In this month issue of PSM in France, there have been details in reference to the new PS3 controller. Of course, none of this has been confirmed by Sony so it could easily fall into the rumour catagory. According to the article, the new shock technology is cheaper to build and offers better rumbling. It can easily be integrated into the existing pad design along side the motion sensitivity. In addition to vibration, a new technology known as “Touchsense” will be included.

“Touchsense2 is a mini-revolution, since the vibrations will not emanate solely any more from the handles of the pad (as on Dualshock) but will be perceptible in various places of the controller. It will offer more powerful, more intense shocks and over short periods if the programmers wish it. Thus, the developers will be able to create a multitude of new effects.

According to the Official PlayStation Blog, Firmware 1.82 is in the works and is expected within the next few days. Eric Lempel, Director of PlayStation Network Operations made the announcement in a blog post. The new firmware update enables the playback of AVC High Profile (H.264/MPEG-4) files. Check out the official blog post below.

“Hey everyone, you told us you wanted to hear about updates a few days in advance, so here’s a quick heads up that we have a PS3 firmware update in the works. Scheduled for release in the next few days, firmware 1.82 is an update that enables the playback of AVC High Profile (H.264/MPEG-4) files. As most of you know, these are high quality files that you’ll now be able to play on your PS3. Hopefully this update is moving us closer to the audio playback features many of you commented about in my post the other week. We’re continuing to evaluate and improve things across the board, including PS2 software compatibility. I’ll chime in here quickly with an update once the firmware is live and ready. Thanks for all of your support and feedback, keep it coming!”

[Via: PlayStation.Blog]

The Illuminati Exploit was revealed only a few days ago and since then Lumines sales have sky rocketed in the hopes that a downgrader will soon come out. Well it is here. All PSP owners now have the ability to downgrade their PSP and updgrade to Dark_AleX’s Custome Firmware to enjoy homebrew heaven. The downgrader only works for Firmware 3.50, to those who want to downgrade must upgrade to 3.50 first.

The downgrader includes a port of Homebrew ENabler (HEN) for firmware 3.50 which will automatically detect existing PSP motherboards, and will take the proper steps for the downgrade. As a recap, the Noobz team advises users to have the following ready:

1. A PSP, upgraded to the official Sony v3.50 firmware. You should also set your language settings to “English”.
2. A legal Lumines UMD, either the EU (ULES00043) or US (ULUS10002) version. The original, Platinum, or Greatest Hits versions are all fine. Support for the Japanese version will come soon.
3. Sufficient intelligence and english language skills to be able to carefully and thoroughly read the instructions.
4. It would also help if you’ve previously run the Illuminati Hello World, so that you’re familiar with how to run the Illuminati exploit.

There is always a risk of downgrading so it is important that you read the following warning messages, issued by Fanjita and the Noobz team, before attempting to downgrade:

• Any downgrader carries some risk of permanently damaging your PSP. We’ve done everything we can to remove as much danger as possible, but if you choose to use this downgrader, you are accepting all of the risk involved. Nobody else will be held responsible for any damage to your PSP, howsoever caused.
• Recent Sony official firmwares (3.30 onwards) have included checks that block upgrade from previously-downgraded PSPs with TA-082 or later motherboards. If you use this downgrader on such a PSP, you will lock yourself out of official firmware updates – although you will still be able to use new OE firmwares when they are released. We intend to release a tool to allow a return to official firmwares in the future.
• This software is provided free of charge, so that you can use legitimate homebrew on your PSP. You are explicitly prohibited from selling it, or using it to pirate commercial games or applications. If you want to play a commercial game, do the decent thing and support the developers by buying it. If you don’t, then YOU are contributing to the death of the PSP software industry.

Full installation and usage instructions should be available in the package. It is strongly recommended that you take a look at the “read me” before doing anything else.

[Download 3.50 Downgrader and HEN]

Here is another update for Tekken fans: Tekken 6 will reportedly have the biggest character lineup in any Tekken game to date. It will also feature the debut of two more never-before seen characters. Currently, the game’s about 50 per cent complete, so more updates should surface in the near future. According to SDTekken, Tekken 6 will have a new feature called the “Rage System”. This new feature will give players a boost to their attack damage depending on how low their life bar is. The lower the life bar, the stronger the attack.

