According to the virtual PSP in Home, the in-depth news section states that the open beta of Home is to start on July 20th 2007. Whether or not this is actually true remains to be seen. Sony initially stated that the closed beta would be held from April to Augsust, meaning the open beta would be held from August to its release in October. Check out the screen shot below.
According to Impress Watch, Bandai Namco announced today at PlayStation Premier that Tekken 6 will, like Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection Online, feature online combat. The online play will be just part of a variety of new modes that will feature in the home version.
And when will that home version arrive? The arcade version isn’t due until later this year, but once that’s out, PS3 owners will have to wait less than a year for the home version, Bandai Namco confirmed.
Most of us have already seen the new slimline PSP during E3 last week, however, today was the first time it was unveiled to the Japanese audience, at PlayStation Premiew. The new unit will be released in Japan on September 20th 2007. In addition to the Ceramic White, Piano Black and Ice Silver colors shown at E3, Japan will get 3 extra colors, Rose Pink, Lavender Purple and Felicia Blue.
Furthermore, Japanese gamers can get the slim PSP a week early if they decide to buy the Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII: 10th Anniversary Limited bundle which comes with a special silver PSP slim unit (with translucent buttons), game software (with a variant cover) and strap with Cloud’s signature Buster Sword. Only 77,777 units are produced so importers better keep an eye on this item.
Most people would be happy enough to hear that a Metal Gear Solid game was on the way to the PS3, however, following a short demo play session of MGS4 at PlayStation Premier, Kojima announced that Kojima Productions is currently preparing a PlayStation 3 version of Metal Gear Online, the online battle game that appeared in MGS3 Subsistence. It is currently unclear as to whether
Famitsu.com reports that Kojima will play the game live at next week’s Metal Gear 20th Anniversary Party event in Tokyo and will share specifics on what players can expect.
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue may be released a bit earlier than expected. Following an impressive showing at E3 last week, Polyphony flew back to Tokyo in time for today’s PlayStation Premier event where it announced that Gran Turismo 5 Prologue will be released to the Japanese market in October.
As for the content set to be included in Prologue, according to Sony’s press materials, we can look forward to a variety of cars, including some set to debut at this October’s Tokyo Motor Show. The game will also have online play.
The only question is cost. The game’s pricing is listed as “TBA,” which suggests that it might not end up being the free download that everyone was hoping for following last year’s big demo gift.
More details on content and pricing soon.
[E3 GT 5 Prologue Trailer]
[PlayStation Premiew GT 5 Prologue Trailer]
According to Game Informer, Sony is planning to release 40GB PlayStation 3 in North America retailing for $399, but will have no backward-compatibility. Game Informer was even waiting for the announcement at E3, but the news wasn’t confirmed at the event. As for the PAL market, Sony has hinted that a 120GB model could be in the pipeline.
SCEE President and CEO David Reeves has said the leap of 20GB from 60GB to 80GB which has occurred in the US is too small a jump in capacity, but doubling the capacity would definately be worth it.
“The difference between 60 and 80GB is very small, we just feel that going up 20GB is not worth it,” Reeves told Norwegian website Dagbladet.
However, “If you go to double it, it’s worth it”, he added. “So maybe you’ll see something a little bit later.”
Two new games are headed to the PlayStation Network, Elefunk and Snakeball. Elefunk is a original pizzle game that will play in much the same way as Lemmings. The aim is to save the elephants by building structures using a range of raw materials. The aim in Snakeball is to glide across the floor swallowing balls as you go and ultimately score more points than your opponent, similar to mobile phone game Snake.
Both the games are originals for the PS3. Elefunk will also include online leaderboard and multiplayer options. Snakeball could be one of the first PS3 games to use the PlayStation Eye to map your face onto the in-game characters, depending on the release date. Check out some screenshots below.
Elefunk
Snakeball
Another Custom Firmwarem 3,51 XR, is in development by pj1115. pj1115 states that the new firmware will be “based loosely on [Dark_AleX’s] OE” and promises that this version will be better than the recent 3.51 M33 Custom Firmware. The firmware is still in development and the developer claims that it is currently undergoing beta testing. We have included a proposed feature list below.
pj1115 is also planning to include:
A team of 10 developers, who wish to remain anonymous, are planning to create a new custom firmware using Sony’s 3.51 firmware. The team plan to reverse engineer Dark_AleX’s Custom Firmwares in order to build a similar version. The team claims that, once finished, their custom firmware will surpass Dark_AleX’s custom firmware versions.
At this point no other information is available, but we will bring you an update on this story as soon as more information is available.
For those of you who have installed the new custom firmware 3.51 M33 may have noticed that homebrew applications that use Wi-Fi were not working correctly. As a result, the M33 Team have made a patch to fix the problems. Apparently, the problem was caused by Sony’s 3.51 wlan.prx code and not by M33 code.
The 3.51 wlan.prx reportedly affected the 1.50 wlan.prx, stopping WLAN-based homebrew from working. As proof of this, they pointed out that the 3.40 wlan.prx did not have the same problem.
