This problem highlights the fact that you should be extra vigilant when entering personal information into any site. As an example only organisations such as banks and insurance companies need to know your real date of birth, this and your name is probably unique to you and you should not let people misuse this. It is really surprising that Sony did not encrypt account information, this entire situation should never have happened, it’s the equivalent of leaving a bank vault door open! A company as big as Sony with a database of millions, should not have taken these risks.

With the ability to watch TV shows on iPlayer, and browse the web, the PS3 plays DVD/Blu-Ray, has excellent battery life fully rechargeable the PS3 is no longer just a console, it does pretty well everything.

Sony also announced a new movie streaming service called Mubi would be coming to the console in October, but there was no mention about the rumoured introduction of 4OD or Love Film for the platform.

In other news Sony revealed a new PS3 bundle featuring the new PlayStation Move hardware, a 320GB hard drive and Move enabled Sports Champions game for £265, and a bigger 160GB version of the console will take over from the 120GB version.

The PS3 Slim has all the features of the original PS3 including a Blu-ray player, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity and wireless controllers, but is 33% smaller and 36% lighter than the original device. The New PS3 Slim also consumes 34% less energy, making it a more eco-friendly choice.

Of course the PS3 Slim plays all of your favourite PS3 games, but Sony still haven’t included any backward compatibility, so your old PS2 games will become redundant as only the earliest PS3 systems came with backward compatibility.

Probably the biggest selling point of the PS3 Slim, after the fact you can play the latest High-Definition games, is the fact that it has an integrated Blu-ray player. This opens up the world of HD media with the latest movies and TV programs available to watch at home.

The biggest stumbling block of the original PS3 was its price, but the PS3 Slim is available for just £249.99 which brings it more in line with its competitors. Will the PS3 Slim top the console charts this Christmas? Only time will tell, but with built-in Wi-Fi and Blu-ray player it may just sway some people away from the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360.

Customers can choose a list of games, 2 of which will be sent out and the games can be kept for as long as you like. Once the games are sent back, via the freepost bag, another game is sent from your chosen list.

Games will include old titles and new releases on various platforms including Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii as well as older consoles like the Xbox and PS2. A statement by GAME said: “We spent a lot of time talking to customers, to find out what services they want from us and how we can help them enjoy more games and get great value,”

And added: “It is a great way to help customers try games out before they buy. GAME.co.uk gives customers every possible choice, so that whichever way they want to get hold of games, we offer it – be it through home delivery, downloading, renting, ordering online or collecting in store.”

Play TV will also allow you to watch recorded programs on your PSP wherever you are, via a Wi-Fi connection. The box will connect to your PS3 through a USB slot, which also powers the device and means you do not need an external power source.

Play TV has dual TV tuners so you can record one channel whilst watching another and you can also play games or Blu-ray discs while recording as well. The usual EPG and program guides are also included so you can view TV listings and set recordings up to a week in advance.

As mentioned above, you can also access recorded content through your PSP via the Remote Play application, that turns your PS3 on through the internet and streams recorded programs straight to your PSP.

The amount of programs you can record will depend on the size of your PS3’s hard drive, with an hour of recording time taking up around 1GB of space. Available on the 19th September, Play TV will retail for around £69.99.

Sony Entertainment stated that it was only a small number of users that had experienced problems installing the patch, but the firmware was removed from the servers as they attempt to identify the issue.

It’s not known if whether users suffering problems with the patch will be able to fix the console themselves or will have to send it back to Sony to be fixed. Sony has said that they are working to identify the problem and fix it before the firmware is re-released.

The latest update was set to introduce gold, silver and bronze trophies to recognise player’s online achievements, similar to the achievements system used on the Xbox 360 and a platinum trophy for players with all three. The friend’s list capacity was also set to be doubled to 100 with the update.

Looking through the latest sales figures that Sony have released in 2008 the Playstation 3 sold 9.2 million consoles whereas the Playstation 2 sold 13.7 million. Ok this is down 1 million on 2007 but hey it’s still out selling the more powerful PS3. Its games sales are down 40 million on 2007 but would you believe Sony are still selling 154 million PS2 games.

The PS3 is slightly under its 9.5 million games sales target but with manufacturing costs on the down, this lowers the PS3 price so hopefully sales will keep increasing.

The main worry was online play and how people would take to it with so many big games taking a lot of the online market place. Well we’ve just signed into Xbox Live and had a very short wait before we where spawned into Liberty City with a knife, pistol and some good old fashioned hand to hand combat, and spread around the death match arena are pistols, AK 47’s and rocket launchers. We are still to see if there is no boundary’s in the multi player game like it has been stated.

The main game play early on is quite dark so as soon as you damage your headlamps on your vehicle you almost driving blind, or so we thought but after messing about with a few settings, the game was fine and was nice and bright. This is quite strange to see how much the brightness of the game varies on its default setting from TV to TV.

The cars seem quite un-realistic to drive and are almost boat like swaying from side to side and tend to roll round the corners, let’s hope some of the high end cars will handle better than the more common ones.

Other little things we have noticed are, when running round tight corners there is a nice lean to Niko, also when you run into pedestrians in cars they don’t just flop over they tend to fall how you would expect them to fall in a real life situation.

San Andreas was one of our favourite GTA games as it had a lot of new features like gang wars and the ability to have a gang follow you around, will the new and latest Grand Theft Auto IV be able to take the crown. Available now for around £34.99 from all leading outlets.