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Engadget has a poll on its website asking which is the best blu-ray player out there? Unsurprisingly the PS3 is currently in the lead. Way, way in the lead. For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’d ever consider anything else for playing blu-ray disks. With the bluetooth remote the PS3 does an amazing job, has fantastic picture quality and is a pretty good media centre too boot. Oh, and apparently it also plays games.

I haven’t really been keeping up on the games world too much lately but I came across this in my news reader this morning. It’s a new game for the PS3 that looks simply gorgeous. It’s an old fashioned platform style fantasy game, only with modern 3d graphics and a pretty good physics engine. Think ghosts and goblins meets little big planet.

More info available here

The New Playstation Europe Blog:

Hello and welcome to the brand new official PlayStation.Blog from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE). For the loyal PlayStation fans, the title of this post echoes what Patrick Seybold said when the US blog launched back in 2007. Yes, it’s taken us a while to get here and we know that many of you have been asking for a European blog for a long time now. We’ve been listening and thank you all for your patience and support whilst we’ve been getting everything ready for today’s launch. Now that we’re here, it’s our hope that this blog will grow to become a one-stop-shop for your daily fix of PlayStation news from across the SCEE region.

It’s been a while since the launch of a Sony Walkman made headlines but its latest offering, the new x-series Walkman has reviewers somewhat excited. The new Walkman, despite its OLED screen, and despite its internet access, wifi and youtube, may be attempting to compete against Apple’s iPod touch, but its biggest strength is as a music player. It’s unclear if that is deliberate but it does present is an interesting point. As Apple moves it’s iPod line to be more of a multimedia handheld computing and gaming device, the market is opening up once again for a premium audio product that caters for those who want high quality audio in a portable device. Something, unfortunately Apple seems to no longer be interested in.

So the PS3 is going no where right? It’s failed to compete with Microsoft and Nintendo, Right? I mean that’s what you would believe from reading the writings of numerous analysts and technology blogs. So you might be a little surprised to read that the PS3 sold almost as many units 10.77 million as the xbox 360 did last year (10.8 million). If Sony managed to pull that off considering that Microsoft are practically giving the damn things away, then I think the future of Sony’s console is far rosier that some people want you to think.

For all those people out there predicting the demise of the PS3, your predictions and musings are about as accurate as those predicting the demise of blu-ray. From PlayStation Universe (PSU):

With the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reporting doom and gloom for the black behemoth, sales data has indicated that PS3 sales are actually up 60 percent in comparison to 2008. That’s quite the feat considering the system is often considers a little too pricey for the average consumer.

Like the” blu-ray is dying” myth, there’s another one that seems to be doing the rounds at the moment, and that is that the PS3 is dying, going no where and doomed to failure. Except, like with the blu-ray myth the numbers just don’t add up. First of all, if you consider that the main competitor for the PS3 is the Xbox 360, and look at the total sales to dat you might be surprised.

From IGN:

The holiday shopping season is at full intensity and consumers have made it clear that above all else they want a Blu-ray player in their stocking. Numerous reports have shown a dramatic increase in Blu-ray sales this year, with experts estimating that many more thousands of units will be cleared from the shelves before the New Year.

So much for the whole “blu-ray is dead” bull that’s been doing the rounds. But wait…there’s more….