What is it about the world’s press jumping on the ‘lets stab SONY in the back’ bandwagon. It must be the age old problem that when you are at the top, there are people hoping to see you fall….. 

The press have always be quick to add fuel to the current minor woes of SONY. Delays, game list, price, availabilty.. They’ve all led to completely unjustified attacks. I think people forget that SONY was named as the number one brand in the US last year (!) above the likes of McDonalds and Coke !

Of course, one has to conceed there have been delays and supply issues and maybe SONY would have been wiser to have knocked back the global launch date to mid-2007 but , no, SONY wanted to please it’s huge fan base and get out as many systems as possible. Nobody can say SONY are not trying their absolute harddest to get the system out as quickly as possible.

After all, the PS3 is not a flash in the pan product. It is at the cutting edge of gaming evolution with a specification that not only stands head and shoulders above the competition but would give a many thousand dollar top spec gaming PC a big lesson.

NOW, Nintendo are directly claiming a scalp over the PS3 with the announcement of sales of more than 600,000 of its Wii video game systems since November 19, racking up $190 million in sales in just eight days. The PS3 is estimated to have sold approximately 200,000 units in the first week of sales.

Er, excuse me, can somebody point out to Nintendo’s head of America that their console is significantly inferior in functionality to the PS3 and, oh, costs half the price !!

I like to use the analogy of Automobiles. The Wii is a basic FORD with a few electrical bits such as electric windows and a funky design. The Playstation 3, however, is a Porsche Cayenne with speed, build quiality, prestige, kudos and luxury such as leather seats, Air Conditioning, etc. Okay, its at a price but you get what you pay for in this world and quality stands the test of time.

How can SONY’s Playstation3 be judged as anything BUT a success. Not only did the consoles sell out but Joe Public was paying ridiculous levels to secure one.

It will likely take a year or so but SONY will once again regain its place at the top of the gaming tree and all these recent snipes will become history.

So… nintendo and xbox… Lets have some respect! 

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Ebay saw sales of 14,675 PlayStation 3 consoles between the November 17 launch and last Friday at an average price of $1186, according to Ebay Marketplace Research. Between October 17 and last Friday a total of 28,233 PlayStation 3 consoles have been sold on Ebay at an average of $1370.

Amazing stuff.

The result of all this is that game sales were a lot lower than expected due to a LOT of people selling the consoles on. I don’t want to get into the moral issue of console speculation but so long as they END UP in the hands of real fans then I’m happy.

Downside: The online play is getting more crowded !

Funnily enough, the Head of SCE was asked the very question ‘when can we expect the PS4′?

He said that they havent even fully launched the PS3 yet and it was far too early to be talking about a PS4.

 

Since then there has been more talk that they fully expect it to last well into the next decade due to easy upgrades via software downloads.

Saying that, he didnt deny it outright. Although we may be talking about 6 years or so in the future  it is possible that SONY engineers have, at least, formulated ideas as to what the next Playstation will be capable of.

I personally think they havent got anything down in writing. I believe that they will see what new technology presents itself before even starting development on the PS4 (or whatever it will be called.)

Dont forget George Lucas didnt even consider making Star Wars 1, 2 and 3 until the new CGI technology was around to make it possible.
I reckon SONY will wait for a technology jump.

I dont think they need to change anything about the PS3 to make it last several years. As it PC based they can easily bring out Cell,  perfomance and storage upgrades.

I also reckon that the next ‘console’ will be 100% online based. Sure, you’ll be able to download games onto a physical hard drive but why bother? Internet connections, bandwidth and speed could be so good in the next 6 years ….

If we dont need storage and a place to put disks in then we dont really need a console. It could be just a small box that sits on an internet connectioin point, or sit inside a TV.

The only thing you’d need is  a controller !

…or maybe the controller could actually house everything you need!

Exciting stuff….

I expect my grandchildren will be playing hologames, like 3D holographic chess in Star Wars..
 :) 

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Happy days! Got a very pleasant delivery this morning:

Yep, yippee. Got the new PS3 special ChillStream controller (see this previous post), Resistance: fall of Man and Need for Speed Carbon. More on the controller and NFSC later….

