The PS3 Weekend Warrior: of excitement, fulfillment, hacks, and… freezes?

Last week was a perfectly eventful one for the PlayStation 3 community as we all celebrated the international success of Konami‘s Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. This week, believe it or not, is even bigger for “the happening console” as it launched its firmware 2.40 update with mixed results. Big announcements for the PSN and major game titles were also thrown to make life that much better as a PS3 owner. Dig in!

Welcome to the second week out for the PlayStation 3 Weekend Warrior! Last week, we saw a worthwhile period for our console of choice as we witnessed Konami‘s Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots wrap up another dominant week. This past week recap should be more appealing to a wider range of people as we saw plenty of important stuff happening for everyone to take part in.

Dropped this week was that super big and much-awaited PS3 firmware 2.40 update, a ton of exciting announcement about upcoming titles, exciting revelations about the future of the PlayStation Network, and a whole lot more.

Nothing was bigger this past week for PS3 owners than the announcement that the anticipated firmware 2.40 update would be released exactly on July 2. The update brings in sweet new features like the in-game XMB and Trophies which would add to the replayability of games on the platform. As promised, the patch arrived along with a FAQ to clear every issue up, and we were all ecstatic when it was finally unlocked.

In our case and in that of most other PS3 owners, the 2.40 firmware update download and installation process went off without a hitch. All the new features were working just fine, but bad news came in just as soon as the good news did. Apparently, a handful of PS3 owners experienced freezing problems after they ran the update and restarted their consoles.

To prevent further damage, Sony pulled out the update from active status and restored the older 2.36 firmware to the fray. The manufacturer conceded that there are issues that led to the PS3 malfunctions and assured everyone that they’re doing something to clean up the mess real quick.

Let’s hope the fixes come sooner than later. It has to be tough to be struck by random freezes and bricks especially when there seems to be no rhyme and reason as to how and why it happens. We’re hoping for the best, Sony.

Link: Firmware v2.40 FAQ released, clears up trophy issues and more
Link: PS3 FW 2.40 goes live
Link: PlayStation 3 FW 2.40 update causes frezes; FW 2.40 pulled out *Update*
Link: Sony’s official statement regarding firmware 2.40 status

To Trophy or not to Trophy – that is the question

Okay, so Trophies are here to stay and Warhawk along with LittleBigPlanet are gearing up to apply them. Not everyone is buying into it, though – Infinity Ward and Insomniac have brushed off requests to have the feature implemented in their games.

The two big development firms say that they have no immediate plans for the introduction of Trophies in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and Resistance: Fall of Man. That’s a bummer, but we suppose it’s only right for them to prioritize upcoming titles in the development nook.

Link: More details about Warhawk trophies and patches v1.4 and v1.5
Link: LittleBigPlanet: 30fps in 720p, beta, trophies, and more
Link: No plans yet for CoD4, Ratchet & Clank Future, Resistance Trophies

Closer to home, and treats for the eyes as well

PSN bosses Susan Pamico and Eric Lempel confirmed that a movie download service is indeed coming to the PS3 and the pair dropped more hints about PlayStation Home. They said that gamers don’t have to worry about Home being launched in Beta form because even in this state, the product will be “robust.” They further assured us that it will drop this Fall and should satisfy everyone who’s excited about it.

That’s good to hear from Sony. It’s been a long time coming for Home and we hope it lives up to the hype surrounding it.

Link: PSN director: Home launch will be robust, confirms movie download service launch

Hacks good and bad

It’s no secret that the whole hacking scene has its pretty and ugly heads. This week hosted both for the PlayStation 3 community as we witnessed a scary security breach on the PSN to fish for credit card information. At the same time, a lot of us were thrilled to view a couple of videos on how to run console emulation software on the PS3 using Swap Magic on Linux.

According to IT security firm SophosLabs, they detected a breach in PlayStation site pages promoting God of War and Singstar! Pop where hackers injected unauthorized code to pilfer valuable credit information from users. Sony better fix this immediately before someone gets scammed.

On the lighter side, yeah, it was demonstrated in a couple of video clips that it’s possible to run emulators on the PS3 using the Linux operating system which can be installed onto it. You better watch those because they’ll be sure to fire up your imagination in a hurry.

Link: Playstation website infiltrated, hackers stealing credit card details
Link: Using emulators on PS3 with Swap Magic guide released

Metal Gear Online, BioShock PS3 making noise

Are you currently enjoying the intensity of Metal Gear Online’s action? You’re not alone. In fact, there are oodles of people who are crazed on the game and Famitsu published some estimates as to how many there are. The Japanese publication reported that on peak hours, about 12,000 players in Japan play simultaneously. On a global basis, the count was at 100,000 though it was not specified if the worldwide count was that of players all logging in at once.

Excited about BioShock for the PS3? Now there’s more reason to be. Veteran shooting game developers Digital Extremes have been announced to be in the same boat as 2K Boston, 2K Marin, and 2K Australia for the effort. This begs the question of how much more extra stuff there are in the PS3 version since it’s obviously using more manpower than its PC and Xbox 360 counterparts. We’ll see.

And oh, European fans should finally get their DualShock 3 controllers right around now. It launches in the region on the fourth of July, making the date a happy occasion not just to American PS3 owners, but also to their pals across the Atlantic. Rumble away, fellas.

Link: Metal Gear Online standalone to hit July 17, 100k MGO users worldwide
Link: PS3 to ‘sing with Big Daddy goodness’ – Digital Extremes partners with 2K Games for BioShock
Link: DualShock 3 coming to Europe soon

Wow, that’s a lot of big news in just a single week. One could say that Sony is building up its pre-E3 2008 road better than any other platform in the market at this point. This kind of activity only spells good things as sales have begun to really pick up both in the US and in Japan.

The addition of the in-game XMB and Trophies only go to show you that there’s really nothing too far-fetched for the PS3. Developers seem to be hitting a groove in how to build games for its architecture and Sony is cranking up the pace of its goodie delivery machinery with PlayStation Home coming along pretty soon.

The only thing we could really ask for right now is a fix to the firmware 2.40 issues and some assurance that our credit card information is safe on the Sony site. Otherwise, everything is falling nicely into place for the PS3.

In light of the firmware 2.40 release and all the great things happening lately, here’s a video that best describes our black boxes of wonder (white or gray for others):