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Phil Harrison, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios will be leaving his current position as of February 29, 2008. The news comes via an announcement from Sony, however no details were given as to why he is stepping down, there is speculation that he has become a victim of the not so stellar PlayStation 3 sales. Kazuo Hirai, who is the president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment International will step up and assume his role.

Via [Crave]

PS3 sales have picked up the pace in the UK and, for the last four weeks, has outsold the Xbox 360. Sony has also confirmed to Market for Home Computing and Video Games (MCV), a leading British industry journal, that PS3 has gone past the 1 million-sales milestone in the UK and at a rate faster than its antecedent console, the PS2…

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Sony has posted a small rise in quarterly profits recently, but are being cautious about painting too rosy a picture. Sony’s Cybershot series of cameras and Handycam camcorders had a strong fourth quarter which helped to bolster the Japanese giants overall numbers. Sony even managed to get better numbers out of it’s gaming division by lowering production costs on the PS3 as well as getting some improved sales figures for the PSP.

“The game division turning into the black is a positive,” said Takeshi Osawa, a senior fund manager at Norinchukin Zenkyoren Asset Management. “But the U.S. economic outlook is a cause of concern for its consumer electronics business.”

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It seems that Sony Australia wants to spread the word about their products. They are planning to do so by giving away the 40GB version of the Blu-ray playing video game device with the purchase of a Sony TV.

The TVs you can purchase are the 1080p XBR, X or W BRAVIA LCDs.  The W series BRAVIA starts at 3,000 Aussie dollars, while the PS3 retails for $700.

To me, this seems like Sony’s way of selling more TVs, as they only lose a fraction of what they make back with each TV sale, but its still a nice option to consider, especially if you are already in the market for a new TV.

Read [Sony AU]

It appears that one of the largest PS3 retailers are going to stop stocking the 20GB PS3, meaning customers will only have one option and will need to pay $600 for the 60GB edition.

The PS3 has appeared to still be falling behind the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii in terms of recent sales and popularity - Best Buy not stocking the 20GB model could hurt those figures even more.

According to Joystiq, they have checked with numerous Best Buy locales and have confirmed the “Discontinued” status that was recently printed out from a BB computer system, which means that the flow of 20GB units into Best Buy stores should all but stop here in the very near future.

If this is correct, I find this very disappointing on Best Buy’s half. What happened to customers being the number one priority?

Via [Joystiq]

As we already mentioned, Sony has just announced PlayStation Home, a virtual world that you control from your PS3.  Check out the video and leave a comment with your impressions.

Via [Kotaku]

There were many gamer-friendly gadgets at this year’s CES but, due to technological limits and simple human exhaustion, we couldn’t quite get them all on Gadgetell.

Here a reduced version of the list I compiled for my local CiN Weekly column featuring the better gaming gadgets and announcements from CES 2007.  Read on for the list…

• Razer Reclusa gaming keyboard with gold-plated USB plug


• Razer DeathAdder gaming mouse


• Nyko WiiMote charger

• Nyko PS3 wireless controller charger (4 controllers at one time)

• Novint Tech.’s Falcon 3D controller, maybe the weirdest item I found. The pointed mouse floats on robot arms and gives back a bit of resistance so it feels like you are touching the items on your computer.


• Alienware m9750 laptop (bling and caching)

• TDVision Systems’ 3D visor that turns any 2D video into 3D


• Samsung’s Series 53 and 54 LCD HDTVs with increased viewing angles and extras ports for game systems.

• HotSeat Chassis with a metal frame, 23 in. LCD HD widescreen monitors and surround sound. Pricey but dern cool. Frame only kit is $600, full setup can cost $4000.


• PCGamerBike to power your PC and control avatars in compatible games. Coming next month for $1100. Mini version available now for $180.


• D-Box GP-100, the uber plush sound-sensitive chair that reacts to on-screen action. A hard sell for $15K,000.


• N-Gage will become a software package that will work with their NSeries devices and will not be a specific N-Gage branded hardware device (I confirmed this with Nokia).


