Games! Games! Games!

We do own a Playstation, but to be honest I have always preferred Nintendo's gaming products over that of Sony. Therefore this news will not really affect my own purchasing.

We’ve covered every bit of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core news that came our way since PSPGN’s launch last year. Now, for the first time ever, let’s take a look at how the game fits into the Final Fantasy universe.

Sony is hoping that PlayStation Home will give the PS3 a greater advantage in the next gen gaming wars, especially as it appears far more advanced than Xbox Live which may even result in some Sony PlayStation converts!

La pregunta que nos hacemos en el título del post, es la que se están haciendo los directivos de Capcom. Desde esta empresa, todos esperan que tanto la versión de Xbox 360, como la de PlayStation 3 sean lo más parecidas posible.

In tradition with console launches there is always a subsequent drought afterwards where a console company has to catch up. In the case for this article we are talking about the PS3 and the Xbox 360 launches and the differences between the two when you look at overall games for the first three months of each console’s life cycle. Before I get into the article I would like to say before moving on that for the sake of this argument Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network games are counted as games.

For those of you that don’t know the PS3 to be launched in the fore mentioned locations is to have a hardware revision (in order to reduce costs) that removes the hardware which allows for full back compatibility of PS2 titles. Sony have instead opted for an Xbox 360 style software emulation to allow partial (no confirmed numbers yet) back compatibility.

Sony announced last week that the first 500,000 Europeans to sign up and register their PS3 on the Playstation network from launch (March 23rd) will get a free copy of Casino Royale on BluRay High Definition disk.

The reason I think PS3 will win the console war requires a quick analysis of both competitors. The Wii has come out to great reviews, is cost effective and will no doubt be very successful. The problem the Wii will have is competing with the sheer power of both PS3 and Xbox 360 and their target market. Nintendo will continue to control the kiddy market as they did with Gamecube. They’ll take a step in the right direction but this battle will go to Sony.

There has been quite a buzz going around for the Playstation 3 systems selling on Ebay for much higher than standard price. This was to be expected, especially with the shortage of units and the time frame being around the holidays. The same thing happened last year to the 360 and Ebay sales were becoming gigantic — even topping out the current PS3 bids. Now that analysts are saying there could only be 150-200,000 units for the launch instead of 400,000 and retailers saying they won’t fill preorders, a lot of people are going to get ripped off.

What the hell is up with Sony lately and their extremely weird Playstation 3 commercials? Yeah, I know it probably attracts attention and is a good marketing scheme to stick in people’s heads but this new one is messed up. I don’t get it at all. How do these type of commercials show off the PS3 or want a consumer to play it at all? Anyway, it pretty much just focuses on a little baby who stares at the PS3 for a while. All of a sudden he starts laughing and speaking in Exorcist-type tongues and then cries. Reminds me of Saw III for some reason, which I saw yesterday night. Go out and see the movie if you haven’t, it’s amazing!

I understand, this is a 360 blog with more Wii news by day. After reading ign’s comments on a PS3 they had in their office recently in the UK I was a bit worried the 360 was gonna lose the war until I read on and read how SIXAXIS, the PS3’s controller still is not good.

Its good to read something positive about the Sony Playstation 3 controller after so much bad press concerning the legal battle over the force feedback and Sony deciding to include motion sensor technology instead.

The latest in what seems to be a never-ending assault on the very concept of common sense by those in high places at Sony Entertainment came yesterday as it was rumored by several usually reliable sources (and not denied by Sony) that the entertainment media giant is planning to restrict sales of used copies of PS3 games.

You will be paying £145 more than an Xbox 360 (Premium). £125 more than when you bought your PS2 at launch. Start saving now, Sony fans!

For example, 36% of IGN’s readership claims allegiance to the PS3 compared with 28% for the Xbox 360 and 22% for the Wii and 14% undecided. Take a look at those numbers for a second. And then take a look at sales numbers for the PS2, Xbox and GameCube.

Resident Evil 5 for the PS3: This looks so beautiful. I love zombies that can scare me. RE4 was so freaky! I hope that RE5 will be even better!

The rumor mill has Sony announcing the release date of their PlayStation 3 on the 15…so come back Wednesday, we’ll post what we learn then.

Skatter Tech reported a few days ago that the Sony PlayStation 3 would have a built in hard drive. This information was partially false. Our source was a Business Week article, which claimed that the PS3 was loaded with some sort of hard drive. According to the PlayStation Global webpage the hard drive is suppose to be sold separately from the unit, which means it is either extenal or somehow goes into the unit. There is no word on this from SCEA yet, but if this is true we should expect that Sony will sell a bundle (aka. value pack) that includes a hard drive.

