Upcoming world creation game LittleBigPlanet has gone gold, and will be officially released on Oct. 21st in the US. The game will come out exclusively for the PS3, in part due to the fact that it fills up a Blu-ray disc. The list of trophies was leaked alongside the announcement. Groups of students at Parsons will be using a 24-hour period this weekend to create levels for the game. Gamespy has a collection of videos and previews for LittleBigPlanet. To protect users' creations, it will feature an in-game copyright system.

Over the past several days, the Guardian has posted a five-part interview with Peter Moore, head of EA Sports. Moore was also the president of Sega, and a vice-president at Microsoft, so his experience at the top levels of the gaming industry is extensive. He describes how he came to be employed by Sega, the development of the Dreamcast, and its subsequent flop when confronted with the Playstation 2. He also discusses his involvement with the development of the Xbox franchise, how the integrated hard drive "killed" the original model, and he gives his account of how the Red Ring of Death fiasco affected the company. The series ends with a look at EA Sports' plans for the future, and how they're trying to create a new business model beyond the micro-payments popularized by iTunes, which Moore calls "a rip-off."

Kotaku reports that a demo for the much-awaited PS3 port of Bioshock will be available on October 2nd. 2K Games launched a new interactive website to promote the game, which comes out on October 21st in the US. GiantBomb took a brief look at the PS3 version, saying, "... quality seems perfectly intact. The PS3 seems to be perfectly capable of rendering Rapture just as it appeared in 2007. The main changes you'll see with this version include things like Survivor mode, which is a new, harder difficulty setting. ... the game also has all of the downloadable updates that rolled out to 360 owners." 1Up notes that the full version will require a 5GB install, and they made a comparison video.

The demo version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was released a few weeks ago for download through Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. Now, LucasArts has announced that the game shattered records for the number of downloads on Xbox Live, taking only eight days to reach 1 million. The full version is due out next Tuesday, and LucasArts will be holding a launch party in San Fransisco on Monday night to celebrate. The game is part of a multimedia project which includes a best-selling book, a comic, action figures, and other tie-ins. According to Eurogamer's interview with producer Cameron Suey, previous Star Wars games suffered from a "lack of ambition." Suey also shows off some of the gameplay in a video. A video walkthrough of the PS2 and PSP versions is available at Kotaku. The game will not be available for PC. Early reviews for the game are good, but not great, and developers recently mentioned that George Lucas himself provided input on the project.

Sony's Martijn Van der Meulen gave an update on the progress of Sony's Playstation "Home" environment, telling IGN there is "a 100 percent guarantee that Home will be released by the end of this calendar year." Originally intended for use on the PS2, the release was pushed back several times as Sony sought to improve the concept. One thing Sony has been trying to accomplish is making the game "safe" and accessible to kids while maintaining an adults-only area. They maintain that it is not a social network, but rather a "visual representation of the PlayStation community."

Michael Shorrock, Sony's director of third-party relations, announced on the Playstation blog that he's been working with the major music game developers (i.e. Rock Band's Harmonix, Guitar Hero's Activision, and others) to ensure basic compatibility for peripherals between the games. Joystiq has a compatibility matrix that shows which devices work with which games. "...Rock Band 2's guitar and drum set will work with Guitar Hero: World Tour and with Rock Revolution. Conversely, Rock Revolution's drum set will work with both Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2. In addition, Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 will both support the SingStar microphones. We're still working hard to ensure compatibility between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles currently on the market, and we hope to have an announcement on that shortly." Update: 8/20 17:38 by SS: Reader TheWolfkin notes that Microsoft has now made an official announcement to do this as well.

An anonymous reader writes to point out the first in a series of articles from a while back about using the Playstation 3 as a development environment under Fedora. Here are the second and third parts of the series. Quoting: "Early on, it was a bit of a challenge to get Linux natively installed on the PS3. Time has passed, and a great deal has changed. Fedora 7 installs on the PS3 out of the box, with the most challenging installation steps eliminated. This article introduces the basic configuration knobs and widgets specific to the PS3 running Linux, shows you how to use them effectively, and suggests the kind of trickery that gets improved performance."

Croakyvoice writes "Dragula96 has released the first 2 player Homebrew Game. Using the Blue Disc Java runtime on the PS3 and the Minimal BD-J (Java) Devkit, this will run on any PS3 on any firmware — Pong finally arrives on PS3."

lindik writes "As part of their research efforts aimed at building real-time human-level artificial vision systems inspired by the brain, MIT graduate student Nicolas Pinto and principal investigators David Cox (Rowland Institute at Harvard) and James DiCarlo (McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT) recently assembled an impressive 16-GPU 'monster' composed of 8x9800gx2s donated by NVIDIA. The high-throughput method they promote can also use other ubiquitous technologies like IBM's Cell Broadband Engine processor (included in Sony's Playstation 3) or Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing services. Interestingly, the team is also involved in the PetaVision project on the Roadrunner, the world's fastest supercomputer."

