As the chief designer of Silent Hill 5, Masashi Tsuboyama has been closely watched over in the last few months. In a recent interview he confirmed that the Xbox 360 still hasn't been ruled out yet, and that a multi-platform release will be discussed. Despite Nintendo's overwhelming console sales, he did say that Silent Hill 5 will most likely not come to the Wii due to its family oriented audience of gamers. No surprise there, what I'm more worried about though, is that Silent Hill 5 is probably nowhere near complete or even playable if they still seem so unsure of which current generation consoles it may or may not be released on. Although, he did hint that we might see a trailer at this year's E3 in July, so another month and a half of waiting won't hurt.

Ninja Gaiden: Sigma is here to once again deliver great graphics in this PS3 gameplay video. It starts strong with Ryu Hayabusa surrounded by burning walls and fiery floors as he fights several enemies. Heads fall and fireballs fill the rooms, forcing the battle outdoors where a boss awaits. Dramatic scenes filled with flames like this always remind me of the infamous Sephiroth cinema in Final Fantasy VII. It's great to look back and see how far graphics and gameplay have come in just a decade.

I'm headed off to a party now, so posts will continue later tonight when I return. Have fun everybody, and stay safe.

Today Sony is giving PlayStation 3 owners many appreciated features with the new Firmware 1.80 update. Full 1080p HD upscaling of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, as well as DVD movies, is now possible for HDMI compatible TV owners. Our wishes have been granted! Version 1.80 also allows us to hook up printers to our PS3 and print out pictures from our hard drives, or use a home network system to stream content back and forth from our PCs and PS3s.

The other big update is that we can now access our PS3s through an Internet connection via Remote Play on our PSPs. That means that if you're at a wireless access point with a version 3.50 updated PSP (new update coming by the end of the month), you can stream all your music and videos that are back at home on your hooked up PS3. Not bad at all, Sony's moving quick and helping out home entertainment systems a lot.

Last week at Sony's Gamers Day we got a sneak peak at Folklore, a new PS3 game that looks promising, and this new video trailer solidifies it as the next big game to keep track of. The setting and story starts off like a less serious Silent Hill 2 and quickly evolves into a fantasy game filled with magic. The few spells we get to see in the trailer show a beautiful battle system, and the lands you explore are equally intriguing. I get the feeling that the dialogue in the game will be both overly simple and hoky, and that the plot could be equally ordinary, but the visuals and gameplay draw from so many different types of appealing games that I can see PS3 owners being very forgiving and eating this game. As long as Folkore can surprise us with something new and imaginative taped around fundamentals that are old and trusted, then it should be enjoyable to a variety of different gamers.

Back in March, Sony filed a FCC "Class II Permissive Change" request that mentioned 80GB PS3 models. They've denied the 80GB PS3 rumors ever since, although now Sony has confirmed their upcoming release in South Korea. It's possible that the 80GB versions will spread across the globe later this year, but Sony doesn't plan to bring it to Europe, so its future elsewhere doesn't look too good. I still don't see why they bumped the maximum size up only by 20GB, if they felt a change was necessary, going above and beyond the Xbox 360 Elite's 120GB probably would have made more sense. In a few weeks, the 80GB PS3s will launch in South Korea on June 16th at the cheap price of 518,000 won ($556), with no 20GB or 60GB versions on sale. Maybe we'll get the PS3 price cuts in America sooner than we had thought.

Aside from Halo and Halo 2, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was one of the few games that Xbox owners tried to brag about. With great graphics for its time, and surprisingly fun gameplay, we were able to forget about Vin Diesel's terrible movies and just enjoy the action and adventure in this first person shooter. According to the UK magazine MCV, a remake is in early development, with Starbreeze planning to bring it to both the Xbox 360 and PS3. On top of better graphics, players will also get to play through extendd single player campaigns and online multiplayer. Starbreeze also worked on The Darkness, which will come out next month for PS3 and 360, so we can use that to judge what they're capable of so far with next generation possibilities.

Also, is it time to start calling it current generation yet? Now that PS2 has finally peaked with several awesome games released in the last year, I think it's time to make the change.

We all know that PlayStation 3 is expensive as hell, and that it's pricey for good reasons, and that eventually the price will drop. Yet, Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot is just as discontent as many of you are:

"Sony must cut the price of PS3 to ensure it remains the dominant force in the console market and achieve the same success it's seen with PSone and PS2. They have to decrease the price quite significantly."

The only good news out of all this is that Ubisoft is working on a secret PS3 exclusive game, but they won't give us any details yet. Even the industry is impatient with the PS3, we've seen several game releases get pushed back and go multiplatform because 2007 is such a dud year. Many companies would rather wait to release their games until the next generation market has grown larger since console sales are still surging on all fronts. Oh wait, not the PS3, here's the April sales statistics for North America:

"the Nintendo DS dominated the month's hardware sales, with 471,000 units sold, closely followed by Nintendo's Wii console, which sold 360,000 units in April, despite continuing console shortages. The Xbox 360 sold 174,000 units for the month, slightly behind the PlayStation 2, which managed 194,000 for April, and the PlayStation Portable, which sold 183,000 in the month. However, the PlayStation 3 again slumped, with just 82,000 units sold in April, again behind the Game Boy Advance, which sold 84,000 copies."

Whaaaaat? It's obvious that handhelds are hot right now, but Game Boy Advance?! Are parents that cheap that they won't get their kids a Nintendo DS and make them settle for a GBA that companies rarely make games for anymore? Jeez PlayStation 3, you've surprised me once again, I promise I won't assume you're better than anyone ever again. Next month I'll try to find out how many NESes and SNESes are being sold, just to be on the safe side. If "This is Living" then I don't want to see what "This Is Dying" for you looks like.

Sony Gamers Day has finally brought us a Heavenly Sword video that doesn't focus on just kicking ass and taking genitals. Although, after seeing Nariko and her . . daughter? . . . I'm now confident that Andy Serkis's emperor erection is safe. The lookout scene starts with Nariko half naked as usual, you'll rewind and try to look down her towel skirt thing, you'll fail, then she'll help you out and shove her boobs in front of the camera, and just as things start to heat up she introduces us to her retarded child -- ugh, I hate it when chicks do that. Uhhh, yeah, sure, no problem Nariko, I'm totally into kids, I want lots of kids, let's just talk about it in the morning, okay? Wait, what? You want me to do what? Twing twang?! And you're inviting your Princess Mononoke mime feral daughter into bed? Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Wrong fantasy, wrong fetish, I'm out of here. You can save the world on your own, I'm gonna start hitting on Ellen from Folklore now.

And now you have, too. Factor 5 also released a more formal trailer if you prefer a brief introduction to the story over groundbreaking dragon guts raining from the sky.

The PlayStation Eye camera is coming out this Summer, with this online card game Eye of Judgement releasing later this year. Combining the insanely popular Magic: the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh! card game playing mechanics with a camera that sucks your moves into a 3D combat environment for online play seems like a bullet proof plan. I wish it were. The camera is responsive to all your moves and the graphics are great, but a set of cards that's only 110 cards is a weak start, even with the promise of more sets coming in the future. And I can't even say that I'd play if the cards were all achieved online for free, the "first to five spaces" winning rule is a terrible way to pace the game, it would get boring after just one night. They should have just worked through Wizards of the Coast to bring Magic online like their old commercials joked about.