Bells! Whistles! Fireworks! Sony have launched a revolutionary new controller! And it’s a lot like Nintendo’s three-year-old Wii controller! Oh…

The Playstation Move was unveiled to some not-whooping delegates at San Francisco’s Games Developers Conference late yesterday and Sony marketing boss Peter Dille harrumphed: “We’d like to think of this as the next generation of motion gaming. We are confident that when we look back in five years time, this will be seen as a seminal moment for PlayStation.” Possibly the moment when it all went tits up?

The controller uses motion control technology and the Playstation Eye camera to track body movements, in almost the exact same way as a Wiimote, except this thing has a big coloured ball stuck on the end like a clown’s nose.

With Microsoft readying themselves for the launch of their Natal control system, where the player becomes the controller, the Playstation Move seems like a backwards step. The projected price tag of almost £50 doesn’t do it any favours either.

We weren’t there in person because Famous Rich And Jobless was on last night but the UK editor of GameSpot, Guy Cocker was there, and he told the BBC: “I was disappointed with the amount of real innovation we saw. In terms of ideas, it is very similar to what we have seen with the Wii and if you are Sony, you can’t help but want to ape that success.” It was a useful critique from Guy as it made us stop thinking about this shitty controller for a minute and got us thinking about apes instead.

Apes are fascinating aren’t they readers?

We’ll sort you right out today – good and proper. Like Danny Dyer but in a nice way. There’s a big new telly, some delightful films to watch on it and a game to play that you’ll only have to wait eight weeks or so for.

You can thank us if you like, but it’s HotUKDeals that deserves all the kudos really.

Here’s a couple of shiny new TV sets that might attract the attention of your magpie eyes – and they’re both racking up some major heat over at HUKD. First up comes a ginormous 50” Panasonic plasma 1080p for only £699 (although there are mumblings of Quidco and discount vouchers as well.)

Cheaper still is the Sony KDL-37W5710 37” (1080p 100Hz) LCD telly which is only £499.99. Sadly, if your dealbreaking question is ‘does it have an ice dispenser?’ the answer is ‘no, it isn’t a frigging fridge.’

Now that you’ve chosen your new telly, you’ll need something to watch on it. How about some Disney films on pin-sharp-picture Blu-ray discs from only £9.99?

Plenty to choose from including titles like Monsters Inc, Ratatouille, Cars, Wall-E and The Nightmare Before Christmas. No Song Of The South because IT IS A RACIST! Oh, and if you don’t have a Blu-ray player, you should get one. You owe it to your new TV.

But if films aren’t your thing and you’d prefer to play games on your magnificent new TV but are happy to wait until the end of April before you do it, and if you’d like a free exclusive T-shirt as well when the bloody thing finally bloody arrives, well here’s one that might tickle your danglers.

It’s a pre-order of Super Street Fighter IV on the PS3 and Xbox 360 and it’s only £21.86 with possible Quidco cashback on offer as well. So that’s you sorted then. No need to leave the house ever again.

(deals found by HUKD members scottm, cuthbert23, neilhukd and Spark)

According to the media, yesterday marked the end of the world for Playstation 3 owners. An unknown error meant players couldn’t connect to the Playstation Network and, depending on what you read, wiped play data from thousands of consoles, causing many a thumb-twiddling mummy’s boy to break down to floods of tears (it didn’t really though, did it?).

To their credit, Sony didn’t shy away from the issue – by yesterday evening, they’d pretty much carpet-bombed blogs and major news outlets with official information, while instructing users to step away from their PS3s (the older versions at least, not the PS3 Slim) until the issue was rectified.

What was the issue? The Millennium Bug! Sort of. Well, not really:

“We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year. Having the internal clock date change from February 29th to March 1st (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally. If the time displayed on the XMB is still incorrect, users are able to adjust time settings manually or via the internet.”

It’s all fixed now – hooray! Out of interest, if you’re a PS3 owner, how much disruption did the bug cause you? Reading the papers you’d think the world had been consumed by locusts. Did Sony catch the problem in time for most of you?

Steady girls!

Is there such a thing as an award for the World’s Smuggest Hacker? If there is, the competition is now officially closed, as thrusting young hacking buck George Hotz is the runaway winner. Hotz by name, Hotz by etc etc etc…

But what has young Master Hotz said or done to deserve such an impressive yet acerbic title? Well, to be fair, his achievements are pretty weighty – after hacking into the iPhone as a teenager, he has now cracked the previously-uncrackable insides of the Playstation 3.

Understandably excited after his triumph (and possibly riding a lemonade-fuelled sugar rush), Master Hotz blurted out the following war cry to anyone who would listen…

“It’s supposed to be unhackable – but nothing is unhackable.”

