Archive for News
Saturday July 28, 2007 at 2:02 pm
· Filed under News, PSP, Sony
Sky TV have announced a deal to take on-demand downloads of TV shows (and presumably movies at some point) to the PSP in the UK and Ireland. Whether this will be free for those already subscribed to Sky, it isn’t clear yet. I would imagine it will be a completely seperate service with limited shows.
Expect the usual Lost, Prison Break, 24, Heroes. More news on this closer to release time. Bringing franchises such as God of War over to PSP, announcing the new version of the PSP and now this. Maybe Sony’s handheld isn’t quite dead yet…
Pick a category for the full story…
SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT EUROPE AND SKY JOIN FORCES TO DELIVER VIDEO ON DEMAND SERVICE TO PSP OWNERSLondon, 27 July 2007. SKY and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) today announced the formation of a Joint Venture company to deliver on-demand entertainment content to owners of the PSP™(PlayStation®Portable) in the UK and Ireland.
The Joint Venture company, with equal Board level representation from SKY and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe will draw on the unrivalled entertainment aggregation expertise and technical leadership of SKY, and the handheld entertainment knowledge and brand power of PlayStation®. The company will establish PSP and the new ground breaking video download service as the natural partners for those seeking the ultimate choice of portable entertainment content.
Focusing exclusively on delivering video content to the PSP, the Joint Venture will initially provide a wealth of video and film content to the more than 2.3 million PSP owners in the UK and Ireland. The two companies are already in discussions with entertainment content providers across Europe to facilitate future introduction of the service to European PSP owners.
More information on the service will be announced by SCEE at Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany on Wednesday 22nd August.
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Thursday July 19, 2007 at 5:42 pm
· Filed under Microsoft, News, PC, Xbox
Microsoft’s annual trade show, ‘X0′, which has been traditionally held in various cities throughout Europe, has been cancelled – so far, without an explanation from the big M.
Microsoft did announce, however, that the UK will be getting its own trade show. It’s all a bit vague at the moment – there is for no name, date or location for the show as of yet. We do know that it will be held “before Christmas” though.
Good news, I’d say!
Try and get your mouse cursor inside the ‘X’ for the story.
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Wednesday July 18, 2007 at 1:42 pm
· Filed under Microsoft, News, X360
Several European retailers such as HMV, Play and GAME have all put up prices for the Xbox 360 Elite which will come out August 24 in europe at a price of GBP 329.99($676 for us Yankees). Now my question is, the Elite has been out for several months now stateside and at price almost 96 pounds cheaper over there but why has Microsoft delayed this long and increased the price for the UK? At those prices it would be cheaper to import a US 360 Elite off of ebay and have shipped to you rather then just waiting to buy one in store.
Now of course Microsoft seems to always have an answer for everything and on this so they say use Math, so I guess we will. In the US a Premium 360 costs USD 399 and the Elite costs USD 479. So in the US the elite costs about 17 percent more then the premium. Well if you look at UK prices you see that a premium costs GBP 279 and so if you added 17 percent of it’s price that would mean the Elite would be selling for GBP 336 which is pretty darn closed to the rumored GBP 329 price.
Now after all this it seems to make sense but I still think it seems rather overpriced compared to it’s American counterpart.
-Josh
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Wednesday July 18, 2007 at 12:26 am
· Filed under Microsoft, News
Today Microsoft officially announced that the corporate vice president of their Interactive Entertainment division, Peter Moore has resigned from his office starting in August. Former EA president Don Mattrick, who is currently a strategic adviser for Microsoft will be replacing Peter Moore.
The reported reason for Peter Moore’s resignation is so that he could be closer to his family in the San Francisco bay area and will be heading up EA Sports.
-Josh
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Tuesday July 17, 2007 at 5:22 pm
· Filed under Games, News, PS3
Loco Roco for me was the biggest reason to buy a PSP. Its quirky, cute, innovative gameplay never failed to put a stupid smile on my face.
