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Check out this extremely clever game from Helsinki Polytechnic student Petri Purho

The latest firmware for the PS3 is now live and ready for download. The new firmware offers some important updates bringing blu-ray 2.0 support to the PS3, and even better, it finally gives the playstation multi disk resume, so you can stop play in the middle of a dvd or blu-ray and then pick up where you left off later, even if you change the disk. This is a feature I had sorely missed on an otherwise excellent player. For more details of what’s in the update see here.

One of the things that became immediately obvious following Apple’s SDK event last Thursday was the potential of the platform for games. Mobile phones have long been a substantial market for game developers but the majority of cellphone games are extremely basic with limited graphics and functionality. However, the demos that Apple, EA and Sega showed off at the Cupertino event demonstrated that the iPhone was more akin to a games console in terms of its ability rather than that of the traditional cell phone.

If I were Sony or Nintendo, I’d be getting pretty worried about now. Both have highly successful mobile gaming platforms, Sony with the PSP and Nintendo with the DS. You may think that there is no way the iPhone platform (which also means the iPod touch) can ever catch the head start of the DS and the PSP, but unlike the existing handhelds the iPhone and iPod touch are being sold by the bucket load all ready for their existing purposes. What the iPhone, and consequently the iPod touch offers is something new and unique. Like the runaway success of the Nintendo Wii, the iPhone platform brings the potential of unique game-play with its multi touch interface and motion sensor that could revolutionise the portable gaming market. This combination of unique input methods could allow game developers to offer the same sort of unique game-play seen on the Wii and to a lesser extent the PS3. (incidentally EA’s upcoming spore looks remarkably like the Playstation Network game “Flow” for the PS3). The iPhone goes further than just its control system though, it offers what could possibly be the most ideal combination of hardware yet seen in a mobile game system.

Consider if you will the PSP. It is a respected and powerful system, but it’s tied (to an extent) to its disk based games, and lack of fixed internal storage. In fairness, Sony is slowly deploying games via the internet to the PSP but currently that requires a somewhat clunky connection to either a PC or a PS3. The iPhone on the other hand has the advantage of fixed mass storage. While you can add a memory stick to the PSP, developers can’t assume it is there, whereas with the iPhone they can, allowing a greater degree of flexibility. Coupled with the iPhones impressive screen, built in networking, bonjour for quickly discovering other games on the same network, you’ve got one hell of a system. The only potential downside is the lack of a traditional control surface, but that is easily overcome by clever programming or at the very least on-screen controls.

Another huge advantage of the iPhone platform is that of delivery. Apple’s App store offers a very powerful way to get your product in front of consumers. Like iTunes it will do away with the need for physical media, and having it also available over edge will push the term “impulse buy” to a whole new level. Imagine you’re sitting in an airport and your flight is delayed. You pop onto the app store on your iPhone and quickly find the latest game to download and relieve your boredom. Having everything available from one place, which is always available is a very big deal. The potential for this is huge. The big name game companies seem to realise it too, and EA’s endorsement is big enough to propel the platform forward.

The only potential downside I see is availability. Obviously the iPhone is not everywhere yet, but the iPod touch is pretty ubiquitous in its international availability. It remains to be seen though if the iPhone App store will have any kind of region coding or if it will be limited to countries where there is already an iTunes store. It will be a shame if they do that because it will hurt the potential for the iPhone and iPod touch to totally dominate the market in a short period of time. Either way though, expect the iPhone and its iPod sibling to be the number one mobile game platform by this time next year. That may sound ambitious, but no one expected the Wii with its “limited graphics” to reach the heights of its success either. I’m sure hard-core gamers everywhere are recoiling at the prospect of anything with an Apple logo entering their precious market space, but as the Wii demonstrated, there’s a huge market for games outside of the traditional “hard-core gamer”. Let’s not forget, the iPhone does a few other things too.

From: PS3 Attitude

Phil Harrison is standing down as President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios. Kaz Hirai (President of SCEI) will assume control of SCEWW after Phil moves on, which is as soon as 29th February.

This came as a bit of a shock I must say. Phil has been pretty much the face of the PS3, certainly from the games aspect since it came out. Oh well, we wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

[Read PS3 Attitude: Phil Harrison quits Sony - returning to game industry soon ¦ PlayStation 3 news with bite]

From a BBC News Blog…

On Microsoft’s own stand at the show one of the demo consoles has a rather familiar problem - the red ring of death. There’s no way of knowing if this particular console was manufactured before or after Microsoft identified the problems with the machines.

They even managed to capture the offending machine on Video. Like the report says, the fact that Microsoft has said these problems are behind it and one of its own demo machines is showing it is pretty embarrassing.
[Read BBC NEWS | dot.life | A blog about technology from BBC News | Red ring of death returns]

Mr. T and William Shatner in a hilarious set of commercials for World of Warcraft.

The Official Playstation blog details some of the new features coming in tomorrows PS3 firmware update.

Update: PS3 Fanboy has screenshots of the forthcoming update.