“I can now do whatever I want with the system. It’s like I’ve got an awesome new power – I’m just not sure how to wield it.”

Some powerful words there – our favourites are ‘awesome’, ‘power’ and particularly ‘wield.’ There’s not enough wielding going on in the world today if you ask us.

Hotz then ramped up his cool levels another few notches by making it sound as though he wasn’t even bothered about hacking the PS3, and that he had almost done it by accident one morning before heading out on his paper round.

He said…

“To tell you the truth, I’ve never really played a PS3. I have one game, but I’ve never really played it.”

Wow. What an incredible human.

His ‘breakthrough’ could mean the imminent appearance of completely illegal hardware and software that will run pirated PS3 games, which would be bad news for Sony. If we were them, we’d be enlisting some hired goons to break the little fucker’s legs, but there you go – that’s probably why we’re not as big as Sony. At least not yet.

The electronic giants have so far responded with a terse: “We are investigating the report and will clarify the situation once we have more information.”

Actually, reading between the lines, it sounds to us as though the hired goons could be on their way to Hotz HQ right now! RUN YOU COCKY LITTLE BASTARD!

Avid Bitterwallet reader Liam wants to see one company awarded our Worst Company 2009 award, and one company only – Currys:

“I saw the brilliant offer for a Sony 37W5500 at Sainsbury’s on HUKD for £599. With a Currys around the corner and being a savvy shopper, I thought I would take advantage of their price promise to get the TV even cheaper.”

Liam popped into his local branch of Currys in Ashton-under-Lyme and waited 20 minutes while a sales assistant checked the price, only to be told that the Sainsbury’s price was too low to match. She referred up to her manager who referred up to head office, after which Liam was promised a phone call that was never made. When he complained, Currys dished out a helping of excuses soup to Liam. It was watery and thin like bathwater, and tasted of onions and filth:

“Having checked I can see that the model that Sainsbury’s are selling is slightly different to the one that Currys are. The model sold by Sainsbury’s is the Sony KDL37W5500U and the one Currys stock is the Sony KDL37W5500. As there is a difference the store can refuse to match the price of the item.”

Fair point, well made. After all, you can’t price match on different products. Because they are different products, aren’t they?

If you’re thinking they look identical, that’s because they are. There is no difference whatsoever between the two. Well, to be agonisingly fair, there is one. According to the experts at HDTV Test:

“The specific model we tested was the Sony KDL37W5500U (which denotes the 3-pin-plug United Kingdom version), but the terms KDL37W5500, KDL-37W5500 and KDL37W5500U may be used interchangeably throughout this article to refer to the same LCD television.”

So in fact the products are identical, but one is seemingly shipped with UK plug attached at source. Both are widely available from retailers across the UK and retail at similar prices – a fitted plug gave Currys enough wriggle room to squirm out of their own price promise guarantee. A+ for ingenuity, Z- for customer service.

PS3 ads are well known for pushing the boundaries of taste and decency. Thankfully Sony didn’t ask the readers of Gizmodo to answer the marketing brief, otherwise their audience would have spent more time sicking up their own organs than blasting chins off alien marauders, or whatever you do on your kiddie games all day long:

There more where that came from, plenty of it NSFW – you’ve been warned. Still, we can’t help but yearn for the days of our favourite PS2 commerical, Wolfman. There’s no attempt to scare the eyes out your face, just pure batshit craziness:

[Gizmodo]

Juan Cabral is the advertising ‘visionary’ who came up with the Sony ‘Balls’ ad and the Cadbury ‘Gorilla’ thing. Ladies and gentlemen, he is an artist. He eats ideas and shits genius. He is Argentine. He is to be feared and adored.

And he’s just made this – it’s an online-only Sony ad, shot in the Icelandic town of Seydisfjordur where Cabral filled the tiny hamlet with hundreds of speakers before blasting out tracks by the likes of Mum, Bob Dylan and the Guillemots. The poor bastards who had to live among it all look utterly petrified, as though a nuclear war is about to come over the hill and suck all their heads off.

It is a truckload of monstrous bollocks from start to finish and we defy you to stick with it throughout its near-three minute length. Not even a drumming gorilla could save it. We’re predicting that Cabral will make his debut feature film in the next couple of years and it will be incomprehensible rubbish. Well done everyone at Sony.

Ah, you have to take your hat off to lovely old Sony, who don’t seem to give a rusty fuck who they offend in their PS3 adverts.

Only last week, we covered the PS3 ad which suggested that some people in Nigeria try to scam the bewildered on the Internet. Of course it’s as true as the fact that Coldplay are wettest group on the planet but the Nigerians were outraged. Wrongly of course.

