Jeux-France reports that SCEE has announced a price drop on some of the older titles in the PS3’s catalog. Resistance, Genji, F1, Motorstorm, Heavenly Sword, Ridge Racer 7 and Folklore will all retail for €40. That works out at £31.12, which considering Resistance, F1 and Motorstorm are all easily found for £25 on the highstreet, it isnt much of a deal.

The problem is the strength of the pound, it makes everything seem alot more expensive. With the average retail price of a game in the US $60 (£30) and the average UK price £44.99 ($90) it is alot of money for Sony to give up by bringing prices into line. Taking into account iTunes recent problems with pricing and the decision by the European Union to force Apple to make prices fairer, could it hurt Sony to drop the UK prices a bit? Fifa 08 still retails for £39.99 ($80) and the game is looking a bit old now.

Of course, you could import your games, but with shipping and customs duty, you end up paying about the same.

Jeux-France via Kotaku

PS3 Fanboy reports on an interesting poll coming from the European Playstation forums. An intrepid user has asked the question of whether European gamers would want their own Playstation.Blog. Im all for it because, even though I pour over the US blog for snippets of info, I would love to have news coming from SCEE directly. So far only 3% of respondees have said that they are happy enough with 3rd party news sources.

So Sony, sort it out.

PS3 Fanboy

Former editor of Edge magazine, Margaret Roberton hailed the BBFC as setting “a worldwide gold standard” whilst saying that the decision to overturn their ruling on the certification of Manhunt has come at a bad time for the ratings committee. The BBC are reporting that a parliamentary attempt to give the government more control over the British Board of Film Classification was talked out last month. However the fact that it even made it to the debating stage shows that the government is losing faith in the independent ratings group. Amidst the usual media frenzy of blaming violent games for violence among yong people, developers and publishers in the UK are awaiting the Byron Review into the effects of technology on children. The government review will seek to advise on the links between film and game violence and the behaviour of children and teenagers.

Julian Brazer, Conservative MP, told the BBC: “The problem is that the Video Appeals Committee needs sorting out: it always sides with the industry and only the industry itself can appeal.”

Is it the responsibility of the government, to decide what we can and cant view? Im all for classification and age restrictions, but it needs to be done by an independent body, not one with a vested interest in the games industry or a political agenda.

‘Game Ratings Under More Scrutiny’ via the BBC.

The Star Tribune reports on similar political interventions into games classification in America.

Sony’s strategy for this gen is pretty obvious. Not content with just having a great games console, they want the Playstation 3 to be your tv’s ultimate companion. The adoption of multiple popular video formats, a plethora of AV options to keep audiphiles happy, a passable web browser and a quite intuitive music player, have all combined to push the PS3 into the realm of media pc’s. The end of the format war and Blu-Ray’s adoption as the hi-def format means the PS3 is one of the cheapest and quite possibly best blu ray devices available at the moment. Even more so with the recent announcement of BD Live support coming in the PS3’s next firmware update, as alot of older blu-ray players (circa £500) are now obsolete.

For the UK market one of the more exciting future add-ons is Play TV: Sony’s PVR hardware which will combine with a firmware upgrade of some kind, to give you the ability to pause, rewind and record freeview television in Hi-Def. The UK television market isnt as saturated as the US, also more of our television signals are sent through the air as opposed to cable connections, which means the market is open to advances in technology and UI.

You can currently buy freeview PVR’s, for about £169, which will get you an 80gb hard disk and for a bit more cash some even offer HD upscaling, however their performance is questionable seeing as the average freeview signal is broadcast at 2mbs which simply isnt enough for a decent picture and this wont be improving until the digital switchover in 2012 when more of the spectrum becomes available. Sky+ comes with an 160gb hard disk, 80gb of which is reserved fo the Anytime tv service. The fact that the PS3 has the potential to be upgraded as much as the tech will allow you and a plehtora of USB ports for external drives, means you have almost limitless potential for saving old shows.