Resistance…. I did the usual thing, opened up the instructions inside the case, gave it a glance and swiftly put it back again. He who dares wins….

The game loaded up pretty quickly and we are told the beginning of a story narrated by a woman in the past tense. The storyline is brilliant; The time is 1951 and it is the ‘now’ mythical and legendary tale of a WWII American Sergeant called Nathan Hale. The Russians (well, they were different back then…) developed and then succumbed to a virus that got out of hand and quickly spread accross Europe. The virus changed people like you and me into very nasty monsters called the Chimera with teeth and a VERY bad attitude, their minds set on converting all living humans to mutants like themselves. You play the part of our Hero, Nathan and proceed through the levels to a conclusion that I am completely unaware of…

I have been playing on easy level but I will start again on medium hardness as it probably a little too easy for a seasoned FPS veteran like myself… 

After each checkpoint the tension and storyline is built up further by the narrator explaining what happened at this point of time and how Nathan was involved. These in-game movies are excellent and you really feel part of the story. It gives it extra feel and somehow feels a lot more realistic than Halo as the setting is UK towns and villages with ‘normal’ humans acting out the lead roles!

I mentioned Halo as this game is pretty much a clone of Halo. This is not a bad thing as Halo remains one of the best games I have ever seen and certainly a good enough reason to get an Xbox….  The storyline is ’similar’ and the pace of play and gameplay almost identical. I have no doubt they used Halo as a reference point. The main difference is that the quality and depth to the graphics is far superior. Its the little details that count. For example, a bus rocks as you shoot out glass. In fact, all glass in every scene cut be shot or smacked with a gun and even cracks first. Evens car’s doors can be knocked off.  The detail of the UK place houses are amazing, both close up and from a distance. I guess the only detail not top drawer is the detail in the faces of the humans and Chimera which is hardly an issue.

There is an armoury very similar to that of Halo and other shooting games. There are different arsenals for humans (WWII stuff) and the Chimera. One cool action is that when a cemi-Chimera grabs you, you have to push him off by shaking the controller!

I was starting to think that the one thing it might not have which was brilliant on Halo is a lack of vehicles you can interact with…. Not so… About 3 missions in you are presented with a huge Tank. I jumped for joy when it stated ‘Press the Triangle to drive’!

There is a lot of action in front of me and I have yet to go online. I had a quick two player game with my middle son and you could choose different location and game rules. The online multiplayer game allows for 40 people which will really liven up the multiplayer locations. I might have a crack at it tonight if I can keep my eyes open from last nights 02.30 am Ridge Racing exploits !

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The PS3 packs 3 big punches:

• CPU Power
• HD (Blu-Ray)
• Wireless Internet

I have to say, so far I have been mightily impressed. It has proved to have THE two most important attributes for the job: Robustness and speed. I’ve been using it regularly for the last few days now and it hasnt come close to losing its connection plus it has operated at a very satisfactory speed. Sure, things may get a bit slower when the whole world is unleashed on it and demand for the bandwidth and server is huge but I am sure SONY have scaled in every eventuality.

Almost as soon as you turn on the ps3 for the first time you are prompted to set up an internet connection on the Playstation Network. Although you will most likely want to jump into playing a game, like I did myself with RR7, you will have to set some minutes aside for connecting up. The wireless card  in the PS3 found my home wireless network immediately and you are then taken through a multi-step process which involves telling the PS3 what wireless to use, any SSID (passwords), your full name and address details, chosen email and online ID. This online ID is important as it will stay with you and all your online game data is held against it in SONY’s database.

You are also offered the opportunity to signup for the Playstation Online Store which as we all now know will have a countless amount of goodies from game downloads to music and videos. However, it asks for credit card details for their online ‘wallet’ which I didnt have to hand so I opted out at that time. Thankfully, as you set up your kid’s IDs on the  Playstation 3 Network you can tell the system NOT to allow them to use your Wallet. Thanks SONY…  I can only imagine how much money they would spend downloading stuff without this protection…

I’ve only experienced RR7 online,  as you know, and its been both exhilerating and frustrating; Exhilerating in that playing online against a plethora of Japanese RR7 nutters is brilliant fun, frustrating in that I am regularly getting my ass whooped big time..

