High Def buffs will love 1.1 as it allows the use of 1.1 enabled Blu-ray discs that feature all sort of exciting things, including picture in picture. At the risk of making this sound far less exciting, this is basically one for people who lurve those directors commentary features on DVDs and have ever wondered ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be great if we could SEE the director as he yammers over the top of the film? Eh? Eh?’. So that’s all seven of you then.

Those who are less addicted to disc extras and more about getting the free movies and TV series off of naughty places on the interwebs that film studios would rather you didn’t visit are in for much more of a treat. DivX support means support for nearly every piece of pirated goodness you can wish for. It’ll run just about anything –most importantly XviD files – currently topping the illegal charts.

I’ve also run a couple of comparisons with the Xbox 360’s rival DivX support to see if there was any difference. Unfortunately there is. Before I go on, let me stress that I am not very clued up on different codecs and file compression techniques, so this is merely going to be anecdotal evidence. Basically, I have found that the Xbox was able to play a couple more files than the PS3. Don’t worry – the only ones that either console struggled with are pretty damned old now downloads now and all the latest stuff I have downloaded (purely for research purpose, no need to send the goons round).

The PS3 has apparently been limited from playing DivX files over 2GB in size. None that I tried were that big, however, the ones that didn’t work each used the OpenDML AVI file format which is ( I believe) designed to support file sizes larger than 2GB. The Xbox 360, not having the same limitation, is capable of running these files just fine.

I’d be interested to hear opinions from anyone who has a better working knowledge of file types and codecs to see if we can narrow it down what can and can’t be played on the PS3 – please write in or drop me an email (on the right hand sidebar). For the most part though, the PS3 is now officially an amazing centre for piracy. If there was ever a time to upgrade your hard drive, that time is now.

If you wondering which of the PS3 and Xbox 360 is the better choice for scurvy practises, the 360 benefits from a better file organisation when you’re using external storage devices, but the PS3 wins for not sounding like a jet taking off.

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The best thing about this most ass kicking kind of DivX support, is that not only does it turn the PS3 into a powerhouse of unrestrained copyright infringement – judging from the amount of content we’ve successfully thrown at the 360, it is nothing to be sniffed at – but developers will be able to encode their in-game cut-scenes using the efficient compression format. That means, alongside the huge amounts of space already on Blu-ray format discs, developers could have even more space to work with in future. Quite how well it works out with HD content remains to be seen though.

It’s lovely to see these companies bending over backwards to give us access to a gold mine of stolen digital content and, err, putting more tools at developers' disposal, of course. Yeah, right. Next thing you know, there’ll be an Azureus client...

Source
TECH.BLORGE, Max Console

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Just to summarise it – there are a huge number of changes being made to the multiplayer playlists, with maps being dropped into and out of different categories and some regulation of how and when clans / groups can team up to pwn innocent ungrouped bystanders. There aren’t any new maps, although there will be more spawn points added to existing maps. Bug fixes include one to resolve an issue of players sprinting too far when holding certain weapons.

So far, so geeky; hopefully the numerous changes to the map playlists will mean less chance of a few maps repeatedly getting left out of games. Probably the most noticeable change though will be the tweaking of the sniper rifles and ACOG scope accuracy which should mean better chance of some headshotting action.

There's no concrete time frame on when this patch will be out. It is expected to be this month - but we'll have to see how much the Infinity Ward's productivity is impacted by the sudden influx of large platefuls mince pies and candy canes before finding out for certain.

What’s interesting is that Rockstar has managed to put enough game content together to receive an age rating, meaning that the game must be very much on track for its early 2008 release. Presumably Rockstar would be unwilling to rush this sort of thing, given the controversy caused by the infamous Hot Coffee mod, which resulted in it receiving reclassification in various territories, including the US and Australia and the lingering rumour of imminent bans that always characterise Rockstar Games launches.

Anyway, that leaves us looking longingly at the February side of GTA IV’s anticipated February-April launch. That’s totally on seven weeks away. Or 49 days. Or 1176 hours. Or... oh I’ll shut up now.

Source
CVG

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Why should we Europeans care? Because this opens the floodgates for making PSN purchases in the US. Normally, you’d need a US credit card, which is kind of hard to do if your place of residence is, say, Belgium. Not anymore. As soon as these puppies hit the shelves, specifically those of import specialists, that’ll mean a nice swift solution to getting our grubby paws on all the neat stuff that the North American PlayStation Store offers and that the European one seems to piddle about with for BLOODY AGES. Pain, High Velocity Bowling – I’m looking at you.

