There’s lots of hubbub about online gaming. But the facts are that in the previous generation, only a small fraction of gamers actually went online. Most gamers just enjoyed playing single-player games like God of War or playing games with friends in the same room.

But Microsoft has been touting Xbox Live as the greatest thing since Coke in a can, and Sony is getting in on the act too.

Even though I’m posting this, it was actually Gary who made this poll suggestion. So here’s the question (answer in the sidebar): When you get your PS3, how do you plan to use its online functionality:

• Play games a lot.
• Download movie trailers and such.
• Kick the tires now and then.
• Not at all.

Results of previous poll:

Is the worldwide launch a good idea?

* Yes. Any PS3’s in my region is better than none.: 73% (64)
* No. Do it right in each region, one at a time.: 12% (11)
* Not sure. Can’t be worse than the 360’s launch!: 15% (13)

Total Votes : 88

Sony has a website up for it’s digital distribution network entitled “E-Distribution Initiative” or EDI for short. Here is a quote from the English welcome page:

The E-Distribution Initiative (EDI) will provide an alternative publishing opportunity for the direct download of games and other content to the user.

The EDI will be managed by Sony Computer Entertainment’s development and studio organizations in North America, Europe, Japan and Asia (collectively known as SCE Worldwide Studios).

I’m assuming it will be for the PS3 & PSP once everything is up & running.

Could this be Sony’s answer to Xbox Live Arcade & Nintendo’s Virtual Console?

US PlayStation.com - EDI

Todd woo-hoo!’ed me with the news that Guitar Hero II is in the making, due for a November release. So November bring both the PS3 and an awesome new PS2 game, cool!

In multiplayer mode one person will be able to play lead guitar while the other plays rhythm or bass. Kinda like good old Frequency, except limited to guitars. Guitar Hero II will use the same guitar peripheral as the first game, and they’re looking to use the same mixture of music genres as the first game. However, they’ll be going for bigger-name artists this time, now that Guitar Hero has had a bit of exposure.

Bring it on! You Rock!

Joystiq - Guitar Hero II interview, dude

Jon, a reader who owns Taipei Gamer, has an article looking at the Cell being used by the PlayStation 3:

There is more than one way to look at programming complexity. Sometimes abstractions that make certain tasks easier make others more difficult. Specifically, abstractions in programming languages/models can often be a double-edged sword, and nowhere is this clearer than in runtime performance. The Xbox 360 adopts the traditional abstractions of multithreaded software development. This model is familiar, but is very difficult to program efficiently. The PS3 opts for a fundamentally lower-level model which could potentially put fewer barriers between software engineers and theoretical performance potential. The PS3, powered by the Cell processor, should overcome the obstacles presented by its unique architecture and easily take the performance crown in the coming generation.

It’s a great article, you might like to take a look:

Taipei Gamer - Celling a Revolution

The floor plans for E3 2006 have been unveiled & unsurprisingly the big three, Sony, Nintendo & Microsoft, have the biggest booths.

The largest booths at the event seem to be Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft - the major hardware manufacturers. Microsoft will likely have a huge section dedicated to the Xbox 360 and a small portion for Windows games. Xbox will likely be a no-show. Sony will probably be giving equal treatment to the PS3, PS2, and PSP. Although it may try to take attention away from the PS3 if it’s not ready yet. Nintendo has four systems to juggle with the Revolution, DS, GBA, and GCN. Don’t expect much from the GCN at all except for Zelda and maybe the rumoured Kirby game. The GBA should also be relatively dead unless they announce a North American release for Mother 3. They will be focusing on the DS and Revolution for sure.

There have been more rumours doing the rounds about the PS3 not even being shown at all at E3 but I find this hard to believe. Considering MGS4 is set to be demoed by Hideo Kojima himself & the number of other PS3 games confirmed at the show, the PS3 will be at E3 but it just won’t be playable by the masses. I don’t see that as being a big deal.

Qj.net - E3 Floor Plans Revealed

Following on from Phil Harrison’s interview with Edge you can read some of Peter Moore’s interview (just the bits where he comments on Sony) from the same magazine below:


Edge: Apparently many small-to-medium-sized Japanese developers don’t yet have PS3 dev kits. How much of an opportunity exists there?

