Posted Oct 29th 2007 2:45PM by Nick Doerr
Filed under: News
Reggie Fils-Aime, one of the heads of the hydra at Nintendo (figuratively speaking ... or are we?), was recently asked which titles he was jealous weren't on the Wii. Without hesitation, Fils-Aime barked out: "I've been very intrigued with Little Big Planet (from Sony). I don't know that it belongs on their platform." He then said Nintendo would like the first person shooters from Microsoft like Halo and Bioshock. But he never said those didn't belong on the 360.
Now, color us crazy, but is Fils-Aime implying that LittleBigPlanet would serve audiences better on the Wii? He does realize the graphics would get a pretty noticeable downgrade and that there needs to be a very open, accessible, and powerful online platform behind the game, right? No? Oh well. Sure, it may seem like it fits in with the casual crowd more, but the casual crowd also wouldn't build a level and upload it for their friends to play. What do you guys think? Is the PS3 the right platform for LittleBigPlanet or not?
If you've been wondering what Disgaea 3 will look like on your HDTV, we've got a gazillion new screenshots to frisbee throw at you. Yep. The sprites are still the low-res generally-recycled stuff from the last generation of consoles, but they do look like they've been softened up a hair. The level design is still quite basic, but totally smooth. NIS isn't taking home any trophies for graphics, but it's always been their gameplay that grabbed us. This will probably succeed in that, so the fact that we privileged PS3 owners get first dibs is icing on the cake.
We've also received word that a release date for the addictive strategy RPG has been set -- January 31, 2008 is the date for Japan, so if you're an import-savvy fellow, there's probably not much you'd miss besides the humorous dialogue. If you've played the previous games, you'd be able to figure this out. Just a few more throwing options and monster fusions. Oh, and be sure not to choke on any pretzels and die. The Netherworld would miss you.
While Sony is planning a video distribution service through the PlayStation Network, it could have a partner waiting in the wings. In a Q3 earnings call, Netflix executive Reed Hastings alluded that the video rental giant would like to expand its services online through a variety of methods, one being "internet-connected game consoles."
The Netflix president, CEO and board chairman said, "In terms of enabling the viewing of online content on the television screen, we are exploring a variety of options, including Internet connected, high definition DVD players, internet connected game consoles, and dedicated internet set tops, with a variety of partners, trying to understand the best ways to provide inexpensive viewing of online content on the television."
This could be a perfect opportunity for Sony to offer a robust lineup of content right out of the gate with a proven company like Netflix. Who knows, though, if Sony will be willing to share its piece of the pie?
Posted Oct 26th 2007 5:00PM by Nick Doerr
Filed under: News
Ray Maguire sat down with Edge magazine and talked about the upcoming surge of PS3 console sales this holiday season. Maguire treats this surge like fact -- we all expect it to happen. He's so confident the PS3 will sell this holiday that he believes in the UK, sales of the PS3 will double. That means 1 million PS3's will have been moved off the shelf since launch.
In addition to the sales of the console itself, Maguire believes that games will no longer be an issue this holiday season: "we're in the period of crossover now, where people will start to develop on PS3 as the lead [platform] if they're multiformat ... because of the Cell chip and because it's got a hard disc in every device, the way of generating games - if you start with PS3 - is you can create the optimal, ultimate game. And then you can knock out functionality to put it onto other platforms." Ouch! Well, since we have yet to see those claims bleed over into actual games yet, maybe something like Devil May Cry 4 will cause that statement to become fact. Who knows.
The official site for Game Republic's Toy Home is up and includes a whole host of information pertinent to its release. The game will be downloadable from the Japanses PSN Store from November the first and will cost 800 yen. Toy Home will weigh in at 629 megabytes and will support up to two players. Both of whom can play with Dualshock 3 controllers, if they wish.
There's no word on when this will be coming to the US or EU PSN Stores, but we'd expect to see it arrive sometime before Christmas. Is that vague enough for you?
Posted Oct 26th 2007 10:27AM by Andrew Yoon
Filed under: News
A former developer at Harmonix, the team behind the hotly anticipated Rock Band, had some choice words against Sony's PS3 in his personal blog. His outrage comes as the most recent in many public outcries against Sony's next generation machine. He tackles so-called "misconceptions" that PS3 fans seem to have. Firstly, he says that the graphics capabilities of the machine have been misconstrued. "Fill rate is one of the primary ways to measure graphics performance - in essence, it's a number describing how many pixel operations you can perform. The fill rate on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the 360, meaning that games either have to run at lower resolution or use simpler shader effects to achieve the same performance ... And I'm not talking about small differences here, we're talking roughly half the pixel pushing power."
