Last night, Mark Rein wrote:

I was playing the PS3 build for a few hours tonight and it is really, really fantastic. Amazingly smooth and solid. I think you PS3 users are in for a huge treat with UT3.

SingStar is coming to Europe in December but not until later for the US. The delays with this title have been licensing related and not technology related. link

MGS4 may or may not be moved back from Q1 2008 to Q2 2008. (from fleakitten)

The ps3blog Folding@Home team has climbed to position 392! Congratz! (from mcloki)

Happy Halloween from Austin!

The PSP recently got a firmware update 3.72. And it had something very interesting in the new feature list.

* Support has been added for [Remote Start]* of the PS3 system under [Remote Play].

*To use this feature, the PS3 system software must be version 2.00 or later. For detailed information about [Remote Start], visit the PS3 Help & Support section at eu.playstation.com and select Connecting to other devices in the General Guides area.

So when will this the 2.00 PS3 FW hit? Hopefully soon. Now I don’t have leave the PS3 on remote play while away from home, how great is that

Update features (ver 3.72)

Every console has its advantages and disadvantages. The 360 has the awesome Xbox Live service and a more established consumer base. The Wii has… uh… something. (Sorry guys, the Wii just doesn’t appeal to me in any way.) The PS3 has several things going for it, two of which are the standard HDD and BD drives. Here PALGN asks the Drake’s Fortune developers about the PS3:

PALGN: Can you tell us why Uncharted is only possible on the PlayStation 3?

EW: There are a few things. Primarily the whole experience is enabled by the use of the hard drive. If we did not have the hard drive then we could not present the game in the seamless load free way that we are. After you start until you turn the console off and go eat your lunch and come back there is not going to be another load time and you can play the game from start to finish. That was really key to us something that we established with Jak and Daxter and it keeps you immersed in the experience. As soon as you hit those load screens, as soon as you have to take that break, you may put the controller down, you may do something else we really just want to engross you in this experience. So, the hard drive really helped with that. The other thing that we’ve got going for us is the Blu Ray. We filled that thing up to 24 plus gigs, it was right at the end where we were literally running out of place where we were having to start pulling some stuff out, we ended up fortunately finding this unused cache of audio lines we were able to pull out to save some space so we could get everything in that we wanted to get in. I’m not going to stand here and say it would have been impossible to do on DVD but it would have been a different game, it really would have. It could have looked worse, we would have had to make concessions in terms of our compression. We would have had to spend a lot more developer resources focusing on how to get it on the disk when we could have been creating the game, making it more fun, making it more beautiful. So I’m really happy just to have that. We’re still on single layer and this is our first game out of the gates. So I highly suspect that on our future games we’ll even go to a double layer and we’re going to even start putting more than 24-25 gigs into a single game.

I really liked that response. It tells us the advantages of the HDD and BD built in to the PS3, but in a humble way, without trying to start a war.

Naughty Dog Interview Part One - PlayStation 3 Interview

Derrick sent me this photo showing a 60GB PS3 going for just $399 (after mail-in rebate) at Hastings. Why bother with the 40GB at this price?

If you’re a Spider-Man fan and a Blu-ray fan, man what a week for you! This week you can get the “Spider-Man: The High Definition Trilogy”. Then there are a few HD Blu-ray titles to just … show off your big HDTV.

* Spider-Man: The High Definition Trilogy (Sony Pictures)
* Spider-Man 3 (Sony Pictures)
* David Gilmour: Remember That Night (Sony Music)
* The Polar Express (Warner Bros.)
* Exotic Saltwater Aquarium (DVD International)
* Fireplace: Visions of Tranquility (DVD International)
* HDScape Sampler (DVD International)
* License to Wed (Warner Bros.)
* HD Window: Hawaii (DVD International)
* Antarctica Dreaming: Wildfire on Ice (DVD International)
* HD Window: The Great Southwest (DVD International)
* Visions of the Sea: Explorations (DVD International)
* Serenity: Southern Seas (DVD International)
* Digital Video Essentials (DVD International)
* StarGaze II: Visions of the Universe (DVD International)

Blu-ray.com

The PS3 is heading for it’s first year anniversary early next month, so I’m interested to know exactly what you have bought for your PS3.

