Gamers are reporting that their PS3s are locking up after downloading Sony’s latest system software update.

We told you yesterday that the update was designed to improve system stability and add Trophy notification options, but it seems that it’s done anything but.

Users have taken to the official PlayStation forums in order to search for some answers. Some have tried to reformat their consoles in order to solve the problem, but this apparently stops the system working at all rather than lock on the flowing ribbon loading screen.

While Sony does appear to have pulled the update, PlayStation Plus users with auto update turned on may have downloaded it automatically.

A Sony spokesperson told IGN, “We are aware of reports that the recent PlayStation 3 system software update (version 4.45) has caused the XMB to not display on a small number of PS3 systems.

“We have temporarily taken 4.45 offline and are investigating the cause of the problem. We will announce when the system update is available for download as soon as possible.  We apologise for the inconvenience.”

In the meantime, if you can hold off downloading the 4.45 firmware update, it’s probably best to do so.

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As expected, Activision confirmed today that Call of Duty: Black Ops II is launching its third DLC pack July 2 on Xbox Live, with PS3 and PC versions to follow.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II Vengeance features four new multiplayer maps, Cove, Rush, Detour and Uplink (the latter is a remake of Summit from the original Black Ops.) Vengeance will also feature a new Zombies map, Buried, where players will face off against the undead in an Old West mining town. A new weapon, the Ray Gun Mark II, will be made available exclusively for this mode.

Vengeance will retail at 1200 Microsoft Points ($15USD) on July 2.

Hungry for more Black Ops II while you wait? Check out our five favourite Black Ops II maps.

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Despite the debut of new consoles and a next-generation of games, one of the biggest talking points going into and coming out of E3 2013 concerned Microsoft and Sony’s digital rights management, and how each company would be restricting or influencing used game sales, borrowing, lending and more. With Nintendo featuring no restrictions along those lines for Wii U or 3DS, I asked the publisher’s global president, Satoru Iwata, for his thoughts on the topic. His solution is remarkably simple.

“The best possible countermeasure against people buying used product is making the kind of product that people never want to sell,” Iwata told me, indicating that he’d never considered implementing mechanisms, or “tying down” his company’s systems, with the kind of features that would restrict or control what Nintendo customers do with their used games. “Taking as an example Mario Kart or Smash Bros., even though you might think, ‘I’ve done enough with this,’ you’ll still have second thoughts. ‘Wait a minute. If one of my friends comes over, I might need this again.’ You’re never going to want to sell these games. That’s something that always occupies our minds. We need to make software that players don’t want to sell.”

Iwata seemed disappointed that E3 2013 had become so focused on everything but what ultimately matters most to him and his company – the games.

“We’re competing with each other in terms of who’s creating the most fun games,” Iwata said. “Unfortunately, however, as I saw the reports dispatched from E3 this year, they’re pretty much occupied by talk about which machine is more friendly to used games, or which machine is $100 cheaper than the other. I’m sorry that we’re missing the most important discussion – about video games.”

Stay tuned for plenty more from my chats with Satoru Iwata, Reggie Fils-Aime and other Nintendo producers and executives.

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Nintendo has revealed its plan to extend the StreetPass Network, in a bid to increase its popularity outside of Japan.

StreetPass allows users to automatically exchange game data between 3DS consoles in Sleep Mode, when they come into close proximity. StreetPass is popular in densely-populated Japan, but Nintendo feels its yet to achieve the same degree of popularity in America and Europe. Fewer people in these territories use StreetPass on a daily basis.

In its E3 Analyst Briefing, Nintendo reveal its plan to release more software that takes advantage of StreetPass functionality, and in a bid to increase its popularity in the West, it’s planning on using public Wi-Fi access points – such as those in Starbucks and McDonald’s – to provide 28,000 Wi-Fi access points in the US and 24,000 in Europe.

“This will involve taking a Nintendo 3DS system in Sleep Mode to an access point which will then connect automatically and send StreetPass data to a server. At the same time, the Nintendo 3DS system also receives the StreetPass data of another user from the server. In this setting, data is not exchanged directly, but rather through a StreetPass relay station.”

“Previously the StreetPass feature required multiple Nintendo 3DS systems in Sleep Mode to be in the same location at the same time, but in this framework, you can exchange data with others by visiting the same location even at a different time, so we can certainly expect the use rate of the StreetPass feature to grow significantly.”

Nintendo says this software update will roll out sometime later this year. No dates were confirmed.

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Mario Golf World Tour on 3DS has been pushed back to 2014. The news was displayed on a slide in Nintendo’s E3 Analyst Briefing, outlining the release schedule for the handheld.

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Sony has confirmed that not every multiplayer game for the PlayStation 4 will require PlayStation Plus, as publishers will be able to decide what happens with free-to-play titles.

In an interview with Polygon, SCE Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida confirmed that this would be the case before revealing that Sony Online Entertainment has already decided its MMOs won’t require players to have a PS Plus subscription.

“As far as free-to-play games are concerned, it’s a publisher’s decision whether they put it inside or outside of the PlayStation Plus requirements,” he said.

