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"The main thing Sony will be doing now is taking the original server code and rebuilding it using new login keys for their admin side," he said. He also claimed that Sony "will probably take the chance to change the developers root key that was recently leaked, which tells PSN that a particular piece of software is licensed and allowed to use the PlayStation Network."

http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/219040/psn-may-be-back-by-wednesday-expert-claims/

FFIII. Not FFIV. But the point is valid.

The iPad is taking gamers away from consoles.

It's creating quite a stir. Example:
http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/218531/is-the-ipad-2-a-gaming-console/

It’s no wonder that Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games, recently told Venturebeat that the iPad 2 is “fantastic for gaming.” Epic Games has traditionally been known for their Unreal Technology and developing the hit Gears of War series for the Xbox 360. But last year, Epic demonstrated their belief in the potential for the mobile platform by producing the visually stunning iDevice bestseller Infinity Blade. Now, other big-name developers have echoed Rein’s early sentiments as other traditional gaming houses begin to take mobile gaming more seriously.

Before there was wikipedia, youtube, livejournal, blogger, and many of the other centralized public services; people ran their own websites. People have become too reliant on these types of behemoth CMS systems. The notion of the "fan site" seems to be a dying theme and people need to be reminded that the power is in their hands to start up their own authoritative knowledge base. Storing information in wikipedia leaves it at the mercy of ignorance, and often times, wikipedia is re-writing history rather than clarifying it.

The sheer volatility of source information on the net makes it impossible for sources based on web based material to stand the test of time. Websites die, mergers go through, and hard-drives fail. Historically accurate information is being stripped out of wikipedia on a daily basis simply because the source links have died, and wikipedia admins stroll through gutting information like mindless drones. This gradual erosion of information online has a trickledown effect.

Case in point: A while back I edited the entry on Shinobi for the Playstation 2 at Wikipedia. There is a gross misconception that the game was envisioned during the Dreamcast era, and that development had already started for the Sega platform. As it turns out, this is not the case, as specifically stated in an Interview at GamePro. However the article link changed, and a user nuked the information from the wikipedia entry, allowing the same old misinformation about Shinobi starting out as a Dreamcast game to seep back into the article.

The link to the interview still exists, but at a new URL:

http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/23740/interview-with-shinobi-developers/

Noriyoshi Ohba: "That's why we [Overworks] didn't make any new Shinobi game for the Saturn or Dreamcast. It wasn't until just this last year [2001] that I had some time and thought I'd tackle the series again."
Takashi Uriu: "This initiative on our part started just as Sega was going multiplatform..."

While it's true that starting up a seperate website doesn't guarantee accuracy, at least the overseers of fansites/compendiums are more concerned about the pursuit of truth on their topic of expertise; and since the sites are within their control, it prevents outsiders from breaking their information repository.

On further digging I call bullshit. Let's see a valid citation that claims sale of used games is illegal.

Here are some showing it isn't:
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/22924/used-game-sales-upheld-in-japan/ [2002]

Online shopping for used games:
http://www.suruga-ya.jp/game.html

Used games flourish in Japan:
http://www.hudsonent.com/user/feature.php?f=IT_CAME_FROM_JAPAN__Used_Games_Market&feature_id=%99%A4%A7%AA%96%A5

I find it comical that the Slashdot submission makes no mention at all that they also said 25% of downloaders were "pirating" it, and not paying even a single penny.

Typical game piracy rates are far above 25%, so if you're not a troll I'm not sure what your point is.

They are taking down the US military's ps3 supercomputer rig! http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/213076/u-s-military-building-ps3-supercomputer/

http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/213014/premium-psn-service-planned-wont-affect-online-gaming/

"Sony is considering adding a subscription-based version of the PlayStation Network, but the company denies that it will charge customers to play games online."

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/sony-may-introduce-psn-subscription-model

"Especially in the online area, we are studying the possibility of introducing a subscription model, offering premium content and services, in addition to the current free services." (Emphasis added.)

That's an interesting point. You do not need the blue ray drive either and a lot of other components as well (harddisk, antennas etc. see here: http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/211942/how-to-take-apart-the-ps3-slim-in-6-steps-page-2/) It would be a lot of work but for a system this massive it could even make sense to build a custom frame for the mainboards only (power consumption? Cooling? Space?) and use some kind of flash drive for the OS. Buying just the mainboards could make sense, I guess.

are you sure it has? I see a June article saying they were down 3 billion dollars and an October article saying that the games division was still losing money. I'm sure Christmas helped, but that's a big deficit to overcome

'Far Cry Vengeance' has been out for the Wii since late 2006.

Wow, they changed it quite a bit for the release version!

http://www.gamepro.com/screen_gallery.cfm?globalId=131224 has 26 screenshots as well, all gorgeous. :)

I do not want to say here that a controller is better (or worse) than a keyboard + mouse, I saw the flame wars on the subject and I myself was raised on the PC hardware. However it is clearly unfair to claim lack of control when the mouse has only two axes and keyboard has no analog channels at all. You do have a sea of keys, and I can imagine that some games may need them (to operate giant robots, for example.) That is all fine. But as you also probably know that the Unreal Tournament for PS3 will support the mouse and keyboard as well, so all camps should be perfectly happy, and I personally will try all the input devices, why not?

With regard to "complex, intelligent, thoughtful games" I have no comments because I am unsure what exactly you mean. Chess, for example, is all that but it is not demanding on input, and you can play chess with any input device and it won't affect your results. Thief, as another game, runs on PC and X-box, and I would call it complex and thoughtful, but I played it on a PC with one-axis mouse and WASD keys; the few inputs beyond that are to crouch, select weapons and throw bombs, that is easy to support with any console controller in existence.

You all do know that the assertion that Bluray won't support porn was spread by a single person at a convention because he though sony was ignoring him right?

Someone makes a claim

Turns out he was trolling

Apparently he was backing the other format and just wanted to grab some PR and slag the compitition. I doubt there ever was a "ban" or even a "we wont' do this but try one of our FRIENDS" policy at Sony.

Last year, you (Phil Harrison) stated that regarding the Xbox 360's emulated back compatability, updated through firmware updates, you "don't believe that was backwards compatibility". Now the PS3 is being redesigned with emulated back compatability, which will be updated through firmware updates. What has changed Sony's attitude to software backwards compatability in the past year?

Yup, Microsoft totally paid me off to play Gears of War, Project Gotham, Viva Pinata and download stuff like Worms off XBL.

Saying "ZOM IT HAS TEH WI-FIS" and "TEH ONLINEZ IS FREEEE" doesn't balance anything out. The majority of 360 owners don't actually play on Live. The cost for Live Gold is negligible, considering it's the best online service available. Sony's always screwed the pooch on the online gaming segment anyway, and saying that they're "offering consumer choice" by decentralizing the network and not requiring online components is nothing but more PR speak. The simple answer: despite the crowing, online console gaming is still in its infancy, and having built in Wi-Fi is certainly not a make-or-break feature.

In the end, if having a solid library of games and a solid system at an acceptable price is a viral campaign, then consider me infected.

the 360 has the same graphics (in some cases, better) and still uses "old" dual-layer dvd technology.

I'll argue with the capacity of the DVD versus the capacity of the blu-ray. I think it's better to have that extra room (it's like a factor of 10 or 20 larger). Hideo Kojima said in an interview linked on Slashdot that he thought games would eventually get to 50GB. The interviewer even says that Resistance was 16GB, much larger than any DVD can hold. Personally, I prefer the one disc to multi-disc games. And yes, the 360 does have the HD-DVD external drive but a developer won't be very open to moving to that as it doesn't guarantee him the same install base. So now you're looking at possibly two different format releases for a game on 360 versus a guaranteed known quantity on the PS3. It might not affect the platform now, but eventually I'm sure it will.

