Recently, I showed my Sony PlayStation Portable to my friend, Jeff, who's 38. He never had seen the hand-held game system up close.
He gazed in wonder as this 6.7-ounce "toy" played the movie "National Treasure 2" vibrantly on a 4.3-inch screen, then we toured a video game that looks and moves as impressively as any PS 2 game.
I showed him photos of Charisma Carpenter stored on the PSP. We surfed the Web (albeit slowly) using its internal WiFi. But he didn't get a chance to listen to music on it, iPod-style, though it has that capability.
All this, I told him, costs $200. And this new version, the PSP 3000 (released in October), comes with a built-in microphone so you can make Skype phone calls on it. Plus, the 3000's new LCD screen features less glare and much more screen detail than before.
Jeff experienced mild consumer surprise, or what I call PSP Envy. He asked if he could buy my PSP from me. No, of course not.
If t... More »
Another year has passed and in 2009 promises an amazing round of games from each platform and we are likely to see mobile phone gaming finally crack the North American market (whether it is through a Symbian, RIM, Windows Mobile, Apple, or Andriod powered phone), but before we can look to 2009 we have to evaluate 2008 and see how it matches up to the so-called Best Year of Gaming; 2007.
2007 was a year where there was no shortage of quality on any platform. With the DS sporting heavy hitters like Zelda, Puzzle Quest, Hotel Dusk, and Contra 4, the PC reclaimed top honors with amazing experiences like Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, and Crysis, but the Xbox 360 was the platform that took the crown with some of the PC offerings as well as it crown jewel, Halo 3.
Not to be discounted, the Sony platforms could not be forgotten either with titles like Uncharted, God of War 2 and Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow. With such a heavy field of courter vying for our attention, wh... More »
Winners of the 2008 Spike Videogame Awards highlighted in bold:
Best Independent Game Fueled By Dew
- Audiosurf
- Braid
- PixelJunk Eden
- World of Goo
Studio Of The Year
- Bethesda Game Studios
- Harmonix
- Media Molecule
- Rockstar North
Game of the Year
- Fallout 3
- Gears of War 2
- Grand Theft Auto IV
- LittleBigPlanet
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Best Team Sports Game
- FIFA Soccer 09
- NBA 2K9
- NHL 09
- Madden NFL 09
Big Name In The Game Female
- Dame Judi Dench As "M" - Quantum of Solace: The Game
- Eliza Dushku As "Shaundi" - Saints Row 2
- Jenny McCarthy As "Tanya" - Red Alert 3
- Liv Tyler As "Betty Ross" - The Incredible Hulk: The Game
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Kurosaki Ichigo of NeoGAF (linked above) has shared Sony's TGS 2008 lineup, as follows:
PS3 Playable Games Announced:
- Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock (Activision)
- FIFA 09 (EA)
- Street Fighter IV (Capcom)
- Biohazard 5 (Capcom)
- Lumines Supernova (Q Entertainment)
- Metal Gear Online (Konami)
- Way of the Samurai 3 (Spike)
- Sonic World Adventure (Sega)
- Socom: Confrontation (Zipper)
- PlayStation Home (Sony)
- Doko Demo Issyo (Sony)
- Motor Storm 2 (Sony)
- LittleBigPlanet (Sony)
- Resistance 2 (Sony)
- WWE 2009 SmackDown vs RAW (THQ)
- Gundam Musou 2 (Bandai Namco)
- Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm (Bandai Namco)
Not Announced:
1 Irem
1 Konami
9 SCEJ
PSP Playable Games Announced:
- Sengoku Basara: Battle Heroes (Capcom)
- Shin Sangoku Musou: Multi Raid (Koei)
- Musou Orochi: Maou S... More »
A funny thing happened a couple of months ago. After completing the PSP version of God of War, developer Ready At Dawn Studios posted a matter-of-fact news story on their site about how they were packing up their dev kits and sending them back to Sony.
The company behind one of the must-play games on the PSP was giving up on the system completely. Around the same time, Sony itself announced a new partnership program where universities could buy up PSP and PS2 development kits on the cheap. It would seem that Ready At Dawn isn’t the only studio giving up on the system.
Presumably, there is an assembly line at Sony headquarters where the old dev kits are repackaged for uni students. Maybe they throw in some typical student freebie favourites in the box, like free condoms, and booklets about doing drugs responsibly.
At any rate, this phase-out is already being felt at retail. There are fewer and fewe... More »
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