Now here’s this week’s piece of iffy PS3 promotion – and yet again we’re wafting the oxygen of free publicity all over it. The ads hail from Chile and include what we assume is a gamer giving a blood transfusion to a Nazi (below).

But, as there’s every chance that Chile is teeming with the direct descendants of escaped Nazi high-rankers, it could alternatively be seen as a heart-warming piece of family-orientated schmaltz. Couldn’t it?

No. No it couldn’t.

UPDATE: The whole chuffing nonsense happened without any approval from Sony whatsoever. The Chilean agency behind the ad has said:

“This creative design did not involve and was never approved by Sony Computer Entertainment or Sony. This “mock campaign” was developed by BBDO Chile staff and was submitted to various creative competitions/festivals without prior notification or approval from SCE/Sony, and it is not representative of the views or advertising policies of SCE/Sony. BBDO Chile apologizes for using this creative concept without authorization or prior approval, and for its misrepresentation of the PlayStation brand and its values.

Cristián Lehuedé B.
Presidente Ejecutivo
BBDO Chile

What’s the golden rule of advertising everyone? Of course it’s ‘Don’t try and ape the opening scene from Trainspotting.’ The film is thirteen fucking years old everyone – do you think you’re speaking to a bunch of people who haven’t seen the thing?

The second golden rule of advertising is one we’ve just made up and are only applying to Sony and their new PS3 campaign. The rule is ‘Don’t get someone in to do the voiceover who sounds exactly like Iain Lee, the talentless comedy gonk who was partly responsible for the BBC1 Watchdog hatchet job on the PS3 only last week. It makes you look like cocks.’

Unless it IS Iain Lee, trying to disguise his voice in order to rake in a few more pence before it all goes well and truly tits up…

There you go Sony – we’ll be invoicing you shortly.

The plot thickens in the row over BBC1’s Watchdog and their cack-handed coverage of the PS3 and its Yellow Light Of Death since we brought you an update yesterday.

One of the YLoD sufferers who appeared on the show has broken rank and given an anonymous interview with The Sixth Axis gaming website. In it, he is asked if Watchdog told him to embellish his story of how his PS3 YLoD’d, to which he replies: “Categorically yes.”

He also adds that Watchdog wouldn’t let him or anyone else speak to the engineers that the programme had recruited to independently fix the knackered PS3s, or to let them watch the actual repairs taking place.

The anonymous consumer went on to say: “They only aired the brief story of what had happened to one of the people on the show, when the three of us had different circumstances as to what happened in each instance.”

Perhaps instead of under-researching and over-sensationalising their stories, the Watchdog crew should train a camera on Anne Robinson while she’s getting one of her frighteningly expensive hair and make-up sessions. That way the licence payers can judge if they’re really getting value for money or not.

Two weeks into its much-heralded return and things are going rapidly tits up for BBC1’s blockbusting Watchdog show. The show’s production team have been attacked by Sony and hordes of PS3 users after what they claim was an unfair and inaccurate section of last week’s show.

It was a lengthy report on the (supposed) scourge of all PS3 owners – the Yellow Light Of Death. The YLOD is a system fail which although not unheard of, has never become the epidemic that Watchdog sought to portray it as. So Watchdog covered it as though it was the gaming equivalent of The Swine Flu.

In fact, the Xbox 360’s Red Ring Of Death is believed to be about five times more common than the Yellow Light Of Death on the PS3 – something which Microsoft eventually acknowledged when they extended the Xbox warranty length to three years. The PS3 warranty is still only for one year.

In their response to the programme, Sony said that: “Fewer than one half of one percent of [UK] units have been reported as failing in circumstances where the yellow indicator is illuminated.” Not an epidemic then.

In the show, Watchdog reported that Sony charge £128 to repair out-of-warranty PS3 consoles and then proceeded to park a van outside the Sony HQ where engineers would repair YLOD-suffering consoles for free. Well, free to the public – the engineers probably invoiced the Beeb afterwards. Sadly, a high proportion of those consoles later malfunctioned again.

To add to the pile of evidence against this hatchet job, the presenter of the piece was unfunny comedian Iain Lee – former host of the 11 O’Clock Show, singer of crap songs about cocks and er, occasional Microsoft Network (MSN) games writer. That’s not really helping Watchdog’s plight is it?

How the hell does this woman get work?

So, after just two high-profile shows with its new look and new host, Anne Robinson, Watchdog has had a boot up the arse and is sulking in the kennel in the corner of the back yard.

Oh, and as a postscript, reports are reaching us that Anne Robinson demanded a £550 haircut and makeover before she would make a seven-minute appearance on BBC Breakfast promoting Watchdog.

Call us old-fashioned but we’re feeling some contradiction between presenting a show based around exposing consumer rip-offs and then trying to squeeze £500 out of the licence-payer for a fucking haircut and a coating of slap.

