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mik9132000 / Voted

So imagine this: You're a huge gamer who bought the Xbox 360 on day one. You stood in line for over 20 hours in the pouring rain, just for Microsoft's newest console. Pretty hardcore, right? It gets better.

Imagine now, with me, that over the course of the past several years, you've played games on your 360 nearly every chance you got. You've racked up a huge gamerscore, only to have it all taken away one day without ANY warning.

This is story of SlapStic reader "JackTheWhack." Jack, whose real name is Jack Barbosa, not only had a huge gamerscore; he had more than any other person in the entire state of New Jersey: 121,250, in fact.

He achieved this impressive score through renting via Gamefly for games that he was only mildly interested in, while he purchased many games that he thought could give him more lasting enjoyment. Obviously, with a score that high, he WAS a MASSIVE 360 fan.

So last night, while playing Mirro... More »  


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In attendance at the Sony Computer Entertainment Staff Annual Briefing held yesterday in London, an anonymous source going by the alias of ‘Legends’ has just tipped us off on all manner of huge PlayStation news. We must make it clear that D+PAD weren’t in attendance, but we have no reason to doubt the validity of Legends’ claims.

Price cuts coming in March, PS3 performing better in Europe than 360

Our source tells us that SCEE President David Reeves took to the stage to discuss the current economic climate and how it shouldn’t affect PlayStation business, though was quick to mention that SCEE will be getting more competitive on price from March 2009 onwards. Our guess is that we’ll be seeing price cuts to PS3 around Easter to tie in with the release of Killzone 2…

Reeves then went on to say that the PS3 has a bigger install base than the 360 in PAL territories, and that the install base gap will significantly increase ... More »  


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IGN (linked above) has posted its review of the official Sony wireless keypad for the PlayStation 3, and seems to have a problem with its general design more than anything.

They note that the biggest issue is the top mounted nature of it, but essentially QWERTY keypads for game controllers don't really work that well and its probably best to pick up a microphone and talk.

To quote: But regardless of the poor touch support and ill-advised key design, the biggest issue I had with the Wireless Keypad is that Sony opted to design it as a top mounted add-on. I don't want to seem partial one way or another, but I definitely think Microsoft had it right when they made their keypad attachable between the handles of the Xbox 360 remote.

The keys seem much easier to view and access when they are located just below your thumbs on the thumbsticks. To be fair, the choice in top versus bottom attachment may have been out of Sony's hands. It's possible that Mi... More »  


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Sony confirms its recently announced network numbers include accounts from both the PlayStation 3 and PSP, but no duplicates; analyst estimates 50 percent of PS3s have gone online.

On Tuesday, Sony made a stir when it announced that its free PlayStation Network had attained 14 million "active users."

The number, revealed to celebrate the PlayStation 3's second birthday, was remarkable, as it appeared to match the 14-million-strong subscriber base for the pay-to-play Xbox Live. Microsoft's online service launched in 2002 and has been a central pillar of its strategy since the Xbox 360 launched in 2005, one year before the PS3.

Three days later, Sony has now clarified what exactly it counts as an active PlayStation Network user. "Seeing as PlayStation Portable does include PlayStation Network services (i.e. games store natively on PSP), yes those numbers do include all PlayStation Network registrations," said a Sony representative.

T... More »  


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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 »  


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At a 10-year anniversary event, Polyphony Digital presented two technological trials for the next generation.

Both of the presentations were founded on the philosophy of “achieving the highest possible quality” held over the years by Gran Turismo... showing it off that at 2160p.

It was all part of a time trial showcasing Sony's latest SRX-S110 projector technology, which can support resolutions of 4096 x 2160 pixels.

To quote: One of these, was a time trial competition using Sony’s newest digital cinema projector, the “SRX-S110”. Gran Turismo 5 prologue is already in Full HD resolution at 1920 x 1080 pixels, providing the highest resolution possible in today’s TV content.

However in this time trial, the Full HD image was increased to twice the resolution both vertically and horizontally (4x the surface area), enabling game play at an ultra high resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels.

This was performed by conne... More »  


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More than a week ago, GamingConfidential reported that a Microsoft customer service representative foresaw an outbreak of the Red Ring of Death (RROD) issue once the New Xbox Experience becomes available.

While most scoffed at the idea, the prediction held true and MS service lines are white hot with calls from angry customers.

"I hate what the company did this year," says the rep. "They released the New Xbox Experience a few days after the extended warranty period ended for most users and it's tough to explain that to raging callers. How do you say that MS just screwed them all?"

He adds "our bosses really fed us to the lions this time. We're getting everything from crying kids to death threats from angry adults. It's an orgy, I tell ya."

The rep ended the short chat by lamenting how Xbox 360 owners are blaming the update for even the most far-fetched issues. An example, he says, is a call from a 32-year old man claiming that his ho... More »  


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The new version of YDL was released. I think the most important new feature is that you can now use the memory of the RSX-GPU as a swap partition.

You should notice a great increase of speed while using linux.

The free version can be downloaded in four weeks. For now only owners of YDL.net Enhanced Accounts can access YDL 6.1.

Press Release: AUSTIN, Texas - 19 November 2008 - From the show floor of SuperComputing 2008, booth #1915, Fixstars today released Yellow Dog Linux v6.1 for Apple G4/G5, Sony PLAYSTATION3, PowerStation, and IBM Power Systems. Built upon the CentOS foundation, a derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, YDL v6.1 offers several end-user and development tool improvements over the previous v6.0.

"This marks the final release of Yellow Dog Linux by Terra Soft and the first by Fixstars," states Owen Stampflee, Fixstars Solutions' Director of Engineering, "In my five years with Terra Soft we have made incremental impro... More »  


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