132w ago - SCEE European Product Manager Cristina Giuliano has confirmed today that the Zombie Apocalypse known as Dead Nation for PlayStation 3 is hitting PSN in Europe on December 1, and a day earlier on November 30, 2010 in North America.

To quote: Calling all zombie killers from across Europe: over the last few month we have been talking quite a lot about Dead Nation, the third-person shooter coming to PlayStation Network, revealing the game's innards trailer by trailer and limb by necrotic limb.

Lots of you have been asking when this game is coming out and I am very happy to finally give you a release date.

Get ready: the zombie apocalypse is happening in Europe on the 1st December, only on PlayStation Network.

The price will be €12.99 / £9.99.

In case you've had your head in a corpse and don't know what Dead Nation is, see all of the posts we have had on the game here.

132w ago - London Studios SingStar Content Manager Nina Scherer has posted up this weeks SingStore PS3 releases today, as follows:

Exciting times this week as the first downloadable dance add-ons will be available in the SingStore and that's not all.

In addition, we're giving you dance and guitar gameplay which you'll be able to grab for free from the Extras section. Don't say we're not good to you!

Note that to get these extras, you will have to have the recent 5.10 update installed.

So apart from twelve dance - I'm expecting amazing videos in MSO, btw - and two guitar add-ons there are also great new tracks from Cheryl Cole, Ellie Goulding, Alexandra Burke, David Bowie, Morrissey and Mudhoney on offer. As always, full tracklisting is below.

You'll notice that the list below is now colour coded (songs only). Anything in green means the track is exclusive to the SingStore and has never been featured on a disc before. Some of you requested that I add this information so hope this helps?

That's me for this week. Now DANCE! Feel free to let me know what you think of the dances and what's your favourite(s).

In English

Alexandra Burke
Hallelujah
worldwide

Amy Diamond
Stay...

132w ago - Today Sony's Senior Social Media Specialist Rey Gutierrez has posted up this weeks new PS3, PSP and PSN releases.

To quote: The third installment in the Assassins Creed franchise arrives on the PS3 this week and the blog boyz are ready to behead and slay some Templars -- Cesare Borgia, you're going down, son.

Igniting mass destruction and triggering powerplays goes portable this week when one my favorite racing games of 2010, Split/Second, comes to the PSP.

In other PSP news: A popular but previously delayed minis title has a new date; you'll be dribbling and shouting "Boom Shakalaka!"; and Criterion and EA are on Hot Pursuit for speed.

PlayStation 3

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - The critically acclaimed single-player experience of Assassin's Creed is back and better than ever as Ezio returns in an epic struggle against the powerful Templar Order.

Now a legendary Master Assassin, Ezio must journey into Italy's greatest city, Rome, center of power, greed and corruption to strike at the heart of the enemy. Defeating the corrupt...

132w ago - Just a few days back we saw a video of PS Downgrade software by the PSJailBreak Team in action, and today graf_chokolo has posted on xorloser's blog (linked above) that he has decrypted PS3 Firmware 3.50 and while it's still a WIP it could very well lead to a free public PlayStation 3 downgrader alternative.

To quote: I am able now to decrypt and decompress CORE_OS_PACKAGE.pkg from PS3 PUP-Files. The decrypted and decompressed package is a copy of FLASH region where all the important SELFs and isolated SPUs stored, e.g. lv1.self or isoldr.

So, now i could downgrade PS3 by writing this decrypted image to FLASH manually, without Update Manager from HV. In fact, Update Manager just do this But the problem is, that the SHA-1 hash values for these files are stored not in flash but in SC EEPROM and i don't have access to it yet

Here is a snippet from CORE_OS_PACKAGE.pkg 3.15:

Offset 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

00000000 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 17 00 00 00 00 00 6F FF E0 .............oÿà
00000010 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 60 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 .......`........
00000020 63 72 65 73 65 72 76 65 64 5F 30 00 00 00 00 00 creserved_0.....
00000030...

132w ago - Today PS3 homebrew developers SKFU and iQD (with some coding by Pillum) have released their latest creation, a PC application they call the PSN Tool version 2.0 for PlayStation 3 users!

Download: The PSN Tool 2.0 for PS3

To quote: Yep, we are still alive guys! To proove that, today our public release of our newest creation.

The PSN Tool Feature list:

• Patchscan in 45(!) PSN environments
• Range & scan
• Direct PKG file download
• PSN Registration
• Store Collection
• User Info
• User Trophy Info

User Info & Trophy Info Details:

To use those features you require keyfiles. For doubts about the legal situation we won't include those in the download package.

To get information/trophies about the user of your choice, enter his/her nickname in the "Input nickname here..." field, choose the region he lives in via the table next to it (USA/EU/JAP) and press "User Info" or "Trophy Info".

If we find the time we may release an update as there still a lot on the TODO-list: