Posted by multippt
Sony UK has recently annouced that they will release firmware 2.10 today. The update is available here.
The update adds a few enhancements:
-Ability to choose “Type 3″ as an option under Bitmapping settings.
-DivX (which is the main feature of the update) and VC-1 support
-Some refinements to Blu-ray features
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U.S. sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 more than doubled in the weeks following a price cut and the launch of a lower-priced version, the company said Friday. Sony said it sold about 75,000 PS3 consoles in the week of October 29 in the United States, and more than 100,000 in the following week, compared with weekly sales of 30,000 to 40,000 before.
Sony cut the U.S. price of its PS3 with an 80GB hard drive by 17 percent to $499 in mid-October. It started selling a new model with a 40GB hard drive on November 2 for $399 in an effort to ignite demand ahead of the crucial holiday-shopping season.
Sony, locked in battle with Microsoft and Nintendo in the global video game market, suffered a slow start for the PS3 after its launch a year ago because of high prices and a scarcity of strong game titles.
Nintendo sold 519,000 units of the Wii in the United States in October, while Microsoft sold 366,000 Xbox 360 consoles and Sony sold 121,000 of its PS3 machines, data from market researcher NPD released Thursday.
Posted by multippt
Looks like the PlayStation 3 decided to catch up with the PlayStation Portable (PSP) on firmware updates.
Similar to the PSP update from 2.00 to 2.01, there are no feature releases in this version, but mainly bug-fixes - relating to improving game-play (no more freezes).
You can get the update by using the “system update” feature in your PlayStation 3 if it is connected online. Alternatively, you can download it from the official PlayStation site.
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Two new video games from Sony and Nintendo have players exploring jungle islands for lost treasure or skipping across the galaxy to save a kidnapped princess.
On the face of it, Sony’s Uncharted and Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy can’t be more different.
Uncharted harnesses the PlayStation 3’s graphical muscle to produce a movie-like adventure, while Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii uses cartoonish graphics and simple controls to breathe new life into an aging franchise.
The games also answer challenges facing Sony and Nintendo.
Although Nintendo has been selling as may machines as it can make, players have started to grumble about the lack of must-have titles that offer a more rewarding experience than short minigames.
That’s where Super Mario Galaxy comes in.
A product of Nintendo’s legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Super Mario Galaxy is being hailed as the most innovative and fun Mario adventure in more than a decade.
The portly Italian plumber once again has to save Princess Peach from the clutches of the evil Bowser, and this time his path hops across an amazing variety of planetoids.
Add in dizzying perspectives, weird gravity effects, and finely-honed motion controls, and you end up with a game that has scored 97 out of 100 on Metacritic.com and is expected to sell 16 million copies worldwide, according to online prediction market simExchange.com.
“It definitely captures the essence of what makes Mario so great,” said Jeremy Parish, features editor at gaming news Web site 1up.com, which scored the game a 9.5 out of 10.
“Some hardcore gamers might be turned off by how cutesy this is, but if you look beyond that, the gameplay is rock solid, it’s incredibly new and inventive,” Parish said.
For Sony, Uncharted is the kind of showcase game it sorely needs to drive sales of the PS3, which has languished behind the Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune puts players on the trail of a hidden treasure of Sir Francis Drake, the 16th century English privateer. It is set in the modern day but crafted in the style of classic adventure movies–think Indiana Jones meets Tomb Raider meets Lost.
“There are lots of sci-fi games that are very dark and brown and grey and sort of post-apocalyptic. We wanted to do something more lush and green and vibrant,” said Evan Wells, co-president of Naughty Dog, the Sony studio known for cartoony games like Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter.
“The goal was to create this pulp action adventure and make it very cinematic and make it feel like playing the lead role of a hero in a summer blockbuster,” Wells said.
Uncharted has an average rating of 89 on Metacritic.com, the highest of any exclusive game for the system along with Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, which came out last month.
“It is another solid addition to the library and I’m sure that for some folks that is something that would push them to buy a console this holiday,” said Billy Pidgeon, games analyst for market research firm IDC.
Super Mario Galaxy was released in the United States on November 12 while Uncharted comes out November 19.
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Microsoft on Wednesday showed off a new Xbox feature that will allow parents to set the amount of time that kids can play games.
The move is part of the company’s effort to broaden the reach of the Xbox 360 to include more families. The company also recently introduced a lower-priced Xbox 360 Arcade model that skips a hard drive, but includes a handful of casual games like Pac-Man and Uno. Microsoft is also working to expand its Viva Pinata title into a franchise of products aimed at younger kids.
“All of those things are starting to make Xbox a much broader gaming world than it was even six months ago,” Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices unit said in an interview.
