A Few Good Men - Sony Pictures
Alexander Revisted: The Final Cut - Warner Bros.
The Best of Blu-ray, Vol. 1 - Warner Bros.
The Best of Blu-ray, Vol. 2 - Warner Bros.
The Best of Blu-ray, Vol. 3 - Warner Bros.
The Condemned - Lionsgate Films
Deliverance - Warner Bros.
House of 1000 Corpses - Lionsgate Films
Jailhouse Rock - Warner Bros.
Smallville: The Complete Sixth Season - Warner Bros.
Troy: Director’s Cut - Warner Bros.
Viva Las Vegas - Warner Bros.
We Are Marshall - Warner Bros.

Starting this week is the introduction of “The Best of Blu-ray” a box set of 4 movies. If your a superman fan you can get Smallville. Or there are a few action movies as well, and much more. You have plenty to pick from this week!

Blu-ray.com

GameStop stores are giving out Ratchet & Clank demo discs to those who pre-order the game! The demo is scheduled to appear on PSN on October 4th, but for those of us who want it sooner, this is great!!!

UPDATE: I got it and beat the one-level demo in about 15 minutes.

Well, it’s what I expected. From this limited taste, it is like PS2 R&C, but with way better graphics + animation. I’m playing on a 480i set and it looks gorgeous. R&C on the PS2 was always a great looking game and this definitely kicks it up a notch. It plays like PS2 R&C except the demo level feels like a demo level. It’s easy, you get a brief feel (not too brief) for a few style of game and then it ends. You get some rail grinding scenes, a free-fall scene, and of course, some platforming/shooting sequences. You get the wrench plus four weapons: gun, groovitron, transmorpher, and grenade.

I will have to play some more levels to really get a feel for this, but I definitely like it. This is easily in my top three anticipated 2007 titles of any platform.

A mediocre month for PS3, and a great month for the 360. Why? The 360 has a price cut, the lead version of the most popular title, Madden, and a huge hit with the PC/360 exclusive Bioshock. PS3 has got the version of Madden with a widely touted frame rate deficiency, GRAW 2, which is great, but has been on the 360 for five whole months, and Warhawk at the very end of the month. I’m still surprised that GRAW2 and Warhawk didn’t sell a little bit better. Of course, the PSN sales of Warhawk aren’t included in NPD numbers, but still. I’m also surprised that consumers seem unphased by widely publicized 360 reliability problems, but that’s what we are seeing in the U.S.

On the bright side:

• All the big PS3 titles for ‘07 are bunched up in late October through November. Warhawk and Heavenly Sword are good, but the real AAA content won’t hit until late October.
• Better cross platform titles. Recently, the cross platform titles have favored the 360 either with widely touted PS3 deficiencies (EA Sports titles) or absurdly late PS3 versions (FEAR, Rainbow Six, and GRAW2). However, that’s looking to change. Big, genre-defining titles like Rock Band are looking to be the best on PS3 (bundled wireless guitar controller rather than getting a wired version bundled and having to buy the wireless version as a more expensive add-on). Also, EA has pledged that the frame rate deficiencies will be gone later this year.
• These are U.S only numbers, which is 360 home turf. In Canada, PS3 does significantly better relative to 360. In Europe and Japan, PS3 performs dramatically better than the 360. If I had more time today, I’d compile Japan numbers and chart the combined totals (Europe numbers are hard to get). Also, yes, the Wii does better than all of them, but that’s almost an entirely different category.
• Tokyo Game Show. Microsoft has made unveiled some nice new content at their pre-TGS conference. Can Sony top that next week when they make their announcements? We can only speculate, but I betting a definite yes. We shall see soon enough…
• 2008. All of the best 2007 content is still to come, but 2008 is when the PS3 should really pull ahead.

