175w ago - Today Rock Band 2 Lead Designer Dan Teasdale has announced that a new Rock Band 2 PS3 software update is on the way that includes some long-awaited fan feature requests.

To quote: I'm proud to announce that the Rock Band team has finalized a software update for Rock Band 2 on the PlayStation 3 that addresses some common feature requests from our fans.

We've also added some great new functionality that we think you'll be excited to try out when the software update arrives this Thursday.

This update wouldn't be possible without the feedback and suggestions that we receive from everyone in both the Rock Band and PlayStation communities. Everybody here at Harmonix takes your forum posts and suggestions to heart, and we wouldn't be able to make our games as awesome as they are without all of the feature requests and feedback that we get from you on a daily basis.

So from all of us here at Harmonix, thank you, and please keep letting us know what you'd like to see in future updates and games!

This update includes:

• "Sort by Stars" in Quickplay. If you hit the "Sort" button on the Song Select screen, you'll come to a brand new sort...

185w ago - This holiday season most will be trying to replace their DVD players with Blu-ray and their nice plasma flatscreens with HDTVs.

However, the industry already is worrying about the market for UHD -- Ultra-High Definition.

Apparently, UHD will debut in the next five to 10 years, but is expected to take a long time before it reaches a "critical mass," deemed to be taking up residence in 5 percent of households globally, according to market research firm In-Stat.

To quote: UHD will come in two resolution levels: 7680 x 4320 pixels (8K) and 3840 x 2160 pixels (4K) and provide four to 16 times the resolution of Blu-ray or 1080p high-def. And "22.2 multichannel three-dimensional sound."

In-Stat's study concluded that high resolution digital cinema would drive consumers to UHDTVs so they could experience the same quality on their home television sets and that broadcasters would start providing content in the lower-resolution UHD by 2017 and the high-resolution technology by 2022. The market in Europe is expected to hit 5 percent penetration by 2021 and then zip up to more than 28 percent by 2025.

Ultra HDTV Requirements:

• Ultra HDTV requires 300Mb/second transmissions using a compressed image at 24 FPS, while 60 FPS will require a new compression system...

189w ago - It appears as though a developer has already hinted that universal game video recording is officially coming to the Xbox 360 courtesy of Microsoft.

According to Kotaku, this means the type of recording things you see in Halo 3, to quote:

"In a meeting last week with a game developer at the Tokyo Game Show, I asked them if they were planning on trying to incorporate in-game video capture into their title. The type you see in Halo 3.

The answer was interesting and, I believe, accidental.

"We'd love to have video capture in our game, but why work on something that the platform holder is already developing," said the developer, who I'm keeping anonymous to cover for his accidental slip-up.

The idea of a universal, platform-level video capture system for games seems like a good idea, and one that fits in nicely with the plans that Microsoft has for the Xbox 360."

191w ago - Apart from looking good, Gran Turismo 5 will hold the distinction of being the first game in the series to feature visual damage modelling on Sony's PlayStation 3 console.

The question is, how far will Polyphony Digital let us go in damaging our rides in the game?

If you're itching to find out, check out this video taken by the folks from VG Arabia (linked above) during the Paris Game Festival.

The subtitles are in French so the commentary may be lost on non-French speakers, but the visuals do give us an idea of how extensive the damage can be.

Check out the video below, courtesy of GT5rs via YouTube!

199w ago - How many times have you wished that you could capture a priceless gaming moment on your console and share it with friends?

Sony finally included this feature last year as part of the PS3 firmware 2.50 update, but nine months later there isn't a single game that supports it... not even a PSN title!

To quote: What is it that keeps game developers from giving us this small joy? Is it too difficult to implement? I'm no expert, but it seems to me like this is a feature that would be rather easy to implement, perhaps even after the game's release via a patch.

Another thing that baffles me is why does this even have to be enabled in each individual game by the developer? Why can't it simply be a feature that lets you take a screenshot regardless of which game you're playing, or even while on the XMB or the PSN Store?

You can take a PC screenshot in a game, while running an app, or simply on the desktop. Even the iPhone's screenshot feature works the same way. So what's stopping Sony from letting us do this regardless of which game we're playing?

Do Sony and game developers think that not enough people want this feature? If they do, they couldn't be more wrong.