Gear Live | High tech gadget and consumer electronics news, opinions, and trends.

STICKY POST

Find Our Latest Video Reviews on YouTube!

If you want to stay on top of all of our video reviews of the latest tech, be sure to check out and subscribe to the Gear Live YouTube channel, hosted by Andru Edwards! It’s free!

Sony’s Online Service To Use Xfire?

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, PlayStation 3,

Xfire One of Sony’s goals for the Playstation 3 is to manage online gaming with a unified service on par with Microsoft’s Xbox Live offering. Few details have emerged for the service, other than Sony’s desire to make their online matching component free. 1up has started investigating Sony’s online service, and has uncovered a few interesting details, and they believe that when online gaming comes to the Playstation 3, it will be based around the Xfire gaming service.

First, Viacom announced that a deal has been signed between Sony and Xfire, for a version of the platform for the PS3. According to 1up, neither company has denied the statement. If true, this is basically the smoking gun that would point to this partnership. Further, according to 1up’s report, Sony’s launch title, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom is now appearing in the PC client’s configuration files. Looking at the capabilities of the Xfire service on the PC, it appears that much of the functionality of Xbox Live is matched by Xfire’s offering, and would make a good launch point for the service. In addition, this could theoretically open the door for PC and Playstation 3 online gaming. Certainly, with the details available, it seems that some form of the Xfire service will be hitting the Playstation 3, but how the service will integrate with Sony’s overall offerings is still unclear.

Update: GameDaily talked with David Karraker at SCEA, and he clarified that the deal was currently limited to Sony Online Entertainment, and not the Playstation 3 platform as a whole.

Sony Announces PS3 Ratio, PSP Bundle

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, PlayStation 3, PSP,

PS3 According to a report on GameDaily, Sony has started to set down the details of their Playstation 3 product launch this November. The ratio of PS3 Premium to Core units was announced, with the $600 Premium consoles taking up roughly 80 percent of the launch quantities. While final assembly of the console isn’t scheduled until the end of September, Sony still believes they will be able to ship another 800,000 units by the end of the year to the United States. Given that Sony plans on having 2.4 million consoles shipped by the end of 2006, this would indicate that Japan will see another 1.1 million Playstation 3 consoles delivered between November 11 and December 31. If Sony can’t scale up Blu-Ray diode production to match demand, though, this number would be in jeopardy.

Sony also announced that they planned to focus on highlighting the PSP’s non-gaming features, and they planned to release a new bundle by the end of the year. No pricing was set on the bundle.

First PS3 Box Art Surfaces, Surprise: Scantily Clad Women

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Action, Corporate News, PlayStation 3, Screenshots,

There you have it folks, the first shot of Playstation 3 box art for the upcoming Dark Kingdom, complete with boobs, swords, and the strange PS3 Spiderman font! With pictures like this, it’s enough to make you wonder why the PS3 needs such amazing cloth physics - everybody’s going to be wearing skin-tight leather anyway!!! Plus, is it me, or does having the PS3 logo along the side bring back fond memories of ye olde Genesis game packaging? It’ll be interesting to see if Sony tries to squeeze PS3 games into the same ridiculously-thin boxes that Blu-Ray discs use - if I had to guess, it doesn’t look like there’s enough room in those for a meaty instruction manual.

Can’t wait to see these on store shelves! (And more importantly, I especially can’t wait to see what the price is!)

Latest Gear Live Videos

Subscribe:

YouTube

iTunes High Definition

iTunes Standard Version

RSS

Sony Releases New PS3 Screenshots

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Action, Fighting, PlayStation 3, Screenshots, Simulation, Sports,

Ahead of the upcoming Tokyo Game Show, Sony has released a ton of high resolution screen shots from some of the games they will be showing at the Tokyo Game Show, and Game Watch has them all online. Many of the screens look like 720P screen grabs. Among the new screen shots shown are a couple of shots of a game tentatively titled Afrika. Lair, the dragon-based action adventure was also updated, and apparently the game is now supporting the Playstation 3 tilt controller. Gamers can also check out screen shots of the upcoming Unknown Realms title from Game Republic and Formula One Championship. Finally, Sony also released a bunch of screens for both Heavenly Sword and MotorStorm. MotorStorm and Formula One both look remarkable well-detailed at this point, and the action shots of Heavenly Sword also show promise. Of course, one can not determine framerate from a still, but the games do look like they are in better shape than Sony’s hardware production.

