102w ago - Here is a brief update from PS3 hacker Waninkoko, sharing his thoughts on how to develop a full-fledged PS3 CFW 3.60 / 3.61 followed by some details from groveritos below.

This news comes following a PlayStation 3 Custom Firmware hybrid update to PS3 CFW VENIX S-PLUS Spoofing 3.65. To quote, roughly translated:

1. Private keys can not be calculated for any firmware> = 3.56, and are NOT in any site, which for some are private (only the Sony has, and if we make a mistake it was thanks to them which they applied the algorithm So encryption of data and a few mathematical operations could calculate the private keys).

2. IF you can create a CFW 3.61, the only obstacle is to get the public keys, which can be drawn SI, with varying degrees of difficulty but you can. Each loader is encrypted with a private key and decrypted with the corresponding public key. But the lowest level loader in a FW is encrypted and decrypted with the root key, which is invariably because the root public key used to decrypt the loader is located in the metldr (obviously, the metldr will have to have the public key to decrypt the loader) and metldr NOT be updated in any way, so that...

201w ago - As expected, Sony Europe has demonstrated its PlayStation 3 Motion Controller at the Develop Conference in Brighton... which runs from July 14 to 16, 2009.

At SCEE's coding keynote presentation, the company stressed that the hardware is still a prototype. The PS3 Motion Controller was shown with the same Zelda-style bow and arrow demo seen at E3.

To quote: Sitting in the front row, our impressions of the motion mapping indicate that the system definitely has room for improvement; the spatial accuracy of the pulling back of the bow didn't match the on-screen action precisely, and other wii-like inaccuracies were obvious.

That said, there's plenty of time for SCEE to get it right, and we were lucky to see the controller at all given that it spent the last four days in customs after getting shipped in from the US.

"It can track true 3D, whereever I move it will fully track on every axis," explained SCEE developer services boss Kish Hirani.

In a demo of the archery game shown at E3, SCEE's Colin...

203w ago - Over the last few years there have been countless rumors that Sony has plans (and even a patent) for a PSP phone. Finally some confirmation has surfaced courtesy of the Nikkei business daily.

It reported this morning that Sony is considering developing a cellphone-game gear hybrid in a bid to better compete with Apple Inc's highly popular iPod and iPhone.

To quote: Sony plans to set up a project team as early as July to develop a new product that combines functions of its portable game player and Sony Ericsson's mobile phones, the Nikkei said.

Sony Ericsson is a cellphone joint venture between Sony and Sweden's Ericsson.

A growing number of game-makers including Capcom Co Ltd and Square Enix Holdings are now offering software for the iPod and iPhone to take advantage of the Apple products' popularity, posing a threat to Sony's PlayStation Portable and Nintendo Co Ltd's DS.

204w ago - SCEE's head of developer services Kish Hirani will be giving the coding keynote at this year's Develop conference, and he'll be giving much more detail on Sony's new PS3 Motion Controller debuted at E3.

To quote: He'll also be talking about new vision processing and advanced graphical techniques in the PS3 libraries, using real-world examples from recent and soon-to-be-released PS3 and PSP titles.

Also appearing at the conference will be Intel's Dr. Doug Binks, who'll present the coding session 'Preparing for Larabee', which will explore how developers can leverage their existing codebase while still exploiting the power of the new chip.

The Develop Conference takes place at the Hilton Metropole in Brighton from July 14th to 16th.

220w ago - Earlier this week, Shaun Himmerick, executive producer for "Wheelman" and employee at Midway, told the hosts of the "This Xbox Life" podcast that developing for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 couldn't be any different.

"The politically incorrect answer is that the PS3 is a huge pain in the ass," Himmerick told the hosts.

"Anyone making a game, if you're going to make it for both, just lead on the PS3 because if it works on the PS3, it'll work on 360," he said. "We had to play catch-up on the PS3 because of the memory constraints and how it renders; how it processes is just different. And it's harder on the PS3," Himmerick continued.

A slew of well-known developers have spoken out against Sony's high-power console.

Valve's Gabe Newell said in 2007 -long before Sony's decline started- that the PlayStation 3 is a "waste of everyone's time." He went on to tell Edge Magazine that "investing in the Cell... gives you no long-term benefits. There's nothing there that you're going to apply to anything else. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created. I don't think it's a good solution."

A report in the Dr....