Wrong. HD-DVD has already won. The Porn industry recently decided to standardize on it.
Just search google-news for "hd-dvd porn" for some references. Or here's a few for the lazy.

http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2172459/porn-i ndustry-standardises-hd
http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=93648
http://www.ecanadanow.com/business/2007/01/12/porn -industry-says-screw-your-blu-ray-were-using-hd-dv d/

Some of those intercoolers cause more problems than they fix.

Here's a little review that I wrote a couple months back.

"The real reason that Sony built this into the PS3 was to avoid import tariffs. Their claim is that since you can run Linux (or whatever), the machine is technically a "computer". Of course, it's a sham: the "Other OS" feature is a virtualized environment that will (no doubt) be clamped down to a bare minimum of usefulness."

So no, the PS3 is not considered a computer just as the PS2 wasn't. REFERENCE

PS3 has ease of development going for it?

You beat me to it. The cell sure is not simple to write for, and many developers are on the record saying so. According to some I've read (like here and here) it might be not as hard as expected, or not as hard as PS2, but this does not say much since PS2 was considered very hard by most.

On a tangentially related note, GamePro.com ran story about one of their writer's experiences waiting outside Toys R Us in upstate NY for an evening in the freezing cold. Might be of interest if you liked this article. http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=84872

You don't want rumble in a wireless controller because it's bad for battery life, and the current trend is towards wireless.

The newly dubbed SIXAXIS can sense tilt functions, and can be plugged in for wired or wireless play. Sony is claiming up to 30 hours of battery life for wireless functionality, which is handled by the Bluetooth wireless standard. Source

So, even if rumble HALVED the battery life, that'd still be 15 hours, which I think would be plenty. Plus, I believe the controllers can be plugged into the PS3 via USB cable to play while recharging.

rumble is out of style anyways

Judging by gamer reaction, I'd say that's debatable.

I'd like to see a reference on that, because I believe you just pulled that one out of the air - I have been following things, albeit only as closely as work allows, and I've seen nothing anywhere to suggest what you've just said. As a game developer, I do not believe for one minute that developers are going to come close to utilizing the space. As it is we have trouble filling a DVD now.

Actually, both Peter Moore of Microsoft and Phil Harrison of Sony had various words of praise for the Wii. Peter's was more like an endorsement than Phil's, but if everyone buys the Wii as their second console, then it is the #1 player over all.

Actually, both Peter Moore of Microsoft and Phil Harrison of Sony had various words of praise for the Wii. Peter's was more like an endorsement than Phil's, but if everyone buys the Wii as their second console, then it is the #1 player over all.

Well, I didn't find the slashdot article, but an older Gamespot report from Merrill Lynch JapanBelieved that it would cost $494 to produce a unit at the time it was set to debut, but they also thought it would sell for $399.

A later Gamepro reported that they would lose $300-$400 per unit if it shipped at $399 (so a loss of $0-$100 or $100-$200 with respect to which version.)

In the end, neither is a very recent article, but even if they are breaking even or making a gross gain per unit, we still have to consider the massive start up costs Sony has to cover before each PS3 unit makes a net gain.

That amount of storage space for games would be nice to have, but really wont be utilized for a while, and only for certain types of games.

Actually, according to Microsoft (several times) the HD-DVD add-on will never be used for games, period, end of discussion. See reference material here and here and here, just to show a few examples.

Aside from that, I agree with your post. MS isn't doing this to promote a format as much as they're doing it to spur more sales of their console. $600 for an HD-DVD player is still a decent price at the moment, and if you consider that most people considering the add-on will already have the X360 at that point, it looks a lot more like $200 to them. Plus, it's a completely non-requisite component for the system -- as opposed to the PS3, where the BD-drive is so important to Sony that they've delayed the console launch TWICE because of it. I'm all for Sony taking as long as it takes to get it right, but there's a point where their 'top-of-the-line' console starts to look like a very, very expensive way for them to promote their new (and ultimately doomed, like UMD, betamax, and mini-disc) proprietary media format.

