The issue of backwards compatibility on the PS3 console is dead and buried, as far as John Koller is concerned. SCEA's director of hardware marketing nailed down the final coffin on the issue in a recent interview.

We've already read about John Koller's leak frustration, now it's Jack Tretton's turn to air his frustrations about info leaks. The SCEA president talks about confidentiality, the industry's focus, and their fight against the reliably accurate rumor mill.

It has been almost a month since we saw the leaked pictures of the PS3 Slim and the gaming scene has been waiting for an announcement (or an announcement for another announcement) from Sony to finally quash confirm the rumor. What we have today isn't an official "Yes, it's all true" confirmation, but in John Koller's interview with Ars Technica, the rumors are as good as confirmed. Read more after the jump.

Not long after John Koller said that Nintendo DS owners grow up and go for the PSP, David Reeves' successor and newly-appointed SCEE president Andrew House makes a similar remark, saying that Wii owners will eventually "upgrade" to the PS3. Is this some kind of unofficial Sony campaign? Wouldn't put it past Sony.

Already released: from Uncharted to Killzone 2. Yet to come: Heavy Rain, God of War III. Of course, there are a whole slew of other hardcore titles smattered in between, and for SCEA's John Koller, he's pretty confident that they've already captured the hardcore market. Yes, they came, they saw, they conquered the hardcore - and they still do, and will still cater to, it seems. But what of other markets, more specifically the casual? I mean, we can't just live by SingStar and Flower, right?

I can hardly keep track of all the new games SCEA's planning to bring to E3, and already they're promising to show off even more? Whoa. Echoing words he himself spoke just last month, PSP brand manager John Koller once again proclaims that we haven't seen the end of all these announcements just yet. He's optimistic about them having one heck of an E3 spectacle, and the road leading up to it will hold even more announcements too!

"Exclusivity is something that doesn’t truly exist in this cycle. What does exist is first-party product. That’s your exclusive product," says SCEA's John Koller. "...We don’t feel the need to write cheques necessarily with every publisher, like [Microsoft] did with the Lost and Damned and some other titles, because we feel very strongly in our first-party line-up."

News spread all over the net over the past few days saying that there may be talks between Facebook and Sony to come up with an in-game integration between the PS3 and the social networking site. Actually, there are still no concrete directions on the matter, and John Koller was merely talking about PS3 and social media in general.

It was a tough week, alright, with the QJ team having to contend with a lot of fakers, a last-minute faking ourselves, and me personally now having to protect myself against some wicked magic of the black kind for leading people to believe that now is the best time to buy a Phantasy Star Portable - cos you know, news broke out that the PSP Brite has finally been hacked -- on April Fool's day. Yeah-huh, being fun sure is a lot of hard work. Thank goodness we've got juicy, exciting news from our friends in the gaming industry to balance it all out. And we've got them bundled up all nice and warm for you in ish #66 .

Sony's still keeping the lid tight on MAG, Zipper Interactive's upcoming action game of admittedly epic proportions, but SCEA hardware marketing chief John Koller managed to reveal two things about the game: 1) it's similar to the SOCOM series; and 2) it's only possible on the PS3.