Today, Sony has announced that version 6.10 of the PSP firmware is now ready to be installed on hand held consoles everywhere. This update includes several big features such as SensMe which chooses songs stored on your PSP based on different moods you select.

Another interesting feature of 6.10 is the ability to tether a PSP Go with a Bluetooth capable cellphone for internet connectivity anywhere you can go.

That’s about it in terms of exciting features so get downloading!

The limit for instances per server has been notched up a bit, and the performance instances are being given are also improved.

The reason behind many players participating in Heroic instances is due to the recent 3.2 changes of Heroic dungeons providing Emblems of Conquest. This way, all fresh 80’s can get their Ulduar gear with just some grinding.

No word on when European and Australian servers will be seeing the fix.

Read (World of Warcraft Forums)

The 1.40 patch focuses on eliminating the recent hacking issues for the PlayStation 3. No official patch notes have been released yet. Unfortunately, the patch is currently only out for North America; a European release has yet to be scheduled.

Modern Warfare 2 will be out on November 10th for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.

Read (Infinity Ward Forums)

Two new demos were also added into the mix, featuring a Madden NFL 10 demo and a Watchmen: The End is Nigh Part 2 demo.

Speaking of Watchmen, the full version of Watchmen: The End is Nigh Part 2 also released today, retailing at $14.99. Spec Ops: Airborne Commando was also added to the PSOne classics.

A good amount of DLC was also added, ranging from Dynasty Warriors to Rag Doll Kung Fu. Here’s the full list:

• Rag Doll Kung Fu Time Saver DLC ($1.99)
• Cross Edge Enigma Synth Pack (1) (free)
• Cross Edge Hero Pack ($0.99)
• Cross Edge It’ll Come in Handy Pack ($0.99)
• Cross Edge This is Equipment Pack ($0.99)
• Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires Eclectic Armor Set (men) (free)
• Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires Norse Armor Set (men) (free)
• Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires Priestess Armor Set (women) (free)
• Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires Valkyrie Armor Set (women) (free)
• Guitar Hero songs
• Rock Band songs
• Katamari Forever and Noby Noby Boy Themes (free)
• G.I. Joe Rise Of The Cobra: Cobra Theme ($0.99)
• G.I. Joe Rise Of The Cobra: G.I. Joe Theme ($0.99)
• Harry Potter XMB Theme Pack ($1.99)
• College Football Themes (x5) (Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan State, Nebraska and Wisconsin) ($1.99 each)
• Killzone 2 DLC Bundle Pack Trailer
• MAG Developer Diary 3
• MAG Developer Diary 4
• Dark Void Composer Interview
• Unbound Saga Between the Panels Issue 1
• God of War III Wallpapers (x3)
• Brave Story: New Traveler ($14.99) (also available from PS3 storefront)
• Pocket Pool ($9.99) (also available from PS3 storefront)
• Strikers 1945 Plus ($11.99) (also available from PS3 storefront)

Oh yeah, a bunch of Guitar Hero and Rock Band tracks were also added. But you already knew that.

Back in March, Nintendo revealed plans to expand to social networking options. Today, Nintendo has released a new application for the Nintendo DSi which allows players to upload their photos directly to Facebook.

To get setup, you need to link your DSi with your Facebook account via Facebook Connect. Once that’s done, a Facebook logo will appear on top of your photos. Users are allowed to upload entire albums at once (200 photos), and every photo after that, a new album is created.

The firmware is only exclusive to Japan, Europe, and Australia. No word on when the update will be released for North America.

“It will be before Christmas,” Halton said. “A lot of the background work’s been done for a lot of applications that are coming.”

The recent preview of the Xbox Live dashboard was missing these upcoming social networking tools, so we don’t know exactly how they’ll work with the user interface just yet. As previously mentioned, these tools will not be included in the August 11th update.

Read (Eurogamer)

The developers also released a very extensive changelog, listing all of the improvements the patch has to offer. This changelog details numerous bug fixes and balance changes. These improvements differ from what you’ve seen in the beta, so it’s well worth a look.

Make the jump for the full changelog.

