Wednesday, December 17, 2008

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The bigger the better?

Got Afrika today in my mail box. Asian version. Havn't played it much yet, but as far as I can say, this game has the largest savegame I have ever seen since I am playing video games: 357MB. This is bigger than some of the older PS2 titles or even most of the new PSN titles in total. Can you believe this? Modern times I guess.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

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Black Beauties

Update 2008-12-17: Here is a listing of the PS3 specific features of the headset. I havn't verified the HQ feature quality yet but it seems to be required for some of the online titles that support voice commands. Also good to know that the headset supports an "ear-free" mode which basically requires the headset to be placed into the cradle. Thanks Zta ;-)

It doesn't happen too often that Sony releases 2 new accessories at the same time. Together with the new Wireless Keypad Sony also released the all new Bluetooth headset, one that is specifically made for the PS3 not as the clunky Jabra headset that came in a bundle with Warhawk.

From the look & feel the new PS3 headset definitely belongs to the group of high quality headset. The headset is not too heavy and all buttons are easy to reach. When it comes to the audio quality the headset initially seemed a little quiet what is actually an issue of fitting the headset to your ear. In order to fit the headset to your ear you have to tweak a little bit with the ear clip that can be adjusted very easy and by turning the headset already being mounted on your ear. That will make sure that the speaker and your ear are fitting very tight. Give it a try before you start complaining.

What makes this device PS3 specific are basically two features that are only available as long as you pair the headset with an USB cable instead of the wireless pairing, which works like on any other Bluetooth headset. Like many other PS3 accessories the headset tells you exactly what the battery level looks like and if you just put the device on mute for instance. The other feature is of course the Mute button itself that allows you to temporarily turn of the mic while being in an online match. No way to miss that hugh Mute button in that case.

As much as I like the new PS3 headset my favorite headset is actually a different one. If you are looking for a lightweight, small, high quality and great sounding headset, check out the official Apple iPhone headset.

Sure the product is little more expensive than the PS3 headset, but believe me, you havn't seen a more refined headset ever.

So, there is basically no need anymore to wear those hugh and uncomfortable USB headsets these days as there are at least two perfect wireless headsets available on the market.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

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Pimp Your Dualshock Part II

Remember my last attempt to improve the already great DualShock by adding those trigger extensions? Well, here is part II of the series: how to attach a wireless keyboard.

It has been announced at the GC2008 press conference and surprisingly enough the hardware is already available at your preferred retail store. Street price EUR 39,90. Remember how long it took for Sony to officially release the PlayTV extension? Over a year. Anyway, it's great to see that keyboard becoming available before the Home Open Beta officially starts (which by the way will be tomorrow ;-).

After unwrapping the device, the first thing you notice is its quality. Unlike many third party keyboard extensions, this is an official accessory and it feels and looks like it. The mechanism that ties the keyboard to the controller is very rigid and you almost feel that this keyboard is actually part of the controller. Don't worry that the rumble effect of some games will shake that baby off.

Even though the attachment covers the former Select, Start and PS button, there are replacements for those buttons on the keyboard that work as the original ones. No issue there. Next thing to look at is the usability.

Well, it has been discussed before wether to placement of the keyboard on top of the controller is better or worse than the solution Microsoft went for: between the handles. In any case you have to move your hands away from the handles in order to reach the keyboard. Not optimal, but I guess that's the compromise we have to take here. What concerns me more are those shift buttons (blue and orange) which are positioned as additional shoulder buttons on the keyboard. Those buttons are used in combination with the keys to reach 2nd and 3rd level functions of the respective key. Remember those HP calculators? This is exactly the same concept. What makes this kind of difficult to use is the fact that for some of the keys you have to press the shoulder button on the same side of the keyboard. So, you press the shoulder key with your index finger and use you thumb to press the key. Not very ergonomic. A better solution would have been to place the keys that can be reached by the right button on the left side and vice versa.

