This happened following the update to hacked machines. You have been warned...

It was only a matter of time, but following all the madness of PS3′s being jail broken by little pen drives, that allowed you to access and essentially mount ripped games off the hard disk drive, Sony have released a firmware update (3.42 to be precise), that apparently doesn’t seem to do anything…

Basically, Sony have yet to release any details of what this actually does, other than a failure to update to it prevents you from accessing the Playstation Network. Maybe that won’t be a big deal to people who are currently enjoying pirated games on the system, but according to the firmware, it will increase “system stability”, whatever that is supposed to mean. Of course, we’ll no doubt see soon as the pen drives of PS3 doom begin to stop working.

Update: According to Exophase, via Kotaku, the update has added an extra level of security to the console, stopping all variants of the PS3 jail break tools, and whilst they say that it’s possible to update the pen drives for future firmware updates, the game between Sony and the hackers looks to be continuing.

It is time, once again, to take a look at the wall of games and work out what is the highest selling box with a disc in it this week. OK, not quite sure what happened with that first sentence, anyway, CHARTS.

This week sees the clambering of Mafia 2 to the top of the video game gang land, weirdly enough grabbing top spot from Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days, with the biggest UK game launch since Red Dead Redemption. It’s clear that crime clearly does pay.

As we watch Just Dance slip like a fat kid on velcro slide down the charts, Wii Sports Resort is the biggest jump this week, going from 16th to 5th, mainly due to the Wii price drop, so nearly everyone must own at least five of them now, right?

Not even a unified Wingardium Leviosa is going to stop Lego Harry Potter from moving down a few positions, from 4th to 8th, with Super Mario Galaxy 2 maintaining its strong 7th spot. Generally this month has seen a bit of a bounce in Wii Software, from Wii Fit Plus to New Super Mario Bros. Wii (which is packaged in with some Wii Deals), both moving up the charts.

Shooters still dominate the ‘teens’, with both Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 hovering around the top 10 spots. This also sees the triumphant return of Sniper: Ghost Warrior, which despite having next to no marketing budget, has reached its highest position of 9, crawling past Prince of Persia, who’s still wall jumping around the top 10 at 10th spot.

As mentioned before, Wii software is seeing another surge, with Mario Kart Wii (still one of my biggest Nintendo disappointments) returning to the charts at 27th, with former number one Crackdown 2 and fellow high flyer Blur returning back to the charts at 31 and 32 respectively. The old guard is still going strong, with Halo 3 and GTA: IV still hanging around awkwardly at 36 and 37.

And at last, but most certainly not least, Club Penguin: Herbert’s Revenge enters the charts at 40, showing that in the UK, there is always a place in a charts for some lovable penguins.

More charts next week, courtesy of GFK Chart-Track

Plain and Simple, see, even gold text!

In a move that will no doubt be blamed squarely on the door of the ‘economic climate’ that we’ve been living under for the past two years, Microsoft’s Larry Hryb, other known as, of course, Major Nelson, has announced today on his blog that prices for subscribing to the Xbox Live service are going up in certain territories.

The UK, in addition to the US, Canada and Mexico are the countries affected, and depending on how you subscribe, the rise is actually pretty nominal, despite what some people would have you believe. The only tariff changing in the UK is if you want to pay monthly, which has gone up from £4.99 for a Gold account to £5.99, but I don’t know anyone who pays for Xbox Live by the month. The three-month and yearly packages are remaining the same for the UK.

The story is mostly the same for the other territories, with the monthly subscription again going up by 1 Canadian dollar, in of course, Canada, and if it means anything you to you less ignorant folks out there, the Mexican figure for a year subscription is now up to 599 Pesos.

It’s the US where a lot of forum goers are getting all catty about it, as all their packages have been affected. To start with, the monthly Gold membership is now up to $9.99 from $7.99, the three-month is now five dollar’s more at $24.99 and the 12 month fee is now (and I’ll refuse to use the word ‘hefty’ as some people have) $59.99.

OK, so the most popular package (yearly) has gone up, but I’m pretty sure that’s only something like 80 cents a month or something like that, so as long as they keep regular checks on their sofa change (and other people’s sofas if you are crafty about it) you should manage just fine. Nope, no one likes prices going up, but just as with games, the price will keep rising as people keep paying. Even so, around $60, which the price of a recently released full price game is approximately £38-40 quid, which is becoming the price of a budget game in UK. And we’re not even getting onto the incredibly inflated prices of the Australian market.

Whilst being available to all users, the New Xbox Experience factors heavily into Xbox Live

Indeed, some people may not be very happy about the cost, the main thing people seem to be complaining about at the moment is the way that MS have communicated it, claiming the hike is due to adding content and valuable user experiences. Whilst the New Xbox Experience and all it’s trappings probably cost a fair bit to implement, the common view is that many Gold users feel that, apart from perhaps Netflix streaming in the US (and soon Canada), most of the features, such as Twitter and Facebook integration are pretty useless on the system.

