1/1/2009 - The Art of the Quincy

So Playstation Home is finally out and I must say that it's mostly useless. Trying to copy the success of Second Life, PS Home aims to provide a virtual environment where gamers can congregate in the form of avatars. The problem is that there's really not much to do in the virtual environments that Sony provides. The videos take forever to load, the minigames aren't much fun, and they limited the ability to voice chat. It kind of makes me angry to think that Sony has spent all this money to develop Playstation Home instead of using it to improve their network or to cut deals with game developers for exclusive games.

Really, the only thing to see in Home is how the mostly male population flock to the female avatars in the virtual environment. The problem is, there's no way to tell if the avatars truly represent their gender in the real world. Which is why a prank like this is possible:

1/17/2008 - Tekken 3 [psx4iphone 0.1.0]

Now here's something I didn't expect to see on the iPhone... a full Playstation emulator on it! If you thought the NES emulator on the iPhone was impressive, this will knock your socks off. Yes, it has a pretty bad framerate, but it's just the first version. Now, you may ask, "why not just get a PSP"? Well, that's certainly a way to fulfill your desire to play Playstation on the go, but can you also play Gameboy games on it? How about NES games? Of course not. That's why the idea of having these emulators on the iPhone is great (if you're willing to skate on the edge of legality).



Boy, I can't wait for the official SDK to come out next month so we can see all sorts of these kinds of programs for the iPhone/iPod Touch. It's fair to say that it would be hard to control a game with a virtual control pad as shown here, but once there's an official way for developers to write applications for the iPhone and interact with the hardware, I can imagine someone creating a dockable add-on for the iPhone with physical controller buttons. Something like that could make the iPhone a true mobile gaming platform. Watch out, Nintendo and Sony!

7/11/2007 - Jack Tretton PS3 price cut interview

When they announced that Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix was coming to the next-gen systems, I decided that I really wanted either the X-Box 360 or the Playstation 3. From the beginning, I thought I would be getting a PS3 because I wanted to be able to play all my PS2 games. But then they announced the price. I wouldn't care if it projected holograms... $600 IS WAY TOO MUCH! Couple that with the lack of games for the PS3, my attention turned to the 360.

After all, 360 had some games on there that I really wanted to play, and the X-Box Live Arcade system looked like a great addition for retro gamers like me. But I knew there were things that really irked me. Like the way they labeled the buttons on the controllers. It's like they gave a big "SCREW YOU" to folks who were used to the Super Nintendo button layout (if you have a 360 and an SNES, you know what I'm talking about). That, and the fact that I have to pay yearly for the X-Box Live service. But you know what the final straw was? The 30% failure rate! I don't know of ANYTHING out there that has such a high failure rate! Before I heard that, I even thought about getting a used 360. I'm glad I didn't.

So Sony pulled me back into their camp this past weekend by announcing that $100 price cut. $500 for a gaming system is still expensive, but it's really cheap for a Blu-Ray player. Also, after evaluating the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars, I really think that Blu-Ray is here to stay. I was this close to cementing my decision for the PS3, but then I saw this interview:



Are you kidding me?! What the heck is this about a 10-year life cycle? It's OBVIOUS why they had to cut the price to $100: The Nintendo Wii is kicking their butt! This guy is the CEO and he's totally clueless! I want to scream to him, "You don't know jack, Jack!" Before I go ahead and buy a PS3, I want this guy out of Sony first.