Asian version of UNCHARTED: DRAKE'S FORTUNE patched to V1.01, Trophies added.

Our Asian version of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune finally receives a patch to version 1.01 on Sept 15. The patch adds the long awaited Trophies (all 48 of them) to the game.

However, you must play the game again to unlock the Trophies even if you have collected all 61 treasures and 1000 medal points in your previous saves.

Happy Trophies collecting!!

Latest games in MY stores.

PS3:

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (EU) - Action


Xbox360:

Infinite Undiscovery (JPN) - RPG
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (EU) - Action
Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise (US) - Sim
TNA iMPACT! (US) - Wrestling
Warhammer: Battle March (EU) - RTS


Wii:

Ferrari Challenge: Trofeo Pirelli (US) - Racing
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 All Play (US) - Sports
Mario Super Sluggers (US) - Sports

PS3 Officially Launches in Malaysia, on Sept 20th.

Its finally here, Sony Malaysia have announced that PS3 will be officially sold in Malaysia. It will be launched 10am on Sept 20th at 1U at Ground Floor Highstreet New Wing (that's a popular mall in PJ, locals will know how to get there) and there is even a 24hours Soul Calibur IV tournament before the launch day.

For the launch, Sony Malaysia will be selling a special launch bundle:

80GB PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) Bundle Early Birds Promotion

1 x 80GB PS3™ (CECHK06)
1 x DUALSHOCK 3® Wireless Controller
1 x Soul Calibur IV™ game
1 x Selected PS3™ game (Resistance, Ratchet and Clank Future, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Assassin's Creed)
1 x Custom made PS3™ Tote bag
1 x Soul Calibur IV™ CD holder
Price: RM 1,799

To sweeten the bundle further, Sony Malaysia have generously added special gifts for the first 120 buyers of the PS3 Malaysian bundle, as detailed below:-

1st - 3rd customer - RM 1,000 Sony Cash Voucher
4th - 21st customer - RM 500 Sony Cash Voucher
22nd - 50th customer - RM 300 Sony Cash Voucher
51st - 120th customer - RM 100 Sony Cash Voucher

To facilate for those who wants to be 1st in line, the queue line will be opened at 8am, so plan your day/night well.

And not forgetting those of you who don't ever leave the house, Sony Malaysia have generously made the same PS3 Malaysian bundle available as an online pre-order purchase. The first 20 online buyers will get a bonus Blu-ray movie thrown in. However, details on the online purchase, delivery method and the free Blu-ray movie are not included.

All these details (except for the online pre-order deal) are available from here (http://corp.sony.com.my/3/main.asp).

What this means is that Malaysia will join HK, Singapore and Taiwan as the 4th country to officially have the PS3 (Japan is a whole region as far as PS3 distribution, and its not Asian region). All these while, the PS3s in MY stores are simply parallel imports (usually from Singapore) and the warranty is from the country of origin only. With the launch, Malaysian PS3s can be repaired by Sony service centres in Malaysia itself.

Hopefully, this will lead Sony Malaysia to bring in PS3 games directly as well as any PS3 peripherals and accessories, and that the prices will be cheaper than the parallel imports.

Latest games in MY stores

It's been a while since new games appeared in game stores, but the flood gates for Fall 08 games have started.

PS3:

Vampire Rain: Altered Species (US) - Action
Disgaea 3: Absense of Justice (US) - RPG
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (US) - Sports
Siren: New Translation (Asian) - Horror
Soul Calibur IV (US) - Fighting

PSN:

The Last Guy - Puzzle
Racthet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty - Platformer

Xbox360:

Too Human (US) - Action RPG
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (US) - Shooter
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (US) - Sports
Spectral Force 3 (US) - Strategy RPG
Tales of Vesperia (JPN) - RPG
Soul Calibur 4 (US) - Fighting

Wii:

Order Up (US) - Simulation
CSI: Hard Evidence (US) - Simulation

PSN game: The Last Guy available now.

The Last Guy, a highly addictive PS3 game that uses googlesque map and "follow the leader" type gameplay, is now out in Playstation Network for all regions. I have played the demo and absolutely love the concept, simple yet challenging to get everything, especially the hidden VIP on each of 15 levels.

