Gamertell

Ars technica is reporting on two brand new PS3 bundles on their way for Europe - a Blu-ray bundle (a 40 GB PS3 with 3 movies and a SixAxis controller) and a GT5: Prologue pack (including a 40 GB PS3, a copy of the racer, and a SixAxis). The Blu-ray bundle is due out March 18, 2008, with the GT5 bundle coming in on March 28, 2008.  Both are set to retail for €399.

There’s one more caveat - the Blu-ray pack comes with three set films (Casino Royale, Spiderman 3, and 300), but that selection certainly beats early American pack-in Talledega Nights. In any event, both bundles look quite tantalizing, so Euro gamers still in the market for a next-gen console should take note.

Read [ars technica]

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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David Reeves, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) recently told Games Industry that game development for the PSP is a bit like a circus.

“Honestly… we should have had more original PSP games. We took this decision maybe a year ago and said what we’ll do now is we’ll bring out more services because we know that the games are coming. We now have to go back and think more about the games because if we lose that advantage - well it’s not really an advantage, it’s the advantage Nintendo have on DS. It’s like in the circus - you’ve got to keep all the plates up, you know? So the plate we’ll be working on now will be the games on PSP.”

Only a few new games have…

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David Reeves, head of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), candidly shared his thoughts about the state of the industry at the ongoing Leipzig Game Convention 07. Although he did not have any major announcements to make, he freely touched upon many worthwhile issues including Nintendo’s ascendancy, the surge in casual games, Microsoft, EA and possible PS3 price-cuts.

He began by saying that, despite Nintendo getting all the credit for making casual games popular with its consoles (Wii and DS), it was Sony that actually sparked this casual gaming revolution. To underpin his point he referred to the…

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Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and UK mobile phone service provider BT have joined forces to turn the PSP into a mobile video phone.  BT has developed software that allows phone calls and video calls over the internet, a natural fit to leverage the PSP digital camera accessory and built-in WIFI capabilities to add video phone the multi-purpose handheld’s list of uses.

Each company has a lot to gain from the partnership: BT has a relatively popular and powerful mobile platform for their highly useful 21CN technology, which is available in any of the 102 countries BT serves, and Sony gets a stake in the lucrative mobile phone market without having to take time and money to develop a whole new device.

Even though this new functionality will likely do well to momentarily invigorate PSP sales where free WIFI is readily available, I can’t help but think this move is too little and too late compared to the Apple iPhone.  It seems to be in line with the PSP’s long list of features: just novel or useful enough to catch someone’s attention but inconvenient or expensive enough in execution to be frustrating and ultimately shrugged off.

Site [BT Group] Also read [EuroGamer]