129w ago - SCEE Blog Manager James Gallagher has shared a video interview today spotlighting Kung Fu Live PS3 with the PlayStation Eye.

To quote: Kung Fu Live is the camera-based beat'em-up that will be released on PlayStation Store tomorrow.

It uses the PlayStation Eye to throw you into a comic book world of martial arts, giant enemies and spectacular superpowers.

I recently caught up with Teemu Mäki-Patola, CEO of Virtual Air Guitar Company, to take an early swing at it myself and grab an interview.

Why did Virtual Air Guitar decide to try something so ambitious with its first game, rather than go for something more traditional?

Our background is in university research where we were working on things like virtual reality interfaces, so that's our interest as well as our expertise and we wanted to bring some of that to the gaming market.

We believe that we can use our research to bring new experiences to games, which is why we set up the company.





What are the biggest challenges in producing a camera-based game like Kung Fu Live?

First of all, it's really difficult to get the technology side so perfect that you're confident...

129w ago - Today Senior Marketing and Programming Manager Lindsay Iveson of Sony Network Entertainment has posted up this weeks PS3 UK Video Store PSN updates, as follows:

We have an exciting update this week and I am pleased to inform you that The Expendables will be available to download from Monday 13 December.

Is it possible to get any more Action Legends in one movie? Don't miss this unbeatable cast: Statham, Li, Rourke, Lundgren, Schwarzenegger, Willis and Stallone.

Here's a personal message from Dolph Lundgren and the film's trailer. You should probably listen to him:





Tell us which action star you would most like to work out with in the comments!

You can also download an Inception HD Special Edition including Bonus Features. Inception is the thought-provoking thriller directed by Christopher Nolan and it is available in SD and HD, and to buy or Rent.

Here are the rest of this week's new releases.

To Buy

• The A-Team
• Shrek Forever After

To Buy & Rent

• The Sorcerer's Apprentice (HD)
• The Karate Kid (HD version included free SD download for PSP)
• Brooklyn's Finest (HD)
• 13 Hours
•...

129w ago - Since the release of PS3 Firmware v3.55 there is no sense in keeping the master key a secret any more - it has been released, along with unencrypted payloads, and a promise to release the source-code by PS3YES for a free PSGrade PS3 downgrader.

Download: PSGrade / PSGrade PS3 Hex Codes

Of note, the downgrade hex will only work on PS3's with a firmware of 3.50 or below.

The same team which brought the PSN spoof for online support of jailbreaks now has also brought us a Free Downgrade HEX for the PS3! PS3YES has released un-encrypted HEX files for downloading.

They promise open-source code to be release soon, but find below pre-compiled HEX files:

PSGRADE AT90USB646-16Mhz Teensy++ 1.0
PSGRADE AT90USB1286-16Mhz Teensy++...

129w ago - Update: CodeTwink has confirmed that PS3 Firmware update version 3.55 blocked access to lv2 kernel "execute" access, however, if you can patch back in a method to lv1_write_htab_entry, you can re-enable this area.

Today Sony Network Operations Americas VP Eric Lempel has announced that PS3 Firmware update v3.55 has arrived and simply adds a security patch.

Download: PS3 Firmware Update v3.55 (US) / PS3 Firmware Update v3.55 (EU)

More details are posted below, and to quote: "A new PS3 system software update, v3.55, will be released soon. This is a minor update that adds a security patch."

As expected, the PS3 Firmware 3.55 update works with the E3...

129w ago - Today we have for you a video that shows off the work of Cyberskunk in a PS3 Retail to Debug WIP Project dubbed Codename: Rebug!

He has been working on turning a retail console into a debug console through the use of firmware loader. The reason we are sharing this now is to show that it is nearly complete.

Most of this work has been done for quite some time just not shared with the public, but seeing its nearly complete you will get a preview of things to come. Once we have our full debug dumps you can expect 100% debug features on a retail console (currently we only have partial dumps).

I have left a few things out in the video that I will take screenshots of like *check although we have it enabled its grayed out, also auto download is now gone just like a TEST unit.

We will keep you posted as we make more progress in the coming days. Please do not ask when we will release this because we ourselves don't know when it will be finished.

System In The Video:

• US - PS3 Slim 120Gb
  
• Teensy ++ 2.0
  
• 1Gb USB Stick (Rebug)