Thursday, June 26, 2008
Introducing ‘Life with PlayStation’
11:45PM Brian Ashcraft | Today, Sony Computer Entertainment exec Kaz Hirai announced “Life with PlayStation” for the PS3. During the presentation, the “Life” was demoed for the audience for the first time — the service shows the Earth, and users can access current news and weather for locations around the world. It’s possible to even pull up the full article from the headline. Users can also set background music while looking at the Earth, checking the weather and the world news. Click through pics below to see it in action. More »
For Your Consideration
11:40PM Brian Ashcraft |
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‘No, We Do Not Hate Ken Levine’
11:30PM Brian Ashcraft | BioShock made team leader Ken Levine famous. While he renegotiates his contract with Take-Two for more money and power, there have been rumours that Levine isn’t exactly Mr. Popular. More like Mr. Unpopular! Apparently, the BioShock team did not enjoy working with him. Not so says lead BioShock programmer Chris Kline: More »‘Metal Gear Solid’ Is What The Cliffster Is Not Doing. Dude.
11:20PM Brian Ashcraft | The Cliffster is making Gears of War 2, and the dude’s totally hoping he can improve. Make a better game, you know. And in doing so, The ’ster has things he’s looking at, things he wants to avoid. And one of those things is Metal Gear Solid. Says The Cliffster: We wanted a blockbuster pace [in Gears of War 1], and in doing so, we lost the story a bit. So that’s one of the lessons we learned. This time round there’s more repetition. Games aren’t movies and aren’t consumed in a single sitting. So secondary characters will remind you about stuff, which is re-established in plot cues. Metal Gear Solid is our example of the game we’re not doing. Passive entertainment is on its way out — you need to hook up with this web 2.0 stuff. The ironic thing? Kojima Productions was influenced by Gears of War’s controls for MGS4. Gears of War 2 Multiplayer Hands-On [IGN via ripten] More »
Hip-Hop Vids Remade In The Sims
11:00PM Luke Plunkett | Goodness gracious me. Never would have thought the internet would go and make a pastime out of this, but now that it has, what else can we do but run with it? Because, as rubbish as the idea of a bunch of Sims re-enacting hip-hop and R&B videos sounds, it’s really not. It’s great. There’s nine more at the link below, but be warned, a lot of them aren’t exactly work/child-friendly. The Ultimate Argument Settler: The 10 Best Fan Made Hip Hop Videos With Sims Of All Time [Videogum, via Boing-Boing] More »When Spore Wii-mote Monsters Attack!
10:40PM Brian Ashcraft | Back when we posted the Spore Creature Creator created Xbox 360 controller, that was a pretty big deal! Well, if only because everyone was too busy making Penis Monsters. Seems like folks have moved onto other creative endeavours — like the Wii-mote, for example. A quick search turns up twenty or so Wii-mote monsters, all of varying skill level. Hit the jump for a look at more. More »Eternal Sonata On PS3: More Than Just A Port
10:20PM Luke Plunkett | Eternal Sonata’s due on the PS3 (at least in Japan) in September 2008. It was released on the 360 (at least in Japan) in June 2007. Time enough for tri-Crescendo to make the wait a little more worthwhile for PS3 owners, yes? Yes. Plenty of time. The PS3 version will feature two new playable characters, new dungeons, new quests, multiple endings (which depend on your in-game actions), new costumes, some new musical numbers and even new 2D character illustrations. That’s a lot of stuff! Maybe even enough to convince some die-hard fans to buy the thing twice. All those upgrades should feature in the Western versions as well, which will be out…sometime in the future. New Details on Eternal Sonata’s PS3 Port [Eternal Sonata] More »Let’s Round Up ‘Over 49 Million Units’ to ‘Over 50 Million Units’
10:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Do you like numbers? Sony Computer Entertainment honcho Kaz Hirai loves numbers. In today’s strategy planning meeting, Hirai pointed out that the PSP has currently sold over 37 million units. That’s a lot! What’s more (or less, actually), the PLAYSTATION 3 has shifted over 12 million units since launch. Grand total: Over 49 million. We’re fairly certain that worldwide sales of both the PS3 and the PSP are over 50 million. That, and “Total Over 49 Million Units” doesn’t sound as nearly nice as “Total Over 50 Million Units“. So there you go. Sony Group’s Mid-Term Corporate Strategy Meeting [Sony] More »Just How Many PLAYSTATION Network Registrants Are There?
9:30PM Brian Ashcraft | In today’s Sony Computer Entertainment strategy meeting, Kaz Hirai also announced thrilling info about the PLAYSTATION Network. Factoids include: Cumulative Number of Registrants: Over 9.8 million accounts worldwide Distributed Data Volume: Approx. 86 peta bytes (equivalent to 17 million single layer DVDs) Simply fascinating. But 17 million single layer DVDs? How many Blu-ray Discs is that exactly? More data after the jump. Registrants: approx. 9.8 million Registration rate: 45 percent Total downloads: 170 million Data volume: 86 peta bytes Data Volume in Single layer DVD: 17 million units as of 2008/6/24 Sony Group’s Mid-Term Corporate Strategy Meeting [Sony] More »
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