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So as of first week of September, those of you looking for a PS3 will be able to yourselves the long-awaited PS3 Slim. The PS3 slim is packed with a 120 gb hard-drive disk, runs much more efficiently and consumes less power. That’s not all, Sony has also announced and confirmed yet another long-awaited “rumor” of $100 price cut effective now (or as of tomorrow depending on where you live). The price cut also applies to current models as well, with the 80GB being $299 and 160GB for $399.

While the slim version obviously give you a better bang for the buck but I personally prefer the original version because of its piano black finish, so no regret for me there! Besides I couldn’t have waited for 2 years anyway. But this is perfect time for those wanting one. For the price of $299, you get yourself a Blu-ray player, a next-gen gaming console with built-in wireless connection. The PlayStation 3 is ready to go unlike Xbox 360 where you have to add this and buy that, but let’s not go there. This should hopefully boost the overall PS3 sales and close up the gap among the other two consoles.

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About more than a month ago, I wrote a post about how I “broke” my PlayStation 3. My friend came over today to take it apart and we are now pretty sure what the problem is as well as the potential cause.

I found this youtube video for us to follow which I think is pretty detailed. This video basically shows you how to disassemble the PS3 as well as putting it back together. But I warn you, if you do not have the confidents and/or skills to do it yourself, I suggest you don’t and instead find someone you know to do it! I also suggest you DO NOT take it apart UNLESS it is over the 1 year warranty because disassembling the PS3 will void your warranty if you are still within that 1 year.

Opening the PS3 is actually easier than I thought, provided you have the right screwdrivers though! You will need a small “minus” sign screwdriver for the very first screw (the one behind the warranty sticker) as well as the torx 10 screwdriver for the ones inside. So we thoroughly checked and make sure it wasn’t the control arms that were causing the problem. I wish it was though, so at least we could relocate them back to their correct positions. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

At this point, we were pretty sure at least the mechanical parts were working properly, we were now stuck whether the cause was coming the Blu-ray lense or as my friend suggested, the drive controller. The drive controller is the board that lies below the Blu-ray drive (as shown in the third picture, right below the yellow warning sticker).

We then looked on ebay because I read from some forums that people are selling the complete Blu-ray rom drive on ebay for $150+USD + shipping. But they don’t include the drive controller. We thought we could swap the existing one in if indeed its the rom drive that’s causing the problem. Next we searched for PS3 drive controller and to our surprise we found someone from Hong Kong selling just the PS3 drive controller for $80+ USD. We thought maybe we should give the controller a try? Then we saw someone asking if it came with the mother board as well but the seller answered was “NO”. Then the person who asked the question said each drive controller is keyed to with a specific mother board which means you can’t just swap the drive controller. So inclusion, if you fry your Blu-ray drive’s controller, your only options are either buy a new PlayStation 3 (duh!) or send it back to Sony (will update how much once I call them on Monday). As you can see I really have no choice but to send it back after finding out how much they are going to charge me. I found a forum (I can’t find it anymore for some reason!) and the person had the same issue as me and he had the chance to talk to the technician and he said it wasn’t the drive itself but rather it was the shorted drive controller. This convinced us that should be what my PS3 is experiencing right now.

If its only your Blu-ray drive that’s not working properly I think you can still get a new one on ebay and swap out the drive controller from your old drive to the new one and it SHOULD work. I cannot be sure as I have not tested.

I hope this little blog post will help those that are in the same similar situation as me. Just try and NOT turn off your PS3 by using the power switch at the back until it shows you the red light! I hope it doesn’t happen to any one of you!

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GameTrailers.com has been showing us loads and loads of E3 trailers, teasers, game plays or whatever you call them these days none stop for the past few days. While most of them look promising, I think this one in particular shines among the rest. Mod Nation Racers is the result of combining LittleBigPlanet and one of our all time favorite, Mario kart. While there are features that will immediately remind you of Mario Kart, like the power ups and the wide range of character customizations for your racers which resemble that of LittleBigPlanet. Sometimes copying other feature from different games and implementing them into a single game might actually work, and might be the case for Mod Nation Racers.

I think one of the biggest selling point of this game is the fact that you can create your own tracks (see trailer 2), something you cannot do in the Mario Kart series. This basically translates to infinite number of playable tracks, assuming people will love this game enough to create these custom tracks similar to LBP’s levels created by the players. If that’s the case, the replay value for the game will be extremely high.

The game’s customizations, track editor and the LBP feel all contribute to why I have high hopes for this game, which I’m guessing will be released some time next year. Which reminds me I should open up my PS3 and get the Blu-ray drive checked out, otherwise I will be missing out all the great games coming up even this year!

So I was playing my favorite Call of Duty 4 on my Playstation 3 and getting pwned, all of a sudden I lost the background sound and I could only hear gun shots. It wasn’t long until it was completely silent, or near silent. I quit the game after the match was over and I couldn’t, it just froze with the black screen, the screen you normally see when you quit the game and back to the main screen. I call this the black screen of death or BSOD for the PlayStation 3.

I’ve encountered freezes before but this time it was different. The console remained in the black screen so the first thing that came to mind was to turn off the console from the back after trying to turn it off from the touch-sensitive power switch at the front. I turned it back on hoping to get back in the game but I wasn’t able to. The game would not load, as in I didn’t see the game icon in the main screen. So then I tried loading one of my Blu-ray movie discs, same thing.

With less than 2 years of game time, my PS3′s disc drive is already busted. That’s pretty disappointing. I’m going to call support tomorrow and hopefully get it fixed. I don’t care if I have to ship my console to them.

Sigh.

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