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 »
Rumor has it that Windows 7 will drop in the middle of next year, but last month Microsoft released a "preview" tester build of Windows 7. After living in the Windows 7 Preview for a week now, several features and niceties jumped out at me which promise to make Windows a better place to work come 2009.
Here are just a few of the things to look forward to in Windows 7.
10. Ding-dong, the Sidebar is dead.
One of the first things I hunted down and killed in Windows Vista was the Sidebar, which loaded by default and docked Vista's Gadgets to the right side of your desktop. In Windows 7, the sidebar is no more, and gadgets, should you want them, can roam free across the desktop. This time around, the gadgets feel less distracting to me—the CPU meter and calendar gadgets are my favourites, though this screenshot shows many more.
9. Calculator, WordPad, and Paint got overhauled.
It sucks that Windows 7 is stripping the built-... More »
PCWorld reports today that security researchers have developed a way to partially crack the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard used to protect data on many wireless networks.
However, the attack does not however work with the WPA2 standard states Dragos Ruiu, the PacSec conference's organizer who will be discussing it next week in Tokyo.
To quote: "Everybody has been saying, 'Go to WPA because WEP is broken,'" Ruiu said. "This is a break in WPA."
If WPA is significantly compromised, it would be a big blow for enterprise customers who have been increasingly adopting it, said Sri Sundaralingam, vice president of product management with wireless network security vendor AirTight Networks.
Although customers can adopt Wi-Fi technology such as WPA2 or virtual private network software that will protect them from this attack, there are still may devices that connect to the network using WPA,... More »
Sony's semi-official blog ThreeSpeech has posted an article that asks AI coders from a number of studios "how close are we to creating truly autonomous AI characters" in games. To quote:
Part one: autonomy
To kick off, we’re looking at enemies who think for themselves. How close are we to creating truly autonomous AI characters, able to react in real-time to player actions and formulate their own responses? Some developers have been experimenting with techniques such as Goal-Orientated Action Planning (GOAP) for several years in order to create ‘thinking’ beings.
But is this desirable? And is there still a role for scripted AI, in which the baddies perform actions based on pre-programmed, pre-determined elements? We ask the makers of F.E.A.R, Prototype, Dead Space and Wheelman.
Participants:
Sergio Garces Casao, Lead AI Programmer, Prototype, Radical Entertainment
Chris Hecker: Independent game coder
Jef... More »
At PDC today, Microsoft gave the first public demonstration of Windows 7. Until now, the company has been uncharacteristically secretive about its new OS; over the past few months, Microsoft has let on that the taskbar will undergo a number of changes, and that many bundled applications would be unbundled and shipped with Windows Live instead.
There have also been occasional screenshots of some of the new applets like Calculator and Paint. Now that the covers are finally off, the scale of the new OS becomes clear. The user interface has undergone the most radical overhaul and update since the introduction of Windows 95 thirteen years ago.
First, however, it's important to note what Windows 7 isn't. Windows 7 will not contain anything like the kind of far-reaching architectural modifications that Microsoft made with Windows Vista. Vista brought a new display layer and vastly improved security, but that came at a cost: a significant number of (badly-written) a... More »
Rock Band 2 was released on the XBox 360 on September 14, 2008 with an exclusive launch window in North America. Today it was announced that Rock Band 2 for the PS3 will be available on October 19, 2008.
In addition, Rock Band 2 for the PS2 and Wii will ship in December 2008. The Rock Band 2 Special Edition Bundle for the XBox 360 will also be available on retail shelves October 19, 2008.
Press Release: MTV Games, Harmonix and Electronic Arts Announce Ship Dates for Rock Band® 2 Coming to PLAYSTATION®3 System, PlayStation®2 System and WiiTM
Harmonix, the world’s premier music video game development company, and MTV Games, a part of Viacom’s MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), along with distribution partner Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), today announced that Rock Band® 2 for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system will be available on October 19, 2008. In addition, Rock Band 2 for the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment sys... More »
Sorry PS3 gamers, but according to Treyarch and the people at Activision, the upcoming online multiplayer BETA for Call of Duty: World at War will be for XBox 360 and PC owners only.
For those of you who remember, Infinity Ward pulled a similar move last year by hosting the Call of Duty 4 BETA only on the XBox 360. After speaking with a Activision representative, I was told that the reasoning behind doing an XBox 360 and PC BETA was primarily due to increased server and connectivity data.
"We are running the BETA only on the XBox 360 and PC," said the representative. He continued then to point out that most BETAs on the PS3 are run by first party anyways, and if Treyarch runs their testing on the XBox 360 and PC they acquire more data on servers and connectivity.
Personally, I think that it's imperative to sufficiently test all networks a game will be running on, and that includes the PlayStation Network. Yes, if you were to run the BETA so... More »
WildTangent Chief Executive Alex St. John never fails to amuse, entertain and stir the pot. And that was certainly the case during his 45 minute talk at the Casual Connect game conference in Seattle today.
St. John, who has built WildTangent into the one of the bigger online gaming networks over the past 10 years, made the bold prediction that video game consoles will be "extinct" by 2020.
He started his talk with an image of Moses on the screen and this rapid-fire comment:
I am going to make some outrageous claims today. And then I will attempt to substantiate them. Feel free to disagree with me. Just remember, that I am right.
St. John called the console business an "extremely fragile business" which has been subject to major collapses over the years:
We are looking at the last generation of consoles right now. I am going to predict to you that the PS3, the Wii and the X-box are the last generation of consoles t... More »
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