Its retailing at SG13.99 (RM33.00) while its US9.99 and Pounds4.99 for US and EU regions respectively. To buy the game from each region, you will need to top-up your PSN wallet to the currency of that region. For SG, I got the top-up card and bought the game this way.

PS. Am currently playing Heavenly Sword (patched) and it feels very different with vibrations. Even the cutscenes vibrates. Cool.

Metal Gear Online patched to V1.01.

Well that was fast. With the game available to the mass market just within one day, Konami have already released a patch for Metal Gear Online. Version 1.01 will help "Lighten the strain the game places on our server" as well as "Adjustments have been made to the character's moving speed", as per screen shot above.

You will need to download and install the patch to run the game, via two options given by Konami, namely Peer to Peer (Bit Torrent) or direct http download. It should be a 40-50MB download, based on my speed of download (as described below).

Strangely, I initially used the Konami's recommended method (which is the peer to peer Bit Torrent method and supposedly faster) but found it too slow. After few minutes and being at 3% with download speed of averaging 14-20kbps, I canceled it and tried the direct http method. I got the file in 4 minutes. So try both methods to see which works for you.

BTW, I do manage to get 10MB files per minute (thats 150++ kpbs average), that's how I estimated the patch to be 40-50MBs in size.

Metal Gear Solid 4 for PS3 arrives in MY!

Here it is, available on the exact worldwide launch date! Yes, it's the Asian version (with English and Chinese language options) of Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4 for Sony's PS3 console. It was available in KL since late last night and with every purchase of the game, you get a free poster (pictured above with the game at the lower left corner). Its very cool to get some freebie especially with a game that's expected to be sold out very quickly.

The game is actually brought in by a local company (as opposed to importing from SG, which usually means that we get the games few days later after the street dates). Lets hope that this company will continue to bring us the games at such fast pace in the future. Kudos to them.

Note: Asian version refers to Sony Entertainment HK (which that covers territories as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore) - and not Sony Entertainment Japan - which western sites (like Engadget, Joystiq) are referring to as Asian. Lets hope they pick this info up.

PS3 Firmware 2.20 is available now.

SCEH released PS3 Firmware V2.20 via PLAYSTATION Network last night. The firmware is a 121.8MB download and installs into your PS3.

The firmware update enables BD-Live, a feature that enables users to access online contents for Blu-Ray movies. The 2GB file size restrictions for DivX and WMV movies have been removed too.

Also available are updates to playlists (users can copy their PS3 playlist to PSP) and other minor tweaks.

Good times for BD movies buff using the PS3.

Blu-Ray wins the High Def video format, blu-ray in Xbox360 soon?

The 1080P High Definition Video format war is over. When HD-DVD exclusive Warner Bros studios switched to support the Blu-Ray format exclusively, the winner was effectively decided. Shortly thereafter, Toshiba (the main player in the HD-DVD format) too announced that they will cease to produce new HD-DVD players and withdrawing from the format war.

Now, its reported that Sony is talking to Microsoft about adopting the Blu-Ray format to its systems. While Sony have approached Apple for the same talks too (Microsoft and Apple are supporters of HD-DVD format), there are now strong rumors that Xbox360 may feature Blu-Ray as standard drive format.

While these are rumors at this point of time, it is not impossible for Xbox360 to adopt the Blu-Ray as the format due to the larger storage capabilities and as games becomes bigger (Lost Oddessey will fit in one dual layer Blu-Ray disc instead of four dual layer DVD dics). Alternatively, Microsoft could come up with a Blu-Ray add-on drive, as they have done with the HD-DVD add-on drive.

This will be interesting to keep watch, to see how Microsoft will react.

Xbox360 HD DVD prices cut to USD130 each

Microsoft had announced further price reduction of the Xbox360 HD-DVD addon peripheral. With immediate effect (from last week, I was slow in reporting this), you can get it for only USD130 (RM560), down from USD180 previously.

While this latest move will undoubtly save HD DVD from losing the format war (Blu-ray have many exclusive studios, with Warner being the latest to run away from HD DVD to be Blu-ray exclusive), its a good time to invest in one unit if you are wanting to see high defination movies via the Xbox360.

Me? I will stick to my blu-ray playing PS3 for my high def movie fixes.