Peter Moore: It’s similar to a story I heard a couple of weeks ago. I think the challenge is that when you’re on the condensed timeline that Sony clearly is, you for better or worse have to prioritise your devkits, because you’re not getting the flow you would like, & the smaller guys are just not getting them. Clearly the Capcoms & the Konamis of this world, & the Activisions & EAs in the west, I’m sure they’re getting their devkits, but when there’s clearly a challenge in getting supply it’s the smaller publishers & developers that struggle. And we’re doing a lot of work over there with them, & they enjoy developing for 360 - hopefully that’s of benefit to us. We’ll see.

Edge: What did you think of the keynotes from Sony & Nintendo, & why didn’t Microsoft deliver one this year?

PM: We certainly could’ve. J gave a keynote that sounded awfully familiar to what Phil said, certainly in the online world, except the biggest difference is that we’re actually now delivering on it. The keynote for Sony seemed weird because it was a rehash primarily of what Kutaragi had said in Tokyo the week before. I don’t know whether Kutaragi’s meeting was hastily arranged, & whether Phil had his legs cut off from underneath him - whether the plan was that he would announce all of this & then that suddenly changed. But I’ve not seen the demos, I didn’t actually go to the keynote, so I’m waiting to see the demos themselves - the playable demos, anyway. It seems like that was really the only thing that Kutaragi didn’t show, so until I see them it’s difficult for me to comment. But I didn’t hear a lot of news that I hadn’t already heard when I was in Tokyo the week before. Certainly there was a little bit more detail on Sony’s online service plans but nothing that shocked me that I hadn’t either assumed or had heard from Kutaragi.
And then with Iwata-san again I’d already left GDC, but it seemed that everybody is now jumping on the back-catalogue, digital-download model & they’re going to have Sega & HudsonSoft committed to making back-catalogue available. All very interesting, & I guess it validates some of the work we’ve already got in the marketplace, again with Arcade & Xbox Live Marketplace itself, allowing downloads. It’s going to be interesting to see, in the case of the Revolution, how that’s going to be facilitated - a hard drive, how big it is, etc. So I think people keep their powder dry until E3. I didn’t see an awful lot of stuff. I think the challenge now for Sony is that they’re shipping this year & gamers should be able to walk up to their booth & get their hands on relatively polished games & play them on the showfloor in LA in 5 to 6 weeks from now. We shall see.

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The May 2006 issue of Edge Magazine (which I bought) has an interview with SCE’s Worldwide Studios President, Phil Harrison. You can read some select parts of the interview below:

Edge: Attention is mainly focused on PS3 at the moment, but PS2 is still the dominant format. After the last transition period there was a lot of talk in the industry about the need to handle the next transition better. Do you think that’s happening?

PH: That’s a good question. I think the people who said it loudly last time were the CFOs of publicity traded companies, because they were saying “Look, we got hosed because we didn’t handle the transition effectively enough”, & I think when Larry Probst & other senior executives are saying we must do it differently next time around then that filters down through their organisations. But I think people also take their lead from us, from the way we’re innovating, the way we’re continuing to push.

Edge: But can they take their lead from you? Surely your focus now has to be showcasing PS3 & what the technology is capable of, & there are very few high-profile PS2 games left on the schedule.

PH: That’s inevitable, but I think with PS2 you’ll see a more measured decline than with PS0ne, It’s not going to be falling off the cliff like you’ve seen with Xbox & 360 - that product’s just stopped, it’s been delisted, but PSone is still selling, & I think we’ll see that with PS2.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you follow the link, you’ll see that Harmonix is looking for next-gen developers. For example, the position of “Senior 3D Graphics Programmer” lists in its job description “Work closely with artists, designers, and fellow programmers to design and implement 3D graphical features using the latest state-of-the-art rendering techniques for next-generation consoles.”

Harmonix is the developer of the hugely successful game Guitar Hero and its predecessors, Frequency and Amplitude. Last night Todd and I played Guitar Hero for a while, and Todd said that he can’t believe he’s seriously considering buying a PS2 just for the Harmonix music games.

