Playstation Update

If you’re one of the masses of unhappy PS2 owners whose systems fell victim to the infamous “disc read error” bug, you may get something back from Sony. A class action lawsuit was filed against SCEA, Sony of Canada, and Toys R Us of Canada. The parties reached a settlement in the matter recently.

The settlement is still pending approval by the courts in both the US and Canada. If it’s approved, anyone who has recently repaired or lost use of an affected PS2 will be eligible to receive a check for $25, a free PS2 game (from a specified list), or a free or “reduced cost” repair or replacement. What you get depends on what “subclass” you’re in.

Sony, of course, is not actually admitting that anything was wrong with the machines, but states that a settlement was reached to “avoid the costs and risks of a trial”. Anyway…

If you think you might be eligible, the settlement website has more information.

From Gamespot

According to Games Digest, PS3Blog.net, and other sources, there is a rumor flying around that the PS3 may not play second hand games. The idea is that when you fire up a disc for the first time, it gets marked to play only in this particular console. The main purpose supposedly would be to help stamp out piracy, but it would also mean you can’t resell used games. Furthermore, you couldn’t take your game over to a friend’s house, or borrow his games.

I’ve never tried to pirate PS2 games, but don’t you have to have a hacked system to play pirated games even now? I’m pretty sure you can’t just make a copy of a PS2 dvd and have it work. Should this new rumor to turn out to be true, someone will have hacked the PS3 within about 5 minutes of its release anyhow.

Personally I just can’t imagine this could be true. I do see how game makers (and thus Sony) could make more money by stamping out the market for used games, but it just seems too suicidal. This would be a fatal blow to all but the most diehard Playstation fans, likely sending a great number of them to the competition.

Also, what happens if your PS3 dies and you have to buy another one? None of your games would work on the new console. Do you have to ship them all off to Sony so they can re-stamp them for your new box?

Someone point me to some evidence. I’m calling BS.

Ars Technica reports that according to a recent interview with Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony, PS3 won’t be released until a year from now. The Hollywood Reporter conducted the interview. They say:

“[Sony] soon will unveil a line of compact, portable video devices to fill the time gap before PlayStation 3 launches in Japan in March and in the U.S. a year from now.”

Seem clear enough. Japan gets it in March, we wait until next holiday season. Up until recently most were speculating that the PS3 would be released simultaneously (or close to it) in Japan and the US. Sigh.

So the question is, if it’s going to be ready in March in Japan, and Microsoft is introducing the XBox 360 in less than two weeks, why on earth is Sony going to sit around and wait to release it here for a whole year?

Steve Thinks speculates that it may have been planned all along. Since Sony can’t beat Microsoft out the door, they might as well wait until next Christmas to launch. Obviously the first reason is just that Christmas is a good time to launch, but by waiting an entire year, they can more convincingly tout the PS3 as a next generation console, superior to that old XBox 360 that came out waaay back in 2005.

I guess we’ll see how it pans out. Microsoft clearly thinks that the reason they’re losing to Sony right now is that the PS2 beat the first XBox out the door, creating a gap in market share too big to overcome. However they’d do well to note that being first doesn’t always mean winning. Witness the permature demise of Sega’s Saturn and Dreamcast systems. Unlike Sega, however, Microsoft has something like $50 billion sitting in the bank. They can quite literally just keep throwing money at this thing until they win.

So what do you think? Good idea to wait until next Christmas? Or should Sony be flogging the team day and night to get the PS3 out as close on the heels of XBox 360 as possible?

Yes, another game from 2001. I’ve been catching up recently on the oldies. I just finished it for the first time last weekend, and I was quite impressed.

While the graphics don’t have the “wow” factor you get from newer games, the gameplay is hard to beat. Camera angle switches can be a little too frequent, and confusing at times, but other than that getting Dante to whup serious demon ass is a piece of cake. There are enough moves and weapons to make things interesting, but not so many that you have to spend time memorizing things.

The story is good if you don’t mind a little gothic cheese. You are Dante, half-demon son of Sparda, the Dark Knight. A terribly evil dude, whom Sparda smote 2000 years ago, has risen again. It is your job to find the gate to the Underworld, and defeat this beast again. If you just pretend you haven’t heard this cliché many times before, it’s quite entertaining.

One thing I really enjoyed about the game is that it seemed remarkably unrepetetive. You didn’t have to spend hours and hours beating up the same old demons before getting to the boss. Boss battles are really the bulk of the gameplay, and there are a lot of them. You end up fighting the same bosses several times, but they change between battles (usually getting harder), and the environment changes as well.

Any serious gamer has probably already played this one several times, but if you haven’t, you really should.

2001 isn’t exactly retro in the rest of the world, but it’s really the infancy of the PS2’s life. I just finished playing 2001’s ICO, and it was really something else. The graphics were stunning. Not just technically impressive, which they were for a 2001 PS2 game, but artistically stunning as well. It wasn’t a terribly difficult game. It’s more of a series of puzzles than anything else, but there are mild action and platform elements thrown in for balance.