The debate continues over at the HotUKDeals forums…

If we were to ask you which country was the source of most online scams, it’d be reasonable to assume Nigeria would make the top two answers and not finish second. We’ve all received countless pleas for assistance from the families of Nigeria’s disproportionate number of diplomats, executive bankers, missionaries and politicians – all of whom almost, but not quite, have access to eight figure sums of cash. Like the inevitability of jamming a kitchen drawer because the potato masher is the wrong way round, Nigerian scammers are a universal truth, surely?

As long as you don’t say it out loud, that’s fine. Unlike Sony, who decided to promote the new price point of the PS3 with a big ol’ round of advertising, which included a line suggesting Nigeria is rammed to the brim with fraudsters:

The Nigerian Federal Government has now asked Sony to withdraw all advertising and offer an unreserved apology. According to their statement:

“Nigeria demands an unconditional apology from Sony Corporation for this deliberate negative campaign against the country’s image and reputation. The apology must be given the same measure of publicity by Sony Corporation in all channels where the unfortunate adverts were aired.”

So Nigeria are expecting Sony to pay for a second advertising campaign on the same scale, that claims nobody in Nigeria is involved in shilling the population of the planet? That’d be a scam in itself, wouldn’t it? And in case you didn’t find the advert all that entertaining to begin with, here’s the return of Joss Whedon’s Doctor Horrible and Captain Hammer at last night’s Emmys in the US.

God be with you on this glorious day.

[Vanguard.com] via [Consumerist]

What will be the hot games console this Christmas that stores will fail to order enough stock of and manufacturers will severely under-estimate demand for? Which brand will make itself deliberately scarce in December to create sensational headlines and impact on national news running orders with footage of pissed-off parents camping outside Woolworths HMV?

Our money’s on the Nintendo Wii, after hearing plans are afoot to slash the console’s price next month in a bid not to lose business to Sony and Microsoft. The PS3 Slim was launched on September 1st at an RRP of £249 (although is widely available for considerably less) while the XBox 360 Elite now comes in at under £200, meaning it’s currently going head-to-head with the Wii.

What will Ms Wii do? Drop her pants and lure in the crash-strapped public with the sight of her tuppence, that’s what. A US press advertisement for Wallmart shows the retailer selling the console to $249, which is round about £150 in proper money. If the price-cut is in line with Nintendo reducing the wholesale cost rather than a retailer-instigated loss leader, there’s every chance we’ll see similar RRPs in this country (and no doubt further discounts on top). Analysts were already predicting a drop in price before this news, pointing out that Nintendo would lose significant market share to the competitors if it didn’t drop the cost.

[Kotaku] via [Electricpig]

While we continue to wait for Amazon to pull their finger out and give us the goddamn Kindle, Sony are cranking out their range of e-readers, in a manner not entirely unlike Apple’s progression of the iPod:

You’ve got the Sony Reader Pocket Edition with a 5-inch screen (left), the Reader Touch Edition with a 6-inch screen (centre) and the all-new Daily Edition (right). In the US market the Daily Edition will be $399, the Touch will be $299 and the Pocket Edition will be $199. The trio will be available in December – isn’t that when they have Christmas too?

All three are due to be launched at the British Library today, which is good new for those of you who like your literature in digital form. At least it’s all you’re going to get, since Amazon still has no release date for their Kindle product in the UK. It only been around in the US for two years now so take your time, eh? Rumours suggest Amazon are close to a UK release, although if you believe every rumour hear you’ll have tried cutting a pane of glass with a pair of scissors. It works if you try it underwater.

Meanwhile, here’s an advert for another trio:

An old man, yesterday

Hey daddy, Sony have got on board with the whole current ‘scrappage’ craze and are allowing customers to treat their old TVs the same way they’d treat an old Peugeot 306 – namely, getting quick cash for dumping it in exchange for a brand new model.

The electronics giant have said they’ll knock £150 off the price of one of their newest Bravia sets if you trade in an old idiot box, but only as long as you do it with a participating Sony stockist.

Sure, the whole thing sounds exciting, but a few questions spring to mind. Firstly, how hard will it be to get a £150 discount by shopping around all dealers that are stocking the new Bravia, especially if you’re armed with some haggling skills and are paying cash? £150? £250 off doesn’t sound unreasonable to us.

Secondly, if you have to hand your old telly back, what are you going to dump in the back garden and use for air rifle target practice for the next three months? Thirdly, the offer is part of Sony’s new campaign to get people to update their TVs ahead of the upcoming digital switchover, and they’ll be plugging it with ads starring Alice Cooper.

Fuck a duck, surely that’s just going to put folk off, no?

[Which?]