So Harmonix is working on next-gen games, which is great! Does this mean they’re porting Guitar Hero? Or working on Guitar Hero 2? And what next-gen platforms are they talking about? PS3? Xbox 360? It’s unknown to us peons, of course, but I for one am anxiously awaiting word.

CreativeHeads.net - Harmonix Music Systems jobs

A lot has been said about Phil Harrison’s claims that Sony are “ahead of the curve” with regards to meeting the November worldwide launch. But one supposed comment that I think has been overlooked is the apparent claim that Sony could be planning global release dates for PS3 games or so says GamesRadar:

As well as a simultaneous global outing for its next-gen console, Harrison indicated that Sony will “hopefully be moving towards a global release date” for PS3 titles - a move that would be hugely beneficial to UK gamers, who traditionally have to endure a lengthy wait long after a game is released in the US and Japan.

If this did turn out to be true then it would be fantastic news with regards to getting games the same time as North American & Japanese gamers. It might even solve the problem of certain games not being released in multiple regions.

One recent game that springs to mind is Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition. I’m a HUGE DMC fan & when I found out DMC3:SE wasn’t getting a release outside North America I was gutted. It’s OK for people who can or are willing to import these games but I’m not one of them.

The downside of getting games the same time as our North American & Japanese cousins is we could miss out on the extras that we sometimes get from game developers who have extra time to polish & add bonus features to a game.

The only concern would be translation problems for text heavy games like the Final Fantasy series. Would they do multiple languages during the development process thus pushing back the release date for all regions or would there be some kind of down-loadable patch that instantly translates the text into your local dialect?

Final Fantasy XII is a game that is already available in Japan but us UK gamers will have to wait until 2007 (so say the rumours) before we got our hands on it.

So do you think a global release date for games would be a good or bad idea?

GamesRadar - Global Release For PS3 Games

The PS3, unlike the PS2 before it, has a real operating system running at the same time as the game. This operating system will take care of things like voice chat, video chat, instant messaging, and other stuff. I’d previously heard that the OS reserves one of the Cell’s seven SPEs to itself.

According to some “inside sources” (or something like that), PS3 Portal has uncovered that there’s a lot more to the picture. Supposedly the OS can request a second SPE of the currently running game at any given moment. Which means that a game can use the main PPU, plus 5 SPEs, no problem. It can use a sixth SPE knowing that it can be taken away at an instant’s notice. This isn’t so bad really. The PPU is a powerful core. Each SPE is a powerful core too. A game running on one PPU and 5 SPEs still has a lot of horsepower available to it. If that was all, the news wouldn’t be so bad.

But according to PS3 Portal’s sources, that’s not all. The OS also reserves 32MB of the GDR3 graphics memory and 64MB of the XDR main memory. That’s about 19% of the system’s memory. That’s a lot. In the world of console gaming, memory is as precious as Coca-Cola is to a programmer. And to pour 19% off a full glass isn’t so bad if there’s Coke in the glass, but its a major hindrance if it’s memory.

Well, it’s a rumour right now. And if there’s a hint of truth to it, maybe the numbers aren’t so bad. But either way, I have a feeling that developers can make up for that missing 19% and still make some killer games.

PlayStation 3 Portal - Inside the PS3

the INQUIRER is reporting that there are problems getting the PS3 complete. No specific problem, really, just a general behind-schedule-ness.

We are about six months from launch, and debugging should be done, prototypes and dev kits should flow like water, and all the tame magazines should already have one. The situation is rather different though, they are nowhere, and there are two related reasons behind this.

The first is size. People tell us that the current PS3s are about 50% too large to fit in the sleek but empty boxes they have been showing off. This is a problem, but a solvable one, electronics always get smaller. Time solves all, and there is still time, just not much.

More troubling to me is that Sony is still bidding on components for the boxes. This means the development is far from final, and it will be debugging up to, and in a Microsoft overheating manner, past the last minute. Not a good sign.

I know I know - rumour is as a rumour does. But there are so many of these rumours flying around it makes me think that E3 can’t come soon enough.

Sony Playstation 3 is far from complete