According to the folks at the Wall Street Journal, Sony has cut production costs of the Playstation 3 to a $18 loss on every console, or $317 for every console. A BIG improvement from 2006, when it was thought to cost $800 per console. Sony also posted its first quarterly profit in a year, and is slowly trying to turn its fortunes around, with the PS3 leading the way.

inFAMOUS
Sucker Punch/Sony Computer Entertainment

"All human beings are commingled out of good and evil."
-Robert Louis Stevenson

I've always had an affinity for Super Heroes®. And, with the rare exception (Batman: Arkham Asylum being the most recent exception), Super Hero® games have been pretty terrible. So when Sucker Punch and Sony announced a new Super Hero® game, I was pretty excited.

Sony announced Wednesday that it would delay the release of its motion controller (possibly to be named the Arc) until Fall of 2010 in order to facilitate the development of games that take advantage of the peripheral.

"We will continue to work to have a comprehensive portfolio of attractive and innovative games for the Motion Controller," said Sony Computer Entertainment President Kazuo Hirai in a statement.

VG247 is reporting that the upcoming motion controller from Sony for the PlayStation 3 may go by the name, "Arc." A reference, possibly, to the first controller shown with the PlayStation 3, but later scrapped in favor of the SIXAXIS due to fanboy outrage.

Not much to say about this, here are the pics:

Hours before the opening of Tokyo Auto Salon 2010, Polyphony Digital, which is expected to have a large showing at the show, has already started releasing new info and other goodies. Amongst the flood of information is a new trailer for Gran Turismo 5 focused on the all new Toyota FT-86G Concept Car. Check it out after the jump.

News coming out of Japan slightly ahead of Tokyo Auto Salon 2010 reveals that Polyphony Digital has partnered with an automobile technology company named Denso to include a GPS Track Day Unit in upcoming automobiles. Such a device will be riding shotgun in the all new Toyota FT-86G which will be on hand at the show and which is featured in new screen shots and a new trailer for Gran Turismo 5. The technology works like so: Run a lap around a real track in your Denso GPS TDU-equipped car, take the memory card out of the unit and insert it into your PlayStation 3. GT5 will then analyze the data on the card in order to reconstruct your lap on the real world track and create a ghost version of the lap in-game (the track has to be in the game, obviously). This will allow you to drive against your real world lap in-game.

Auto magazine MotorTrend claims that the technology was used in a Lexus IS-F at the Nurburgring in October. The magazine also revealed that a 3D version of Gran Turismo 5 will be released as soon as 3D TVs are available. That should be as early as this summer. Of course, the game itself has been pushed back to an undisclosed date, so the TVs may beat it to market, anyway.

It looks like Home is evolving again, this time in the form of Sodium One, a new interactive gaming environment that's being added to Playstation Home. Described as "a highly-interactive and expansive social gaming environment" Sodium One is being developed by by Outso Ltd. and published by Lockwood Publishing Ltd.

According to the Playstation blog, Sodium One will launch with a game called Salt Shooter," a 50 level combat challenge where players can collect items to level up gameplay and strategically customize hovertanks with weapons, armor, and countermeasures. These level-ups can be obtained in a variety of ways, including meeting in-game objectives, trading resources collected in the Sodium world, and purchasing items that unlock upgrades in the Sodium environment (such as the tank pilot jackets, which grant access to additional levels of the game, leaderboards, and the pilots’ VIP lounge). All of this is built upon an MMO framework that includes additional games like Desert Quench and Scorpion Stomp, associated rewards and collectibles, and personal questing adventures, all of which are tracked by the Sodium AI Information Android known as VICKIE."

Sodium One is planned as a dynamic, expanding environment that will be adding new games, items and community events over time. Sounds like this could provide some much needed interaction within the Home community and those of you that are tired of doing the running man with your friends should have something to look forward to.  For a limited time over the next 7 days they will be giving out vouchers within the Sodium One space for a full unlock of the Salt Shooter game.. There will only be 1,050 of them given out free so make sure to get yours this week by going to see Vickie in the new Sodium one space.

For the hardcore Socom fans out there waiting for new content, today is your day.. The Cold Front expansion pack will lbe avaialable today in the US Playstation store for a special limited time price of $9.99. The expansion is loaded with new features, new characters, new modes and new maps. Here is the full list:

• New Russian / Eastern European Area of Operation
• Snow setting complete with snow effects
• New snow gear and camo for both the Special Forces and Mercenaries
• Thermal vision
• New ARMS RUN gameplay mode
• 5 New Maps: Uprising, Entrapment, Blizzard, Night Stalker, Vigilance
• All new mercenaries characters with new looks and new VO.
• New Special Forces squad, the Russian Spetsnaz
• Gun turrets emplacements
• New music
• All new character specialization/progression system allows players to pick a primary and secondary specialization and unlock new equipment exclusive to those specializations
• New weapons, including: 3 new weapons, 6 enhanced versions of weapons available as part of the new weapons specialization system, 2 new weapon attachments (including the thermal scope), 5 enhanced versions of weapon attachments also available as part of the new weapons specialization system.
• 2 new grenade launcher ammo types (flash and smoke)
• New Trophies

For a limited time, the Cold Front pack will be available for only $9.99. Be sure and download the pack from the PlayStation Store this weekend to lock in the low introductory price. After Sunday, December 20 the price will move to $14.99.

The SCEE Blog has announced the eminent arrival of PlayStation 3 firmware version 3.15. In addition to bug fixes (specifically mentioned was a controller pairing issue fix) this update brings the ability of the PS3 to play PSP minis and also includes a feature allowing a user to connect two PS3s directly via Ethernet in order to transfer save game data. No specific date was given as to the availability of the update, but in the past, new firmware has tended to show up within a couple of days of its announcement.