Next issue I see is the missing backlight. Yea, I know this would eventually drain the battery much faster but there is no way someone can read those fine prints on the keyboard in a dimmed room. Sorry guys, but you have to learn where those commas and colons are ;-)

Last but not least the keyboard has a couple of special features that can not be found on any other keyboard extension so far:

• Touch Pad Mode: this is really cool as you can use most part of the keyboard as a mouse pad in order to navigate through XMB or within the browser. Believe me it works. It really does.
• Friends & Messages Key: Well, this is kind of weird as both are located under the same menu on the XMB. So why having 2 different buttons that basically lead you to the same spot? I don't get it.

All in all this is a very useful tool for all online gamers or those who really use the PSN as a mail system to communicate with friends. I am not sure to what extend I will use the keyboard within Home as I am more of a voice chat kind of guy, but you never know. I have mine attached to one of my controllers and I will for sure use it once in a while.

P.S. Before someone asks: yes, the keyboard comes with a localized keypad!

Sunday, December 7, 2008

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The Prince is back

It's basically 3 years since Ubisoft released the last Prince of Persia sequel. Even though Ubisoft Montreal was obviously focused on Assassin's Creed it looks like the folks being in charge of the franchise were in a challenging situation: the Prince of Persia franchise reached the peak of its development. What next?

Continue with the review

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

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Back to the future

Something I was speculating about since Sony removed the backward compatibility in newer hardware revsions seems to finally come to PS3: software-only emulated PS2 titles.

The official ESRB database lists the former PS2 title Rayman: Revolution as PS3/PSP compatible, which obviously hints at a downloadable title, similar to the various PSone titles that are out there. Even though Sony hasn't officially commented that listing, it seems very likely. PS2 titles would seemlessly extend the current game portfolio with some of the best games ever made for consoles.

To be honest, this isn't actually the first PS2 title runnung on PS3. Just check out the European PSN Store and look for Buzz Junior: Jungle Party for PS3, which is actually the cut down version of Buzz Junior: Jungle Party for PS2 with only 5 mini games. Btw, a great party game. The game has the original PS2 grafics and it seems that Sony is just emulating a modified PS2 version of the game.

It is not too late for Sony to still turn back the time and revive backward compatibility again. Given the fact that the current PS3 clientele are most likely coming from a PS2 legacy.

P.S. Don't expect a PSP emulation of PS2 titles. This is simply not possible as the PSP is almost on the same performance level as the PS2. In order to emulate a different hardware architecture on a platform your hardware must be at least an order of magnitude faster than the emulated hardware. PS2 on PSP no way.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

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Pimp your DualShock

Don't try to argue with me which is the most ergonomic, most useable or in other words the best game controller in the world. I am used to the DualShock controller since years and for me there is no need for Sony to change the design of this device at all. I wasn't really disappointed when Sony announced that the official PS3 controller simply looks the same as the old PS2 controller. Never change a working design or something like that.

Anyway, even though the design didn't change in general, Sony revised it to the extend that the shoulder button got some more attention in terms of added analog support mostly used for racing games. Part of that decision was a slightly enhanced L2/R2 button that now look more like a trigger than before.

Good intention but the execution just stopped somewhere in the middle of the design process. The new triggers are not fully developed which simply makes it difficult for me to actually use it for instance during racing games. The same is true for shooters as R2 is literally used as a gun trigger most of the time.

During my short shopping tour today I actually found a simple solution to this DualShock issue: gioteck's Real Triggers for PS3. What looks like (and actually is) a nickle and dime good perfectly fits to the L2/R2 triggers and simply enhance the useability of those buttons a lot. The new triggers do not just look like the original triggers they even feel as solid as the original design.

Even though those triggers are a little pricy, I don't wanna miss them anymore. Big difference. Believe me.

P.S. While you there check out gioteck's stage light for GuitarHero. Welcome back to the 80th.

Monday, December 1, 2008

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Weekend Plays

It was actually a very short weekend for me as I was most of the time outside. The weather was simply too good. Anyway, I finally got a Home beta key and I had to at least try Home a couple of times. It's kind of interesting to see some of the people reactions re. the Home beta on the net.

Boring, too male and too slow, just to mention the top 3 feedbacks. Well, Home is boring right now, that's kind of true. But there is only so much you can do in this beta. Feedback from other people on the net show that what we can look at right now is only a small percentage what's actually part of the Home experience. I guess Sony is simply load testing their infrastructure right now and not so much interested in showing the whole shebang to the beta testers. Fair enough. At the end of the day, Home is more of an infrastructure than content. Home is just the stage for content providers and not the content itself. This is part of the concept. So don't argue about Home being boring, at least not at this point in time.

2nd biggest complain I read was about the fact that you see so many male running around, where there are only a few ladies. Well, what sould I say, that's what it is. There is nothing wrong with Home here. Expect this ratio to change over time as more and more attractive content showing up in Home. Anyway, nobody on the net knows what gener you are ;-)

Last but not least, is Home slow? Well, you pay for what you get. Or was it the other way round. Home features a lot of HD environments you can walk through and guess what, those environments have to be loaded at some point. Is this happening in the background? No, not really, but Sony is doing whatever they can to ease the pain: environment cache and background loading are only two means.

What's more frustrating right now are the difficulties to find friends joining the same location. You can hear them, but you can't see them. The other issue are not loaded textures of the other folks running around. Right after you enter a location a lot of the other folks in the room look like T2000s from the Terminator movie.

Bottomline, I think it is simply too early to decide what Home will be after the official launch. The ability to setup your own appartment, to meet people there, to have themed locations that acompany the release of games and finally being able to meet in Home and launch a game from there are just a few features o look forward to.

The second new title during this weekend session was Loco Roco 2, one of the few genuine PSP games these days. Are you really surprised to learn that Loco Roco 2 is more of what we liked in Loco Roco in the first place? I really like Loco Roco 2 a lot, the only issue I have is the fact that it is no longer the new gaming concept it was a year ago. Did we already get used to it? Why can we play the 10th sequel a random sports game without any problem, but we are disappointed while playing Loco Roco 2nd iteration. Crazy.

Last but not least, I had two quick PS2 sessions. One covering Genji, the PS2 predecessor of the PS3 Genji, Days of the Blade and Getaway Black Monday, one of the PS3 launch titles that finally got canceled. For those of you that like Onimusha on PS2, Genji is a must in my opinion. Great visuals, great controls and a nice epic story. Getaway on the other side was kind of interesting to look at. By the time Sony released the game it look great and had a level of detailed not yet being found on PS2. A lot of polygons for one game. Compare this to this generation games and you immediately see the quantum leap when it comes to the models used and the real time rendering. I actualy would have liked to see Getaway on PS3, but I guess the risk of screwing up this game was simply to high.

Monday, December 1, 2008

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Market share vs. Profitability

These days are obviously kind of hard for the folks at Sony Computer Entertainment to follow. As the 360 is currently in a constant lead of the PS3 it seems there is only so much they can do about it. Sony is pretty much in a locked in situation: either they lower the price point of the PS3 by at least $100 and loose money with every console they sell or they will not be able to compete with Microsoft in terms of the market share, which in turn simply means lower software sales long term.

Black friday aka. doomsday when it comes to console sales, showed again who is leading the pack these days. Microsofts biggest asset there is the Arcade version of the 360, which is crossing the counter for a street price of less than $160. Based on latest reports, the Arcade version is responsible for at least 50% of the 360 sales. Let's not argue if this is a full fledged console and if its worth the money, the strategy simple seems to work.

For Sony this is a price point that is still far off in the future and there is no way for Sony to release a shrinked down version of the PS3 which has for instance no HDD. The PS3 was never designed to work like that.

Nobody knows for sure what each of the companies are actually paying for each console, but we can guess, right. Technically speaking, the PS3 has the more expensive components when it comes to a side by side comparision. This is mainly due to the mandatory HDD and the brand new BluRay drive. On the other side, the PS3 leads by a couple of month in terms of the level of integration. Since a couple of month, the PS3 is based on 65nm technology when it comes to the CPU and GPU, something that MS just released as part of the Jasper hardware revision.