In regards to Blu-ray, the developer criticized the lower read speeds of the medium. "Great for watching movies, but not so great for games. Getting data off the Blu-ray drive takes about twice as long as it does to get the same data off the 360's DVD drive. That translates into longer load times."
The challenges that developers face when coding for the PS3 have inevitably led to "sloppier" ports, where the PS3 versions of games on Xbox 360 run more sluggishly. Jason Booth postulates that "Getting equivalent performance out of the PS3 requires a lot of work unique to the platform, and in many cases, even with all these tricks, you still won't see equivalent performance. Thus, many PS3 games have simplified shaders and run at lower native resolutions than the 360 versions. On top of this, there is shrinking incentive to do this work; the PS3 isn't selling."
[Via NeoGAF]
[Update: Added "former" to description of employee.]
The Motorstorm version 3.0 patch has been released. In order to update your version of the game simply enter the "Online" section of the main menu. The update contains various bug fixes and feature improvements. The full patch list is as follows:
Added vibration support for the DUALSHOCK 3 controller with adjustable settings
Grid order has been randomised for first race in any online lobby
Finishing positions in your last race now determine your starting grid position in the next race within the same online lobby.
On-screen indicator has been added to show whether voice comms are issuing from TV or headset – As before, press and hold L1 (R1 if using control scheme 'B') to toggle headset output through TV or Headset.
Sensitivity Settings for SIXAXIS™ Motion Sensor control have been added.
Gloating Index' has been added to the Stats card – The Gloating index gives guidance as to a racer's online prowess. It takes into account the number of people you've beaten in each race and the number of people that have beaten you. Use the gloating index to spot the players to beat in each race! Try and rank your Gloating Index up to the perfect '10'!
Several causes for an occasional snagging issue which would destroy vehicles on suspension impact have been addressed.
Further fixes to prevent the occasional statistics reset issue have been applied.
Fixed an occasional issue with inaccuracies in Eliminator finishing results.
Fixed an issue where winners leaving Eliminator before race completed could cause issues for other players in lobby.
It's nice to see the Motorstorm developers still supporting and upgrading the game, even almost a year after its original release. Though we're getting a bit annoyed at the recent release of Dualshock 3 support for games when we can't get our hands on them until Spring.
Posted Oct 25th 2007 9:00PM by Andrew Yoon
Filed under: News
What kind of devilry is this? Even with a cheap $60 Canon printer, you too can print your own cards for use in Eye of Judgment. This potentially game-destroying trick will let you scan rare cards, share them on the web, and simply print them out to add to your collection. We don't think Hasbro is going to be too happy about this.
Will Sony come up with some kind of anti-cheat measure for this? Thankfully, we're pretty sure that the really dedicated collectors won't resort to such ... deceit.
After posting an interesting piece on Uncharted on the official PlayStation Blog, the AI and Animation Programmer for Naughty Dog, Christian Gyrling, responded to commenter's questions regarding a demo of the title. He said simply, "a demo will be available in the PlayStation Store sometime mid November. I don't know the exact date as of now." Demo in November? Game due out in November? It seems we'll get a demo a week or so prior to release. That's all, really. Gyrling seems pretty gung-ho about answering commenter questions, so if you've got something else on your mind, it doesn't seem too far-fetched to think he'll shout an answer sooner or later.
Dylan Jobe is at it again with another PlayStation.Blog post. This time to let us know that Warhawkpatch version 1.1 accidentally slipped out into the public. Some players in the US with the Blu-Ray version of the game were able to download and install version 1.1 before it had finished it's internal testing procedure at Sony. The update has since been removed from the PlayStation Network.
Anyone who installed the update is required to delete their Warhawk data from the Game Data Utility section of the XMB. Jobe assures us that save data and stats will not be affected. The real release of version 1.1 is still targeted for the end of this month. You never know, those extra few days of testing could make all the difference.