MetaPhyzx writes "According to an article put forth by the Toward Freedom website, the metallic ore known as columbite-tantalite or coltan for short is fueling conflict in central Africa. The relevance to us who read news for geeks: Coltan is in quite a few consumer electronics; the article references the Sony Playstation series." As reader fahrvergnugen points out in the comments below, there's reason to more than doubt the currency of the claims in the above-linked article, as outlined in a post at Joystiq.

Relin writes "Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One started its run on the Xbox Live Arcade, and shortly after making its way to Steam, the development team at Hothead Games announced that it had begun work on a PS3 version of the game."

An anonymous reader writes "Earlier today Sony launched firmware V2.40 for the PS3 which is mandatory for online play. To my horror after installing the update my console wouldn't boot, and this appears to be a not uncommon problem affecting all ages and models of PS3s. Although there is rampant fanboy denial over at the official Playstation forums, the Kotaku article details the issue and has a suggested solution if you don't mind yanking your PS3's hard drive."

LinucksGirl writes "In this article Terra Soft show you how to configure and encrypt, step-by-step, the built-in Wi-Fi network that comes with the Cell Broadband Engine-based Sony PlayStation 3. And, as a little bonus, get 16 quick steps that explain how to switch from a wireless network back to a wired network on the PS3."

mikesd81 brings us a detailed IGN review of the recently released Metal Gear Solid 4, which notes: "Fans familiar with previous Metal Gear Solid games are aware that each title has introduced new gameplay mechanics for Snake to take advantage of. The incredible part about Metal Gear Solid 4 is there are tons of additional features added to this title, and even when you run into a system or mechanic that you wouldn't think would fit in the Metal Gear Universe, Kojima and his team have figured out a way to make it blend seamlessly with the gameplay, which easily allays any fears or concerns you have.""

Square Enix recently announced some of the games to be showcased at their "private party" in August. Looking at the games listed we see that Final Fantasy XIII seems to still be PS3 only and the rumors that Final Fantasy Agito XIII was canned seem to be highly overrated.

Verunks points out that senior manager Mark Danks at the Playstation Blog has announced the availability of PS2 and PSP development kits through college programs. He writes: "PlayStation-edu is a program for universities and colleges to get access to PS2 and PSP development kits ... the same ones that professional developers use to make the games you love to play. You get the development software, the hardware, and the SDK to learn and experiment with. SCEA wants to make sure that students who are graduating from college are ready to program on PlayStation hardware and that means getting it into your hands."

MahariBalzitch writes "Popular Mechanics shows step by step guide on how to install Ubuntu Linux on a PlayStation 3 and still keep the PS3 gaming functionality. Now I just need to get my hands on a PS3." Not bad specs for the price, either, since Blu-Ray players still aren't cheap. And though the article calls the procedure "somewhat complicated," it's a lot simpler than was installing Linux from floppies not so many years ago.

Gamespot is reporting that both The Getaway and Eight Days have hit the developmental equivalent to purgatory since the studio has suspended work on both games. Claiming the desire to "redistribute resources and budget," Sony is apparently conducting an internal review of all of their development projects in an attempt to stay competitive in the immediate future. "Announced at E3 in 2006, Eight Days was a PlayStation 3 game that combined third-person shooting with driving action. The Getaway, also for the PS3, was to continue on from the PlayStation 2 game, which was released in 2002 and spawned a sequel and a PlayStation Portable spin-off called Gangs of London. Little was known about the modern action-adventure game other than the fact that it was to be set in a photorealistic London."

Gamasutra is running an interview with Cyberconnect2's Matsuyama on the studio's plans for their Naruto franchise. "over the last few years it has also been the prolific developer of the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series, a PlayStation-exclusive line of games now spanning as many as seven entries. Currently, CyberConnect2 is working on Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, the series' first entry on PlayStation 3. It makes a significant graphical leap beyond its predecessors, focusing on perfecting the cel-shading techniques that imitate hand-drawn animation."

bigmouth_strikes writes "A few weeks ago it was announced that British game developers Codemasters have received the exclusive right to develop and publish video games using the "Formula One" brand name. This was after Sony and Formula One Management didn't renew their contract that have made the Playstation platform the only choice for gamers wanting "official" games since 2003. The earlier Sony exclusive right and decision to only release for the Playstation platform has led to active fan-created content for various racing simulation engines, such as rFactor for the PC. The official Formula One website has a brief interview/promo piece with Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens about their hopes and intentions for the game and platforms — which will include Xbox 360 and Wii. The company is targeting an initial release in 2009."