One of the driving factors behind my early adoption of the PS3 was the fact that I could play all my PS2 games on it thanks to the Emotion Engine Chip that it had under the hood. In subsequent SKU’s, that hardware was removed, and Sony even said that they were focused on moving forward without it.

Well, that may be changing in the near future. According to Siliconera, Sony has secured a U.S. Patent for the technology that will apparently allow the Cell Processor in the PS3 to emulate the Emotion Engine of the PS2.

Couple this with the rumors of a price cut and the release of the PS3 Slim this fall, and you start to think that Sony may have a fundamental strategy shift under way.

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If you haven’t heard yet, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has threatened, in a roundabout way, to drop his company’s support for PS3 if Sony doesn’t consider a price cut.

According to MCV, Kotick said in an interview,

“I’m getting concerned about Sony – the PS3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform. It’s expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation.

They have to cut the price, because if they don’t, the attach rates are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony. When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console — and the PSP too.”

That’s a big shot fired across Sony’s bow. So, will Sony take him seriously, and how will they respond?

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As if two new Metal Gear titles at E3 weren’t enough, Sony’s now bringing the undisputed champ of the Metal Gear Series to PlayStation Network. Starting today, you can grab the PS1 classic, Metal Gear Solid, for $9.99. You can even get it for your PSP!

As usual, there’s a lot of other stuff in the update. Some of it is interesting, like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for the PSP. Some of it is mindless, like Qore (Seriously, does anyone actually watch that?).

You can also choose the demo for EA Sports’ NCAA Football 10, as well as the usual weekly song downloads for Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Rock Band gets Spinal Tap this week, something guaranteed to make people my age smile with nostalgia.

If you want to see a full list of what’s available this week, it’s available after the break.

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So every week for awhile the writers all over the new looking for a simple quick movie to plug into their gaming news site flocked like rabid sheep over to online game magazine The Escapist for the witty and acerbic commentary put to film by Internet personality and slapdash game designer Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. Yahtzee’s weekly poke, jab and lancing of the festering boils of gaming left no game unscathed and is still one of the more enjoyable forms of critique out there.

The Escapist choose to expand their video offerings with a few new segments, one of these – Unskippable – is a tribute to the classic overdubbing comedy of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 gang – except their subject matter is video game cut scenes and trailers instead of horribly bad B-movies like Ator the Fighting Eagle.

Unskippable is a little hit or miss but anyone who enjoys making fun of this wonderful hobby of ours will soon find that you’re not the the only person out there who talks back at the screen during an interminable Metal Gear Solid Expositional Cut Scene. This week the Unskippable guys take a crack at three E3 trailers.. Final Fantasy XIV Online, Edge of Twilight and long in development online FPS Huxley.

dragon age origins

Bioware, long the favorites of PC RPG fans are firing up the information train to release new trailer and new screens for its upcoming magnum opus – Dragon Age: Origins. While the movies all make folks drool and the screens look exciting one key question every PC gamer asks is: “Will I have to upgrade to play this beast?”

Well as of today we have the final system requirments for the game, and its likely that anyone who owns a moderately powerful modern PC will be able to play it in at least Neverwinter Nights 1, 1995 style graphic mode. As expected the requirements for Vista are a bit higher than their XP counterpart but both have a sizable hard drive footprint – 20GB! Wow! The game will also be released on the Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 console this October.

Here are the Specs:

Windows XP Minimum Specifications
OS: Windows XP with SP3
CPU: Intel Core 2 (or equivalent) running at 1.4Ghz or greater
AMD X2 (or equivalent) running at 1.8Ghz or greater
RAM: 1GB or more
Video: ATI Radeon X850 128MB or greater
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Windows Vista Minimum Specifications
OS: Windows Vista with SP1
CPU: Intel Core 2 (or equivalent) running at 1.6Ghz or greater
AMD X2 (or equivalent) running at 2.2GHZ or greater
RAM: 1.5 GB or more
Video: ATI Radeon X1550 256MB or greater
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Recommended Specifications
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz Processor or equivalent
RAM: 4 GB (Vista) or 2 GB (XP)
Video: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater
NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Looking for some designer threads for your thugs in Saints Row 2?

