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How about a free PS3 instead? Oh wait, that would just introduce more Sony problems into our lives. Whoops.

Naahh, if you got a free PS3 you'd just be induced to run out and buy a Sony HDTV so that in the end Sony would still make money on the deal. They wouldn't learn a thing!;)

Interesting. I'm actually waiting for the World of Warcraft Index, or WoWEx, myself! In principal, I suppose one can use just about any popular item to track some kind of economic activity or social behavior. The coming years should be fun for economists and sociologists alike!

I would guess that the most immediately useful application of a voice interface to a search engine would be in facilitating searches from devices like cellphones. Right now, entering search terms in a cellphone is quite tedious. Another possible use of the underlying voice recognition technology would be voice to text conversion for chat in MMORPGs and other online games. Why? Because as voice enabled games and services like Xbox Live become more popular, the problem of "bad language" has continued to grow. Policing this is difficult because voice chat is not logged in any easy to search or filter manner, if at all. If Google lives up to its reputation, it's not a big stretch to see them building on their voice technology to provide voice chat to text logging for online game providers. Being able to log voice chat would also be useful to the gamers themselves.

Sony just cannot seem to cut a break these days. I suppose when they officially pronounce UMD movies dead, they'll blame those darn pirates who have given people the idea that they should be able download movies or rip them from their own DVDs to play on anything they like. Darn pirates! Seriously, digital distribution is the big threat to physical media of any current format.

Anyway, I suppose we should start seeing some fire sales of UMD movies to clear existing stock. Here's my own semi-lame attempt to have some fun with this! Bring on the B movies and go out in blaze of cheesecake!

LOL! Stop it IBM! You're killin me! It wasn't too long ago that IBM was complaining about the decline in the number of students pursuing CS degrees in the U.S.. I guess another 14000 need not bother! Way to go Big Blue!

Of course this is good for India, but I wish these companies would quit complaining about the unwillingness of American students to pursue careers that have no future in the U.S.. They should be honest, education was never the real issue, it's always been wages and benefits.

Call me crazy, but I can't help but wonder if spinning off Fedora will make it easier for a future Red Hat buyout by Microsoft because of issues concerning the GPL, a license that Microsoft considers viral. Not too long ago Microsoft and Red Hat sat down for a little chat and shortly before that, Michael Dell put a whole bunch of his own money in Red Hat. Are these all connected? Maybe, maybe not, but it does make you go hmmmmm.

Nothing to see here folks! This is just Illinois politics. The governor has been a profound disappointment here and is now scrambling for easy targets to win reelection. They all know this law won't stand constitutional muster.

This is just a waste of taxpayer money.

It'll be interesting to see what effect this NGJ has on the gaming media and media in general. There are clearly some talented people out there who we might never have heard from previously. Of course, there's a lot of junk too! In any case, here's a tool I whipped up using Yahoo's Search API for doing video game news searches which NGJs might find useful. I built it to help me find interesting things to write about and to help see developing patterns or trends.

http://www.proliphus.com/yws/peywsnews.php

That's a little steeper than first anticipated, but mainly because of the bundled memory stick I would guess. Anyway, $250 for a portable game machine may be steep, but as others have mentioned, it does more than games. In particular, I'm considering it as a PDA replacement. If Sony follows through and releases a productivity pack of applications like a web browser, address book, etc., then $250 for a wi-fi enabled PDA that also plays music, movies, and (ahem) games, is not too bad. There was a story today reporting that PDA sales are down again. I think the PSP is a definite threat to that market, along with cell phones. Besides games, all I want is a decent calendar, address book, and a web browser that'll let me surf using my living room access point. The PSP might just do that cheaper than any of the PDAs out there right now.

Here ya go!

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Disclaimer: Just having a little fun with Fireworks Mr. Probst!

Here ya go!

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Full Sized

Disclaimer: Just having a little fun with Fireworks Mr. Probst!

