Perhaps you guys got excited about the announcement made by Electronic Arts on the upcoming Nascar 09. The company has just unleashed details on the Paint Booth Customization feature in the racing game, accompanied by 13 screenshots. Find details and photos at the full article.

If you've seen the changelog for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's Xbox 360 patch, you'd know that Infinity Ward cooked up something special. Sony PS3 and PC owners have been waiting for their update, but it's still nowhere in sight. Thankfully, the crack devs of this FPS masterwork have given us their assurance that the goodies are on the way. Details follow in the full article.

It's no secret that Valve's Gabe Newell has had his issues in the past with Sony's PlayStation 3 game console. In a recent interview with Edge Magazine, the respected developer didn't hold back on his comments for the system again, saying that Sony should go for a do-over of their high-end machine.

"I think PS3 is a waste of everybody's time", says Newell. He also tackled the idea of the Sony PS3 being "future-proof", remarking that investment on the Cell Processor and the SPE yields no real long-term benefits. "There's nothing there that you're going to apply to anything else", he reasons.

"You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created," confides Newell. "I don't think they're going to make money off their box. I don't think it's a good solution."

Still, Newell says that even if it can be tough to develop for the Sony PS3, Valve will go on with game projects on the platform. The Orange Box will still launch on it as scheduled. He even commended Electronic Arts for putting together a team for the job that has people with lots of experience with the PS3 architecture.

"I think the people who have The Orange Box on the PS3 are going to be happy with their game experience," concludes Newell.

 

A little while earlier, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) strutted its lineup of PlayStation Network downloadable games with names in tow. There were about 10 games mentioned by the games division of Sony, and if you weren't familiar with all of them, this update should keep facts in check.

But what a huge update it is! Every game comes complete with screenshots paired with their respective primers - a collection spruced up just for the E3 Media & Business Summit. Covering all these is a valiant undertaking that could only deserve a pizza and a can of ice-cold, refreshing Coke, and you know we deserve it. Below, we've got Blast Factor: Advanced Research, Nucleus, Pixel Junk, and Super Stardust HD.

Take a deep breath, then dive into the first four of the eight games that you are most likely unfamiliar with right after the Full Article jump.

This one comes from the Blog of Buffis. He has a PS3 running Yellow Dog Linux and Pygame. Py-huh? Wikipedia: Pygame is a cross-platform set of Python modules designed for writing games. It includes computer graphics and sound libraries designed to be used with the Python programming language. In short: game writing stuff. Buffis wanna see if Pygame will compile and work on YDL-PS3.

Answer: it worked. "Compiling all of the dependencies and the pygame made it possible for me to run stuff at decent speed. Its not exactly fast, but absolutely fast enough to develop graphical user interfaces and small games." He also notes that Pygame is limited to using one SPE, "but it works" (Picture to the right comes from Buffis.com). As for instructions...

If people want me to I can write a guide for compiling pygame for PS3, but it’s pretty much the same as compiling it for any other platform… Simply install all dependencies for SDL, then SDL and SDL_mixer, SDL_image and so on and top it all of with pygame.

On a subsequent blog post Buffis made another happy discovery. Acting on a tip from a SomethingAwful member, he found that Pygame is also very easy to install on Fedora Core 5 - easier than YDL, even. "Installing pygame there is apparently as simple as writing “yum install pygame” as root."

Fedora or YDL... that's still two for two for PS3 Linux.

Hopefully a portend of things to come when the PS3 launches in North America. Impress Watch reports that Japanese PS3 owners can download anime and 720p/1080p digital entertainment content, such as trailers (please check provided screenshot from Impress Watch), from So-Net's P-TV service.

Of what we can interpret from the Engrish Google translation, you'll need firmware 1.10 on the PS3 before you can hook up with P-TV for downloads. But there seems to be "no charge" for using the service (other than paying for the download?). And, quoting Google translation of Impress Watch, "There is no restriction of viewing period." Like we said earlier, hopefully a sign of things to come. But that's P-TV, and that's Japan, for now.

Anyway, if you happen to be in Japan and would like to enjoy P-TV entertainment content on the PS3, here are the instructions:

• Point your PS3 browsers to http://www.p-tv.jp/special/HD/index.html
• Browse for the show you want to watch
• Download into your PS3 HDD

Aside from So-Net, Sony's own in-house Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), Warner Entertainment Japan, and WOWOW also provides digital media content to the PS3. No info or knowledge of their respective charging system for downloadable media content.