Alarm bells went a-ringing this morning when eagle-eyed visitors to the official Ubisoft website noticed that the PS3 had been mysteriously omitted from the list of platforms upcoming survival title I Am Alive will feature on.

Cue frantic phone-calls to Ubisoft and, thankfully, it was just an typological error and the game is still very much planned for the PS3 sometime in 2011.

Broadcasting on the first and third Thursday of every month (so not actually matching with the lunar cycle), Insomniac’s “Full Moon Show” podcast is a way for the studio to connect with its fans, answer some questions and basically goof around for nearly an hour.

Revealed on the podcast is just what Insomniac’s new studio over in South Carolina are up to.

With hints in the past that the new division would be focusing on their own titles, the podcast confirms that the new game is not a Resistance or a Ratchet entry and is “a lot of fun”, if not a long way off.

After numerous whispers through the industry grapevines over the last couple of weeks, the sad news that developer Grin has shut its doors has finally been confirmed.

Posting on their official web-site, founders Bo and Ulf Andersson state that it is with “a heavy heart” that the development studio is now defunct. Though associated mostly with recent lacklustre titles such as Bionic Commando, Wanted: Weapons of Fate and Terminator: Salvation, the studio also worked on the solid action series Ghost Recon and the racing game Ballistics.

The Homerun is back with more news and views on the new content to hit PlayStation Home this week, plus anything else we can fit in.

It’s a busy week from all directions so let’s get straight into it.

Confirming to VG247, SCEE have clarified the recent mammoth time slot quoted for Sony’s conference next week at Gamescom noting that the actual presentation will last “just over an hour” with the added time required “for people to sit down.” Obviously Sony will be hiding the chairs around Cologne if it takes two whole hours to find your seat.

Or maybe they’re anticipating some really drunk people. Actually, we’ll be at Gamescom – maybe they’ve got wind that we were coming?

Reported over at MCV (and pretty much all across the interweb), U.K. retailers are claiming that, according to Sony, they should not expect any new PS3 stock until later this month or possibly September.

The news comes during a period of immense speculation of an impending announcement from Sony with such stock strangling measures occurring in the past, usually when a new SKU is about to launch on the market in conjunction with a sales-injecting price-cut.

With Sony expected to announce the PS3 Slim at Gamescom next week, mark this one down as yet another red flag in the “PS3 Slim Lives!” phenomenon.

Back at E3 in 2008, on the exact same day as their conference, Sony officially announced and launched a video store for the United States.

But straight away as expected, people from other regions around the world were asking when they would see their own store to download television shows and movies, including some of the latest blockbusters straight on their PS3s.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe have confirmed a new Heavy Rain character will be revealed at this year’s GamesCom event in Cologne that runs between the 19th and 22nd of August.

The news started speading when PS3Center claimed that they had information about Sony unveiling a new character for the Quantic Dreams title at the up-and-coming games event.

OK, something is definitely going on.
Apparently if the PSP Go was the “worst kept secret at E3″, the latest in the long line of Sony’s “there’s no smoke without a nuclear blast” big reveals is …

Though still very much steeped in myth and hearsay, when a popular online retailer lists a pre-order scheme for the still unconfirmed PS3 slim, we sit up and take notice.

This is exactly what has happened with the German branch of Amazon now taking orders for what some people are calling Sony’s relaunch of the PS3 console.

There’s at least one good outcome now that Eidos Interactive fits snugly under the wing of Square Enix – where we got two press releases in the past, we now get just the one cost-effective announcement in their place.

Confirming their joint game line-up for this year’s Gamescom, Square Enix and Eidos have revealed what games will be on show at the annual European expo in Cologne, Germany. And boy, it’s a doozy.

LittleBigPlanet has been seeing a lot of costumes inspired by other PlayStation brands including Killzone 2 and Metal Gear, but Media Molecule have just announced a new set of costumes coming this week on the PlayStation Store.

Those of you who are inFAMOUS fans will be glad to hear that a couple of Cole outfits are coming your way to spread the love for the game towards LittleBigPlanet.

Twitter has been rummaging in our fridge here at Attitude Towers for some time now, and it seems that we’ve come to just accept it as par for the course.

With Twitter friends like ours though, we can’t be blamed for that!

This week, we managed to come 6th in GamesAid’s Charity Poker event. Final table FTW!

PSFree Attitude took a quieter turn this week thanks to Develop09 in Brighton, where we got a load of info about a host of new games and features, including APB and the Motion Controller for the PS3.

Reported over at VG247, it appears Sony are about to follow up their megaton E3 show with 180 unadulterated minutes of press conference goodness at this year’s GamesCom.

What could they be planning to talk about for a full three hours? We have our ideas. Like, how long does it take to say: “Here’s the PS3 Slim, it will cost you $299″? 6 seconds?

Speaking at the Develop Conference today, Jonathan Smith of TT Games demonstrated the new killer feature coming to Lego Indiana Jones 2, a complete level creation suite.

Demonstrating these game building abilities live to a packed auditorium, Jonathan was able to build a playable Lego space in just a few seconds.