Playstation 3 Online Store Gets Much Needed Upgrade. The great news this week for PS3 owners: the latest upgrade of the firmware makes the Online PSN Store much better. For one thing the store is not a web site, and is integrated into the firmware. This makes the store much faster to navigate. It is also a much better "organized" store, with icons for all items that are more constructively listed on the screen. Just in time for this major store overhaul, was a considerably large update of items for sale, including Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, a bunch of add-on packs for everything from Rock Band to Lair and Warhawk (among others), and tons of new videos to download. As for me; I'm just glad for the simple fact that the new store navigates like a handy DVD menu, and not with a mouse arrow that is slow as molasses (which was pretty odd, considering few people connect a mouse to their video game system).

Soulcalibur...as an XBox Arcade Game? Could the "ceiling" for XBox Live Arcade games be broken? For ages, the apparent idea was for XBox Live Arcade games to be sold "small," so they could fit on one of those small memory cards for the XBox 360...that is presuming anyone ever bought one, given the much easier-to-use internal hard drive. Seriously; why not offer an XBox game that takes advantage of the minimum 20GB free space of the typical XBox 360? Well, according to a press conference held by Namco Bandai yesterday (Thursday); that's what might happen, upon the release of the original Soulcalibur to XBox Live Arcade. Though no notice of when this will happen was given, it is presumed it will coincide with the release of Soul Calibur IV this summer. The bad news: reprogramming the game from the ground up is apparently not an option, and given that the original Sega Dreamcast game was only "multiplayer" via local play (i.e.: two controllers on one game system), no online multiplayer will be offered. The game will have leaderboards and such though, so that's cool, as is the fact that the game itself should be one of the largest Xbox Live Arcade games offered to date.

Spiderman 4? For Gamers, Yes. It's no surprise to gamers that Spiderman 2 was one of the best superhero games of all time, largely because of it's completely open-world game play, that allowed your "Spiderman" to web sling all across New York with no load times to speak of and the freedom to approach any "mission" in any order you wished. You could even go into stores to buy things, climb the top of the Empire State Building, and much more. This was all followed by the disappointing Spider-Man 3, which was hardly helped, really, by the even more disappointing movie. So given that there is no Spiderman "4" in the works, does this mean game company Activision is going to give up all hope at another attempt at a game as good as Spiderman 2...? Of course not...so allow this news page to say the obvious, and announce that Spider-man: Web of Shadows is coming out for all major next gen consoles this August. It will have the same freedom of "open world" gameplay in a replica of New York City, which is good enough news for me. The game is also said to allow gamers a bigger freedom of which missions to accept and which to ignore (earlier games required particular missions to be completed before other missions would become available). A more thorough news byte can be read over at IGN.

Divorce Via Youtube. I live for the latest Youtube video each week that tries to set a new...uh, "standard," if you can call it a standard in this case. In short: a woman basically divorced her husband via Youtube this week, dishing the dirt on their troubled marriage for all the internet to see. While this is hardly a tabloid site, it is one of the more talked about viral videos this week, so I felt the need to link to it here. Of course, this is presuming that the video isn't pulled for lawsuit concerns from the inevitably soon to be ex husband.

X-Files "2" Gets (Unintentionally Funny?) Subtitle. Sometimes it's all in the subtitles. Okay; not really. Did Talladega Nights really need a subtitle to tell us it was "The Ballad of Ricky Bobby"...especially when there is no such person, so why should we care? Ask yourself that when I tell you that the chosen full title of the upcoming X-Files movie is X-Files 2: I Want to Believe. Okay; I just have to say it. That's kind of sad. That's what a UFO believer is usually told by some politically correct naysayer, whose full comment, if they were more brutally honest, would go like this: "I want to believe you...but I pretty much think you're a whole can of nuts." Then again: what matters my opinion? The story first broke out thanks to Wired, whose chosen headline says it all: "X-Files Sequel Gets Lame Name At Last."

Wii Fit On Good Morning America. As a game fan, it's always nice to see games showcased in the "real" media world, in a way that doesn't involve criminal activity. You know what I mean, right? Anyway: Good Morning America has this interesting video online where the show's hosts tried out the so-called "Wii Fit" game for the Nintendo Wii. It's supposed to help people exercise in a way that's as fun as if you were playing a video game (in short; what just about every Nintendo Wii game does, only with less subtlety and more "fitness" involved). Even if you're not a Wii fan, it's interesting enough to watch an online video where the often-sitting hosts of a morning chat show are standing on Wii Fit platforms as they try to figure out the game. Check it out.

Final News Byte This Week: Arrested Man Gets All A-"Twitter." The final news byte each week is often left for the most intriguing story on a unique or perhaps even slightly humorous level. Well, put this in the former category: Techcrunch offered a tale this week of a UC Berkeley graduate who was arrested in Egypt for photographing a demonstration of some sort. He was able to text his account via a new social network called "Twitter," with the simple message "arrested." This was immediately followed by his friends over at Twitter calling the US Embassy. Of course, he's still in jail last anybody checked, though at least he's getting the help he needs in this case.

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