Just thought I should let you guys know that the God of War demo has made its way to the Playstation Store on PC....at least in Australia anyways, so for all of you Kratos loving fans who couldn't get the demo before, you can get it now at stare in glory till its full release in march! so you know the information comes from the regular Sony Australia newsletter... so it might not be up now, probably on next update (Thursday for Aussies)

The release date for GTA IV has been pushed back to April 2008.

Take-Two is reducing its fiscal 2007 guidance primarily to reflect the movement of the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and the Xbox 360? video game and entertainment system from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007 to fiscal 2008, due to additional development time required to complete the title. The title is now planned for release in the Company?s second quarter of fiscal 2008.

Why, you ask?

Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of Take-Two, stated, ?With Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar is setting a new standard for next generation video games. Certain elements of development proved to be more time-intensive than expected, especially given the commitment for a simultaneous release on two very different platforms. We all recognize that perfecting the game is vital and I can assure everyone it will be worth the wait. We owe it to the game?s millions of fans, to our dedicated development team, and to our shareholders to make sure that Grand Theft Auto IV is a groundbreaking gaming experience that takes maximum advantage of next generation technology.?

Sam Houser, Founder and Executive Producer of Rockstar Games, added, "The new consoles are allowing us to create the Grand Theft Auto game we always dreamed about. Every aspect of the game and its design has been completely transformed. The game is huge and is pushing the hardware platforms to their absolute limits. The top engineers from Sony and Microsoft are working closely with the team in Edinburgh right now, helping us to fully leverage the power of both platforms. As always, our goal is to surpass even the wildest expectations of the game?s fans, and to create the ultimate high definition video game experience."

This is mastermoe1 from http://www.vipsonline.net bringing it to u first

Playstation 3 update 1.9 out now it just came out for the US about an hour ago go and download it.
Not sure what it has since mine is still downloading but im sure we can expect a few good changes as a previous article stated. Soon there will be more information on all the features and what they do and how to use them. This is just to let people know that it is out.

Today I was looking at PS3's when I can across an article at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/322906_sony09.html 

it said

"Sony is cutting the price of its primary PlayStation 3 game console by $100 in the United States, seeking to regain traction in a market it has long dominated.Putting a new twist into the video-game console wars, the company on Monday is announcing a new price of $499.99 for the 60-gigabyte PlayStation 3, effective Monday. Sony says it also plans to introduce a new PlayStation 3 model, with an 80-gigabyte hard drive, at a price of $599.99." and this was on July 8th 2007.  I did a google search to see if it was a joke and came up with this.

http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/8078.html 

"The limited amount of top game titles yet available for the Playstation 3, as well as stiff competition from Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360, have forced Sony into lowering its original price for the 60GB PS3 from $599 to $499. The price cut is effective immediately.  In addition, Sony also introduced a new 80GB model. Aimed at online gamers and entertainment enthusiasts, the 80GB model will ship in August for $599. The online-enabled racing game MotorStorm will be bundled in the sales package."

I went to best buy's and circut city's websites and the 60gb ps3 was for $500, a $100 price drop and E3 is hear yet.

YES!!! I can now buy one.

IMPORTANT: I have nothing against the Playstation 3 or Blu-ray. Never having played the PS3 or watched a movie on Blu-ray, I really COULDN'T have anything against them. My statements about the PS3's current sales are based on the numbers as I know them, not my opinions or any data that I can directly and personally confirm. This is purely objective, from an economic standpoint, not from a gaming standpoint.

It certainly looks like Blu-ray is winning the format wars, which is exactly what Sony's Playstation division wanted. Sony has been reasoning all along that the success of Blu-ray would help the PS3, and their reasoning was relatively sound. However, now that both have been around for a while, we see Blu-ray with strong success and the PS3 trailing its competitors. Why?

I believe Sony was hoping Blu-ray and the PS3 would help each other, but it only ended up working one way: the PS3 helped Blu-ray, but Blu-ray didn't help the PS3. I believe Sony's mistake rests in the branding: rather than calling this device the Playstation 3, they should have given it a new name to separate it from its video game-focused predecessors. Why? Well, the only way someone can know that the PS3 plays Blu-ray movies is to seek information about it, but if you're not interested in a video game console, you're probably not going to check out the details. As such, to non-gamers, the PS3 is just a 600 dollar video game console. Advertising certainly helps bring the news to some, but for everyone else, Playstation=video game console.

Can I prove my theory? Of course not; I haven't conducted a mass survey or anything like that. However, price has always been labeled as the biggest factor hurting the PS3. The price is bad for a video game console, but not for a Blu-ray player. That indicates that people are primarily looking at it as a video game console; if they weren't, the price wouldn't turn them off.

It's understandable that Sony wouldn't want to give up the Playstation brand, but if that's the case, they should have left out the Blu-ray. If they did, while Blu-ray would have slightly less support, the PS3 would have much more because it would be cheaper. It seems Sony is beginning to realize that its functionality as a Blu-ray player is not selling the PS3, given that they've released a Blu-ray player that's cheaper than the console. Now they have to find a way to make the console much cheaper. Even analysts who predict the PS3 will win the console wars tend to base that prediction on the system having a massive price cut; if Sony doesn't deliver, it will turn out very differently.

Designing their console in part to sell another product was a mistake, one from which they seem to have learned. Now they have to rectify it in order for the PS3 to be as successful as they want it to be. They can't offer an alternate model without Blu-ray, because games are also on Blu-ray discs, so they'll have to figure out something else.