Henning initially wrote about the secret Minority Report like hardware that is rumoured to be in development here and now the same site that claims to have a source has apparantly more info about the device.

It is apparantly being manufactured by Prime Sense and as it’s fairly cheap to manufacture the price shouldn’t be too high. Now to the supposed meat and potatoes. The device is said to offer incredible freedom of movement and will accurately portray your movements into in-game actions.

For instance if you perform Martial Art techniques, say a low roundhouse kick followed by an elbow to the head, your character on screen should mimic those techniques and dispose of Ninjas or other enemies your on-screen character is battling. Now as a Martial Artist that sounds great to me!!

There are more examples:

An even more impressive example shown was that of a player following on-screen dance moves, with no restrictions to movement, while his moves are accurately recognized as correct or wrong. The final demonstration mentioned, is that of a player collapsing some pillars using his avatar. This demonstration highlighted how the virtual representation of the player will interact with the in-game physics.

All of these were apparantley demonstrated to the source and are over one year old.

It does sound like a great way to boost the way gamers interact with a game but I just don’t know whether to believe these rumours or not. If true fantastic if not maybe it will be possible some time in the future.

Megagames - More Secrets About PS3’s Secret Hard-wear Revealed

That’s if you live in Germany *cough* Segitz *cough* & if you pre-order from Saturn. QJ.net wrongly states that you get 7 games for free when you pre-order a 60GB PS3 in it’s headline. Now that would be some deal.

These types of deals are what most retailers should do rather than forcing people to buy bundles like Play.com is doing. Yes it may sound daft but give people a game for FREE and let them choose the game they want will actually boost sales & a retailers reputation!

QJ.net - Pre-order a PS3 & Get One Game for Free

I’ve had my HDTV for two years now (see the picture of my set below), and I’m really enjoying it. Every time a program comes on TV that’s not in HD, I’m disappointed. Last season my cable company didn’t have a channel that carried Smallville in HD, and I was miffed. Watching the Olympics, my wife once complained that the event she wanted to watch was on a “regular” channel. The HD experience is one you need to experience, not one that people can tell you about. And in my view, you really need a larger set to get the full impact. None of this 34″ widescreen HDTV stuff! Sure you get the benefit of a widescreen display, but at 34″ and most viewing distances, an EDTV (Enhanced Definition TV, between SD and HD) would be just as good.

So if you were to ask me if a future PS3 owner should own an HDTV to use it with, of course my answer would be “yes”. Am I biased? You bet. But it’s from experience. My friend Todd has an Xbox 360 and it’s fun to play games on his 32″ SDTV. But he brought the 360 over to my place once, and it was like a white chocolate Easter bunny versus the white chocolate chunks from Laura Secord. (Hmmm, I guess that analogy only makes sense if you’re a white chocolate lover like me, and you know how great the chocolate is at Laura Secord stores. Ah well. Insert your own analogy expounding a big difference, if you like.) We play GRAW in four player mode, and it’s hard to see what you’re shooting at on a 32″ TV. We each get one quarter of the screen, of course, which makes it rough on a small SDTV. The HDTV makes all the difference. Not only is the image much bigger, it’s also more detailed. An SDTV gives you “Is that Todd in the distance there? Do I need to shoot? Yeah, I guess. Okay, line up on those two pixels there and pull the trigger. Nope - missed. Move over another pixel.” While with an HDTV it’s more like “Ha! Got Todd! Now where’s Steve? Ah! Right behind me!”

But I guess if I had to get all technical on you and answer the question in this article’s title, that is “Do PS3 owners need an HDTV?”, the answer is “no”. You do not need an HDTV to use and enjoy a PS3. You will covet one. You’ll think “How did I ever manage with a cruddy old SDTV?”. You’ll sell your left lung for one because they’re so cool and nice to play games on. But technically, if you’re gonna get right down to it, you don’t really need one. Just don’t tell anyone I said that, okay?

GameSpy - Do Gamers Really Need HDTV?

Much had been made a little while ago about the fact that the Sony PS3, 20GB version, would not be available in the UK. According the Amazon, it looks like maybe the cheaper, 20GB version, of the PS3 will be available in the UK after all.