Ha this brings me back to the bad old days of the Apple / Windows flame wars where people in the mainstream technology press used to write massive amounts of untrue rubbish every time Apple did anything, in their best efforts to paste the mac in a bad light. Since those same people now can’t seem to get enough of Apple they have turned their attention to Sony. Of course certain “blogs” are leading the charge. Take this gem from Joystiq (Talking about the forthcoming firmware update to the PS3)

“The update, well, it’s, um, it’s … (how to put this?) … it’s lame it’s not gonna ‘un-lame’ your crippled PS3. What, you cry, but it was supposed to trump the Halo 3s, the Mass Effects — the best Mario game in more than a decade! We know. Sorry, folks. At least you can finally use your Canon printers.”

I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware my PS3 was lame or crippled. Talk about flame bait. This from an online games publication in their supposed Playstation section. Why the hell would you put someone writing about a console who clearly doesn’t like the console.

But wait, it gets better….

Engadget, reporting on the same story uses it’s own brand of nerd sarcasm it seems to think it’s readers find amusing:

“Sure, 2.00 might sound like a magical milestone, but in reality there’s not a whole lot here that’s going to revolutionize your gaming experience, and sadly nothing yet to bring online communication and play to parity with Xbox Live and Xbox’s handy dandy dashboard. “

Are you kidding me? parity with Xbox’s dashboard? The same dashboard that shoves ads in your face on every section even though you’ve paid for the console and paid for the network service. Sure, I want parity with that.

I’m not trying to rain on any xbox fans out there. Hey, I have one myself. For me, the issue here is brutally bad journalism. Why do these publications insist on qualifying every piece of news about the PS3 with how much better they think the xbox is, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with the story. It’s the same crap mac users have had to put up with for years, and it’s as untrue about the PS3 as it was about the Mac.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I can not understand why for some people, in order for a particular product to be a success, the competition must utterly fail and all but cease to exist. Is the game market not big enough for more than one player so that people actually have a choice as to how they spend their money.

Ok, rant over.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Halo maker parts from Microsoft:

Bungie, the developer of the hugely popular Halo series, is to part company with owner Microsoft.

There has been rumors of this for the last few weeks but this is major news. Bungie started life as a developer of mac games, most noteable of which was the marathon series. Of particular interest is this line:

“Harold Ryan, studio head at Bungie, said Microsoft’s platforms would remain the firm’s “primary focus” but the move opens up the possibility of the studio developing for other consoles.”

This means that Microsoft could loose exclusivity of one of its flagship game studios. Will we see a return to Bungie games on the mac? More importantly, will we ever see Halo on the PS3? Interesting times ahead.

From Gamespot. This quote pretty much sums up how impressive that is…

“If proven accurate when the NPD Group releases its sales figures next month, the number would give Halo 3 the honor of having generated more money in 24 hours than any other American entertainment property ever. The $170 million haul would also best Spider-Man 3’s $151 million domestic theatrical opening weekend and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ first-day US sales of an estimated 8.3 million copies at a range of price points.”

Wow.

I have to say, having purchased my copy yesterday and only having a short time to play it, so far it’s fracking awesome.

For all those nice people who think the Playstation 3 is underpowered here’s a behind the scenes developer walkthrough of Killzone 2. (Courtsey of gamespot) All I can say is Oh my God”

This game will be a Game changer, pardon the pun. It is so far ahead graphically of anything that came before it that other developers will be scratching their heads trying to catch up. There are a number of interesting things being done in realtime on this engine that are impressive from a nerd point of view, such as real time color grading (on a 1080p picture while actually generating the graphics is bloody impressive). Even if you’re not a fan of first person shooters you have to watch this from the technology point of view.

This great picture pretty much sums up Sony’s new online game for the PS3.

Charles Arthur: Time for Microsoft to show some guts | Technology | Guardian Unlimited:

Looking at the insides of a console can be revealing, but still nobody can work out what the Xbox 360’s problem is

So Electronic Arts, or as they’re more commonly known EA Games have been pissing a lot of people off lately. Fist off, they blamed Sony for their rather poor ports of games to the PS3, even though other studios seem to be getting to grips with developing for the platform just fine.

It was a rather pathetic cheap shot at Sony and even worse PR on their own part because they openly admitted one of their products is inferior.

Then they went and backtracked a promise they made at WWDC to release new games for the Mac, all of which seem to have been delayed. A fascinating article on Appleinsider has some classic quotes from EA:

“When pressed for an explanation, the EA spokesperson said there were no definitive reasons available for the delay but alluded to a possible lack of experience with Mac development. This was possibly prompted in part by the company’s years-long absence from the platform.”

Oh come on, so you can’t develop for the PS3 because of Sony’s hasn’t given you development tools that are exactly the same as your xbox development tools, and now you can’t get mac games out the door because you’ve no experience with that platform either.

but wait, it gets better.

In the same article….

“In speaking to AppleInsider, the spokesperson nonetheless claimed that four ports of previously released titles — Battlefield 2142, Command and Conquer 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Need for Speed Carbon — were already available in stores. As of press time, however, EA was unable to provide the name of a single store at which customers could purchase any of the titles.”

What the hell is going on over there?

If I was paranoid I would think that perhaps EA has taken a sudden and dramatic shift to being overly pro-microsoft, and saying and doing some rather inexcusable things with regard to platforms that might compete with said company. But I’m probably just being paranoid, right? I mean, it’s not like the former head of Microsoft’s Game devision just took up a job as the President of one of the major devisions at EA Games….. Oh , no, wait…..

(Hey, I’m just sayin’)