
• Fixed a bug that would allow the character to run or slide while performing spot idle animations.

 

 

So there we have it folks, SCEE is keeping their promises and actually looking after their players, how long will they be able to keep it up? who knows!

Sources:
Playstation Home Forum
PS3 Daily

Over the last week, news and blog articles have been popping up globally after pictures emerged appearing to show various un-assembled parts of plastic bearing the Playstation logo and the “PS3″ writing and font. These bits of plastic seemed to belong to a mysterious new unseen design for the PS3 console.

Articles regarding this apparent re-design of the Playstation 3 (nicknamed by the media the “PS3 Slimline” or “PS3 Slim”) spread like wildfire thanks to reports that Sony is going to be making 2 separate announcements at E3 next month regarding hardware re-designs. One of these is generally believed to be a new psp, but the second remained a mystery, and then out of the blue these images appeared and everybody then started to believe that this second hardware re-design announcement could in-fact be a new ps3 design.

As articles spread regarding this new mystery re-design, so did the images taken from the “Levelup China” website that kicked it off in the first place. Levelup China had posted these images up and then suddenly the article and the images disappeared from their site (but not before plenty of people had grabbed the images) which led to speculation that Sony had tried to silence them so as not to let the cat out of the bag too early, this of course just seemed to clarify it for most article and blog writers.

But then a twist was added to this whole equation, CVG (Computer and Video Games) was told by Sony UK that Sony “currently don’t have any plans for a redesigned PS3″, and that they “don’t know anything about the system in the photos.”. This caused a 50/50 split in opinion with some people sure that this was the real deal, and others believing these rumours to be ludicrous.

But then early this week various sites who had posted up these images of the so called PS3 Slim started receiving e-mails from a law firm called “Li Mo & Associates” from Taipei in Taiwan telling them to “immediately remove those pages and keep our request confidential”, but seeing as news and blog writers don’t like being told what to do, most of them did neither of those things, and some even went as far as posting up the entire e-mail. I read the e-mail at Spong and decided it was time to find out a little more, Mog was on a mission!

First I traced down Li Mo. After coming accross a news article on the Law section of the official Harvard website it seemed that Li Mo was infact an author of numerous books on Taiwanese law and Chinese history and he practiced Law at Li Mo & Associates. This finding confirmed that the law firm was genuine, after this I came across the website for the firm (http://www.limo.com.tw/), but couldn’t find anything truly enlightening except the fact that the person who had issued the e-mail (James Lan otherwise known as Hung-Jeng Lan) specialised in Intellectual property rights and corporate law. Unfortunately I could find no information anywhere as regards to the client they represented.

But then Spong came through and made an interesting discovery of what they called “Genuine Fakes”, I suggest you view their article here.

In a nutshell, they came across some “Genuine Fake” console producers in China who make shoddy looking replicas of official consoles but they don’t contain the same hardware that official machines do, most open up and you find they actually take cartridges rather than discs, you can view one such manufacturer of these “Genuine Fakes” here.

It is now believed by most of the sites that received this e-mail, that the law firm are not representing Sony but are in actual fact representing one of these many “Genuine Fake” console producers, and are issuing the e-mail in order to take theirselves out of the spotlight and out of the view of Sony’s ever seeing eyes.

I don’t think we have seen the end of this story just yet, and we will be keeping our eyes on this one.

Sources:
http://www.ps3daily.co.uk/20090515/sony-puts-an-end-to-the-slimline-ps3-rumours/
http://news.spong.com/article/17975/Genuine_Fake_PS3_Slim_in_the_Wild_Fun
http://news.spong.com/article/17968/PS3_Slim_Confirmed_Lawyers_Demand_SPOnG_Removes_Pix
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=214873
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=214986

Well with the E3 expo only a few short weeks away, the net has been on fire with rumours and predictions. Rumours have been zooming back and forth like babies on hot coals, one such rumour being the re-design of the Playstation 3.

Earlier this week Levelup Chinaposted an article up with some rough looking images supposedly showing a re-designed PS3, and PS3 packaging. This was very quickly taken down and the images removed, but not before a whole bunch of people had grabbed the images and the article that went with it. Soon the Internet was infested with these Slimline PS3 rumours with pretty much every game site reporting on them, some just putting down predictions, some believing Sony was trying to cover it up and that the pics could indeed be real.

So one Games site decided to stop beating around the bush and decided to ask Sony UK directly about the rumoured re-design, CVG (Computer and Video Games) was told by Sony UK that “We currently don’t have any plans for a redesigned PS3″, and that “We don’t know anything about the system in the photos.”.

