Tag Archives: PS3
MAG: The Beta I’d be playing if PSN didn’t suck
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Update: Finally got into the beta, and it sucked. BORING as dirt.
So, it’s been nearly two weeks, and generally speaking I have been enjoying my PS3 quite a bit. I finished Metal Gear Solid 4 last night (more on that later), I’ve played a fair amount of God of War Collection (including the very nice looking demo of God of War 3), and I’ve tinkered a little with Little Big Planet. And of course, I’ve downloaded some demos from Playstation Network, AKA PSN, thinking it would be awfully fun to play some potential purchases.
The problem is, PSN sucks. It sucks a LOT. For all those fans who decry Xbox Live and its yearly fees, citing the free PSN as the holy grail, let me tell you something: You get what you pay for, and PSN is the proof in that pudding. Let me give you some examples of why this is so. I decided to try out the demo of Dante’s Inferno, which weighs in at about 1GB, and I thought at the same time that it would be fun to try out both the PS3 and 360 versions. So I fired up my PS3 and kicked off the download, and watched as the progress bar slowly crept to 1%. “Well,” I thought, “This is boring. I might as well start the 360 download too.” And so I did. One hour later, I was playing the 360 version-and the PS3 version was at 30%. 5 hours later and the PS3 version finished downloading at last. “Woohoo!” I thought: “Now I can try it out, too!” And then the install screen popped up. The Install Screen, people. On a CONSOLE. Luckily the install only took about 5 minutes, but still: On Xbox 360, you never, EVER install demos. Once the download is finished, you’re ready to play.
So today, they released the public beta of MAG: Massive Action Game. I’ve been a little excited about this. I’m not typically an FPS fan, but this one seemed like something special, what with its 256 player online doolabob and huge levels, and so I eagerly signed into the Playstation Store and found my download. “Hooray!” I thought, “it’s only 289MB!”
Three hours later, it finally finished. Three.Fucking.Hours.
I know what you’re gonna say: “But Jason, it’s your internet connection, it’s too slow for the awesome size of 289MB!” And to you I say “Ha! In your dreams, buddy! I’m on a 10Mb Fiber connection! I can stream HD movies from Netflix and hulu and rarely have so much as a blink!” But here’s the fun part: So I go to launch the MAG demo, and what do I find? After going through the tedious 5 minute install process, it pops up a screen to ask if it’s OK to download another 1.8GB before I can play the demo. That’s about as lovely as it can get, isn’t it? So that’s where I am.
Waiting on PS3 to download. Can’t do anything else with the system while that happens.
Good thing my 360 still works. Moral of the story? You get what you pay for, and you need look no further than the free PlayStation network to see that in action.
About Jason Ward
Well this is funny: PS-Thriimote anyone?
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When Sony announced their very own evolution of the Wii Remote this year at E3, nobody was particularly surprised. After all, even Microsoft joined the fray with it’s no-controller motion controller system, Project Natal (oh, but for a cooler name), and let’s face it: Nintendo’s more than proven that motion control in some form is the way forward for video game interaction. At this point, it would be more shocking if the big boys didn’t leap in and try to parrot Nintendo; after all, they’ve managed to nearly outsell the two combined.
With that said, I can’t claim to have seen this one coming: The Wii Remote…now for Playstation 3. Luckily Sony’s not exactly behind this (it’s coming from Blaze Products Europe), because oh how the fanboys would howl. No doubt there’s a collective sigh of relief at Sony HQ today, the kind that comes with the ability to smile and say “wasn’t us!” As you can see from the diagram at left, the new “BLAZE PS3™ Motion Freedom 3D Controller” (yeah, I copied and pasted, so sue me) is virtually identical to the Wii Remote, with the sole exception being the addition of a ton of buttons (wonder how often they’ll get pressed by your palm while swinging a virtual tennis racket or baseball–err, cricket bat).
The description isn’t clear as to whether it has a pointer functionality to it or not, nor does it tell us whether it has the full range of detection found in the Wii’s Motion Plus adapter, so we’ll just have to sit on our hands and wait for more info. In the meantime…sit back and chuckle a bit as the “fad” migrates to the “big boy” consoles.
About Jason Ward
E3 2009-The Eye Candy
While our friends at Ugly Baby Studios were busy galavanting around the Los Angeles Convention Center playing video games for three days last week, they had the good courtesy to at least photograph the best eye candy. No, we’re not talking about the video games on PS3 and Xbox 360, the graphics on those are of a much less savory variety than what we’re about to show you.
No, my fellow Nerds, the nerdiest of nerdy stuff is here for you to behold: The Booth Babes of E3 2009, as photographed by Ugly Baby Studios developer Juliet Flores. Normally they’d post these on their own site, but their gallery is having technical difficulties. Your loss is our gain, bitches! I mean, uh, friends…
A sampling is smattered here, but let’s face it: the good stuff is on the gallery page!
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FreeWare Review: Orb Media Server
Today’s nugget of tasty freeware is something for, perhaps, the slightly more advanced user. Now, for a site that’s all about Nerdy Stuff, that shouldn’t present a problem for anyone reading this. Even so, a fair word of warning is in order: this one will require a little patience.
Orb Networks. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe not, but what they do primarily is provide the free Orb Media Server software. Now, in theory this is an amazingly cool piece of software, but in practice it’s actually only pretty darn cool. Yes, cool has levels.
Anyway, the software. Orb is pretty slick; what it does is fairly simple in premise: install it on your PC, configure it to point to your folders full of music and video clips, and it will stream all that media to your mobile device, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, cell phone, iPhone or pretty much anything else with a web browser. In cases where the target device doesn’t support the media in its native format Orb will transcode it to something a little more universal, notably Flash FLV format (as you’d find on YouTube or similar sites).
About Jason Ward
UBISoft thinks new consoles in 2011ish–and they’re probably right
It probably seems like premature nerdjaculation to begin speculating about the Next Generation of gaming consoles at this point; PS3 and Wii have scarcely been on the market for 2 years and 360 has just broken 3. Even so, that hasn’t stopped a little speculation from happening, not the least of which has come from UBISoft’s Yves Guillimot who, quoted in an article on GamesIndustry.biz, has stated that his company is preparing for the next generation to arrive in the 2011-2012 time frame.
As you should expect, there are naysayers, and some of them have good reason say nay, but they’re still wrong. The logic goes like this: “Well Sony says PS3 will last 10 years!”. Yes, and they said that about PS2, and that appears likely to be the case–but that didn’t stop Sony from announcing PS3 just 5 years after PS2 launched, and launching just a year later (that’s 6 years, folks, and if you use both hands worth of fingers to count you’ll find that 2012 will be-you guessed it-6 years after the launch of PS3-and Wii for that matter). Moreover, Xbox 360 will be 6 years old in 2011. Simply put, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the next gen will launch-or at worst case scenario, be announced-by 2011-12.
