Sony is apparently having issues with Little Big Planet again. Not the game's technology this time, or the PSN servers, but for plagiarism. There was a Sackboy costume design contest recently, and now users are claiming that Sony is copying designs from non-winning entries for PSN LBP download content. You can check the similarities at the link. Posters on the official forums have pointed out more than one uncanny similarity between the design postings and Sackboy official costumes. Of course, Sony community officials are claiming it is just a coincidence. We are sure the Sony art people did look at the entries though, and who can say if it affected them subconsciously?

"this was always going to be a possibility when we ran the costumer competition - releasing new costumes which are similar in theme to ones that were entered," said the Sony rep.

Sony has confirmed that the PS3 wireless keyboard, which looks similar to the 360 chatpad, will be released later this month. It will cost around 24.99EU, and will be available November 28. No word on US date yet.

SCEA stated this morning that there are 14 million active PSN accounts, globally. The 14 million users have downloaded over 273 million different bits of content, as well. In July, Sony said that there were 9.8 million registered users, this is a big jump for less than a year.

"With 14 million active accounts and 273 million pieces of content downloaded, we know that you're thirsting for this digital entertainment," said John Koller, director of hardware marketing for SCEA, on the company blog.

Sony has responded to the October NPD Sales numbers, which we reported on earlier. The PS3 sold 190k units, as you know, and SCEA notes that the number sold represents a 56% increase over October 2007. The increase in sales, according to Sony, is attributed to "an unmatched line-up of first-party and third-party titles." In terms of the PSP, Sony stated that the 193k units sold represented a year-to-date growth of 9%.

Apple iPhone Marketing man Greg Joswiak has said that iPhone is "the future of gameplay." Whatever that means. He also said that Sony and Nintendo's dedicated gaming portables are "in the past."

"The [iPhone] gameplay I think has surprised a lot of people, because it's not just the casual games. There are real 3D games, and it's hard to imagine we're only a little over 100 days into it," said Joswiak.

According to the Playstation Blog, the Capcom section of the PSN Store that we told you about a while back is finally in place. On Thursday, after the update, you will find all the Capcom titles available for purchase online in one section, such as Bionic Commando and Street Fighter Alpha. Check it out.

SCE UK Boss Ray Maguire says that they need to "work a little bit harder" on getting across the message to gamers that the PSP and the PS3 function together very well. Because the PS3 was launched with the cross platform features not totally finished, users were not able to experience the functionality as a launch feature. Now that it has been polished off with firmware updates, Maguire says Sony needs to start pushing the cross-platform functionality. We must say, remote play with the PSP, and being able to stream a DivX movie to your PSP from your PC, over the internet, using your PS3 as a "slingbox" of sorts, is a very cool feature (hope you got all that!).

"Those are the things we have to work a little bit harder on - the GPS functionality, the camera functionality - all of those elements which of course give us content to sit on the PS3," he added.

Gears of War 2 has beaten out Little Big Planet in the UK charts for the last week. Gears is just behind Halo 3 and GTA IV for the top 3 all time weekly sales on the Xbox360. Little Big debuted at number 4 on the charts. Click read more for the full top 10.

1. Gears of War 2
2. FIFA 09
3. Fallout 3
4. LittleBigPlanet

The Playstation PSN Store has been updated with new stuff, folks. First, the new issue of the Qore digital magazine is out, and this one has the PSN HOME Beta for annual subscribers. There are also MGS4 and NCAA Basketball 09 demos to be had, as well as two free Little Big Planet costumes, and a whole slew of videos and trailers.

Sony HOME PSN Community Manager, forum name TedTheDog on the official forums, responded to users who asked how applicants would be selected for the HOME PSN Open Beta, which is slated to start later this year. He related that Sony had considered a few plans, but decided that the chosen would be picked "broadly based on the concept of loyalty." We really have no idea what that means, and the users on the forums are having a field day with it, of course. As for when the Open Beta stage is going to start, he said that it will begin "within weeks" of the US-only Qore subscriber's beta access giveaway. The new Qore comes out today, by the way.

"We've picked the names already and no, I'm not going to reveal the list."