Since 22nd of December Microsoft's Xbox Live has been experiencing technical difficulties. The situation got worse by Christmas and we can safely assume that users may experience even worse problems by the New Year.

The issues have been acknowledged on Major Nelson's blog, whose blog itself has been experiencing traffic overload.

It's a bit weird why the software giant was not able to anticipate the load and prepare redundant servers or whatever there is. Anyhow, I believe the engineers are working at their best to fix the problems so that users enjoy smooth and uninterrupted experience.

Posted by George S. at 10:17 AM | 0 comments  

Labels: Microsoft, XBox

What makes Nintendo Wii so successful? One of the factors is the motion sensitive controllers. What makes Xbox such a cool gaming console? Cool graphics and great titles. What if Xbox 360 had motion sensitive controllers? Wow, that would make the box even better.

It shall not be a surprise that Microsoft along with Gyration (California based company) is building some sort of motion sensitive controllers for Xbox 360.

A while ago rumors and some images have hit the Internet. Folks at XboxFamily.com doubt that those images are new. It is believed that the images date back to 2001.

However, we can safely assume that at some point we will see motion sensitive controllers for Xbox.

Posted by George S. at 12:26 PM | 0 comments  

Labels: XBox

PlayStation Store Cards have been noticed in stores. According to Kotaku, the card was spotted for sale in stores on the US Army base in Aberdeen, Maryland.


Only a $20 value card was noticed shown on the image.





Some people find these cards a dumb idea. However, there are some good points about it. First, imagine that the PlayStation store does not accept your card. I know some people who have this problem. Second, with this card there is no need to enter your card number. Well, it's Sony but anyway if you don't have a credit protection, it's a good idea to use the prepaid store card and not the credit card. Finally, PlayStation Store Card can turn out to be a nice little gift.


So, it's not that dumb idea as it looked initially.



Source: http://kotaku.com/337485/playstation-store-cards-already-in-the-wild

Posted by George S. at 10:00 AM | 0 comments  

Labels: PlayStation

Recently I've come across an interesting site - Allpspgames.com. As you may guess from the title of this post and the name of the site, the site offers PSP games download for free.

Well, it's not fully free though. Joining the site is not free. However, once you join the site, the downloads are available for free.

On the site we read: "Search and Download as many PSP Songs, PSP Movies, PSP TV-shows, PSP Video-Clips, PSP Games, PSP Wallpapers... As much content as You Want! Fully compatible!"

The website offers two types of subscriptions: Basic and Pro. The former costs $35 and gives you access for a year. The later costs $44 and you can enjoy unlimited access. According to the site, those prices are for a limited offer which ends on 27th of December. So hurry up. Regular subscription prices are $65 and $90 respectively for the basic and pro accounts.

Sounds too good to be true? Frankly, I don't know. Generally, I look at sites like this skeptically. So, it's up to you to join or not.

Posted by George S. at 9:59 AM | 0 comments  

Labels: PSP

According to Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) PlayStation 3 is gaining developer confidence. This is something that PlayStation 3 has been severely lacking. Hopefully, the more developers start creating good titles for Sony's gaming console, the more appealing it will become for gamers.

Sony on its own is doing maximum to make the console feature-rich. Sony has recently released firmware update version 2.10 for the PlayStation 3. The most interesting new feature added to the update is support for DivX files. Thus, PlayStation 3 has caught up with Xbox 360 in terms of media capabilities.

Another interesting feature introduced in this update is a voice changer feature, allowing users to change the pitch of their voice in chat.

Some PlayStation 3 users have found out that the firmware update also includes the ability to play PS1 games on PSP via Remote Play.

Interestingly, on the portable gaming front, Sony is making progress as well. Sony Japan has introduced a free media manager. The old media manager is NOT free and besides it doesn't work on Windows Vista, which was a huge disappointment for me. However, the new media manager, which is already available for download, allows you to unleash the full power of your PSP's multimedia capabilities for free.