So there we have it folks, there is no PS3 Slim on it’s way, which makes sense. Sony has just reported its first loss in 14 years in tune to a net loss of $1 billion for its fiscal year, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to spend a whole heap of cash on a re-design of something that works perfectly well already, as the old saying goes “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!”.

This all said and done, it is reported that there are 2 hardware re-designs to be announced at E3 by Sony, one is believed to be the new PSP and the other is now open to debate, could this possibly be the new motion sensing controller we have reported here? Or seeing as that isn’t really a “re-design”, could there be something else on its way? Let us know what you think this might be!

Got any opinions on this article? let us know! Got an idea what the hardware re-designs might be? Have you seen the photos of the rumoured slimline PS3? What did you think of it? We would love to hear from you!

Source:
CVG Article 1
and
CVG Article 2

It seems that a some of our readers have been experiencing faster trophy comparison speeds after the 2.76 firmware update, so we decided to investigate!

Previously when comparing trophies, you would sometimes have to wait a minute or more for it to gather your own and other fellow players trophies (give or take 30 seconds depending on your Internet connection), now the Sony US blog told us yesterday that “This is a minor update that improves the playback quality of some PS3 format software”. And the official Playstation websites system software page tells us that “The playback quality of some PLAYSTATION 3 software has been improved”.

It does indeed seem from our testing yesterday that trophy comparison has improved (at least on our unit), our trophy data comparison times with various users seemed to all be under 10 seconds, and some under 5! Now we see two possible reasons for this considerable increase in trophy comparison times:

1. Sony have updated their servers during Thursday downtime to improve various Playstation Network functionality.
2. The improvements to the ”playback quality of some PS3 format software”, was actually supposed to say ‘the playback quality of some PS3 SYSTEM software’.

Tell us what you think! Have your PS3 trophy comparison times improved? Have you noticed anything else on the PS3 that has improved? Do you not see any difference at all? Feed us your opinions on this, we would love to hear them!

Well here is the list of all the new bits and bobs to arrive in the Playstation Store today!

So Playstation Store recieves some nice new updates today, a whole host of games, plenty of videos and a whole host of content, it seems that SCEE is improving their ways and we will hopefully see more updates like this in the future too! so without beating around the bush, here is the list:

PS3 Store update for 14th May 2009

Game
Bejeweled® 2
Texas Cheat’em
Zen Pinball
Buzz!™ Junior: RoboJam

Demo
Zen Pinball

Packs
Street Fighter 4 - Complete Alternate Costume Pack
Sonic Unleashed - Holoska Adventure Pack
MotorStorm Pacific Rift - Lunar Tec Signature Livery Pack

Pain
Sore Spots Pack
Daxter Pack

Guitar Hero World Tour
So What’ By Pink
Stop And Stare’ By One Republic
Pop Rock Track Pack
Everything’s Magic’ By Angels & Airwaves

Rock Band
Bad Luck
Black Friday
My Old School
Radio Radio
Ring Of Fire
Story Of My Life
Stricken
Stupify
Social Distortion Pack 01

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2
Additional Mission 1
Additional Mission 2
Additional Mission 3

Videos
Resistance Retribution
Resistance Retribution Behind the Scenes Episodes 1
Resistance Retribution Behind the Scenes Episodes 2
Resistance Retribution Behind the Scenes Episodes 3

Killzone 2
Killzone 2 Making of Trailers
Killzone 2 Making of Trailers Conclusion

MotorStorm® Pacific Rift – Signature Livery Trailer
Pain - Sore Spots Trailer

Themes
MotorStorm Pacific Rift Signature Livery Theme
Bejeweled® 2 Theme #2

Source - MusterBuster

What are your opinions on this weeks updates, do you think SCEE have started to pull their finger out? Is there anything you feel should have been added this week that wasn’t? Personaly I think FUEL videos and an inFamous demo should have been added, but I guess this is a pretty decent update by any standards. Let us know your opinions about it!

That’s right, your eyes did not deceive you, Bejeweled®2 has indeed made its long awaited jump into the Playstation Store!

Bejeweled®2, a remake of the classic gem-swapping puzzle has finaly made its way into the Playstation store, much to the pleasure of a whole bunch of classic puzzle fans who happen to own a PS3, and as described in the game details “Bejeweled 2 takes the classic game of gem-swapping to euphoric new heights”.

The game is trophy enabled and your are able to play it on your PSP via remote play (which is always good news).

