About Electronics

Idealo: This news is quickly told. On the official playstation.blog the director of PlayStation Network Operations, Eric Lempel, yesterday announced that a ‘PS3 firmware update (v2.42) is now available for download”.

It follows the much troubled update version 2.40 that left players with problems in game play among others on Call of Duty 4.

Nevertheless, the firmware update 2.42 for Playstation 3 is a minor one that improves the playback quality of the PS3 and ‘Playstation format software’.

Version 2.42 doesn’t come with the anticipated Life with PlayStation feature.

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Telegraph: Sony’s PlayStation 3 could lose the battle of the games consoles, as it struggles to convince independent gaming groups to invest in its technology.

Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide, has admitted that the electronics giant underestimated the support it needed from third-party publishers – companies that make games for Sony, such as Electronic Arts and Ubisoft.

Around 30pc of PS3 games are developed, published and distributed by Sony-owned ‘first-party’ publishers – such as the racing video game Gran Turismo – leaving the vast majority of games provided by external parties. The long-awaited Grand Theft Auto IV, for example, was launched by independent group Take-Two for both PS3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

However, in an interview with a gaming website, Mr Yoshida said: “Sometimes we struggle to convince them (third-party publishers) to put more resources into the PSP.”

He added: “We know there’s a lot more that we can do, and with the massive growth of the industry we understand that third party publishers have so many choices, many more than they have resources.”

Sony’s biggest rival consoles are Microsoft’s Xbox and the Nintendo Wii, which have provided fierce competition ever since the botched launch of the PS3 last year.

Technical problems delayed the launch by six months, putting it behind the release of Microsoft’s Xbox.

In an attempt to dismiss the overwhelming success of the Xbox launch compared with that of the PS3, Mr Yoshida told GamesIndustry.biz: “Because the 360 hardware was out earlier, the games were built based on 360 architecture. But still, they must have been planning to…release (the PS3 game) at the same time with the same quality. So they massively underestimated the effort that was needed to re-architect the game to property take advantage of the PS3′s multi-core architecture.”

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PC Advisor: The PlayStation 3 (PS3) console has reached 1 million unit sales in PAL regions, including the UK and the rest of Europe.

This comes as good news to Sony after last week’s figures showed that Nintendo’s Wii console was outselling the PS3 by a 5:1 margin.

Selling one million units in nine-and-half weeks since its launch on March 23 makes the PS3 a more popular console than both the PlayStation and PlayStation 2. Reaching 165,000 units in the first two days it was available made the console the second best selling debut console beside Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP).

The PlayStation Network has also seen success, attracting 460,000 registered European users.

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T3: Sure, you know it produces better pictures than DVD, but what about the rest of Blu-Ray’s advantages? We took a trip to see Sony today, for a proper look under the bonnet of all those lovely Blu-Ray players we’ll be buying this Christmas, and to see what the future holds for Sony’s Hi-Def platform.

For a start, the capabilities of current Blu-Ray discs are just the tip of the Hi-Def iceberg – they’ll hold around 50-gig of data at the moment, but Sony says its intricate layering system means up to 200-gig discs are possible.

It’s that space that allows the next impressive advantage – uncompressed audio in full 5.1 surround. That means Blu-Ray boasts better quality sound than you’ll get at your local multiplex, at least until digital cinema really takes off in Britain.

Even the menus gracing Blu-Ray titles have been given an overhaul, with Sony saying new animations, sounds and fast page changes will make watching a film at home much more pleasurable.

Blu-Ray even supports downloadable subtitles, so if a film isn’t immediately subtitled to your native language, a quick trip online can rectify the problem.

That network connectivity, coupled with local storage, either inside the player or through flash cards, will also let you download new content. Sony says studios will offer new trailers whenever you insert one of their discs – something that could keep films feeling fresh, even after you’ve owned them for a while.

Extra content won’t just come in the form of videos and trailers though. Sony’s BD-J system lets Java programs run from the discs, opening up the possibility of real games being bundled with films. Think mobile phone games, but bigger and better. (…)

Blu-Ray also lets you enjoy picture-in-picture goodies, like video commentaries from directors. (…)

All this content can be tagged to specific points in the film too, and live audio mixing means it all sounds crisp, clean and well balanced.

And now for the bad news. Sony’s PlayStation 3 is the only device anywhere near the horizon capable of exploiting all these whizzy new features.

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