Sony has now officially announced that they have discontinued the production of the Motorstrom 80GB bundle.  But don't fret, they're coming out with the new and improved 80GB system.  This brute comes with the snazzy Dualshock 3 controller and a copy of Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots.  The cost for this bad boy is a somewhat painful $500. {Thanks uberusmaximus}

 —"What you mean, you're firing me?"

The National Purchase Diary released their monthly sales report, with only 1,969,800 next generation consoles sold. The Nintendo Wii was in first at 714,000 sales, 36% of all sales that month. Nintendo DS sold 414,800, and the PSP sold 192,700. The Xbox 360 was fourth place this time, at 188,000. The PS3 ranked fifth with only 187,100, very much less than expected. Though many estimates for sales were off by large numbers, it was a good month for Nintendo and the Wii.

[source: qj.net]

The latest episode of Insomniac's "Full Moon Show" podcast, indicate that a playable build of Resistance 2 will be available for press at PlayStation Day. Unfortunately, no video of the game will be made available after the event, leaving you to snack on only a collection of screenshots and hands-on impressions before June 13th. We'll be at the event and will endeavor to bring you those all-important screenies and our own hands on impressions of the game as soon as possible.

PlayStation Day occurs on Tuesday, May 6th so be sure to check back here for full coverage of the event.

[Resource Kyle]

A slew of new content was added to the Playstation Store for PSP and PS3 owners yesterday.
Here's what Sony has given us: 

Downloadable Games

• echochrome (US$ 9.99)

Add-on Game Content

• Rock Band
  • “Zero” – Smashing Pumpkins (US$ 1.99)
  • “Time-Sick Son of a Grizzly Bear” – The Mother Hips (US$ 1.99)
  • “Red Tandy” – The Mother Hips (US$ 1.99)
• Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore (US$1.49 each)
  • “(You Make Me Feel Life) A Natural Woman” – Aretha Franklin
  • “Against All Odds” – Phil Collins
  • “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” – Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
  • “Ain’t Nothing Life the Real Thing” – Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
  • “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” – Temptations
  • “Alone” – Heart
  • “Always Something There to Remind Me” – Naked Eyes
  • “American Woman – Lenny Kravitz
  • “Born to be Wild” – Steppenwolf
  • “Careless Whisper” – Wham
  • “Complicated” – Avril Lavigne
  • “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” – Queen
  • “Do I Make You Proud” – Taylor Hicks
  • “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” – Culture Club
  • “Every Rose Has its Thorn” – Poison
  • “Flashdance…What a Feeling” – Irene Cara
  • “Greatest Love of All” – Whitney Houston
  • “Here I Go Again” – Whitesnake
  • “I Got You Babe” – Sonny & Cher
  • “If I Ain’t Got You” – Alicia Keys
  • “I’m Coming Out” – Diana Ross
  • “It’s Your Love” – Tim McGraw & Faith Hill
  • “Just the Way You Are” – Billy Joel
  • “Ladies Night” – Kool & the Gang
  • “Let’s Get it On” – Marvin Gaye
  • “Love Will Keep Us Together” – Captain & Tennille
  • “My Girl” – Temptations
  • “New York
  • "New York” – Frank Sinatra
  • “On the Road Again” – Willy Nelson
  • “Photograph” – Nickelback
  • “Proud Mary” – Creedance Clearwater
  • “Respect” – Aretha Franklin
  • “Stand By Your Man” – Tammy Wynette
  • “Straight Up” – Paula Abdul
  • “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” – Fall Out Boy
  • “Taking Care of Business” – Bachman Turner Overdrive
  • “The First Cut is the Deepest” – Sheryl Crow / Rod Stewart
  • “The Real Thing” – Bo Bice
  • “When the Sun Goes Down” – Kenny Chesney & Uncle Kracker
  • “Who Can it be Now?” – Men At Work
  • “You and Me” – Lifehouse
  • “You’re My Best Friend” – Queen

