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 »
Call of Duty: World at War is joining the ever-expanding list of titles that will come packed with Trophies for PlayStation 3 owners to unlock.
Most of these Trophies are attained only through the offline mode of play, and often call for you to play at the hardest difficulty setting. Some of these do contain spoilers, so beware. List is below:
Bronze Trophies
- Get Your Hands Dirty - Complete 'Semper Fi' on Veteran difficulty. (Solo only)
- Bloody Peleliu - Complete 'Little Resistance' on Veteran difficulty. (Solo only)
- The Sword Is Broken - Complete 'Hard Landing' on Veteran difficulty. (Solo only)
- Architect - Complete 'Vendetta' on Veteran difficulty. (Solo only)
- The Hammer Strikes - Complete 'Their Land, Their Blood' on Veteran difficulty. (Solo only)
- Scorched Earth - Complete 'Burn 'em Out' on Veteran difficulty. (Solo only)
- Fearless Complete - 'Relentless' on Veteran difficulty. (Solo onl... More »
Ex-Xbox head Peter Moore has revealed how Microsoft was "completely fixated on Sony" with its Xbox Strategy.
Speaking in the second part of an interview with The Guardian, Moore revealed that Nintendo wasn't even considered when discussing console strategies with Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer (and now Wii's at the top).
"In January (2003) I flew up [to Redmond] and had lunch with Steve Ballmer and you don't say no to Ballmer," Moore said, discussing his route into Xbox. "We had a great lunch and he convinced me that Microsoft was going to take on Sony; so I get to put on my suit of armour, get on my horse and take on Sony again - but with a little bit more money this time!"
It was a classic "build or buy" conversation, said the now EA Sport boss. "Xbox had launched but it was an aggressive black box for shooters, and how do we evolve that, how do we build the next Xbox, how do we get after Sony?
Update: Sony have just called to confirm that you CAN actually record while playing games. There will be a message in the final build of the code that will ask you to reboot your PS3 to enable the background recording functionality.
This rather important bit of info was missing from the review build I have been using! Lovely. I'll have a look over the next few days and see what, if any, impact recording has when playing a game but clearly this makes PlayTV are far more interesting proposition.
The Guardian has reviewed the PlayTV from Sony for the PS3 and report back that the pricing is right for a basic PVR at £70, although the device is just a bit too restrictive to recommend.
They spot a few caveats with the product such as you need to have PlayTV to actually watch your recordings and question who the PlayTV is actually aimed at as early adopters are likely to have Sky + or a freeview PVR.
Guardian writes: You can't knock the PS3 as a piece of a kit - it still works fine for me while I'm on my fourth 360 now - but you have to wonder if features like Remote Play - fiddly to setup, geekily impressive when it works - are symptomatic of a console that almost tries to do too much.
UK Playstation boss Ray Maguire has admitted what we already knew, namely that the PS3's slow start was due to the high RRP.
"The gamble that Ken Kutaragi took with the PlayStation 3 was to put in a high level of technology, so it has been a bit slow to market in some respects, but we're now seeing how people are starting to understand how the technology works. Historically, the installed base of any hardware platform has been proportional to its great gameplay, but also very attached to the RRP.
That was the second part of Kutaragi-san's gamble, as that hardware made the machine more expensive. But now we're in the second part of the PS3's cyc... More »
The film industry is underestimating the threat that digital downloads pose to its traditional revenue streams from sales of physical media such as DVD and Blu-ray movie discs, claims the founder of download service iLoaded.
The issue is in the news this week, following reports of the imminent UK launch of movie downloads via Apple’s iTunes store and the continuing and increasing growth of user-friendly, legal movie download services from companies such as LoveFilm and iLoaded.
“The DVD is only 10 years old and yet the doom merchants are predicting it could join the likes of VHS tapes,” reads a report in today’s Media Guardian, adding, “even DVD industry insiders admit the format may eventually die out.
The report continues: “Yet they argue that the collectability of box sets, the convenience of re-watchable discs and the relatively slow growth of downloads mean there is still plenty of life left in the little silver discs.”
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According to writer Greg Howson over at the Guardian.co.uk (linked above), he has done some number crunching and believes that the PS3 could be losing $260 on every PS3 shipped!
Here is his reasoning: On Sony's own figures, the games division made a loss of $130 for each PlayStation 3 shipped. Let's assume that it's making pots of money on the PSP and the PlayStation 2: the PS2 is now hugely profitable and still sells more games than anything else.
These two platforms could easily have made a profit of $1.2bn in the year. In that case, the total PS3 loss would have been $2.4bn shared between 9.24m PS3 consoles, or $260 per PS3 -- including any attached Sony games.
Sound like a realistic estimate? Of course, only Sony knows for sure...
The Telegraph headline is "Grand Theft Auto IV: Violence flares after launch" and they know the cause: A 23-year-old was repeatedly stabbed in Croydon, south London as he walked past 100 people queuing to buy the controversial game, in which players rob and murder their way through the criminal underworld.
The Mail, as ever, don’t pull their punches with "Teenager stabbed in queue at midnight launch of ultra violent video game Grand Theft Auto IV". They too know what happened: A man was stabbed last night while queueing to buy one of the first copies of a controversial new video game.
The BBC report the stabbing but make no mention of any game.
The Press association, which many journalists will use as their source, headline with "Police hunt video game attacker" and say: Police are hunting a hooded man who stabbed a passer-by as he waited to buy a new edition of a notoriously viole... More »
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