Early rumblings from Sony’s “Playstation Premiere 2007″ show tell us that the PS3 iteration of the series is almost complete, but does not yet have a release date.
Surely I can’t be the only one who’s been thinking for a while now that the Loco Roco franchise is absolutely perfect for Wii? Well it looks like we’re going to see the next best thing – sixaxis control to tilt the world.
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Monday July 16, 2007 at 8:44 pm
· Filed under News, X360
One of the more unnoticed news stories at E3 – the Xbox 360 keyboard has been priced at GBP 24.99 and will be released on the 7th September.
The device plugs into the 360 controller itself and is designed for use with Live Messenger (MSN to you and I), which came recently as part of a dashboard update.
Type away for the full story.
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Monday July 16, 2007 at 8:35 pm
· Filed under Games, News, Nintendo, Wii
Mario Party 8 has been pulled from sales and recalled for containing the word ’spastic’. It comes soon after a similar case in which Ubi’s Mind Quiz was pulled for using the same word when the player scores zero.
“[Mario Party 8] was launched in the UK today. Unfortunately we have discovered that a small number of games contain the wrong version of the disk due to an assembly error. We have therefore decided to recall all copies of the game from UK retailers so that this mistake can be corrected,” is the official word from Ninty.
The American response seems to be generally one of bewilderment, since ’spastic’ isn’t really that much of an offensive word in the States. The general feeling is that it’s ‘political correctness gone mad’, but for obvious reasons, we can’t have a kids game calling the player a spastic.
Now, I’ll join the rush to go and play the crap out of my copy (bought on release day) to see if it contains the word – who knows, some fanboy or other might pay me a small fortune for it in a few months. I implore you, dear gamers, to do the same. And leave any feedback as a comment, of course. ;o)
Give that politically-incorrect plumber a stern telling off for the full story.
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Monday July 16, 2007 at 5:02 pm
· Filed under News, PSP, Sony
So the PSP is getting a little bit lighter, a little bit thinner, and your old accessories won’t work.
Gizmodo have been exploring the new 200x manual and have outlined the main changes:
- Its TA-085 PCB motherboard is homebrew-conducive.
- USB can be used to charge the battery.
- The battery has been shrunk from 1800mAh to 1200mAh, but retains hour rating.
- Memory increased from 32mb to 64mb
- Old PSP remote is not compatible.
- WLAN switch has been relocated to top.
- TV-out cable is not included.
It doesn’t take a genius to realise that the only real (in terms of how it will affect games) difference is the doubling of the memory. The increase now means that the PSP has double (yes DOUBLE) that of the PS2. So we can definitely expect quicker loading times. Whether we will get games that only work on the new model, we don’t know yet.
What we do know is that Sony have killed off one of the main drawbacks of the PSP – load times. If only they’d given us a better battery rather than made the PSP slightly smaller, they could have really challenged for the DS’s crown…
Prod the slightly sleeker portable for the full works.
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Monday July 16, 2007 at 3:53 pm
· Filed under News, PS3, Sony
The PS3 price-drop announced at E3 will only apply to US models.
The question is, with prices already comparatively higher than over the pond, will European gamers notice this snub? Gamers in the know may now react to Sony’s move by opting for the Xbox360 as their console of choice.
Could there be a price-cut in the works, or are European gamers right to feel like they have been left out in the cold?
Click the shiny bane of our existence for the full BBC article.
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Monday July 16, 2007 at 3:15 pm
· Filed under News, Nintendo, Wii
Satoru Iwata has laid down the gauntlet to Sony by stating he thinks the Wii could out-sell the PS2 thanks to its wider audience.
“Sony’s PS2 sales of 100 million units is an extraordinary number that our home game console business has not achieved,” Iwata said.
“But if we can make our bid to expand the gaming population a continued success, we could exceed that,” he told Reuters.
Poke Iwata’s face for the full article.
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