Supposedly, Merrill Lynch, investment firm giant, sez that the PS3 will, at launch, cause $900!!! I don't buy it at all. You've got the 360 at $400, maybe less by then, the Nintendo Revolution is rumored to be $250 and then Sony shoves a $900 machine on the market? No one would buy it! Of course, given Sony's recent DRM debacle, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to pull it off...Link

According to a new Business Week article, the upcoming Sony PlayStation 3 is supposed to have a built in Hard Drive. The author of the article had a chance to actually test out a BETA unit. He claimed that they were including plenty of internal storage space for storing media content such as music, photos, videos and more…

My personal take on the PS3 is that I’m not going to buy one for quite a while. Unlike the PS2, there’s nothing really pushing me to adopt it - I’d rather wait and see how it’s received by the marketplace and wait until the price drops. These days I have so little time for games, I’m still having plenty of fun with my PS2 and don’t need a swiss army knife for my multimedia needs. (And if I did want one, I’d get a Mac Mini)

“Although we are participating in many CES activities with Sony,we have no new announcements on PlayStation 3 planned at this time.”

I saw this picture from Kotaku.com. Rumors say that Sony would be using Japanese models for PS3 yet that model in the picture is Korean. I smell something fishy here.

Essentially, this would mean that the RSX chip powering the PlayStation 3 is less powerful than two GeForce 6800’s running in SLI mode, which is exactly how the 7800 performs. Interestingly enough, according to Microsoft and ATi, the Xbox 360 GPU is more powerful than the same SLI combo.

Nakamura had some more enigmatic words for the development of games for the PlayStation 3: “developers will need to change their ways of thinking to adapt to the PS3’s architecture” as noted by the GameSpot piece. Does this mean the PlayStation 3 will be harder to develop for? How will that affect the launch titles of Sony’s console?

Finally, no one wants to keep a score card to remember which player they can pop a disc into; you want the disc to play in anything, whether it’s your gaming console, PC, or set-top recorder. Once again, the study results bear this out: 62 percent of respondents indicate they’d prefer a disc that be played in any of those three devices. That makes sense, considering that the popularity of DVD-ROM drives on computers was jumpstarted by the proliferation of DVD-Video, not DVD data, discs. For those of you keeping score at home, Sony has announced it will support Blu-ray Disc in the PlayStation 3; Microsoft, meanwhile, has not announced HD-DVD support for its Xbox 360, but rumors are still swirling that a future version of the Xbox might.

Analysts at Wedbush Morgan Securities recently said that Sony may delay the release of the PlayStation 3 until 2007 if the Microsoft’s Xbox 360 launch is less than stellar.

Well, I guess I have at least one more post this month. This story out of Sony UK give some interesting info on the PS3. It is supposedly on track for 2006 (there were stories this week that it would be delayed and that Sony was planning to ride a $100 PS2 for a full year if Xbox 360 was flopping) and that is supposed *nix OSes. In the release it mentions (at the bottom) "Linux and Apple's Tiger". This could be very interesting - what would have to happen to let Apple release a version of OSX that would run a PS3? It could one of the big things that was announced at Macworld with the Sony pres. And if it is a fully operational OS on the PS3, it seems that the cell chips will have found their way into the Apple line.

The PlayStation 3 was originally mooted to launch with a single (1X, 36Mbit per second) speed drive to run its optical media. But with the arrival of 2X (72Mbps) drives this autumn, it’s hoped that by the time PS3 launches in Japan in spring 2006, faster formats will be readily available, with potential for the multimedia machine to run up to 4X, costs permitting.

I have a ps2 and some games that I like a lot for it are the duo of Baldur's Gate games. They are wicked, solo or as a team. Finished both of them and I am looking forward to a new one (hopefully before the ps3 comes out!). I also have a compilation of old school arcade classics that is pretty fun when you're in the mood. And the Mark of Kri was one of my first, and probably my favorite.

Da qualche giorno su internet circola la notizia che il processore Cell (ovvero quello che verrà messo nelle PlayStation 3) è supportato anche dal kernel Linux, maggiori informazioni si trovano su questo articolo. Visto che la PlayStation 3 supporterà un HD da 2.5′’ (come quelli dei notebook) è teoricamente possibile installarci anche un sistema operativo basato sul kernel Linux. Il resto lo lascio alla vostra immaginazione!

According to the latest issue of Japanese magazine Toyo Keizai, Merrill Lynch Japan Securities has recently calculated an analysis that the production of a single PlayStation 3 console will cost Sony approximately 54,000 yen to make ($494), as of its initial release in 2006. We haven’t even seen a Blu-ray drive yet.

For a while, we were all waiting to see which developers and publishers would support the Playstation 3. Now it seems that Bandai is the company, and that they are in development for a game that will be a release title for the PS3.

This means that what looks like an Xbox successor, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 will be the only one out of the next-gen consoles that will have a detachable 20GB hard drive, which sums up to be 60GB less than what seemed to be the PS3’s hard drive. Also, Nintendo has not considered the Revolution having a hard drive because the console actually uses 512MB of memory for saving game data.

I think the Xbox 360 is looking better and better all of the time – I can’t wait for some real reviews to come in once they get into people’s hands. Is anyone actually considering the Playstation 3 over the Xbox 360?