Game Demos

• Dark Sector (free)

Game Videos (free)

• echochrome Trailer
• Battlefield Bad Redford Blog
• Kung Fu Panda Trailer
• Dead Space Announcement Trailer
• Dead Space Ship Date Trailer
• Turok “Bring It” Trailer
• Turok – “Kane” Gameplay Trailer
• NBA Ballers: Chosen One TV Spot
• Wyclef’s “Fast Car” Music Video

PS3 Wallpaper

• echochrome Wallpapers (x4)
• Kung Fu Panda Wallpapers (x3)

PLAYSTATION STORE for PC (PSP)

Downloadable Games

• echochrome (US$ 9.99) (also downloadable via PS3)

Game Videos (free)

• echochrome Trailer
• Wyclef’s “Fast Car” Music Video

PSP Wallpaper (free)

• echochrome Wallpapers (x4)

Quite a lot, no? Enjoy! .

The newest Grand Theft Auto game took a long time to make, and apparently, it was the most expensive. Rockstar Games let slip that the game supposedly cost $100 million to make. This breaks the previous record of $70 million. This massive figure is a sign of the video game industry’s expansion, and a good reason not to pirate games. Funny thing is, Rockstar has gained all that money back (probably doubled it) in less then these 2 days.

For a long time now, Metal Gear players have been waiting for the Metal Gear Online Premiere Beta kick-off.  Unfortunately their joy has been delayed because of a patch that Konami has been installing. 

The wait is now over. Users in all regions can now triumphantly log on to the MGO servers and play their eyes out.  As promised, it will start with the players creating their own characters and customizing their stats.  Have fun. 

Sony Computer Entertainment has announced that PS3 users will now have to wait just a bit longer to get a taste of PlayStation Home. With an open beta not expected to begin until fall of 2008.

Following completion of the extended closed beta test, the Home open beta service will commence in fall 2008.

Well, its better to have a prefect Home release than one that will be full of glitches and bugs, right?

April 15th on the East Coast and firmware 2.30 is live. The major update for this release is new redesigned PLAYSTATION Store, and trust me, this is as good it gets. As soon as you clicked that X button on your Sixaxis controller, you will hear the first sound update on the PLAYSTATION Store.

So if you haven't yet upgraded to 2.30, you better do it now or else as a PS3 user, you are missing out!

Hideo Kojima's commented on his own creation, Metal Gear Solid 4 and the PS3. It's almost inevitable our take on the situation will be misconstrued as blind fanboy bias, but we'd like to try to take an objective glance at what he said. In a recent interview in Edge magazine, Kojima said that the gameplay of MGS4 is fairly close to his vision, but the graphical side of things got a slight hit from what he envisioned: "things like motion-blending and the size of the map, totally was not accomplished to my original vision – to my satisfaction."

After their initial TGS showing, everyone was excited to see what the PS3 was capable of, but once development really started, Kojima says they could not evolve as much as he wanted. "The original vision was to go ten steps further, the reality was just one step, which isn't to say we didn't progress." The CPU apparently is at fault here, as the Cell is being fully employed, says Kojima.

He doesn't blame the PS3 and rightly so that one thing to lay out your plans and envision what you'd like to do, but when it comes to it, you've got to sacrifice some of your dreams and ideals. Was Kojima dreaming too much with his original ideas? Not really– but what he wanted might have been something we'll need to wait another generation for. We'd like to have a smell-o-vision, but we'll settle for rumble. Is that the PS3's fault? Nah. Kojima should relax — his game looks fantastic and we're sure all his fans will agree he's made much more progress than he's giving himself credit for.

[via NeoGAF]

Sony announced that they have just released their official PS3 firmware version 2.30 on April 15th

Changes for 2.30:

The Blu-ray Disc playback now supports DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio output.
However, The PS3 system does not support playback of DTS-ES and DTS 96/24 for DVD-Video or DTS-ES Matrix for Blu-ray Discs.