Reports of the "Jasper" model of the Xbox 360 have been reported to have been in stores since as early as late September, and now a newer report gives us some better details on what to look for, particularly the output voltage on the power brick.
The Jasper chipset is, essentially, supposed to be better in every way, this including the amount of power it requires. So it seems, any 360 made after October 23, 2008 should have the chipset.
My only question is: why the heck wouldn't this be advertised and on the box? I guess if they did that a lot of unsuspecting customers would have suddenly been suspecting, meaning less sales since launch. Still!
VentureBeat reporter and "renowned Microsoft digger" Dean Takahashi has done a... More »
It looks like the first Jasper motherboards (which should have the new 65nm GPU) are now out in the wild! To quote: Moddage posted pictures of his new Jasper 360 on our forums and we also received some pictures from The Dude Z. Both are Arcade SKUs made 10-23-2008 Lot #0843X by Team FDOU.
The new power supply (pictured below) is now 150W (25W less than those used with Falcon boards), and the plug has of course been changed so u can't plugin this PSU into an older motherboard.
Other unannounced change... the onboard flash chip has grown from 16MB to 256MB. Microsoft included internal memory storage, so the Arcade SKU now ships without (external) Memory Unit and the new NXE dash will install fully on the flashchip (rather than requiring a HDD or external MU).
But the internal memory can also be used to store gamesave data, XBLA games, videos or whatever ... u can use it asif it was an external MU. As the flash chip is also used for th... More »
A British company may have won the contract to design and build the next-generation graphics processor for the PSP2. Imagination Technologies Group announced in a press release this week that the company has signed a license agreement with a new partner, “a major consumer electronics company.”
Industry sources say that the partner is almost certainly Sony, and that the SGX55x graphics chip will be used in the upcoming PSP2.
The secrecy on the part of Imagination Technologies makes sense, because Sony is understandably unwilling to announce its plans for a PSP successor just yet. Imagination's PowerVR MBX chip is already being used in the Apple iPhone, so Sony finds itself in good company with this manufacturer.
The SGX55x chip promises to be much more powerful than what is currently found in the PSP. At the moment, the PSP uses a... More »
To quote: Firstly, to avoid misunderstanding: This program is NOT for psp 3000. It is for psp1000/2000, but it allows the decryption of psp 3000 prx's for researching purposes.
Modules specifically of psp 3000 usually end with 03g. From the files, it seems that umdcache is handled differently in psp 3000, and that psp 3000 comes with a new wireless chip.
P.D: better looked now, it seems that wlanfirm_02g and wlanfirm_03g prx are equal. Same happens with umdcache_02g.prx and 03g. It seems that Sony enjoys making redundant data to make update eboots bigger... More »
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 »
Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo may dominate the global market for video games, but they don't rule in every corner of the world.
The extremely high cost of new video game consoles and games in Brazil has led to unusual market conditions in that emerging country – and a potential market for video game hardware makers. Due to high import taxes, new consoles like the PlayStation 3 regularly fetch in excess of $1,000 USD in Brazil.
However, an intrepid Brazilian company called Tectoy hopes to capture a portion of the young, casual gaming market in Brazil with the launch of their Zeebo home console.
This innovative piece of hardware presents the first credible challenge to the popularity of the other big three manufacturers, and lights the way toward other potential opportunities in markets south of the equator.
Under the hood, the Zeebo is no slouch, especially considering that i... More »
The guys over at Mgestyk Technologies have been playing and come up with a pretty awesome melding of gaming technology dubbed Mgestyk Fusion, currently available for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
To quote the link above: If you've tried games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the recent Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Lightsaber Duels on the Wii, you may have been disappointed that the in-game lightsaber does not always match how you are holding the wiimote.
Introducing Fusion from Mgestyk Technologies: Fusion is a patent-pending technology which combines Mgestyk's gesture processing with other sensor data such as from Nintendo's wiimote.
It looks pretty cool to me. It's a shame we won't see it on the PS3 until either someone hacks it for homebrew or Sony buys Nintendo. :)
Continued: We'll be demoing this at MIGS next week along with some of th... More »
Leadtek has announced that it will start selling its first PC graphics card based on Toshiba's SpursEngine graphics co-processor next week.
The SpursEngine is based on the same architecture as the CELL that powers the PlayStation 3 and was partly developed by Toshiba.
To quote: Leadtek will next week start selling its first PC graphics card based on Toshiba's SpursEngine graphics co-processor, it announced today.
The WinFast PxVC1100 will hit stories in Japan's Akihabara electronics district from November 19 and will be cost about ¥29,800 (£199).
The SpursEngine is based on the same architecture as the Cell Broadband Engine microprocessor that powers the PlayStation 3 console and was partly developed by Toshiba. While the Cell contains a Power PC core and eight "Synergistic Processing Elements" cores, the SpursEngine contains only four of the SPE cores.
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