Anyone expecting to land a PS3 this holiday season after a price cut is shit out of luck. Since the Xbox 360 price drop, namely the Arcade to $199.99, MS has seen sales skyrocket even passing the Wii in some areas. With the economy in the tank and retailers expecting a very bad sales report in Q4, Sony still refuses to drop the price of their console. When asked at a European game show about the slight possibility of a price cut, Sony responded with this:
“At the moment there’s a marketplace for PS3 and I think for this particular Christmas, with the kind of quality of games we’re seeing coming out this Christmas, I don’t think the price of the console is going to be an issue at all.”
I do agree Sony will have a great game lineup this holiday season headlined by Little Big Planet and Resistance 2, there are still plenty of people out there who simply cannot afford to spend 400 bucks on a console, then have to buy a game and a second controller if need be. Granted their are some bundles out there, but they only offer you deals after dropping a considerable amount of dough. Do you expect PS3 console sales to stay stagnant this winter while Xbox 360 cleans up? The Wii prints money, we all know that. No one feels bad for Nintendo.
NBA 09 The Inside is the follow up to the the past two first party PS3 basketball titles. The game looks to build upon what was started last year to take things to the next level, but does not succeed. Although some new features were added, the game has too many lingering issues. It’s definitely pretty, but needs some depth to really compete in the basketball sim market.
The game runs nicely at 60fps at full 1080p. Most of the character models, arenas, and crowd textures are roughly the same as last year’s title, though. There are some cool replay effects to speak of, but these are vary sparse and only occur after a big dunk or alley-oop. The presentation has made the most improvement since last year. You now get a Broadcast style camera as the default to make it feel like you’re watching a televised basketball game. To go along with this transition, Kevin Calabro and Kenny Smith show off some pretty good play-calling skills. Mark Jackson was in the booth last year and it wasn’t all that great, this year is much better. Otherwise, normal sound effects (bouncing balls, dunks, ball hitting the rim or backboard) sound good, but not perfect. The crowds get into the game much better than last year as well, so expect some nice cheers for your hometown team and boos for your rivals.
Here is a great comparison video between the 2nd generation Sony PSP and the newest iteration. As you watch the video you can see the aesthetic upgrades are minimal and the 3000 really only shines in it’s video and audio upgrades. The screen is brighter than the 2000 and allows for progressive scan video, but as a trade off you do take a hit on batter life, about 20% less battery life. The microphone allows for Skype capabilities, but you can always by a microphone upgrade for your existing 2000 instead. If you do not have a PSP yet this is a good buy for you, I own a PSP 1000 (original launch PSP, with missing pixels) and the new 3000 has me contemplating a purchase.
What do you think, worth a purchase or will you wait for the 4000?
I made a trip over to Best Buy today to pick up Far Cry 2 for the Xbox 360 and decided to browse through all the gaming aisles to see what they had available. To my surprise, for the first time, I saw PSN cards. Both the $20 and $50 cards were available for sale with over 10 of each on the racks.
It took long enough, but you can now walk into your friendly neighborhood Best Buy and actually get these bad boys. Too bad they aren’t getting advertised as being available. I bet most of the gaming population has no idea.
Here is a nice easy guide to show you how to switch out your HDD from your stock Sony PS3 into a mega big HDD. If your like me and you bought a launch PS3 this is very useful and will let you build up your DLC, videos, music and pictures. It seems to be an easy install so step on up and grab a large HDD of your liking and start the upgrading.
1. Buy HDD of course, lol
2. Back up all of you PS3 data onto a flash drive or external HDD for easy recovery. Go to “System>Backup>create backup”. The process could take up to an hour. I would recommend deleting anything unimportant, to speed up the process. Using the backup ensures that you won’t have to re-download or reinstall anything.
3. Shut down and disconnect PS3
After a brief battle with some server issues, the PlayStation Store arrived a little later than usual yesterday. Some decent stuff, but nothing earth shattering. Here’s what your bandwidth could be spent downloading:
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation ($39.99)
Sno-Cross Championship Racing ($5.99) [PS1 Classics]
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09 Spyglass Hill Golf Course ($7.49)
THE EYE OF JUDGEMENT: Biolith Rebellion 3 (Expansion Set Three) ($14.99)
THE EYE OF JUDGEMENT: Biolith Rebellion 2 & 3 Expansion Bundle ($19.99)
We get quite a few videos from certain sources and Gametrailers is a major one with typically great high quality videos, but every once in a while one sneaks in and you have to wonder to yourself WTF? Like this video which has something to do with Street Fighter IV being in Sony’s Home. There are no English subtitles and it is completely in Japanese so the gentleman from Sony who is explaining things does not really come across very well.
Why feature this video? My interpretation is stay tuned folks because Sony is planning to do some cool things with Home and Street Fighter, but who gives a shit since both have been announced for ages and will come later in our lifetimes.
Watch as an ugly version of Chun Li and very tiny Dhalsims are put on display. Do you know what this video is about?
At the TGS we got a look at the newest installation of Patapon for the Sony PSP, watch as they show you the new characters and features available during a demo of the game in Japan. The original Patapon was highly addictive and a great game for the PSP and Patapon 2 looks to build off that very nicely by adding in more options, specifically multiplayer aspects.
Watch as the translator explains what is going on and the guy playing sings along with the game.
This one isn’t a total surprise, but Sony has officially announced PSP Plus, a software package built into Resistance: Retribution that will allow you to use your DualShock 3 controller (that means dual analog sticks and rumble) with the upcoming PSP shooter.
There is a catch, people. There’s always a catch. To enable this feature, you have to connect your PSP to your PS3 while running Resistance 2 to enable the feature. From R2, there’s a menu option to enable PSP Plus! for your handheld version. If you’re a Resistance fan, I’d imagine you’re picking up both anyway. You’ll also be able to use the video out features of the PSP Slim or PSP Bright to watch on your big screen.
The PSP Plus! mode turns off aim assist, adds vibrate, gives you dual analog controls, and increases the challenge level of the game. You know, make it harder since you have real controls.
I’m personally very much looking forward to this. Not sure how happy I’ll be going from home to mobile gaming switching between the PSP controls and the DS3, but we’ll see how it plays out. Hopefully more games start to incorporate this functionality.
Tekken and Sony go to together, well, just like Sony and Final Fantasy used to. An exclusive title since 1995, Tekken 6 will now be released to both consoles, PS3 and Xbox 360, at the same time. We all hinted that maybe it would be a timed exclusive then ported over a few months later, but the game will be on the shelves for both on the same day. No one can begin to argue that the Xbox 360 is the superior machine of the two tech wise, but as more and more established Sony exclusives are becoming universal, it seems that MS is getting the nod in game superiority.
We're like Spaceballs... we're making Loot Ninja everything. Coming soon we'll have hats, shirts, hoodies, possibly banana hammocks if one Editor has his way...
Check out the shirt prototypes here and the hats here