Here are more details about the game from SDTekken:

• Live Monitor panel now has touch screen functionality. You can view either the live match or view other matches recorded throughout Japan.
• In T5DR, to be broadcasted on TEKKEN-NET live monitors you had to be Fujin ranked or above. For Tekken 6 it allows lower ranked matches to be broadcasted on the live network.
• Ranking starts at Beginner.
• Rankings will now be international.
• Tekken Teams/Clans can use an original common item.
• Teams/Clans will now be assigned a rank/level.
• You can achieve medals by completing certain tasks. Much like Virtua Fighter 5. For example, get a 15 win streak, receive a 15 win streak medal/reward.
• There are 12 total stages. Some stages are connected to each other. Not all stages will have a linked stage.
• There will still be infinite stages.
• For breakable stages, there are unique combos/juggles you can perform on those stages only.
• Namco does not intend to do minor patches/tweaks to the game(like VF5 does), instead they plan on launching the game and having it as balanced as possible in November.
• The new Tekken 6 arcade board has faster read/load times than Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection.

[Via: SDTekken]

Believe it or not but technology on your Playstation is being used to help develop new national security devices. Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are using the same technology used in the new Playstation 3 to develop new video tools for national security. The research is being done on this small supercomputer [the PlayStation 3], which has about one-quarter the computing power of the lab’s 8,000 square foot supercomputer.

Researchers hope to develop new ways to manage things like security video and facial recognition technology without a human administrator.

“It places a tremendous burden on the operator of those control environments that are looking at all those video feeds coming in and not knowing how to process all that information and this is an opportunity to bring machine based processing into the video analysis environment,” said lab researcher Mark Goodwin.

PNNL is working on the research with Massachusetts based Mercury Computer Systems.

[Via: KNDO/KNDU]

The long awaited Motorstorm patch is now available to download from the PlayStation Store in both North America and Europe. The main feature of the patch is the inclusion of a new Time Attack Mode. Stability issues have also been addressed, including glitches with boost, SD text cut-off, online performance and surround sound glitches. The update also allows for up to 50 friends in the game’s buddy list.

Remember to update the game before downloading the new game mode from the Store. To update the game, simply launch Motorstorm on your PS3 system. You will be prompted to download the update.

Firmware 3.50 was decrypted shortly after release, but not fully since Sony implemented various changes in the PRX formats. After being quiet for some time, new updates regarding the decryption progress as well as that of the next custom firmware have emerged. Accordingly, Mathieulh and Dark AleX are indeed working on Custom Firmware 3.50 OE and the project is already 5 per cent complete.

There are no details of what the new custom firmware will offer, but one of the main reasons for the new firmware is to utilize the 3.50 kernel. Lets hope the pair include some interesting new additions to the firmware. Look out for more details soon.

Blu-Ray is leading the High Definition DVD war thanks to the PlayStation 3. To further boost Blu-Ray, recently, Blockbuster announced that Blu-ray disc will be the exclusive HD movie format for 1,450 of their 1,700 stores in North America. This is a big win for the Blu-ray format, as Blockbuster noted they based their decision on consumer feedback.

“The consumers are sending us a message. I can’t ignore what I’m seeing,” said Matthew Smith, senior vice president of merchandising at Blockbuster, to The Associated Press.

By mid-July , they will have over 170 Blu-ray movies in stock. You can read the official Blockbuster announcement here.

One change in Firmware 3.50 that Sony failed to mention was that the PSP now uses the full power of the CPU. Previous firmware versions limited the CPU speeds to 266MHz – roughly 80 per cent of the portable console’s full power. But now, the PSP using Firmware 3.50 runs games at 333MHz, utilizing 100 percent of the CPU power. What does this mean? Faster game loading and possible better graphics for future games, but shorter battery life.

To those who use Dark_AleX’s OE Firmwares, 333MHz CPU speeds have been available for some time now so this really isn’t good news. The company has yet to give an official statement on this new feature, and whether this unlocked CPU speed is dedicated to post-3.50 UMD games, or will affect past titles as well. Maybe even a new battery is in the works to makeup for the extra power usage.