The UpStream

Our ever watchful friends at Engadget are reporting that two of Sony's manufacturing companies have already begun fabrication of the long-rumored PS3 Slim. With the existing rumors and analyst predictions of a price-cut in August, it would make sense that a newly redesigned console would be launched at the same time.

In addition to wild rumors about new hardware, it is also being reported that this will be the last model of the PS3. I suspect this is a rumor developed by children who do not know the business world at all. We already know that Microsoft plans a big change when the Natal hardware goes live, so it would be crazy to think that Sony wouldn't make a similar move, creating another model of the system. So, I think some of the rumor is true, but most is just plain silly.

What do you guys think? PS3 Slim in August?

A long, long, time ago in a... oh excuse me. I was just praying to the Tech Gods that Star Wars: The Old Rrepublic will be somewhat redeeming and forgot I was writing an article about WOW... well back to reality, for now. As a long time WOW player I am put in a bit of an awkward position with some of the recent changes that have taken place over the past year or so and especially now with the changes WOTLK has brought. Thanks to the new mana regeneration, healing is a breeze. You can get mounts at level 30 now (wtf?). Arena, mostly 3v3, has almost ruined PvE and dual specking has killed it. I remember when RFD was the end game dungeon and if your guild could clear even half of it you were 1337. Leveling used to be fun and challenging. Now, mounts and good gear are thrown at you and all the old instances are only used to PL your alts. I am only 23 years old, but I imagine this must have been how my grandfather felt talking about the old days.

Up until now there was a cardinal rule that WOW and its' players have lived by and was sworn to never break: No matter what race or class you wanted there were two choices. You pledged your loyalty to the Alliance or your allegiance to the Horde. In the future this will not be so.

Blizzard released a statement saying:

If you have a PS3, chances are you cannot play PS2 games on it. Some of you can, but most of you can't. If you have an early model, it still has a PS2 Emotion Engine chip in it. If you have a middle-aged model, you might have an emulator. Otherwise, you're screwed. You still have to keep your PS2 plugged in to play all your old games. Those days, my friends, might just be a thing of the past.

A patent recently filed by Sony reveals they have developed a way to have the Cell processor on the PS3 replicate functions of the Emotion chip, meaning you can dump your old PS2 and just have the big black behemoth in your living room!

Now, those of you who don't currently have a PS3, or those that have one that can't play old games are probably thinking "Why the hell haven't we had this all along?" The answer is simple. We don't know, ask Sony.

Do you ever visit The Pirate Bay? Of course you do. And so does almost everyone else on the planet. It is on the top 100 visited sites list consistently. That is all about to come to an end, as TPB has been bought.

Real-world business Global Gaming Factory X has purchased TPB for $7.7 million. That is a lot of money for a legit company to purchase an illegal file-sharing website. The bad news is that they know it, and have a plan to make that money back.

CEO of Global Gaming Hans Pandeya, said:

Now that I have your attention, we have it on good authority that China has passed a new law preventing people from trading virtual goods or services for real-world goods or services. I guess that means I can no longer respond to "special" CraigsList ads with offers of WoW gold. I mean, I guess I can no longer buy WoW gold from the Chinese gold farmers.

Just for reference, since we love numbers here at PLuGHiTz Live!, G4TV reports "gold farming generates somewhere between $200 million and $1 billion a year, and around 85 percent of gold farmers can be found in China." Obviously this practice isn't going anywhere any time soon, but it sure looks like we might have a new late-night infomercial "at home business" idea!

It would appear that PlayStation 3 consoles can no longer watch any videos on Hulu.com via the internal web browser. Engadget believes that this is just a software glitch with the latest PS3 firmware, but we are receiving reports that the issue also affects users who do not have the latest firmware installed.

This certainly lends credence to the theory that Hulu is blocking the service on the PS3. It wouldn't be the first time they have taken actions like this. We know Hulu pulled its content from TV.com, and recently from Boxee, which is a way to watch web videos on your TV. It would not be a stretch, then, to jump to the conclusion that this is a purposeful attack on the PS3.