World Builder
• Added the World Builder how-to guide to the root directory
• Fixed a bug where adding a horizon-mesh would cause World Builder to crash

Observer Feature
• Pressing ESC now gets rid of the observer/replay attention arrow. If a unit is selected and an arrow is present, pressing ESC deselects the units. Pressing it again removes the arrow
• Selecting the HQ displays the player’s current tech tier

Balance Changes

Tyranid Balance Changes
• The Ravener Alpha’s Hardened Carapace grants 100 health
• Both Carnifexes cannot be repaired
• Sporemine durability vs. small arms increased from 60 to 150 hp
• Screamer Killer Venom Cannon damage increased to 75 from 55 and removes the Spore Cysts ability
• Tier 2 Carnifex damage increased from 200 to 250
• Zoanthrope damage increased from 70 to 80, energy cost reduction on Focus Blast from 80 to 65
• Termagant damage increase on Toxin Sacs upgrade from 1.2 to 1.35
• Tyranid Warriors’ hitpoints increased from 320 to 360, Barbed Strangler damage decreased to 45 from 60
• Hive Tyrant’s Venom Cannon damage decreased from 75 to 55

Ork Balance Changes
• Slugga Nob damage reduced to 85, Nob Squad Choppa damage increased to 100
• The Kommando knife no longer refunds energy and resets cooldown after killing a target
• Warboss’ big stomp radius UI was changed to 10 m
• Warboss’ Kustom Shoota can now fire on the move
• Warboss’ Angry Bits health regeneration lowered from 1.5 to 1, cooldown from 15 seconds to 30
• Tankbusta population cost lowered 4 to 3
• Slugga Nob Leader damage lowered (due to accidental buff)
• Warboss Stomp damage lowered 40 to 30
• Kommando Nob Leader’s hammer damage increased 100 to 175
• Slugga damage increased to 25

Space Marine Balance Changes
• Scouts can now repair while using a sniper rifle
• Set the Apothecary’s Rapid Fire ability to no longer knockback retreating units
• Force Commander with Terminator Armor now has a Cleansing Flame ability on his heavy flamer (costs 50 energy)
• Purification Rights damage decreased from 30 to 15
• Relay Beacon health regeneration rate decreased .4 to .15
• Force Commander’s hitpoints increased from 720 to 820
• Tactical Marine bolter damage decreased to 25
• Tactical marine melee damage reduced from 22 to 19
• Purification rites no longer affects retreating units

Eldar Balance Changes
• Spiritual rites radius UI was changed to 15m
• The Fire Prism’s explosive shot no longer affects retreating units
• Warpspider squad member hitpoints slightly reduced from 200 to 160, Exarchs from 240 to 200
• Fire Prism’s Focus Beam cooldown reduced from 4.5 to 3 seconds
• Debuff removed from Immolator
• Warp Spider Exarch’s Improved Targets are moved to tier 1
• Banshee’s damage increased to 35 from 33

General Balance Changes
• Zeal/Biomass/Psychic Might/Waaagh! amount from killing/losing units increased by 20%
• Piercing damage modifier vs. Heavy armor decreased to 67%
• Turret damage at long range increased from .15 to .3
• Turrets inflict increased supression, have a minimum range of 2 m, armor type changed to be more vulnerable from small arms fire .01 to .2
• Suppression weapons received the following changes:
• Setup and teardown times reduced by 1 second respectively
• 0.2 to 0.3 at long range
• 1 to 1.25 at medium range
• 2 to 2.75 at short range
• Suppression damage increased from 300 to 400

Bug Fixes

Tyranid Bug Fixes
• Fixed a bug where Bioplasma would not fire if targeted units ran out of the line of sight
• Fixed the broken image on the Ravener Alpha’s ‘exit tunnel’ ‘cancel construction’ ability

Ork Bug Fixes
• Shoota Boyz Aiming? Wotz Dat? tool tip no longer mentions immobility
• Nob squad tool tip mentions Meaner an’ Greener instead of Nob Kit
• Kommando squad tool tip no longer mentions Kommando Kit

Space Marine Bug Fixes
• The Dreadnought’s auto cannon ability previews its energy cost properly

Eldar Bug Fixes
• The Farseer’s Ghosthelm tool tip no longer mentions damage to self, mentions suppression
• The Farseer’s Mindwar tool tip mentions suppression
• Warpspider Exarch powerblades tool tip mentions they are effective against infantry

UI Bugs
• Added a missing tooltip for observers in the multiplayer games list
• Fixed a bug causing player loading bars to be cut off in 1280×1024 resolutions

Performance Bugs
• Fixed a bug that disallowed users with high-end machines to set their graphics settings to “Ultra”
• Fixed a fatal scar error involving Anti Armor in the campaign