Some people might care more about this than I do, because I think that the 60GB version is the only one worth having. But for those people out there on a budget, this little piece of news is like a little light from the clouds.

T3 - Brits to get 20-gig PS3 after all?

1up.com is running an article with a quote from Kaz Hirai from PSM that say’s PS3 games could cost more than $59.99. Apparently Mr Hirai told the magazine:

“So, what I can say now is, I think it would be a bit of a stretch to think that we could suddenly turn around and say “PS3 games now $99.99″ I don’t think the consumers expect the software pricing to suddenly be double. So, if it becomes a bit higher than fifty-nine bucks don’t ding me, but, again, as I said, I don’t expect it to be a hundred bucks.”

If PS3 games do end up being more than $59.99 or £49.99 in my world, I would definitley not buy any games at that price. I know using BD will probably cost more to produce but Sony has to be realistic & not price the games higher than it’s main rival the 360. It might get away with charging more for the hardware but I don’t need to be a psychic to know that a lot of people would be put off from buying games if they cost more than $59.99 and £49.99.

I won’t pay more than £30 for games on PS2 & I haven’t done for the past 2 years & I know a lot of people who won’t pay more than £30, so charging £20+ more for PS3 games will alienate a lot of people. They might get away with charging $64.99 for games in North America but if games went over £49.99 in the U.K. that would definitley put people off from purchasing a PS3. Maybe not the hardcore gamers but a lot of the casual gamers would definitley not want to pay £425 for the hardware and £50+ for the games.

Still I’ll hold fire until I see the official price of PS3 games, until then it’s just speculation. Worrying speculation but speculation all the same.

1up.com - PS3 Games to Cost More Than $59.99?

I’d never heard of gaming lag until a friend of mine with an LCD HDTV complained about it to me one day. Apparently, the image on his screen was being displayed just a bit after it really should. So my friend would react to something that he sees on screen, but his reactions were always too late. Therefore, gaming became a very frustrating experience for him, and he couldn’t use his nice LCD rear-projection HDTV to play video games.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

It never happened to me, and this article from IGN helps explain why. Some kinds of displays are less affected by gaming lag than others. IGN points out that CRT displays are among the least affected, and I have a CRT rear-projection HDTV. So that was explained. But I think that IGN also puts the finger on the real problem. It might be that CRT displays are less affected, but I think that it’s more to do with the video processing that is part of the HDTV. The HDTV has to take the incoming video signal and process it for display. It might have to do some deinterlacing. Some scaling. Sometimes a display will do colour correction, edge enhancement, and other fake effects to trick you into thinking you see a better image when in fact you’re just seeing a less accurate one. IGN points out that often these things can be disabled, and that some HDTV’s even have gaming modes that disable these things for you.

What does this mean for you? Ideally you could bring your console into a store and try it out on a display that you’re thinking of purchasing. Often that’s not possible. So you’ll having to do some research on the internet, and see if gaming lag is a problem for the set you’re thinking of buying. You can also see if the set has a gaming mode.

It’s not really a problem we need. We already have to think about DLP versus LCD versus whatever. HDMI and 1080p. PVR and cable versus satellite. Etc. But if you don’t make sure that your television doesn’t suffer from gaming lag, you could be in for a very frustrating experience. Take it from my friend - it’s not a pleasant experience.

IGN - HDTV-Gaming-Lag: An Epidemic Exposed

If you haven’t heard by now, let me be the first to tell you this news which I personally don’t really care about but that a lot of other people are really interested in because it’s about a game that has sold really really well and lots of people like it but it’s not really my cup of tea but because it’s so popular I’m gonna make a poll about it anyway and I’m sure Gary will have a comment because he seems to care more than I do.

GTA4 will not be a PS3 exclusive.

What an anti-climax, heh? Anyway, the poll question is this: do you think that the PlayStation 3 would sell better if GTA4 were a PS3 exclusive? As always, vote in the poll in the sidebar of PS3Blog.net.

Oh, and before you say it, I’ll say it. This is old news. I know. But the poll is new!

Previous Poll Results:

Would you mind an external power supply for the PS3?

* Don’t need no stinking external power supply! Where’s the esthetic value of that?: 35% (36)
* No, not at all.: 65% (68)

Total Votes : 104