Only three have been made, so you better get your skates on if the 1,600 grams of solid 22ct gold and 58 0.50ct diamonds-decorated console is just the living room accessory you've been after. Only £199,995 ($319,104)—a veritable steal in comparison to the Wii. But how much will the Xbox 360 version set us back, and can we get a refund when the inevitable RROD happens? [Stuart Hughes via Goldstriker]

By Mexican ad agency Diagonal, this new series of posters are part of Sony's latest, slightly less esoteric branding initiative for the PS3 in which the console actually does things rather than, I dunno, whatever we call this (NSFW) or even this.

I'm not sure the ads are completely clear to those who don't know the PS3's function set to begin with, and frankly, I prefer watching 30 seconds of art to a spokesperson listing a product's merits. But then again, I'm not a Sony shareholder. [Ads of the World via PS3 Maven]

As the story goes, the DualShock got it on with a '60s era Baterang and the Gaming Gods retaliated—smiting their unholy spawn. This event cleared the slate, so to speak, and the evolutionary process started all over again. [Autour D'un Cafe via Geekologie]

Making it easy for everyone to adopt 3D entertainment, good ol' Sony has worked it so that the PS3 will be able to play 3D Blu-ray discs, and the upcoming 3D players will be able to play 2D discs too. In regards to codecs, these discs will use Multiview Video Coding (or MVC), which is similar to the ITU-T H.264 AVC codec we use now, and will actually take up 50 per cent less space on the discs compared to 2D content.

Again clearing up any questions we may've had about 3D Blu-rays, the content will be full 1080p, so even though you're watching in 3D, the quality of the resolution won't be compromised. Expect to see some massive announcements from manufacturers and movie studios next month, including exactly what LG's going to sell in order to reach that 3.8m 3D TV units sold target. [BDA]

All that's known about it is that it's 802.11b/g wireless-compatible and connects to a TV. Curiously, it's been filed under the 'display devices' category, for 'televisions, monitor, picture frame.' Any thoughts? A Wi-Fi adapter for Sony Bravia TVs? Something which will let you use your PS3 wirelessly? An adapter for flashing up a message on your Bravia, alerting you to the fact that your Sony Ericsson phone has finished charging? Answers on a postcard, please. [FCC via Sony Insider via Engadget]

The adapter works with the Mini DisplayPort in the iMac 27", which is bi-directional. Right now, only this model of iMac supports this video standard. No price, no dates, no excuses not to buy this whenever it comes out. [Apogee via Electronista]

In an interview with Nikkei, SCE's Masayuki Chatani, from the company's strategy planning department, has revealed that not only were Sony looking at making the Slim even smaller, but that they were looking at some fairly radical solutions to the problems of HDD sizing.

One of those was to use flash memory instead of the conventional HDD the PS3 currently uses, which would have cut down on the size, running costs and even noise levels of the console.

Another was to leave local storage out of the equation altogether, and instead rely on the PlayStation Network to save all of a user's game data, personal files and settings (similar to how Gmail works, for example).

Chatani says Sony "considered both options", but in the end, "felt that the price would be too high for the amount of storage capacity the PS3 needs", so they stuck with a conventional HDD.

He also says, when comparing the Slim with the PS2's redesign - a model that made far more drastic cuts to the dimensions of the console than the Slim has managed - that reducing the size of the PS3 even further was a possibility, but that in order to do so, the machine's power supply would have to have been made external (as it was on the PS2 Slim), which "would have imposed restrictions on transport and use, making it harder to use freely."

PS3, PSP Made Smaller, Lighter to Capture New Customer Segments [Nikkei]

Dead Space 2: Multiplayer, Bigger World, Space-Floating
This could be both fun and nauseating!

Ever Wonder How Much Money Has Been Sunk Into America's Army?
You don't want to know.

Five Steps to Total Pwnage of a Gamer Girl's Heart
In case you didn't have the attention span to take all 10 prerequisite steps.

Xbox 360 Game Helps You Talk To Girls
No it doesn't.

Pokemon Teaches Your Children To Worship Satan
No no, Pokemon IS Satan.

Blizzard Patches Diablo II, Beta Test It Now
My old discs are about 5 feet away...