When you select online play the PS3 performs a customary network check and then will load in all your previous race data and settings. You make your way to a ‘Room’, press ‘Start’ to join in and you’re away. There are options to invite friends or previous rivals and you can set up your own room. The game starts really quickly and the overall performace was identical to playing it locally on your own machine. Brilliant.

I am waiting for Resistance: Fall of Man to arrive next plus one of those funky ChillStream controllers (see an earlier post.) More on those later !

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As I mentioned in the previous entry, I was only able to get RR7 due to availability problems. I would have really liked to have had Resistance: Fall of Man or perhaps Call of Duty 3 as I don’t tend to bond well with racing games. They never seem to have the stickiness and longevity that other games can offer.

After loading the game into the front slot i eventually realised you have to then proceed, from the menu, to the game icon. Clicking down you will see an icon for the game you have loaded. It doesn’t happen automatically, well not for me anyway.

I was a bit nervous about the PS3 anyway as its a fairly complicated bit of kit (I’m far more at home with a PC !) but when a game loaded on to the screen that came from the 1980’s with beep beep sounds I had a horrible feeling in my stomach that I was a victim of some huge international fraud…

As it happens, it was meant to happen and it was just Xevious, an old arcade classic, as you can see in the first picture. After dying within 10 seconds I pressed ‘Start’ to proceed to the main event. Immediately the graphics were impressive but I wouldn’t say any better than an Xbox 360. I guess being a pre-launch game that it doesn’t have the full monty of graphical goods.

Clicking down through the main menu it is immediately obvious there is a HUGE amount of depth to this game. It is definately NOT a quick arcade bash sort of game. It is a lot bigger than PGR, for example. I quickly got down to some arcade action which is probably everybody’s first port of call, not even bothering to read the instructions. I must say, the driving dynamics are very good and drifting round the corners seemed to come naturaly depsite being an old fart.. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks…

There is the usual ghost-car Time Attack but this time it compares your times with everyone around the world for the chosen car and track! (Internet connection neeeded.)

The GP section looks to have the usual ‘progress up the ranks’ scenario but, judging by the ‘percentage of game completed’ figures thrown at me, I expect to be spending a good month before reaching the upper echelons of Racerdom.

After a day or two of playing I realised I wasn’t getting very far, very fast and was really struggling in the the levels above ‘idiot novice’. It turns out that after winning certain races in Manufacturers Mode that you win credits which you may spend on your car in the Machine Connector section. There is a full array of body parts and performance parts to choose from and the better stuff costs a fortune as do the better cars. The extra speed I gathered from upgrading 2 car levels up with extra nitrous was unbelievable. The game actually took on another dimension and it felt as if I had been running through deep water previously… The game went from Manic to Mental !

Tips I can impart in my limited experience:

The cars are much faster with Manual Gears which are not as scary as some may think. Also, the car is much smoother by using the ananloge thumb sticks than the buttons which helps with faster lap times.

Overall… I am very impressed and my boys (right pic) are addicts already which means that I am not getting many ‘Road Hours’. 

More on the Online functionality of this game tomorrow!

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Oh, happy days!  My PS3 came into my life late last night….

Apologies for the crappy picture… Not a lot of light in my lounge last night:

 

 

First impressions:

Well built box with a nice handle !   I might not need to shell out 40 bucks on a protective carry case.

It gets children very excited. My kids had stayed up to see it. Only one had made it but he only got to view it only briefly before being sent off to bed!

The console: Its heavy, its deceptively deep, wonderfully black and glossy with quite an inposing amount of silver, more than I thought. Surely, the 20GB will look pale in comparison.

I Didn’t bother opening the instructions, just got stuck in. Power in, TV jacks in, controller ready. Pressed start and briefly pondered the ramifications of it blowing up….

