Sony

Matt gets his PSP to run on TV, nearly wets himself

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Woohoo! I finally got my PSP Slim component video cables in the mail on Friday. I was a tad disappointed to find out that Sony held the release of the cables until only recently (the Daxter bundle with the Silver Slim unit was released much earlier in the month), but the wait has been worth it. I promised my impressions on the video-out option, and I always keep my word. So here they are.

First, a little disclaimer: games cannot be displayed without the component cables. Sony has released composite cables, but you can only view movies, music, and photos with them. To play games on your TV, you need the component wires, as the games are developed with a progressive scan-enabled screen in mind. They’re the same price, so it’s not really a problem. You just have to make sure your TV has component inputs (most HDTV’s have them at this point).

So now we get into the nitty-gritty. UMD movies look surprisingly good. →  Contains 10% more consonants than comparable articles.

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 9.21.07

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PSP outsells DS in Japan
Square’s Final Fantasy VII spin off for the PSP, Crisis Core, sold half a million copies last week. It also sold PSPs. Possibly not all of the 95 thousand Sony sold in the week, but likely around 80 thousand, which is how many more units were sold than the previous week. Sony’s business strategy should be clear – simply release a spinoff of one of the most beloved games of all time once a week and the PSP will handily outsell the DS in Japan 1.2 to 1.

Or, to quote someone from a forum I read:
“If DS stopped selling and PSP continued at this rate, it would catch up in 139.7 weeks (May 21, 2010).”

Does anyone else feel nauseous?

Home delayed till Spring
Good for Sony. I’d rather they take the extra time to polish Home than release it early. Nintendo’s Reggie recently mocked Home by saying something glib like, “I think that exists already, it’s called Second Life.” →  A delayed article is eventually good, a rushed article is all we post.

Dual Shock 3 please, with a side of rumble

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Well, it’s official, rumble is back. Officially dubbed the Dual Shock 3, Sony has “listened” to its fans and added the most basic of features to their much scoffed-at SIXAXIS controller. Isn’t it amazing?!

Yeah, not really. This should have been implemented with the PS3 before it even came out. This is Sony playing catch-up, but it’s not the cool kind, especially when they make people spend $600 on something that lacks an integral piece of the gaming equation.

And why did I surround the word listen with quotation marks in my introduction, you ask? It’s simple, my dear reader. Other than being clever/snooty, I was trying to point out that Sony knew not having rumble in their PS3 controller was a serious problem the entire time. They didn’t need to listen to their consumers to see if it was a problem or not. Sony isn’t THAT dumb (which is debatable, I’m sure).

What they did need to do was get rid of that pesky lawsuit they had with Immersion, the company responsible for the rumble tech that Sony used in their previous Dual Shock controllers. →  Fear the old posts.

Discs based gaming and you – Luddites and grognards

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I have something to admit. It will sound strange in this day and age, but I still get a bit weirded out playing games on optical media.

It really makes no sense, considering just how long I have been popping discs into trays to get my game on. My reasons are a combination of upbringing and perception, and if you’re bored or curious, I’d like to share them with you.

Reason One – Music

Very early on, when CD’s were becoming mainstream, I was young enough to make the false assumption that they were like cassettes and vinyl before them, intended only for playing music. Of course, young Christian had never played with a computer using a tape drive, so I was wrong on two accounts. In any case, thinking of a CD as a storage medium rather than as a vessel for music took a little while, but I came around eventually.

Reason Two – I’m a computer guy

The one place that I have never felt weird about using CD’s for non musical purposes was the PC. →  The Adventures of Cookie and Read

PS1 games you may have missed: The RPGs

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As you all may be aware, Sony is finally picking up the software side of backwards compatibility for its shiny new system.

Since the PS3 doesn’t have any good RPGs or strategy games of its own yet, I would like to take this opportunity to recommend a few rare games that may actually be compatible with the PS3 by now.

I won’t lie; some of these games are inordinately expensive by used-game standards. But even the most expensive doesn’t cost twice as much as a new PS3 game.

My intent with this is to show you all that the PSX was, in some ways, an incredible system; it may not have had the sturdy character of the N64, but even though I am fascinated with obscurity, I hadn’t heard of several of these games a few years ago – well after the PS2 had taken over.

Revelations: Persona and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
Since Persona 3 came out (I have been playing it much of the last month), it seems appropriate that the two predecessors that made it to North America be on this list. →  But the future refused to change.

