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 »
Word hit today through the grapevine that "massive" layoffs had hit at Electronic Arts. Initially we heard as much as 20 percent of the staff has been let go, but a quick check with Electronic Arts confirms that it was actually 6 percent, or about 600 positions.
"EA is continuing to make progress against our business plan, but we have the constant imperative to keep our costs in line as we grow our revenues and improve our margins," Electronic Arts spokesperson Mariam Sughayer told me. "Decisions that impact people's jobs are always extremely tough but all of the people affected will be treated fairly and respectfully."
"We have begun a cost reduction initiative which will include eliminating approximately six percent of our existing workforce - or approximately 600 positions. We will also reduce hiring and close some open positions that we had previously planned to fill this fiscal year."
"All parts of EA have reviewed their team sizes to ... More »
According to XBitLabs (linked above), Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology Corp. has been contracted to manufacture external Blu-ray disc drives for Microsoft XBox 360 game consoles.
Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology Corporation is a joint venture between Samsung Electronics and Toshiba Corporation. The Blu-ray disc drives are rumored to cost in the $100-$150 range.
To quote: It is still unclear when exactly Microsoft plans to release its external Blu-ray solution for Xbox 360. Hypothetically, the company may launch it slightly ahead of the holiday season in an attempt to steal an advantage from the PlayStation 3. B
ut since sales of Blu-ray are still on a low level, the software giant may decide to postpone the unveiling till Consumer Electronics Show early next year in order to get the most attention of the media with new device.
Microsoft and TSST did not comment on the news story.
From ReadMe: PS3 NAND FLOW REBUILDER v3.50 (including ECC Algo by RPS).
This tool allows to unscramble the blocks of a PS3 dumps ordering them in a way that the dumps become readable and extractable!
It also allow you to re-scramble back to the original order once you modified the data you wants, then from now on it include the ECC recalculation algorithm that was private until today.
It's for study and tests purposes, for experienced people only (devs) that this way can manage the files inside the flashes and patch sensible areas.
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 PC market is in disarray, sure it's not dying but a lot can be done to help it out against it's console foes. We go though some of the most important ways we feels the PC gaming market could be saved, from automatic driver downloads to new styles of gaming.
A Standard download system for online game transfers. We all know and use Steam but more funds need to be put into Steam and more publishers need to join the program to make it the only choice gamers will need. The steam system should open up an API to provide 3rd party application developers to be able to create custom interfaces for the software. For Digital Downloads to survive however users must be able to edit and mod the games provided and DRM should be as little interference as humanly possible.
The download service should enable as much of the action to be done without using a lot of CPU resources, at current the steam service is doing this to an acceptable degree, but more optimization will be... More »
Sam_Protagonist, an SCE developer has just posted up at the Official PlayStation forums (linked above) that:
"There will be a limited public BETA test for LittleBigPlanet in September. If it will be possible to "sign up" for this test, full information on how to do so will be made public in advance of the test. Similarly if the test is going to be conducted in an invitation-only we will let you know ahead of time."
To quote in full: Hi all, here's your guide to what a beta test is, why it happens in the first place and what the different is between internal, external, public, private, open and closed.
A beta test takes place in order to test aspects of a game that cannot be checked using internal testing and QA staff. This is usually because of the number of people required to adequately test the game is far beyond the size of internal test departments. Often these tests are looking to ensure that balance, stability and various online func... More »
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