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Firmware update available on the 8th for North America/Japan and Asia. European PS3's will be preloaded with this latest update.

Features of this latest firmware include:

More refined PS Store frontend
Playstation Network integrity enhanced
Wallpapers from pictures
Ability to change background colours
Sony Connect Store for music and movies added to the PS Store. Hundreds of trailers/full films/song videos and mps3's available for download.
Playstation Card option in PS Store enabled.
Playstation Lifestyle- Similar to my space/youtube. User generated content and experiences are the key.
+ more.

Removal of Emotion Engine chips in PS3's in NA and Japan to follow in April. Reason for this is to reduce costs and focus on enhanced opportunities via software. Benefits include the ability to upscale selected PSone/PS2 games to 1080i/720p.

Lots of development talk.
Release dates for key games. Warhawk in June/July 2007. Heavenly Sword delayed. Killzone and MGS4 in late 2007.

New content on PS Store available on the 8th:

Tekken 6 trailer
Lair demo & trailer
Rainbow Six Vegas demo
EA: Skate trailer
Battlefield Bad Company trailer
Warhawk demo
Virtua Fighter 5 demo
Virtua Tennis 3 demo & trailer
GRAW 2: trailer
Mortal Kombat 2 game
Killzone trailer

Killzone demo for May.

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As GDC rapidly approaches, GameDaily's James Brightman sat down with conference director Jamil Moledina to discuss possible PS3 announcements among other things. According to Moledina, PS3 owners will be "very happy" come March 7 after hearing Phil Harrison's keynote. "Not to be coy but you'll just have to come to his talk" he told GameDaily. "All I can say is that I stand behind my 'very happy' comment."

It's likely Moldina has the advance on Harrison's keynote because, after all, it's his freakin' conference. And being that Jamil isn't on Sony's payroll, maybe PS3 owners do have some legitimate good news to look forward to next week. To say they need it is an understatement

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We just received a very interesting tip that, while juicy and quite believable, we're labeling as rumor for now. As you are probably well aware, GDC executive director Jamil Moledina set Sony's Phil Harrison up for the spike yesterday, claiming that PLAYSTATION 3 owners will be "very happy" when Phil's keynote takes place next week.

Could the PlayStation Home, Sony's blending of achievements and Miis be that big surprise?

While the rumor seems to make sense, keep in mind while reading through it that it came from an anonymous source and that the half-dozen development studios we spoke with hadn't heard a thing about it.

Sony, when contacted earlier today, said they do not comment on rumors or speculation.

Playstation Home sounds like it could be an interesting, lo-fi, killer app, as described by our source.

Basically, you get to make an avatar for your console (like a Mii) and this avatar has a room. As you play games and accomplish certain tasks, you will receive items with which to adorn the room that are specific to the game (achievements). The kicker is that this is going to be a new requirement for every PS3 game...

This also sounds kind of like it could fulfill the promise Sony made at last year's GDC keynote to bring social networking to the PS3.

So we move from product based to service based, starting with packaged product augmented by downloadble content. We'll enhance this with social networks, the MySpace experience, this will be a key part of the PlayStation3 going forward. What brings it to life is the voice chat, the text chat, the video, the social features we're building in for the future.

Rooting around some recent (and not so recent) comments from Sony spokespeople, we find some things that might just validate this.

From Phil's recently published DICE interview with Newsweek editor N'Gai Croal comes this tidbit, following a discussion on the "lo-fi" approach Nintendo took with their Mii avatars:

If you are going to have an avatar which is your representative in a virtual world, it has to stand for more of your personality than some 2-D cartoons. So while I think that millions of people would be happy with cartoony looks, the planet at large probably isn't. And it's an experiment that will be played out very soon, actually.

From Dutch gaming site Next Generation Gamer comes this choice quote from an unidentified Sony rep:

We have something big coming up for the PlayStation Network, but I can't say anything about that yet. It has something to do with the Home Button on the SIXAXIS controller, and with the community.

Again, this is rumor. Our source continues to remain anonymous. Sony could be announcing the robust set of social features it has been touting for a long time, ones that go beyond voice and video chat, and tap into the collective and competitive feature sets that helped make both Xbox Live and Animal Crossing a hit with gamers.

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is it jsut me or does that game looks like shit graphically? i know that the gameplay will prob be crazy but the graphics looked awful in the trailer

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