SCEA has confirmed that Lair for the PS3 is to be delayed by a few weeks and will be released on September 4th 2007 instead of August 14th. It is claimed that an extra step in Quality Assurance testing is the reason for the lengthy delay.

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Wow, even I didn’t see this one coming! Due to an extra step in QA testing to enhance the community features in the game, the release of LAIR, originally set for August 14th, has changed to September 4, 2007. Natural challenges that arose while finalizing the offline game to include key online features - such as leaderboards and medal systems - have led to the difficult choice of pushing back the release date. We appreciate everyone’s excitement and patience for the game and look forward to its release on September 4.

Midway has revealed that it is still concerned with lagging sales of the PS3 but believes the $100 USD price cut is certainly a step in the right direction. Although, thankfully their concerns aren't enough to put them off the system with the likes of Stranglehold destined for the machine featuring a full length movie on a Blu-ray game disc too.

However, worries over the uptake of the PS3 aren't enough to put Midway off supporting the luxury console, with Unreal Tournament 3 exclusive to the machine this year, and forthcoming action game Stranglehold set to feature a full-length movie on the Blu-ray game disc.

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"We would not be the only publisher to tell you that we're a little concerned about the take-up of the PS3," said Zucker, in an interview published today.

"Anytime you get a hundred dollar price on hardware it will improve sales. The question is, is it enough? Will there be more?"

A boy aged 15 years old is facing a life sentence after being found guilty of murder due to him murdering his elder brother in a 'revenge arson' after the family took away his Xbox games console. The boy eventually set the family home on fire by pouring white spirit through the hallway and setting the house alight by tossing a match through the letter box which then became a blazing inferno trapping six people inside.

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Early on the morning of November 3 last year he struck the fatal match. Forensic scientists found traces of white spirit which had been used to start the blaze on his trousers.

The rest of the family believed the dead 15-year-old had escaped but he always slept curled up underneath the bedcovers and on this occasion had his headphones on. Said Mr Jameson: "It may have prevented him hearing the shouts of the others."

In his defence, the teenager claimed he had been helping a friend with his paper round and he returned to find the house on fire. That story was disproved.

He also concocted another tale for police - that he had left the house after stealing from his brother because he owed cash to a drug dealer.

The 14-year-old lied throughout a dozen police interviews.

During recordings played to the court he was clearly distressed and crying, repeatedly denying his involvement.

He said: "I didn't do anything. It wasn't me." When asked about his home life he admitted being a "bit angry" when the family took away his X-box as punishment for stealing from his elder brother.

Speaking in a recent interview, Sony's Phil Harrison has looked to reassure gamers that the PS3 is more than capable of doing a 1080p 60 frames per second sports title as Sony's very own studio are making one. The remark comes as Harrison was asked why EA's Madden will only be running at 30 FPS who claims he was trying to be polite during the interview too.

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Madden on PS3 Only 30 FPS

"[pause] Well, I can only point to our own sports studio [doing a] 1080p, 60 frames-per-second basketball game, but I'm afraid I have no idea. We're providing some tools and technologies from our worldwide studio's core technology groups to 3rd parties now, as well. You may remember something from GDC, we announced this thing called EDGE and that's now widely deployed within the 3rd party community, and that is clearly improving the developer's ability to maximize what the CELL processor does. Hopefully, that will assist folks like EA. It would concern me if the platform was incapable of doing it, but we've proven the platform is capable of doing it, so it's not a PlayStation 3 issue. I'm trying to be polite."

A blog devoted to African Women has slammed the latest Resident Evil trailer 5, claiming it is problematic in many different ways larged basely on its showing of black people as inhuman savages and the killing of black people by a white man in military clothing and above all the fact the game is aimed at young adults and even children.

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This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young… fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.

A gaming site is claiming that they can confirm that prototypes of the new rumble enabled SIXAXIS controller for PS3 have found their way into the hands of a number of official Sony developers. The new version is also expected to ship with the console and will replace the non-rumble enabled version.

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We can confirm that prototypes of the new rumble-enabled controllers have made their way to various Sony developers. Information on these controllers is still closely held by Sony and their partners, but an official announcement and unveiling is expected in the next two to three months. Leipzig is the most obvious guess for this unveiling, but we believe Sony is going to withhold the controllers until they can launch them to coincide with support from enough developers.

We can also confirm that new versions of the Sixaxis controller are quietly replacing the original controllers launched with the console. Hardware updates occur regularly throughout the lifespan of controllers; in this case, Sony has improved the fidelity of motion sensing in the controller. The original controllers apparently suffered of too much of a dead zone.

Despite Microsoft's Shane Kim rubbishing such an event, an Xbox fan website is claimed that it has learned that MS is planning to produce some guys which will definitely require the use of a HDD, essentially leaving Core owners out in the cold unless they upgrade. According to one source, a HDD REQUIRED logo will be printed on the case but it is not know when exactly this will come into effect IF at all.

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XF has learned that MS has plans for the 360 to do the very same thing. Games requiring the HDD will initially have a "HDD required" logo clearly viewable on the front of the case, as well being listed as requiring the HDD on the back info panel of the case.

No word yet on the first game to that will start this trend of requiring the HDD. But we have some ideas. XF will elaborate on this story as soon as we have more. While it would be fun to "speculate" at possible games that will require the HDD, we'll stick to what we already know.

High profile Singaporean contract chip maker Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing are set to manufacture a new 45 nanometre (nm) processor which is designed for use in video game consoles and most likely the Xbox 360. This new process could give Microsoft further room to adjust their pricing levels comfortably.

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"We have customers' activity for products in the CPU space that goes into a video-game device," Chia Song Hwee, Chartered's president and CEO, said when discussing the company's 45nm manufacturing plans with analysts during a recent conference call.

Chia didn't name the CPU customer but was likely referring to Microsoft, which uses Chartered to manufacture its Xbox 360 processor.

The 64-bit Xbox 360 processor is a custom chip based on three 3.2GHz Power PC cores. Chartered has so far produced 90nm and 65nm versions of the Xbox 360 processor for Microsoft using a SOI (Silicon-on-Insulator) process licensed from IBM.

The numbers that describe each chip version refer to the process technology used to make them, and describe - in billionths of a metre - the average size of the smallest features that can be created on a piece of silicon. Smaller is better when it comes to chips and moving to a more advanced process technology offers several benefits.