PS3 Firmware 2.10 is available in US

Firmware 2.1 is out in US. It adds DivX (and xviD) and WMV support to the PS3. Also added are Blu-Ray Profile 1.1 which adds features like Pic-in-Pic capabilities (something HD-DVD have long time ago).

Firmware 2.1 is not yet available for Asian region yet (www.asia.playstation.com) but I am sure it will be there few hours later, so check it again later.

Rumor Commentary: 40GB PS3 soon?

The internet as well as traditional media have been abuzz with the rumored 40GB PS3. Many industry watchers are suggesting that Sony could be announcing the 40GB PS3 sometime next week, in a bid to steal some of Halo 3's street release date.

There are more rumbles in the hardware industry players, with some unamed "electronic manufactuing news source" have revealed that Sony have enlisted FoxConn (Taiwan based company that currently produces the Playstation 2) to produce 40GB PS3. Rumors have even planted the 40GB PS3 with a USD$399.90 price level, but fully expecting other lesser specs (no bluetooth, no card readers, no WiFi?) at that price level.

Personally, although I am taking this rumor with a pinch of salt, there are several advantages for Sony to do so.

1) USD$399 price point is seen by industry player as the ceiling price consumers will buy for electronics goods.
2) At USD$399, it makes the (40GB) PS3 a very cheap blu-ray movie player with HD gaming capabilities, as the cheapest HD-DVD standalone players from rival camp Toshiba will be retailing at USD299.
3) With more total PS3 sold, this will also increase the total numbers of consumers of blu-ray movie discs.
4) With Sony deep entrenched in the blu-ray camp, increasing PS3 and blu-ray consumers makes perfect business sense as they will stand to earn from license of blu-ray players, movie deals (they do own several studios) and they dont want a repeat lost of technology format (remember Sony's betamax videotape lost the format war against JVC's VHS format).

As Sony is eager to win the next gen DVD format, by push more PS3 into homes with a cheaper USD$399 entry level 40GB PS3 makes perfect business sense to me. We will see if this turns out to the truth in the next few weeks.

New Blu-ray movies available.

There are new blu-ray movies titles to be found in some video stores around KL (Wega Enterprise in Sungei Wang is one of them).

New titles available are:-

300
Ghost Rider
Casino Royale
Shooter
Black Hawk Down
Underground Evolution
Pearl Harbor
The Fifth Element
Kung Fu Hustle (US version with Cantonese)

Elsewhere in 1U, more titles showed up:-

Superman Returns
Pirates of the Caribbeans (1 and 2)
The Departed
(and many more)...

Check out the stores if you have a blu-ray movie playback unit (stand-alone players or PS3), prices ranges from RM149.90 to RM199.90.

Michael Bay kools down.

Michael Bay, the possible director of Transformers 2, have back pedaled on his earlier statement about Paramount's decision not to release Transformers in the blu-ray format.

He has posted in his blog forum that he "drank the Kool-Aid.... yadda yadda yadda... so I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!"

Hahaha.... so much for standing up to your beliefs...

Michael Bay responds to Paramount's decision to go HD-DVD exclusively.

Michael Bay, director of Transformers, have reportedly stated in his blog forum that that Paramount's decision to go HD exclusively has pissed him off.

In his blog forum title "Paramount pisses me off!" Michael goes on the record saying "I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me! "

Oh no!! No Transformers 2.... curse you Paramount!

Paramount and Dreamworks on HD-DVD exclusively.

The format war between HD-DVD and blu-ray is heating up even more.

Paramount Pictures and Dreamworks Animations have been releasing movies in both HD-DVD and Blu-ray format for a while now. In fact, they started in the HD-DVD camp before they decided to release them in blu-ray format too. Now all this is about to change again.

Both studios have announced that they are dropping the blu-ray format and be exclusive to the HD format. This means that latest summer blockbuster movies such as Transformers, Shrek The Third and Blades of Glory (which will come out first) will not be getting the blu-ray edition. To view them in HD, you have to use the

Reason given for the switch? Cheaper HD-DVD players and manufacturing costs will trump out the more expensive blu-ray players (which are mainly PS3).

Oh no! Do I have to get the Xbox360 (a 30% failure machine) and the HD-DVD attachment, or get the Toshiba player, to see Transformer in high def?? Why cant I use the PS3?

Curse you Paramount! Hahaha....