The UK price is set as £9.99 or 1200 MS Points, which is a reasonable price if this game lives up to its expectation. The game will have a download size of approximately 560MB, which regular downloaders will know is tiny with most game demos weighing in at 1GB plus.

Battlefield 1943 uses the engine developed by DICE for Battlefield Bad Company, allowing buildings and objects to be destroyed in game, changing the play through each time.

Full Press Release

FIGHT ON LAND, SEA OR AIR IN BATTLEFIELD 1943 ON JULY 9
Kick off the summer with the must-have downloadable game for only £9.99/1200 MS Points

Guildford, UK – July 2, 2009 – DICE, an Electronic Arts Inc. studio (NASDAQ: ERTS), today announced that Battlefield 1943™ will be available on July 8th on Xbox LIVE™ Marketplace and July 9th on the PlayStation®Network. Battlefield 1943 is an all-new download-only action game that brings DICE’s first-class vehicular warfare to gamers for just £9.99, or 1200 MS Points.

Battlefield 1943 is a critically acclaimed First-Person Shooter (FPS) multiplayer game that puts players in the middle of a dogfight on land, sea or in the skies. The game introduces two thrilling new modes that can be played across four classic Battlefield tropical WWII maps: Wake Island, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Coral Sea. These maps are inspired by the award winning Battlefield 1942™ game, but have been redesigned and reengineered using the DICE destructible Frostbite™ engine which takes down walls, blockades and cover spots, leaving players with almost nowhere to hide. The game delivers endless hours of social online gameplay for extraordinary value.

The Coral Sea map will be unlocked as part of a worldwide community challenge, where players will work together to reach 43million kills on both Xbox LIVE and the PlayStation Network. To help gamers reach that goal, up to 24 players can play together online in countless matches. They will have the freedom to compete by land, air and sea as either the US Marines or the Imperial Japanese Navy. Whether they choose to play the role of a rifleman crawling through the trenches, a steel-fisted tank commander, or a dog fighting ace pilot, gamers will have the power to rule the battlefield.

“Battlefield 1943 is going to change consumer expectations of what a downloadable game can be. By offering Frostbite’s next generation destruction technology with a full Vehicle Warfare FPS multiplayer experience at a mere 560MB, Battlefield 1943 sets a new standard,” said Gordon Van Dyke, Producer on Battlefield 1943. “Our goal is to blow people away with a fully accessible, retail-calibre game for veteran Battlefield fans and shooter fans alike to enjoy for only £9.99.”

DOn’t get me wrong, it is a great service, the videos load quickly, there’s quite a big choice on there, but there’s always good songs missing. But Sony or whoever makes the updates is on the ball, they are bringing out weekly(?) updates and new playlists all the time.

Speaking of playlists, the next few playlists have been announced on the Official European PlayStation weblog, and they are as follows:

BBQ Music
Videos from The Beach Boys, Jazzy Jeff, Groove Armada, LL Cool J and a ton more.

90’s
Check out the Shell suits and videos from Ace of Base, Take That, Whitney, The Lighthouse Family and more.

Metal Anthems
System of a Down, Godsmack, Marilyn Manson and Bullet for my Valentine feature among others.

Dizzee Rascal
Dizzee has exclusively chosen a selection of his all time favourite music videos.

The above playlists will all be featured between July 2nd and July 9th, whereas the below playlist is a new ever-changing one:

Hot New Videos
This does exactly what it says in the title with videos from Chaka Khan, Freemasons, Grizzly Bear, Maximo Park and much much more!

*slight exaggeration**

**huge exaggeration

Don’t forget to check out our Monster Hunter Freedom unite competition!

The prizes for the competition are as follows:

1 winner will win a free copy of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite for the PSP
2 runner-ups will win a MHFU T-shirt each

Speculated T-shirt design (subject to change)

To enter the competition you simply need to correctly answer the following question.

This competition is only open to UK residents. Only one entry per person. Closing date is Monday 6th July 2009.

Check out our Monster Hunter Freedom Unite Competition to win a free copy of the game.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite has been discussed quite a lot for a PSP game on Just Video Game. First of all we were one of the first to bring you the MHFU trailer. Then we followed this by letting you know of the viral video that was taking hold on social networking sites everywhere.