This is what I’ve bought specifically for use my PS3:

TV

I bought this 40″1080p HDTV a couple of months after I got my PS3. I’m looking into getting Surround Sound for my TV at some point in the future.

Blu-ray games

For a console that has been criticised for it’s lack of software, I must have imagined all the games I’ve been playing on it.

Resistance: Fall of Man
MotorStorm (no longer have)
Oblivion
Ninja Gaiden Sigma (no longer have)
GRAW 2 (no longer have)
Heavenly Sword
Madden 08
Skate
FIFA 08

Then there’s Ratchet & Clank Future, CoD4, Haze, Assassins Creed and Uncharted all due out by the beginning of December…

PSN Games

Super Stardust HD
Blast Factor
Calling All Cars
flOw
Warhawk

Super Stardust HD is by far the most enjoyable game from the PSN. Excellent fun to play, with great music. Calling All Cars is a lot fun when you play with 2 or 3 friends, although I had a couple of offline games with my girlfriend, which she enjoyed.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Pain, SOCOM and LittleBigPlanet turn out.

Blu-ray Movies

Casino Royale (free with the PS3)
Spider-Man Trilogy

I haven’t bought many BD movies but one definite purchase that’s due out early November in the UK is Planet Earth. I’m planning on inviting some people round to watch it, as I’m sure it will look fantastic on my TV.

Peripherals

SIXAXIS

I’m prone to breaking my pads during particular moments of ‘gaming frustration’ so I made sure I bought a 2nd pad for both offline multi-player fun and as a back up for when I would break my first pad. I’m on my 2nd SIXAXIS pad.

I’ll probably get a DS3 next year when I break my 2nd SIXAXIS pad but until then, I doubt I’ll buy any more peripherals this year for my PS3.

So what have you guys bought for your PS3?

Here a few theories for why Sony is dropping PS2 BC (and other features) on newer PS3 models. Speak up in the comments and vote for which one you think is most likely or add your own theory.

Reduce Production Costs: As seen in Sony’s last financial statement, they are writing off hundreds of millions of dollars on hardware losses. Obviously, they need to sell at a low price point to stay competitive, but they’ve committed to providing some pretty high-end, expensive technology in the PS3. Given that the PS2 BC was at least partially software based, I wouldn’t believe that this would cost too much, but every dollar counts.

Grocery Store Psychology: Grocery stores often sell generic brand and name brand versions of the same basic product. They intentionally make the generic brand look uglier, not because it saves them money on production, but so they keep the price-sensitive shoppers with the generic brand goods and still sell for a higher price to the less price-sensitive shoppers.

Car Dealership Psychology: Car dealerships often sell a stripped down version of a brand new car for a really low price. They run this price heavily in newspaper circular ads. This gets customers in buying mode and pulls them into the showroom. However, once the consumers realize the features that are missing, they begrudgingly agree to go up in price for the features that they want. The low price model is more of a teaser model to get consumers interested than the model they are actually going to buy.

Push developers to migrate to PS3 titles: Tons of premier 2007 titles are *still* being released for the PS2 rather than the PS3 (Manhunt, Persona 3, Odin Sphere, etc). Pulling BC support would give the developers a push to move to PS3. The counter-argument to this is Sony’s own studios are among the slowest to move. They have highly popular series such as Buzz, SingStar, SOCOM, and God Of War, but the 2007 releases from these series are PS2 only. In 2008, these series will mostly move to PS3, but that’s a pretty slow transition.

Protect PS2 Sales: Sony makes money by selling PS2 hardware and is losing money on PS3 hardware, so pulling BC support would encourage some consumers to buy new PS2 units rather than PS3s. There are two counter-reasons. First, the more PS3s they sell, the lower the price/unit is for them. Sure, they *may* lose more money by selling more PS3s (and we can’t say for sure without seeing internal financial data), but the loss per unit drops as volume increases. Secondly, it’s important for the future of the PlayStation brand to accelerate the PS3 growth and they are clearly willing to make short term sacrifices to achieve this.