Standalone 250 GB PS3 Slim debut Nov 3
It seems that Sony has been busy since the release of their 120GB PS3 Slim (with one million sold in three weeks). There have been rumors of a 250GB PS3 System, but it turned out to be a bundle. Now Sony has announced that the standalone 250GB PS3 Slim is coming out Novemeber 3. The bigger hard drive capacity will set you back $349.99 and will have all of the same features of the 120GB PS3 slim model.
The $100 increase in price will once again make the PS3 the most expensive console. At least the PS3 allows (even encourages) the ability for the user to put in a larger hard drive. As opposed to the Xbox 360 being locked to whatever expensive part they want to sell you (Hello $50 for 64 MEGABYTES of flash storage). For more information on how to upgrade your PS3 Slim HDD (hard drive), go here.
Little Big Planet Mechanical AI
I ran across this video on Youtube today. A Little Big Planet user named Cristel put together a mechanical AI that will play Tic tac Toe against you. It is pretty amazing what somebody can do inside of a video game. This reminds me of the complex machines created with Garry's Mod, what people can do! To make this creation even more amazing is that you can't actually program in Little Big Planet. This is all a collection of levers, switches and wires; no programming code runs the AI. It is so sad that Little Big Planet has been underselling. Maybe once people know they can create levels like this, sales will pick up? From the Youtube page:
In this Little Big Planet level, you can play Tic Tac Toe against a machine. There are 2 boards. One is beatable, and one hopefully isn't. First I show you the level, after that I show you the edit mode. You can find my level on the first page of the 'highest rated' levels. It's called 'Tic Tac Toe'. My PSN name is Cristel. Have fun!
And here is the video for the actual level. I might have to go to my friend's house and play Tic Tac Toe against this Little Big Planet AI.
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PlayStation Home Connection Fix Inbound
It looks like there is a patch inbound for the PlayStation Home beta to fix connection error C-931. Although, it seems that it is only "the first step in tackling the connection issues that you'll know as C-931 errors". I wonder how bad the connection issues can be? I thought that it would be an issue in regards to the sheer amount of volume of people trying to log into the servers. The C-931 patch will go live tomorrow (December 18th). Let's hope that this doesn't set PlayStation Home back too much and the development team will get time to add more features to their product. You can check out the Home support forum for more information on this fix and to keep up with the news.
Via Joystiq
Playstation Home Information
So the big news this week is that PlayStation Home has finally arrived! There was a bit of a rocky start at the begining, with PlayStation Home not being available for download and connection issues. Although, with PlayStation Home being widely anticipated by many PlayStation 3 owners, who wouldn't have foreseen that the PlayStation Networks getting hammered. Now it seems that everything is getting better and users are able to log into Platstation Home with few issues.
Gizmodo has an awesome top ten list of things you need to know about PlayStation Home. The ones that stood out for me were:
4) There will be microtransactions, lots of 'em. Diesel is the partner Sony has been most vocal about for the time being, with pieces of their branded clothing available for $1-$2. And if you want to expand beyond your base apartment, a Summer House will be available for $5.
6) Free Games! PS Home features free bowling and billiards along with a few choices in arcade games. Your avatar actually walks up to a particular arcade cabinet before playing games like a Breakout clone or a gimped version of Ecochrome. Interesting in theory, so-so in execution. And only one guy on a machine at a time.
9) The theater works great...for an ad. You can sit down to watch a movie...if there were a movie. For now, you can watch a loop of a preview for Twilight and an accompanying music video. The quality is that of typical flash video, though the video screen does render smoothly into the 3D background.
The idea of purchasing clothes for an avatar is not very appealing but on the plus side, being able to watch movies within a game with your friends sounds pretty cool. Especially when they allow user uploaded movies ( I wonder how they will deal with copyright issues?). Maybe it will end up something like the Netflix streaming with friends with Xbox360.
Microsoft took a swipe at the PlayStation Home launch by comparing it to Second Life for hardcore gamers. The full quote from Aaron Greenberg is:
"What Home to me feels like is Second Life for hardcore gamers," he said, "it doesn’t feel like it broadens the experience and invites people in. When they unveiled it, it seemed innovative. I think what's happened is now here we are a couple of years later and we feel beyond that."It feels like 2005 tech in 2008. I'm not sure that’s what people want."
Gizmodo doesn't belive that Playstation Home is the same thing as Second Life because of the fact that you can't create content, only buy it. They go on to say that:
Home could be a great platform one day, but Sony needs to provide the content to back it up. And right now, anything short of more advertising is lacking. In Home, I feel like a prisoner—my uniform matches all the other inmates as I walk around beside the other inmates endlessly with nothing to do.
Time will tell with Home, so who knows how it will turn out, but in the meantime, hit up my buddy over at Last Geek for codes to get into the Playstation Home: Uncharted areas. His post has the codes for Uncharted: Sully Bar Room, so get the codes and go explore!