In General Gaming

Details from Phil Harrison- Sony Computer Worldwide Studios
Keynote at GDC March 7th 2007:

Anouncements:

Firmware update available on the 8th for North America/Japan and Asia. European PS3's will be preloaded with this latest update.

Features of this latest firmware include:

More refined PS Store frontend
Playstation Network integrity enhanced
Wallpapers from pictures
Ability to change background colours
Sony Connect Store for music and movies added to the PS Store. Hundreds of trailers/full films/song videos and mps3's available for download.
Playstation Card option in PS Store enabled.
Playstation Lifestyle- Similar to my space/youtube. User generated content and experiences are the key.
+ more.

Removal of Emotion Engine chips in PS3's in NA and Japan to follow in April. Reason for this is to reduce costs and focus on enhanced opportunities via software. Benefits include the ability to upscale selected PSone/PS2 games to 1080i/720p.

Lots of development talk.
Release dates for key games. Warhawk in June/July 2007. Heavenly Sword delayed. Killzone and MGS4 in late 2007.

New content on PS Store available on the 8th:

Tekken 6 trailer
Lair demo & trailer
Rainbow Six Vegas demo
EA: Skate trailer
Battlefield Bad Company trailer
Warhawk demo
Virtua Fighter 5 demo
Virtua Tennis 3 demo & trailer
GRAW 2: trailer
Mortal Kombat 2 game
Killzone trailer

Killzone demo for May.

More details. Stay tuned on the 7th



Also Here's more:

"Basically, you get to make an avatar for your console (like a Mii) and this avatar has a room. As you play games and accomplish certain tasks, you will receive items with which to adorn the room that are specific to the game (achievements). The kicker is that this is going to be a new requirement for every PS3 game..."




Let's see how this all plays out...

Ah, so they're ripping off gamertags from the 360, and Miis from the Wii. In addition to ripping off the motion sensing controller, and everything else. I guess it's only logical.

Thats Sony for ya.

My thoughts exactly. Maybe by sony's twisted logic, combining unique or popular ideas on other consoles will somehow help them create a "Super Console"
I thought it was funny how they criticise others ideas only to use them. One that springs to mind is their dismissal of the 360's two tier price structure, only to use it themselves (although not in Europe)

Haha, I read that, too.
Sony is now even blackballing kotaku.com, because they posted that rumour.

Funny folks there.
I wonder when was the last time Sony invented something from scratch...