Hasta La Gadget!

Well, what do we have here? No sooner do we get a 250GB Xbox 360 on the horizon does this image land in our tip box, showing a PlayStation 3 slim bundle for Uncharted 2 that just so happens to have that 250GB hard drive we spotted in the FCC last month. We’ve been able to independently confirm that it’s legit, but beyond that we’ve got no clue when it’ll be announced or any price / release date information. We wouldn’t be surprised to see this hit stores in mid-October alongside Uncharted 2, but that’s just a guess on our part. With any luck, SCE exec Kaz Hirai will be shedding some light at his Tokyo Game Show keynote next week — c’mon Sony, don’t keep us in the dark too long.

Update: Joystiq points us to this rumor from last week that Uncharted 2, Assassin’s Creed II, and Gran Turismo 5 bundles are possibly slated for the UK in October for £299 ($494), just £50 more than the current 120GB model.

Update 2: We just got off the line with SCEA, who has denied the photo and told us quite plainly that there’s no bundles being planned for America, but that the rep can’t speak for other regions (e.g. Europe, Japan) — not surprising, of course, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, right?

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250GB PlayStation 3 slim Uncharted 2 bundle leaked? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Turns out not everyone was amused by Sony’s tongue-in-cheek PlayStation 3 Slim ad about internet rumors — just ask the Nigerian government. The line in question, “you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, otherwise I’d be a Nigerian millionaire by now,” apparently caused a bit of a stir, and the local authorities demanded the company pull the commercial. It’s now been replaced in the company’s Viddler account with a slightly altered version that claims online FUD is “how World War One got started.” Someone should tell Sony Director of Rumor Confirmation Kevin Butler that there’s a certain assassinated Austrian Archduke who would beg to differ. Revised video after the break, and just for kicks, we found the old video on YouTube for comparison.

[Via Joystiq]

Continue reading Brilliant PS3 Slim ad loses Nigerian scam reference, internet rumors now known to have started WWI

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Brilliant PS3 Slim ad loses Nigerian scam reference, internet rumors now known to have started WWI originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s this, another fun tech demo from Sony? Just a few days ago we got a glimpse of the PS3VR library, which allows seamless zooming from far away to very, very close indeed. The company also showed off voice recognition tech and it’s now applying the same idea to the PlayStation Eye, fulfilling earlier promises of advanced facial recognition for the PS3. It’s called the Vision Library and, once a face has been analyzed, the machine can tell it apart from others, determine orientation, identify gender, tell what expression that face is… expressing, and then superimpose some big-eyed anime head right on top of it real-time. We fear this might take some of the fun out of cosplay night, but could make life rather more interesting for freaks with bovine fetishes. See for yourself after the break.

Continue reading Video: Sony’s Vision Library for PlayStation Eye recognizes faces, creates nightmarish human-cow hybrids

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Video: Sony’s Vision Library for PlayStation Eye recognizes faces, creates nightmarish human-cow hybrids originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re sick of hearing your grandmother brag about how popular her chosen console is while she rocks your world in Wii Sports Bowling yet again, maybe this news will finally shut her up. Last week, thanks to a flurry of price cuts and slimming waistlines, the other two players in the console war saw significant sales boosts. Xbox 360 numbers jumped 32 percent over the week before and the PS3 was up an impressive 104 percent. That puts all three consoles neck-and-neck for the American weekly sales lead, each one close enough to 75,000 units that the margin of error more than covers the lot. But, since both price cuts officially went into effect part-way through that week, we’re expecting even bigger surges ahead — and even bigger drops from the Nintendo’s offering as we get further and further away from the release of Wii Sports Resort, seemingly the last game worth playing on the thing.

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PS3 and Xbox 360 hardware sales jump last week amid price cuts, both beat Wii for once originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, here’s a bit of a curious situation. As Joystiq reports, it wasn’t long after the PS3 firmware 3.0 went live that the first reports of problems started cropping up, with one particularly nagging issue being that some controllers (specifically the CECHZC2H Ceramic White DualShock3) seemed to be locked out of the console once the update was installed. After hashing it out a bit on the official PlayStation3 forum, however, users apparently determined that the controllers in question were in fact knock-offs and not official Sony product, which raises some different but just as interesting questions. Namely, is Sony locking the knock-offs out on purpose, or is firmware 3.0 just too much for them to handle? For its part, Sony doesn’t seem to be saying anything on the matter just yet, but we’ll keep you posted.

[Via Joystiq]

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PS3 firmware 3.0 locking out knock-off controllers? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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