Source
PS3Fanboy

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Epic programmer Josh Adams admitted to the official UTIII forums that “the PS3 mod tools aren't quite ready yet.” Fortunately, although this is a bit of a disappointment for those anxious to crack on with meddling about with the PS3 game, there is a patch in the works to solve the issue. “When it's ready, you will need to download the latest PC patch and another PS3 Mod Tools "patch" that adds the full PS3 mod support to the PC version. “ If the legal / release issues are indeed the only problem, then presumably all the content is already there waiting to be unlocked safely, which at least implies we’ll be spared massive patch downloads.

If Epic was in so much of a rush to get the game out that such a loudly boasted feature didn’t even make it into the retail release, you might be justifiably concerned that the game itself isn’t up to par. Well, allay those fears; IGN – normally the first to cry foul if a PS3 version of a multiplatformer is below standard – has given the game a clean bill of health. IGN’s first impressions conclude that “all signs point to this being an excellent version of Unreal Tournament 3, offering a unique and enjoyable brand of FPS action”. “Not only does it control well with the SIXAXIS, but the game features fully customizable mouse and keyboard support, along with the ability to load in mods,” the article reads.

UT3 is out now for PS3 across the pond – UK gamers will have to wait until 2008, but it should be reasonable to expect that by the time ours arrives, all relevant features will be enabled from the get go.

Source
CVG

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What I did find particularly interesting is that the person chosen to represent the PlayStation 3 is God of War star, Kratos (albeit in a horribly animated, poorly voiced form). Kratos, of course has yet to make his PS3 debut and won’t be doing so for over a year. A bit of an oversight on Greenpeace’s behalf, but I can understand why he was used; Kratos is by far the most recognisable of the PS2’s game characters. The PS3 doesn’t really have anything / anyone that really compares. There are some good characters – Heavenly Sword’s Nariko, R&C’s Ratchet, maybe even R:FOM’s Nathan Hale, etc – but for whatever reasons these don’t manage to stand out from the crowd.

Maybe it doesn’t make an ounce of difference, but it is a shame that the PS3 lacks a truly iconic character to rally behind – Masterchief and Mario, who represent their respective consoles in the same video, do a great job of symbolising the different strength of the two rivals. Given time (and a sequel or two) maybe Uncharted’s Nathan Drake will fill those shoes, but I wonder if perhaps his intentional every-man design preclude this. So who would you chose to be the iconic ambassador of the PS3? Or will we just have to wait for Kratos’ PS3 outing before the console will get the same kind of symbolic representation?

Source
Joystiq

That’s definitively a feature that will be worth waiting for, although as I dread to think quite how mind warping it will be trying to work through the game puzzles, setting up your own challenges can only be ten times more so. Neat idea though, especially if it takes a leaf out of Unreal Tournament III’s book and throws the whole thing out there to be distributed freely across the network. As it presumably wouldn’t involve a PC either, that could almost surpass Epic’s open network dreams.

Source
MTV via Gaming Today

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Gran Turismo’s tag line has always been “The real driving simulator”, which I always thought just was a good way of explaining to people that there wouldn’t be any nitro-boosts or cops chasing you here. However, Yamauchi reiterated his belief that the game is an effective alternative to driving a real car; “Close to 90% of the experience you get out of Gran Turismo will help you in building your experience in motor sports – next to the real thing of course,” he said.

This doesn’t just have to be to the sole benefit of racing drivers either. “If people can experience Gran Turismo, that gives them the experience in a virtual world and a safe environment without killing themselves. The can reach the limits of the car, for example, [and] once they know that, they will learn to drive without that,” Yamauchi explains. I’m loving the idea of being ‘forced’ to spend six hours on Gran Turismo rather than getting a speeding ticket.

Full interview embedded on the turn.

Source
MaxConsole

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Although it should be interesting to see how Ninja Theory plans to bring sassy red-head Nariko back into future iterations, it will be far more fun to see what kind of tweaks can be made to the gameplay. I rather enjoyed the elegant fighting mechanic that Heavenly Sword introduced but it wouldn’t be harmed by a bit of fine tuning either – possibly to even produce something as satisfying as God of War’s more visceral approach.

Source
Gaming Today

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That’s definitely a good sign – there are more than a few features that Prologue is noticeably lacking against other recent racers. Damage modelling is the big one. Although Forza 2 didn’t agree with my style of racing (being a Gran Turismo man at heart), the damage modelling was a superb addition to racing sims. Weather is another one (although I can’t find definite confirmation that it is absent from Prologue), which PGR 4 perfected.

Even without these, the updated 1080p graphics and the improved physics are holding the GT 5 taster in good stead, which definitely bodes well for whenever the full fifth iteration makes it to the console. Now, when can we get our hands on the top scoring Prologue? Some time in Q1 2008 is as close as it can be pinned down to.

Source
Ripten

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People are stupid. Too stupid to know what’s good for them. THEY MUST BE EDUCATED. Never more so than at Christmas time when their tiny minds are further subdued by the warm numbing sensation of too much mulled wine and mince pies. Good thing Sony is here to step in like an over-affectionate uncle and tell them what to think, where to think it, how it’s all their little secret and they shouldn’t tell mother about this.