The story is that of a Ico, a young boy born with a set of bull horns (I thought he was wearing a viking helmet most of the game, guess I wasn’t paying attention to the beginning). Anyhow he’s sent off to be sacrificed, but due to some rather good luck, he ends up escaping this fate. He presently stumbles across a ghostly girl locked in a giant bird cage, who he frees. He then spends the rest of the game fending off smoky black beasts that come in several shapes and sizes. Fighting the smoky guys isn’t too difficult. You just have to make sure you don’t leave the girl alone for too long, or they suck her into a smoky puddle, and you lose.

Gameplay is really seamless. Load time is impressively minimal, especially considering the beautifully rendered world. Cinematic sequences are impressive, and don’t seem to intrude much. Figuring out the controls will take you all of about 30 seconds. You can run, jump, grab things, and swing your stick. Sounds dull, but the game is so well done that it doesn’t get boring. It’s also rather short at about 7-8 hours, but since you can pick it up for about $10 now, it’s quite a bargain.

Check it out, you won’t regret it.

Ok now this is pretty cool. If you update your PSP to the new firmware release 2.50, you can now stream video over your wireless home network, or even over the internet at a hotspot if you have a fast enough connection. This is an expansion of Sony’s LocationFree program, which up until now has been supported on certain Sony TVs/Monitors, and on their Vaio notebooks.

The catch is you have to pony up $350 for Sony’s LocationFree wireless base station and software. Attach this thing to your home entertainment center, and you can stream live tv, dvds, or pretty much anything else over the internet to your PSP or PC. With an onscreen “universal remote”, you can control most major brands of a/v devices. So basically you can log in, switch your equipment over to TV, change the channel, and start watching your show over the internet. Pretty slick. Now if they can get it set up so it can rummage around and find the DVD you want, that would be helpful. I guess this is when a massive DVD changer comes in handy.

I think this is a fantastic idea, but they should really let you do at least part of this for free. Logging in to your network and controlling your TV is cool, but most people aren’t going to shell out $350 for it. What they need is an idiot proof server that you can run on your PC, that will let you at least stream your own digital video and music over the net. Now that I would really be interested in. Or partner with TiVo so I can stream my TiVo shows over the net. Yeah, that’ll happen.

As you likely know, the PS3 will employ a spiffy new “Cell Processor” to do the massive graphical weightlifting necessary to render insane models like that of Snake in MGS4 (click to enlarge him, he’s pretty impressive).

In case you want to know what a cell processor is, there’s a pretty good writeup at cell-processor.org. Basically you have a bunch of tiny processors that share common memory. These mini-processors are called Synergistic Processor Elements (gotta love synergy).

In any case, the PS3 cell processor is going to have 8 of these SPE doo-dads. Only 7 of them, however, will be active. PS3Blog.net reports that the 8th SPE may or may not be redundant. Seems the official line from Sony is that it’s just a backup, allowing the processor unit to remain functional, even if 1 of the 8 is defective from the factory. This reduces waste, and cuts cost in the end, as they don’t have to throw away an entire chip if just one SPE is a dud.

There’s now a rumor flying about, however, that the 8th SPE will be reserved for security and DRM (Digital Rights Management). Perhaps Sony really doesn’t want to see any pirated PS3 games floating around. Or maybe it’s protection for some other kind of media. Or maybe not. Who knows?

A new budget line of PSP games, called “The Best” has been announced in Japan. The PSP has been on sale there for about a year now, so it’s time to start repackaging the old games and selling them for a bit less. Similar to the PS2 “The Best” line (that would be equivalent to our “Greatest Hits” here in the US), these will be older games that have sold well.

The first round of “The Best” in Japan will be:

• Metal Gear Acid
• Minna No Golf Portable
• Vampire Chronicle
• Mojipitan
• Ridge Racer
• Lumines
• Armoured Core Formula Front

Sony has not announced any plans for a “Greatest Hits” line for PSP in the US, but I would think within the next 6 months to a year we’ll see something similar.

I came across something interesting today. PS3Forumz is holding a contest where you can win a free PSP. All you have to do is register on the site, and post once a week, and they’ll enter you in the drawing.

If you really want a free PSP, post more. For every 30 posts you make, your name will be added to the list again for the drawing. It’s a brand new site, and there aren’t too many users registered on the site yet, so you actually have a chance of winning. I just registered as “gary”, come say hi.

For all you Matrix fans out there, Tuesday is your day. Or is it Monday? Most are claiming a ship date of 11/7, while the official Atari.com site for the game states in big Matrix-y type that 11/8 is the day. In any case, sometime next week you’ll be able to pick up this game. And it looks like it will be a good one. At long last, after a slew of Matrix games, you get to play as “The One”. The game follows Neo through the path of all three Matrix movies.

If that sounds like a bit much to bite off for one game, consider the fact that both Wachowski brothers served as writer/director types on this project. They’ve apparently tweaked the story line just for the game, and they’ve created an all-new ending. With video game budgets entering the realm of blockbuster movie budgets, it’s interesting to see the big name creative folks getting involved.

Anyhow from what I’ve read, gameplay is much improved over earlier Matrix titles. You’ll start out punching and kicking, but you’ll find it fairly easy in time to master more impressive moves. As the game progresses, you’ll also have the opportunity to improve your character, selecting from different attributes to improve throughout the game. In the end you’ll end up with your very own customized butt kicking Neo.