Kratos Doesn't Break Bones Because His Body Is Made From Steel. Fact.

Gizmodo’s just been sent an authentic x-ray from a physician who claims to have treated a broken hand caused by excessive God Of War III excitement.

“I had a patient who was so caught up in playing God of War III that he rolled over his hand with his knee and broke two fingers. The radiograph is attached (with his information omitted and arrows that point to the fractures). First time I’ve seen such an extreme gaming injury.”

Awesome. Here’s hoping Kratos ain’t around to track down this guy. The bad publicity might just piss Sony’s spartan off enough to do some damage. Like set fire to the kid’s dog or something.

Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes From Liberty City Is Coming... Just Later Than Planned.

Well, we’ve waited months and months for Grand Theft Auto IV’s XBOX 360 “exclusive” content Episodes From Liberty City, right? What harm’s a couple more weeks going to cause, right?

Rockstar’s announced this morning that they’ve delayed the PS3 version of GTAIV: Episodes From Liberty City by two weeks due to some minor changes demanded by SCEE. The game was originally scheduled to release on March 30th but will now hit on April 16th here in Europe (April 13th in the US).

“Due to a last minute game submission request from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe to edit some of the in-game Liberty City radio station, television, and internet content – we are forced to delay the worldwide release of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City for both PlayStation 3 and PC for an extra two weeks,” Rockstar posted on their blog.

“The new release date for Episodes from Liberty City – and the two downloadable episodes The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony – on those platforms is now April 13th in North America and April 16th in Europe.

“This new date will enable us to rectify these changes for Sony Europe, and still allow for a level playing field for all of the Grand Theft Auto fans that have been waiting patiently for this release. In the meantime, we’re moving full speed ahead towards the new game release date. On that note – please be aware that the Grand Theft Auto IV PlayStation 3 leaderboards at Rockstar Games Social Club will be down for maintenance for one week starting March 22nd as we work on their re-launch in support of Episodes from Liberty City.

“Unfortunately, with each round of changes comes fully re-testing the game and a full re-submission to PlayStation. This is the nature of the game submission process. Believe us, if we could expedite the turnaround any sooner – we would. We are dying to get this game in the hands of fans who’ve waited for it for so long in the first place.

“This was a tough decision but with a simultaneous release, everyone can experience multiplayer simultaneously, take part in online events together, be on level ground on leaderboards, etc.”

It’s pretty bumming news to be honest, that must frustrate the publisher no end. But these things happen and the delay is not particularly huge. Two extra weeks is all guys. Hold out.

Sounds To Us Like The Call Of Duty Franchise Is Over.

Remember Call Of Duty? Yeah it was a big deal for a little while. It’ll continue to be a big deal for a while longer. But it kinda sounds like the franchise is done.

In a whole pile of drama starting yesterday, Activision has fired the Infinity Ward bosses Vince Zampella and Jason West. Activision’s also filed a document citing a human resources investigation “into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward”. Gamasutra argue that the “insubordination” clause might be Activision’s way of getting out of a contract with Infinity Ward that states only they can make games in the Modern Warfare franchise. Big stuff right there. But we haven’t finished yet.

Indeed Activision announced last night that new upstarts Sledgehammer games (formerly of EA’s Visceral team) will work on an “action-adventure” Call Of Duty game in 2011, alongside another Call Of Duty game by an unknown developer.

Basically, Activision are milking Call Of Duty for everything it’s worth and the two guys that were responsible for kick-starting the franchise, well, they’re no longer at Infinity Ward.

Get Yesterday's News Today: Sensationalism - Fantastic.

If you want hilariously out-of-date news, go pick-up the Metro from your local bus-stop or train-station. The paper, released this morning, runs with the headline “Millions Hit By PS3 Meltdown”. Not great PR for Sony, but kinda ironic given that by the time people were reading this “news” all PS3s had been back online for roughly seven hours.

We daresay the Metro aren’t planning a front-page follow-up to this.

[Pic: CVG]

Let Us Never Speak Of February 29th 2010 Again.

As we speculated yesterday, at 00:00AM GMT last night a whole host of borked Playstation 3 systems fixed themselves. There was a simple glitch in the system clock that caused the Playstation 3 to think March 1st was actually February 29th; in turn causing older systems to flip out. Everything should be back to normal now though, regardless of which Playstation 3 platform you own.

Sony has issued the following statement:

“We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year. Having the internal clock date change from February 29 to March 1 (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally. If the time displayed on the XMB is still incorrect, users are able to adjust time settings manually or via the internet. If we have new information, we will update you through PlayStation.Blog or PlayStation.com.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

So that’s it guys, finished with. Can we all get back to being crazy excited over God Of War III and playing Heavy Rain now please? An unfortunate 24 hours, but it could have been worse — and it’s unlikely to happen again.

Sony Hopes To Have Borked PS3s Working Within 24 Hours.

Sony’s released a press release regarding the impending “apocalyPS3″ which has seen millions of Playstation 3s borked since Sunday evening.

As you may be aware, some customers have been unable to connect to the PlayStation Network today. This problem affects the models other than the new slim PS3.

We believe we have identified that this problem is being caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system.

Errors include:

• The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000.
• When the user tries to sign-in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; “An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”.
• When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; “Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game.”
• When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; “The current date and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)”
• Users are not able to playback certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date.

We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.

As mentioned above, Please be advised that the new slim PS3 is not affected with this error. We are doing our best to resolve the issue and do apologise for any inconvenience caused.

For the latest status on this situation please check either PlayStation.Blog, Twitter or PlayStation.com.

As we speculated earlier, the likelihood is that the error will fix itself as the system clocks moves past 00:00AM GMT tonight. Sony’s committed engineers to the problem. Hopefully this will all be a distant memory come tomorrow.

"So, Today Is A Leap Year Right? What Do You Mean It's 1999."

It’s fantastic on the Internet today. Everyone’s got something to say about the thousands (probably millions?) of Playstation 3 consoles that suddenly ceased to operate over night. It’s not great news for the owners of a borked Playstation 3 console, but it’s pretty comical thinking about the happenings in Sony HQ. We imagine there are a fair few raised voices.

Still, the ApocalyPS3 seems to point towards a system hardware clock error. Essentially the Playstation 3 uses an algorithm to determine the time from 00:00GMT. The hardware clock is assuming today is February 29th, causing the algorithm to flip out and your Playstation 3 to appear borked. From what we understand from extensive reading, the algorithm should reconsider itself at 00:00GMT tonight — correcting the date to something more reasonable, and thus halting system errors.

It does appear to be very wait and see, although Sony has consistently stated they have people working on the problem as we speak.

Sit tight folks. Sit tight.