Sony has released images of the PS3 browser and the store front. Looking quite different from the XBOX Live Marketplace, it appears clean and polished. Hopefully Sony keeps a card or two up their sleeve and more items are prepped for download than what has already been disclosed.

1up

Okay, okay. Please don’t roast me for having such a duuuuhmb moment. But ever since they announced the new controller for the PS3, I was wondering one thing: what does six degrees of movement really mean? Does it mean yaw left, yaw right, pitch forward, pitch back, roll left, and roll right? That’s six things. Personally, I thought that it was really just three: yaw, pitch, and roll. But you know marketting-speak as well as I do. There’s no guarantees as to what Sony meant. So I was always wondering if the SIXAXIS controller could only detect rotation, or if it could detect linear movement as well.

Well, this little demonstration on the official Japanese website lays my question to rest. The SIXAXIS detects rotation in all three axes, and movement in all three axes. Just click on the link below, then click on the joystick.

Japanese PS3 Website

In case you’d all like some really nice close-up pics of some PS3 cables, boxes, remotes and such, I thought I’d give them to ya!

Talladega Nights BD Movie (included in box):

20GB Box:

60GB Box:

Read the rest of this entry »

First, there’s news that Microsoft has announced that it has sold 6 million Xbox 360’s to gamers. In July Microsoft said that it had sold 5 million, so they’re up a million since July - not bad!

Microsoft says has sold 6 million Xbox 360s

Second, with all those rumours going around (that I personally reported on too) about their lack of manufacturing ability, Sony said that they are still on track to make 6 million PS3’s by the end of March.

Sony Reasserts PS3 Shipment Targets

So, what formats does the PS3 support? How about these disc formats:

# BD-ROM
# BD-R
# BD-RE
# DVD-ROM
# DVD-R
# DVD-RW
# DVD+R
# DVD+RW
# CD-ROM
# CD-R
# CD-RW
# Super Audio CD

And these codecs and file formats:

VIDEO
# MPEG-1
# MPEG-2 (PS,TS)
# H.264/MEPG-4 AVC
# MPEG-4 SP

MUSIC
# ATRAC (.oma .msa .aa3)
# AAC (.3gp .mp4)
# MP3 (.mp3)
# WAV (.wav)

IMAGES
# JPEG
# GIF
# PNG
# TIFF
# BMP

PS3 Formats

IGN have had a very detailed analysis of PS3’s XMB menu system running through the options under each section.

User
This is the option you will come into first contact with, and thankfully it sounds fairly easy to use. It shares a lot of similarities with the “User” functions you find on most modern PCs- password protection and various customisation options can be found here. Also like a PC, the main user of the console becomes the administrator- this is good for parents as it means they can restrict the content that their children can access. IGN also expects options for the PlayStation Wallet and online account setup to be here on final machines. For now icons are limited to Sony’s selection choice, but you would imagine personal images will get added at some point.

Photo
This appears to be the most finalised part of the system. You can create interesting slideshows of whatever photos are stored on your HDD. It is pretty similar to the PSP really, just with a cosmetic upgrade and the ability to sort your photos- one of the biggest gripes with the PSP’s multimedia functionality.

Music
Again, shades of PSP functionality here, but improved. The PS3 runs a visualiser and whilst only one was available at the time more will downloadable in the future. ATRAC, WAV, AAC and MP3 are supported, and, if the PSP is anything to go by, WMA will be available eventually. It appears as though you can navigate away from the music bar to look at your photos and that your music will keep playing.

Video
Similar to PSP again. The big difference here is that the PS3 shows realtime thumbnail videos of each video. Unlike the PSP full-screen, ie. 1080p, playback is possible on the PS3. The playback features are similar to the PSPs, which themselves are similar to PS2’s DVD playback menus. The PS3 can also stream content to a PSP, at first locally and then internationally, this is, in my opinion a killer application; the only thing that cannot be streamed is game data. DVD upscaling however is not included, hopefully this will be rectified in a firmware update.

Games
Put a game into your PS3 and, again like the PSP, your XMB will divert you to the games menu and load the game’s personalised background and music to the screen. It also sounds as though downloadable playback has been necessarily simplified with all your downloaded items appearing in the menu rather than in a sub-section. A new feature, the Game Data Utility stores your games’ hard drive caches (something that shortens loading). Some games take up a large space, others less- expect load-time impressions in the future! PS1 and PS2 games running on PS3 will not be enhanced.

