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 »
Capcom's John Diamonon shared the following today via PS Blog:
Hey PS Fam! Long time no blog. It’s my pleasure to announce that Age of Booty will finally become available today on the PSN for only $9.99. I know there was a delay bringing this title to you, but we had to make sure we fixed all the bugs before we deliver one of the most original digital games on this platform.
Anyway, Max Hoberman, the President of Certain Affinity and the developer of Age of Booty, wanted to give you some insights into this critically acclaimed game. He’ll also answer any questions you have about the game. Without further ado, heeeere’s Max!
This is a follow-up to my previous post, where I described the genesis of our upcoming downloadable pirate action RTS, Age of Booty. I left off with us signing a publishing deal with Capcom and beginning production. That was a year ago, and since then we’ve had a lot of time to improve upon the original design.... More »
The infamous Xbox 360 "red ring of death" (indicating a failed unit) has caused Microsoft - and its customers - untold pain in the three years since the console's launch in 2005, and cost it $1.15bn (£738m) last year.
Microsoft has never said publicly why the console was plagued with faults: it seems that poor production quality was at the heart of the failures - an all-round problem with no single cause except impatience on the company's part as it tried to become the leader in videogame consoles.
It was an ambitious attack. Microsoft's engineers started working on the Xbox 360 at least a year after Sony's engineers began work on the PlayStation 3, yet wound up shipping a year earlier. With the first Xbox, the company lost $3.7bn (£2.3bn) over four years, mostly because costs of the box - particularly its hard drive - were too high.
Bill Gates didn't really care about the losses; that was simply the ante for getting into an exciting ne... More »
Today AhMan has updated iR Shell to 4.7 for the PlayStation Portable, which includes both 5.00 M33 compatibility as well as a revamped iR Sensor.
MK2k has also recently released APPSwitcher for PSP, which is a VSH plug-in that lets you categorize your homebrew for the XMB and switch between each by holding the right shoulder button and d-pad.
- Support Dark_AleX latest 5.00M33-3 CFWs. Users of original 5.00M33 & M33-2 should upgrade to M33-3 to avoid incompatibility issues. The latest Popsloader 5.00 is also supported.
- An Infra-Red lear... More »
You'll have to forgive me; I would rather be playing Gears of War 2 on my Xbox 360 instead of writing this. Unfortunately, Microsoft's customer support has made that an impossibility.
Now, I'm well aware that the internet has become a haven for Xbox customer support horror stories and with good cause. In fact, I think that these types of stories are quickly catching up to porn as the most popular use of the internet.
I kid of course, and I would think my experiences with these people would be good for a laugh or two if I didn't have a fresh copy of Gears 2 staring me in the face. Before I begin with my multiple tales of woe, let me tell you a bit about how our operation works here at GamingExcellence.
GE is made up of a staff of about two dozen very enthusiastic folks that contribute to the site through sheer love of all things gaming related. We're not doing this for the big bucks, we're not doing this for the fame, we're doing this because gami... More »
Many people have been wondering exactly what the differences are between Development and Retail PlayStation 3 Systems, and we figured now would be a great time to clarify these along with reporting some new findings.
Aside from the different hardware revisions of the PS3's motherboard, the systems are virtually the same as mentioned in previous posts. We have examined multiple PS3 TEST's, Retail PS3's, Demo Unit PS3's, and even Factory Mode PS3's, and found that there are no hardware differences between them at all.
Mind you, there are differences, but they are due to the hardware revision, not due to the systems themselves. To make that more clear, the units are identical to their counterparts of the same hardware revision.
So, the question is- what's the difference? Software!
We all know the difference is in the software, and after examining countless dumps from these systems, on top of flash dumps given to us by you, our loyal re... More »
A short time ago Sony Computer Entertainment executive Ray Maguire was quoted in response to a question about a PlayStation 3 price cut.
"Well the pressure comes from the consumers obviously and so therefore there's always pressure on price," admitted Maguire, "but you know we have a business to run, and we have to make sure we're doing the right thing for the shareholders as well."
I am sorry, what? I know I am not a CPA, a high ranking business analyst, nor a senior executive at a multi-billion dollar company, but I can do basic math. Microsoft recently had some major price cuts on their hardware and has seen a big hardware surge in North America and especially Europe as a result. So let’s break out some hypothetical numbers shall we?
Senior Manager Grace Chen of the PlayStation Store is back once again with this weekend's PSN video content update as follows:
Hi again! The weekend’s here – time for your weekly update of new movie & TV shows on the PlayStation Network.
This week we’ve added new video content from the following television series:
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Season 1
• Intervention, Season 4
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Season 4
• Pushing Daisies, Season 2
• Smallville, Season 8
• Solty Rei, Season 1
• Squidbillies, Season 3
• The First 48, Season 7
• The Secret Saturdays, Season 1
• The Unit, Season 4
We’ve also added the following feature films:
• Action Jackson
• American Gigolo
• An American Rhapsody
• Bad News Bears (2005)
• Best Defense
• Blood Brothers
• Bonnie and Clyde ... More »
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