Free-to-play games for the PlayStation 4 that won’t require you to have a PlayStation Plus subscription are currently confirmed to include DC Universe Online, PlanetSide 2, Blacklight: Retribution and Warframe.

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During an analyst presentation earlier today, Nintendo specified a North American release month for The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the Nintendo 3DS. Previously indicated to be a ‘Winter’ arrival, A Link Between Worlds is now due out in November 2013.

No further clarification was provided for a European release, which is still a vague “towards the end of the year.”

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Retro would love to work on the Metroid series again, but it’s not currently doing so. Though many expected a move to HD would lure Retro back to the franchise that made it famous, Retro president Michael Kelbaugh told me in an interview that his team felt Donkey Kong Country needed more attention.

“Well, we love Metroid. We love Metroid Prime and we always will. It was a big part of our studio, the culture of the studio. The majority of that team is still at Retro,” Kelbaugh said. “When we finished with DK, we still had a lot of really cool ideas. That, in combination with what the Wii U could do, we really wanted to continue with that. Again, Retro Studios loves Metroid. We might do another one someday. But we really enjoyed working with DK as well.”

Of course, many Nintendo fans refuse to give up hope, and might assume that Retro is working on both Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and some sort of Metroid project. While the developer certainly might have ideas, and could be doing some tests, it won’t be working on two major projects simultaneously.

“We’re pretty much on one major project at a time. We do a game every two years or three years,” Kelbaugh said. “In the first year of that, we have some extra bandwidth, so sometimes… We helped out with Mario Kart 7. We helped Monster Games do the 3DS version. Sometimes we’ll have a little bit of extra bandwidth to help out other entities at Nintendo. We really feel strongly about helping out Nintendo as a whole, so if we have time, we’ll do that. Do we have the bandwidth to do two major projects at once? I don’t think so. A big project and a little project at the same time, we can do that.”

So Retro is working on Tropical Freeze. It doesn’t have two teams working on two major projects, even though it might be interested in returning to Metroid one day. What, then, is the future of Samus Aran’s intergalactic adventures? I turned to Kensuke Tanabe, an Executive Officer at Nintendo, and the man responsible for producing Retro’s games, including the Metroid Prime series.

“Basically I’m thinking of, not just Samus, but how we can expand the whole Samus universe,” Tanabe said. “You remember Metroid Prime Hunters. I’m thinking about things like how we could make that go out further, with all these different bounty hunters as well.”

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Star Wars fans no doubt have plenty of questions about what DICE plans to do with the beloved Battlefront series, but it’s still a little too early to tell. The ink is barely dry on the agreement, but DICE specifically hopes it isn’t making a Battlefield-themed Star Wars game.

“We don’t want Star Wars plus Battlefield,” said Bach, “because that would be boring, right?” DICE seemed like the obvious choice to revive the much-troubled Battlefront franchise. Fans weren’t the only ones who wanted it. Bach says that “LucasArts wanted us to build a Battlefront game.”

But what will DICE’s Battlefront actually be?

“In general, we wouldn’t build a game that is a copy of someone else’s game,” Bach told GNG. “We couldn’t do that. We’re too stubborn and too annoying for people to think we could do that.” Star Wars: Battlefront is still in the earliest of stages at DICE, so it is still “figuring out what we want to build” while it “looks at the history of the Battlefront franchise to reverse engineer it…to find out what it was supposed to be.”

What do you want to see from DICE’s Battlefront? While we wait who-knows-how-long for its unspecified release date, let us know your thoughts about Star Wars’ future in Frostbite, and the potential for first-person Battlefront combat.

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A video, purportedly from Sony, leaked by YouTube user ArekkzG, seems to show off the PlayStation 4’s interface, and some of its special functionality. You can see the video below.

The video, which runs just over three minutes, shows a man turning on his PS4 with a quick push of the PlayStation button on the DualShock 4. His start menu on the PS4 shows (likely fake) games like Combat Plane 2 and Dragons and Cavalier, but it’s the very real game – Knack – that draws his attention. He sees that his friend Sarah earned the Platinum Trophy in Knack, gives her a thumbs up on her accomplishment, and then jumps into the game himself.

But our friend isn’t very good at Knack. So he downloads a video to see how Sarah completed some of the tougher parts of the game, and then jumps in and tries again for himself.

Later, another of this guy’s friends invites him to play Killzone: Shadow Fall. He doesn’t have the game yet, though, so he has to download it. According to the interface shown, he’s then given the option of downloading Shadow Fall’s multiplayer component first or the single player campaign. While he downloads multiplayer, he jumps back into Knack, messages with his friend Sarah and gets hassled by his friend playing Shadow Fall over his headset.

He eventually jumps into Killzone to play, at which point their friend Sarah sees over her smartphone that they’re playing. She buys the game remotely so it’s ready for her when she returns.

And thus, the video ends.

It’s unclear if this video is the real deal, of course, but it would be exceptionally difficult to fake DualShock 4 controllers, the interface, the gameplay, and all of the rest. Nonetheless, we’ve reached out to Sony to see if we can confirm the authenticity of the video, and to see if we can get a higher-res version of it.

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