Sony has confirmed that the 80GB PS3 will be coming to Europe on August 27. Sony announced yesterday that the company was phasing out the 40GB device for the 80GB model in the US but now it looks certain that UK gamers will get the new console sooner rather than later.
That said, it looks like we are going to be left out of the launch of the long-awaited video download service until 2009.
Gamesindustry.biz reported SCEE boss David Reeves, as saying:
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At the E3 event, Sony confirmed that the 40GB PS3 - the one Europe was lumped with - is to be phased out in favour of the 80GB model. All of this is good news except for the fact that it will not be exactly the same as the 80GB model that’s aways been out in the US.
CEO Jack Tretton confirmed that the 80GB PS3 is going to be the main model on offer to UK - and other countries - as the year progresses but said that the new 80GB version will offer the same functionality as the 40GB model.
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I’m here in Berlin at the big Sony Vaio bash and, in between beer steins and sausages, I thought I’d share a few first impressions of some of the new features you’ll be seeing on the new notebooks.
Isolated keyboard
Boy, does this make a difference to typing or what? We’ve seen these on the MacBooks but now Sony has decided to roll isolated keyboards across most of the new Vaio lines. You know when you’re on a typing roll: thoughts are flying and, for once, your fingers are keeping up, getting faster and faster? And then, of course, you look up after 3 minutes of furious bashing to read back your wonderful prose and are greeted with text that looks like a small bird flew in the window and spent a minute walking around your keyboard. That’s what this passage looked like a few minutes ago. I took 5 minutes out with the new keyboard and I have to admit that it made a big difference. The number of usual errors dropped off dramatically and, even when you mis-hit the intended key, there’s less chance of hitting the one beside it. Typing is also a lot quieter, more tactile and it just looks a whole lot better too.
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Sony has taken the wraps of its new lineup of Vaio notebooks, the first of which is the new FW series with some clever design tweaks and most sporting Blu-ray drives.
The most noticeable change - across all of the 4 new families launched today in Berlin - is the spine, now even more cylindrical than usual and sporting a big, glowing green power button at one end - representing the ‘energy of life’, don’t you know. Good looking though.
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Not everyone who owns an MP3 player is particularly into their music and/or video, and not everyone who listens to or watches digital media is that bothered by performance and quality.
If you fit this particular description you could get away with buying a relatively cheap player that still offers a range of functions for far less than the ‘industry standard’ offerings from companies like Apple and Sony.
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One of the more interesting services to be announced for the PSP has just gone live in the UK & Ireland, allowing owners to access a new video-on-demand service with Sky, beginning with a 1-month free trial.
Users will be able to access content from Disney-ABC-ESPN Television, BBC Worldwide, Sony Pictures Television International, NBC Universal International Television Distribution, National Geographic and Sky Sports. The service is PC-based and uses the Kontiki peer-to-peer software for downloading programmes which can then be transferred to your PSP. What, no Wi-Fi access to download directly to the PSP?
It will come served up in three subscription packs: Comedy, Sport and Entertainment and no, it will not be free after that 1 month trial. The packs cost…
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Sony’s Vaio notebooks tend to be quite stylish - and more expensive - than their rivals but price hasn’t stopped the Vaio line from being a big consumer success.
A new teaser ad on the Sony site points to a big laptop refresh coming later today and, if speculation holds true, then it will probably be led by some new Centrino 2 notebooks that will will run faster and more power efficiently than their predecessors.
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Sony has launched the first 8GB Memory Stick Micro(M2) card, doubling the capacity from the existing 4GB version.
If you own a Sony Ericsson blower then, that means you can store 5,000 5-megapixel (MP) photos, over 2000 MP3 songs at 128kbps or over 88 hours of MPEG 4 video at 192kbps.
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The last big update for the PS3 - 2.40 - had gamers excited about the arrival of certain new features but crashing their PS3s was not one of them.
Last week Sony had to withdraw the 2.40 firmware update for its console after some users reported that the patch then froze their PS3s by not allowing it to boot-up fully after install. Today, the company has rushed out 2.41, which promises to fix 2.40 or, at least, not break your console.
Eric Lempel, Director, PlayStation Network Operations said:
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Not happy with being the main driver behind getting anorexic OLED TVs from the lab into our homes, Sony has just taken a big step to make its FED TV technology the next LCD.
FED, or Field Emission Display, technology was unveiled for the first time last year but now Sony’s company Field Emission Technologies Inc. has agreed to take over Pioneers’ closing plasma display production plant in a deal worth up to £100 million. Mass production is expected to kick off next year, targeting the medical markets with 26in models to start before assaulting our living rooms and wallets after that.
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