Not but a few days after some decided anti-Sony Japan commentary by a very frustrated Phil Harrison, the Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President is out, with his role to be assumed by the monolithic Kaz Hirai. Phil recently expressed his frustration for SCE Japan's resistance to online and social gaming, which, as it turns out, is exactly where Sony needed to be like five years ago. From the sound of things, Phil's departure is a little unceremonious (and, dare we say, acrimonious?), but who's to say what really went down behind closed doors?

Read - Phil pulled his hair out over Sony Japan's conservative nature
Read - ... and now, mysteriously, Harrison is out

Given some of the bold statements that Sony's Phil Harrison has made, hinting at possible PlayStation 3 homebrew plans doesn't seem all that remarkable, but it's still nice to hear it coming from the source. While he unfortunately didn't get very specific, he certainly seemed to be open to the idea in a recent interview with Slashdot, saying that he fully supports "the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone," adding that he believes it's "a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry." He then went on to earn himself a bit of cred by talking about his Commodore 64 coding past, also citing Sony's Net Yaroze homebrew development kit for the PS1 as evidence of the company's openness to the idea. Let's just hope that any homebrew effort on the PS3 doesn't demand the same premium price that the Net Yaroze did.

[Via Gamesindustry.biz]

Well, sort of. Phil Harrison naturally couldn't just announce the future feature straight out, he had to work it into a clever demonstration of how Sony doesn't usually talk about stuff that's in the pipeline. In a talk with N'Gai Croal, Phil conjectured that to "engender trust in our users, we have to share some things that might be not quite perfect." He continued: "So we could say, 'You know, we're not sure when it's coming, but we're going to have DVD upscaling on PlayStation 3.' There you go. There's a scoop for you." If Phil digs the idea enough to drop some info like that in an interview, we're not sure why he doesn't just go ahead and adopt it as a policy, but we're sure there are powers at Sony that even our shiny-headed little friend here cannot conquer. Of course, this gives us very little knowledge in the way of timing and implementation, but it's nice to know that DVD upscaling -- which Xbox 360 users have been enjoying for a few months already -- is coming to Phil's shiny PS3 boxen all the same.

[Via Joystiq]

As you can probably imagine, the reaction to Sony's newly-spec'ed European PS3 hasn't been all that warm, so Three Speech decided to hit up big Phil Harrison himself to get responses to the criticism straight from the horse's mouth. Perhaps the biggest relief to nervous Eurogamers will be Harrison's claim that over 1,000 PS2 titles will be available on the PlayStation Network at launch fully software-backwards compatible (despite the Euro PS3's removal of PS2 hardware), a list of which will be made available online on the 23rd or perhaps even sooner. However, it's clear from the way Harrison dodged a question about the importance of backwards compatibility that Sony does not place a lot of weight on the feature, instead hoping that people will go out and spend loot on games and Blu-ray flicks. One possible positive revealed by Harrison was the fact that the PS2 Emotion Engine chips being omitted from European (and possibly all future) models are not the same ones mass-produced for the PS2 itself, but rather, are manufactured specifically for the PS3 -- meaning that Sony will indeed see a significant cost reduction which could theoretically be passed down to the consumer.

Want some more potentially good news? How'd you like all those legacy games to utilize the PS3's upscaling ability and add new life to your favorite classics? Well that's exactly what Sony plans to do with a firmware update this summer, claims "Rumor Reporter" Bruce Kelly, whose sources tell him that the company is looking to bring 1080i/720p support to its upcoming emulator. Kelly goes on to say that Sony will add compatibility for select games in batches of ten or so, but hopes to eventually offer support for almost every title on PSN. We'll believe this one when we see it, but if Kelly does turn out to be right, we don't think Sony will be hearing one more word about that discarded Emotion Engine.

Read - Harrison interview [Via Joystiq]
Read - Upscaling rumor [Via PS3 Fanboy]

It's not really fair to judge the PS3's online component before, like, the console is actually released and gamers start putting it through its paces, but it's still interesting hear Eurogamer's take on a pre-launch version of the PlayStation Network, courtesy of some exclusive face time with Sony exec Phil Harrison. From the site's extensive coverage of many aspects of the service, the most noticeable theme is that Sony seems to have been closely watching the successes and failures of Xbox Live, and is serious about its promise to meet or exceed all of Live's capabilities. Therefore, many of features that 360 fans have become accustomed to -- consistent UI, multiple methods of communicating with friends, and downloadable content -- are prominently featured in the Network experience, with other aspects -- namely a full web browser, multitude of game-specific mini-stores, and pricing in real currency as opposed to "points" -- clearly designed to one-up Microsoft's offering. Other nice touches here include the ability to create a master account and regulated "associated" accounts (helpful for parents looking to police their kids' usage), a global "Wallet" with which you make all micro-payments (including those required by third-party publishers), and of course, an upgradable OS that leverages the hard drive on both versions of the PS3. Downsides? Unlike Xbox Live, the first iteration of PlayStation Network doesn't let friends communicate while playing a game; even though you'll get a notification of new messages during gameplay, you have to exit the game in order to read them and respond. Also, it's still not clear if / how Sony will implement player rankings a la Live's leaderboards, which is a feature that naturally-competitive gamers have come to expect. All-in-all, though, it sounds like Sony has put a lot of thought into the usability of this increasingly important aspect of the console experience, and assuming that the company is able to overcome potential shortages, lack of rumble, and other well-known nitpicks, the PlayStation Network looks poised to attract the same fervent following as XBL.

[Via PS3 Fanboy and Joystiq]

Once again, we're hoping something is missing in translation here, but we've got the latest from the trenches in Sony's never-ending hype war of attrition; Phil Harrison, Vice President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, apparently told Spiegel, the following, which was translated from English to German, then back as the following (which we cleaned up a tiny bit): "We believe that the PS3 will be the place where our users play, watch films, browse the Web...  The PlayStation 3 is a computer. We do not need the PC." Seriously? We translated the page a few different ways and times, same result. Do you really mean to say the PlayStation 3, which, granted, will run a flavor of Linux, will make us drop our PCs off at the corner because it can browse the web and play back movies? Phil, c'mon, work with us here. As long as you and your cronies are going to keep on making these crazed, bombastic Sim Wong Hoo-like statements, we're gonna keep reporting it; and then our kind readers are gonna think we're all hating on Sony and stuff, but really we're trying to expose the folly of what's really at hand. Seriously Sony, Phil, Ken, you guys need let the product stand on their own two feet. We're gonna suggest the Nintendo method on this one; enough with the superlative language and let the product sell itself.

[Via VideoGamesBlogger]

Update: thanks to our dear, sweet German speaking audience (yes, we're read internationally -- who knew?) it's becoming increasingly glear that our translation-bot didn't facilitate an accurate quotation here, (surprise, surprise). Essentially the answer Phil gave was along the lines of using the PS3 to attack some of the more commonly used PC functionalities, and that Sony's emphasis is on entertainment, not just gaming. Ok, that's cool, but that's still a helluva money quote.