As I was talking about a few weeks ago, SAW (staff appreciation week) on bootleggers has begun. Players submit photos of themselves with a picture that generally says I <3 xxxx staff member, like last year. This time however, staff members have each submitted there own photo that each player must hold up otherwise it wont be accepted. This is silly in my opinion, do they need to inflate their own ego's even more? BSf's picture says BSF rawks my socks (or other), so everyone who wants to nominate BSF as their favourite staff member, has to use the picture he made himself. I don't like it. Also part of the fun was seeing what creative messages people have came up with. You can still add your own message on the picture though, but it seems that generally people have not been, as there is not much space on the picture to do so, or people would have to write it up on another piece of paper and hold up two bit, and, neeeh who wants to do that, I don't blame them for not.

Anyways, it still is fun look through the submissions and seeing the wierd things people have done in their photo, and look at all the photos of bootleggers players. It's fun to see such a .... diverse (is that  the word im not really sure) amount of people playing bootleggers and submitting their photos. I just hope there is a player appreciation week or something, for all the people who have bought points to help keep bootleggers alive. Probably not but hey.

Recently, Sony announced a God of War collection for PS3, which will include God of War 1 and II from the PS2, with remastered graphics and bring in other features such as PSN trophies in anticipation for the release of God of War II in early 2010. Wow... just wow. This is an incredible move by sony. I own both of them on PS2, but don't actually have a PS2 at the moment to play it with, and don't think I could even find the disks now. Now, with two great games coming to PS3 with upgrades graphics and trophy support and a cheaper price point, this could open the way to more PS2 games like this. Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 anyone? hmmmm, Times certainly thinks this is interesting, and will defenetly pick up the God of War collection later this year and possibly God of War III when it comes out next year.

Also, it looks like the PS3 slim is doing nice things for sony, cheaper price point, and it seems lots of people are buying one now. More n00bs to beat and hear online.

Playstation 3 system software 3.0 is ow avaailable and here is a small article with my thoughts. So the main thing you will see when you first load up your playstation 3 is a new logo, which is neat I guess, and then a whats new section. This in my opinion is great. It acts as sort of like a home page for your playstation. Here you can check out recently released games on the playstation network, select games that you have recently played, or check out the latest online news. I like this, I can check out the newest stuff while still able to quickly select my last game played and play it. This is much better than it just defaulting to the game menu like it did before the update.

Mostly everything is just a cosmetic update. You now have sparkles of glitter in the background and it's more animated. Also, a status indicator in the top right hand corner is good, you can see how many of your friends are online, and see how many messages are still unread. This is a great update for me, beforehand if you miss the "you have recieved a message" notification (or simply had it turned off) it was hard to tell that you had an unread message. Now it is always on the top right of your XMB for you to see. Also the controller indicator no longer overrides the clock when you press the PS button in a game or application.

 Font and text size has been increased, which doesn't mean much to me, still looks the same so no comments there. The friends list now has a grey box on each persons background. Most people think this is ugly, but I think it is to make it look more like a profile. Sony could put a persons trophy level to the right of the box, and something else in it and it would look great, something it wouldn't look like without the grey box.

Now for the bad. According to wikipedia, an ABC iView player has been added for users in Australia. I am Australian, and have no iView icon on my XMB. Futhermore, looking through forums, it seems there is a glitch with this and the BBC iPlayer for people in the UK. Now there is a playstation store icon under games and under video and other sections for members in the US and places where there is a video store. One icon is enough. One plus the whats new section that links to the playstation store. I don't have these extra icons but I can imagine they would clutter up the XMB with one in every section. personally I like the new update, and there as some features I haven't even talked about: Dynamic themes, support for custom avatars, audio multi output, much faster internet browser, connection speed test, slider for long lists, etc...