Unlike last year, we will not be live blogging Sony’s Press Conference. Frankly, we don’t see the point seeing as half the gaming community will be doing it for us. Instead, be sure to check out XTREME PS3 throughout the day on the major announcements coming straight from the Expo. If you are interested in checking out a live blog, check out the links below.
Find out when Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are having their press conference this week below. Microsoft will be the first company to have their press conference later today followed by Nintendo and Sony on Tuesday. You can watch the press conferences online, with a number of websites streaming live – details below.
The US PlayStation Website suggests that new hardware will be revealed at E3 this week. The website states, “The E3 expo is coming! Meet us here to find out what awesome PlayStation games and hardware are being revealed.” In addition, CVG has learned that Sony is set to reveal two new PS3 SKUs this week which will come bundled with the Move motion controller.
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If you aren’t confident in upgrading your PS3 Hard Disk youself, Sony has just announced a new service in Japan. The service upgrades your current PS3 to 250GB as well as taking care of moving all the content to the new disk, labor and returning the original drive.
With the release of Firmware 3.30 today, Sony has also updated the Terms of Service and the End-User License Agreement (EULA). One of the main modifications is to the “Maintenance and Upgrades” clause, which allows Sony to automatically change functionality on the PS3 and could “cause a loss of data or content or cause a loss of functionalities or utilities.”
While Sony has been doing a good job of keeping the PS3 up-to-date with new firmware updates and features, today’s announcement of Firmware v3.21 is a backwards move by Sony. The 3.21 firmware update will remove the OtherOS feature from the older PS3 models over “security concerns,” mainly due to the recent exploit discovered by hacker George Hotz. However, this isn’t the first time Sony has removed functionality from the PS3.
Sony has had a great 2009, with gamers buying 15% more PS3 games than 2008. The PS3 was also the only console in the U.S. to see double-digit growth in sales this past quarter. December also marked the best sales month in the platform’s history, breaking one million hardware units and 7.3 million software units. January has seen a 36% sales increase on compared to last January.
Bayonetta was recently patched to alleviate loading times on the PS3 version of the game. The 135MB patch allows you to install 4.5GB of data to your PS3 hard drive to significantly improve load times significantly and reduce screen tearing as well. It turns out that patch was not created by Sega or Platinum Games, and was instead put together by Sony themselves.
Sony Computer Entertainment boss Kaz Hirai outlined Sony’s strategy for 2009 at today’s keynote speech during the Tokyo Game Show. Sony’s strategy seems pretty clear – an emphasis on network play, and creating an attractive price point for the PlayStation 3. He said there are eight elements of network gaming: watch, create, communication, learn, play, share, and discover.
If you are not attending this year’s E3, there is no need to miss out on Sony’s Press Conference. You can catch the big announcements online from 7:00PM BST (11:00AM PST) tomorrow at IGN and GameSpot, and from within PlayStation Home. The Pavillion Space is all setup within PlayStation Home, though we’re not sure whether the conference will be streamed live into PlayStation Home. Sony’s conference is expected to be 2 hours long.