Given that the Cell's programming paradigm is so vastly different from traditional CPUs, it is highly unlikely that there will be broad software development for IBM's chip. Think Itanium, but even more dramatic. Even John Carmack (of id Software fame) has publicly lamented the programmability of the Cell.

I do think it's great that Sony is willing to support the platform outside gaming, but I do believe that they are being a bit over-optimisitc. Given that the PS3 only supports Ethernet, and not Myrinet or InfiniBand, it would appear that the PS3 is quite inadequate for latency-bound technical computing tasks (the ones that require numerous small messages, etc).

Spoken like a man who hasn't investigated the Wii at all.

The Wii remote will be a fad - who honestly wants to wave that around: Yeah, it really looks like he's really waving it around. Oh wait, it's small wrist movements which controls the action, not huge motions.

good luck using it in FPS games: Yeah, nobody liked the controls on Metroid Prime 3.

Whether or not you like it, marketing and hype is what sells consoles. I don't see any Wii hype anywhere but on Digg and Slashdot. Sorry.: Where's the PS3 hype? I see nothing in mainstream media and nothing but negativity from the online media. Where's the X360 hype? I haven't seen any since their launch a year ago. I also haven't seen any compelling reason to buy an Xbox 360 aside from maybe Xbox Live Arcade games (which I played 10 years ago)

Mario sux0rs to me - but Mom or the kid next door can have fun with it if they want: I'm honestly very sorry that you have a complex which prevents you from enjoying video games which are fun because you're afraid they are too "kiddy". If it's any consolation, you'll grow out of that once you graduate 9th grade.

Then again, I guess I shouldn't expect too much out of a user named "XpL1CiT". Have fun in High School kid.

a) What to you think "jerky, gimmicky shit" is? Why the fuck would I want to wave my controller or console around.

b) Hardcores care about the games, and Nintendo isn't delivering with the "slightly modified Smash Bros 3", "now you can jump to planets Mario Umpteen", and "Hey look, the same Zelda with much, much worse controls".

c) Graphics don't matter, but physics, AI, and room and ability to make your game without it running at 30FPS if you're lucky (ala Shadow of the Colossus) does.

d) Why do you care that Nintendo makes money? What should matter is that they're trying to make games you/I/true gamers (if indeed, you are one, I have my doubts) like, rather then trying to appeal to a lower common denomiator then even EA? I'm boycotting EA for less then this, and if Nintendo still didn't have good games coming out for GameCube, I'd cut them off my money for good as well. But you? No, you're Nintendo's good little bitch. They say "you don't want this, you don't want this", and you agree no matter how stupid the decision is. Go back to sucking Nintendo's cock and taking it up your ass from them and get the fuck off Slashdot.

Last, but not least, once again fuck Nintendo, and fuck you their corperate shill numero uno.

Sue a company called "Firestarter" into Oblivion ?

Sony thinks they can sell 100 million PS3s. http://gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=68990

Oblivion for the 360 is getting a patch, for example. Having hard drive for downloadable content is a double edged sword in this regard.

Also, obligatory "Oblivion is an awesome game anyways" that everyone always says. Because, really, it still is an awesome game.

See this article which quotes Ebay CEO Meg Whitman, who claimed that as of Dec-12-05 of the 400,000 units sold at that time 10% had been resold though ebay. Pretty significant numbers, I'd say. If ebay is good for anything, it is to track current market rates for just about anything. The average pre-xmas price for a 360 was $718.00. That's several hundred dollars lost to MS per unit (or gained by the reseller, if you prefer).

GamePro has an article about the ads from a few days ago. No registration here. I posted this on my my site.

http://www.gamepro.com/computer/pc/games/previews/ images/50334-1-2.jpg

Then upgraded to the quake 2 engine:

http://games.cnews.ru/trophy/screens/duke-nukem-fo rever/aai.jpg

Not sure what engine this is from 2001: http://www.gamenavigator.ru/pub/gallery/news/news2 005100605.jpg 2001

If you are out of the loop like me:

http://www.planetduke.com/duke4/faq/

I can't find a single current screenshot on the web and am very curious. Anyone got a lead on that?