Posted by George S. at 7:38 AM | 0 comments  

Labels: PlayStation, Sony

There are rumours of SonyEricsson making a PSP branded phone. I don't think that SE will be releasing PlayStation Phone anytime soon. But someone has already managed to play PlayStation 1 games on iPhone.

PlayStation 1 games on iPhone? Sounds weird but it's already a reality. But wait, iPhone doesn't have any buttons. Right, the iPhone doesn't, however for a tough programmer that ain't a problem at all. The guy has easily got around this problem by mapping the PS controls to the touchscreen. Wow!

Posted by George S. at 11:12 AM | 0 comments  

Labels: iPhone, PlayStation

Yesterday IBM announced that the company will be able to deliver 32nm chips to its partners by the second half of 2009. This means that Microsoft will have a possibility to make a new Xbox 360 based on that processor.

According to the IBM's estimates, the 32nm chip will offer almost 30% speed increase at a 45% power saving.

Hopefully, Microsoft will soon reveal its plans for the CPU upgrade for its popular gaming console.

Posted by George S. at 11:04 AM | 0 comments  

Labels: IBM, Microsoft, XBox

It's not a secret the new PSP, as well as the old PSP with the latest firmware do support external cameras. But what about the one mentioned in the title of this post? Yes, the internal. If you think it is something out of the range of possibility, then there are certainly some folks out there proving that it's quite possible. Just watch the video below. Those guys do amazing things and I don't think this is the limit of modders.

Posted by George S. at 6:12 PM | 1 comments  

Labels: PSP

What do the Sony Aibo robot and Sony PlayStation have in common? Yes, both of them are toys in some ways. However, in the near future those two devices may become close friends. At least there are some rumours about this, according to Stuff Magazine.

Nobody knows for sure how this friendship between PlayStation, PSP and the Aibo Robot will work however there are speculations that you will be able to download new personalities for the Aibo Robot from the PlayStation Store via the PlayStation 3 and then upload them to your metallic friend. You will then be able to control the Aibo Robot with your PSP via Wi-Fi. At the same time, your metallic friend will be sending a video signal from the new Aibo’s head mounted cam to your PlayStation 3 for watching on TV.

I think this is an excellent strategy for Sony. Men are ruled by toys, somehow said Napoleon. We all like toys and many would not mind spending a grand or two on getting a cool arrangement between a metallic pet, the "best" console and the "coolest" portable gaming device.

On this I must stop writing post and feed my dog... not metallic, so far :)

Posted by George S. at 5:46 PM | 0 comments  

Labels: PlayStation

Recently a colleague of mine mentioned that he was going to buy a PlayStation 3. When I asked the reason, he told me: "why not"? After all, PlayStation 3 is an extremely powerful computing machine and it can be successfully used not only for gaming. Ironically, so far, PlayStation has found the most effective usage in every computing task but gaming. I've tried to cover every such case demonstrating the impressive power of the PlayStation 3's Cell chip at work and let's look at them below.

First, it was Stanford University's Folding (at) Home program where over 600,000 PlayStation 3s have been connected to the program delivering a petaflop performance to the university's network.

Another person successfully using PlayStation 3 for scientific purposes was an astrophysicist Dr. Gaurav Khanna, who has assembled a computer consisting of 8 PlayStation 3s, run by Linux.

Jayram Moorkanikara, Jeff Furlong and Matt Johnson, along with two students from Dartmouth College, have hooked up three PlayStation 3s to reproduce human brain functions. Their solution was able to reproduce visual processing.

And now we have one more successful case of PlayStation 3's power. Security researcher Nick Breese used a PlayStation 3 to crack supposedly strong eight-character passwords in hours. Passwords like this are very common for securing Microsoft Office files, PDFs or ZIP archives.

PlayStation 3's Cell processor can perform computations 100 times faster than a powerful Intel chip. The very architecture of the Cell processor delivers this enormous computing power.

Well, all these is fine. But the main question still remains open. When will PlayStation 3 become a gaming machine in the first place?

Posted by George S. at 7:08 AM | 0 comments  

Labels: PlayStation