Here’s some new GT5 screens we thought you might appreciate!

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Some of you have been asking for further facts on Stranglehold. Well here they are:

Signature Cinematic Action
Stranglehold allows gamers to play a John Woo-directed action blockbuster movie. Dual-wielding, stunt-laden gunplay combined with massive destructible environments ensures that Stranglehold will be a true tour-de-force. The environmental interactivity and two-fisted gunplay all come online, bringing the experience to a whole new level.

Amazing Gunplay & Stunts
Gamers will experience smooth flowing gameplay, such as running up railings, swinging on chandeliers and leaping onto moving objects, all without interrupting intense gun battles.

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Top Hong Kong director John Woo is bringing his action movie expertise and eye for beautiful, cinematic gun-play to the PS3 on 7th September, courtesy of Midway Games’ Chicago studio. The game is a sequel to Woo’s classic 1992 film Hard Boiled, with you in the nifty shoes of HK cop Inspector Tequila, out to take down the Chinese drug barons and Russian mafia bosses who’ve kidnapped his daughter.

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Midway Austin’s alien-bashing FPS is due for release on PS3 on 14th September. A follow up to their excellent PS2 title Area 51, you are in charge of a special ops team sent to the sleepy Nevada town of Rachel (near to the infamous Area 51) in response to some sort of ‘incident’. On arrival, of course, you find all manner of genetic experiments and human-robot hybrids on the rampage, tearing up gas stations and smashing up diners.

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SKY and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) today announced the formation of a Joint Venture company to deliver on-demand entertainment content to owners of the PSP™(PlayStation®Portable) in the UK and Ireland.

The Joint Venture company, with equal Board level representation from SKY and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe will draw on the unrivalled entertainment aggregation expertise and technical leadership of SKY, and the handheld entertainment knowledge and brand power of PlayStation®. The company will establish PSP and the new ground breaking video download service as the natural partners for those seeking the ultimate choice of portable entertainment content.

Focusing exclusively on delivering video content to the PSP, the Joint Venture will initially provide a wealth of video and film content to the more than 2.3 million PSP owners in the UK and Ireland. The two companies are already in discussions with entertainment content providers across Europe to facilitate future introduction of the service to European PSP owners.

More information on the service will be announced by SCEE at Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany on Wednesday 22nd August.

Sony Computer Entertainment collect three major honours at the Developer Industry Excellence Awards, including the coveted ‘Grand Prix Award’.

On the evening of Wednesday July 25th, at the Develop Industry Excellence Awards, hosted in the UK by Develop magazine, and attended by 500 game development industry professionals, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) collected three major honours.

SCE and our partner studios were nominated in a number of categories, and were proud to win the following awards, for our software titles.

- Best New Console/PC IP - Motorstorm (PS3)
- Best use of Audio - FreeStyle Games, for BBoy on PSP/PS2

The final award of the evening was the ‘Grand Prix Award’ - awarded solely by the judging panel without any advance nominations, it recognises overall excellence in creativity, technology or business development, within the gaming industry.

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The following content will be uploaded onto the Euro PSN store on Thursday 26th July:

PS One games:
- Crash 2
- Spyro 2
- Medievil

- *Wipeout 2097 (to be released end of August)

PS3 Demos:
- Heavenly Sword

PS3 Trailers:
- Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction
- GT5 Prologue

(These are the new E3 trailers, which can be found online… but will be offered on the store in HD PS3 format.)

*Post amended - Tuesday 24th July

For all those interested in the Ratchet and Clank developments, PSU.com have put together a detailed overview of what’s in store. See link below:

http://www.psu.com/node/12186.

We’ve also attached some more screens for you:

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As you may have seen on www.kotaku.com, the 1.90 Firmware update has just been released in Japan. Everyone over here in Europe will be able to get your hands on this from tomorrow (24th July).

Here’s a quick breakdown of what to expect:

• Ability to rearrange games on the XMB
• Option menu now includes “eject disk”
• Press triangle to eject games/CDs/movies in the XMB
• XMB backgrounds
• Change the folder classification
• Emoticons
• Change CD output to 44.1/88.2/176.4kHz
• Force 24Hz output for Blu-ray over HDMI
• Change PS3 video settings in-game
• “Bit Mapping” in the “Music Setting”
• Save AVCHD type animations from a Memory Stick
• Change settings like upscaling while playing PS and PS2 games
• Add bookmarks
• Web browser security function in the browser’s tool section
• Avatar moves during audio visual chat

A certain amount of confusion has reigned since Sony announced that the price of the 60Gb PS3 has been cut by $100 in the US – while in the UK, potential PS3 purchasers will instead get a Value Pack, which throws two games and a second Sixaxis controller into the mix, but leaves the PS3’s RRP at £425. Part of the problem was caused by Sony’s initial reluctance to point out that the 60Gb PS3 is being phased out in favour of an 80Gb model in the US, so effectively, the $100 price-cut will only be temporary.

But the fact remains that while a PS3 officially costs £425 in the UK (albeit bundled with more kit than the Americans get), for a while, it will cost just £250 in the US. We thought that the best thing to do would be go straight to the horse’s mouth, and managed to catch up with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s President, David Reeves, who provided a reasoned argument as to why we haven’t had a price-cut in the UK yet (it’s partly because it would annoy everyone who has already bought a PS3) and provided some strong hints that it won’t be too long before we do get a PS3 price-cut over here. Here’s what he said:

Q: So why didn’t we get a PS3 price-cut in the UK?

David Reeves: If you’re a consumer — and we introduced the PS3 in March for £425 or 599 Euros – let’s say you bought one at the end of April and have been using it, playing Resistance: Fall of Man and MotorStorm. We’ve only been on the market for three and a bit months. Our thought process was: “Wait a minute – we’re actually not doing too badly – we’re not selling as well as Wii or DS – but seasonality-wise, compared to, say, PS2 at the same time we launched it in 2001, we’re actually doing quite well on a regional level”. It’s exactly the target that we sought. July is not really a gamers’ month unless you get a big, big title. So we thought if we reduced the price, we’d annoy a lot of people. We did think about it, but we also felt that it wasn’t doing that badly. In the US, they’ve been going for more than six months, so they took the decision that going down in price was a better thing to do than a value pack.

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