I won’t lie to you; when the Sony E3 conference came and went with nary a sign of Wipeout HD, I was dialling up my best henchmen. The game had already been delayed at least once before to add features, a laudable goal to be sure, but let’s go already, you know? So the E3 disappearing act was not well-received, especially with no word on exactly what the cause was. Eurogamer managed to get a quote out of Sony that described a very tricky technical problem, one that “no region has been able to solve”.

That particular wording made it sound like the bug was possibly related to networking. As it turns out, thanks to CVG’s persistence, we now know that the sheer quantities of awesome pouring out of the screen might literally do something bad to your brain.

Snippit:

Imagine our surprise when we were told that the game had failed epilepsy tests and has to be re-engineered as a result before it can be released to the public.

CVG has been told that WipEout “fails the epilepsy tests so much that it has to be re-engineered.” All that speed and flashing lights zipping past your eyes must be too much to handle.

No further details were available, such as how long this re-working might take but we’ve contacted Sony and are still awaiting an official response on the status of WipEout HD and when we can expect to see it launch on PSN.

Obviously Sony has sent out beta code to the various dev houses in each region, to see if one of their hotshots can solve the problem – perhaps with some postprocessing or filtering – rather than go back and re-build large parts of the game.

Is it bad for me to wish I could sign a waiver and buy the seizure version?

As reported in on Kotaku and Joystiq, and decried across the Playstation community forums – Sony seems to have pulled the (in?)famous 2.40 firmware update. It is no longer available through the PS3 System Update, nor on the usual web links at Sony’s sites. No one is quite sure why yet; reports range from PS3s being stuck at the “waves” on boot, and not seeing any icons, to controller issues.

Joystiq managed to get a “we’re working on it” comment from SCEA just before the update was pulled.

If you’ve already installed it, and not experienced any issues, there doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about…. we’ll update you as the drama unfolds.

Cue your pining for the good ol’ days of non-flashable consoles.

I feel bad for Bogart. I mean, he was a famous actor and everything, and probably got laid a lot, but it’s gotta suck to have your namesake equated with the inappropriate consumption of communal marijuana. What did he do to deserve that?

Criterion is doing their part to help the guy out. The forthcoming patch for Burnout Paradise is called Bogart. Here’s the full list of changes, and it’s a biggie. I’m particularly happy to see the dropped-controller exploit and low-speed takedowns addressed. It should roll out on both Live and PSN on April 24th.

Keep in mind this is not the same as the announced DLC, which should add another island and some more cars to the mix. Rumour mill says it will be free. Nice if true. There’s a little preview video here of the work-in-progress.

A hail of bullet-points after the jump.

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