PS3 to shrink graphics chip to 65nm

Sony boss Kaz Hirai has indicated in a series of slides from an internal corporate strategy meeting at Sony that the company is planning to update the PlayStation 3 graphics chip later this year.

The plan is, according to Kotaku, for Sony to update the PlayStation 3's graphics chip to a new 65nm model by Q4 this year.

The new graphics chip will be smaller, cooler and cheaper to produce than the current model, so Sony is understandably keen to make the move as soon as possible as the PlayStation 3 is still seen by many as prohibitively expensive compared to the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360.

Acrobat suffers security flaw

If you've been prompted to install an Adobe Reader update in the last couple of days, I'd go ahead: it's to fix a rather nasty security bug.

A vulnerability report was made public yesterday concerning Adobe's popular Reader product – specifically, the implementation of Javascript with Acrobat-created documents. The issue is present in all versions of Adobe Reader prior to 8.1.2 Security Update 1 as well as the commercial Acrobat packages used to create PDF files. The bug, discovered by the Information Security team at John Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, can result in a program crash with the potential to execute arbitrary code. It's a bad one, in other words.

EA: New rating systems could slow releases

EA's UK Boss Keith Ramsdale has voiced concerns that the new rating systems proposed within the Byron report could have serious consequences for publishers and cause delays in UK releases of several games.

At the moment a PEGI rating system is employed for most games in the UK, but only games rated 15 or 18 are passed on to the government-backed BBFC. The BBFC has the authority to ban any games it examines, but is obviously only exposed to a small selection of games. The PEGI system is completely voluntary too, though major chains may refuse to carry games which are unrated.