There's general agreement that Sony stumbled out of the gate with the PlayStation 3. Months of intense hype were followed by a late launch (fully a year after the Xbox 360) and a staggering $600 price tag for the deluxe model.
Even worse, the PS3 didn't initially have any real must-have exclusive titles, and despite the power of its vaunted Cell processor, multiplatform games from third-party developers didn't look appreciably better than the respective titles on the Xbox 360.
Since then, the company's been modifying the PlayStation product line to better fit the competitive market landscape. As of August 2008, a new "bargain" PS3 is available with a larger, 80GB hard drive, and a "deluxe" model is due in November, doubling the capacity to 160GB.
Both, however, lack backward compatibility with PS2 games and do not come with flash card readers. If those features are a must, it might be best to pick up the 80GB "Metal Gear" bundle version on eBay w... More »
Tracklists for both upcoming SingStar titles on PS3 have now been revealed thanks to the semi-official European blog ThreeSpeech.
There's also word that more song packs will be appearing on the store in the form of "Essentials" collections. The first of which, "Pop Classics," will be made available tomorrow on the SingStore.
There's no price for the "Essentials Songpacks," but the first one will contain Duran Duran's "Rio," Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It?", A-Ha's "Take On Me," Blondie's "Heart Of Glass" and Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon."
The other packs you can expect to see this year are detailed below, along with the ABBA and Volume 3 tracklists.
Upcoming "Essential Songpacks"
• Pop Classics 30th October
• Party Starters 13th November
• Rock Anthems 11th December
• ... More »
If you are using Firefox 3 (or even Chrome) you should consider taking a look at Mozilla's Minefield.
This browser (alpha version yet, but stable) would give a new meaning to "fast browsing experience"... Some Firefox extensions aren't supported, but riding the fastest javascript engine on the planet definitely worth a try.
Download: Mozilla Minefield
Minefield's install won't affect your Firefox, so there's no risk trying it. It's fast. Really. And I'm loving it.
Version 5.0 and Version 2.5 of their respective Firmwares gave the PSP and the PS3 some much asked-for features. So what's in store for Sony's PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3 consoles?
For answers, we turn to Munechika Nishida, who posted his latest Random Tracking column to Impress Watch over the weekend.
This time around, the well-connected technology writer managed to get commentary from Naoya Matsui, Koujiro Umemura, Masaki Takase, and Shinji Noda, all high ranking Sony Computer Entertainment employees directly responsible for firmware and network issues regarding the PS3 and PSP.
The column first recapped some of the major points of the recent firwmare updates, with particular attention given to the inclusion of Flash 9 support in the PS3. This was a heavily requested feature, said Matsui, with Japanese fans hoping to view videos from Nico Nico Video, a Japanese... More »
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The new Xbox 360 Dashboard OS update is coming soon and it is going to be one of the biggest changes to the Xbox 360 since the system hit the market.
It is going to include the first complete redesign of the Xbox interface called the NXE by all the cool kids. The New Xbox Experience (NXE) is going to be the best thing to hit the Xbox and it is going to completely redefine how we use it.
One of the niftiest things at Penny Arcade Expo 08 was seeing the new Xbox dashboard. Xbox Live's own Major Nelson showed it off. He made sure to stress that it is still a work in progress and that there was an army of programmers over in Redmond that were cranking out code and testing it as he gave the demo.
As a side note if you ever go to a game expo or press event and Major Nelson asks you not to film something in the presentation and you do it anyway and then go on and keep on filming after he notices you and calls you out and you don't stop it then y... More »
The Internet is atwitter with Google Chrome's innovative new features, but there was no clear winner in our speed test comparing Firefox and Chrome—which means your choice of browser may depend solely on features.
Apart from a few specific issues (namely process management), many of Chrome's best features are already available in Firefox 3, proving yet again the power of extensibility. From incognito browsing and the streamlined download manager to URL highlighting and improved search, let's take a look at how you can bring some of Google Chrome's best features to Firefox.
Stealther Turns On Incognito Browsing
Chrome's Incognito browsing allows you to shop for your significant other without keeping any history of that browsing session anywhere on your computer. In Firefox, the Stealther extension does the same thing.
The main difference: In Chrome, a single wind... More »
Google has been promising that one of the aims of its new Chrome browser is to make everything quicker. Well, a JavaScript benchmark test reveals that it wipes the floor with all the other browsers. JavaScript, is the programming language that powers Google Docs, Gmail, and many other Web applications.
To quote: Here's the site description of the speed tests:
• Richards: OS kernel simulation benchmark, originally written in BCPL by Martin Richards (539 lines).
• DeltaBlue: One-way constraint solver, originally written in Smalltalk by John Maloney and Mario Wolczko (880 lines).
• Crypto: Encryption and decryption benchmark based on code by Tom Wu (1,689 lines).
• RayTrace: Ray tracer benchmark based on code by Adam Burmister (3,418 lines).
• EarleyBoyer: Classic Scheme benchmarks, translated to JavaScript by Florian Loitsch's Scheme2Js compiler (4,682 lines).
A few notes: First, y... More »
First tests of Google's "faster, safer" browser have revealed embarrassing glitches which prevent basic Web features from loading.
Online speculation suggests that the errors are based on the Javascript foundations of the browser, which can affect everything from pop-up windows to login modules.
The free browser has been made available in a "public trial" version following a premature press release yesterday on the new service, which came in comic book form.
Google Chrome is being touted as a sleeker and more reliable alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, with Google saying a sophisticated testing system was used to prevent bugs from occurring on popular websites.
However this morning, some computers running Chrome failed to load Google services such as iGoogle and Google Docs, and others – such as GMail's login page – only loaded part of the text, without images or a login form.
One user told news.com.au... More »
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