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An informed UK reader sends word of the Playstation 3's 2.0 firmware release, which he says is supposed to hit on Oct. 30. While the source appears to be genuine, I am a little doubtful of the timing since 1.94 seems to be just hitting now with copies of Ratchet and Clank, so take this, as you should all rumors, with a grain of salt.

Chief among the updates is the inclusion of cross media bar customization, a separate Playstation Network category, music and photo playlists and the ability to turn your PS3 on and off with PSP Remote Play. Hit the jump for the full break down of what we're told will be coming in this rather robust update.

To: Crecente
From: Ashcraft

Today is a very, very dark day. Earlier, we dropped by Costco to pick up a real, orange pumpkin (not the green Japanese pumpkins), and Costco was COMPLETELY SOLD OUT. That means, no pumpkin for me. And that means no pumpkin pie, no jack-o'-lantern and no pumpkin seeds. Nothing! Instead, my Halloween will consist of a pumpkin the size of an apple covered with cheesy stickers. Talk about horrible.

What you missed last night
Ah, Mike with the seamen puns
TV show visit
Contest voting!
Tomb Raider and Uncharted are different

Good news and bad news. OK, really just good news for Nintendo.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata today ruled out any price cut for the Wii today during a press conference, saying that they would be struggling to meet demand for the console. He added that the will begin selling the Wii in China next year and unveiled a new gift-giving feature for the Wii.

The new function will allow users to send each other games via the Wii's shopping channel. The user will purchase the game and then choose a recipient, who will receive an alert. When the other gamer accepts the gift the Wii will jump to the channel and start downloading.

"We think this will be a breakthrough in encouraging customers to spread news of fun games word of mouth," Iwata said. "We also hope to spur more users to connect their Wiis to the Internet," he said.

Just in time for the holidays. I wonder how well this will go over?

Nintendo Rules Out Wii Price Cut [AP]

Never before has an in-home game system experienced this type of worldwide success on such a long-lasting scale... PlayStation 2 is a perfect example of our ten year product lifecycle promise and is a testament to the design and technology that continues to be at the core of the product. While today's anniversary celebrates PlayStation 2's past, we're very excited for its future.

It's raining! No, it's pouring. There's a leak in Kotaku Tower, and all our stuff is getting drenched. Good thing our Sponsors know how to mend roofs. Good thing we have Sponsors! This week Kotaku was kept nice and dry by Dementium, GameStop, Logitech, Mojo, Opera, PLAYSTATION 3, Register.com, Rockstar Games, Sony Ericsson, TiVo, Verizon, World in Conflict and Xbox 360. Glad to have the drippy ceiling gone!

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The Wii's controllers enable players to enjoy Samba De Amigo's unique gameplay without having to purchase an expensive peripheral.

We've got an Xbox 360 collecting dust in the background, a Wii hooked up that we use quite a bit. I don't have a PS3... At the moment I can get better graphics on my PC than I can on the PS3... The only next gen system I've seen is the Wii — the PS3 and the Xbox 360 feel like better versions of the last, but pretty much the same game with incremental improvement. Bu the Wii feels like a major jump — not that the graphics are more powerful, but that it hits a completely different demographic. In some sense I see the Wii as the most significant thing that's happened, at least on the console side, in quite a while.

I completely understand them, just because this is a genre which is not that widely used in videogames for whatever reason — people tend to focus more on science fiction. This more realistic, treasure hunting, pulp action adventure genre really hasn't been tried by that many. So I think just by the very fact that both Nathan Drake and Lara Croft are treasure hunters, there will be comparisons. But beyond that, they diverge pretty rapidly. From a character standpoint, Nathan Drake is an everyman who struggles to get by, who you can see on his face that he's stressed out as he's flinching from bullets ricocheting off the cover he's hiding behind, while Lara is the more stone-faced acrobat, perfect landing every time. And then the game play, obviously we were very focused on third person cover-based play, while theirs is more auto-aiming and a little more heavy on the puzzle-solving.

We're not going to sacrifice quality because our fans deserve the best and we're going to make sure that we continue to deliver that, each and every game we make.

It's not a masterpiece by any means, but I think it turned out pretty well... and I hadn't seen other megaman pumpkins yet. My friend was going to do a quickman pumpkin so he'd have someone to fight against, but that didn't work out :-) Anyway, I hope you like it!

Brunch Out!! [Meth Minute]

Holy crap! We got some good entries in our Dementium bandage contest. Tons of brave folks were more than willing to cover themselves in TP, band-aids, w/e to enter this contest. For that, respect and much love! We've picked our top ten finalists. Now, it's up to you Kotakuland to pick the winner. In the comments section, vote for ONE finalist that you like. Just one, not more than that. Voting ends at midnight, tonight. Congrats to the finalists!