The next one is the worst. It is estimated that Sony will sell the PS3 for… $399. That’s £220.72. But let us not forget, we always pay thorugh the nose for consoles. Let’s add the obligatory £80 onto that and we’re looking at paying £300 for a console minus extra control pads and games. So let’s add those. Let us say on launch you buy 2 games and an extra control pad to play multiplayer. Oh and I almost forgot, you’ll want a hard drive to go with that.

HD-DVD and Toshiba seem to have become increasingly desperate in recent weeks and it's become clear that Sony simply aren't interested in making a deal on a unification of the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats. This desperation is partly founded in the knowledge that Sony possesses a killer USP - the Playstation 3, whereas Toshiba has none. Now Toshiba are moving to redress the balance by forming a partnership with Microsoft that will see sharing of ideas and technologies, as well as the joint production of an HD-DVD player.

MGS4 doesn’t seem to be limited exclusively to the PS3, though. While Kojima states that the game is, at this point, only set for the PS3, he wouldn’t mind porting it to other hardware. However, this would require a large staff and lots of development funds. He also adds that if he were making a game for the Revolution or Xbox 360, he’d want to make something completely different from the Metal Gear Solid series — an original title that fits in with the market for those systems.

The Sony Playstation 3 took home the coveted Best Hardware/Peripheral award at last night's Spike TV Game Critics Awards: The Best of E3 2005. Also, Killzone deservingly took home the Special Commendation for Graphics award.

This is so funny. I hope the PS3 really does come with grilling capabilities. I mean Sony wants the PS3 to do everything else anyway. If it could grill that would really give it an edge over the other systems.

If they could somehow not include the harddrive but still require it, I'd be all for it. I'd much rather pay $300 for the PS3 and $50 for a 120GB hard drive than pay $465 for a PS3 with a 40GB drive.

The three developers of the Cell processor are preparing to release full chip specifications and software libraries in an effort to rally the open-source community around the device that powers the Sony Playstation 3. With the outlook for the multicore chip's use beyond Sony's internal systems cloudy at best, the partners are hoping to spark its uptake in applications ranging from HDTVs to supercomputers.

Microsoft's J Allard was asked his opinions on the Playstation 3 hardware. His response was quite contrary to reports heard from other Microsoft employees:

Q: What do you think about Sony’s hardware?

A: In the end, it’s basically a wash. I look at it and say it’s a wash. You can make the case for us, you can make the case for them. We’ll publish a bunch of details so you guys can all speculate but it’s basically a wash.

Interesting, so with all the advantages outlined here, in reality it's only a wash? One might interpret this to mean Mr. Allard is downplaying it to a wash, when in fact all signs point to Sony having the strong upper hand in the hardware department.

Microsoft is way down there at a meager 23%, while Nintendo continues their steady decline at 12%. What's clear is that more gamers want the PS3 than the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Revolution combined.

So I did compare the xbox360 and they do look pretty even, although I think the ps3 is a little better because blu ray can hold like 40 or 50 gigs or something like that. And has just about every type or wireless controller support you can think of, including 7 bluetooth. Going to have support for different memory cards including compact flash (are they finally realizing people don’t want to use their proprietary memory sticks? (although there’s slots for those, too)) and a removable 2.5″ hard drive (size wasn’t specified,...

Console specifications are a lot like statistics in that you can really change perceptions by paying special attention in selecting what you measure and how you go about measuring it. Microsoft may have been the first manufacturer to announce its next-generation console, but in order to gain that advantage Microsoft also had to reveal its console specs first--giving a fat target-list for Sony's marketing team. Do you really think that Sony would have even mentioned the 51-billion-dot-product-operations per second number during the PS3 press conference...

Finally, the Playstation 3 will support outputting to dual screens, either as a way of providing panoramic output, or of displaying additional information. Now, while the photo makes it look quite useful, remember that the PC has supported muyltiple outputs for years, and no game developers (or users) have really taken advantage of that.

I was reading my latest issue of Gamesmaster and came across an article on the next generation of games consoles - the PS3, Nintendo Revolution and Xbox 2. I have to say that what I read wasn't all good, it seems that in their desire to make better consoles with more features Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft may well damage the games industry itself.

A movie and screenshots of the upcoming Formula 1 game for the PlayStation 3 — looks absolutely fantastic!

Fully backward compatible with all Playstation and Playstation 2

Since I am a brand loyalist, and Sony has always treated me right, the PS3 will be sitting on my stand the day it comes out (let’s hope). It has been said that all the PS3 games will be in High Definition which makes me wonder how the hell video games are possibly going to get any better. Here’s only a glimpse into the capability of the PS#:

I may be asking too much of my machinery. Video games are about fun and community. Not sitting your bare ass down on the sterile paper at the doctor’s office. Will the next generation come with a hand sanitizer dispensers in them? Maybe it’ll just excrete from pores in the controller. I don’t want to live in a world where my video game playing isn’t 99.9% germ free.

These are shots from an unknown game which is to be released either for the upcoming X-BOX 360, or PlayStation