Talk Playstation 3 News

With some information related to the Playstation Home beta for Japan, there was some interesting info in SCEJ’s press release.

You already know from us that the Japanese version of Home recently got 24 third party developers and publisher on board to make there own area’s and/or more.

Well it seems that there will be a large-scale closed beta test between late October and early November. This is to prepare for the Open Beta Service which release date will be announced on the official Home website.

The most important bit is that you’ll be able to obtain special items usable within Playstation Home depending on the level of your gameplay.
So does this mean that when you have played a game a lot and gathered enough trophies you will for example be able to walk around in a generals outfit (Warhawk related) or have a golden golfstick in your hands (Hot Shot Golf 5 related). We don’t know but it is getting more and more interesting in what Sony has planned for Home.

Despite the game being originally developed by SCEE it seem SCEJ has taken the foreground to announce most information and many of the features we can expect.

There was no word on Europe and North America getting a similar ’stress test’.

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PSU was so kind enough to let their readers know which LittleBigPlanet bundles the gamers in Japan can expect.

You have the PS3 bundle that contains a 80-GB console and one controller (all Satin Silver). You’ll also be getting an extra controller and the LittleBigPlanet game.
For the people that already have a PS3 there are three DualShock 3 packs. Your probably thinking why three? Well each pack has a DualShock in it’s own colour. So if you have a Ceramic White PS3, you can get the Ceramic White DS3+LBP bundle. Same goes for your Piano Black and Satin Silver consoles.

Yes we know Europe doesn’t have some of these colours but these bundles are specially made for the Japanese market. There is no word if they will every cross the ocean.

Tough luck for people not living there, or am I wrong and will some of you try and order them?

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On the official EU Playstation site it appears that EA is offering an exclusive to PS3 users who pre-order Dead Space.

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So your having some problems clearing certain levels or just want to mess around, the folks at PSU posted a list of cheats for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

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For unknown reasons Just Cause has been pushed back to 2009 by Eidos.

Avalanche Studios was planning on implementing many of the features they couldn’t in the first part and improvements fed by the community. One of these features is chaos activities that reward destructive rampages by increasing influence with associated factions. After you have gained enough influence you might even over throw opposing governments.
Also looking to be improved are enemy AI, new lock-on targeting that allows individual limbs to be picked out, bigger guns and better vehicle controls.

We will keep you posted once we get a reply from Avalanche about the delay.

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VideoGaming247 showed us the sales chart of the japanese market of last week and it looked pretty bad for the PS3.

It’s been out sold by the Xbox 360 for the 4th week running. There is some good news for the Sony camp though. The PSP has sold almost 20000 units more then it’s big brother and 360. Even the PS2 managed to outsell them by a few hundred.

• DS – 42,385
• PSP – 26,045
• Wii – 25,330
• PS2 – 8,618
• Xbox 360 – 8,271
• PS3 – 7,232

What does this mean for the PS3? Will they be forced to lower to price to bring back the sale numbers or are people just waiting and saving their money for this busy game release period and the upcoming new SKU.
MCVUK says it might be the price. Electronic Entertainment Design and Research analyst Jesse Divnich said to Edge Online

The $399 price point is simply too steep to entice the casual and mainstream markets, regardless of how great Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet may be.

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After reporting about the bug in WipeOut HD many people were worried about purchasing the game. Either because they were worried that their PS3 would get stuck known with games like Uncharted, or they couldn’t play online because of their huge friends list.

WipeOut HD Screenshot 03

Studio Liverpool has (finally) released a patch for the friends list bug where you weren’t able to play online (or had major slowdowns in menu’s). When you start up you WipeOut game you will be requested to install the patch.
There some bad news though. If you had issues with the game, you will be required to manually delete your save file after installing the patch. This means you will lose all you lap times, team loyalties, single-player stats and options.
You will however not lose you trophies and leaderboard scores.

So question to our readers, it is worth losing all you stats, lap times and team loyalties to finally play online with you friends? My opinion is if you have more then 50 of them who own WipeOut HD you do, if it’s less, delete some till you have around 40 patch up try the game and see if it works. Don’t forget to message your friends to re-add you, as it would be crazy to re-add them all yourself.