The issue is perhaps, that if MS raise the price, but don’t change the product, it seems more like an effort to generate reliable funds from an area of the business, especially as they are preparing to release the potentially risky Kinect system in November. I’m pretty sure most people are kind of ‘Meh’ about this, and will accept to paying a bit more, but they may start feeling Microsoft needs to start offering more to them, as opposed to the ‘casual’ crowd.

The price rise does not come into effect until November 1st, so if you renew your subscription by then, you can dodge around paying the extra cash, but this really only applies to those who are on longer subscriptions in the States or Mexico.

Also, in reaction to this, retailers in the US, such as Amazon.com and Newegg are dropping the price of the 12 month XBL cards to $40 dollars, so as a service to anybody from the US out there, check it out or buy multiple cards to last you forever! Or just do the single year on Xbox.com, the choice is yours.

Forget high-powered sports cars, this, is why I'm installing 10 Gigs

In a twitter post responding to fan’s questions, the creator of the series Kazunori Yamauchi said that whilst GT5 would only require you to install 256MB to the PS3′s Hard drive, for the smoothest of possible gameplay, a 10GB would be better. Whilst I’ve used many games that actually require a compulsory large install, I think a 10GB optional is the record, unless anyone else out there has any other ideas.

The issue of these installs though have largely gone away, mainly because developers have got better at managing the disc speed of the Blu Ray and because you can install games to the Xbox 360, parity has, in a  way, evened the playing field, with far more ‘optional’ installs.

The one thing I could imagine being a problem is the size of the install, and then the effect it actually has. Because it wasn’t exactly a detailed answer, being a tweet, ‘smoothest’ could mean anything from load speeds to actual frame rate, so the 10GB may mean faster loading of car models and other details, or the different between a constant frame rate and jittery racing.

At least, with regards to actual hard drive space, the majority of people will not have too much in the way of space issues, especially if you are, without question, going to be playing a lot of GT5. And for those still using the smaller hard drives, such as the 20GB models that came out in Japan and North America, it may be time for an upgrade now.

Gran Turismo 5 is out on PS3 in November

Screen's like this make Far Cry 2 look 'cooler' than, unfortunately, it is

Whilst I know roaming through a couple of square miles through the war-torn African heartland wasn’t to everyone’s cup of tea, Far Cry 2 wasn’t a bad game, despite it perhaps being not too memorable. Whilst it was a little gimmicky, even compared to Far Cry 1, for example the idea of repairing every vehicle known to man by tightening up a bolt on the engine (have tried, does not work in real life).

And whilst I thought that FC2 had some issues, such as the incredibly aggressive AI, slow build up and pretty floaty vehicle controls,I enjoyed my time with it, so perhaps wouldn’t be too opposed to a new one, if they tightened many of the mechanics. So it was rumoured in the ‘spy’ column in PC Gamer that development of the 3rd game is in ‘full swing’, being handled by Ubisoft Montreal, with Relic Entertainment’s former  Creative Director (the guys behind Company of Heroes and the Warhammer 40k games amongst others) Josh Mosqueira jumping into the vacant role in Montreal’s team.

However, we still know nothing about the game, Linkedin profiles and other such things don’t really say much about that, but it has been rumoured that the next Far Cry would most likely retain its African setting, although someone did mention Antartica…which isn’t going to do much for all that Fire technology they worked on for the last game

When it was announced there would be Co-Op in Portal, people didn’t actually know whether they wanted it or not. Part of what made Portal such a classic game was the experience of being a single character going through a mysterious test lab, so wouldn’t making it just a series of cooperative challenges not really add too much.

However, what those people tend to forget is that Portal was simply fun, a fun game to play that people wanted more of. Of course, the single player is shaping up to be great, but more Portal 2 can’t be a bad thing, right? So, in this brief trailer from GTTV shows you and a friend playing as two test robots, but even from this short section, it’s clear that they have a bunch of personality.

Whilst people have attempted to add Co-op to Portal through Mods, having a fully fledged co-op campaign could add more value to what is growing into a far larger game than the original.

Portal 2 is due out on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on February 9th 2011

With the closure of Ensemble studios following the release of Halo Wars, it seemed like the end of all things Age of Empires. Whilst Microsoft still owned the IP, it was Ensemble who had driven the franchise from the start, and without them as a unified studio, it seemed like it would never really be able to release another AoE game, following the generally well received Age of Empires 3.

Well, Microsoft have been talking about something called ‘Project S’ for a while, and it turns out than rather than just any online based real-time strategy game, its an Age of Empires based online strategy game. It’s got a cartoony look, kind of like it’s been crossed with something like Battlefield Heroes or some kind of facebook game, but it’s still recognisable taking it’s style from the second Age of Empires game, Age of Kings, which happens to be my favourite.