I guess it's fair to say that MS is not making any money with the Arcade version at all, but they are obviously going for the market share, wheras Sony is very reluctant to lower the PS3 price point at this point in time. As I speculated earlier, we might see some considerable lower price for the PS3 in Spring, latest Summer. No, it'll be Spring.

What's the better strategy right now? Hard to say. Microsoft obviously has the money to afford such subsidizing of certain models much better than Sony which obviously is no longer willing to invest even more money into this business.

What's your guess?

Friday, November 28, 2008

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That's me

Finally PSN got it's own gamer cards and viewable profiles that can be looked at on the net. Looks like things are coming together now that more and more of the online features are part of PSN. Let's see how Sony is extending that service over the time with trophy support and other things.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

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Buying new platform games or so ????

I rarely debate other peoples blog entries. Personal, non-profit blogs reflect more or less personal opinions and there is only so much you can argue with someone. Today, I will make an exception to my own unwritten rule ...

I am a quite regular reader of ps3blog.net, which is again a non-profit PS3 related blog with quite a community. Just recently, the folks posted on two topics which both excited me a lot.

The first post is about buying new video games vs. buying used games or even renting them. The author simply argues that there are only a few good reason to actually buy new games. Not wanting to reiterate his position here I think he missed a few points.

1. No new games >> new used games
   Simply put, if nobody buys the game in the first place, there is no used games market on the other side. In other words in order to satisfy the used games demand you have to buy a game at least one time as new
2. Downloadable games might actually work better for the publishers
   Current DRM systems will eventually disable the used games after market, but this is not going to happen any time soon as downloadable games tend to still be not as big as full prize games today. This might change, but it is also likely that with the development of new storage media, the average size of a game increases and will not be suitable for download.
3. People like to own things
   Call me old school, but I am collecting video games and many people not as fanatic as I am are doing the same thing as well. It's simply a difference of owning a movie, music album or a video game instead of just renting it. and it's not just about owning the asset, it's really about having the flexibility to watch it, listen to it or play it at any time I want. usually I am not finishing games in one single session. I try over a couple of weeks. Rentals don't work in this case.
4. I hate don't like how some people treat games
   Yes, I buy used games as well and I don't feel bad about it. There is nothing wrong with that. I just don't like how people treat their games. Scratched discs, dirty covers, missing guides, ... just to name a few. And you can not really trust in what people write on ebay. But that's the risk you take and sometimes people don't want to take the risk.

Well, in a nutshell I can understand why people buy new games and I would be surprised if that's going to change over the time. People still buy "real" books, movies and records, why not video games?

Ok, done with that one. But the next one is more emotional I guess. Why I hate LBP is all about the authors inability to enjoy the game and especially its controls. Well, I am not arguing about the fact that you could actually hate a game like this. It's more about the "whys". Obviously the biggest issue the author has with the games are its controls. To be honest, I can see where he is coming from and I had the same issues when I had to master my first big jumps or the spring boards.

Yes, some of that stuff is not obvious and it takes some tries to get there, but seriously, that's what games are all about. He argues that he doesn't have the time to do so. Great, but then its not the games fault. What would LBP be like if you can master all levels with no problems and no rehersals and stuff. Again, it's part of the fun to actually try to reach those unreachable areas maybe together with a friend online just to figure out that how great it feels to achieve something as a team.

Sofar, the game is a great experience and obviously worked for the majority of people who bought it. Mission acomplished if you ask me. There might be people out there where LBP doesn't work, but would I compromise the game just because of that? I don't think so. One last statement here: LBP introduces physics into the platform genre which might confuse a few people to the extend that they expect the non-realistic behaviour of a typical platformer. Again, then it is not an issue of the game, it's really expecting something else and maybe we need to call this genre something else. Maybe call them playground games? What do you think?

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