Update: Seems the patch did more then only fix the friends list bug. It also improved the Music Playback, Custom Playlist playback, online stability and accurate tracking of tournament scores.

Another fix was the ability to switch between Tournament End Race results in Online Multiplayer using the square button.

You can read about these fixes yourself in the Online section under the announcements tab.

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For some of our readers who where worried and wondering if Gran Turismo would still be coming to the PSP, we have some news for you. Only it’s no release period/date.

Shuhei Yoshida said to Eurogamer.net that the game is still in development.
It seems Polyphony Digital is working on this project but because of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Gran Turismo 5, the PSP version got a backseat until they were properly done with the PS3 versions.

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Remember when we told you about the first custom PSP-3000, well there is another one on it’s way. This time we can expect to see Amano-esque logo characters Cosmos and Chaos on either side on the back.
(click on the picture if you want to see the HD version of it)

This is a 20th anniversary exclusive project for the PSP.

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You probably missed this part on our weekly Playstation Store update, but we’re letting you know that users on the PSP can purchase the expansion pack for $5. It will increase level of maps with 40.

If you didn’t have the original version already, they will come with a bundle including both the expansion and the original version. So that’s 96 levels to keep keep you entertained.

One interesting fact was that it seems echochrome is taking up all the 333MHz of processing power.

In Japan they can expect access from their PSP to the Playstation Store on October 15th. Making this possible is the 5.00 firmware update that will be included which will put the store under the new XMB category that will be added.

Also following the rest of the year through out the holiday season will be game releases of Bleach Soul Carnival, Secret Agent Clank and Patapon 2 to name a few.

The most important thing how ever is the ability to download every SCE game from the store which are meant for the PSP. So a title like Resistance Retribution will be found on there once it gets out.

Does this mean the end for the UMD disks. We don’t know, but it does send out a worrying signal for games from 3rd party developers.

No word on when Europe and North America can expect it.

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As it has been known the PS3 doesn’t have “hot” USB ports where you can plug your controller in and it will charge like with the Xbox 360.
Some have tried solutions like charging them through their PC or even 360’s when their PS3 is off.

As you can see the unit can charge two USB devices at the same time, while you have this baby plugged in in the power socket. This will eliminate the use of a USB port on your PS3 (which are very precious on current released units)

So far we only know that this device will be launched in Japan on December 18th for the price of 2,800 yen. Europe and North America have no date yet for this.

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No doubt that Monster Encore is very popular as it keeps being downloaded from the store week after week. To encourage the sales and popularity of their latest game Eden, the team responsible for the PixelJunk series has cooked up a deal where you will receive the expansion of Monster Encore for free with the purchase of Eden.

The expansion holds 15 new levels (and a random level generator).

So if you want to make use of this deal, head over to the Playstation Store and buy Eden (don’t forget to try it out as well) cause the deal only lasts till October 16th.

Source, via PS3Fanboy

With a new week comes a new update to the Video Store of Playstation. After the break you can see the top 20 of Movie downloads being led by Ironman (no suprise) and the top 20 TV downloads of last week.

TV Shows added:

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Star Trek VIII: First Contact
Superjail!, Season 1
Watchmen Motion Comic, Chapter One & Two

Movies added:

Charlotte’s Web 2
Cobra
Con Air
Crocodile Dundee II
Curly Sue
Date Movie (Unrated)
Doctor Zhivago
Domestic Disturbance
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Yes thats right, Quantum Theory has been confirmed exclusive to the Playstation 3 at the Tokyo Game Show 2008.

Out of all the possible answers relating to platform exclusivity inquiries, a simple “yes” is easily the most difficult one to extract. This did not prove to be the case with Tecmo’s Makoto Shibata, however, who calmly assured us that Tecmo’s upcoming third-person shooter, the cryptically named Quantum Theory, is indeed exclusive to the PlayStation 3.

For those wondering, Tecmo’s Quantum Theory is a new third person shooter where you will control a dark hero with big weapons. The game will be released sometime in 2009.

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