PSP Lite/Slim/2000 Impressions

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To be hardcore in the video game scene, one must make a painful sacrifice. I’m sorry to tell you this, but you just can’t buy one system and call it a day. No, you must do what is necessary: you must buy every single piece of hardware that has ever been made. Yes, even a Nuon. So, with that in mind, I begged my girlfriend to buy me the new streamlined PSP. What? I didn’t say you couldn’t ruin someone else’s life in your pursuit of hardcore-ness. And guess what? The damn fool agreed to it! Can you believe that shit? Oh mercy.

So with that quick anecdote, here are my quick impressions on the new Ice Silver Sony PSP (the unit bundled with Daxter), officially referred to as the PSP 2000.

My initial response when I opened the package was how insanely light the thing is. I seriously thought it was fake, like some bum put the plastic casing in the box just to fuck with me. →  Some say the world will end in fire, some say in read more

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 9.7.07

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Molyneux takes a shocking stand – his company is more influential than its competitor
In a recent interview, designer Peter Molyneux said that Microsoft’s Live will be more impactful than the Wii remote. Molyneux was clearly kidding – would anyone use the non-word “impactful” in a serious statement?

Pretend he was serious. Is Live more influential than motion sensing controls? This is not easy to answer, partly because it’s comparing apples to gypsies, partly because the Wii is very young and partly because in some form, both things being compared have already existed for years. At its base level, Live is the internet. Should we thank Al Gore for being more impactful on games than Microsoft? If that’s too far a leap, what about X-Band on the Genesis or SNES? Surely Seganet was impactful as all get out.
OMG Nintendo copied Hasbro!

The motion controlled Star Wars Lightsaber Battle game Hasbro released in 2005 is more fun than most Wii games. →  Read Band 2

Sony sends IGN a Reviewing Guide for Lair, IGN realizes the folly of its ways

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Wow, how arrogant can someone be? Completely ignoring the fact that every single review for Factor 5’s monumental disaster says the same exact thing (god-awful motion controls with the SIXAXIS), Sony has issued a Lair Reviewer’s Guide for IGN, stating, in cold-hard PR-speak, that they are not playing the game properly, and that they need to open their minds and “hands for something very different!”.

Now, I could understand if Nintendo was the one doing this, as there have been many times where a Wii game would get the lowest scores possible on one site, while it had higher than average scores on another, depending on if the reviewer understood how to use the game’s motion controls. That I could understand. But because Sony is doing it, I can’t help but think this is more of a publicity stunt than anything.

Sony didn’t make this to teach the reviewer how to play the game, they did it to make them look like asses. →  A delayed article is eventually good, a rushed article is all we post.

The Hardware Honeymoon Is Over, Bring On The Games!

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I just took a quick peek at the Japanese console sales charts and I think it is safe to say that the newness is starting to fade from this generation of consoles. This is by no means a doom and gloom statement, it just means that now some game developers need to step up to the plate and convince people to buy into all of the new hardware floating around.

Microsoft will again be the loser in the Japanese console market. The Xbox 360 just does not have titles that Japanese people are interested in. Halo 3 will most definitely boost sales in the United States and Europe but not many Japanese gamers play Halo. I am positive I will be able to walk into any store here on the day Halo 3 is released and walk out with a copy of the game if I so desired. It is a shame for MS that they can’t find some way to connect with the inhabitants of this little island country because the 360 is a very solid console. →  Now with fewer vowels.

Dreamcast Mania!: What did we miss? – Headhunter

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What Happened?: Headhunter was supposed to come out at the tail end of the Dreamcast’s life. It still did – in Europe. Its US cancellation was a big enough deal for IGN’s Dreamcast channel to review the import, meaning it was as important to them as Shenmue 2. Eventually Americans got a chance to play it on the PS2.

The Game: Allow me to get bold and assertive for a minute. 1998 was the beginning of a new little period in which a flurry of Important Games were released. They reinvented series, changed genres, and refined 3d game design. It ended with the release of Halo in 2001. It isn’t that innovation or good games ended there, its just that, six years later, we’re still copying Halo’s formula. Where we once only had Metal Gear Solid for stealth and Medal of Honor for WW2 shooters, we now have countless games in each genre. We rebuilt some franchises, and then franchised the fuck out of the rest. →  WELCOMETOTHENEXTARTICLE