A new post over at the PlayStation Blog has confirmed that Rockstar’s next franchise will be exclusive to the PlayStation 3. The post from Michael Shorrock, Director of 3rd Party Relations at SCEA. Although exact about the title were not disclosed because of an arrangement between SCEA and Rockstar, they did promise more information soon. “We agreed with Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive Software that we wouldn’t disclose anything more about the deal or title at this time, so stay tuned, we’ll share more info as soon as we can.”

“we are announcing that a new franchise from Rockstar Games will be exclusive to PS3. As part of our long standing relationship with Rockstar, and the incredible success for both companies with the cultural icon that is Grand Theft Auto, we’ve agreed to the PlayStation exclusive rights of the next great franchise from the Rockstar studios.”

A recent filing for a PSP related patent turned up with Sony’s name, and involves an idea to dock controllers to the PSP. The idea is that a controller would be made dockable onto the PSP using some kind of “control docking apparatus”. This would prove beneficial to gamers since it would could mean an extra analogue stick or even rumble if the PS2 controller could be docked.

The SIXAXIS could also play a part in the new device, since the patent mentions that “the electrical interface can be a wired or wireless communication link”. You can check out the patent application here.

Tekken 5:Dark Resurrection Online will be available to download next week from the PlayStation Network Store, however, it will only be available in Japan. The game goes on sale on August 1st for JPY 2,800 (approx USD 23.59, GBP 11.64) for the full version, or JPY 1,000 (approx USD 8.42, GBP 4.15) for the expansion pack. The full game will weight in at around 550MB, while the expansion pack will be about 220MB.

The game will allow up to 8 players in a room, however, only two players will be able to play. Voice chat in enabled in the rooms so players can socialize while waiting to play. Several new modes have been included in addition to online play, including Survival mode and Practice mode. Look out for more details on the Japanese version as well as details on European and US release dates.

SCEE and Sky have announced the formation of a Joint Venture company to deliver on-demand entertainment content to PSP owners in the UK and Ireland. The company will initially provide a wealth of video and film content to the more than 2.3 million PSP owners in the UK and Ireland. More information on the service will be announced at Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany on Wednesday 22nd August.

The two companies are already in discussions with entertainment content providers across Europe to facilitate future introduction of the service to European PSP owners. Sky is the UK?s leading entertainment company and operates the most comprehensive multichannel, multi-platform television service in the UK and Ireland. Look out for an update next month.

[Via: SCEE Press]

In a recent interview with Ryan Schneider, Marketing Director for Insomniac, Shack News learnt that the the Ratchet and Clank Future demo is complete and should be hitting the PlayStation Store soon. Ryan also revealed that new content for Resistance is in the making and should roll out in the next few months, however, he didn’t give any specific details on the new content.

“I can confirm that the demo [of Ratchet and Clank Future] will be downloadable via the PlayStation Store. Only Sony can tell you exactly when that will be though.”

“We’re always working on enhanced functionality and new content. We actually have some content that hasn’t been shared yet, so I think our fans will be happy in the coming months in terms of ongoing support for Resistance. I don’t want to go into specifics, but we’re not done.”

[Via: ShackNews]

The US PlayStation Network Store has also been updated with new content, however, the US store didn’t get all the same content as the UK/European one. One significant addition to the US store is a gameplay demo of Metal Gear Solid 4, which many gamers are eager to see. A full list of new content can be found below.

• Playable Demos
  • Heavenly Sword
• Game Trailers
  • Metal Gear Solid 4 Gameplay Demo
  • Resident Evil 4 Trailer
  • Haze ‘Origins’ Trailer
• Wallpaper
  • Heavelny Sword Wallpaper 1 and 2
• Movie Trailers
  • 30 Days of Night
  • Across the Universe
  • August Rush
• Blu-Ray Movie Trailers
• Vacancy

Woolworths, a UK retail chain, has been trialling both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD product ranges. They found that sales for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray had been virtually non-existent, however since the PlayStation 3 release, Blu-Ray movie sales have seen a steady increase in saled. As a result, they are now rolling out Blu-Ray movies across all their medium to large stores, but will be dropping all HD-DVD lines.

Last month, Blockbusters announced that it would stock only Blu-Ray titles in 1,450 of their 1,700 stores in North America. This is bad news for the HD-DVD format and could mean the end of the high definition DVD war if other retailers follow suit.

The UK PlayStation Network Store has been updated with new content including a new playable demo, game trailers and Blu-Ray movie trailers. In addition, three new PlayStation (PSOne) titles are available to download including Spyro 2 and Crash Bandicoot 2. Check out the complete list below.

• Playable Demos:
  • Heavenly Sword
• Game Trailers
  • Haze Trailer
  • Assassin’s Creed
  • Resident Evil 5
• Blu-Ray Trailers
  • Open Season
  • Talladega
• PlayStation (PSOne) Titles
  • MediEvil
  • Crash Bandicoot 2
  • Spyro 2

The PlayStation store is still heavy on trailers, but hopefully we will start to see more game demos appearing soon. Sony is working on a number of downloadable titles for the PlayStation 3 and should appear on the PSN soon.

Team M33 has cracked Sony’s new PSP Firmware wide open and released a new version of their Custom Firmware. Custom Firmware 3.52 M33 includes all the improvements made by Sony as well as incoperating all the features from the previous releases of Custom Firmware M33. M33 has also fixed a number of bugs including better no-umd compatibility. Check out the list of improvements below. Instructions on how to install the custom firmware are included in the ZIP package.

Changelog:

• Now uses 3.52 Kernel
• M33 NO-UMD: fixed problem with Simple 2500 Series Portable, The IQ Cube
• Fix a bug which made Go!Cam, GPS and sceKernelLoadExecVSH not work in game mode.
• PSN downloaded PSX games support wasn’t working in 3.51 M33 (didn’t work in latest OE’s either). Now it is working again. If an original PSN game still doesn’t work, we recommend to delete the KEYS.BIN file if it exists, and copy the game again from PS3 to PSP.

[Download Custom Firmware 3.52 M33]

Sony is indeed listening to the views of consumers on what to include in their firmware updates. In an update to a blog posted earlier, Eric Lempel, Director of PlayStation Network Operations, said that Sony is working on incorporating in-game XMB access and more information on the feature should be available soon. Most of you will probably know that in-game XMB access is one of the most popular features consumers would like to see.

The update reads:
“Also, I noticed a lot of your comments were directly related to accessing XMB features in-game. We understand this is something you want and we are working on it. For the sake of keeping all the comments below on topic, please understand that we hear this request and are working toward a solution. When I have some more info to share on this, know that I will do so here on this blog.”

Now lets see of Sony listens to all the other requests like better video format support and in-game music playback. Whether in-game access makes it in the next firmware update remains to be seen, but so far it’s looking good. Look out for more information soon.

[Via: PlayStation.Blog]