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Richard Lemarchand, from Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune developer Naughty Dog, has said that he thinks they are probably only using around 30 or 40 percent of the power of the PS3 at the moment and that the PS3 has a great, untapped potential.

To quote: Lemarchand can talk about another interesting subject, though: the prospect that, in the near future, multi-platform PS3 games will outshine the versions running on rival consoles: “There’s a set of tools called Edge that were developed on the Naughty Dog premises, actually, by a group of very, very senior games programmer, some from Naughty Dog and some from elsewhere. I think it’s tremendously visionary of Sony to make these tools, which are largely low-level libraries.”

Before proceeding, we need to explain a little of the unique manner in which the PS3’s much-admired, phenomenally powerful Cell processor works. Essentially, it contains eight mini-processors called Synergistic Processor Units ... More »  


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In an article at IBM.com (linked above) titled 'PS3 is more than a Toy', Peter Seebach talks us through how to tweak Linux for the best possible performance on the PS3.

To quote: The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) runs Linux, but getting it to run well requires some tweaking. In this article, first in a series, Peter Seebach introduces the features and benefits of PS3 Linux, and explains some of the issues that might benefit from a bit of tweaking.

When Sony first announced that the PlayStation 3 would be able to run Linux natively, a great deal of excitement ensued. Early on, it was a bit of a challenge to get Linux natively installed. The supported installer ran a custom script that hand-mangled a Fedora Core 5 or 6 install DVD into a runnable system with a special PS3 kernel. People put in hours and hours of effort to get other systems, such as Ubuntu, working. Terrasoft's Yellow Dog Linux, with an actual graphical installer that ran on the PS3, was the ki... More »  


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The new head of Sony Computer Entertainment Shuhei Yoshida said, in an interview with the Official PlayStation Magazine, that Team Ico has something “really, really good on the way.”

The full quote: “They are working on a title. I started the ICO project. Ueda-san joined my team in Japan as a cinematic animator, but he created a short movie and presented it to me and said, “I want to make this game.”

I said, “Yes, let’s do it, but you have never made a game. We have to have experienced people do it,” so it took a while, recruiting one person at a time. And because Fumito Ueda doesn’t compromise, we had to move the development from PSone to PlayStation 2. Then I couldn’t complete the game because I moved to the United States.

It took four years and the second game took four years too. So I started calling them the ‘Olympic Team.’ They haven’t released a PS3 title yet - of course not - they’ll take four years! But ... More »  


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To begin this week's PS3 Dev briefing, we want to give a follow-up in regards to the PS3 Downgrade PUP's for PS3 TEST/Debug consoles we recently acquired.

Yes, it does work fine, and we have successfully downgraded a PS3 Test to version 1.00! Version 1.00 is quite neutered for a TEST, about the only thing that works is the ability to run code from a DVD/BD, aside from that just about everything is non-functional.

More to come in those regards, including our ability to install and dump Retail PKG's on a Debug PS3 console!

Now onto the rumors: As we all know, many have been trying (but failing terribly) to dump the EEPROM chip inside the PS3's controller.

Our very own talented Courier successfully removed and dumped the chip, a picture o... More »  


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We’re going to have to say this, so just bear with us for a second, and be aware that we mean it in the best possible sense. We don’t want to indulge in any pointless console wars, and we certainly don’t want to be tarred with the inevitable fanboy brush.

Okay... deep breath. The PS3 is kinda broken.

Now we don’t mean that the PS3 will ‘red ring’ at any given opportunity, and we’re not suggesting it’s a console destined for the scrapheap – quite the opposite. When we say the PS3 is broken, we say it with the best of intentions, with a barely contained frustration towards a machine that, in its current state, will never fulfil its full potential.

We’re talking of course about processing bottlenecks, and the PS3 has a tonne of them.

The first major bottleneck is a result of the Blu ray drive. Although Blu-ray has traditionally been seen as the major selling point of the PS3 (and to a certain extent it is) at this ear... More »  


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We have had quite a few requests as to how the BD-Emulator on a PS3 TEST console works, and thought the best way to show how it works is through a video!

After formatting a USB HDD (in this case, a 500GB EIDE Drive hooked to the PS3 via an old USB CDROM enclosure) in the PS3, it is transferred to a PC. Once transferred, a properly decrypted, patched and remastered retail game is written to the drive. The drive is then plugged back in via USB to the PS3 TEST, while off.

The Drive is then turned on, followed by the PS3. Once the PS3 is on the BD-Emulator is set to USB. DEV is for a PS3 TOOL, which has an additional internal HDD for BD-Emulator purposes, and BD Drive is self explanatory. The PS3 then gets rebooted.




Upon reboot is where the video starts, it first shows the previous settings in the PS3, and then the game that was remastered, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is started from BD-Emulator. The BD-Emulator ... More »  

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First off, we would like to wish all of our American visitors a very Happy 4th of July 2008 today!

But for more explosive news (who doesn't love a pun?) we recently received two special PS3 PUP files from a VERY nice guy. As pictured below, they are PS3 Debug 1.00 (65.5 MB (68,765,224 bytes)) and PS3 Debug 1.50 (72.2 MB (75,762,080 bytes)).

These PUPs, which are the special downgrade PUPs, allow a user to downgrade their PS3 TEST from any version down to it. For example, with the 1.00 SPECIAL Downgrade PUP a user can be on 2.40, install it, and after a reboot be on 1.00!

1.00, which lacks just about every feature but ON/OFF functionality, will then let us upgrade to any DEV firmware above it.

Which brings us to 1.50... Through examining numerous Sony documentation recently, we have read that in the 1.60 Firmware the PS3's kernel memory and user memory are separated, leading us to believe that the kernel m... More »  


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As a follow-up to last week's post, this week we deliver more information on the SN Systems suite of products, specifically the Target Manager and ProDG Debugger for PS3.

As most recall, for ages SN Systems tools have required license files, usually based off a PC's MAC address and only available to licensed developers. We managed to 'acquire' a few for our PS3 Devs, but in addition to those each EXE had to be modified... but it was not a problem for one of our talented DEVs!

In the video below (clear version HERE), it demonstrates adding the SN license file, and showing that it is valid.




After that the Target Manager (which facilitates PC/PS3 communications) is started up, the old TEST removed,... More »  


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