The Homerun is back to give you another dosage of PlayStation Home goodness. We’re delighted to say that there is a lot of new content for everyone this week!
We’ll start this time with the massive European update. As we have said countless times before, we are big fans of Killzone 2 and so were really happy when Sony announced that a Visari Throne room apartment for PlayStation Home.

It seems like an eternity since the v1.50 patch was announced for SOCOM, and we have some more news on it, but still no release date.

According to the developers, thanks to the “scope of the feature set” of the update, testing has taken longer than expected.

The Homerun is back for another week of Home news from around the world. We will give you analysis of what’s happening in and around the virtual hub for the PlayStation 3.

We’re very happy because unlike in the last Homerun, we have a tonne to fit in this week so lets go straight into business and talk PlayStation Home!

Considering SOCOM: Confrontation’s deployment to European territories has taken so long – over half a year in fact – it would not be unreasonable to assume at least some of the more egregious network and gameplay issues that have famously crippled the American version would finally now be solved.

Unfortunately, as fans of the SOCOM franchise, and with a responsibility to honestly appraise any title irrespective of brand recognition or past pedigree, we have the unhappy duty to report that, though it is improved to some degree, every snippet of bad press you’ve heard about SOCOM:Confrontation is pretty much warranted.

Welcome to another Homerun. This week we have been covering the E3 convention and listening out for news on PlayStation Home.

So hear what has been announced and released in this run-through of the goings on in and around the online world.

With E3 being less than a month away, expect to see a flutter of press releases coming from every direction. Sony have done us the honor of releasing the list of games they will be bringing to this years convention.

There really are no surprises in what we see. What will surprise us, though, are the secret and juicy games NOT on the list.

As yet another patch for SOCOM: Confrontation pokes its helpful but somewhat condemning head into the limelight, we’re starting to think maybe Slant Six should have called the game “SOCOM: Patch Adams” instead.

Just like the last patch that arrived around the time of the European launch, 1.50 promises to remedy many of the issues that have plagued the game since its 2008 launch.

New images of Zipper Interactive’s massive multiplayer online frag-fest MAG have appeared today showing off the sheer scale of what 256 players running around one environment while trying to kill one another will look like.

On display are some character models, screen grabs of the game in action and even some environment maps depicting the type of locations you and 255 other gun-happy people will be inhabiting this fall.

The SOCOM server guys have been hard at work reconfiguring the farm with the happy news today (or yesterday, whatever) that, not only have they completely eradicated the rogue region based latency issue, but they’ve also tweaked a whole bunch of other known problems, forging together a new release (1.41 if you’re still counting) that promises to finally make SOCOM be the best it can be.

Or, failing that, a robust online experience would suffice.

You may be greeted by this message the next time you log in to the SOCOM blog:
“I’m David “Point Man” Brothers, your senior drill instructor, from now on you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and the last word out of your filthy sewers will be “Sir”. Do you maggots understand that? Bull$#!% I can’t hear you. Sound off like you got a pair!”

The SOCOM team are through messing around as they say. Read on to findout how they plan to make men out of you, in a strictly military sense of course. Wait, that still sounds weird…

Crippled by lag while playing SOCOM: Confrontation? The boys over at Slant Six have your … eh, Six. Whatever. There’s a fix coming soon.

Phase two-point-oh is a go. The SOCOM servers have been updated to give us a new online look and experience. The website servers that is, the game servers are still a bit wobbly for our taste. Here’s hoping that they are in fighting shape come SOCOM Confrontation’s European release. But I digress (again).

Following on from our recent articles looking at how 2009 is shaping up – coupled with some potentially positive results already – we take a foray into the untended and unsightly future of the PS3.

We’ve looked at ‘The Good’. We’ve looked at ‘The Bad’. Now it’s time for the uncensored (and slightly unhinged) ‘The Ugly’.

You have been warned…

SOCOM European team member Shijima has confirmed official release dates for SOCOM: Confrontation in Europe and Australia.

The game first released last October in North America and Japan however it was unfortunately delayed till 2009.