During the holiday season, Nintendo sold two Wii's for each Sony PlayStation 3. It appears that in Japan, Nintendo's strong trend continues, and they are currently selling 3 Wii's for every single PS3 sold. The official figures are 405,000 Wiis sold to 148,000 PS3's. If this trend continues, Sony will likely cut PS3 prices in Japan by the end of the year.

Sony has updated their PS3 firmware edition to 1.51, and requires the update the moment a user logs into the PlayStation Network. However, it doesn't really address any major issues (I'm not saying there are any), and it doesn't add functionality. When asked what 1.51 does compared to 1.5, Sony gave us a fine-worded answer.

Support for PLAYSTATION 3 format software titles has been expanded.

This probably has something to do with backwards compatibility, or allows future games to work.

Now that everyone knows that the PS3 is coming to Europe in March, Sony is beginning to heavily advertise their machine. Of course, a problem in the past has been painfully low shipment numbers on launch day. With only an estimated 150,000 units available at launch in America back in November, it was very hard to acquire a PS3. Sony says that the Europeans should not worry about such a problem, and promised no less than 220,000 PS3's for Europe.

For a while Saints Row for PS3 was considered nothing but a listing on EB Games and Gamestop. However, THQ has issued an official press release announcing Saints row for PS3. They will release it sometime this Spring, with no mention of whether or not there will be extra features. However, the PS3 version will have all the online features of the Xbox360 version (minus Xbox Live, of course), as well as some "minor transactions".

TOKYO - Although Sony is blaming its faltering profits partly on PlayStation 3 price cuts in Japan, a senior executive said Wednesday that further slashing prices may be in store for the just-launched video game machine. Pricing is among the factors Sony Corp. (SNE) is studying as it expects to break even in its money-losing gaming business next fiscal year, said Senior Vice President Takao Yuhara, stressing that no additional price cut has been decided. "We may look at the price as part of our strategy to expand the market when the timing is right," Yuhara told reporters at Sony's Tokyo headquarters.

Immersion's various legal battles with Sony over the force feedback controller are numerous, to say the least. While it good to see from a legal standpoint that Sony is not ignoring court orders by putting force feedback in their controller, it sure isn't good from a gamer's standpoint. SplitFish stated in a press release today that Sony doesn't have to have a vibration-less controller. SplitFish actually announced that they would be very willing to help Sony develop a force feedback system completely different from Immersion's solution. This means that if Sony wants force feedback in a future SIXAXIS revision, they could very well have it, if they accept SplitFish's offer to help.

One of Sony's most promoted features in the PS3 is it's backwards compatibility. Unfortunately, when the PS3 was first released, it hardly could boast this. Classic PS2 and PS1 games would be presented as garbled lines of text instead of something playable. In a firmware release that brings the console to version 1.5, Sony has fixed almost all compatibility issues, with exception to a very small amount of isolated cases. Any older game you run on the PS3 will be presented with a higher clarity than on the PS1 or PS2.

London, 25 January 2007 - Sony Computer Entertainment Europe today announced that PLAYSTATION 3 will be launched in the PAL territories of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Australasia on 23rd March 2007 at a price of EURO 599 (GBP 425, AUD 999.95, NZ 1199.95).

Responding to retail and consumer demand, SCEE confirmed that initially only the 60GB model would be available, with the 20GB model to follow later in the year dependent on demand.

Seems like there are a few people in the industry willing to bet some serious money on a March 23rd release for the Playstation 3. These sources are shop owners and the like. Even EA seems to be releasing Playstation 3 games on the 22/23rd of March. This would also confirm the statement from Sony, that everything is still on time for Europe. Let's hope so.

Transcend information, a leading company in manufacturing flash memory products showcased its new SD gaming cards designed specially for game consoles, such as Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii, at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The growing popularity of game consoles has catapulted the need for higher performance and bigger capacity flash memory cards.

When the Sony PlayStation 3 was released to the United States, people queued for days, and even shot each other over the next generation console from Sony. Sony has managed to ship 1 million PS3s to the United States, however, people just aren't buying them. Some people blame the high price of the console, others blame a rather lackluster collection of launch titles. Whatever the reason is, the PS3 simply isn't doing well right now. While PS3s are filling space on store shelves, the Nintendo Wii has become very successful, due to having reasonably good supply, a low price, an interesting controller, and a great set of launch titles.

Fenner Investments sues Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for infringing on its joystick

It sounds too nonsensical to be true, but Texas-based Fenner Investments sued all three console manufacturers for infringing their copyright on a "low-voltage joystick port interface" (patent number 6,297,751). The patent basically states:

The joystick port interface according the present invention is a low power port which interfaces a typical 5 Volt joystick peripheral device with a lower power computer port. The low-voltage joystick port interface includes a bidirectional buffer circuit and a pulse generator which, together, generate a digital pulse signal, representing a joystick coordinate position, based on an input analog measurement signal.

If Fenner wins the lawsuits, then they will succeed in banning all three consoles from market, as they are seeking damages and an injunction against the consoles.

In Japan, where both Nintendo and Sony originate, the competition is really fierce between technology companies. Sony is so far losing the console war in Japan. Nintendo sold close to a million Wiis in Japan, while Sony sold 466,716 PS3s. Sony had expected to sell a million consoles in Japan, though whether or not Sony's lack of sales is due to low supply is unclear. Microsoft's Xbox360 also did not do very well in Japan.