The general problem with these PVR’s is that the UI and underlying software are almost always horrible to use. This is due to the fact that the hardware makers choose their software for functionality (although they mostly lack that aswell). Sony’s strength is their UI and the software architecture. Another potential caveat is that most newer tv’s come with a freeview tuner of some kind and internal upscaling to match the screens resolution. But these are far from perfect.

The major competition PlayTV will have will come from Sky+ and Virgin Media’s offerings and if your purely interested in the programming then it’s worth paying the subscription for the variety of programs and channels you get. However if you simply wish to replace your ageing VCR with something digital then Play TV would be the answer.

Due to copy protection you cannot pull recorded digital content from your Sky+ (and most freeview PVRs) onto your computer for consumption elsewhere. Seeing as most people own an iPod or a PSP or some other kind of portable media player, this is a serious barrier. You can buy TV tuners for your P, with varying degrees of success, but then it becomes difficult to watch that programming on your television unless you have a HTPC hooked up to it. Sony’s belief in interoprability between the PS3 and PSP and the ability to view all of your recorded shows over the internet using remote play is a huge boon for their offering. Play TV will also offer the ability to copy shows to a memory card/stick and allow you to copy them to your pc in a non-proprietry format.

If Sony can market it right, and provide an easy to use system, then Play TV could be a fantastic addition to your home theatre. However it could also become just another gimmicky peripheral. It also remains to be seen how the recording of shows will effect gaming as we dont know if the two can be accomplished at the same time.

Any idea of a definite release date has disapeared from online retailers, who previously had March 29th listed.

Play TV Advert, Play TV on Play.com.

Last night the Call of Duty 4 Patch was finally released for PS3. So I thought I would go over some of the ‘improvements’, and see how improving they are.

*Host Switching: Lets start with the most important one in my mind, The switching of hosts when the original host drops out. This has been a really annoying plague on the whole COD4 experience, so when this was announced, most people (well maybe not the people who actually drop out of games when they are losing, causing the whole game to end…losers) were overjoyed. So here I am, booting up my first match, it plays for about 20 seconds and suddenly “Host Ended Game” followed by some disgruntled “OMGZ” over the mics, before it ejects us all from the game. I’m still not 100% sure how I should actually feel about this, so I’m going to move on.

*Kill Cam on everything: Ok this one is actually quite cool. You know those times you died, and you didn’t know what the hell actually happened? Well now, with the help of more Kill Cams, you will. There’s nothing quite like exploding, thinking “What the hell?” and then being shown via Kill Cam, that a rocket flew right into your eye. Ahhhhh, Fun times.

*Optimized Sniper Rifle/ACOG Scope Accuracy: I’m going to start this off by saying I don’t actually like the ACOG Scope. I equipped it on a P90 for this review, but still didn’t like it, and couldn’t notice a difference. ( I don’t use it so didn’t really have anything to compare it to…in my mind it sucked before, and sucks now so it’s the same…). The Sniper Rifle on the other hand does have something about it that makes it feel a lot more comfortable. I couldn’t hit the nail on the head, but there is something improved there.

*Addition of 9 extra spawn locations on each map: I don’t really know if there is much to say here apart from YES, there are now new spawn locations on each maps.

*Improved Network Performance: I didn’t play any 18 player games, just a 12 player TDM mostly, but I felt that it suffered from a bit of lag, this could have been because of a few other factors, such as the servers being flooded by everyone coming back to try the patch, or, that my internet is playing up (its been fine up to now, so it would be a big coincidence if on the release of the COD4 patch it plays up…conspiracy perhaps? ), but i am going to go with my favourite reason, and say that they have messed up (similar to the whole host migration thing) and that they need to sort it out. The lagging wasn’t too serious though and it was playable.

*Optimized Old School mode: I don’t really play old School matches, but again, for the sake of this review, I tried one. It was actually not that bad, the improvements that they added (Unlimited sprint and double magazine size) are parts of the matches that I felt made it fun, so I’m sure that all the Old School mode veterans will accept these with open arms.

