Talk Playstation 3 News

Great news for Sony and Playstation 3. VGChartz is showing that the Playstation 3 has passed the 30 million mark worldwide this past week. It is now only 5.7 million behind the Xbox 360.

Playstation 3 dominates in Japan and Europe, it just has some caching up to do in America.

Will it do it?

Sony has confirmed the Q1 lineup for the Playstation 3. Here’s the list.

• God of War
• Heavy Rain
• Massive Action Game

The above are the exclusive games, there’s alot of non exclusive games coming out in between.

Source.

Are you wondering what games you want for the Playstation 3 this Xmas? We have listed the following recommendations to add to your Xmas list!

The Saboteur

Inspired by a true story, The Saboteur stars Sean Devlin, a street-tough Irish race car driver trapped behind enemy lines in 1940s Nazi-occupied France. Motivated by personal revenge, Sean fights, climbs, and races through open-world Paris, sneaking into the heart of the Nazi operations and sabotaging their every move.

Assassin Creed 2

Betrayed by the ruling families of Italy, a young man embarks upon an epic quest for vengeance. To eradicate corruption and restore his family’s honor, he will study the secrets of an ancient Codex, written by Altair. To his allies, he will become a force for change – fighting for freedom and justice. To his enemies, he will become a dark knight – dedicated to the destruction of the tyrants abusing the people of Italy. His name is Ezio Auditore di Firenze. He is an Assassin.

Rogue Warrior

Play as Richard Demo Dick Marcinko a real-life American badass and founder of the elite SEAL Team 6. His defiant, crude, and sometimes ruthless behavior has earned him both glory and infamy in the history books. Now you take on his explosive nature as you engage in a blacker-than-black special ops mission behind the iron curtain. Go against the rules of conventional warfare to get the job done by any means necessary in this actionpacked first-person shooter.

Modern Warfare 2

Modern Warfare 2 is a first-person tactical shooter and the sixth entry in the popular Call of Duty series. True to its name and following the lead of its predecessor, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, it places players in modern combat settings, as opposed to the WWII environments of the earlier Call of Duty games. This modern approach brings with it new weapons, action and options.

Ever since the Playstation 3 launched with Playstation Network, overtime many people wondered if Sony will keep the service free, or bring in some sort of subscription based service. Well now it appears that Sony will indeed bring a in a premium level service and yes you will need to pay for it.

During the presentation, which emphasized Sony’s plans to make its game business profitable in the next fiscal year, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai confirmed the plans. “We will be building upon our current free [PSN] service offering with premium content and services to start the subscription model,” he told attendees.

Will we have to pay for it anyway? No, Kaz Hirai has said that the current level of service would remain gratis.

SCE will further increase sales by offering users new entertainment through the combination of hardware, software, peripheral, and PlayStation Network,

Especially in the online area, we are studying the possibility of introducing a subscription model, offering premium content and services, in addition to the current free services.” (Emphasis added.)

Even without subscriptions, PSN revenue is on the rise. For the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2010, Sony expects ¥50 billion ($563 million) in earnings from the service, a threefold increase from the year prior. In addition to game-related content, the PSN’s retail component–the PlayStation Store–offers video offerings, such as television shows and movies for both rental and sale.

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In Sony’s recent conference the company revealed some Playstation Network stats and said that more than 33 million users are registered to the Playstation Network as of November 16, 2009.

The PSN has been online ever since the launch of the Playstation 3 back on the 11th of November 2006. During that time Sony has expanded the Network and moved it to the PSP and the service continues to grow even stronger. Better yet, it’s still free!

• 5.4 million unique users are signed-in to PSN daily
• 1.4 million Playstation Store visits daily
• 25 Petabyte downloads monthly

Source.

Yesterday we confirmed that firmware 3.10 was in the making. Now it seems the firmware might be here sooner then we think (we hope today rather then tomorrow).

In some parts of Europe special on-demand TV sites will be included in the firmware. Here the announcement slipped up on some info.

Television lovers in other parts of Europe can now enjoy faster access to catch-up on TV with the addition of the following on-demand TV sites to the XMB over the next few days

Depending on how you interpret it, this can mean that in following days they will be adding more TV sites to the working firmware. They will make more announcements on which TV sites will be joining or what we’re thinking after the release of firmware 3.10 they will be adding more channels.
The following TV channels will be included: RTVE, Antena 3 and LaSexta in Spain. NOS in the Netherlands. AXN/Animax in Czech, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia.

This move is centering the PlayStation 3 more and more in your livingroom, making it a device which will suit your everyday needs (except some).

