Wait a tick -- if Sony has "no plans" to hack off a cool hundie from the price of its PlayStation 3, what mothership is directing Circuit City? In a brief blurb that can't exactly be taken as the unequivocal truth, Sony President Ryoji Chubachi told Reuters that "at present, we have no plans" to lower the pricetag attached to its PS3 console. Of course, we mustn't forget those contradicting reports showing that Sony actually has been mulling PS3 price cuts since the beginning of this year, and better yet, Sony's been known to deny blatantly obvious price alterations a time or two before. So there you have it, a denial that reeks of non-denial, but even analysts are betting that Sony (officially) trims at least a Benjamin from the machine in the relatively near future.

The console wars just got a whole lot hotter. No, not in that way. Sony's perennially overpriced PS3 is about to get a welcome pricebreak to the tune of $100, at least according to a scan of an upcoming Circuit City advertisement leaked onto the interwebs. That puts the console at $499, and with the 5 free Blu-ray movies Sony is tossing in with every purchase, there's never been a better time to buy. The promotion runs from July 15th to the 21st, and there's no word if that price drop will stick, if it has Sony's blessing, or if will get expanded to other retailers, but we'll all hope for the best.

[Via Joystiq; thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: GameDaily is reporting this is going to be an official change of price as of July 12th, which is, surprise surprise, during E3. We'll keep an eye on this.

Considering that some retail locales in America are still having trouble keeping a fresh supply of Wii consoles in stock (whilst the PlayStation 3 units tend collect thin layers of dust), it's no surprise to see such dramatic sales figures surface. Sure enough, Enterbrain's latest report demonstrates that Nintendo's darling moved into 270,974 new households in June, while only 41,628 PS3s were sold in the same timeframe; just to compare, the even older Xbox 360 was able to sell 17,616 units. That brings the overall sales figures to date for Nintendo to nearly 2.76 million, while Sony has yet to break the magical one million in units sold. But don't count Sony out just yet -- it's coming back, remember?

Managed to not entirely forget that Sony owes us all a rumbling SIXAXIS or two? If so, you may actually be delighted to hear that the end result could be quite the device if whispers stemming from the latest issue of PSM France are to be believed. Reportedly, the forthcoming controller will not only sport a vanilla rumble, but it will also boast a "touch sense" feature that allows rumbles to emanate from specific locales on the device. Additionally, the shakin' is said to be "more powerful and more intense" than prior renditions on the PS2, which means that the 90-pound wusses in the crowd best get to the weight room, and programmers are purportedly working to enable shorter bursts of sensation to make even the most subtle of movements ones you can feel. Now, how's about a release date?

Happy Canada Day, eh? PlayStation.ca is celebrating that finest of patriotic traditions with three limited edition red PS3s to be handed out to lucky contest winners. You don't need to do much to enter, just fill out a few details about yourself and call Canada your home -- or find someone to do it for you who can. The custom paint job is being done by Adrian Anz, tech customizer to the stars, and sounds like it won't be at all shabby. Of course, if you don't luck out, don't live in that vast northern wasteland, or don't want to wait for the contest to wrap up, you can always ship your system off to ColorWare or pony up for an eBay job. Just be sure you have a few pennies left over to help offset the cost of a few of those 380 promised PS3 games in the coming months -- no point in having a red PS3 if you can't afford anything to play on it. Now when are Sony and Nintendo going to get their acts together and start selling color alternatives outright?

Eric Lempel, the gentleman behind PlayStation Networks Operations, was kind enough to share news on the company's blog about the upcoming 1.82 firmware update for Sony's black box, hitting PS3s stateside in a matter of days now. The update (which is already available in Japan) will step up the AVC from Main Profile to High Profile, thus allowing playback of HD content via H.264/MPEG-4 files. The video upgrade appears to be the only feature of this bump, although Eric says the company is working on audio issues that some users have been taking Sony to task on.

[Via Joystiq]

Read -- Eric Lempel blog post
Read -- Translated Japanese coverage of the update

Update: According to our astute readers, this firmware update went live last night. So go get it.

While it seems like voice chat has taken over as the dominant trash-talk medium for online console gaming, there's still a lot of tedious onscreen keyboarding to be done -- entering Wii friend codes leaps to mind, for one. With any luck, those chores will be made easier in the future with the TwoStick system recently developed in Vienna. The system assigns characters to a Sodoku-like 9x3 grid, letting the user select a quadrant with the left stick and select a letter from within the quadrant with the right. According to the developers, TwoStick users are around 2 words per minute faster than regular on-screen keyboarders after just a little practice. No word on if we might see the system hit the current-gen systems, but we're definitely holding out hope for the 720 and PS4. Peep a video of TwoStick in action after the break.