This could be indicative of nothing, but on the other hand, we may have several new titles for the PS3 getting registered by Sony. Probably along the downloadable line, the following names have been confirmed pending for trademarkingness:
Ember
SkyBlue
Carriage Return
Race Day
Strings Attached
Our verdict? Probably PSN titles if anything. We're particularly enticed by Carriage Return because when we go grocery shopping, it's always an adventure to return the shopping cart. Replace those with carriages, and you've got a winner. Strings Attached sounds like something that may be more on the artsy-fartsy side, which is perfectly fine, but until we know more, all we can do is guess and scratch ourselves.
Some eager Ratchet and Clank fans were in for a surprise when they picked up their copies from their outlet of preference yesterday. It seems that a glitch is affecting the setup process of the game on some machines which makes the hard drive appear full. The game copies some files over to the hard drive before it starts but if it thinks the hard disc is full then it will refuse to boot. The glitch seems to happen randomly but is easily fixed.
If this happens to you then you will simply need to add or remove around 500megs worth of content. Once that's done the game should load fine. Still, it's a bit of an inconvenience and we expect there will be a good number of gamers who perhaps don't venture online for gaming news and will assume that their copy of the game is bust. Hopefully the number of people affected will be nice and low. If you come across this glitch then let us know.
Posted Oct 24th 2007 5:15PM by Nick Doerr
Filed under: News
Insomniac just delivered their second high-profile PS3 title, Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction -- it's been getting pretty rave reviews across the board, so MTV sought out an interview with the dev team to unearth how and why Insomniac kicks so much ass. So to speak. After gushing over the awesomeness that is the Groovitron, Insomniac mentioned their ambitious claim: "We've bandied the Pixar name around a lot, in terms of our visual goals," and many say they have achieved these goals.
To boast the increase in graphics on the PS3, Insomniac divulged that on the PS2, Ratchet had 112 joints in his entire polygonal body -- the PS3 has given Ratchet 90 joints in his face alone. But of course, graphics aren't everything: "My game-designer side wants to say graphics don't matter and it's all about what the player is doing. But the other side is that it really immerses you in a world. ... Our burden is to create a world that is very convincing. So the fact that we can improve the visuals and the graphics adds to that."
The online options were dropped for this title not because Insomniac couldn't have done it (just look at Resistance), but "we were kind of disappointed to find that less than 5 percent of players actually played it who actually played the game for both Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Deadlocked." If any reviewers detracted points for lack of online, well, there's always a reason. There's plenty of details in the full story, so check it out if you want to learn about how graphical detail was approached and the possibility of future titles.
Posted Oct 24th 2007 4:30PM by Nick Doerr
Filed under: News
Key titles and features of the PS3 are the new approach for a revamped PS3 marketing campaign in the US. Gone are the white room ads featuring awkward and vague commentary about life, games, and a floating console. Sony hopes these ads will boost holiday sales by creating better awareness of what the machine can actually do and we hope so as well. As SCEA Marketing Manager Kim Nguyen put it: " ... the way I would describe the 'White Room' is 'thought provoking' compared to this new campaign, which is 'visually provoking;' you have to watch it several times to catch everything being shown. There's just so much the PS3 offers, and we're trying to emphasize that."
The games to be mentioned are what Nguyen calls "system defining": stuff like Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Warhawk, and Heavenly Sword. Interesting how Lair didn't make it on the list, huh? Anyway. There is also going to be a huge push for Blu-ray, moreso than last year, as well as a lot of deliberation about the PlayStation Network. There will also be some coverage of the new $399 PS3, but it doesn't seem to be a focal point for the campaign. What do you guys think? Step in the right direction?
As promised, Bethesda's expansion pack to Oblivion, Shivering Isles, will be available in retail stores on November 20th. This standalone disc will allow gamers who already own Oblivion a chance to experience the realm of Sheogorath. Shivering Isles, which is already included in the recently released Game of the Year Edition, features a bizarre landscape split between two sides: Mania and Dementia.
The Shivering Isles are about one fourth the size Cyrodiil, where Oblivion takes place. The expansion pack promises 30 hours of new gameplay. Players will be able to go back and forth between Oblivion and Shivering Isles whenever they like.
Just like the Xbox 360 version, the PS3 expansion pack will retail for $29.99.
While Sony is planning a 
Ray Maguire sat down with Edge magazine and talked about the upcoming surge of PS3 console sales this holiday season. Maguire treats this surge like fact -- we all expect it to happen. He's so confident the PS3 will sell this holiday that he believes in the UK, sales of the PS3 will double. That means 1 million PS3's will have been moved off the shelf since launch.