There were a few other little improvements, like Spectator Cam updates, but I cant really get that excited about them, and writing about them might actually bore me, so I wont.

Now pick up your gu…I mean pad and get to the fraging Soldier!

See also: Release Announced

The nice people over at Xbox.com have just announced that the Call of Duty 4: Game of the Year Edition and the New Maps (now known as the Variety Map Pack) are set to be released on April 3^rd.

The Variety Map Pack will include 4 new maps (Creek, Broadcast, Chinatown and Killhouse) and will be available on XBL for 800 MS points.

If you haven’t already picked up this fantastic game I would suggest waiting until April for the GOTY edition, as it offers a nice shiny (it better shine!!) voucher to obtain the Maps for free. Fantastic.

There is still no official news on when the PS3 will obtain these goodies, but going by the last few patches, I would guess that it will be a week or two later. [Ed: Correct assumption, see below for update]

[Update] Also Loot Ninja, reports that the map packs will be Xbox exclusive for the first 21 days of release.

Breaking over at Kotaku, the next PS3 firmware update, 2.20, which is now scheduled for the end of March will add BD-Live, the much lauded interactive features of the high-definition format. The features include: downloadable video content, ringtones, games and more. The firmware update will also include the ability to create video and photo playlists to make viewing content stored on your hard drive easier.

Another cool feature is the ability to use your PSP as a remote control for your music, handy if you have a decent speaker set up and you are wandering around the house. The ability to play WMV and DivX files larger then 2gb will also be added and will continue to cement the PS3’s growing reputation as a media hub.

Finally, a browser update is mentioned,  including streaming video, does this mean the flash player is finally getting upgraded. We know that Adobe are working on a new player for the iPhone, does that perhaps mean they just finished the new PS3 codec? It could also mean DivX now streams, but since the death of Stage6 it wouldnt be infinitely as cool as it could have been!

 Now, with the impending addition of another update, let the in game XMB and Home squabbling commence!

Full press release at Kotaku. Also at PS3 Fanboy.

“With Blu-ray established as the high-definition optical disc standard, more consumers are ready to jump in and take advantage of everything the format offers. Whether you want to download movie extras, send ringtones to your phone, or play interactive games, BD-LIVE will offer exciting new ways to enjoy a Blu-ray movie. With these regular firmware updates and future-proofed technology, SCEA is making the 10-year lifecycle of PS3 possible.” – Scott Steinberg, Sony

Yes, it’s true, I could think of nothing witty to say in the title of this post. ‘Wii-lly Good Value’ was the height of my powers.

This is just a quicky, Shop.to are offering the collectors edition of John Woo’s Stranglehold, on the Xbox 360, for £13.00 with free first class recorded delivery. They also advise that there is ‘99% next day delivery’ on orders placed before 5.30pm. However be wary, it’s a bank holiday coming up and crazy things seem to happen to the post on bank holidays.

A quick peruse of Shop.to’s other deals brings up a few belters: MX vs MTV Untamed for £24.99 on the PS3. Also, Dynasty Warriors 6 for PS3 is £29.99. No real Wii deals but for PS3 and Xbox owners, the cheap games and the favourable shipping could be a winning combo!

Gamestation are offering two Wii games for £30 on their website. The choice of games isnt stellar, but you can pick up Call of Duty 3, the two Avatar games, Madden NFL 07, Blazing Angels or Scarface along with a host of so-so and some downright strange games (Bratz?).

It may not be the best selection, but for 30 quids, you cant really complain. Quantity over quality!

You can find the full list of games here.

It is a PS3 exlcusive. It isn’t a PS3 exclusive. It may come out on the Xbox shortly after the PS3 release. It may never get on Microsoft’s console. Hell, it may never even get released when you take into account the amount of delays and games of PR tennis that have gone on.

You can’t, however, deny that the hype machine has been working overtime on Haze, for better or for worse.

PS3 Fanboy reports on the conflicting reports coming out of Ubisoft. Their PR department must be spread out over several continents, either that or they are just seriously inept.