[Via Joystiq]

Howard Stringer -- Sony Corp's CEO and man with the plan -- just exited stage-left from Sony's annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo. To say that the 6,000 attendees were skeptical of said plan would be an understatement given a year of fiscal losses, job cuts, PS3 under-performance (with an eventual Kutaragi dismissal), and an embarrassing and dangerous recall of some 10 million batteries among other missteps. Still, Howard stood strong, assuring investors that Sony has made the swtich from "recovery to profitable growth" and will be a "dominant company" in the digital age. So what's the plan?

The 1.80 PS3 firmware update might have just went out the door, but they aren't letting the coders sit still in Japan. In an interview with AV Watch, Sony Computer Entertainment managers Kawanishi and Kanehide let it slip that Sony isn't content to simply match the visual quality of upscaling TVs and DVD players, since the Cell is capable of doing much better. Sony expects to improve the quality of the image another 30 - 40% when all is said and done, and is waiting on a stable version of the Blu-ray spec so it can enable scaling of 1080i BD content to 1080p. The duo also hinted that a remote media playback solution that doesn't involve having to leave the PS3 on at all times is in the works, and that Sony plans on updating the PS3's firmware every quarter. No word on when we might see rumble finally show up, but we'll take what we can get -- maybe the upscaling will actually make a difference this time around.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

We knew it was coming, but we can't help but shed a tear at the retirement of the man who took consoles out of the cartridge era and into the extravagant and multi-billion dollar polygon war currently taking place in our living rooms -- for better or worse. Ken Kutaragi, father of the PlayStation, is calling it quits today at the ripe old age of 56. It was pretty clear he was on the outs when he left his post as president of SCE last year, with Kazuo Hirai taking his place in most operational duties. Ken announced he was leaving his positions as CEO and chairman in April, and now he's making good on his promise, with little more clarity if it's of his own accord or due to internal Sony pressures for a changing of the guard. As previously announced, Kutaragi will be sticking around in an advisory role, but from here on out the expectations of a struggling company and a few million fanboys will rest squarely on Kaz to steer the faithful through this console generation and beyond. And yes, this also means we're retiring the 'shopped PS3 pic to the right of this post. It will be missed most of all.

It's unlikely that we'll be the only ones thrilled to see this fiasco finally reach closure, and even though the dust has somewhat settled, the PS3 faithful are still operating sans a first-party rumbling controller. Rumors may have suggested that such a device was indeed getting ready to launch in the not too distant future, but according to a blurb at Inner Bits, battery life could be holding things up. While it doesn't come without a tad of salt, Sony is reportedly "facing some difficulties with regard to battery life," as sources supposedly mentioned that "the rumble and wireless support" were causing the batteries to "drain too fast to be acceptable for consumers." Of course, there's always the third-party alternative if you're not picky, but those holding out for the real deal could be waiting a tick longer if this proves true.

[Via Joystiq]

Sony's PR department has got to be one of the oddest places in the world to work: what other job requires doing damage control over accusations of running a racist marketing campaign and apologizing to the Church of England about violent video games in the same breath? Well, the latter is the current situation report from the whole "Resistance: Fall of Man level being set in Manchester Cathedral" brouhaha. Apparently, the company and the Church are going to sit down and discuss the Church's demands -- how much the company will be donating, and whether there will be a recall of the game -- with the background of Sony sincerely apologizing to anyone that was offended by the depiction. In light of this controversy, the embarrassment from asking a Church "can we make a video game where we shoot aliens inside this Cathedral?" would have been far less damaging than all this negative publicity: next time Sony, just ask permission!

[Via Joystiq]

The translation from Korean to English is a little icky, but it looks like the PlayStation 3 launch in Korea which took place earlier today went ahead with an 80GB hard drive, in line with previous reports from Sony. It still confuses us as to why Sony is so adamant that the rest of the world won't be enjoying this same capacity anytime soon: it's not a justification to say that Korea has better broadband and therefore more capacity is required (Europeans and North Americans will just have to wait longer to fill the drive!) But hey, we're not ones to get all huffed and puffed about a measly extra 20GB of space; you've already "freed your hard disk" by now, right?

[Thanks, Jayoung]

Not that there's ever been a mainstream game console or gadget that didn't eventually go down in price, but PlayStation fans not ready to plunk down the up to $800 sticker price for a new PS3 can take heart. Sony's Howard Stringer did confirm that Sony is looking at ways to bring down the price on its monolith at some point down the road -- probably way, way down the road -- but unfortunately there wasn't much more to it than that. We know Stringer wants to drop the price on the thing, but as usual one shouldn't expect any formal pre-announcements of price cuts on hardware the company's struggling to make a dime off of.

[Via The Inq]