You may have thought that the PS3 was a games console. Think again, nitwit. The PS3 is only ONE PATHETIC FRACTION a games console. The rest of it is some kind of generic home entertainment device – it stores photos (like a computer), it stores video (like a computer), it browses the internet (anyone seeing a trend here?), it plays CDs (what is this, 1990?), it plays MP3s (I love how the image confuses it with a portable MP3 player) and it even plays DVDs (if you don’t already have a DVD player, I’m guessing a PS3 is probably not your cup of tea). It connects to your PSP (note how that extra £130 is missing from the shopping list). The only point I’ll agree on is the Blu-ray player, because if you’re actually considering getting a standalone Blu-ray player, you are either a dangerously addicted early adopter or just a tit.

Sony packed a shed load of goodies into the PS3, fine. Can’t we just accept that some of them are just a tiny bit shit and that they’re only in there because we know they are possible to implement and we’d all kick up a big stink if Sony left them out with no good reason? Sony keeps bullishly shouting feature sets at people, blithely ignoring the things that DO make the PS3 stand out from the crowd:

First off – it’s a f*cking GAMES CONSOLE. If you are not shopping for a games console, you would do well to step away from the PlayStation 3 aisle. It isn’t bad games console though; I happen to think it’s actually a rather awesome games console. There are more than a handful of top notch titles already out and easily enough to keep your corpulent body firmly glued to the sofa for the festive period. And then, as luck would have it, there’s plenty on the horizon to keep you content for the forth coming year.

Second of all – it’s a f*cking BLU-RAY PLAYER. The cheapest one there is, actually. It is, naturally, compatible with all the other various disc formats that Sony has been pushing over the years (except UMD and Mini-disc; I wonder why...). You might not need it now, but someday you will cave into your innate desire to own an absolutely gigantic telly and then you’ll be laughing your socks off as you bathe in high definition wonderment.

These are the only two factors that are needed to sell the PlayStation 3, and – given that Sony is peddling the PS3 at below its cost price – games and Blu-ray discs must be sold in order to recover some of those losses, so why on earth are we pushing them to the side? Everything else is just a neat extra, and neat technology is what we once used to associate with the brand ‘Sony’. For the love of god, someone take this diagram and bury it in the same lead lined box as the This Is Living campaign.

/end rant.

Frankly, a bit of expansion is needed. Microsoft has been running rings around Sony in terms of online console services, most prevalently with the Xbox Live Video Marketplace. Now that this has just broken out of its US only mould and spread to other parts of North America and us here in Europe, the pressure is on Sony to play catch up. We already know this is in the works – a rival video download service is already on its way to Japan – but it now looks like Sony has something a bit bolder in mind. Stringer confirmed that the Network would be expanded to include other kinds of content and opened up to non-Sony media.

Sounds like a great idea to us; with every single PS3 offering at least some form of hard disk and a piss easy means with which to upgrade them, all we need is the content to fill ‘em up. With Microsoft seeming to be avoiding TV shows for its download plans at the moment and Sony presumably being unwilling to inhibit its fledgling HD disc format with full blown high definition movie downloads, that leaves a compelling potential niche for getting decent series out in digital form (well, other than just on the torrents).

April is the time frame for these mysterious new updates, which SPOnG points out is pretty close to the Spring time frame that PlayStation Home is gunning for. Could the two be connected? I’ve already shared my crazy Home release date conspiracy of the day, so you can decide which seems more likely.

Source
Gamasutra

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Uncharted has started its assault on the UK games charts with an extremely disappointing debut at number 28. That puts it below half-arsed racing drivel, Need for Speed: Pro Street, monotonous glitch-fest, Assassin’s Creed, and isn’t-that-a-PS2-game, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Although the PS3 was riding an encouraging sales spike in the wake of the 40GB launch, it appears most PS3 gamers’ piggy-banks have been so thoroughly milked dry that there’s nothing left to buy any actual games with.

It isn’t really all that surprising; the aforementioned collection of titles are of course all multiplatform and thus have a lot better chance of chart success and making any kind of decent return on investment. However, this isn’t going to be all that encouraging for any developers thinking of making their games into PS3 exclusives. On the other hand, there are a lot more 360s and Wiis out there than PS3s – and many of those are probably going to be sat firmly under Christmas trees doing nothing for the next two weeks – so there’s not really a huge number of potential customers out there. Still, you’d have thought Uncharted could have at least beaten bloody Cooking Mama!

I don’t know who to blame, so I’m blaming YOU. Yes, you sitting there, gazing wide-eyed at that PC monitor, ostensibly not going out and buying Uncharted. Oh you’ve already copy. Go get another one. Then stand in the corner and think carefully about what you’ve done.

