It's good news, and hopefully an important step in ensuring that Remote Play stops being news—and instead becomes part of the everyday experience of owning a PS3 and PSP. And then when we post stories on Remote Play, all of you can be like, "slow news day?" And we can be like, "Witz, please take him out back. But yes, thank-you for asking, it has been a slow news day. Our apologies."

'Bionic Commando: Rearmed' PS3 Will Run On PSPs Thanks To Remote Play [MTVmultiplayer]

The questions then become, are these two versions identical and will the game support Remote Play? And if so, just how much is it worth to have a UMD? UPDATE: Siliconera updated their post, pointing out that PSP Echochrome has twice the levels. I guess that explains the price difference.

PS3 Echochrome costs 50% less than PSP Echochrome [Siliconera via OpposableThumbs]

PlayStation Tips #4 - DLNA media server [PlayStation.Blog]

According to Impress Game Watch, the game plays just fine, minus some squished kanji that makes reading a bit more challenging.

PlayStation 3 Remote Play [Impress Game Watch via Siliconera]

I've said this before, but I'm getting pumped seeing Sony finally kicking some ass.

The mounting buzz on the Playstation forums are true, you can play Lair on your PSP using Remote Play. Well, you can sorta play Lair on your PSP using Remote Play. Unfortunately the PSP does not have the R2 or L2 buttons, so you can't brake, but who needs to brake anyway. Sure it makes the end bosses and many of the levels a lot easier, but honestly, not that big a deal.

If you do want to do this make sure you play through the tutorial level first because unless you can brake it won't let you continue through the training and get to the meat of the game. Check back in a bit for our video of this in action on the PSP2K.

Lair Playable on your PSP [Playstation Forums, thanks to about half of the Kotaku readers who tipped us]

And yes, I used the word "play" in relationship to the Mainichi Issyo download because really, all the playing you can do with a cat is offer it food. Unless you can download a moth for it to catch, but I'm sure Sony's already on it. Kim Phu

Japanese PS3 'Game' Playable On PSP [SPonG]

Internet-based Remote Play was added weeks ago when the PS3 was updated to version 1.80, previously network-only—more of a novelty than anything else. It's rare that one would find oneself walking around the house, PSP in hand streaming content from a not-too distant PS3.

Following last week's firmware update for the PSP to version 3.50, which now allows for Remote Play streaming over the internet, Remote Play started to be somewhat useful. Now, if the uncommon owner of both a PSP and a PS3 decides that he or she would like to access the content on his or her home console from anywhere in the world, he or she has that option.

Merely connecting to my wireless connection then to my PS3 about 8 feet away wasn't quite driving home the impact of using this new connectivity, so I made a rare trip outside in daylight.

Booking down to the local free wi-fi featured coffee house, Silverlake Coffee, I hopped on their network, signed in to my PlayStation Network account and began streaming MP3s from my miles-away home console. Keep in mind, however, that I did have to leave my PS3 running, in Remote Play mode and signed in to the PlayStation Network, essentially idling for reasons that could largely be replaced by my iPod.

But it worked. And I thought "This is cool. I can actually see myself using this at some point. This really IS the Walkman of the 21st century!" Exorcising the demon Ken Kutaragi from my brain, I decided to see (and listen) how well the PSP performed at emulating the PS3 interface. The PSP display, during Remote Play, looks exactly like the PS3 Cross Media Bar as it too is streamed to the portable. You'll see PS3 game demos, which you (obviously) can't play, the PlayStation Store, which you can navigate and kick off demo or trailer downloads, as well as your stored music, video and photos.

The streaming of audio performed admirably, but stuttered a bit when the free wi-fi connection dropped to 66% strength. Even then, it held up like a champ. Video on the other hand, suffered slightly from streaming over the internet to the PSP. You'll notice a slight delay when navigating the streamed PS3 XMB, a delay which you can configure to your preferences, and this delay can cause odd video behavior. Navigate to a video and select it too quickly and you'll jump to a random spot in the clip (Reader Cartman86 reminds me that the PS3 remembers at what time you stopped a video and jumps-to that time on reviewing). Video looked on par with medium quality streamed video on the Web when my connection was set to the lowest quality settings (256kb).

Remote Play over the PSP allows for five levels of interface delay and streaming quality each. Setting each of these to optimal levels allowed for higher fidelity audio and video streams, but, as expected, increased skipped frames and stuttering music playback. It all depends on your signal, but the default settings seem to work quite well.

While I don't see myself using Remote Play over the internet often, when the PS3 allows for Wake On Lan support in a future firmware upgrade, I expect I'll be using my PS3 to store more non-gaming content... and not just for tech demos. Everyone that witnessed demonstrations of Remote Play was very impressed. This is a very gee-whiz inducing feature and one that I hope Sony improves upon over the next few years.

Any questions? I'll do my best to answer in the comments. Michael McWhertor

All it does now is let you play music, videos and pictures that are stored on your Playstation 3's harddrive. While you can also browse around a mirror image of the PS3 Menu, which is a copy of the PSP Menu, you can't do much else. You can use the PS3's Internet browser, instead of the PSP's, you can read and send messages through the PSP, but in general it seems sorta worthless.

Initially, I thought the music playback was choppy, but after testing it a few times I realized that playback was choppy for the first few seconds, but quickly smooths out. The single neat thing about Remote Play is that while listening to music stored on your PS3 your PSP also gets treated to the mellow visualizer, which is kinda neat.

In theory, you are supposed to be able to play games you purchased at the online Playstation store on your PSP, but the directions are pretty damn confusing. There's nothing that tells you, for instance, which games you can or cannot play from the store. So my assumption is that all of them are playable on the PSP, though I suspect I'm wrong.

I'm in the process now of downloading Cash Guns Chaos to my PSP. That's right, you have to download the damn thing, you can't just copy it from your PS3 to your PSP's memory card. That right there is genius design. This will be the third time I download this eternally slow 326 MB file from the store.

I'll do a post when I get it on my system and working, probably in a year since the download is still stuck at zero after ten minutes.

Even if I did like the PS3 access granted to the PSP, it still would have issues. For instance, you have to leave your PS3 both on and in Remote Play mode to be able to use Remote Play on your PSP. And, worse still, right now it only works within your home.

Pretty worthless all around. Brian Crecente

The update will provide support for Downloading PLAYSTATION Network titles and then, of course, starting them. You can see in the Starting a PLAYSTATION Network title that you can choose from four button configurations (nice?) and view digital versions of the game's instruction manual (nice!).

Details on PlayStation 3 Remote Play via the PSP are also available for your study, under Operating the PS3 system.

A handful of other cool features, including turning off UMD Auto Start and Timer settings for RSS channels are detailed. Less cool? Certificates (aka inevitable but un-fun DRM) for PlayStation Network titles and needing a PS3 to connect to the PlayStation Store for your PSone downloads. Michael McWhertor

PSP System Software User's Guide