Crispy Gamer News

Last Thursday, we reported on Sony adding a new patch to its Home service, which added facial hair to the avatar options while disabling the service’s voice chat capabilities. Apparently, a weekend of silence was more than enough though, as Sony has released a brand new patch to the Home beta, giving users back their collective voice … with a few conditions.

Ostensibly, the voice feature was originally dropped due to the strain the feature was putting of the service. Of course, the decision to yank the feature was probably helped by the fact that much of the chatter going on in Home was of the juvenile smack talk/pickup line variety. Now that the voice chat feature has been re-established, players will be able to go back to hitting on each other, but only in the comforts of their personal spaces and clubhouses. So, you’ll have to actually convince someone to come back to your place before you can try to talk them into “coming to your place”.

By clicking on their PlayStation Home icon on the PlayStation Network column of XMB, Home users will be automatically prompted to update to 1.05. Users who are online with PlayStation Home will need to log-off and click on PlayStation Home icon for the update to register.

To say that PlayStation Home has had a lukewarm launch would probably be one of the biggest understatements of the year. The PS3’s social networking service has been plagued with server crashes, stripped features, and even reports of widespread hacking. Sony seems to be scrambling to fix things, though, as a post on the PlayStation blog is reporting that the service will be undergoing another round of maintenance today to try and fix some of the issues.

The new update, moving things up from v1.03 to v 1.04, is supposed to address “the difficulty some people are having accessing PlayStation Home due to the high demand for the service”. It also looks like Sony thinks some of the issues may be stemming from the chatter going on in Home, as the voice chat feature on the service is being “temporarily suspended”. Who knew that that smack talk and cybersex could take up so much bandwidth? Well … who besides more than three quarters of the people who ever go into virtual worlds? (Second Life anyone?)

To make up for the temporary case of laryngitis on Home, the new update will add give players something extra in their avatar closets: beards. While the selection is extremely limited, and you still can’t create the “Mirror, Mirror” style evil twin of your Home persona to blame for all your actions, there’s a nice big set of muttonchops and even a full beard/moustache combo that would do Santa proud. If nothing else, this should bring a little more diversity to the appearance of the Home population. The fairer sex, though, is out of luck. With no new additions to the female avatar toolbox, it looks like the Bearded Lady will have to be content to stick with her carnival act.

After all the hype, the hoopla, and the building anticipation, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. finally announced that its PlayStation Home Beta service will be available to all PS3 users around the world this week. Starting tomorrow, PS3 owners will be able to download the 3D service, creating and customizing their own unique avatars while exploring Sony’s virtual community in real time and chatting things up with friends and strangers through text or voice chat.

Users will also be able to play mini-games, watch videos, and attend special events hosted by Sony or any of its partners. Home will also let users create their own communities by using the “Club” feature to create clubs with other Home users who share the same interests.

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Sony’s virtual ‘Home’ away from home hasn’t even officially opened to the public yet, and it’s already looking like the neighborhood is getting zoned for commercial use. According to a report this morning on UK-based marketing website BrandRepublic, energy drink manufacturer Red bull has become the first brand to build a presence in PlayStation Home. While game companies have promised to have their own presence in the virtual PS3 community, Red Bull is the first non-gaming company to announce a brand partnership with Sony.

The Red Bull brand will be showcase on a new tropical island built in Home, which will feature an airplane racing game based on Red Bull’s real world Red Bull Air Race series.
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It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about the holidays, Santa, riots in shopping malls, or anything of that sort. I’m talking about time for PlayStation 3 owners to, yet again, turn on their consoles and grab another firmware update for the system. This time around, we’re moving on up to version 2.53, which adds a gaggle of tweaks to the system, including full screen Flash support, DivX Video On Demand support, video noise reduction, and some playback improvements for certain PS3 software.

Want to see the complete list of improvements? Keep reading after the jump.
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What better time is there than the middle of a presidential election to start talking about the Secret Service? With that in mind, Activision announced today that it plans to release Secret Service, a new tactical first person action game. Secret Service will feature story and level design contributions by Daniel Arey, who previously worked on Uncharted, the Jak series, and the Crash Bandicoot series. The game will be released later this year for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and PC.
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