Video game consoles left running round-the-clock can send your annual electricity bill soaring. That's probably no surprise for most gamers. But the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based conservation group, has conducted a study of gaming machine energy use to raise awareness among gamers and pressure manufacturers into making more energy-efficient machines.
The NRDC's study found that Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii machines in the U.S. use about as much electricity in a year as every home in San Diego combined. Much of the energy comes from machines that are left on, but not in use, the NRDC said.
Of the three consoles, Sony's PS3 was the biggest energy hog, followed by Microsoft's Xbox 360. Nintendo's Wii is by far the most energy efficient-and even uses less electricity than its predecessor, GameCube.
To quote: With more efficient devices and by utilizing existing power-saving features, consumers ... More »
Raing3 is not yet through with this PSP homebrew app, Memory Stick Utility. He's released v0.6 today, and has made several changes to improve its function.
Just a recap for those not familiar with this app. PlayStation Portable Memory Stick Utility is a mutli-player utility which allows you to perform various general management functions on your MemStick.
Here's the list of what it can do:
• Connect various devices through a USB cable (Flash 0, Flash 1, Flash 2, Flash 3, Memory Stick and UMD Disc)
• Inject a variety of included IPLs or an IPL from a file to the Memory Stick
• Erase the entire IPL space of the Memory Stick
• Check the IPL injected on the Memory Stick or a file located on the Memory Stick
• Create a checksum of the IPL injected on the Memory Stick or an IPL located on the Memory Stick
• ... More »
Courtesy of marcan42, this The very first working test of BootMii. BootMii takes over the boot process of the Wii and lets you run almost anything (even security code, a backup/restore utility, you name it) from an SD card, before most of the system even starts booting.
To quote: It is a huge step towards "brickproofing" a Wii, as it will still work even if you thoroughly screw up your filesystem. You could even format it entirely and it would still work.
Here I'm testing it with a small program that modifies the boot code (boot2) to boot into the Homebrew Channel instead of the normal system menu. Pop the SD card in, the Wii boots to HBC. Take it out, it reverts to normal boot. Real handy for coders.
To those that claimed that System Menu channels were more convenient (read: saved you a click or two) compared to running homebrew off of HBC: take that! :-)
Far Cry 2 to is one game everyone can't wait to get their hands on, coming to a PS3 near you here are the trophies we'll be aiming for:
• Stickin it to the man: Kill a Faction Captain in Leboa-Sako - the Northern Territory
• Wages of Conflict: Aquire all conflict diamonds in the game available through payment or exploration
• Making friends: Save a Buddy from captivity
• The best laid plans: Work with a Buddy to subvert a mission offered by a faction
• Wanderer: Find all the Safe Houses in Leboa-Sako - the Northern Territory
• Orienteer: Find all the Safe Houses in Bowa-Seko - the Southern Territory
• Investigative Reporter: Turn over the first set of the Jackal's audio logs to the Journalist
• Messenger: Complete all the available Underground side-quests in both the North and the South
• Supply: Unlock new weapons by hitting a Convoy
• On the run: Escape the Town
• Down but not out: Escape t... More »
Update: A brief guide and F.A.Q. are available HERE and NDT posted a more detailed walkthrough.
Guys,
I need a little help from the community, if possible i'd like to have from all of you uploaded somewhere (example: rapidshare) the first 2048KB of the HDD partition. Specifically i need a test conducted this way:
Power up the ps3, go to the formatting utility, and format the ps3 HDD with the option of 10GB for the ps3 system.
Power off the ps3, remove the hard disk, attach it to the PC and dump the first 2048KB.
Compress the 2048 with the program you actually prefer (rar, zip whatever) and upload and post a link here.
For the dumping part winhex (for windows) or dd (unix and windows), if any problem or question rise, feel free to contact me or other devs, thanks a... More »
The Sony Video Store on the PlayStation Network is filled with a good selection of movies, and you can't beat the convenience of renting or even buying movies from your couch and watching them on your big screen with your PlayStation 3.
Renting movies is a joy on the system, although it would be nice to have longer than 24 hours to watch the content, but what happens when you buy a movie? As one Ars reader found out, and Sony confirmed for us, you have to be careful about what happens to your system once it's filled with video content: you have one download, one redownload, and that's it.
Noise, a forum-goer, sent out a warning after he deleted some video content to make room on his hard drive and then found he couldn't redownload the content. The PlayStation 3 support page is perfectly clear on this matter. "Purchased content can be downloaded to ... More »
The first bit of “Fusion” that AMD is releasing today is an in-house designed software utility that was described to us as being able to “turn a mainstream PC into a lean, mean gaming machine.”
Essentially, this Fusion Gaming tool is a utility that automates many of the tweaks that hardcore enthusiasts carry out in order to free up system resources for the purpose of maximizing gaming performance. The utility works by temporarily disabling background services and processes, freeing up memory and CPU cycles in an effort to make games run more smoothly.
AMD demonstrated the application to us clicking the gigantic “Fusion” button on a Windows Vista desktop, which immediately shut down usually active applications such as Skype, Google Talk, as well as many other background services. The utility will not, however, override any applications that have a shutdown or save dialog, meaning that clicking the button will still allow Microsoft Word to prompt if ... More »
It only took a year... to quote hmxsean via RockBand Forums:
Hi Everyone: PS3 ROCK BAND DISC EXPORT TITLE UPDATE
First and foremost, we’re happy to announce that PS3 users will soon be able to export RB1 songs to their system in advance of the launch of RB2! A PS3 patch will be coming out this Thursday, September 11th, which will allow RB1 song export, in addition to updating DLC to our RB2 standards (so you can continue to rock the newer content in RB1 if you so choose!)
This title update will also patch for the use of the Guitar Hero III Les Paul PS3 Controller with RB1 on the PS3. We're excited to release this, as controller compatibility is something we've been working towards for a long time.
This Rock Band 1 title update is set to come out next Thursday. As with the Xbox 360 Title Update, you will have to update Rock Band in order to play any DLC that is released after Thursday.
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