Nothing so far on cross-game chat being included in this firmware. But as a EU spokesperson said, they’re working on it, but can’t give a specific date.

Source: EU PlayStation Blog

Playstation 3 bundles across Europe will be uncleashed as there will be 3 of them to choose from! In each bundle you will get the following:-

• 250GB PS3 Slim
• DualShock 3 controller

And then either of the following bundle items.

Here is an interview with Tom French of Pandemic Studios.

Source: EU PlayStation Blog

It’s finally official, Final Fantasy XIII will launch on March 9, 2010. Four years after it was announced the game will finally reach North America and Europe. Months later then it’s Japanese release date.

John Yamamoto, President of Square Enix, Inc had this to say

We know that our fans have been eagerly awaiting the next installation of the franchise Final Fantasy XIII will exceed all expectations. Coming simultaneously to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 for the first time, Final Fantasy XIII will be available to all players who are looking for the most immersive gaming experience of 2010

This might sound weird, but I’m advising all gamers to save their holiday money which they intent to use to buy games with christmas and use it for games in the first 5 months of 2010 as this schedule is going to be packed!

Source: Joystiq

That is what according to OTX’s GamePlan Insights, who did a survey and found out that sequel title buyers are switching console. 15 percent of those who plan to buy the PS3 version of Assassin’s Creed 2 own the Xbox 360 version of the original, while only 7 percent of those who plan to buy the Xbox 360 version own the original game on PS3.

Analyst Nick Williams of OTX, said that the data on franchise lineage highlights an interesting trend between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2. The data highlights a shift, at least among fans of Assassin’s Creed, are in favour of the PS3 might be a sizeable portion. And these are players who plan a console defection for the second instalment.

Source:Gamasutra

XMB integration will be coming next year, so that could shave a few seconds there. As far as the Party view goes, almost sounds like this Sony patent is rather comparable.

Source:PS3blog.net

The Playstation 3’s hardware sales has risen by 1000% in the UK and this is due to the PS3 Slim. Dorian Bloch, director of Chart-Track told VG247 that he isn’t surprised by the impact PS3 Slim had.

I’m not surprised by it, There’s a lot of demand for the Slim.

Bloch said that the PS3 hardware sales were +999% in week 35, it’s higher in week 36.

Here’s some facts.

• PS3 is shown as ‘+999%’ over week 35. The system is set to display +999% when it encounters huge increases, so the actual increase in PS3 unit hardware sell-through is around 11X – so 11 times what PS3 was selling the previous week. Obviously people have been waiting for PS3 Slim.
• PS3 is the lead format in week 36 and is outselling 360/DS Lite/Wii (not combined, individually – they were all selling around the same amount in week 36) by approx 3:1.
• PS3 is the lead hardware format for week 36, 2009 and the last time it did this was back in week 1, 2008.
• Note that PS2 Slim came out in week 44, 2004 and showed an increase of +310% over the previous week (an increase of 3X).
  Comparing the sales of all PS2 hardware in week 44, 2004 and all PS3 hardware in week 36, 2009 this shows that PS2 outsold PS3 by 21%, but of course PS2 was much cheaper at that point in the life cycle (approx £100) compared to the ASP for PS3 last week (approx £244). PS2 Slim came out in the first week of November 2004 and in Q4 you woud be expecting healthier numbers for most hardware formats.

Things are shaping up good for Sony and Playstation 3.

Will the Playstation 3 ever outpace it’s older brother, the Playstation 2? Sony believe that this will happen, where the PS3 will significantly outpace the PS2.

Andrew House, SCE Europe boss said:

If you look at the PS2, still in some markets going very strong, especially in North America in its tenth year on the market, we still can’t predict where that lifecycle will end

I have a theory that with successive generations, and with more value added and built into the console in terms of experience – and let’s not forget that the PS2 really didn’t offer a tremendously robust network experience – that what you effectively do is potentially lengthen that lifecycle more and more as you get to the next iteration.

Only time will tell. Do you think the PS3 will ever outpace the Ps2?

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1Up was able to get their hands on Bayonetta at a Tokyo event. Their verdict

While the 360 version on display looked crisp and smooth, the PS3 version was very blurry and the framerate was all over the place. During one portion of the demo, a crazy scene where you are jumping off of falling parts of a giant clock tower, it was often hard to keep track of the action because of the graphical issues on PS3.

This doesn’t sound good for Sega as the game has been delayed several times.

Source

As you know the PS3 slim is selling out quite well, Amazon reported that they have sold out of their pre-order allocation. What is all the fuss about? G4TV has posted a video that will compare the PS3 slim against the original PS3. Check it out.