People have a misconception about the current state of technology. There has been a move of the last 50 years of trying to put as many things into one device as possible. An example could be the clock radio (which works well) or the Gas Powered Toolbox (they took stupid and added danger to it). I think the hype surrounding the PSP Phone is a good example of how merging devices could quite possibly work if made correctly, but chances are will fail horribly.
How many people reading this own a mobile phone with a camera? Do you also own a digital camera? Chances are you said yes to both, and with good reason. 1. Why would you take pictures with your phone when you know they will turn out crap (fixed lens, with tiny pinhole to let light in)? 2. Your phone has a rated 5 hours of talk time. Now remove the battery life required to use you camera frequently and what do you have? You have a phone with shitty pictures accompanied by shitty battery life.
What has all this got to do with the marvellous PSP Phone? The PSP gets like 3-5 hours depending what you are doing on it (videos or games). Add the phone functions to the mix and it will cut it down considerately. You sit on the train, play your PSP Phone, then make a call to work saying you are running late, then message that girl from the club who said if you come 10 feet from her she will call the cops, and what you are left with is not much battery life. That doesn’t even include the pirated Lost episodes (or Scrubs if you have taste), and your music library (which is completely legitimate).
It seems to be about the device that do everything. Your mobile can already play games, and surf the net, watch videos and play music. When you actually watch your battery disappearing you will understand what I mean.
There are a lot of points I can use to further display a distaste for the PSP Phone, but I would miss the positive possibilities of the system. The PSP Phone could say, feature some incredible battery, OLED screen and a Cell processor that together will bring you a new generation of mobile goodness. The chances of that happening are about as high as the chances of Hillary Clinton becoming the next President (won’t I look silly if she wins).
Sony are talking about doing the iPhone thing with the touch screen that can change depending on function. Has anyone tired running emulated games on an iPhone with touch screen controls? Utter crap is all that can be said for it. How do you emulate a joystick on a touch screen, without giving you big freaking blisters?!.
The PSP can’t sacrifice anything more if it wants to compete against Nintendo. If it loses screen size, it will fail. If the controls get any more acquit it will fail. If the games take longer, run slower or look worse, guess what will happen? It will fail. Keep them separate, and sit with me while we watch N-Gage fail once again.
I wish I had a product which sold every 5 seconds. I might not but Nintendo do with there DS portable gaming console. This number is calculated on the 6 million DS’s sold last year in the US alone. That is around 16,500 a day or around 700 an hour or 11 a minute and finally 0.2 every second. Multiply that by 5 and you get a DS sold every 5 seconds. If that is for the US only image the number if you include the rest of the world!
For more info, click over to the Gizmodo Blog.
Who wants to be able to stream internet radio, schedule television recordings and use OPML RSS feeds (whatever that is) from your PSP? Firmware 3.80 brings that to the table as well as other things. Updated features include streaming Internet Radio player, video scene search, RSS support for OPML and pictures, 1Seg tuners can use an EPG to schedule Japanese mobile television recordings (only on the Slim) and PlayStation Spot now available at BB Mobile Point (Japan only). Is it enough for most people, especially anyone outside of Japan to warrant losing your custom firmware? Probably now sorry.
For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were awesome games for the PlayStation 3. Sure you have a few new ones that have been just released that aren’t so bad, but most of them are on all gaming platforms. Sony may have noticed that as well, with it now being cheaper to become a developer for the PS3, seeing there has been a price reduction on the cost of the Playstation 3 Reference Tool. If you are a developer, you can get yours now for $10,250 USD, half of what it use to cost! Lets hope that more game companies will adopt the PS3 and we will finally see some new and unique games for the system.
For more info, click over to the Joystiq Website.
Who wants to download brand new full version games, without having to use a PC or wait for Phantom Entertainment to make a comeback? That is where WiiWare comes in, which is basically full game downloads to your Nintendo Wii. Earlier I talked about the games that were coming to it and a bit of info on the system, but now Nintendo has released a few other snip bits that should quench your fanboy thirst.
Each game will have a size limit of 40MB, which will fill its 512 MB of storage pretty damn fast (unless they let you use either a USB HDD or an SD card). Apparently, the devs will release a maximum of 1 game a month, with a max budget of $US100,000. Seems to be a lot like Xbox Arcade and less like a cool new full featured game download service. Guess we will have to wait for the rain of game reviews before we can make any judgement.
For more info, dance over to the Kotaku Blog.
Firstly, for the people who don’t know what DiVX is, it is a codec which is used by most piraters to released movies onto the internet. It is also a very good codec for making very big DVD’s, into smaller more manageable movie files. It seems that Sony will be giving the PlayStation 3 the ability to play them back soon, which means a few things.
It means that, when compared to the X360 (though it may come soon), it will be a more capable media centre machine. It means that people can take their whole DVD collections and put them on the PS3 hard drive, and never need to put another DVD in there very valuable Blu-Ray drive. It means that game developers can add 10+ hours of video to a Blu-Ray disk and still have space for ridiculously large games.
Currently developers can now use the DiVX decoder, but there is no news when the rest of the PS3 owners will have the ability to use it. Expect an update people.
For more info, click over to the Joystiq Blog.
It is apparently a real thing coming to a system which, besides its awesome console sales, is very lacking in the game area. An announcement today at the Nintendo Fall press conference, has given all the children (and adults who won’t admit to it) a great piece of news with Pokemon making an appearance on the Nintendo Wii gaming console. The game will be distributed via the upcoming Wii Ware Service, which is a way to buy games online direct from Nintendo. The game could be titled either Pokemon Farm or Pokemon Ranch, but will give people the ability to grab their Pokemon off their DS system (only Pokemon Pearl and Diamond) and do things with them on their Wii console (not sure not exactly, but it will be fun and/or evil).
Also launching on the Wii Ware service will be games such as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Little King and the Promised Land (can you say longest title ever), Dr. Mario, Mojipittan, Joysound, Bomberman, and Star Soldier R. Each title is expected to set you back around 1,500 Wii points, equating to around $US15, which considering they are around $US60 in store, will be a fantastic deal (depending on the games quality of course). The Japanese launch is set for March, with no announcement for the rest of the world.
For more info, click over to the Kotaku Blog, and the Wired Website.
It is all real my friends, and about bloody time as well. The PlayStation 3, the console we lust for (if it had good games that is) and we would love to own, just to wake up in the morning next to it (maybe not that far). The price has dropped in Japan, but only by around 10% (on the 20GB model). That isn’t all either. You can now get the 40GB model over there for 11% cheaper then the now price dropped 20GB (you lose a few things but it is still quite a bit cheaper). The price are now 44,980 yen ($US384) for the 20GB and for around 40,000 yen ($US340) you can get the 40GB model. Maybe all these PS3 changes will have the same affect as the PSP Slim?
For a lot more info, fly over to the PCMag Website.
Good news for all you Aussies like Mwah (me for those who don’t speak idiot) who also can’t afford the $AU999 PS3. It is now confirmed that Australia will also get the new 40GB model, which other then being cut down by a bit, will also be a few hundred dollars cheaper. Though it isn’t cheap enough yet to compete with the Wii or X360, it will sell for $AU699. I think it is still about $100 overpriced. Should hit shelves on the 11th of this month (October).
For more info, waddle over to the Kotaku Blog.
It seems that it isn’t dead in the grave like everyone expected it to be, but still on the very beautiful drawing board of Kazunori Yamauchi. Though he has said it won’t be out before the PS3 version (GT5), he did says it is coming still. Until then you always have that emulated version don’t you?
For more info, drive over to the Kotaku Blog.