The re-make is displayed in full 1080p glory and comes packed with a whole bunch of new gems to swap and destroy in age old Bejeweled fashion, it has fantastic, visually appealing backdrops and great special effects which will no doubt keep you hooked once you get started.

It comes with Classic and time based action modes, puzzle mode and endless mode which just keeps the Bejeweled fun coming.

Source - Playstation Games & Media

Well PS3 firmware version 2.76 is now live, so whats new I hear you ask?

And the honest answer to that would be……. nothing, nowt, niente, nada!

Well nothing exciting, unless of course you find pairing up long lost socks from under your bed to be exciting, in which case this will most likeley be the highlight of the month for you.

As the US Sony Playstation blog tells us “This is a minor update that improves the playback quality of some PS3 format software”. So there you have it folks, a big download that gets you nothing more than half an hour of boredom (depending on your Internet connection and the Playstation servers).

If you have any opinions on this let us know! Would you rather updates like this be optional? Do you think these small updates are essential to increasing the ps3’s potential? Do you wish you could still use the ps3 (at least while the update was downloading)? We would love to hear from you on this!

Source - US Playstation blog

Well its the usual Thursday scheduled downtime tomorrow, and unfortunately there is nothing new coming yet.

Scheduled downtime tomorrow (Thursday the 14th of May).

Home will be down from 8am tomorrow morning, but don’t get too excited, community team leader MusterBuster has informed us that there will be nothing new arriving tomorrow, no clothes, no furniture, no new areas. So don’t lose any sleep unless you’re maybe hoping for a new video trailer for inFAMOUS or something along those lines.

Hopefully soon we will get the Playstation Home Film studio set, Check out this nice article about it at joystiq

And for those of you wondering if the fish in the stream in Home Square will be returning this week - sadly not, no.

Well anyone in the SCEE region could hardly have failed to notice that there is/has always been a clear lack of content in our region, not just for Home but for things like content in the Playstation Store too (DLC packs for Guitar Hero etc), well as far as Home is concerned…. Things are about to change, BIG TIME!

SCEE’s Home community manager TedTheDog yesterday announced that it was quite clear that Home in the SCEE region was along way behind all the other regions in the number of spaces that are offered to its users, although he did like to point out that there was plenty of nice bits and bobs available in the Shopping Centre and that they had some great Home Partners in there as well. SCEE home users (in the forums) do quite often like to point out the fact that SCEE does seem to care more about keeping their partners happy and keeping their wallets brimming rather than actually keeping their players happy, and that even though the SCEE community is one of the biggest earners they do always seem to be pushed to the back of the line.

TedTheDog has now said that starting immediately that Home in the SCEE region is to undertake some major changes that will help keep Home up-to-date and in the same playing field as the other regions, keep players better informed and keep players much more happy.

Here are some of the key points mentioned in his post:

• Red Bull has another trick up its sleeve (free to interpretation), and that the Xi has still got some way to run and has some more surprises in store for us.
• Priority will now be given to the production of new Home spaces and support will still be given to the Partners in the Shopping Center.
• A new production assistant has been hired to meet the demand of more workload brought on by these changes.
• The first task will be to get up to date on all the old content that has been missed (Uncharted, Warhawk, Resident Evil).
• The second task will then be to start work on some of the more recent spaces like Guitar Hero, and then to finally keep up to date with other regions and ensure releases of spaces at the same time as them.
• Over the next 2 to 4 months the SCEE Home Producer will be investigating 17 spaces for deployment.
• Communication is to improve, and from now on we can expect information about content and updates to be published a week in advance rather than just before, during, or after the updates have taken place and the content has been updated.

It seems that SCEE is finally getting up to scratch and improving the PS3 experience for European users, hopefully we will soon start to see some of the other content from other regions start to appear in the Playstation Store.

Everybody, things are looking up at last!

Source - Home Forum

For all those Guitar Hero obsessed gamers out there, Logitech has a big treat waiting for you - as long as you can afford it!

Made mainly out of Authentic guitar materials, The Logitech Wireless Guitar Controller Premiere Edition is a fantastic addition to your Guitar Hero games on the PS3, but at GBP £149.99 rrp its also quite a pricey addition, especially seeing as you can purchase a real brand new guitar for that price.

But looking away from the obvious cost factors, this controller is exceptionally well built, the body itself is solid and the neck is made from real wood, the frets and tuning pegs are made from metal and the fingerboard is made from proper rosewood. And unlike the basic plastic Guitar Hero controller you don’t get that annoying clicky sounds from strumming or hitting the fret buttons, the controller is almost silent operation.

