Firmware 2.42 has just been made available on PSN for all you PS3 owners out there. Although there are no Blu-ray upgrades to speak of, the official word is that “This update improves the playback quality of some PLAYSTATION 3 and PlayStation format software.” Hopefully this update should go along without a hitch this time.
Tags: Playstation 3, PS3, PS3 News
The first quarter of Sony’s fiscal year shows a profit in its games division with strong sales of the PS3 leading the way. Sony’s game unit helped the company with $51 million in operating income. 1.56 million PS3s were sold worldwide this quarter, good for an increase of 860,000 units over last years first quarter. Overall however, Sony Corp posted a decrease in earnings over last years fiscal first quarter. Severe film declines brought a 47.4% drop in income, good for $330 million in net income.
It’s good to see strong PS3 sales keeping Sony’s game unit profits up. This can only mean that Sony will continue its effort to keep Blu-ray in its forefront, in much the same way they did to win the format war.
Tags: Playstation 3, PS3, PS3 News, Sony
Blu-ray Technologies Inc. is looking to make a name for itself by first being America’s first indie Blu-ray manufacturing plant and now becoming the largest indie Blue-ray disc mastering facility in the US. The indie Blu-ray plant will handle rewritable disc mastering, provide pre-mastering, and will most importantly be capable of handling Blu-ray Profile 2.0. Cofounder and chairman, Erick Hansen added, “We have more experience at this than any other indie on the planet. The discs will be mastered, encoded and delivered right.”
Tags: Blu-ray News, Blu-ray Technologies
If you’re looking to be a proud owner of the standard, non-gunmetal, 80GB Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle then your best bet is to by your computer when it goes on sale later today on Amazon.com at 10am PST. This bundle will cost $499 and includes the 80GB PS3 system, a regular copy of Metal Gear Solid 4, and a DualShock 3 controller. According to Amazon, “demand for this item is so great, we anticipate selling out very quickly.” The system will be available in stores June 12th but they are expected to sell out quickly.
[Amazon]
Tags: Blu-ray News, Playstation 3, PS3, PS3 News, Sony
It looks like two new release made it into the top 20 this week, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Once again half of the top 20 titles on DVD aren’t available on Blu-ray, such as each of the first three Indiana Jones movies. Consumers will just have to wait until more catalog titles are released on Blu-ray to even the availability between both formats.
As for the market share, Blu-ray sales went up 21.71% over last week but that figure still accounts for 5% of the top 20 sales. We’re looking forward to next week’s numbers to see if new release National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets or any of the Paramount reissues made an impact on sales.
Tags: Blu-ray News, Nielsen
Two men were arrested and convicted for stealing 1,440 Playstation 3 consoles from a warehouse in Grange Park, Northampton, UK. The two men, Partizan Zejak, age 28, and Nard Paloka, 29, were former employees at a warehouse belonging to NYK Logistics, a contracted distributor for Sony. Apparently the two men arranged for a truck to arrive at the warehouse where they made off with 25 pallets of PS3s. The pallets went missing and have not been recovered. The amount for the heist totaled £700,000 (US $1.4 million). That’s a lot of money, good thing they got caught. Now, about finding those 1,440 missing PS3s…..
The sexy Metal Gear Gunmetal Limited Edition PS3 will be available to pre-order next Monday exclusively on Konami’s official website. The price is $599 and the package includes a gunmetal PS3, matching DualShock 3 controller, and the Limited Edition version of Metal Gear Solid 4. It’s not really that great of a packaged deal but if you must own the sexiest Blu-ray player on the market, then the price shouldn’t matter. Besides it has Profile 2.0 so you shouldn’t worry about its future compatibility with Blu-ray movies. Production on this will be limited so picking one up ASAP is a must.
Tags: Blu-ray Players, PS3, PS3 News
It’s been less than a week that we heard about a man murdered over a PS3 and now comes this horrific story about kidnapping, torture, and alleged sexual assault over a game. Two teenagers were at a bus stop when they were blindfolded and forced by four suspects into a car. They were then taken to an unknown location where they were tortured and beaten. The suspects were searching for information on a stolen PS3 system and missing PS3 game.
The teens could offer no information so the suspects bizarrely gave them new clothes and $20 to pay for a ride to the hospital. The victims suffered from burns, stab and puncture wounds. So far only one suspect, 21 year old Christopher Johnson, has been arrested and charged with 31 counts which include kidnapping, sodomy, and use of dangerous weapons. The other three suspects remain at large.
Sony has revealed that 9.24 millon PS3 consoles were sold over the last financial year ending March 31st, 2008. This is an increase of 5.63 million over the previous fiscal year, translating into a growth of 250%. This solidifies the PS3’s top spot as the best selling Blu-ray player, though in all fairness most buy it as a video game console first. These sales numbers can only help the Blu-ray market that’s received less than stellar predictions from analysts.
Tags: Blu-ray News, PS3, PS3 News
NetBlender and Blufocus have joined forces to develop, implement, and certify BD Touch Technology for the Blu-ray industry. BD Touch was developed by NetBlender and brings together Apple’s iPhone/iPod Touch and Blu-ray’s BD Live to form a combination that allows users to transfer digital copies to the their iPhones from Blu-ray discs or use the iPhone as a remote control for Blu-ray games. The video above shows BD Touch in use. Blufocus has developed Blu-ray interactive features and have advanced testing and certification methods in place. John Harrington, NetBlender CEO, believes that both companies ‘offer the Blu-ray industry and and unparalleled BD-Live solution’.
[PR Web]
Tags: Blu-ray News, Blu-ray Software, Blufocus, NetBlender
