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There may not have been a recall but the reports of problems w/ the cards seem to be legitimate. See Ike Sato's impressions of the PS2 @ videogames.com for a first hand account of some of the problems.

Wasn't there just an article about the Playstation 2 being banned for export from Japan?

This is correct. Tom's Hardware had a link to this article about it:

http://headline.gamespot.com/news/00_03/01_vg_impo rt/index.html

Digging through Sony's pages, I can't find anything about this in the North American page. The Japanese pages, naturally, I can't read :). If someone with knowledge of the language could confirm that there's an actual announcement there, it would be much appreciated.

URL for the Japanese playstation pages is:

http://www.scei.co.jp/index-n.html

Used Games Under Fire in Japan

Sony has worked very hard to keep Americans, Japanese and Europeans from buying and using import products. For example, a lot of the new Japanese games that come out contain code which can detect whether you have a mod-chip in your Playstation (Dino Crisis is the best example I can think of. This detection can be beaten, but it is starting to get into the "it's more trouble than it is worth catagory."). They do not want people to be able to region jump.

In my case, they have thoroughly alienated my business. I have no interest in Sony products any more, and won't buy from them. Now, this isn't me proposing a boycott or anything, this is just me getting disgusted by a company that treats consumers like garbage. I'm sure Playstation II will do well, I'm sure that unlike previous systems it will be more taylored to what the bosses of Sony think each region should get. I expect to see a lot of "lowest common denominator" games come out, and people won't be able to get things from outside their region.

That's ok by me, it'll give me more money to spend on my computer.

While everyone is looking at the future of console gaming, I found this link on Zophar's Domain... It's a history of Nintendo and how they transformed gaming and kept afloat despite competitors like Sony, Sega, and NEC.

The article is here at Video Games.Com.

Did you know that Nintendo is a company that is over 100 years old? If not, I suggest you go read the article - it's quite enlightening.

Actually, It's already in use, or at least projects to use it are in the works. One mentioned recently on GameSpot (with a /. mention)is an open-source game with a Linux cient. IMHO, This game's possibilities, however, to those of WorldForge. Everything is open source (GPL I believe), clients and servers. It's still very much a work in progress, but they're gearing for a semi-playable demo release (they had a barely-useable demo release a while back).

They're trying for clients and servers for Linux, Windows and Mac platforms. The clients under develoment include text-based, 2d isometric and 3d rendered. The server side has some impressive work being done for AI and A-life. Not all clients need to be identical because the core of the project is a standardized protocol, called Atlas, for transmitting information and actions. Any client that is fully Atlas-compliant will be able to work with a WorldForge server, no matter how its inner working or interface are designed. Being open source, they know people will try to hack their clients, so intead of "hack-proofing" them, they simply designed the client-server model such that the client isn't trusted with anything it shouldn't be. Weenies won't be able to cheat with their clients because all the stuff they'd be able to cheat with it handled on the server. Even scripting your character's actions in no problem; in fact, the WF guys think it would be cool if you can do a decent job of it , because it keeps your character in the action even when you're not behind the wheel.

When it's completed, anyone with a machine and connection suited for their intended user base will be able to set up a server with the rules modules and world design they want to use. They can set it up for free access for anyone like modern MUDs, or if their game is good enough for it, charge for access like EverQuest or Ultima Online. Everything specific to the game itself is kept modular, so you can use whatever game rules you want, or write your own (I think they're using Python for scripting); the same goes for the world, i.e. map data and character/creature art. They have two primary games in different stages of development, one fantasy and one science fiction. At least one of the clients is skinnable, with a fantasy and sci-fi skin included.

Personally, I can barely wait until I can actually play it. It's gonna be pretty freakin' cool.

• Reviews
  • Linux version
  • at LinuxWorld
  • at CNN
• at GameSpot.com
• at GamesMania.com
• at Play Now
• at Game Power (with video)

Tips, Cheats, Hints

• at Gamespot.co.uk
• http://sages.ign.com/codes/14/codes_h.html">at IGN
• at CD mag

Fan Pages

• BOG

========

Pure FMV games aren't dead yet, by the way.

Another link that I just found:
Gamespot
If you look about midway down for
The Coppermine/RDRAM/820 combination clearly outpaces other solutions, including the Athlon 700. But the performance crown lies much more uneasily on this system's head. AMD has just announced the 750MHz Athlon, which is built using a 0.18 micron semiconductor process, similar to that used for Coppermine.
This states that Intel is faster, although not by much. I doubt, however, that it can be considered faster because of a mere 33MHz, so my feeling is that the overall package of a PIII system is better than the Athlon. (The CPU may not be any better, but once you plug it into something, it starts getting better.) Note also, the cost of increasing to RDRAM and the 820 chipset isn't very cheap, but it does seem faster.

Sorry, it seems that my links didn't work correctly so I'm reposting
From everything I've heard (two places IIRC) Tom's Hardware and Gamespot a PIII with the 820 mobo and RDRAM actually runs faster than an equivalently clocked Athlon. Now, yes it is running a different memory, but as far as I know, Athlon doesn't support that memory (at least right now.) And the memory is VERY expensive (~$700-$1000 for 128MB), but if you are going for the FASTEST possible at this moment, I think it goes to INTEL. Another slight hit towards Athlon is that it isn't stable in all configurations. (according to gamespot)
Now I have to say that for some odd reason I feel biased towards Intel even though they are the giant. Maybe it's because AMD has underperformed in the past.
However, I will say that I'm happy AMD came out with their Athlon. Competition can only be good, and if they can take the crown, it will mean that I can buy an even faster processor. I don't have any problem with that.

Sorry, it seems that my links didn't work correctly so I'm reposting
From everything I've heard (two places IIRC) Tom's Hardware and Gamespot a PIII with the 820 mobo and RDRAM actually runs faster than an equivalently clocked Athlon. Now, yes it is running a different memory, but as far as I know, Athlon doesn't support that memory (at least right now.) And the memory is VERY expensive (~$700-$1000 for 128MB), but if you are going for the FASTEST possible at this moment, I think it goes to INTEL. Another slight hit towards Athlon is that it isn't stable in all configurations. (according to gamespot)
Now I have to say that for some odd reason I feel biased towards Intel even though they are the giant. Maybe it's because AMD has underperformed in the past.
However, I will say that I'm happy AMD came out with their Athlon. Competition can only be good, and if they can take the crown, it will mean that I can buy an even faster processor. I don't have any problem with that.

USB2 will have no more power than USB1.1... note to self - buy additional power strip.

Take a look at the size of the PS2. This thing is incredibly huge for a console, it's like a big tower desktop computer. I don't even think it could fit in the shelves that I store my consoles on. I wonder how much this thing weighs?

I've made a small list of what seems to be a pretty complete list of the new PS2 info. If I've missed any, feel free to add-on.

Sony of America

Sony of Europe

Sony of Japan

PSX Nation

IGNPSX

Gaming Age

Next-Generation

Gamespot

The Magic Box

And then I'd also recomend you check out the MB's connected with some of those sites because there are some very interesting discussions in there. Also expect the major news organizations (MSNBC, ZDNET, CNN) to pick it up sometime tonight too.

I doubt that they would take PS2 backwards, so I would guess S-Video Out will stay.

According to GameSpot, Playstation 2 will also be "digital TV ready." Whatever that means.

Keith Russell

ZDNet has posted a lot of information about the new console.