IBM

The Sony Guide to Committing Game Console Suicide

by

Step 1: Create A Technologically Difficult Console. Decide that games don’t really matter and it is console specs that sell new gaming consoles. Create a partnership with IBM that introduces a very fast processor into your new gaming machine. Since games don’t sell systems, it is no big deal that this new bleeding edge CPU is very difficult to design titles around and port titles to. After dealing with the new CPU you decide to throw in your newest form of optical drive that shoots the concept of a decently priced system all to hell.

On top of that, you force yet another media standard on to consumers, something you are already notorious for. Lastly, you decide that the internet is a fad and that people don’t really like Microsoft Live so you figure that there is no need to include anything remotely close with the new console or your business operation. →  Read the rest

Kutaragi is Kutarazy

by

Ken Kutaragi recently made it known that he has design ideas for the PS4. And the PS5. And the PS6. Based on Phil Harrison’s declaration that the PS3 is future proof, the PS4 should hit the market between about 84 thousand years from now and never. But even if you’re one of those cynics who don’t believe everything PR people say, you’ve got to figure the PS4 will launch around 2012. With five years each generation, that gives us the PS6 in 2022, a full 15 years from now.

Maybe Kutaragi has a knack for correctly interpreting Nostradamus, but he is probably just delusional. How could he possibly be planning anything beyond the color of the PS6 casing? Technology advances in fits and starts and is difficult to predict even without any unforeseen break throughs (cars, radio, TV, internet, The Clapper). →  Read the rest

PC Gaming dead!? But it’s so young and innocent!

by

In a somewhat bizarre turn of events, I’ve actually started reading a book. Yeah, I know. Simply amazing.

My friend at work let me borrow Masters of Doom, the book that details the two men that helped shape the PC gaming industry into what it is today: John Carmack and John Romero of id Software.

A very interesting part in the book was when Carmack, in only one night, recreated the first level to Super Mario Bros. 3 on a PC. For an IBM PC at the time (1990), this was an amazing feat. No PC was powerful enough to simulate the scrolling effect that Nintendo did so easily on their NES system, but Carmack created an algorithm that somehow faked the effect, calling it adaptive tile refresh. Basically, the screen changed only what needed to change, and it would be the starting point for what would later become id Software. →  Read the rest