ShackNews reports that PS3 firmware version 1.94 — included on Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction — will include rumble support. Players will be able to toggle the rumble support by pressing the Playstation button. However, rumble will only be enabled on the dual-shock controllers — the ones Sony has yet to release.

Most of you are very familiar with the statements that Sony has previously made regarding rumble. However, they have realized the error of their ways — or rather, worked out things with their legal issues — and is now ready to make your fingers vibrate once again.

Is this that important of a feature to y’all? Personally I enjoy the feature when it is there, but it isn’t something that I miss when I play my handheld games. Hell, it’s not even something I miss when playing Warhawk. I just don’t get it.

Chufmoney

Sony recently released the 3.50 firmware for the PSP. This was the firmware update that unlocked the full power of the PSP for developers. However, it also left open a nice little method for homebrewers to take advantage of the new update.
To run homebrew with firmware 3.50 all you need is a copy of Lumines and a little determination. While I won’t go into detail here about how to specifically bypass the firmware and run homebrew applications (there are plenty of places where you can read that), I will just say that the exploit comes through the menu system of Lumines.

As a result of the firmware update and its inherent homebrew hack via Lumines, Gamasutra reports that the sales of the game on Amazon have gone up by 5,900%! This places Lumines at the top of Amazon’s PSP sales chart.

Sony has not taken this situation lightly though. They just released their 3.51 firmware update, which, unlike the previous update, does nothing to help out the performance of the system. This update merely changes it so that the Lumines exploit is no longer accessible.

Chufmoney

Sony pushed out their 1.5 firmware update today, and the biggest improvement contained therein is a fix for progressive scan problems for PS2 titles.  While Sony didn’t actually ever admit there was anything wrong (just as they’ve gone silent about the 1080i shenanigans), 1up et al are reporting that PS2 games that formerly looked worse on the PS3 actually look better now, largely due to the quality of the video signal.  I know this will please Chuf, whose recently been pining for a solution to PS2 games looking like garbage over S-video on his new HDTV (when he’s not haunted by the ghosts of pixels past).  Folks, we may be creeping steadily closer to a PS3 purchase here at eat-sleep-game.  However, don’t expect a resolution to the 1080i issue, well, ever.  The PS3 has no hardware scaler, and doing that kind of thing in software is incredibly resource intensive. Given that developers have been having a hard time keeping a steady frame rate as it is, it would be a little much to ask.  Maybe Sony will add it to hardware revision 2.

-Aegies