Infinium Labs basically has no money for attorney's fees or anything else since the last I heard, they had failed to get any additional investor funding. So I think throwing in the towel on the lawsuit is part of their endgame strategy. Don't be surprised if this is soon followed by Chapter 7 Bankruptcy following CES. Unless they get more money real soon, they are DEAD and the show is over. I think whatever they show at CES is their last chance. Though I still wonder if success was ever even an option.

Even with the delay, I would say hats off to Carmack and id for continuing to release code like this. As others have already mentioned, it really does help keep the fps genre in particular alive and progressing because it seeds the next generation of development talent. This is good not just for fps games, but anything where a good 3D engine is needed. It's easy to think that there may not be any need to further develop 3D engines, but with new hardware and software coming out all of the time, along with new ideas on how to do things, there's always more that can be done.

Contrast this openess to a company like EA which as far as I know has never released any source code. As many here already know, EA just sewed up an exclusive deal with the NFL for NFL branded football games which essentially puts competing games from ESPN or 989 off the field since they can't use NFL players or stadiums. There has never been any source code for sports games like this released to the public, which means no mods or clones. And it also means that learning how to write these types of games has an enormous learning curve. Well I'm rambling now, but I think the point has been made. Oh, and of course EA is not the only company tight with source code, most are!

It would be nice to salvage something from all of the work that went into the title, but I won't be holding my breath. If it is true that Level 5 and MS had a falling out over TFLO, then it is unlikely it will be a poster child when Xbox 2 promotions begin. Why would Microsoft want to smear more egg on its face with this failed title, though even Malice eventually came out...

If Level 5 is serious about getting some return on investment, I think their best bet is to convert whatever they have into a single player Xbox or PC game (PS2 port would take too long and wouldn't fare well against Square Enix offerings that dominate that platform). This isn't trivial, and a rushed game will likely suck, but it would cut their loses somewhat and perhaps save some face.

Actually, the Gizmondo portable console may be Microsoft's low risk (for them) answer to the portable gaming market. It was recently announced that they will be developing games for this console. Gizmondo is built around a powerful 400MHz ARM9 CPU and runs a version of Windows CE.

If Miyamoto is starting to talk about online gaming, then I think that means that he may already have some game ideas in mind. Up until now, Nintendo has been famously against online gaming. But given the string of Miyamoto hits that have supported the company over the years, if he is talking about online play, then the wheels are finally starting to turn at Nintendo. But I don't really believe it will be 3 or 4 years. If they are serious, I'd guess we'll see some serious NDS online play within about 18 months, maybe something related to Pikmin or Pokemon. Maybe they'll have a bundle with a GameCube wireless router add-on or something. I think an online multiplayer Mario might be interesting, but a real challenge to design and keep the Mario flavor.

Heck, if they're working with Square Enix, we might even see some kind of FFIX NDS connectivity as a proof of concept (wild speculation!). This might be followed by a version of Crystal Chronicles with online elements or full blown online multiplayer.

It's too bad GT4 is going to miss XMas, but Need For Speed Underground 2 and Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition should clean up quite nicely in its stead. Both of these have borrowed a big page from the Gran Turismo book in terms of allowing a maddening level of customization through aftermarket auto parts. This is definitely going to take some who would have been buying GT4. Not only that, NFS and MC3 both have online play.

GT4 will still do well whenever it comes out, but they are definitely going to lose some sales compared to what they might have had. Man I hate being right sometimes!

Given that the online part of GT 4 was the big new thing, I think that Sony now has big time egg on their faces. So I'm going to make the big ol' guess that they will want to do something to make up for it in part. I wouldn't be too surprised to see GT 4 bundled with the new PStwo for XMas at some discount. And to sweeten the deal a bit, I'm guessing that while there won't be online multiplayer, there probably will be some kind of online goodies, like leader boards and stats, and maybe some downloadable cars later. They might even have downloads of player data for ghost races.

Now to toot my own horn, I speculated on this several weeks ago in my blog!

I just bundle my iPod in a little cozy for warmth! Take a look here at 3 seconds of fame for my iPod!