Gameplay Bugs
• Fixed an exploit where repeatedly setting up and tearing down the Ranger’s sniper rifle would increase the unit’s firing rate
• Fixed a bug involving melee units targeting retreating units
• Stabilized randomness of units using special attacks
• Fixed an exploit where players could make units at the HQ retreat “towards” a relay beacon in the field
• Fixed a bug where clicking on a hero’s portrait would render targetable abilities unusable

Map Fixes
• Fixed an exploit in (6p) Ruins of Argus where players could build structures and move units in an impassible area

Post-game bugs
• Fixed a bug where incorrect trueskill values were shown after viewing a player’s statistics screen in the post-game
• Fixed a crash that occurred when viewing another player’s statistics during a game-starting countdown

Networking Improvements
• Fixed a networking bug that caused users to lag and disconnect due to a proxy communication problem

Read (Dawn Of War 2 Community Site)

Here is the full changelog:

• Fixed lightning gun sound, no more loud enemies.
• Added team_say for spectators so they can chat only among spectators.
• Increased the speed of nailgun nails.
• The powerups now spawn at the same time after match start.
• cg_lagometer 2 will now display the client ping estimation along with the standard lag-o-meter graph.
• cg_chatBeep allows you to enable/disable the audible beep when you receive a message.
• cg_teamChatBeep allows you to enable/disable the audible beep when you receive a message from a teammate.
• cg_selfOnTeamOverlay toggles whether you see yourself in the team overlay.
• cg_fov lower limit is now 10.
• Changed demo autorecord naming to more easily sort and locate.
• cg_autoaction 0-3
  0 – do nothing
  1 – auto record demo
  2 – auto record a screenshot at end of game
  3 – auto record demo and screenshot
• cl_autoRecordDemo has been removed in favor of the new cg_autoaction system.
• cl_demoRecordMessage 0/1 allows you to toggle the “RECORDING…” message on the hud when recording a demo.
• cl_conTimestamps can now display values in game time.
  0 – Do nothing
  1 – Show values in game time (affected by cg_levelTimerDirection)
  2 – Show values in servertime
• Fix for several keys becoming unbound (2,e,u,o,s,m)
• Spectators will no longer get the “Internal combustion” message upon respawn after following a player that was mined.
• Fix for a dropweapon bug that could cause other players in the game to auto switch to another weapon.
• Removed setu/sets commands.
• Fix for odd sv_maxclients values.
• Warmup delay is now disabled for bot games.
• Zoomed fov calculation now takes aspect ratio into account.
• Some FireFox users were experiencing crashes while loading into maps, these issues have been resolved.

Competition mode changes:

• Added support for limiting the amount of timeouts called, and configuring their default duration. Time outs remaining are indicated on the team scoreboards.
• Server owners can deop other clients with the ‘deop’ command.
• Pause and Timeout events print to the console.

Don’t forget that you need the EA Download Manager to make the patch possible, though. Here’s the full changelog:

Spore Improvements:

• Asymmetry is now available for creatures! Details on new Asymmetry features for Creatures and Vehicles can be found here.
• This patch fixes several crashes in Space Game.
• Many tuning improvements to Space Game, including reduced disaster rates at all levels of difficulty, adjustments to Hard Mode, increased limits on concurrent trade routes, as well as changes to tool unlocks for the Knights.
• Creator Lineage appears correctly for all creation types shared after this patch is installed.
• Cheat is included that permits Creators to export creatures in Collada format for use in Maya. Creators must acknowledge and accept a Tools EULA to perform this operation. An additional cheat has been provided to enable highest quality textures to appear on vehicles, where it is supported by user hardware.
• Fixed a problem where creations would go missing if a user quits the game in any way while downloads are in progress.
• Fixed a bug where achievements were disappearing.
• Fixed a bug where some Sporepedia cards had corrupted backgrounds.
• Fixed a problem in Space where some Grox planets were unreachable.
• YouTube movies now publish as public

Galatic Adventure Improvements:

• This patch must be installed again after installing Galactic Adventures, even if you have installed this patch previously.
• You can now place the avatar, NPCs, and handheld objects on top of air, land, and sea vehicles in the Adventure Creator. Get more info here.
• Improvements are made to the Adventure Creator, including right-click camera behavior, and User Interface enhancements.
• In EP1 open gates were not working correctly when they were disguised
• Some customer-reported crashes in Galactic Adventures have been fixed.

Read (Spore)

Included with the update comes Xbox Live Games on Demand, the game distribution service announced during this year’s E3. On Demand allows players to download full retail games at the convenience of their own couches. Titles such as Mass Effect, BioShock, Assassin’s Creed, and Lego Star Wars will all be featured in launch. More titles will be added on a weekly basis.