• Zune will play games by July 2008


• Sony, besides the unfortunate PR blunder, won two Emmys and announced and agreement with Midway to offer more downloadable games.


• Nintendo was a no-show but Wiis were on display everywhere and they won an Emmy for their D-pad.


• Microsoft promoted Vista with the FPS game, Crysis, showed off the Xbox 360 controller working with a Vista PC, console and PC content sharing, a raise in the 50MB download cap on games and some Zune integration.

It’s starting to feel a bit like Windows, ain’t it? Only a couple months in and Sony’s announced that there is yet another PS3 firmware update (ver. 1.50, which I believe makes it the third update). The latest firmware adds the option of auto or manual sign-in to the Playstation Network and lets gamers select an image on their hard drive to use as a User Icon on the XrossMediaBar, They also added a Key Tone feature, the ability to delete backup data on the internal hard drive or external devices and the ability to enter Korean text the on-screen keyboard.

To install the update, just like before, you can use the sluggish System Update feature and watch the bar fill for the next hour, wait to get a game that has it installed or download it to your PC and slap it on a USB thumb drive to update through one of the seven USB ports.

Several blog sites have mentioned the “contactless payments” via a USB card reader peripheral will be available in Japan thanks to the latest upgrade but it was not part of the US upgrade list on Sony’s site (of course that doesn’t mean it’s not in there).

Upgrade [Sony] Read [Rojo]

We can finally talk about NPD Group’s real report on video game sales for 2006. In the US, the game industry raked in $12.5 billion (that’s frickin’ beeelion), a $2 billion increase over 2005 sales. Add another billion to include PC game sales as well. December sales were a major factor with hardware making up nearly half of the month’s $3.7 billion in sales. Annual hardware sales were up 42.8 percent over 2005, likely due to the two new consoles, and software sales increased 6.4 percent.

For consoles, PS2s sold the most with 1.4 million in December (37.1 million overall), while Xbox 360s sold 1.1 million (4.5 million overall), the Wii sold 1.1 million and the PS3 sold 687,300. For handhelds, the DS won holiday sales with 1.6 million sold in December 2006, PSP with 953,200 and, the li’l system that keeps on kickin’, the Game Boy Advance (GBA) with 850,700.

According to NPD, the top ten games sold in 200 were:

• Madden NFL 07 (PS2, 2.8 million)


• New Super Mario Bros. (DS, 2.0)


• Gears of War (X360, 1.8)


• Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS2, 1.7)


• Guitar Hero 2 (PS2, 1.3)


• Final Fantasy XII (PS2, 1.3)


• Brain Age: Train Your Brain (DS, 1.1)


• Madden NFL 07 (X360, 1.1)


• Tom Clancy’s G.R.A.W. (X360, 1.0)


• NCAA Football 07 (PS2, 1.0)

Read, Read [GameDailyBiz] Site [NPD Group]

After all the hubbub over Sony bragging about their Emmy - the online bitching followed by Sony’s retraction - and the Academy’s eventual clarification of the award(s), Nintendo took its good ol’ time to brag about its Emmy. Sending out a press release just after CES on Jan. 12, 2007, the somewhat slower response allowed enough time for all the facts to come in for a brief, cool-headed and accurate PR response. Bureaucracy might have had something to do with it, but the delay paid off as Sony’s efforts pretty much backfired with online fans.

The Emmy for Nintendo was for its development of the D-pad. If you’ve ever seen the guts of an Atari 2600 joystick, it’s easy to see how that technology could be turned into a stickless, button-based controller. It took the Nintendo tech to work out better specs and put it into the flatter - and far more sturdy - NES/Famicom controllers which reached the US in 1985.

Not to leave the other game-related Emmy winners out of the picture, John Carmack and id Software respectively won for contributions to rendering technology as the lead programmer on Doom and technological leadership in rendering breakthroughs with Quake’s technology. Also, Microsoft won one for DirectX, and Sony grabbed a second Emmy for the Xross Media Bar GUI - originally used on the PSX (media center) and now part of the PSP and PS3.

Read [Nintendo] Site [National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences] Via [Kotaku]