PlayStation 3

Engadget reports the PlayStation 3 has ended its production run in Japan. According to its own website, Sony has officially completed shipping of the model in the company’s home country.

Following up from the comparison to the original Project CARS, we now have some more footage directly looking at how GT Sport compares to its predecessor, Gran Turismo 6.

Last week, we reported on the many Driveclub discounts you can currently find on the PlayStation Store in the EU, If Evolution Studios’ title doesn’t quite tickle your fancy, there’s also some other racers on sale until February 8 across the PlayStation ecosystem. If you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, you’ll get a further 10% off these prices too.

Ah, to be back in 2006. A simpler time, full of flip-phones, Zunes, and Myspace. Twitter had only just begun its expansion; Lindsay Lohan, her descent. It was into this landscape Sony pushed out its third home console, the ambitious PlayStation 3. That was ten years ago today (at least, in the North American market).

When looking at the GT franchise as a whole, critics frequently rate the most recent games – GT5 and GT6 – as the least successful in the series’ history, for a wide variety of reasons. Those critics might be surprised to find that Kazunori Yamauchi actually agrees with them.

After several leaks, Logitech have officially announced their return to the sim-racing hardware market with the G29 and G920 steering wheels. The two models are roughly identical, though the G29 is compatible with both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, while the G920 is compatible with the Xbox One and does not include the same red adjustable dial. Both models will also be compatible with the PC.

Since the PlayStation 3 encryption keys were published by hackers back in 2011, both GT5 and GT6 have been targeted by users looking to modify the games beyond their intended parameters. Although “hacks” have always been a part of video gaming and even the GT series, it now takes on a new seriousness, as it threatens the integrity and fairness of online competitions.

More details from the Gran Turismo article in the most recent issue of GamesTM magazine have been revealed, and some additional quotes from Kazunori Yamauchi paint an interesting picture of his thoughts on the franchise and its future.

Many Kazunori Yamauchi interviews emerged from E3 2013 earlier this month, most of which covered or re-iterated points and announcements made during the Gran Turismo 6 reveal at Silverstone back in May.

While Gran Turismo 6 is just about to appear over the horizon on a still-unknown platform, Sony appears committed to promoting Gran Turismo 5 on the PlayStation 3 in the immediate future.

SCEE CEO Jim Ryan has made new comments which may support Vice President Michael Denny’s statement that Gran Turismo 6 is coming to the PlayStation 3 console.

As the news spreads that Gran Turismo 6 may be headed to the PlayStation 3, sparked by SCEE Vice President Michael Denny’s recent comments, the situation is gathering more attention and investigation by larger media outlets.

An audio snippet of SCEE Senior Vice President Michael Denny suggesting Gran Turismo 6 will be released this year on the PlayStation 3 has been published by Silicon Republic, the website which conducted the confusing and controversial interview with him last week.

As you may have heard, Sony announced the launch of their third – and likely final – revision to the PlayStation 3 hardware at the Tokyo Game Show a few weeks back.

If you’re looking to pick up a new PlayStation 3 in the United States, take a look at GameStop’s latest bundle, which includes a 160GB PS3 Slim, a copy of Gran Turimo 5 XL Edition, The Sly Collection, and a 30 day free trial of PlayStation Plus.

What started as downtime in the PlayStation Network last Thursday has gradually snowballed into a very serious problem for gamers. The inability to connect to PSN has rendered Gran Turismo 5’s online features and races useless, with angst is growing in our forums and around the world.

As you’ve probably heard by now, the PlayStation 3’s security has been completely cracked, allowing unfettered access to the console’s software, files, and games. Unsurprisingly, GT5 has been an active target for hackers taking advantage of the compromised system. Their first major accomplishment involves a way to easily duplicate game-saves between different PSN accounts (sorry, I won’t be providing any source links for information on how to do this).

Gran Turismo 5 has been found to significantly benefit from the installation of a solid-state drive (SSD) into the PlayStation 3 console, according to several reports from around the web over the past few days. One of the most organized and extensive tests was conducted by GTPlanet user padadiso. Click through his collection of graphs below, or head over to his forum topic for more discussion and analysis.

More information is slowly filtering out about GT5’s delay, and it fits in neatly with everything else we’ve learned about the game’s production in the past 24 hours. Here’s what was recently posted by Maximus – a respected moderator at the Blu-Ray.com forums with reported connections to Sony:

Kazunori Yamauchi has given us a heads-up regarding what to expect from GT5 in terms of hard drive installation size via Twitter (human translation thanks to our own SHIRAKAWA Akira):