Well THQ hears your cries of fashion abandonment and is offering a new Unkut branded download pack for players to further customize their hooligans as the battle for supremacy of Saints Row continues. The add on also includes new tattoo options to further expand the ink options.

While GTA IV gets most of the press, I have to say I really enjoyed the low-brow humor and satire in Saints Row 2 more. The whole driving through the construction zone in a stolen waste disposal truck spraying down a developers half-built homes with feces is still one of the most fun stupid side missions I’ve ever played in a sandbox game.

The Unkut pack is now available for free on Xbox Live and Sony’s PSN store. You can find more images of the Unkut branded clothing at the Saints Row 2 community website.

So, every week the slavishly obsessive video game public saunter over to the escapist website to line up in morbid fascination ready to hear the idiot savant ramblings of critic and “commentarian” Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw skewer and lambaste the most recent game releases. Big game or little, he usually has something particularly biting to say in his punctuation-less rants and only rarely does that amount to anything but sidways praise for a title. This week it looks like one of those rare occasions when the stars, moons and hormones align to see the personality spout true praise for a title sprinkled with minor niggling and an admission the game is worth playing.

The target of his slight admiration: Sony & Sucker Punch’s inFAMOUS. The review itself is worth watching not because I agree with him on almost every point (which I do) but because its a rare event when the Zero Punctuation master has to work to tear a game apart.

In a post on the official US PlayStation Blog, Justin Richmond, one of Uncharted 2’s Multiplayer Designers commented on the great success that the recent beta test of the upcoming games’ multiplayer mode has been. Bundled with retail copies of Sucker Punch’s inFAMOUS the competitive online game mode for the previously solo only series has benefited Naughty Dog’s team greatly and the team is preparing to implement some changes to the beta.

The Uncharted 2 Multiplayer Beta is about to enter its second week, and we’re already making some tweaks to improve your experience. We are preparing a patch for release in the next few days. Properly applying this patch requires some careful attention on your end: You must watch the screen closely while booting into the beta. As soon as you see the patch message come up in the XMB overlay, you should hit X to accept as quickly as possible.

Richmond describes the fixes included in the beta patch and goes on to announce the dates for “Play with the Developer” events during the ongoing testing cycles.

The patch  fixes include:

General

• Grenade explosions now apply damage properly

Matchmaking

• Players should no longer get hung up in matchmaking for long periods of time

Bug Fixes

• Ranks should no longer reset randomly
• Quitting the game will no longer reset the PS3
• Player collision – players should no longer get hung up on each other when moving through the environment
• Player will now be killed if stuck in falling animation for too long
• In Plunder mode, treasures will no longer disappear during matches

Overlord was one of those games many consider a guilty pleasure. Like Pikmin with blood and gore, the title let you assume the role of an evil leader while building up your henchmen and eliminating the pastoral villages and their inhabitants. Teh continuation of the Overlord series is due out later this year and in the wake of E3, publisher Codemasters is revving up the information flow to tease us all about the game’s new features.

Today we have two new videos – one, a comical look at beginning your “Career in Overlording” and the second – ‘Mayhem and Chaos’ highlighting the destruction you can drum up in the new title. These instructional vids come straight from the Minionstry of Information.

If you’re interested, Overlord II’s demo recently hit Xbox Live and should make its way to the PSN sometimes soon.

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The rumor mill is chewing on a possible price drop for the PS3 this August to kick off EA’s latest Madden game. Unnamed inside sources have indicated to Industrygamers‘ James Brightman that “industry sources indicate Sony is planning a $100 price cut on the PS3 in mid-August, just prior the launch of Madden (8/18) and the start of the back to school shopping season. This will naturally be a positive for the industry.”

Those of you holding their breath with me at the end of Sony’s E3 2009 presentation only to be disappointed shouldn’t give up on seeing a PS3 price drop this year. At least PSP fans should be getting a price break on games and just more games altogether because of the PSP development kit price break announced at the press conference.

I could be paranoid, but I suspect there may be other reasons Sony is holding firm on the price of its overly expensive gaming console.

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