European Sony Fans Have Had Enough, ThisIsWaiting.com Launches

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Hardware, Internet, PlayStation 3, Politics,

It took less than 24 hours, and now gamers the world ‘round to have a place to vent their PS3 frustrations in Photoshop form. Parodying the marketing slogan for the PlayStation 3, “This is Living”, ThisIsWaiting.com gives users the ability to upload their own anti-Sony images and have them appear on the front page.

It should be noted that the owners of ThisIsWaiting.com appear to also own the wii60.com domain, which has been encouraging users for a while to get a Wii and Xbox 360 for the price of a PS3. So, obviously, these folks are a bit biased. Still, there’s some hilarity to be seen on the frontpage, and some creative venting of anger.

Reactions To PS3 Announcement

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360,

PS3 Dean Takahashi at Mercury News has put together a preview of the story to be published about what the PS3 delay and hardware shortage may mean for Sony and the rest of the industry. The most significant impact seen, of course, will be in the European territory. Missing the holiday launch there means that Microsoft and Nintendo will have a great opportunity to grow marketshare over the next six months. Takahashi was also able to talk with Sony’s new director of communications, David Karraker, particularly about why Sony sat so long on the news. Karraker laid the blame on Kutaragi’s management style, saying that Kutaragi, “pushes his internal teams to hit the numbers. When it became clear we couldn’t hit the numbers, Ken revised it.” Karraker also reiterated that the shortage is solely tied to blue-diode lasers and not any other component, and stated that production of the console will start at the end of September.

Overall, this holiday is not going to be a rosy one for Sony. While every single console manufactured will definitely be sold, they can expect a huge consumer backlash because of availability issues in all three territories. The US Playstation 2 launch suffered huge shortages, and back then, Sony launched with roughly 500,000 units. Now, Sony is releasing even fewer into the US market, and it is unclear whether the company will really be able to sustain production levels if they can’t resolve their diode issues.

The other immediate impact would seem to be next week’s Tokyo Game Show. While Sony has been boasting about the number of playable titles at the show, game selection largely becomes meaningless if nobody can get a console to play on. What could have been Sony’s final public demonstration of the potential of the Playstation 3 before launch will now be tainted with Sony’s inability to provide hardware to the gaming public.

Sony Can’t Produce Enough PS3’s, US Will Only See 400K at Launch

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Corporate News, Hardware, PlayStation 3,

PS3 $1000 Bundle Remember all those articles about blue laser diode shortages and low Cell processor yields? Well, it looks like there may have been something to them. This morning, Sony posted the staggering announcement that their estimates for PS3 production by year end have been cut in half, from 4 million to 2 million. How is Sony going to deal with this shortage and distribute them amongst the various continents? In short, they can’t. The European PS3 launch has now been pushed back another 4 months, to March 2007. But the bad news isn’t just for our European friends… North America will only see 400,000 PS3’s for launch, and Japan will get a measly 100,000.

It should be interesting to see what this means in the end - if demand for the PS3 remains high, then this could give retailers a chance to reap extra profits by forcing bundles and other cost increases on consumers. It might not be so outlandish to expect the earlier-reported $1000 PS3 bundles here in the states. Then again, if retailers push the price too high, or if supply shortages are severe, then demand could wane drastically and many of those kiddies with dreams of PS3s dancing in their heads could see a Wii60 in their stocking instead on Christmas morning.

Read More | International Herald Tribune

Wait For It… PS3 Loads to be Slower Than Xbox 360, Says Math

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Hardware, PlayStation 3, Rumors, Xbox 360,

PS3 On Side It’s been a few hours since we’ve heard some new bad press rumblings about Sony’s seemingly ill-fated PS3, so let’s fill that void… This time, it’s not-so-unbiased blogger Ozymandias, a.k.a. gaming strategist for Microsoft Andre Vrignaud. He reports on some technical details of the PS3’s Blu-Ray drive, pointing out that its read speeds, even for standard DVD discs, will be slower than those on the already-released Xbox 360.

