Tag Archives | Gaming

Dust 514: E3’s Most Ambitious Shooter

Posted by Jared Newman on June 9, 2011 at 8:43 am

If you watched Sony’s E3 press conference, you might’ve dismissed Dust 514 as just another Playstation 3 shooter among countless others. And that’d be too bad, because Dust 514’s latest trailer doesn’t do justice to the crazy ideas that CCP Games is trying to execute.

Unlike most multiplayer shooters, whose individual matches live in a vacuum and don’t support any overarching goals, Dust 514 is tied directly to the massive multiplayer game EVE Online. By fighting on the ground, players try to capture planets on behalf of EVE’s major corporations. In other words, players’ actions in Dust 514 can have a ripple effect throughout the EVE universe.

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Apple is “Very Excited” About OnLive on the iPad (Says OnLive)

Posted by Jared Newman on June 8, 2011 at 1:00 pm

OnLive made a bunch of announcements before E3, but at the show, the streaming game service was showing something new: full, working versions of OnLive on the iPad and Android tablets.

An OnLive app is already available on the iPad, but only for watching other players and seeing what games are available. The unreleased app shown at E3 can run OnLive’s full library of games using the universal controller announced last week, and one game was even adapted to the touch screen. According to Joe Bentley, OnLive’s vice president of engineering, Apple is listening.

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8 Questions About Nintendo’s Wii U

Posted by Jared Newman on June 7, 2011 at 11:54 am

The crowd laughed at the silly name when Nintendo announced the Wii U at its E3 press conference, but their derision quickly turned to amazement when Nintendo showed what its upcoming home gaming system can theoretically do. The trick is in a controller with a 6.2-inch touch screen that streams video from the console itself.

We’re still a long way from the Wii U’s 2012 release, and Nintendo left a lot of questions unanswered, even as it injected a much-needed dose of buzz into the E3 atmosphere. So I’m going to take a page from Harry and tackle the Wii U announcement as a series of open questions.

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Sony Announces Playstation Vita, Stays the Course on PS3

Posted by Jared Newman on June 6, 2011 at 11:06 pm

Hand it to Sony for knowing its audience.

Although the Playstation 3 has become a multimedia powerhouse — Sony dropped the nugget that its console accounts for 30 percent of all Netflix streaming — Sony’s E3 press conference was almost entirely about games. The requisite parade of exclusives came first, followed by launch details for Sony’s next-generation portable, now known as the Playstation Vita.

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Microsoft’s E3: A Bang for Kinect, a Whimper for Live TV

Posted by Jared Newman on June 6, 2011 at 2:35 pm

Good thing Microsoft had a packed line-up of Kinect games to show at its E3 press conference, because last week’s big rumor about live TV on the Xbox 360 turned out to be kind of a dud.

Kinect, the motion-sensing, audio-detecting Xbox 360 camera that launched last year, dominated the discussion at Microsoft’s press conference. I counted 15 announcements for games that will either support or require Kinect, plus a revamped console menu designed for gestures and voice.

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Now Nintendo Admits It Was Hacked, Says No Customer Data Stolen

Posted by Matt Peckham on June 6, 2011 at 7:25 am

As this week’s E3 games conference and debut of Nintendo’s Wii successor looms, Nintendo’s admitting that Sony’s not the only victim of hacktivist ne’er-do-wells—yep, Nintendo was hacked, too.

Nintendo acknowledged a security breach in a statement yesterday, explaining that its U.S. servers came under cyber-fire a few weeks ago, but stressed that no personal user data was in breach. By comparison, Sony’s seen troves of sensitive personal data repeatedly stolen (and reportedly distributed) as hackers took turns assaulting the electronics conglomerate’s many corporate facets.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Review: Like Being a Kid Again

Posted by Jared Newman on June 6, 2011 at 12:04 am

Let’s get something out of the way: I cannot justify buying Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play. For as much as I love video games, I’m 28. And that seems a bit old to be carrying around a smartphone with its own set of game controls.

But that didn’t stop me from cracking a huge grin when I slid out the Xperia Play’s set of buttons and touch pads for the first time. This Android handset is the mythical “Playstation Phone.” If only it existed 10 or 15 years ago.

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Konami Has Its Own Plan for PSP-to-PS3 Gaming, And It’s Called “Transfarring”

Posted by Jared Newman on June 3, 2011 at 3:39 pm

At a pre-E3 press event Thursday night, Konami announced a couple of game compilations that will be playable on both the Sony PSP and the Playstation 3, with the ability to transfer your progress between both systems. And unfortunately, Konami is calling this gimmick “Transfarring.”

Strange name aside, Transfarring is a neat idea. You connect the PSP to the PS3, and your saved game transfers from one to the other. The first games to include this capability will be Metal Gear Solid HD Collection and Zone of Enders HD Collection. Eventually, Konami wants to expand Transfarring to Sony’s next-generation portable.

If this all sounds kind of familiar, it’s because Sony announced a similar PSP-to-PS3 feature a couple of weeks ago. Konami stressed that Transfarring is a separate creation, although it’s not clear why the publisher has decided to go it alone. I suppose it doesn’t make a difference as long as both systems work well.

For now, I’m wondering whether people will have to buy two versions of each game to use Transfarring or otherwise pay extra for the privilege. I’m also curious how Konami will deal with the control differences on Sony’s large and small devices. The PSP, after all, lacks a second analog stick and has only one pair of trigger buttons. (Sony has said it will rework the controls for its own PSP-to-PS3 remakes.) As with most video game news that’s trickling out ahead of next week’s E3 expo, I’m hoping to get some answers soon.

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OnLive Befriends Intel, Joins Facebook

Posted by Jared Newman on June 2, 2011 at 10:22 pm

OnLive made a couple announcements today that might help people discover and use the streaming video game service.

The biggest news is a partnership with Intel that will enable OnLive on all connected TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes that use Intel’s CE4100 embedded processor. OnLive expects to land on 25 million TVs by the end of this year, according to GigaOM. A new universal controller will work on any OnLive-enabled device.

This fits nicely with the idea of video games coming directly to televisions without the help of game consoles. OnLive processes and streams high-end video games from its own servers, so it doesn’t need fancy hardware on the user’s end to play modern games like Borderlands and Bioshock.

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Playstation Store Returns as Sony Hacking Continues

Posted by Jared Newman on June 2, 2011 at 3:27 pm

Sony just can’t get back on track. On Wednesday evening, the Playstation Store came back online, finally making the Playstation Network whole again after April’s devastating security breach.

But now, a group of hackers known as Lulz Security claims to have breached Sony Pictures’ website, stealing e-mails, passwords, addresses, birth dates and opt-in information for more than a million users. All of this information is now posted to the Internet.

To be clear, we’re talking about two different divisions of Sony. The hacking of Sony Pictures has no effect on the Playstation Network. Still, this is another embarrassing security breach for Sony, and a sign that the company isn’t finished fending off hackers. It’s not even the first attack since the breaches of PSN and Sony Online Entertainment in April. Other smaller attacks have included a leaked database in Japan and a phishing scam site on Sony’s Thai web domain.

On the bright side, the Playstation Network has remained relatively stable since online play resumed in mid-May. That’s the best way Sony Computer Entertainment can redeem itself, along with the “welcome back” package of free games and other benefits that’s reportedly in its final testing stages.

But as a whole, Sony needs to show its customers that it’s taking security more seriously. Obviously, the entire company is now a target, and customers are the innocent bystanders. Perhaps it’s time for CEO Howard Stringer to change his tone.

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