My PS3 was freezing constantly on me last night. Even after reboots the system would just freeze again. I’ve never had any stability problems until now which is impressive since I put my system through very heavy use; it’s almost always on and it’s usually running folding@home while I’m not actively using it.

Based on other online reports and Sony’s v2.01 heads up, my suspicion is that this is a firmware problem.

If I have to send in my system, I will be upset. One of the best things about the PS3 is it’s generally rock solid reliability. If this is just a bum firmware update that gets addressed by a patch, that will still be annoying, but ultimately not that big a deal.

Anyone else have similar issues?

It’s Die Hard week! You can pick them all up on Blu-ray. Man the last Die Hard was so action packed. I gotta have that one Or you can get into the holiday spirit a little early and pick up a couple holiday movies. I still need to pick up “A Christmas Story“, what a classic movie. It’s one of my family traditions to watch that every year.

* Live Free or Die Hard (20th Century Fox)
* The Die Hard Collection (20th Century Fox)
* Hairspray (New Line Cinema)
* David Gilmour: Remember That Night (Sony Music)
* The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (Disney / Buena Vista)
* Badder Santa: Unrated (Disney / Buena Vista)
* Die Hard (20th Century Fox)
* Die Hard with a Vengeance (20th Century Fox)
* Die Hard 2: Die Harder (20th Century Fox)
* Pathfinder: Unrated (20th Century Fox)

Blu-ray.com

Tomorrow will mark one year since the PS3 launched in North America (11.17.06). A lot has happened in one year, here are a few highlights.

• No Rumble at Launch
• Dual Shock 3
• Issues with cross platform titles which are only now being resolved
• Several Firmware Updates since launch adding many new features
• Announcement of Home. With the open beta coming late November / early December
• PlayStation Eye
• PS3 Starting $399 vs $499 a year ago
• Release of Folding@home, which has greatly contributed to science
• Play TV for users in Europe
• Global Remote Play with Remote Start
• New Ceramic White PS3
• PS3’s support of Blu-ray helps to give Blu-ray a 2-1 sales advantage over its competition.
• Communication has been improved with the launch of PlayStation.Blog & Three Speech

Hit PS3 Games for 06-07

• Assassin’s Creed
• Call of Duty 4
• Call of Duty 3
• Conan
• Dynasty Warriors 6
• Eye of Judgment
• F.E.A.R
• Folklore
• Gran Turismo 5 Prologue
• Half-Life 2: The Orange Box
• Haze
• Heavenly Sword
• Jericho
• Lair
• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
• Motorstorm
• Ninja Gaiden Sigma
• Oblivion
• Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
• Resistance Fall of Man
• Stuntman Ignition
• The Simpsons Game
• Tekken Dark Resurrection Online
• Time Crisis 4
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas
• Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
• Unreal Tournament 3
• Virtua Fighter 5
• Warhawk

So how will you celebrate the birth of the PS3? Me personally I will be testing out the PS Eye, playing Call of Duty 4, Warhawk, Resistance Fall of Man, Tekken DR Online, and Jericho. If I had the Dual Shock 3 I’d be testing out more games to see how the rumble is, but sadly yesasia.com hasn’t got mine in yet.

The image above is from one of the latest PS3 advertisements. And shadowman540 from the PlayStation Boards noticed something very interesting. It featured the game PAIN next to the PlayStation Home logo. Well PAIN is going to be released on November 29th. So it’s very possible, Phil Harrison has already said that the open Home beta will be available late November / early December. No official word on if Home will be available that day. But I hope it’s true

PlayStation Board

Not a bad update this week. A couple demos and plenty of new videos. But where oh where did the PS1 games go? Japan keeps getting more and more and we get very few. Twisted Metal 2 a while ago was a great addition. But where is Final Fantasy 7, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, etc?

North America PSN Update

Demos:

Toy Home
Blazing Angels 2

Game Videos:

Playstation Network Video
Toy Home Video
PAIN Launch Trailer
High Velocity Bowling Trailer
Ratchet & Clank BTS: Animation
Ratchet & Clank BTS: Gameplay
Uncharted: DF Meet the Dogs video
Time Crisis 4 Trailer 2
Burnout Paradise Ultimate Driving Trailer
Battlefield: Bad Company Teaser Trailer
Timeshift FPS Differently Trailer 1

Movie Trailers:

The Dark Knight
This Christmas
David Gilmour - Remember That Night (Blu-ray)

European PSN updates

Games:

Mesmerize: Trace PlayStation Eye game (£1.99)

Game Add-ons:

Motorstorm “Big I Bunny and Numskull” add-on pack (£1.49)

Demos:

Stranglehold demo

Game Videos:

Uncharted “A Living Environment” behind the scenes video
Everyday Shooter trailer
Blazing Angels 2 trailer
PS3 TV advert
Wall-E movie trailer

[Update]

N’Gai Croal has just posted his ode to the Wii. He reminds me of stock analysts that simply rave about whatever is currently doing really well on the charts. They won’t say anything insightful, but they sure know how to read quarterly reports and turn reports of high profits into cheery stories of wonder and turn reports of losses into stories of gloom.

If you are praising Wii for its simplicity and sales figures, you are missing it’s biggest competition. It’s a hot selling video game console that’s *much* simpler and *much* cheaper, and more child/parent friendly than the Wii.

Can you guess which console I’m referring to? No, not anything made by Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo. I’m talking about the market leader and sales juggernaut for baby video games: the V-Smile!

What are the sales figures? I don’t know: NPD, MediaCreate, and vgchartz aren’t tracking them.

How are their games rated? Most sites aren’t reviewing them. Heck, Metacritic doesn’t even list them as a category, despite their high sales figures.

But why not? Those things sell well. I have seen tons of parents who buy those things for their small children. Why doesn’t the video game media cover them? This is definitely a widespread media bias!

Probably for the same reason most fine food media covers obscure recipes and subtle flavors rather than talking about chicken fingers.

The Wii and the V-Smile may own the sales charts, but the adults who like to read and talk about games, want to focus on the more complex and sophisticated titles.

It’s nice to hear some good news every once and a while, isn’t it?

In the USA

(source)

Previously: 30,000-40,000 per week
Week of October 29th: 75,000
Week of November 5th: 100,000

In Japan

(source)

Weekly sales:

PS3: 56,000
Wii: 35,000
360: 7,000

In France

(source)

100,000 PS3 consoles have been sold in France since October 12th

I love seeing stuff like this. I like the last video. Scan in any object to use in a tank game, even your own finger, lol. I’m really excited to see what else the PS Eye can do. Sometimes I still play some of the old Eye Toy games when I have people over.

I remember a tech demo for the Eye Toy long ago that came with a demo disc. Which I still have. You just need a bright colored object. So I used a bright green ball. You hold the ball in this circle on the screen so it can recognize the color and your set. Now you can do magic. Wave your hand over the ball to activate your magic powers. Then you draw a Playstation shape (triangle, circle, X, square) to conjure up a magic ability. For example, earthquake, fire, etc. It was a fun tech demo. That’s why I kept the demo disc

Video of New Research Conducted with PlayStation Eye

Tosh was kind enough to make a banner for our website. Here it is:

Please don’t link to it directly - download it. My bandwidth will suffer otherwise. I’ll be moving this file to a different location soon, just in case.