Mercenaries2 on PSN this Thursday

Mercenaries 2 has been garnering quite some attention...and mixed reviews too! Scores of the game run from a highly respectable B+ from 1UP and a slightly less respectable 5/10 from Eurogamer. If sandbox destruction and explosions are your thing, then you might be interested to know that you'll get the chance to try for yourself, with a demo scheduled to appear on the PSN on Thursday.

Despite its mixed reception, Mercenaries2 has done pretty well at retail in the UK and topped charts last week. The original as definitely a solid little title, featuring a welcome spin on the open-world model. Being able to blow up almost anything in sight was an undeniable draw. Given what seems to be a solid retail debut, a third part is looking increasingly likely.

Blu-ray's demise around the corner: Samsung

In a recent interview, the director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK, Andy Griffiths, has put a 5 year limit on the next-gen media format war victor. That's not even as long as the PS3's anticipated shelf life and puts a gloomy future on the thriving format.

"I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn't give it 10," Griffiths said. Great, now Samsung is now on Toshiba's side!

Being a seller of stand alone Blu-ray players by itself, I don't think they will make mcuh profit by shooing away their customers.

On the upside, 2008 is going to be a good year for the format, Griffiths reckons[I hope he one day becomes a forcaster!], citing rental services like LoveFilm which have adopted the disc format and are offering a clear path for Blu-ray adoption.

160GB PS3 model for Europe in October!

Games Convention in Leipzig is exciting in its own way as Sony has unveiled yet another PS3 model. It is essentially the same as the 80GB and its predecessor, the 40GB, but has doubled the hard drive capacity again, taking it to 160GB.

It is due to launch on October 31st across Europe and is set to cost 449 Euros.The fact that Sony has generously made it so simple to replace PS3 hard drives up to any capacity you like makes it seem ridiculous to launch new models with larger HDDs, so to even it out, the 160GB will also come with 70 Euros worth of additional downloadable content. There's no indication as to what that is - it seems unlikely to be PSN games though. We'll be finding out somewhere closer to the October launch. UK may be lucky, with prices seem to be around 399.99 Pounds.