Network
The PS3’s web browser is its greatest asset here- 6 windows can be opened at a time from demonstrations I have seen. Flash is supported, so YouTube users out there are in luck! The PS Store is essentially the same browser accessing PS3 download pages. The options seem suitable enough and navigation sounds fairly easy too. The functionality here is pretty similar to what you see on any web-based shop from Amazon to Best Buy, one particularly useful feature sounds like the ability to buy virtual gift certificates. Games in the store will be $14.99 or less. According to Gamefront the following downloadable titles will be available at the Japanese launch.
DEMOS:

#Blast Factor (Sony, Action)
#flOw (Sony, Action)
#Lemmings 2 (Sony, Puzzle)
#Kazuo (Sony, Puzzle)
#Puzzle (Sony, Puzzle)
#Mainichi Issho (Sony, Action)
#Ridge Racer 7 Demo (Bandai Namco, Rennspiel)

PS1 games:

#Biohazard Director’s Cut (Capcom)
#Konami Antics MSX Collection Vol. 1 (Konami)
#Konami Antics MSX Collection Vol. 2 (Konami)
#Bishi Bashi Special (Konami)
#Arc The Lad (Sony)
#Jumping Flash! (Sony)
#Everybody’s Golf 2 (Sony)
#Silent Bomber (Bandai Namco)
#Tekken 2 (Bandai Namco)
#Mr. Driller (Bandai Namco)

Impressed? I am! We also know Resistance and MotorStorm will be downloadable demos Stateside.

Friends
This is pretty standard fayre to what you would find on the major PC messaging programmes. Useful features include a “Players met” list and a “Ban players” option. Pop-ups inform you of messages and log-ons. There are still a lot of questions regarding this mode though, so expect more information to trickle out around launch.

Settings
Finally the part for the AV enthusiasts out there! There’s a lot of details on IGN, but the stand out points are:
#Firmware updates.
#Naming your PS3.
#A dictionary for text entry.
#Bluetooth device registering (mice, keyboards, headsets, phones, Blackberrys )
#Mouse, keyboard and camera settings.
#Custom resolution settings.
#A whole host of audio output options.
#Network options.

This made for an interesting read. Having just received a PSP for my birthday it is interesting to see where Sony is taking the concept for PS3. I hope some of these features get transferred over!

IGN: PS3 Menu Examination

One of the less noticed things to appear with the cavalcade of media that came from Sony’s Gamer’s Day was Unreal Tournament 2007. The game looks like standard UT fair; running around in vast environments, with huge guns creating enormous explosions in an attempt to kill as many opponents as possible. The game makes use of Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 (unsurprisingly) and based on the video, linked below, it looks set to deliver the kind of graphics the released screens have pointed at in gameplay. Epic are working on tightening up Unreal Engine 3 for the PS3 right now, so hopefully the game will see more benefits from this work when it reaches a finished state! The video also highlights that vehicles and turrets will play a significant role in the game.

Unreal Tournament on PS2 was a let down; a poor conversion of a reasonable PC title, but the biggest thing missing was the online mode. It appears that Epic should have everything on their side though this time in bringing a full version of Unreal to the PS3. Lets hope they deliver! The game looks set for release in the first half of next year.

News4Gamers.com: PS3 News : First gameplay video Unreal Tournament 2007

Didn’t these guys get a PS3 already? They got a new PS3 test unit and have some pretty detailed videos. This one is a very nice tutorial of the physical system. It shows walkthroughs of what it’s like to boot up the system and turn it off, and use the wireless controller. It’s strange, but this minutae is actually quite interesting.

I really like what I see thus far. Everything seems very well designed and put together. I can’t wait to try this stuff out in person.

See PSM3’s PS3 in action! Movies here!

What a horrible legal trainwreck this is. Can Sony ever avoid getting into a damaging war of words?!

For those unaware of what I am discussing, This week a British judge ruled that Lik-Sang, a Hong Kong based game exporter, had illegally sold PSPs to European consumers. Sony had made it clear to a group of exporters that they would be legally challenged unless they stopped selling the machines to European consumers in 2005.

At the time the PSP had been delayed in Europe by six months, (sound familiar?), so demand on sites like Lik-Sang and PlayAsia was high. PlayAsia took Sony’s threat of action seriously and pulled the product. Lik-Sang did not and that is what led to the lawsuit. On Monday the judge delivered his verdict; Lik-Sang had lost the case by infringing on Sony’s intellectual property rights. In other words, importing PS hardware, as a business, to the UK, is wrong.

And that is where it should have ended, in the interest of both parties. Unfortunately it has not.

Lik-Sang, clearly incensed with the decision and the costs they had to cover, have chosen to shut down their website. This is a terrible disappointment as Lik-Sang are widely regarded as one of the best companies to import from on the web, they have a huge range of stock, supply customers quickly and sort out any issues with speed. The message posted on their website placed the blame squarely on Sony, something I entirely agreed with.

