Here’s some info on the kind of things that you will be able to pick up on the PSN come April.

If you’ve already managed to take your games through their paces by then, you’ll be able to add some more flavour by downloading different sets of battle dress for your four playable Genji characters. Or if that doesn’t grab you, you can always opt for the school uniform…

There will also the option to customise your car and download a special race event for Ridge Racer, two new playable maps for Resistance: Fall of Man and any PS3 owner playing MotorStorm online will receive Time Trial Mode automatically – you won’t even need to download this one from the Store.

Phew, anyone would think that European think launch day was just around the corner…

Press release follows -
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We’ve had trouble putting this one down in the Three Speech office. Mindless destruction…brilliant! Some further info:
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With the European launch of the PS3 imminent, we’ll no doubt be bombarding you with plenty of info direct from PlayStation. To get us started, here’s an update on the PlayStation Network and the exclusive games, free demos, video and extra game content that will be available for your system. As ever in these instances, we like to let you see the press release verbatim:

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The day after Phil Harrison’s keynote speech at GDC, we had a chance to interview him. Naturally, the focus was on the implications and details of Home and LittleBigPlanet. Obviously there were things that Harrison was reluctant to divulge just yet, but his answers offer some good insight into the two hotly anticipated items.

Q: Home looks great, but it begs a few questions. Presumably there will be moderation, at least in the public spaces?

PH: Exactly right. Public spaces will be moderated, and we’ll use the same rules of parental control as we do for the PlayStation Network, so parents can control whether people have access to the network or not. Then, in the private spaces, it’s unmoderated - exactly in the same way that you can send an e-mail to somebody with an attachment on it, or you could have a video chat with somebody.

Q: In terms of some of the actions you can do within the world, presumably there’s no adult content there?

PH: Well, it’s absolutely deliberate that there is no physical impact between characters, between avatars. We are going to have animations that will allow you to shake somebody’s hand or to have some social touch but in a very, you know, appropriate way. But no, we’re not going to have ‘those’ kind of animations that I’m imagining that you’re thinking about.

Q: What about uploading porn from your PS3’s hard-disk to your private space? And maybe inviting people you don’t necessarily know back and them being slightly offended by what they see, then going to a moderator?

PH: Well I’m disappointed that you would use those as the first questions. I think Home should be used for a much wider and more beneficial scope than that, but I think that people can express their creativity inside Home in a wide variety of ways and it’s not necessarily for us to dictate what that should be. However, if somebody feels uncomfortable about an encounter on Home, it’s very easy for them to ban that person from their friends list…
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It seems that Sony really have been striving to make up for all the love lost with early compatibility fears. Whilst standing by their original comments that backwards compatibility will not be the focus going forward, the early launch of its compatibility site reveals that 1,782 of the 2,451 PS2 titles (in the SCEE region) available will work on your PS3.

The 1.6 firmware upgrade to be released at midnight on March 22 has now been finalised, and the number of games listed is the number that will be available to those owners who upgrade their system software after March 23.

See press release below for details of the compatibility site and 1.60 Firmware upgrade:

European PLAYSTATION 3 Compatibility Site Launches Early

Firmware upgrade at launch to implement connectivity to Folding@home, background downloading and internet browser enhancements

London, 20 March 2007 – Sony Computer Entertainment Europe today launched the web site that will allow prospective PLAYSTATION®3 owners to see which of their PlayStation®2 titles are playable on the new European PS 3 hardware model.

The web site at http://faq.eu.playstation.com/bc lists those titles from the portfolio of PS2 titles available in the SCEE PAL territories that are playable on PS3.
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Following on from the most recent review of Three Speech’s event over at 3Rooms, here’s another piece put together by Ben Fernaux (www.red-riot.net).

Last Tuesday I went on a LittleBigAdventure.

It’s been a very long time since I had such faith in a failing product. Up until GDC’07 it was very hard for me to find a reason to want a PS3, yet more than anything I wanted to want one. At the best of times in the last two years the Sony PlayStation PR division has been tying themselves in knots. The lawsuit with Immersion left Sony battered and looking for ways to lick their wounds. Whether SIXAXIS was a by-product of a creative team frantically looking for ways to innovate or not, it’s here to stay. Steep prices, modified hardware, contradicting messages and launch shootings aside, things got off to a very bad start for the PS3.
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Insomniac Games debuted some of the first footage from its eagerly anticipated Ratchet And Clank on Friday and judging by the 290,000 views it received over the weekend, seems that it’s already generating a vast amount of interest. Here it is:

Rather than Three Speech reviewing this week’s event down at 3Rooms, we thought we’d ask some of those that attended to give us there impression of the night. Here’s what Azz from www.gamesey.com had to say (special thanks to Ricky Hodgson for providing the pics):

I was one of the lucky few who got to go to Three Speech’s Three Rooms event on Tuesday, and this is my personal account of the event. Before I begin I should highlight that this was my first time at a Three Rooms event, and probably more importantly, my first hands-on with a PS3!

I met up with three other members of Gamesey at our hotel and we headed down to London’s Shoreditch area, where the Three Rooms event was being hosted. You’ve probably seen pictures of the white building with a graffiti exterior… When we got there, we were let in by two doormen, and greeted by a charming young lady with a mysterious in-the-know look on her face, very Justin-Timberlake-music-video-esque. She checked to see we were on the list then directed us to the bar upstairs. Already, everything felt exclusive and we felt like total VIPs!
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Seems PlayStation have launched a free lifestyle mag in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, covering sport, technology, gaming, music, film etc. “The PlayStation brand will be shaped with PS3 as high definition home entertainment. With CONSOUL we look directly at the lifestyle of our customers. We address all, the fun of new emerging gadgets, the digital life of the internet, and naturally our outstanding games and films”, said Uwe Bassendowski, Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment Deutschland GmbH.

Has anyone seen a copy? Any good? The girl on the cover, by the way, comes from the new PS3 TV advertising campaign.

(Belated thanks to Consoul blog. No malice intended. Keep your hair on. Etc)

There’s been some debate whether WarHawk will be available as a downloadable game or on Blu-Ray. Sony have advised us that it will be available as a download only for the time being, and that a statement will be released if that position should change.