People who bought "The Descent" on Blu-ray hoping for a high-definition movie experience were sorely disappointed if they had a standard Blu-ray drive. While PS3 users watched away, people who had spent hundreds of dollars more on a standard Blu-ray drive could only stare at a blank screen. The problem has to do with the way Lions Gate Entertainment encrypted the Blu-ray. Lions Gate Entertainment used BD-Java technology, which is not compatible with any Sony or Pioneer stand-alone Blu-ray player. Sony is expected to patch the problem early this year.

While a lot of people would think Nintendo should win an Emmy for their controller, the people at the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences decided otherwise. The Sony PS3 controller won the Technology and Engineering Emmy Award at CES 2007, while Nintendo didn't even get an honorable mention. Sony's XBR interface is also being nominated for "Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Best Use of Personal Media Display and Presentation Technology". The actual Emmy will be awarded later tonight.

While both the Microsoft Xbox360 and Nintendo Wii support force feedback, the Sony PS3 somehow lacks anything like it. And so, it is no surprise that the Sony PS3 cannot support force feedback steering wheels. Sony explains it rather vaguely:

"All PS3 games are programmed for the Sixaxis which doesn't have force feedback, therefore the force feedback in the wheels won't be recognized."

Basically, Sony is saying that programming force feedback into PS3 games is not possible, due to the difficulty to adding an additional layer of programming to the "Sixaxis". Sony's lack of force feedback support may have something to do with the 2003 lawsuit brought against Sony by Immersion, and the judge's denial of Sony's subsequent appeal.

In the console war between Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, Microsoft has won this holiday season. Between November and Christmas day in 2006, Microsoft sold nearly 2 million Xbox360's. This was very close to Nintendo Wii sales, which totaled around 1.8 million. The Sony PS3 trailed at around 750,000 sales, which was less than half of the Wii sales.

Despite having upset some users by forcing Blu-ray upon anyone who buys their latest console, now Sony are taking it a step further and planning an updated PS3 which is not primarily intended as a gaming machine, but for multimedia. The new version of their console will feature improved anti-vibration on the Blu-ray drive to make it quieter, 512MB XDR memory, an improved PSU and two HDMI connectors dividing the audio and video. The appearance of the console may be very different to the standard Playstation 3 but it should still play all PS3 games. The Playstation itself has always been made by Sony Computer Entertainment, however this may be direct from Sony and will probably be very expensive.

Apparently Sony may have been using a new tactic with the release of its PS3. Some of the demo units supposedly have a feature which means that the console will freeze or turn off after a while and is not a faulty machine. Although this isn't confirmed, rumours are saying that Sony decided to have in store PS3s that crashed sometimes to try and prevent people coming into shops and taking control of the PS3 all day rather than buying one for themselves. However, some shop assistants are thinking the console is broken so not even turning it on, which can't help sales much. If this is true it's certainly an intriguing new approach, but not one that's likely to be particularly successful.

It may seem crazy, trading a console worth no less than $550 for one that retails for $250. However, that's exactly what people are doing. According to Craigslist.org, there are currently 6 people in Austin, 18 in New York City, and an impressive 48 in San Francisco trying to offload their PS3 for a Nintendo Wii. While most trades are PS3 for Wii and cash, there are some trades that are purely PS3 for Wii, meaning that the PS3 owner would be losing a considerable amount of money in the deal. While there is no definite reason for people doing this, some speculate that people owning a second PS3 who can't sell for the price they were looking for on Ebay can't think of a better way to use the PS3 then to trade it for a Nintendo Wii.

Getting hold of a PS3 can be hard enough by itself wherever you live, but with the only color you can get your hands on being black at the moment this custom console is even rarer. If you want to be special and have the chance to boast then you could put a bid in for this white PS3. It has been very carefully painted with gloss paint by PS3center.com and looks very different (plus controllers might be hard to get hold of). When I write this the price is at $1,425 with less than five days left. You can expect that price to surge over the last two days if it sells like other PS3s on eBay.

In an interview with CVG, Phil Harrison - Sony's head of Worldwide Studios - has admitted that he wouldn't guarantee a March launch for the Playstation 3 in Europe. Although Sony quickly issued a statement to say that it would be ready on time, this has still lead to speculation about the console's release date. A launch by April is still likely, however CVG claim that a source has told them the PS3 won't be available in Europe until September 2007 due to component shortages. People needn't worry yet because this is only a rumour, but Phil Harrison's comment would suggest that Sony themselves aren't sure when it will be ready.

Sony released today new system software update version 1.30 for PlayStation 3 consoles. This is the second update released since the PS3 official start three weeks ago. Among the key updates is support for a Blu-ray Disc remote control, and the ability to select the output format for BD/DVD video through an HDMI cable. If you plan to update your PS3 system, to software version 1.30, please click here.

Sony has started offering old Playstation games for download to Playstation 3 owners. These games are meant for the PSP, so you need to own both to take advantage of this offer. Games cost $5.99 and can be downloaded from the PlayStation Store accessed through the Playstation 3. The current games offered are: Cool Boarders, Crash Bandicoot, Hot Shots Golf 2, Syphon Filter and Tekken 2. Sony will release another wave of games later this month.

The team behind several mod chips for both the Xbox and the Playstation 2 already has an interesting new product for the Playstation 3 in the works. It is called the Hyperdrive and lets the user add an external SATA hard drive to the Playstation 3. This is great as game images take up around 18GB each, for which the internal drive is inadequate.