Then they did something rather daft and odd; they revealed that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe personnel had imported their PSPs via Lik-Sang (and received chintzy freebies from Lik-Sang too). It highlighted the hypocrisy in Sony taking them to court, but it also raised questions over Lik-Sang’s privacy policy.

Then Sony released its own response which bought to light other details, namely that Lik-Sang did not contest the case, has not paid any compensation and that PSP consoles were bought by Sony employees for “investigatory purposes”. I don’t buy the last part one bit, but I do find it interesting that, despite not having paid Sony a cent, Lik-Sang is ceasing trading. It makes Lik-Sang appear unprofessional and Sony appear as a bully.

A legal wrangle that was meant to stop the “business” side of hardware exports and imports has actually closed the door on software sales. In my opinion Sony had the right aims here, some of these companies can be very dodgy, but they completely targeted the wrong group. Hopefully software exporters will not be too harmed from this, the rise of “region free gaming” makes them more important than before!

Put mildly, nobody wins from this. Sony gets the whole wrath of the hardcore gaming community for slamming the door on a well regarded import business, I have seen enough people calling this the “final straw”. Meanwhile Lik-Sang gets a tarnished reputation after years of building the business. What does this mean with regards to PS3 though is that importing hardware to Europe is out of the question unless you have a personal friend in Japan or the US.

Eurogamer

It’s coming like a freight train. The PS3’s launch is November 17th, and all of us PS3 fans are taking stock of our finances and our gaming rooms, to determine what kind of changes might be required. So this post is just a little question to ask what you will all be getting on launch day, before launch day, and after launch day, all for the PS3. Cables? HDTV? Games? Movies? What?

Here’s what I will be getting.

PS3 (of course) $600
Resistance $60
NFS Carbon $60
Marvel Ultimate Alliance $60
CoD3 $60
3 controllers $150
The Transporter $30

I won’t need any additional cables because I already have both component video cables (for my PS2) and an HDMI/DVI cable (that I was going to use for my HD PVR but decided not to). I already have a nice HDTV and a good surround sound system (both of which could always use improvement, but that’s another story).

So that makes a grand total of $1020. Whew! Good thing I’ve been saving up for quite some time!

Usually when rumours like this come out, I just wait a couple days for the rumour to be rebuffed, and then I mention that the rumour is indeed false. That hasn’t happened with this one, so here I am, a couple days late, reporting that maybe North America won’t be seeing all those 400,000 units that Sony last promised.

Speaking to Bloomberg, SCEA co-chair Jack Tretton admitted that the launch figures, which some see as already relatively low, are not a given. “The honest answer is it’s more of a target,” he said. “Clearly we’ve had production issues.”

Hmmm. That doesn’t sound promising. They’ve only just started mass producing the PS3, and now we get news like this. Not a promising tidbit of information there. Ah well. I guess I’ll have to rest in the fact that I’m first on my PS3’s pre-order list, and hope that that’s enough to get me one.

Sony Uncertain of PS3 Shipment Targets

[Edit: See comments for clarification. I think I didn’t quite understand what Mr. Tretton was referring to.]

IGN has a small article showing their unpacking of a test version of the PS3. Sure, it’s not the retail box experience, but it’s still something. Something that I’ve personally not been able to do. After all that work I did to get on someone’s inside track, I still have not touched a PS3, unlike these IGN people.

Ah well, at least we can be happy for those IGN folks. Above is my favourite of the images (I guess they got more cables than we will be), but there are more if you follow the link.

PlayStation 3 Unwrapped

Thanks so much to Guardian Angel for sending this in. Previously Sony has come under some flack for some tacky PS3 advertising. “This is Living” and all that. And I know that lots of people don’t like the European PS3 site either. But here’s something new that Sony has done quite well.

The PLAY B3YOND website has two videos about the PS3, and they’re both very good. One is about the Cell processor - Smarter. And the other is about the Blu-ray Disc’s capacity - Capacity. (Duh.)

Good stuff.

PLAYB3YOND.COM

Previously reported rumours about the PS3 suggested that there would be an equivalent to Xbox Live’s ‘Achievements’ system on the PS3. Instead of calling them ‘Achievements’, though, the PS3 version would call them ‘Entitlements’. Well, scratch that rumour. Well… just kinda.

Sony is leaving it up to each developer to do their own version of Achievements. So you can still see who’s doing well in a certain game, and how you compare. The only difference is, you’ll probably have to actually be in the game to do it. Ah well. No big loss for me. Maybe some of you feel different?

No ‘Achievements’ System for PS3 Games