PlayStation Home Director Wants "Mini-MMOs" On The Service
Interesting idea.

Frankenreview: The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Spoiler: the reviews deem it excellent.

EA CEO: "I Think Of Pirates As A Marketplace"
A marketplace that's just been robbed.

Yes, it's just an Epson viral-ish video, but that doesn't make the clip any less wonderful, as a gamer walks the streets, choosing any convenient building for his giant canvas (while surely getting paid for it). Eventually, as pico projectors become more popular and powerful, it'll be interesting to see how many of us torture the landscape with Tekken 6 matches, and just how authorities choose to respond. [Epson via RegHardware via Engadget]

According to a recent poll (results above/translation below) of Japanese children 12 and under, they really want...

1. Video game software (over 450 kids said this)
2. Pretty Cure goods (over 100 kids said this)
3. Anpanman goods
4. Books (picture book, book, illustrated encyclopedia)
5. Kamen Rider goods
6. Bicycle
7. Toy car
8. Clothes
9. Stuffed animal
10. Video game console

Since many kids have consoles, they just want video games now—that's fair. But clothes? What self-respecting child under 13 wants clothes?? And have you actually ever seen a picture of Anpanman?

As translated by the esteemed Brian Ashcraft over at Kotaku. [はちま起稿 via Kotaku]

The patent for an "Expandable Control Device Via Hardware Attachment" touches on a number of control options. According to details from the patent, Sony's motion controller may offer the option to join two motion control units together lengthwise—previously seen in an earlier patent—or in an H-shape.

And as pictured above, a unique, secondary controller attachment may offer a solution to the one DualShock in one hand, one motion controller in the other hand scheme seen at Sony's Tokyo Game Show press conference.

Other potentially interesting add-on possibilities are attachments shaped like a baseball bat, a the business end of a flashlight and a rattle-like sphere that's very maraca like.

Perhaps more interesting is a proposed biometric reader attachment, including a "thumb reader used to validate the identity of the person holding the controller by analyzing the biometric data provided by the attachment."

Additional possibilities included microphone attachments and swappable control faceplates—letting the player customize whether a motion controller has buttons or a d-pad or even a dial.

Of course, this is a patent, not a product announcement. Sony could simply release the motion controller as previously seen, with none of these possibilities becoming actual products. But take a look at some of the drawings in the gallery below and check out the patent to see what Sony may have in mind.

Expandable Control Device Via Hardware Attachment [USPTO.gov]

You see, the televisions in a few of these bundles never really sold for as much as Best Buy says they did, meaning the "steep discounts" are anything but. There's some savings to be had here, definitely, but even so six of the twelve TVs sold through this promotion were never actually offered for full price by Best Buy.

Here's just one example from HD Guru (emphasis theirs):

Sony KDL-46Z5100 46″(sku #9279899): $2,099.99 TV + $299.99 PS3 System + $59.99 PS3 Game + $29.99 Blu-ray Movie = $2,489.96 Regular Price – $410 TV Savings – $428.98 Package Savings = $1,650.98 Package Price

Current TV price is $1689.99. This TV never sold at BB for the MSRP of $2099.99

However, tucked in amongst the 12 bundles are a number of good deals. Just be careful when shopping around to be sure the one you've selected is really saving you a bundle. Price check against Amazon, here, or elsewhere first. The sale begins today and lasts through December 12. [HD Guru - Thanks, Gary]

Real Girlfriend Gallery of Horrors
Serves those pervs right.

What's In The Star Trek Online Collector's Edition?
If there's no Picard Maneuver, count me out.

Star Trek Online "Belly Of The Beast" Trailer Contains No Bellies Or Beasts
Still good though!

Star in Your Own N64 Freakout Kid Video
Just when we thought the N64 kid was done, he pulls us back in.

Mass Effect 2 Expands To 2 Discs, Sometimes 3
Cannot wait.

Mass Effect 2's New Blue Girl Kicks Ass
Cannot wait.

Split/Second Trailer Is About The Only Thing Not Exploding
It's like Burnout crossed with 2012.

Scandal or No, EA Sports Stands by Its Man
EA does not care who Tiger Woods sleeps with as long as he's in bed with EA.