Says Ozy:

At GDC Europe last year Sony mentioned in their presentation that the PS3 Blu-ray drive would have sustained peak transfer rates of 36 MBit/s (4.5 MB/s) at 1x speed. Since then it appears that the drive has been upgraded to a 2x drive, which would enable transfer rates of 9 MB/s. Assuming a full 50 GB Blu-ray disc, at this speed you’d need just over 90 minutes to read the entire disc through memory. Of course, you can’t fit all of that data into system memory at the same time, so you’ll either be streaming a great deal (hard even with faster optical drives) and/or caching data to the hard drive. There’s a reason the PS3 is so expensive - once Sony committed to Blu-ray as a corporate strategy, they were also forced to bundle the hard drive in every box to help mitigate slow disc data transfer rates.

For comparison, the Xbox 360 uses a 12x DVD drive, which can load at about 16 MB/s, making Microsoft’s read speeds about 2x greater. In recent days, this has lead to an online blogging argument, between Ozy at MS and Mark Deloura at Sony, about the importance of this comparison. Still, they seem to agree on the fundamentals of the mathematics.

Says Deloura:

“Admittedly, Blu-Ray looks dicey from several non-capacity angles. Blu-Ray movies require a 1.5x Blu-Ray drive, or 54Mbits/second. Sony announced that PS3 uses a 2x BD drive, which is 72Mbits/second or 9MB/second. The Xbox360 uses a 12x DVD, which should give it about 16MB/second. That is significantly faster for games and will result in shorter load times. And that 12x DVD drive should be a whole lot cheaper. (Note that the PS3 drive will do 8x DVD, and even that is faster than 2x BD.)”

First the official Playstation magazine editor states she doesn’t want the PS3, now former Sony execs are agreeing that the PS3 is too slow?? What’s next—Kaz Hirai admitting that Dead Rising is his favorite game ever?!?

Possible Images of PS3, Wii Demo Kiosks Surface

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: PlayStation 3, Rumors, Screenshots, Wii,

Rumored Wii and PS3 kiosks Ah internet, how is it that you’re always one step ahead in the rumor-mongering!? Just when people were getting bored speculating about the Wii price and release date, you find yet another rumor to start!

The image to the right is what some are claiming may be the PS3 and Wii demo kiosks, though who knows where they came from or how anyone got ahold of them. I wouldn’t hold your breath though… there are roughly a bajillion companies out there that make a living off of creating tradeshow-floor displays and demo kiosks, and chances are Nintendo and Sony have asked several of them out there to bid on a proposal and try to create the demo units that the consoles will be housed in. However, I think there’s still some interesting information to be gleaned here - chances are both Sony and Nintendo gave specifications about what the demo kiosks should hold and how they’re set up… and with that in mind it’s interesting to note that the Nintendo kiosk doesn’t include the nunchuk attachment for the Wiimote, and that the Sony booth appears to have corded controllers attached to it. Could those even be PS2 controllers that don’t have the built-in tilt sensor?

While we’re doubtful that these will resemble the final forms of these kiosks, it’ll be interesting to see just how much of each console’s functionality will be present in their demo kiosks. Will Wii players be able to try out games that use the nunchuk? And will PS3 players be able to test out the tilt sensing capabilities of the new controller? Right now it’s looking like the answer to both those questions is “No.”

Assassin’s Creed Confirmed For PC

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: PC, PlayStation 3, Ubisoft, Xbox 360,

Xbox 360 owners have been upturning stones all over the Internet trying to get confirmation that Ubisoft’s upcoming action game, Assassin’s Creed would no longer be a Playstation 3 exclusive and would turn up on Microsoft’s console. Ubisoft confirmed to Gamespot that the game would be multi-platform: Assassin’s Creed would be released for the PC some time after the release of the Playstation 3 version. Those seeking confirmation of an Xbox 360 release will have to keep looking. A PC version is nice, but is not really what gamers are looking for.

Welcome, Guest