Both games are available as of, well, right now, and both will sell for $US30. If you haven’t managed to pick up a copy of Uncharted yet, and like the looks of Uncharted 2, this news is of particular relevance.

A patch, some clothes and Watchmen-themed costumes are out for Home this week. Street Fighter, SOCOM, Uncharted and Siren stuff is on the way.

The patch fixes a problem with Game Launching, which caused crashes when you opened the list of game sessions available and then tried to launch one. Most of the clothes are generic items — both free and for-purchase — but there are two complete Watchmen-themed outfits and some black-and-white shirts to celebrate the film’s release next week. Sounds like not all of them are up yet, so keep checking back.

Beyond that, we have some game-themed content to look forward to:

Street Fighter IV
The unlockable items are already available in Home and are rewarded for winning online matches in the game.
Purchasable outfits will be available within a few weeks.

Home Square
A slightly updated Home Square will arrive in early March, possibly as early as the 5th.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Space
This is currently being worked on and we hope to release this for you within a few weeks

SOCOM: CONFRONTATION Space
This Space is also nearly ready but a specific date for its release is not yet available, but we are expecting it within a few weeks.

Siren: Blood Curse & Resident Evil 5, Warhawk
Content for all of these have arrived here and are being prepared for SCEE’s audience now. We will bring you more information on these as it becomes available.

Game Launching
Many titles are preparing support for Game Launching but this often requires a patch to their title. It is not our intention to be announcing new releases and patches to other titles here in the Home community but hope to bring you news in the coming weeks.

Music within Home
Playing your own music to others within Home is an extremely complex licensing issue that will take time to solve, if it is at all possible.
In the meantime we are investigating various ways of allowing you to play your own music to yourself. We are also talking to other 3rd parties about making their music available to you in various ways.

Having seen an early version of the Uncharted space in Home’s beta, I think I’m looking forward to it the most. The Watchmen clothes might also be cool, but I’m still out of sorts over the $20 price tag confirmation for End is Nigh PSN and Xbox Live. (The remedy? This webcomic.)

News update – 26th Feb [PlayStation Forums via CVG]

SOCOM Confrontation had a few issues. OK, it had a lot of issues. Issues that up til now, only Americans have had the pleasure of experiencing! That’ll change next month with the PAL release.

Coming five months after the American release, SOCOM Confrontation will be out in Australia on March 18, and in Europe on March 13. It should be an all-around improved experience from the US launch, too, with a series of much-needed patches that have been released for the game in the intervening months helping fix most of the game’s more notorious online glitches.

CONFIRMED SOCOM RELEASE DATE [PlayStation, thanks Brett!]

Full statement after the jump:

We will be performing server maintenance and rolling out a new patch on September 9th at 5am PDT, 1200 GMT. The SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation game servers will be unavailable during the maintenance. The server maintenance is not expected to last longer than 1 1/2 hours.

SOCOM: Confrontation Public Beta 1.10 Patch

* Adds support for European EULAs.
* Adds support for dedicated servers located in Europe and Australia.
* Addresses a number of stability and late joining issues.
* Reduce the volume of the proximity chat by 50%.

The server maintenance and patch are not meant to address all issues. We will have more updates to both the server and client in the future.

Regards,
SOCOM Confrontation Online Team

SOCOM: Confrontation Public Beta 1.10 Patch and Server update [Official Site via PS3 Fanboy]

Official Bluetooth Headset for the PLAYSTATION 3 [PlayStation.Blog]

Gamers can land entry to the public beta by preodering a copy of the game at GameStop, which will also give them two keys to the beta to share. They can also get in by downloading the June issue of Playstation Network video show QORE. GameStop beta keys go live on September 1, while the Qore when start on September 8.

Unfortunately, this is only for North American gamers. Other regions will have to wait to see what their local Sony tells them.

Public Beta Info No Really! [SOCOM]

It seems like every online shooter coming out nowadays is held to a much higher standard than before when it comes to features and modes. Everyone is trying to outdo each other by having larger multiplayer maps, better cover systems, or smarter AI bots. So it was refreshing to see that SOCOM: Confrontation went the simple route and included none of these.

SOCOM is strictly multiplayer-only (read: no bots) and consists of seven maps. Five are for 32 players and the other two are for only 16. The level I was shown was for 32 players and we played against the QA testers back in Foster City. The game was a little laggy, but nothing that broke the gamplay.

I was surprised when I was told there’s no cover system of any kind. Moving the analogue stick slightly forward will allow you to crouch-run, like in Metal Gear Solid 4. Also, for you Sixaxis fans out there, tilting the controller left and right when immobile will allow for peaking around corners. It worked pretty well, but I didn’t think it was all that useful since the gunfire can get hectic at times.

Graphically, the game looks phenomenal. While certain areas look better than others, the overall scope of the map I saw was impressive. In terms of destructibility, there isn’t a lot to blow up. You can blow up cars and barrels, but don’t expect to blow away pieces of buildings or terrain.

While I wasn’t given specific details on trophies, and since there’s no single player campaign, it appears they’ll be tied to your online stats. I assume that means there will be trophies for number of kills, accuracy, victories etc…

There’s also a great deal of customisation for your character. You can select from a variety of armour pieces and weapons to bring into a fight, each affecting your overall movement speed and accuracy. There’s also an option to make your own badge if you’re hardcore enough to start making clans.

For a $US 40 PSN game, this is looking like a title online shooter fans will have a hard to passing up.

It’s not hard to imagine that Sony knew Microsoft would choose E3 to make its curtain-call announcement of Final Fantasy XIII for the 360. It’s likewise reasonable to believe they searched their catalogueof works under development for the best candidate to generate any buzz. What we got was a mixed bag — the trailer of an incredibly expansive shooter, but it didn’t even have a title. It was just MAG: Massive Action Game. It sounded tempting, but very incomplete.

In fact it was shown to a focus group less than a month before E3. One among that group, after seeing the MAG E3 debut, reached out to me, under a promise of anonymity, to describe what was shown and asked of the group. Put simply, MAG — whatever title it comes out under — will be a mercenary combat MMO. It will more than likely carry SOCOM branding, as Zipper Interactive is behind it. And if so, it could be called SOCOM: Shadow War or SOCOM: Zero.

For purposes of identity protection, my source, who has experience in other video game focus groups, will be called Orange. Being identified could cost Orange, and others, future work.

Character growth will be accomplished through an advancement tree, which allows players to fine tune their players throughout massive campaigns. “MAG will deliver an intense and long lasting shooter experience”, said Beaudoin, who also described the game as “a workout even for the PS3 architecture”.

More on this title as it develops. No release date was specified. Gallery below.