It’s going to combine a load of social gaming features, all linked in through Games for Windows Live, so for example, there will be persistent levelling, a variety of multi player options and  some sort of quests functionality. It’s being developed by Robot Entertainment, which has some of the old AoE team working on it, and the game will be completely free to play.

If you fancy perhaps getting involved in the beta, why not sign up over at this website, or take a look at some of the gloriously colourful screen shots below.

It’s that time again, my favourite time of the week, the time we get to see what all your people in the United Kingdom have been spending your hard-earned ‘Game Cash’ on. This week, Toy Story 3 has moved to the top of the charts, after being in 2nd last week, and apparently, that game is a pretty good game. Modern Warfare 2 is back up there at number two, thanks, according to Chart-Trak (who kindly provide this data), to a resurgence in the PS3 version of the game. We’ll just brush over the fact Dance on Broadway is still there, and move onto to the rest of the games.

Starcraft II, after selling bucketloads in its first week, has died off a little into 4th spot, but considering it is one of the few PC only titles on the charts, that is still pretty good going. Generally that hasn’t been much going on in terms of movement or new games, with only Art Academy for the DS and Hidden Mysteries: Titanic for DS and Wii being completely new, with GTA Episodes: Liberty City Stories appearing back on the charts. Other news from Chart-Trak is that Modern Warfare 2 is poised to over-take Dr Kawashima’s games as the top selling in the UK of all time. True Facts.

We’ll have more charts next week.

In terms of explosions that look like fireworks, Homefront is right up there

You’d imagine that if you were making a game, you’d aim to be the biggest and best at what you were going for. That doesn’t necessarily mean having a huge budget, but whether it falls short or not, most developers seem to have the idea of their game making some type of impact on the market. With the way games development has gone, many games often live on through the recycling of concepts, as opposed to critical or commercial success.

However, sometimes a cautious line, especially in a genre as heavily populated as first person shooters, is required, as is being reported in Gamesindustry.biz this morning, THQ’s head of marketing Jon Rooke seems to think that too often, games try to be too big, too fast. Rooke says that whilst THQ are excited about Homefront and how it will stand up against the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops and the newly revitalised Medal of Honor series, they are remaining realistic about its performance.

“We’re not going to do 15 million unit sales overnight with the first game – even if the market potential is there and we spent money on it, we just wouldn’t do it,”

Pointing towards the longevity of the two big shooter franchises this year, Rooke explains that because Call of Duty and Medal of Honor have years to establish themselves, Homefront cannot simply stomp over them without taking steps first:

“You have to take time to build fans, engage consumers, give them a reason to purchase – and then keep them with it as you go to sequel iterations.”"

So instead of aiming for what THQ’s marketing department claim is almost  impossible with Homefront, they are simply aiming to give the title at high metacritic score and plant the game in people’s minds, similar to how the first Medal of Honor did on PS1. Whilst that game didn’t do brilliantly straight away, its high scores meant it remained one of the best FPS’s on the system for many years.

Despite the comparisons to the Call of Duty franchise, it’s not something developer Kaos studios have being making themselves, instead preferring to compare their game to Half Life 2, with their game taking place in Korean occupied America in 2027, with you playing as the American Civilian Resistance attempting to reclaim the US from Korean hands.

Homefront is being developed by Kaos Studios and published by THQ and is due out later this year on PS3, PC and Xbox 360.

[Gamesindustry.biz]

It's a good job she hasn't got the boards mixed up...

Whilst I’ll admit to the tagline being ever so slightly misleading, the idea of Tony Hawk: Shred having snowboarding in it just seems weird, but then, when you consider that these extreme sports dudes tend to transfer from one piece of wood to another, it perhaps seems weirder that Mr. Hawk hasn’t changed his style a bit earlier than this.

Without really knowing a whole lot about it, some screens of SHRED have been released that show that it’s got a more cell shaded, and almost a ‘Sim’ style look to the characters, as opposed to the simply ‘poor’ looks the characters in the badly received Tony Hawk: Ride. Speaking of which, I’m not sure, but then I have a feeling that, just for the hell of it, the board that was oh so important for Ride will be usable here, if of course, you feel a need to justify purchasing that board anyway.

I’m still generally confused at what direction this series is going. Skate as a series has pulled ahead hugely in terms of critical acclaim, and perhaps soon name recogniton, so the question Activision will have to ask when thinking about this series is whether it’s worth it. If I were them, they need a couple of years to break away, similar to what the SSX franchise has done, so people can actually come back and think ‘Yeah, I a Tony Hawk game’, as it’s taken to about now for people to be asking EA for another SSX game.

Anyhow, here are some of the screens, courtesy of Destructoid, and just so you know, Tony Hawk: Shred is supposed to be coming out this year, despite is still knowing pretty much nothing about it.