Co-operative Netflix watching will also be available, allowing players to stream movies simultaneously among friends on Xbox Live.

Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm integration will have to wait until the fall update.

If you can’t wait until August, you can sign up for Major Nelson’s Xbox LIVE Update Preview Program by completing a survey for a chance to take a sneak peek at the update.

Read (Co-Optimus)

Soldier Front is run on a free-to-play model, with the option to purchase game currency for paid content. The game is published on ijji, NHN USA’s game portal website. You can grab it for free over at the official website in a quick 300MB download.

I’ve played the game and I can say that it’s definitely not worth to buy the special weapons and such, but it’s worth a go in case you want a pick-me-up FPS.

The developers mention that the beta was a success, receiving an “overwhelming amount of community feedback and support.” That being said, the retail launch of the patch will be rolling out soon, except this time with even more bug fixes and balance changes unseen in the beta.

“There is Only War” includes eight unreleased multiplayer maps, balance changes, bug fixes, and a map editor.

Read (Dawn of War 2 Community Site)

The PS2 was the first to feature it, allowing gamers to still play their old favorites. The Xbox 360 followed suit somewhat, with a few hundred original Xbox games playable. The Wii can handle any Gamecube title, though there likely aren’t too many people go back to. The PS3 offered backwards compatibility as well, but only on certain SKUs and only for a limited period of time.

If you didn’t buy one of the 60 gigabyte models you were out of luck as your system didn’t have the necessary hardware to play PS2 games. It seems that all might change though as Sony filed an application for a patent that would allow backwards compatability to be integrated into existing systems via a software update. According to the patent Sony has figured out a way to get the PS3’s cell processor to emulate the PS2’s emotion engine.

I admit that after trying to read through the garbled nonsense of patent filing I have no clue whether or not IGN has interpreted this correctly, so this could be for something else entirely, but it seems logical. Now whether this would be available for everyone is the question. They could hold it back for release with the PS3 Slim, offering it at a later date as a paid download to anyone with a non-slim PS3, or they could simply show they’re nice guys and release it for free.

With Punch Out!!’s May 18th Wii release date just around the corner, it would only make sense that Nintendo would put up the game’s official website and today they’ve done just that.

As of now, only Glass Joe is featured on the website with a small gameplay video made available by clicking the stats on the right side of the page.

When the game’s release date gets even closer, expect Nintendo to update this page with more fighters featured in Punch Out!!.

It seems that the original release of Metal Gear Solid Touch for the iPod Touch and iPhone wasn’t complete, ending almost randomly leaving players in the dust.

Well, Konami has announced that the game has official been finished and an update has been sent to the App Store for all to download for free

Joystiq reports that the update adds 8 new stages along with new unlockable wallpapers and a bunch of bug fixes.

We learned earlier this month that the Killzone 2 map pack entitled Steel & Titanium would be hitting the Playstation Network on April 30th but were left in the dark in terms of pricing.

Sony has decided to lift the veil giving us the heads up, on the Official Playstation Blog, that the pack would be selling for $5.99 when it hits.

In leui of this pricing announcement, Sony has also provided us with the above trailer detailing both maps (Wasteland Bullet and Vekta Cruiser) to be included in Steel & Titanium.

Since Killzone 2 hit shelves there have been a small number of complaints regarding its controls. Well, a patch has recently been released, version 1.2, that has been rumored to slightly alter the controls.

Gamezine reports that the update has effectively elimnated the problems which included input lag issues.

What about you guys? Have you a little more peppiness in the Killzone 2 controls ever since 1.2 was released?

A patch for the Xbox 360 version of the game is bringing the graphics closer to the level of the PC and PS3 versions of the post-apocalyptic role playing game. The patch brings specular maps  to certain textures of the game. In layman’s terms the patch makes lighting reflect more off the various creatures you encounter and makes the NPCs you talk to look a lot more lifelike. The PS3 still has an advantage as a few specular effects won’t be integrated with the patch and the more powerful console still features higher resolution textures.

Connect with a thousand gamers from all walks of life by joining the online ps3 tournaments.

The company announced in October that it will cut 6% of its workforce and now it looks like they went to 10%. Those 1,000 people will be let go by March 31st, 2009. This whole restructuring process combined with the company narrowing its games portfolio will save the company about $120 million annually but it will also cost them $55-65 million in the following quarters.

via Press