The PS3 Hacked..Finally!

It seems that the genius who broke open the iPhone (Geohot Verbatim),  has been spending time breaking open the PS3. How much time? He says it has taken him 5 weeks to finally break through the securities Sony had put in place.
The hack itself is just the ability to access the entire system memory, so it won’t play your downloaded games or allow home-brew as yet. His next step is to reverse engineer everything he has found, but this is definitely a step towards a completely open system for homebrewers and pirates.
3 years 2 months and 11 days it has taken, so you gotta give Sony some credit.
Via [PS3 Hacks]

Sony Enters Streaming Video Market

Seems Sony has rounded up a bunch of studios and talked them into entering the 21st century of film distribution. Arriving, sometime this year, a system titled Qriocity will be avaliable on pretty much anything that runs a XMB (Vaio’s, BRAVIA’s, maybe PS3). The system will launch with hundreds of films in both SD and HD formats.

What doesn’t make sense is why it has taken Sony so long to make this happen? They already own a massive studio, and sure it might have taken some time to get 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Walt Disney Pictures, Lionsgate, Warner Brothers, Universal and MGM on board, but they could have started with Sony Classics and grew.

I am hoping for a good value subscription based service, with a local mirror at my ISP and fast cinema to services. I can dream can’t I?

Via [Sony Insider]

DualShock 3 Is Coming To US In April

The title pretty much says it all, except the date, which is April 15th. Ohh, it will cost $US54.99. Now what do I write to make the article more informative and fun? I got nothing, sorry people.

For more info (like you need more), click over to Kotaku.

Play Copied PS3 Games Doable?

This is a break through that pirates worldwide will love to hear about. What is the news? There has been success in running backup Playstation 3 games on a “PS3 Test” development machine. The better news is, they were able to play games from internal and external (USB) HDD’s.
There are a few little things to remember before being able to do this of course. These include stripping the games of encryption, patching them, and remastering to get them to load. Not something many people without know how can do.
The good news for non-know-how’ers (I made it up, but I think it works) is there will surely be nice pirates out there who will happily place pre-hacked games on torrent sites (that will then be taken to court) for everyone to leech. It has taken over a year, but eventually the hackers always win.

For more info, click over to Engadget.

IBM Shrink Cell, Spurs PS3 Slim Rumours

IBM have announced the shrinking of the Cell fabrication. The new size, which seems to be the hip size for processors, is 45nm. The size will add a lot of advantages to the processor, which include power savings, cost savings, heat savings and physical size savings. All these savings should hopefully spill into savings for us poor consumers.
IBM have said that the new 45nm processors will use up to 40% less power, and its die area will be reduced by 34 percent. This is all possible because of the next-generation 45nm high-k process (whatever that means).
All this information makes the little OLED (my brain is energy conscious) in my brain flash. If the die size is so much smaller, and doesn’t require as much cooling, could the PSP become a Cell powerhouse? I just hope that it makes its way into the PS3 Slim, which everybody knows is going to happen sooner or later.

For more cell info, click over to Ars Technica.

Skinny PS3 In Training?

Who doesn’t think the PlayStation 3 is gigantic? Ok, Kenny George might think it is small, but that’s because he’s 7′7. Rumour has it that Sony are doing a Slim version of the PS3. It makes sense considering their past with PlayStation hardware (PS2 Slim, PSP Slim). Lets hope that it happens soon, with the added bonus of a price drop (I still wouldn’t be able to afford it).

For more info, run over to The Register.

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White PS3 Going To US

It has been out in Japan for a while now, but seems Sony have seen it wise to bring it to US shores. The white 40GB PS3 appears to be the same model as the Japanese version, so nothing new to see here sorry. No release date as yet, but couldn’t be to far away.

For more info, click over to Engadget.

PC Gaming On Linux PlayStation 3 Possible!

You have heard of streaming audio, and maybe video, but what about streaming games? There are currently companies making streaming products, but I’ve never heard of anything that can do what this system can.
Imagine playing any PC game ever release on your PS3 with good frames and quality. Welcome to the reality of SteamMyGame. The basic idea of the product is you have a Windows machine that takes the game and then turns it into a video and control stream. It means that your older machines can play new games, that is of course, if you have a fast enough machine in the house to run it.
There are many options for this incredible piece of software, such as the ability to play games over the Internet, without worrying about PC requirements and without having to downloading the game at all. It will create a new market for ‘rent a game system’ and options for future consoles to be dumb terminals.
If you want to have a play, you can jump over to the StreamMyGame website and download the program for free. If it is as good as it says, this could be the best thing since slice bread (for PC game streaming).

For more info, jump over to Akihabara News.

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Say Bye Too Playstation 3 20 and 60 In Japan

Death to the 20 and 60 GB versions of the Playstation 3 has been announced by Sony in Japan today. The 40GB, which does not contain the backwards compatibility chip, will be continued with no news on the 80GB model, which is already hard to find. Wonder if Sony will hit up a bigger better model soon, to widen the now small line-up.

For info at  I4U.

Dual Shock 3 Hitting US 2008

S0mething those lucky Japanese people have already got their hands on, is the new Dual Shock 3 controller for the PS3. Fortunately for US residents, they will also get it fairly soon. From the people over at Engadget, it should be arriving early 2008, which they found through a little hidden bit of info in the PS3 firmware 2.01 update. Australia is closer to Japan, why do we have to wait so long?

For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog.