These ear plugs were made by deviantART member Marcus Hermansson. For those of you interested, unfortunately he’s not interested in selling them. Maybe you can one-up him and plug actual parts from consoles into your lobes. +1 if you can fit an entire console in there.

Head to Hermannson’s gallery at deviantART for high resolution images, including a picture of his LED plugs, which lets him see in the dark as long as he swings his head from side-to-side.

[via Sprite Stitch]

Coming from Sony’s legendary Santa Monica Studios and developed by Giant Sparrow, the game centers on a runaway swan who leads you through a kingdom filled with weird and wild creatures. As you move through the world, you discover your surroundings by splashing paint onto white surfaces – definitely an offbeat gameplay mechanism in my book. The game is expected to be loaded with puzzles and challenges as you make your way to the King who built the unusual world. Here’s a look at an early teaser for the game to whet your appetite.

Sony hasn’t announced a release date for The Unfinished Swan as of yet, but it definitely looks like the sort of thing that’ll show up on PlayStation Network versus being a high-priced disc title. You’ll definitely want to keep an eye out for this title as it gets closer to a release.

The game will have characters such as Sweet Tooth, Kratos, Parappa, Fat Princess, Colonel Radec, and Sly Cooper. The game will also feature characters from games published by third-party developers. Each of the characters will have special attacks and stages along with music smashed up from various game titles.

The game will feature four player head-to-head battles, and will have multiple game modes. Those game modes will include team battles, practice modes, and the ability to fight online against friends and other players. Online multiple player tournaments, special event battles, and custom matches are among the online features. Sony isn’t offering a launch date for the game at this time.

During the downtime, gamers won’t be able to access the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Home, account management, or play online games. The downtime will last roughly 13 hours. There seems to be no indication of exactly why the network will be down for so long.

Sony says keep an eye on the PlayStation Twitter feed for notification of when the PlayStation network will be back online. I wonder when the network comes back up if it will have new features or if this is simple maintenance.

Unfortunately, these miniatures are non-functioning. So while you may have wanted your pet ant or beetle to have some good old fashioned fun playing some PaRappa the Rapper, that won’t be happening anytime soon.

However, it’s still cool how detailed these miniatures are. The Japanese are probably going nutty for these right about now.

For more pics, check out Sebastian’s full Flickr set that he calls Mini World or his Tumblr.

[Insanely Gaming via Thaeger]

The pins are all handmade and painted with enamel and gold finish. The featured controllers are from the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Dreamcast, Sega Genesis, SNES and of course the NES.

Supermandolini still sells these pins for €18 (~$24(USD)) each. Unfortunately, these pins are ultimately awarded to the quick shopper – they are limited edition products and as of this writing the NES, SNES and the PS3 pins are already out of stock, so claim your medal right away.

[via The Fancy]

Aside from the techie titillating pictures, iFixit’s teardown reveals that the Vita is a very repairable device. It’s mostly held together by common Philips #00 screws, although iFixit also used their plastic opening tool to pry open the case before they could access the battery (it’s the large silver slab that you see in both pictures). Still, it’s comforting to know that replacing the battery is a task that even newbies can do.

The PS Vita also has a modular design, so replacement parts should be cheaper. Except for the front plastic part, because it’s fused to the Vita’s OLED. iFixit even had to gently bake their Vita just to separate the front plastic from the rest of the frame. So when you get a Vita, be sure to take good care not just of the display but of the whole front cover as well.

Highlights include a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU, a quad-core SGX543MP4+ GPU, 512MB RAM, 128MB VRAM, and of course that luscious 5-inch, 960 x 544 OLED touchscreen and rear capacitive grid.

Head to iFixit for the whole teardown and details of what they found inside.

Under these limits, a single PSN account will be able to support two consoles and two handhelds. Prior to this change, up to five different PlayStation consoles could be connected to a PSN account and used to play the same games.

[via BBC]

Owners of the now older version of the PlayStation credit card shouldn’t panic, as the new scheme is backwards-compatible – your accounts should automatically be upgraded to this new one. You can find out more info and apply for the card here. And someone tell Mr. Lee M. Cardholder that his account is not secure.

I wonder what will happen if you use it to buy an Xbox 360 game.

[via PlayStation Blog via Gearfuse]

Splash Blue sounds like a Kool-Aid flavor, while Scarlet Red just sounds like a lipstick. These are 320GB PS3 Slim models (CECH-3000B), and you can expect them to hit Japan on November 17. Aside from the new coats of paint, everything under the hood remains the same. Along with the console, you also get a matching Dualshock 3 controller and AV, USB, and power cables with your purchase.

No word on when we might get them here in the states, but if you get sick of waiting, just remember, there’s always the old Krylon spray can option.

[via CNet]

Hori’s Fighting Commander 3 Pro controller for the PlayStation 3 starts out looking like just another retro gamepad, but this special controller has a few tricks up its sleeves. For starters, it does away with the DualShock’s analog sticks, making way for just a D-Pad, six oversize buttons and shoulder controls.

The D-Pad offers an adjustable angle from 0° to 20°, and you can also adjust how sensitive the diagonal inputs are on the D-Pad, choosing from three levels of sensitivity. You can also flip-flop the left and right shoulder buttons if  you so desire. The controller also offers an asymmetrical left-hand grip, which is said to give you better stability. In addition, the controller offers adjustable turbo modes, but you’d never use those, would you?

You can grab the Fighting Commander 3 Pro controller for the PS3 over at Amazon for about $35 (USD). No word on an Xbox 360 version at this time.

These geeky gamer necklaces are made by Deadly Pretty Designs, and you can choose from a bunch of them available in their Etsy store.

You can choose from a miniature Nintendo DS, Xbox 360 or PS3 controllers and more. The retro Super Mario Bros. necklaces are also pretty cool. Prices for the necklaces vary from $10 to $25 (USD).

[via holycool via Thaeger]

Every one of the games you see here is an official first-party game with the official PlayStation hologram to prove it. The collector says he bought a bunch of the games when stores were going out of business to keep costs down. Right now, he believes his collection has one of every single game made for the system.

That is 1850 games, not counting variants of the games. The collector says the hardest game in the collection to find was a sealed copy of Moto GP. The most expensive was Wizardry: Tale Of The Forsaken Land, which he ended up buying for $300 on eBay. The collection isn’t for sale, but I wonder how much it would be worth though in one giant lot.

[via Playstationcollecting]

The P1-4000 (aka PI-4000) Game Station may look a whole lot like a PS2 Slim, but it’s actually a media player, capable of handling a whole bunch of video file formats, as well as audio and e-books. The console can play videos in RM, RMVB, AVI, MKV, WMV, VOB, FLV, ASF, DAT, MP4, 3GP, MPG, and MPEG formats, and audio in MP3, WMA, DRM WMA, OGG, APE, FLAC, WAV, and AAC. It can play video at up to 720p resolution through its HDMI output.

The thing is also supposed to play all PlayStation 1 games, as well as Flash games written for PC versions of Flash 4-8, and Flash Lite 1-3 (assuming they use ActionScript 1 or 2). So you won’t be able to play the latest and greatest games on here, that’s for sure.

It’s got 4GB of built-in flash memory, as well as support for SD cards up to 32GB or USB storage devices. It comes with a pair of wired controllers that look just like the PlayStation 2′s controllers, along with an IR remote for controlling media playback. It also includes 8 DVDs filled with games (which I imagine you’ll have to copy over to flash memory from your PC). I have no idea what these games are, or if any of them are illegal, so this is definitely a Caveat Emptor kind of situation. That said, I dug up these photos which show the console playing some games:

If you’re willing to take a gamble on this thing, you can get your hands on the P1-4000 Game Station over at DealExtreme for about $92 USD. Of course, for about the same price, you could just buy an actual PS2.

You might be wondering why Pirate used an old PS3 SKU instead of one of the newer Slim models. That’s because the PS3 Slim wasn’t around when Pirate started this project way back in 2008. Ben Heck must have made a ton of PS3 laptops in between now and then, but then again none of them are liquid cooled. Speaking of which, Pirate used Feser One Cooling Fluid in this project. Other specs include a 720p/1080i screen (not sure if it’s 15″ or 17″), 4 USB ports, 500GB HDD, and built-in keyboard and speakers. Unfortunately the PSU is separate from the main unit, so minus points for portability there…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

… Not that that prevented Pirate from making a tidy sum of money out of his creation – the winning bid on eBay was $2,000 (USD). Although if you think of it, after putting in three years of blood, sweat and tears into the laptop, $2,000 sounds just about right. Check out PS3HAX and Pirate’s work log for more info.

[via HacknMod]

As we learned back in January, the PS Vita (NGP) will offer both front and rear touchpads, a high-res OLED Screen, SIXAXIS motion sensor technology, dual analog sticks, and both front and rear cameras – providing support for augmented reality gaming.

