Another item that I cannot verify is Facebook integration.  I have read on several other sites that there is some basic Facebook integration, but I could not find it anywhere.

If you want the latest firmware, just head to the System Update selection under the Settings section of the XMB.  It is a small update, and took about 15 minutes max to download and install.

Did you hear the news? Sony’s Ad-hoc Party feature for the PSP is coming to North America this month! This awesome new service allows you to play Monster Hunter Freedom Unite ONLINE by enabling your PSP to play through your PS3. This is HUGE news for Monster Hunter fans as now they can play MHFU with their Monster Hunter buddies around the country! The new feature also allows you to use text or voice chat to communicate with friends, which is critical for coordinating those 4 player hunts and taking out those tougher Monsters.

Granted that Adhoc Party will actually bring lots and lots of OLD PSP games online, going back literally years with no patching needed, but it’s also letting developers off the hook to a certain extent. Keep in mind that your PS3 will have to be dedicated to this to work — no DVD, Blu-ray or Netflix use by someone else in your household while you’re online with the PSP — and that you need a hard-line ethernet connection to it so the PSP can talk to it via the built-in Wi-Fi chipset. It’s a great deal for existing PS3 owners at zero dollars and zero cents and no ongoing online service fee.

All of that said, the technical triumphs of things like the two excellent Syphon Filter PSP games from the Sony Bend Studio that included not just online play for a first-person shooter but also had voice chat proved years ago that it could be done, and done well, without having to fall back to another service. Yes, this is just like having Xbox Live to fall back on if you think about it, and yes, this might help boost sales, but there are side benefits to running your own servers.

Take Sega and what they’re planning for Phantasy Star Portable 2. The first game was adhoc only, but the sequel is adding online play. Why is this a big deal? Why not just use Adhoc Party? Maybe because they might use it to reduce used game sales by requiring you enter a code from your manual into the game to register it with their servers before you can play it online.

In the end, though, I can’t help but think this is a net positive for the little handheld that is still alive and kicking up against Nintendo’s incredible DS juggernaut. What older games do you have that you want to play online?

GAME> The Beatles: Rock Band (2009)
SYSTEM> Sony PlayStation3
SOURCE> Email from GameStop, October 2009

Sssh! This code was a GameStop exclusive! Don’t tell anybody!

We all saw the announcement a week or so ago that mentioned Netflix Instant Streaming coming to PS3 sometime in November.  Well that time seems to be tomorrow, as I just received an email from Netflix stating that my Instant Streaming disc will be arriving tomorrow (November 6th).

Anyone else receive their announcement email yet?  And are you surprised with how quickly this announcement went from press conference to reality.  I mean, it is Sony, not Apple.

This makes me want TripleTags back so I can have a really great-looking Trophy card again instead of the sad-looking one available on the PSN. So why did it go under? Site owner Joshua “SectionZ” Hernandez (a guest of the Aeropodcast) posted on Facebook that he didn’t have time to maintain it any longer now that his new game software company Metamoorephosis is off to a great start with purcussONE and bitFLIP.

Will GamerDNA and Raptr get Trophy data back? I imagine they could continue to try and scrape it off of the site. I suspect this is what PlayFire is doing with the EU arm of Sony. But without an official connection it’ll be a losing battle.

That’s a great deal for a whopping amount of storage. I’ve had a 4GB stick in my PSP for probably three years now and think that as more and more PSP games go download-only an 8GB will only be more useful.

The DS didn’t exactly blow its doors off, though. The DS sold 524k, the PS3 sold 491k, the Wii sold 462k, the Xbox 360 sold 352k, and the PSP (pre-Go, remember) chugged along at 191K. In last place, limping along, is the PS2 with 142k units sold. The 360’s number is nothing to sneeze at, but it looks like that PS3 price cut showed that consumers still really did want a PlayStation 3 after all this time. Does Microsoft consider that along with having sold a full 110,000 units less than the Wii this time a problem?

September was also notable for stopping a long slide of months where game sales were down significantly from the previous year. This is no small feat, even if this month just meant staying on par with 2008. New consoles on the market could have been a big part of that and if the holidays are good to those new console owners it could very well be a very happy holiday for all three console makers after all.

Seen at Gamespot.

Hm, let me think, what else raised this kind of torch-and-pitchfork no-retail-competition gamer rage in the past? What was it? I’m having a hard time remembering now since everyone has since gone back to their homes and stoped raging against it since it’s considered a success. Oh yeah, it’s Steam!

Now do I wish the PSP Go had UMD support? Of course I do. Do I think the Go is a good choice for consumers? Not yet, and it probably won’t be for a while. We didn’t really see Steam start kicking off sales of games via frequent discounts of one kind or another until relatively recently, so I don’t quite know when the PlayStation Store will be something to gaze longingly at.

My guess is that Sony will wait out the fire and brimstone and put the PSP Go out in front of the digital distribution revolution that everyone thinks has “saved PC gaming”. Are they ahead of the curve? I’m sure they are, and it might be as big a risk as the PS3’s Blu-ray drive was, but this time Sony doesn’t have a high definition format to be victorious to fall back on.

What they do have to fall back on is that gamers — hardcore gamers that buy things like a PSP in the first place — are used to buying digital content. They’ve done it on their Wii, PS3, 360, a PSP, or even that other itty bitty digital distribution market you might have heard of called iTunes. So all Sony has to do is wait, push the digital content to all PSPs, not just the Go, and watch adoption rates climb.

It’s entirely possible the consumer isn’t ready for an all-digital gaming platform, but you know what, I’m going to bet that isn’t the case. People are already buying things like Warhawk and Burnout Paradise on the PS3 because they just don’t feel like getting up to put the disc in the drive and want to jump right in, so those gamers are being spoken to by the new PlayStation Store.

I just hope we more quickly get to the part of the story where we can get sale pricing from time to time as well as always be able to find older releases there. Until then I’ll deal with the little whirring disc in my PSP-2000.

Sources: image.

Maybe it’s the conspiracy theorist in me, but this almost seems as though it was planned. I wonder how many click-throughs Sony’s getting for this, entirely by accident. Is anyone else seeing this, or do I need to check my settings?