204w ago - Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time finally brings the graphical quality of pre-rendered CGI to video game consoles.

Insomniac's hard work has finally produced CGI quality graphics rendered in real-time on the PlayStation 3. Sure, it might not quite be at Wall-E level yet, but Toy Story 2 quality pre-rendered graphics have definately been reached.

To quote: Insomniac Games, who have produced more games for the PS3 than any other developer (Resistance 1, Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction, Resistance 2) brings their fourth game, Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time (or what they like to call Clock Blockers) with an even more polished engine.

The pre-defined animation and limited scope of the cutscenes mean that Insomniac can pull more out of the PS3 for their real-time rendered cutscenes in A Crack in Time, though the gameplay graphics are just as spectacular.

The latest gameplay footage of A Crack in Time video is below also:

204w ago - The new Mesa 7.5 has been released recently.

The interesting thing about it is that it is first release to contain Gallium3D architecture for "OS-independent and API-independent 3D drivers" which in turn contains drivers for various devices such as:

• softpipe - a software/reference driver
• i915 - Intel 915/945 driver
• Cell - IBM/Sony/Toshiba Cell processor driver
• nouveau (for NVIDIA GPUs) and R300 for (AMD/ATI R300)

You can read about state of Cell driver here.

This in fact will bring accelerated 3D graphics to PS3 where the graphics processing won't be done by RSX but by employing SPUs. This would vastly enhance usability of Linux running on PS3 by providing one of the things it's lacking now...

206w ago - Today Eurogamer.es is reporting that PowerVR technology from Imagination Technologies will form the basis of the still-in-development PSP2.

The site claims to have insider sources that reckon that a quad core iteration of the low-power SGX543MP chip, codenamed "Hydra", will be present in the next generation handheld, not to be confused with the forthcoming PSPgo.

To quote: The chip itself appears to be very close indeed to the enhanced GPU experts say resides within the iPhone 3GS, providing a generational leap in performance over older PowerVR MBX processors found in the previous models.

The same technology is also found in select netbooks such as the Dell Mini 12, as part of the new low power Poulsbo chipset. The single core version of the chip has been demonstrated at CES running Quake 3 Arena at 30FPS.

The obvious difference of course is that the SGX543MP is a multicore processor, available with anything up to 16 cores on tap. According to the original report, PSP2 opts for a quad configuration offering notional specs of 133 million polygons per second, and 4Gpixels/sec fillrate, assuming that Hydra operates at the chip's low-end of 200MHz (higher speed variants are also available, presumably...

208w ago - God Of War 3 has been overhauled in a major way since the video game awards debut footage.

Now the game looks extremely real and very polished, but the most exciting thing about the screenshots below is the fact that more is being done to the overall game leading up to it's march 2010 release.

Most importantly the games graphics are still being worked on and currently it's aiming to achieve 1080p 60fps.

When asked if the game will rival the CG trailer, Sony E3 representatives responded by saying, to quote:

"It will come close to it and you will not be disappointed, the game is still a ways off but we're confident that gamers will love the final product come march 2010 so stay tuned for the coming months."

Pictured below are the before, after, and CG image rival captures.

212w ago - Tokyo-based market researcher Net-Asia has released some new findings in reference to Japanese gaming trends.

The poll noted that out of those surveyed with a PS3, 66 percent of them believed that the graphical prowess of the console was a reason to own it.

To quote: When asked why they owned their respective consoles, 81% of the PS3 owners responded that they bought it for the gamse, while only 52% of Wii owners got their system for the games.

66% of the PS3 owners also cited graphical prowess of the system as a reason to own it, with the Blu-ray player being another reason. 37% of the Wii owners snapped up the console up to be used as a health tool, with other reasons included increasing family communication and to try playing games in a new way.

So there ya have it, the average PS3 owner in Japan is a young graphics addict that tends to enjoy playing action games by themselves.

PS: The pic below is a last-minute Memorial Day 2009 tribute!