Details from Phil Harrison- Sony Computer Worldwide Studios
Keynote at GDC March 7th 2007:

Anouncements:

Firmware update available on the 8th for North America/Japan and Asia. European PS3's will be preloaded with this latest update.

Features of this latest firmware include:

More refined PS Store frontend
Playstation Network integrity enhanced
Wallpapers from pictures
Ability to change background colours
Sony Connect Store for music and movies added to the PS Store. Hundreds of trailers/full films/song videos and mps3's available for download.
Playstation Card option in PS Store enabled.
Playstation Lifestyle- Similar to my space/youtube. User generated content and experiences are the key.
+ more.

Removal of Emotion Engine chips in PS3's in NA and Japan to follow in April. Reason for this is to reduce costs and focus on enhanced opportunities via software. Benefits include the ability to upscale selected PSone/PS2 games to 1080i/720p.

Lots of development talk.
Release dates for key games. Warhawk in June/July 2007. Heavenly Sword delayed. Killzone and MGS4 in late 2007.

New content on PS Store available on the 8th:

Tekken 6 trailer
Lair demo & trailer
Rainbow Six Vegas demo
EA: Skate trailer
Battlefield Bad Company trailer
Warhawk demo
Virtua Fighter 5 demo
Virtua Tennis 3 demo & trailer
GRAW 2: trailer
Mortal Kombat 2 game
Killzone trailer

Killzone demo for May.

More details. Stay tuned on the 7th.

Sounds. Freakin' Sweet.

quote DevelopersHeart

Removal of Emotion Engine chips in PS3's in NA and Japan to follow in April. Reason for this is to reduce costs and focus on enhanced opportunities via software. Benefits include the ability to upscale selected PSone/PS2 games to 1080i/720p.

I thought about this. Since the new PS3's are no longer running old games through the actual hardware the new PS3's will be running it through software emulation, which opens the door much wider for optimization like upscaling...

I hope they can still upscale PS1/PS2 games on the original PS3's that still have the emotion engine intact. Because if not then you Europeans are actually getting a better system! I'd much rather have upscaled versions of all my old big name games than just the same old same old!

I feel dumb for not even thinking about tweaking the old games through software emulation. What would really make it interesting is if they actually added content to old games, since now they have the hardware to do so. It would definitely be unique and make older games even more worth re-playing. Its a good thing I have a friend in the store so I can just trade mine in and get an updated model. As long as they do a better job than Microsoft with backward compatibility, then its worth it. That PlayStation lifestyle sounds cool, even though I can't stand myspace. I'd like to hear more about actual game development though.

7 More days for you to prove your self DevelopersHeart.

I believe about everything except the killzone demo. Im still skeptical about that.

As much as I hate the living hell out of myspace, playstation lifestyle sounds cool. What ever way it works, it will be something amazing that Xbox live won't have.

sounds sick, hope it is true

alot of cool new things if this is the case

Any word about the PS3 getting a feature that is like the 360's Achievement feature?

Well there have been some rumors about it. There was also a website called kukiro or something. They posted the rumor about the playstation lifestyle. Sony then asked them nicely to take it down, but they didn't and sony got pissed at them. It sounds like there trying to hide something.

Its pretty much a genius idea if they make Achievements more than just cred, honestly. I crossing my fingers for this kind of feature, I got high hopes for it.

Well Microsoft has already 'upgraded' the achievements system so that its more than bragging rights; you can win prizes if your score is high enough. So yea, it would be a smart move for Sony to incorporate something similar, especially with the asking price of their system.

I want the lifestyle. I sounds really cool. I wonder if we will be able to search people and check out there thing. If they make something like that.

quote iLLmatic

Well Microsoft has already 'upgraded' the achievements system so that its more than bragging rights; you can win prizes if your score is high enough.

Meh, thats just a promotional thing...and its more about making people buy more games just to get the points, then it is about rewarding players...

And YES, I DO have a 360, so don't say anything fanboy~ish ^_^;;

But yeah, it would be nice if the PS3 achievements (if they add them), can actually be used for SOMETHING, if nothing more then redeemable points...would likely take a lot of achievements to get anything...

quote iLLmatic

Well Microsoft has already 'upgraded' the achievements system so that its more than bragging rights; you can win prizes if your score is high enough. So yea, it would be a smart move for Sony to incorporate something similar, especially with the asking price of their system.

Rumors say that it could use the Wii's "Mii" feature and the Achievements feature ideas and make something along the line. I can think of plenty of ideas just by taking those into consideration.

This sounds awesome but does anyone know how much the price will go down without the emotion chip or whatever its called?

It will cost a couple bucks less to produce.