Games For Purchase

• $6.99 PixelJunk Racers
• $9.99 High Stakes on the Vegas Strip: Poker Edition

Free Playable Game Demos

• PixelJunk Racers
• Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground
• NHL 08
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• FIFA 08

Trailers, Videos, Other

• Everyday Shooter trailer
• Warhawk trailer
• Lair Behind the Scenes video
• Feel the Noise trailer
• Juiced 2 trailer
• High Stakes on the Vegas Strip: Poker Edition trailer
• Soul Calibur IV trailer
• High Stakes: Poker wallpaper
• 2 PixelJunk Racer wallpapers
• Folklore wallpaper
• Free Music Track from Lair

Wow, amazing update. Huge amount of content for sports, casual, and childrens genres.

Honestly, those are the genres that most readers of this site probably aren’t interested in. Most of us would rather see content that is more technically or conceptually bleeding edge, but it’s good to see the PS3 providing content for other demographics as well.

Official Announcement

In an interview with gameindustry.biz, Sony’s Jamie MacDonald had this to say:

When do you intend to release Home to the public?

[…] It’s already out there in a closed beta and we’re going to an open beta in the next couple of months and then it will be available on the Cross Media Bar soon after. […]

Are you going to have an open beta for everyday PlayStation 3 users?

At the moment the closed beta is employees, trusted third-parties and people like that. An open beta will be a wider audience but it won’t be open to everybody. We haven’t worked out the exact way of doing it but it will be invites to people to ask if they want to be part of it, and then depending on what the response is, we’ll have to have some way of deciding who can and who can’t take part.

This interview was posted on gameindustry.biz today. It’s the middle of September already and the open beta will begin “in the next couple of months”. Plus, they “haven’t worked out the exact way of doing it” yet either. This seems to suggest to me that Home won’t be coming to my home in September, October, or not even November. We’ll have to see…

No Place Like Home

Logitech has announced a new wireless keyboard and headset specifically for the PS3.

The keyboard sounds excellent: all special-function buttons are designed explicitly for the PS3, the piano black finish is a perfect aesthetic match, the built-in trackpad is ideal for mouse-less couch control, and the battery life sounds perfect. I’ve been planning to get a generic PC bluetooth keyboard for my PS3, but this sounds much better. List price of $80, scheduled for October in U.S and Europe.

However, the headset sounds a little less interesting. There are already a great range of bluetooth headsets to choose from. The announced list price is $80, which is high, although the street price is usually lower for headsets. Will this offer any distinct advantages over the competition? We shall see…

If anyone has used a wireless headset or keyboard with their PS3, speak up and let us know your recommendation.

Official PR

I always thought PlayStation Home for the PLAYSTATION 3 would be an environment where I could import images, video, and music. And that’s it. But it looks like I might be able to do more than that:

Q: Will there be any design tool going out with it, specifically for designing objects?

PE: Absolutely. Again, that’s a bit further down the line – our priority at the moment is to be able to give developers the tools in which to create an experience for users. But once we’ve got those guys up and running, we’ll start turning to user-created content tools. Such as, for example, the T-shirt designer, all the way up to being able to design your own dream apartment. Also things like giving scripting tools. Most users won’t be that creatively minded, probably, but there will be some who want to show other people what they can do, so you could give them Java-scripting tools so they can create their own min-games or something. That’s the sort of thing that can really start to build the smaller, more hard-core community that influences the larger community.

Be able to design my own dream apartment? Now that’s cool. The only problem is, I’m not much of an artist. Can anyone out there reproduce for me the lounge from the Millenium Falcon?

Sony Chiefs on Web 2.0 and gaming

WOO!!! It’s due to hit the PSN October 4th according to IGN:

Sony’s told IGN that a demo of upcoming Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction will hit PSN on October 4.

Oh yes!!! I’m a huge Ratchet & Clank fan so I’ve been waiting to hear when the demo would finally hit the PSN. Not long to wait now.

Ratchet & Clank Future Demo to Hit PSN Oct 4th

So what does that mean for us PS3 owners? Well faster and more reliable downloads, which is always good. Maybe this means a upcoming PlayStation Store refresh? I’m sure some of this has to do with Home as well. Because Sony wants to integrate the PS Store right into Home in the future.

Has anybody noticed a increase in speed as far as download go lately? Oh and Microsoft has had Limelight Networks for about as year.

Limelight Networks’ Content Delivery Technology Adopted for PLAYSTATION®3 and PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) System Software Updates