The move comes ahead of an important holiday selling season, with consoles from Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft all now in volume production. Nintendo’s Wii has been the surprise hit, but Sony has dropped the price of the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft is counting on Halo 3 and other titles to help boost its holiday sales.
Bach said the ability to set time limits on children’s gaming should help parents feel more comfortable with having a game console in the house.
“At the same time, I think it does more than just make people feel good,” Bach said. “I think when we talk to parents, when we talk to them about things that would matter to them as a purchase criteria, family settings in general certainly make the list, and time controls has been one of the things people have been talking about for a few years now.”
This is just one of a number of areas in which Microsoft is hoping to make the Xbox 360 attractive to a broader range of customers than its traditional base, which Bach noted tends to be older than those that use rival consoles, such as the Wii and the PlayStation 3. There’s work that can be done in terms of game development, improvements to the console, additions to its Xbox Live online gaming as well as new types of peripherals.
Another thing Microsoft needs to do, Bach said, is find more ways to make the console cheaper to produce. “That’s something we need to do over the life cycle to continue to make the business work,” he said, “so, over time (we can) bring down prices.”
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Nintendo said it aims to launch its Wii game console in China and South Korea next year, helping accelerate its breakneck growth, and cement its recent lead over Sony and Microsoft. One day after the three game makers’ earnings announcements, Japan-based analysts said Nintendo looks well-positioned to win the race for top spot in the current-generation video game console market due to a strong software lineup and low hardware prices. “New game hardware comes around once in every five, six years. So making a good start is crucial,” Daiwa Institute of Research analyst Koki Shiraishi said. “Since the Xbox 360 was launched one year ahead, it is roughly on par with the Wii in total sales. But if you take a look at current momentum in net growth, the Wii is well ahead.” In the July-to-September quarter, Nintendo sold 3.9 million units of the Wii, which features a motion-sensing controller that enables users to direct onscreen play by swinging it like a racket. That’s three times as many Wiis sold as Sony PlayStation 3s and twice as many as Microsofts Xbox 360s during the same period. “We suffer a global shortage of the Wii. Our responsibility now is to deliver as many consoles as we can to existing markets,” Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said during a news conference. “But next year, I think we can bring the Wii (to China).” Iwata also said on Friday that he has no plan to cut the Wii price in response to recent console price cuts by Sony and Microsoft. “We are in a situation where we need to focus our effort on satisfying demand. I am not at all thinking about price cuts.” Sony recently announced PS3 price cuts and the launch of a low-price model to ignite demand and win back game maker support in the run-up to the critical holiday season. However, the lowest-price PS3, which goes on sale on November 11 in Japan for 39,980 yen ($350), will still cost 60 percent more for buyers than the Wii. Sony loaded the PS3 with cutting-edge technology such as a Blu-ray high-definition DVD recorder. But advanced components have driven up the price for buyers and made it difficult and time-consuming for game creators to develop PS3 software. In a major coup, Nintendo said earlier this month that software publisher Capcom would develop the latest version of its blockbuster Monster Hunter action game for the Wii. The game had previously been developed for Sony’s consoles, and the switch to Nintendo has fed speculation that support for the PlayStation franchise may be slipping. As key software for this holiday season, Nintendo plans to launch its Wii Fit home fitness game on December 1 in Japan featuring a pressure-sensitive mat that allows players to “head” virtual soccer balls and imitate ski jumping. “Wii Fit is probably going to appeal to light gamers, and it will be helping Nintendo to win more users,” Mizuho Investors Securities analyst Etsuko Tamura said.
Nintendo’s strategy to offer innovative but easy-to-play games to expand the gamer population has been a smashing success. Nintendo shares have risen more than fivefold in the past two years to make the game maker Japan’s third most valuable company. Asked what Nintendo plans to do with its growing cash pile, Iwata said the company may carry out a new capital policy in the near future, but it did not elaborate. “Nintendo has ample cash, for sure, and you may say we have strong cash-generating power,” Iwata said. “There is a chance that we will need to do something we haven’t done or we haven’t said in the not-so-distant future, in terms of capital policy, if cash keeps accumulating. But it is too early to say what it would be.” Nintendo’s cash and deposits totaled 912.7 billion yen (about $8 billion) as of September 30.
Posted by multippt
Looks like Microsoft should have sticked to the good old IIS6. PHP and IIS7 (in Windows Vista) do not make good parthners. When together, expect an error message in 1.5 hours time (IIS process worker crash). Of course, other than that error message that seem to pop up every now and then, your computer will start losing a lot of usable memory (RAM) each time you see that message. More »