DSi XL Makes Jubblie Bouncing Extra Large [Slightly NSFW]
It was bound to happen.

Quite simply, castration anxiety is a theory proposed by Freud in which a boy sees a girl's genitalia (or lack of penis) as a symbol of punishment, as if she's been castrated.

In this particular instance, I'd argue that the console becomes the phallus in a symbolic castration. Man plays video games. Woman does not. And when the video-game-less female destroys the male's video games, that's akin to a woman removing a man's manhood. It just so happens that, in this metaphor, man has both a literal phallus and a gaming phallus. Really, an analog like a guy tossing his girlfriend's makeup collection out the window could work just as well.

But why the fixation? Why can't we look away? Like a thought scab that our brains can't help but pick, male philosophers and writers have been obsessed with castration probably since the the beginning of time itself. A notable example would be Ernest Hemingway, as outlined by the famous literary criticism Freud, Fetishism and Hemingway's Phallic Women. For instance, in A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway writes (through character), "Sometimes I am afraid I will break off a finger as one breaks a stick of chalk."

It just so happens, the ladies of YouTube aren't generally as eloquent, but they do tend to show more cleave. [Ripten via Kotaku]

Helping Sega pioneer disc-based gaming, the original PlayStation went on to sell over 100 million consoles until it was discontinued in 2006. Check out the official birthday site for PlayStation here for a trip down memory lane—when PlayStations were much smaller and lighter than they are today, and didn't need to install patches every 20 minutes. [PlayStation via Kotaku]

This isn't the first time that the DoD is using PS3 consoles for supercomputing. In fact, these 2,200 units are going to be added to an existing Linux cluster of 336 PS3s used by the United States Air Force. According to Justification Review Documents, the purchase is all about getting the best value out the DoD's budget:

With respect to cell processors, a single 1U server configured with two 3.2GHz cell processors can cost up to $8K while two Sony PS3s cost approximately $600. Though a single 3.2 GHz cell processor can deliver over 200 GFLOPS, whereas the Sony PS3 configuration delivers approximately 150 GFLOPS, the approximately tenfold cost difference per GFLOP makes the Sony PS3 the only viable technology for HPC applications.

I'm all for balancing cost and features, but isn't it just a bit curious that someone thought to save on upgrading the supercomputer just after Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released? [Ars Technica via Boing Boing]

Price

$250 with mixamp needed to combine chatting and surround sound.

Verdict

I still vastly prefer the convenience of Turtle Beach's wireless X41 headset, but I have to admit, the Astro A40 sounds better.
Playing Borderlands, everything from the growls of skaggs to the cadence of machine gun fire sounded richer and rounder on the A40s than my X41s. Maybe the sounds weren't always as distinct, but especially when cranking the volume on each headset, I realized the general listenability—the whole package of sound—was more pleasant with Atro's product, making me long for hearing loss. It's a difference in mid range that, while not absolutely Earth-shattering, will probably be noticeable to most in a side-by-side test.

Both headsets have extremely similar sound localization. And chatting, on both, is an equal joy.

But there's one, huge, horrible, despicable Achilles' heel to the Astro A40s. To connect the headset to an Xbox 360 (or PS3/PC), wires will invade your entire living room because the console needs to plug twice into a mixamp (the big, retro box you see in the lead photo), then the mixamp connects your headphones and controller. That's confusing, I know. Here's the full workflow:

Xbox 360 optical out and USB cord => A40 Mixamp => Headphones/Mic and Xbox 360 controller.
Ultimately, not only are you negotiating four wires for this one headset, but you'll still be tethered close to your console because of one, generally short/inflexible wire: the optical cord from your Xbox to the Mixamp (you can always opt for stereo plugs, but that sort of spoils the fun).

So while I knew the A40s sounded a bit better than my X41s, I couldn't kick back and enjoy the game in the same way. For one long cord or tight quarters PC gaming, I might opt for the A40s. For four cords sprawled across my living room, I'm sticking with the X41s—especially since they're $50+ less.

Maybe you'll feel differently.

Excellent sound

Headphones work with any 3.5mm source, too

Wiring gets obnoxious