Now we've seen our share of fake PS3 news before and this one looks too good to be true. According to a post from Belzar.com, they are now on the verge of releasing the worlds first full-fledged direct boot modchip for the PS3 that is packed full of useful features including multi-region DVD and blu-ray movie playback.

Already lost all hope about getting your hands on the LittleBigPlanet public beta? Don't, because according to Media Molecule's technical director Alex Evans, the earlier announcement of the public not getting access to the LittleBigPlanet beta is simply a "miscommunication." Read on in the full article for more details.

The countdown to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has begun, and Konami is doing one of its own through a video that looks back at the yesteryears of the franchise. Flirt with nostalgia when you watch Solid Snake as his young self in some of the most memorable locales he's ever visited when you watch the video after the jump.

 A lot of us were expecting Konami Digital Entertainment's Metal Gear Online beta download to drop on the 17th of April, but what we found on the PSN was a pleasant surprise. The Beta is there, and there's no explanation why. More details in the full article.

Thanks to Darkshneider and Eclipze_ for the tip!

Gamers who previously thought that Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet was already in its closed beta testing phase should shelf those ideas since the developers recently announced the game will just be entering its alpha stage very soon. No worries, though. Everything still seems to be going according to schedule for the much awaited title's September launch. More details about this in our full article.

If you're easily stirred by envy by the news of other lucky people participating in the beta testing of your much-awaited game, then you may want to avoid this piece of news. But we're saying it anyway: there's a big possibility that a few lucky people are blessed with the chance to play the beta version of LittleBigPlanet. Read all about it in the full article.

With Metal Gear Online's beta testing recently commencing over in Japan's PlayStation 3s, we're sure plenty of fans would love to know how the game's looking so far.

With that in mind, we're reporting that NeoGAF Forums member Autumn Thread managed to get his (or her) hands on a beta pass, and was more than happy to debrief the rest of us.

For starters, the pack comes in at 650 MB, with users required to have a Konami ID to log in. There's also character customization based on what we're hearing, which ensures you've got plenty of leeway in how you want your character to look (Mullets ftw). Now, without further ado, here are Autumn Thread's first impressions:

• The combat is really f**king cool, there's different lobbies, each named after an MGS character ; Snake, Otacon, Liquid etc (yeah, 95% of the people are in Snake lobby).
• It's rather annoying to change to first person mode (L1+triangle) especially when you're fighting people. The box has made a return! It's pretty funny that I managed to kill quite from a cardboard box that totally didn't fit in with the environment.
• There are only two maps in the beta. One looks like the arctic and the other is something like the middle east that we see in the trailers and gameplay footage.
• Voice chat is supported as well as typing. To bring up chat window is left or right on the d-pad.
• To change to the position on your back once laying down is triangle, tapping triangle and holding the joystick in whatever direction will allow you to roll in that said direction.
• Grenades are cool, so are stun knifes.
• No slow down, solid frame rate.

That's a rough idea of how MGO's looking so far in Japan. Check back as more features are discovered.

Check out more first impressions behind the Full Article link!

  

Today the gaming gods smile on three thousand lucky souls who've been chosen to beta test the online version of the Metal Gear series. Dubbed Metal Gear Online, the gameplay was based on the soon-to-be released Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

Kojima Productions first announced this game during its recent Metal Gear 20th Anniversary Party. For people wondering what's it like being in a certain unshaven commando's combat boots, they can finally test out their stealth and close-quarter-combat skills against up to 16 people online. Don't expect a certain colonel to shout out your name, though, if you somehow get yourself killed.

Anyway, it is rather unfortunate that the beta testing seems to have been isolated to Japanese gamers for now. From what we've seen from the previous videos and reports of the game, the rest of us can only curse the lucky dogs who are playing MGO and wait in nail-biting anticipation until a commercial release can finally reach our shores.

Until then, here are a few more screenshots of what the opening screens of Metal Gear Online looks like.

   

Warhawk's very own game director, Dylan Jobe, took to the PlayStation Blogs to answer a couple of questions sent in to Incognito Entertainment and shared non-PR, straight to the point, no-nonsense info on the studios' developments of the sky and ground shooter.

 

While many a PlayStation 3 player are fixated on what leaked info they can get on the beta testing of the game, Jobe might have decided that it was high time to entice even the hardened Wing Commander or Freespace dogfighters into the game with a couple of five-word snippets to describe the game experience while still in beta. He said:

[I would describe it as] the love child of Unreal Tournament and Battlefield. [Or] the fastest war-game you’ve ever played! One of our Public BETA testers referred to Warhawk as a 'Super Hot, psycho, girlfriend'. This description works pretty well.

Interestingly, he wants Ubisoft Montreal's Jade Raymond, producer of Assassin's Creed, to sit and play Warhawk for an hour, noting that he chose her specifically because he has "a purely innocent, *professional* crush on her." And definitely up in his list of highly anticipated games is Blizzard's Starcraft 2, while hinting about one other highly anticipated title that has yet to be announced.

And Warhawk is pushing all seven SPUs of the PlayStation 3 pretty well in parallel, offering great skies, procedural water effects, and atmospheric scattering among others, if you could take a breather from the inbound triple A tracers. Fans hoping to get the latest in Warhawk developments might also want to keep their eyes peeled for the upcoming E3 event, because Warhawk will definitely be there.

How would you feel if someone mentioned that they're going to make your PlayStation 3's Home look prehistoric? It wouldn't hurt to go old-school sometimes and it seems that's exactly what Virgin Games' Games Domain International (GDI) CEO Roger Walkden had in mind.

In case you haven't heard, Virgin Games is currently developing a 3D virtual world platform known as AWOMO (A World of My Own). Basically, this allows players from all over the world to download and play games direct to their own PC units at once without actually walking up to a retail store and buy a copy.

Walkden shared that for AWOMO's beta testing, Virgin Games is planning to have 30,000 subscribers at the minimum and that they are currently well on track. The official added that what they really have in mind is to have a subscriber base of around half a million by the end of 2007.

If you've missed our previous reports regarding AWOMO, don't worry because Virgin Games promised to launch four to five massive PR and marketing promotions in the next few weeks. But in the meanwhile, Walkden is very much happy with the feedback they've been getting from the community,

We have had a few emails from people who have already registered and are impressed that we seem to have pulled off a "me too" model of PS3 Home for PC. But they will have to wait and see how good this will get. In terms of download speed, Home is very much what we have got used to in the 21st Century. AWOMO will make that look prehistoric.