The Vita will come in both WiFi and 3G/WiFi models, and Sony also announced an exclusive partnership with AT&T as the 3G carrier for PS Vita (which brought along with it substantial groans from the audience). They also showed off a demo of Uncharted: Golden Abyss, running on the portable, and it not only looks damned impressive, it takes full advantage of the front and rear touch controls, along with the motion sensors and both thumbsticks.

Another nifty feature that was shown was the ability to start a game on your PS Vita, then resume it on your PS3, using cloud-based saves. Sony also announced a feature called “Cross-play” which will offer games which can be played between players on both PlayStation Vita and PS3 consoles. Also revealed was an awesome looking new PS Vita version of Little Big Planet, which takes full advantage of the handheld’s unique control capabilities, as well as a cool touch-based level editor. This could be one of the Vita’s killer apps, IMHO.

There are more than 80 titles in development, with titles mentioned during the presentation including Street Fighter X Tekken, Wipeout, and ModNation Racers, among others.

The Sony PlayStation Vita will be available in time for the 2011 holiday season, and will sell for $249 (USD) / €249 (EUR)/ ¥24,980 (JPY), with the 3G/WiFi model selling for $299 (USD) / €299 (EUR) / ¥29,980 (JPY). No word yet on an AT&T subsidy, or costs for a 3G data plan. Both models can be pre-ordered now over at Amazon.

There’s no question that the hardware in the PlayStation Vita looks impressive. The real question is whether or not handheld gaming systems can compete with smartphones and tablets now that they’re so pervasive. Personally, I bought a Nintendo 3DS, and it’s frequently gathering dust in favor of playing games on my iPad 2. That said, the PS Vita’s hardware and control capabilities are arguably more advanced than the iPad, and the inclusion of tactile controllers might be enough to convince me to buy one anyhow. Now if only Sony could keep their PlayStation Network alive and secure.

More details can be found over at Sony’s NGP/Vita website and on the PlayStation Blog in the near future.

So what does SOE do? Give away free stuff, that’s what!

If you were one of the users who was affected by these, then you’re set to receive a free Batman-inspired mask and 30 days of subscription credit (plus one day for each day that you were unable to access the service.) Further information on how you can get your hands on these masks will be made available soon by Sony.

Now that’s how an apology should be done. Maybe a cape would be in order for next time?

[via PlayStation Universe]

Sony has also offered up figures on the sales of other gaming items too. As of April 3 Sony had sold more than 8 million PlayStation Move motion controllers globally.

Sony attributes some of the success of the PS3 to the multifaceted things that it is capable of. The PS3 is much more than just a game console. It can play Blu-rays and is still one of the best Blu-ray players around. The PS3 also supports 3D Blu-ray and 3D gaming as well. Plus, even though the PS3 has been on the market since 2006 it arguably has the most impressive graphics on any console.

[Press Release]

The buttons can be made in colors or peanut butter too. Nothing like a D-Pad made out of peanut butter, right? Usually if I want that I have to eat some Reese’s then play some Killzone 3 in order to get that same effect.

To sweeten Michelle’s already sweet deal, the set includes a “game disc” for Grand Theft Chocolate. Personally, I’d like God of Chocolate III or LittleBigChocolate 2 instead, but GTC will have to satisfy my stomach for now.

You can get your hands these delectable PS2/PS3 controller chocolates over at Michelle’s Etsy shop. A single controller will set you back just 7 bucks, or you can grab the controller/disc combo for $14. If you want any customization or want more than one, be sure to drop Michelle a convo. Personally, I’d like a full-size PS3 made from chocolate, then dipped in a crunchy candy shell.

Takara Tomy’s SR Series PlayStation History Collection 1 includes miniature plastic versions of four PlayStation models. Designed to be sold in Gashopon vending machines in Japan, this set includes not only the consoles themselves, but mini versions of games, memory cards, joysticks and more.

The lids on the CD-ROM trays even open, and the controllers actually plug in too. About the only thing these miniatures don’t do is play games. The set of four includes:

• SCPH-1000 with I.Q. game, memory card, and original joypad
• SCPH-7000 with Minna no Golf, memory card, Dual Shock
• SCPH-9000 with Ape Escape and PocketStation (SCPH-4000C)
• SCPH-101 with LCD monitor accessory, Dual Shock 2, and Dokodemo

You can pre-order the set over at NCSX for $29.90 (USD) for delivery this Summer. No word on when they’ll release PS2 or PS3 versions.

[Image Credit: Toy World HK, and a nod to Game Set Watch]