In my personal experience, the more subtle the ad, the more effective I believe it is. Advertising a big out-of-place SUBWAY COUNTER-STRIKE SPECIAL on the side of an office building in my mind ruins the gaming experience. Putting in a Pepsi machine in the office break room and having Pepsi products dump out when someone blasts the thing is probably far more effective.

You mean like this? That may cause a lawsuit. I'll take my cs ad-free thank you.

http://www.gamepro.com/computer/pc/games/news/5110 8.shtml

I don't see how it will look better unless they say across the board "OK. For all XBox 1 emulation, set up more powerful anti-aliasing. We also want our system-selling games to ship with new art." Those are both quite doubtful. Depending on how *fast* their emulation is, it might play better (have a better framerate), but since it is on a completely different architecture and will not be recompiled, I sincerely doubt it. No matter how fast the POWER cores are, any architecture sucks at emulating a different architecture (well, relatively modern architecture, anyway). But also, the free XBox Live subscription that comes with the 360 will *not* allow you to play online.... http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbox360/games/fea tures/45261.shtml/ Quote: "Unfortunately, you won't be able to regularly play multiplayer games using the Silver Tier plan" Sorry, Charlie. -Nick

Got any figures to back up those "declining sales?"

This article, linked to by TFA, may blow your mind.

Your numbers betray you, indeed it grows but most people are content with offlien play

People used to say the same thing about cable. Look where it's at now. Once people try online gaming, they're hooked. If you assume an even distribution of gamers for Xbox & PS2 are interested in online gaming, then this would yield a significant increase in market share and initial sales for the Xbox360.

little under half of them cannot pay anything a month

If they can't afford $50, they can't afford to purchase a single video game, and they certainly can't afford a console. Oh wait, their parents bought them that stuff? Gee, I wonder what else fits in the xmas stocking ...

But when it came out, it was the cheapest (or close to) thing in Japan that played DVD's. You are forgetting when the machiens firts came out $500 for a panasonic DVd player was par for the course, for the same price you could get a PS2. Thats why PS2 has such a huge install base and that's why sony waited until blu-ray to make the PS3. Their gambling on a similiar effect.

There is a difference this time around: Blu-ray isn't "the" established standard. People aren't going to be purchasing them because they want both a next gen movie format + game box -- they don't know which format will come on top. This means that only people who are convinced that blu-ray will come out on top will consider this a good deal.

You also have a GPU whose instruction sets and design are IP of a company that wants nothing to do with the box. They could just obstract it back into pure Direct X and nto the xbox variant but they will nee dgame specific hacks.

Microsoft made announcment awhile back about having licensed the appropriate IP. In fact, you can read about it here: http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbox360/games/new s/45969.shtml

Have you ever run an emulator? Generally every game varies, some are 100% other have graphic glitches ect.. The PS2 incorporated the PS1 chip as a IO processor and it even had glitches. Now a 100% software solution is possible, but you need unique software hacks for a lot of games.

Exactly right. No solution will be 100% compatible, which is why you didn't see absurd statements about the xbox 360 being 100% compatible with the xbox (and why I scoff every time Sony claims 100% backwards compatibility, because it is a baldfaced lie). They're targeting as many games as possible, starting with the most popular games and working their way down the list. It is certainly an accomplishable goal, unlike your previous statement where you said it would be impossible.

But don't take my word for it; you can read what the guy actually making it work has to say about it: http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pubs/essays/xbox 360.html

You can also read a few more details about how they plan on performing the emulation here: http://www.ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=50574

I doubt that the compatibility will be near the 100% level, but I'd be willing to bet that they hit 80%. And personally, I could give a crap if "Bob's adventures in peanut land" works if the games I want to play don't (this was the problem with the PS2 ... half of my [admitedly small] PS1 library didn't work right on the PS2).