It features a touch sensitive Neck slider to take full advantage of the features in Guitar Hero World Tour, The guitar also features a “Star Power” button, personaly I think this takes away from the fun tilt to get star power feature which makes watching your friends play so amusing.

The Guitar comes loaded with a 2 year limited hardware warranty, dedicated gig bag, Wireless 2.4GHz USB receiver, Guitar controller strap, 2 AA batteries and the usual paperwork and documentation.

So down to the pro’s and con’s:

Pros - Its exceptionally well built, it looks fantastic, it feels fantastic, its a good weight, Xbox doesn’t have it, and it has a 2 year warranty.
Cons - Its pretty pricey, It will give you back ache from playing for too long, you’ll never want to put it down, your REAL Guitar playing friends will take the mickey out of you and tell you to stop wasting your time and to get and learn to play Real Guitar.

So if your a 24/7 Guitar Hero addict or you just have money to burn, why not pick one up?

There is a black edition of the guitar going on sale in June for European gamers, and later this month in the US.

Currently approaching the PS3 community at the speed of a bullet shot from the Desert eagle of the God’s, is a game of epic proportions of which you don’t often see. Personally I think it is one of the most groundbreaking games released in recent years. But for some bizarre reason, hardly anybody has heard of it.

Fuel is the name, and racing is the game.

The little-known, under marketed and under reported game designed by Asobo studios in France is currently streaming towards us at light speed and is set for release on the 29^th of this month. The game is brought to our fingertips via Codemasters, so hopefully it won’t disappoint.

Fuel is set in an alternate present in the U.S of A, but not as we know it, not even close. Global Warming has taken over and has forced everyone away (well almost), as Sebastian Wloch at Asobo Studio states “a bunch of crazy drivers are going for it in these extreme conditions to find more extreme racing than ever”. The prologue to the main fmv for this video says “These were once fertile lands until weather raged war on man, the sea’s rose, the sun scorched the earth, and the people fled. Some… remained behind”.

The basics of this game are that it is an off-road free roaming racing game with a whole bunch of different vehicles to choose from (over 70 in total plus a bonus vehicle if you pre-order). But that is where the basics end and the game suddenly gets interesting. The game is a massive 14,000 square kilometres in size with a huge 40km draw distance, the game quite literally takes hours and hours to drive across (on or off-road), but to make this more of a challenge you have weather effects that will keep you on your toes (tornadoes, sandstorms, rain, snow, thunderstorms and blizzards to name a few), the landscape ranges from snow capped mountain ranges, deserts, canyons, cityscapes to salt flats and more (most of which is generated from actual satelite data of landmarks in the US like Yosemite national park and the Grand Canyon), and to add even more feeling to the game it has a 24 hour day/night system!

There is a whole host of races and missions to keep you occupied plus a race maker if you finish all those, and if you get bored of doing that you can go play in the world, with the rest of the world playing in the world with you, go adventure the American landscapes with your friends or simply go do anything you wish, chase tornadoes, jump off big cliffs, pull the dragster out and have drag races with people on the salt flats etc etc.

This article could have me going on for quite some time, but instead I will be nice! I have placed the link to the FUEL website at the bottom of this page so you can research and discover about it yourself (and watch some videos).

In conclusion:

1) If you’re a racing game fan, then purchase the game.
2) If you’re not a racing game fan, then still purchase the game!

The simple point to this game is:
“If you can see it, you can drive to it, taking any route (on or off-road)” - Complete freedom.

FUEL website – www.fuel-game.com

If what we are about to mention here is all true then we know we will be very happy bunnies, the latest rumour says that Sony will have its brand new PS3 motion controller at E3 2009 in June.

The all new Sony patent shows off the awesome PlayStation 3 Wand Controller where the final finished device will be shown at E3, look at the picture above at you will get to understand a little about this device.

All we say is; if this rumour is indeed true we can see this smashing the hell out of Nintendo Wii, please let us know what you think of this device, post all comments below. Thanks

Source – Variety via TechRadar

So those of you who thought the screens were bad on the awesome PS3 game “Mag” can now think again, so are the screens bad then?

Below is a superb Mag gameplay premiere video for you to feast your eyes on and after watching it only then can you answer our question. Some people have past judgement and said “This game looks really cool and that they would buy it, but did not like the animations”. Mmmm

Another question we would like answered is “Is this going to be one of the most incredible gaming experiences of this generation, and perhaps of gaming as a whole? Anyway, please watch the video and let me know.