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Multiplayer support is going to be absent from the launch – this, along with online features such as ranking boards and downloadable ghost car times, is coming in a later update due on December 25th.

Given that GT5 Prologue is going to be an important part of PlayStation Home, where there will be some much needed support for drop-in, drop-out functionality direct from Sony’s original virtual world, I wonder if this delay could be taken as hint that PlayStation Home might be seeing a roll out earlier than we had hoped? More likely that Home beta testers could be getting the chance to try out some real gaming features rather than just wandering around barren, deserted locales and constantly rearranging their Home furniture. If so, it should be interesting if someone can sneak out some opinions from under the glare of the NDA.

Unfortunately, there’s still very little news on exactly when we can expect GT5 Prologue to be gracing European and North American shores.

Source
CVG

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Developer, Guerrilla, has admitted to a bit of monkey business (hohoho) in its latest set of Killzone 2 ‘screenshots’. The confession came on the official PS3 forums, where Guerrilla’s Seb Downie tried to wriggle out of the awful scam by explaining: “They are only the tiniest bit touched up. Short answer is yes. Long answer is that there was a little bit of colour-correction done and some minor polish, but nothing major. Still very close to reality and it looks better in motion in my opinion.”

Does it really matter that these pics have had a bit of “minor polish” added to them? Hell yes, it does! Any amount of touch up effectively means that what you’re seeing isn’t a true reflection of what is in the actual game. Even if it’s just a tenny bit of colour correction, where do we draw the line on what an acceptable amount of DOCTORING and what’s just a blatant LIE?

You’d think that Guerrilla would be the last lot to try and pull this kind of stunt, what with the debacle of their pre-rendered E3 2005 footage that some genius tried to pass off as real gameplay. This whole thing reeks of desperation, which is pretty ironic given that the outing at this year’s E3 was a stunning success – it looked pretty darned amazing and almost managed to repair the damage done by all the earlier wool pulling. All this latest shenanigan has done is make me wonder just what is wrong with the stuff we’ve seen so far – is the truth actually so bad it needs to covered up with sly marketing tricks?

Source
PSU

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Probably nothing for anything but the most ardent of eco-warriors to really get upset about, but in a more practical sense, leaving the Folding@Home program in constant operation is going to clock up your electricity bill faster than you might have thought.

Along the same lines; if you’re a Remote Play user, you’ll find that when you leave the console in Remote Start mode you’ll be using up 24 times as much power as the ordinary standby mode – and according to other tests, that’s more than it actually takes to run an normal Nintendo Wii title and it’s not even doing anything! Of course the TV will be off at the time, so that’ll take a bit of an edge off it.

See the full list of stats on the turn:

Standby: 1 watt.
Remote Start Standby: 24 watts.
Idle at the XMB: 158 watts.
Playing a video or music from the XMB: 160 watts.
Playing back Blu-ray movie (Ratatouille) at 1080i: 185 watts.
Folding@Home with visuals: 215 watts.
Folding@Home screen saver: 185 watts.
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction basic gameplay tests: 185-200 watts.
Uncharted Demo during video introduction: 173 watts.
Uncharted Demo during first level gameplay: 203 watts.
Aquatopia: 204 watts.

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And what features would this new version come equipped with? Stuff takes a stab at AIBO PS having its own avatar within PS Home where it will mimic its real world actions. More usefully, it will have Remote Play functionality, allowing you to control its movement from across teh interwebs and images will be streamed directly from pooch’s headcam to the PSP. It will also have a guard mode that detects movement and alerts you with an email. Couple that with its facial detection system and you've got one amazing system for catching cheating spouses.

I can’t see this doing a lot for PlayStation sales, but it is nice to think that the unique interconnectivity between the PlayStation products could actually make the robotic pet worth having instead. I do like the idea of being able to remotely guide a robotic pet around my flat while I’m on the other side of the country - it would be totally like the final scene from A View to a Kill.

The one major lacking I can see is that neither the PS3 or PSP have microphones built in, which would have made for a really amusing method of having VoIP conversations with people from afar. Maybe there’ll just be a ‘bark’ button instead (put it next to the ‘sniff own balls’ and ‘hump chair leg’ buttons).

Source
GameSpot

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This is a sentiment echoed by Evan Wells, Co-President of Naughty Dog, who has revealed in an interview with ThreeSpeech that “Right now we are brainstorming on what Naughty Dog’s next project will be, but even if we don’t do an Uncharted sequel right away, you can pretty much count on us doing one in the near future.” Well, it’s either going to be Uncharted or Jak & Daxter… Ubisoft might be all over the new IPs at the moment, but sequels sell and given the graphical quality of Uncharted, the proverbial bucket and stool are set in firmly place to start milking them cash cows.

Source
ThreeSpeech

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