It's no secret that iPhone has turned the mobile phone industry on its head, sliding past its smartphone rivals with its sexy design. We know Apple has opened a new chapter in mobile technology, but the real story behind this is how the iPhone is quietly taking over pocket gaming.
Business Week has already pointed out what is clearly becoming a new player in the handheld market. Apple has set iPhone on the right track to contend with Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable as the definitive portable gaming platform new figures show. Sales of iPhone continue to increase with each passing month, not to mention downloads from the App Store.
Momentum behind iPhone can't be discredited either as developers both large and small are flocking to the system. It all points to the strong possibility that iPhone could become the leading device for handheld gaming in the coming years.
The argument isn't a new one, as we were one of the first to identify the pote... More »
A couple days ago we reported on a few holiday adverts that are part of a “bigger campaign”.
Today Sony's Senior Vice President of Marketing & PlayStation Network Peter Dille detailed their PlayStation: Entertainment Unleashed ad campaign officially via PS Blog as follows:
This is one of the fun parts of my job, when we get to unveil our TV commercials and give you, our loyal fans, a preview of our spots before they hit the airwaves. This year’s campaign is dubbed “Entertainment Unleashed” and for good reason.
The campaign actually began quietly a few weeks back with three fifteen second “tease” executions. Hopefully, you’ve seen these by now. These initial ads depicted various people catching glimpses and reflections of beautiful PS3 game footage magically appearing ... 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 »
Rod Fergesson, the Senior Producer from Gears of War 2 has outlined on the official forums (linked above) the problems with their online matchmaking service and acknowledges that and patch will be released in the near future to counter the issues.
To quote: We're aware that some folks are experiencing longer-than-ideal wait times while using the skill-based Public matchmaking in Gears 2 multiplayer.
We're working on some solutions but it's a complicated issue as there isn't any one problem; it's a combination of factors. Clearly, scale is one of them as we've had millions of successful matches played online so far, however a small percentage of players are having issues, which is unacceptable.
We're working closely with Microsoft to address the matchmaking issues, I promise you that it is our #1 priority, and we hope to have an update soon.
In the meantime, I would like to suggest some workarounds:
Below is a recent interview with the very friendly Ben LeRougtel of Capcom, who enthusiatically answered some questions on Resident Evil 5 courtesy of XCN.
XCN: What makes a classic Resident Evil game?
BL: It’s fear and tension. If you look at some of the enemies you encounter in Resident Evil games they’re always grotesque and you’re not sure what they’re made up of - sometimes they’re part human, sometimes they’re complete abominations of nature. But Resident Evil 5 has moved away from that survival horror tag that was there in the beginning.
It has more of an action feel to it but still the tension is there and it’s intensified with the addition of co-op. It’s a very different experience - normally your Resident Evil mindset is “me, me, me!” and it’s just about your survival. Now you’ve got to worry about someone else as well, and if the other person is only out for themselves it makes the game ver... More »
Why EA would promise both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 owners fresh DLC, when everybody knows that Mirror's Edge PS3 is getting the exclusive?
We asked our friendly neighborhood EA representative.
To quote: “It’s downloadable content for both platforms,” a spokesperson told GameCyte.
While PS3 might well have some token exclusive DLC (just look at how EA is handling Dead Space), DLC in and of itself will apparently not be exclusive.
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 »
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 »