This time it isn’t a video, instead it is a Monster Hunter Freedom Unite event, which has only just been announced. The event, known only as The Gathering Hall at this time (so named because of the venue it is at has that the name), is located in England, specifically at the following address:

121 Charing Cross Road
London
WC2H 0EW

The only requirement is that you have a legal copy of Monster Hunter Freedom unite (no custom firmware PSPs if you have the downloadable version). If you meet that requirement then entry is compeltely free, allowing you to mingle fight with and, if you feel inclined, ignore other people. The event will run from July 3rd to August 30th and the following opening times are given:

Opening hours
10am till 8pm every day except for Thursday, when it’ll be open till 10pm.

JVG got invited to the press event associated with the opening day but is unavailable to attend, if anyone does manage to go, feel free to send us your thoughts on the day.

If you attend the Gathering Hall event you will be given exclusive early access to downloadable quests, which will only be made publicly available sometime after the 30th of August. There will also be a chance to meet the games developers on certain dates.

For more info, check out the official forum thread.

The new game boasts an updated graphics engine and a number of new features. But if you are still sitting on the fence post umming and ahhing on whether to get this game then maybe you should check out the brand new video game launch trailer:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is released on pretty much every electronic device imagineable* on Friday, 3rd July 2009.

* PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, DS, PSP, PC and mobile phones.

You can’t of missed the game, it has been one of the most advertised PlayStation 3 games of its life cycle so far, considering advertising games is something Sony seems to avoid for some reason.

With a metacritic score of 84, inFAMOUS
is not the PS3’s most highly rated offering, but it does offer an open gameplay mechanic (it is a sandbox game after all) and an intriguing karma system which allows you to play the story out in several different ways. inFAMOUS is exclusive to the PlayStation 3 games console.

The figure was released in the most recent PlayStation newsletter in the following snippet:

Kyle Ward is speculated to be doing the script work for the movie, reinforcing his career after doing other game to movie tie-ins, such as “Kane and Lynch” and the upcoming sequel “Hitman 2″.

Uncharted has quite a good backdrop for a film. Plenty of action, historic references, mysteries and twists, a female co-star and comedy sidekick…oh and zombies.

No word on when the film is due or even how far along it is at this time, but JVG will try to keep you updated as the information is revealed.

We wanted to see what the fuss is about and recognise the community interaction Twitter offers so we thought, why not. Hopefully, the blog and Twitter integration should be working now, which we’ll see if this post appears on our Twitter feed.

This may not be the most exciting news for the week, but there you have it. We’ll start bringing you gaming news as soon as possible don’t worry. Tweet you all soon!

At first there were rumours that the update sped up the XMB loading times and that the speed which trophy cards are displayed. However, many are claiming there has been no change. There has been a comment on the official PlayStation.Blog that may shed light on the issue, but keep in mind the author doesn’t seem to be anyone of authority.

====== TO EVERYONE =======

PlayStation 3 : Firmware V2.80 Change Log:

- PlayStation One Titles loading times have decreased.
- Internet Browser Loads pages smoother and has less issues with corrupted page loading.
- The Open Remote Play Hack has been scrambled for security reasons.
- The Bug that allowed Some online friends to be displayed as Offline has been fixed on small level.
- XMB Moves Much more smoother when used in-game.

This Update is a Optional Update, a user who has updated to 2.76 is not required to update to 2.80.

On top of these changes two other changes have been reported by several users across the internet:

• Microphone volume for Official Sony Headset is frozen at level 3
• The maximum character in the newish Text Chat has been extended from 32 to 64

If you notice any other changes, let us know.

“Our network management system mistakenly classified PlayStation traffic in a way which meant some customers using their consoles to access the internet may have had their speeds reduced, in line with our network management policy for Sky Broadband Connect”

So in laymans, any PSN traffic was being blocked during the peak hours of 5:00PM until midnight as it was automatically considered a heavy traffic, Peer2Peer service.

If you were looking for a fix to the problem, you can stop. Sony have stated they are working on resolving the issue as soon as possible.