One of the reasons I had been hesitant about Blu-Ray is that I believe it was Sony’s intention to win the hi-def war at the expense of their gaming division. The Playstation lost its mantle as top dog in the console war after so much success with the Playstation and PS2. I was unnerved at the decision to cram a blu-ray player into the young machine raising the price to a staggering $600 price tag.
All to beat the HD-DVD. Sony won the HD platform, but the once great Playstation languished behind the graphically inferior Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. Blu-Ray had essentially made the PS3 inaccessible to the majority of gamers with access to much more affordable options.
But now the grand plan is revealed to me and the floodgates have been opened. Amazon’s stock of PS3 Slims quickly sold and shipped and now has a 1-2 month waiting period for new to arrive. In their video game department, the Slim is now their #1 bestseller. Economy be damned, people just needed that $300 sweetspot to jump into gorgeous PS3 graphics and BD playability. As a fervent Sony supporter, despite my trepidation, I can finally start feeling confidence in my hometeam of Playstation once again.
There hasn’t been any price drop news or Slim news for that matter on this site as it’s all been hearsay up til now. But it is official folks, PS3 Slim has been announced at the GamesCom show and is going to hit at $299 with a 120 GB hard drive capacity. All of this will be comin’ at you in September with the 299 pricetag across the board for both new slim and fat versions.
I’m kind of jealous of this new tidy slim version, as my current fatty PS3 bloats my energy bill and turns into a toaster oven if my entertainment cabinet door is closed. Oh well at least I’m rocking some backwards compatibility…
Never really been a fan of super deluxe premium designer editions. But the state the gaming industry is in currently I suppose I can keep an open mind that they’ve gotta make some extra bucks somehow. And there isn’t a gun pointed to my head to buy the extra-special extra-priced Halo X-Box or this righteous Final Fantasy Advent Children PS3. The silver emblem looks right at home on top of this unit, it’s a 160 gigger and FF7:AC blu-ray is packed with it and it is a marvel of a CG masterpiece. OH yeah also comes with the demo of some JRPG called Final Fantasy 13 or something or other.
If I didn’t already have a PS3, or a copy of Advent Children…well…I’d consider it.
This bundle’s out April 16th in Japan so hold your breath.
With the PlayStation Network becoming more and more user friendly, players are becoming more involved in the online capabilities of the PS3. Some games even have a bluetooth package available to gain access to voice chat and some simply use their choice of headset for communication on PSN. Well Sony has finally released an image of their long overdue brand of bluetooth headset. This may finally give me an excuse to stop putting that particular purchase off.
Oh yeah, RUMBLE SHOCK! At least that’s what I’ve always called it. DualShock as you probably know it is back now on the Playstation 3. Among some gripes about some development decisions over at Sony, the choice to omit DualShock at launch for their next-gen, now current-gen, console was one of them. Rumbling always was a welcome surprise that added that extra sensation when getting stabbed by a faceless nurse in an abandoned hospital hallway. Or when your buddy lands that 8-hit combo and you see your character’s ribs get pulverized accompanied by tumultuous controller tremors. All fears are now alleviated this April in Metal Gear Solid 4, Devil May Cry 4 and more to be announced all in force feedback righteousness.
Now it would seem that the perfect videogame controller is within reach. My decision to purchase a PS3 over its competitors came down to a factor as simple as controller design. It had nothing to do with Sony fanboyism or Microsoft hatred. Neither of which I hold. It was simply a matter of a superior control pad. During every generation of videogame consoling, most developers take their controllers back to formula in effort to reinvent the wheel in futility. There’s a reason the Playstation controller has stayed essentially the same ever since generation 1. There’s not much room for improvement when it’s near perfection. Maybe make them black…with rumble…and wireless with a USB charge. I give you the Dualshock 3.
Images are pouring in along with a look at tons of extras for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots scheduled to launch June 12, 2008. Last week Konami announced that some key features had to be removed because the game could not fit on a 50gig Blu-ray disc. This week was the annoucement of a special Limited Edition ‘Steel Green’ PlayStation 3 and matching Dualshock 3 control. There is no SIXAXIS standard controller in this package. So it’s clear to say that MSG 4 will be full rumbling goodness.
Yesterday Sony announced since they took part in the Stanford University’s “Folding@home project” on March 22, 2007 that the registered number of users has reached well over one million users.
If your not familiar with “Folding@home”… it aims to understand protein folding and misfolding, and how these are related to diseases and many forms of cancer. When proteins do not fold correctly, there can be serious consequences, including many well-known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many cancers and cancer-related syndromes, according to the release.
Here is a quote where Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) talking about working on the project…
“Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users,” said Vijay Pande, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home project lead. “Now we have over one million PS3 users registered for Folding@home, allowing us to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures to some of the world’s most life-threatening diseases. We are grateful for the extraordinary worldwide participation by PS3 and PC users around the globe.”
The release also says that PS3 users make up approximately 74% of the total teraflop computing power of the project.