Joy.. An initially dull looking screen appeared with a wavy line welcoming me to PS3 ownership. It was accompanied by a nice meaty chord similar to the THX noise at a cinema.

I went through the start up procedure, made sure everything was in English. There is a bit of configuration needed. Well, there was for me anyway. I needed to set up the screen resolution, size, sound options and user log in. Not complicated but a kid couldn’t do it.

The controller worked out of the box even without its cable. It must have had some residual power as it faded quickly so I plugged it, via its cable, into one of the USB ports to charge it. Once charged you can keep it in or remove the cable and play it from as far as 20 yards away… Of course, I couldn’t see the screen and looked a bit of an eejit standing in my front garden waving my controller at the window…

It didnt connect immediately to my home wireless connection and on a little investigation I thought I would come back to it.. I was  a little worried it would be frightfully complicated… More on that later….

So, I would love to tell you how I spent 10 minutes on deciding which game to unwrap and place inside the virginal slot but due to availability problems I only had Ridge Racer 7..

I loaded the game in and ……….. nothing happened. I was beginning to think the machine had a problem but when I scrolled, from the main menu, to the game section I could see that Ridge Racer 7 was listed there. Selecting the game brought it up in only a few seconds. There is a bit of pfaffing around about data saving but eventually got to a bit which allowed me to save data to the hard drive. Vrooooom.

My thoughts on the PlaystationNetwork and Ridge Racer 7 a bit later…

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So,  the madness has started…

A man gets shot queuing outside a store for a PS3… 

At first, I thought, Oh my God, somebody has been shot just for jumping a queue to get a PS3 !! 
However, it turns out the brave man was just confronting some muggers who knew the people would likely be carrying money.
I wish him well and do hope somebody in the store set him aside a PS3 for when he recovers… Good luck.  :smt023

The story has been the same, the lines of customers moving round the block hoping to get one of the 400,000 released to the whole of North America…

Elsewhere, the crowds got rowdy and stampeded for the shelves, injuring a man in Wisconsin and forcing authorities to shut down a Wal-Mart store in California.

Still, the appetite has not been satiated and we can expect Ebay prices to reach manic levels again….  The record being $15,500 from a UK buyer !!!!!    8O  8O 

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 According to the poll at www.playstation3.net the answer, so far, is the fantastic and highly hyped-up Metal Gear Solid 4. It has taken a quarter of all the votes for the selected games.

As to be expected, Call of Duty 3 lies in second place with Gran Turismo- HD very closely snapping at COD3’s heels in third. We would expect GT-HD to start leaping up as it is becoming clear just how fantastic a prospect the online gaming part of this game is going to be. Downloadble cars, lliveries, tracks, International scoreboards… Oh yes!

Not on the list but expected to be decent sellers are Madden NFL , Splinter Cell, Rainbow 6 and what looks like increasingly being a super game, Resistance; Fall of Man.

With games at $60 a pop it may actually be a case that a lot of people may only be able to get one game at first…..

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Well, its clearly not the biggest shock surprise this century, is it….

Can you remember the bugs that the Xbox suffered from at it’s launch !?

I am not trying to make excuses but it’s not that uncommon.

So, what are these bugs?

There are issues with compatability with the older, original Playstation and PS2 machines which cause problems with the sound or screen on some games. SONY have said it affects just over 200 of the 8000 games tested, which is a pretty small percentage.

Of course, the Press have been extra quick to bash an already weakened SONY but Sony Computer Entertainment spokesman, Satoshi Fukuoka, has already said that upgrades of the PS3 software WILL be offered. Howeverm he admitted that it’s unlikely that all the bugs  will ever get completely fixed.

It wouldn’t be so bad except that some decent titles are affected: The background music to Tekken 5, freezing screens on Gran Turismo and small things like guns that wont fire, etc.

You will be able to download the various software patches needed very soon so at least SONY have admitted and addressed the glitch in extra quick time. Well done!

Personally, once I get a sniff of the PS3 games I don’t imagine that the PS2 games in my collection will get much of a look-in !

Latest Playstation 3 Offer: Click HERE

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