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 »
A few weeks ago, I made my way to Ubisoft's Montreal studio to interview a pair of team members working on the latest Prince of Persia, and it turned out to be one of those interviews where we kept talking longer than we probably should have.
Below is an excerpt from that interview as follows:
1UP: Were you guys disappointed when those first couple of screenshots leaked out and everyone assumed it was going to be a two-player game?
BM: [Laughs] Disappointed? No, it was to be expected, really. I think if you see two characters on the screen, some people are going to assume one of their friends can control one of those two characters. So it didn't really disappoint me to see people saying, "Oh, oh, I think this is going to be a co-op game."
But we really haven't had much negative backlash about the fact that it's single-player. I've been reading the forums, I get e-mails, I get Facebook messages and that sort of stuff, and no one ever... More »
By now, the term 'Next-gen' has transformed itself into 'Current-gen' in the minds of videogame enthusiasts. Gamers all across the world have seen what the consoles are capable of, played the cream of the crop, bickered about which version has more Trees, etc.
While there have been a few flops this Gen (Yes, we're looking at YOU Too Human & Lair) there have certainly been plenty of hits. With excellent software having been released for all 3 platforms, we turn our attention to the teams behind the software.
#5- Nintendo EAD (Mario Galaxy, Wii Sports, LOZ: Twilight Princess)
Nintendo's dramatic shift into casual gaming caused a lot of anger and complaints: "Why all the casual games?!?", "Do they even care about core gamers?!! "What The heck is WiiFit?", all these were questions thrown at the Japanese video game juggernaut.
While it's clear the 'Old Nintendo' is long gone, the 'new' Nintendo still has the most valuable feature of... More »
Many of you wisely noted in our debut trailer for the upcoming PSN game Red Baron Arcade that it looks fun, in spite of its antiquated graphics. After playing a few missions from the downloadable title, I'd have to agree with that assessment.
Red Baron Arcade is true to its namesake: it provides a very arcade aerial combat game, one which is easy to pick up and play. The simplistic nature of the gameplay is part of its appeal, but also limits the depth one may come to expect from a genre like this.
Planes are incredible maneuverable, able to turn at a moment's notice. Obviously, these planes aren't meant to handle like their real-world equivalents. Various evasive tactics, like U-turns and barrel rolls, are done easily with a single press of a button. While this makes it very easy to jump into the game, it also makes everything feel completely unnatural.
While the controls are far from realistic, they do get the job done during the massive dogfig... More »
Months ago TechRadar released a list of 10 tricks that Sony hasn’t revealed to no one. Well guess what, that’s not all! There are now 16 PS3 tricks that Sony hasn’t mentioned to anyone. Are there still more secrets that Sony is trying to hide from us. We will find out soon...
(1) Play games from any country Harbouring a desire to play Super Gaiden Ninja XI? Now you can. In fact, you can handily play any PS3 game from any country. On holiday in the States and spot the latest release at a bargain dollar-to-pound price? Help yourself. So far, at least, PS3 games aren’t being region coded. That said PS2 and PS1 games are so you can’t play a US title on a Euro console.
And let’s not forget that Blu-ray movies are region-coded so the barriers aren’t completely down yet.
(2) The secret video reset One of the most annoying as... More »
Once a staple of the games market, the supply of platform-exclusive titles from third-party developers is drying up. Aylon Herbet explains why this isn't such a bad thing... The gaming industry is changing in this generation and there's a bunch of possible reasons.
It may have to do with the higher cost of development, different systems' market share, peripherals or different control requirements, but none of that really matters. The reasons are irrelevant, the point remains the same: we are seeing less and less third-party exclusives (that is, games that are only on one console and which are developed by someone other than Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo themselves) in the world.
The recent announcement that Final Fantasy XIII is coming to Xbox 360 brought this change into focus. All they needed now was a Metal Gear Solid 4 announcement and we could start poking a stick at the corpse of third-party exclusives. Let's face the facts, even if Metal Gear Solid... More »
Shhhh... In a recent IGN video clip Ken Lobb (Creative director of Microsoft game studios) showed the world game play footage of the latest Banjo-Kazooie installment. With all this talk about a motion controller coming to the Xbox 360, could it actually be happening? Apparently so!
In the IGN video clip it clearly shows Ken Lobb playing through the hub world of Nuts and Bolts. Whilst playing the game he moves Banjo up close to a crane. He then states that Kazooie has a special wrench that is used on certain items. He continued saying “you basically grab with the wrench, and then you twist the controller around and it will move different things in the game”. So he basically confirmed a motion censored controller right?
I hope that if this statement is correct and that the “Newton” controller is finally confirmed at E3 that Microsoft use i... More »
Before I start this article, I'd like everyone to give this article over at RPGFan a read. It really states the bad situation Sony is in with RPGs and even highlights the numbers. Now, onto the article.
The PLAYSTATION 3 does have a decent amount of exclusives out right now. Most of them won't make you go "wow", but a few will. Those few, however, are usually the games made by Sony Computer Entertainment.
This brings us to the PLAYSTATION 3's one-leg of survival, the first party. Let us take a look at the currently released exclusives. We've labeled first-party games in regular font, and third-party games in bold.
• Eye of Judgement
• Folklore
• Formula One Championship Edition
• Full Auto 2: Battlelines • Genji: Days of the Blade • Gran Turismo 5: Prologue
• HAZE • Heavenly Sword
• Hot Shots Golf: Out... More »
(4) 