And if MS is going to be Backwards compatable they would have trumpetted it as a feature. I hear very little buzz about that.

They announced it at E3. What else do you expect them to be doing at this point?

Here educate yourselves and quit making baseless accusations and stupid comments.

"Twelve million units apiece of the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable consoles will be shipped worldwide in the financial year through to March 31st, 2006, according to the latest projections released by Sony.

The figures would bring worldwide shipments of the PSP to around 15 million units by the end of the financial year, while the PlayStation 2 - which currently has a global installed base of well over 80 million units - would be within shouting distance of 100 million units."
LTFA

America Drives Global Sony PSP Sales Underground

PSP sales hit 500,000 mark in US

PSP Not Even Close to Selling Out

Assorted PSP news links etc

Here educate yourselves and quit making baseless accusations and stupid comments.

"Twelve million units apiece of the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable consoles will be shipped worldwide in the financial year through to March 31st, 2006, according to the latest projections released by Sony.

The figures would bring worldwide shipments of the PSP to around 15 million units by the end of the financial year, while the PlayStation 2 - which currently has a global installed base of well over 80 million units - would be within shouting distance of 100 million units."
LTFA

America Drives Global Sony PSP Sales Underground

PSP sales hit 500,000 mark in US

PSP Not Even Close to Selling Out

Assorted PSP news links etc

Japanese PSP Sales Nearly Double DS -
"Media Create has released its latest hardware sales charts covering the week ending March 20th, 2005. Sales in general saw a slight dip, and PSP sales were nearly double that of the DS. Xbox saw a slight increase in sales, likely due to the critical acclaim that Fable received from publications such as Famitsu.

PlayStation Portable: 43,644 (Annual: 580,120)
PlayStation 2: 40,270 (Annual: 602,316)
Nintendo DS: 22,446 (Annual: 429,545)
Game Boy Advance SP: 11,013 (Annual: 197,776)
GameCube: 3,357 (Annual: 70,016)
Game Boy Advance: 477 (Annual: 6,253)
Xbox: 345 (Annual: 4,606)"
http://www.gamepro.com/sony/psp/games/news/43769.s html

==========

"PSP sales outpace the DS in Japan -
The most popular handheld in Japan is still the Nintendo DS. However, the DS sold an impressive 1.09 million units during December, a total that Sony has only just now reached after four months of sales.

The PSP, suffering from production delays, sold only 330,000 units in December. The DS continued to beat the PSP in January, selling 450,000 units to the PSP's 360,000 units.

But the tables turned in February, when 195,000 PSP units were sold, edging out 121,000 DS units. PSP sales increased by a small margin in March, reaching 202,000 units, and DS sales also increased, reaching 136,000 units.

While these new numbers are encouraging for Sony, the PSP still lags behind the DS in overall penetration: Japanese consumers currently own 1.09 million PSPs and 1.8 million DSes."
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/04/12/news_61221 17.html

Media Create has released its latest hardware sales charts, covering the week ending February 13, 2005. Rankings wise nothing has changed from the previous week, with PSP continuing to lead in hardware sales.

PlayStation Portable: 45,972 (Annual: 362,355)
PlayStation 2: 39,889 (Annual: 393,137)
Nintendo DS: 26,205 (Annual: 305,679)
Game Boy Advance SP: 10,372 (Annual: 137,877)
GameCube: 4,499 (Annual: 52,172)
Game Boy Advance: 573 (Annual: 4,022)
Xbox: 262 (Annual: 3,300)

http://www.gamepro.com/sony/psp/games/news/42189.s html

since they have the original Halo on PC I guess I'm still one of those "hoity-toity" PC people. Sorry, nothing replaces mouse and keyboard, and yes I've played Halo 2 on console and didn't like it without my preciousssssssssss mouse....

Mercifully, Portal Runner's missions are short, and even incompetent gamers will have no problem conquering the easy "puzzles"---a good thing since players will get tired of the tinny in-game music and Vikki's raspy-voiced one-liners real fast. Stay away. Stay far away.