Sony Style Store

Sony, like so many other manufacturers, has begun setting up show room floors across the USA. These experience centers are called 'Sony Style' stores. When I was in Japan a few years back, hitting up the Sony showroom in Ginza was a must. Now, Sony has come to my front door, setting up a Sony Style store in the Dallas Galleria. Once I found out, I dragged my fiancée there to try some of the latest Sony tech. With all the new technology emerging, it is actually one of the best ways for Sony to market all their new hardware. Showrooms like these are built around the idea of “try before you buy” and with so many choices this almost seems necessary. Take for example 3D TV’s; they come in all forms of size, shape and technologies. They are something so complex and expensive that I had no intention of buying day one, but here, they can be experienced for free. Better yet, they can be experienced while playing a Playstation 3, which is the first console outside of a PC that can do this. It may not be worth the $2000+, but having played some MLB the Show and Motorstorm I can say in confidence, it works. If you can combine this with “the Move” and a 7.1 sound system in a creative way, it may be the closest thing to Virtual Reality in your living room we have seen yet.

Speaking of “the Move”, this is another technology that I am not probably going to be adopting day one, but was happy to hear Sony will be having an event in the next month. Thereby, Sony is providing me another opportunity to “try before I buy”, in a retail space more comfortable than the local Wal-Mart or Best Buy. There are numerous other products, ranging from laptops to PSP’s, but I wouldn’t recommend actually buying anything there. I was looking through the shelf of games they had for sale and Lair was priced at almost $60!!! You look on Amazon.com and you can buy a new copy for $17, which is still overpriced since the game is shit. Other than that, I think as a marketing vehicle, this could be very profitable for Sony in the long run. Hey, it works for Apple!

Expect to see another post from the Sony Style Store @ the Playstation Move Event in early September.

Podcast 02

Another Podcast is complete, and this one is on a new mixer. Tim, Steve and I discuss things like Bioshock 2, Red Dead Redemption, Japanese perversion and E3 dreams. Oh and this one is a little more explicit than the previous one....

You can download Episode 2 here or listen below.

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Sony "Where's the PR?"

As many users may already aware, the Playstation 3 has run into a little error that effected it’s users in a big way. On March 1st, the internal clock on all “fat” PS3’s was a little mixed up and thought we were currently in a leap year. The cell or some higher function inside the PS3 new better and every “fat” in the wild began to beat itself up over the date, causing numerous problems. The biggest of which was the blahblahblah error, keeping the PS3 from being able to connect to the Playstation Network. This created a domino effect across other games, which required trophies to sync in order to run. Users who turned on their PS3’s and were greeted by this error, were equally as stunned to discover that they were also being treated to a slew of corrupted trophy data, save files and other oddities.

First off, Sony is not a villain in this situation, as this was a silly error that probably happened due to the forgetfulness of some poor employee. When compared to the Xbox 360 and its numerous hardware failures, Sony looks like the gold star of the classroom. The problem was how they handled the situation and the advice they offered their consumers. Telling your customers not to turn on their PS3’s is ridiculous, especially since they would not be online looking for a solution if they had not already done so. Also, most of the posts I saw in North America were directed at the United States audience, but this is a worldwide issue. It was not localized to one region and customers from many countries were probably left in the dark about what was going on. Holding their breath and hoping that this was not the end of their backwards compatible “fat’s” lifespan (I was one of them). I am sure Canadians everywhere were wondering where the support was. While engineers were being called in on a Sunday and someone soon realized that this issue would be resolved once March 2nd rolled around and the internal clock realized its mistake. Instead, of pretending like people were willing to stand by and act like nothing was wrong (which they weren’t reference solution), Sony should have been transparent about the situation and addressed the public with this knowledge, putting everyone’s mind at ease for the next 24 hours. If they were wrong, it at least doused the fire long enough for them to figure out a way to fix it, but if they were right, it potential ended a flame war hours earlier than what actually happened. Taking some action and keeping users from modifying their PS3s and causing more damage. I still love Sony and still support the brand, but I just felt they should have been more responsive to customer concerns, besides some press releases and twitter updates. Though, maybe I am still young and naïve. Whatever the case, everything is find now and my PS3 came back unscathed. Now I can finish Heavy Rain!

When is Online Co-op Disconnected?

When you develop a game, based around your ability to communicate with your partner and there is no voice chat for on-line co-op... EA, you are a smart dedicated publisher that makes quality games. Why was this overlooked? I understand Microsoft gives you a freebie with cross game chat and you obviously had enough money to put in some chat function, since you were able to make a PSP version of this game (is that even going to sell). Sorry, getting a little bitter, but I think this should have been in there. It is just what the consumer would expect going into the experience. Good game though otherwise and the mask customization within the EA accounts was genius, but next time, please put in the voice chat. Thanks!

State of the Industry: The Landscape of 2010 part 3

Really quick, to wrap up the expectations for the rest of the year, I feel I have to mention the advent of motion control. Much like online connectivity, hard drives and now Netflix; Motion Control seems destined to become the next industry standard for video game consoles, for better or worse... Let's take a really quick look at all the different offerings we should expect.

Wii & "The Motion Plus"- Wii Motion Plus has been available since 2009. It is essentially supported by only a hand full of titles and 2010 would seem like the year that would change, but Nintendo has been pretty quiet about it. Red Steel 2 is coming and hopefully a Zelda which supports the motion plus, but why has the focus shifted to the vitality sensor so quickly? It would seem prudent that their hardware be accompanied by comparable software.

PS3 & "The Arc" - Not much changing here, as Sony delays it's release of the new motion sensing peripherals, no rumored to be called "the arc". The delay is apparently for software reasons and that at least puts my mind at ease, knowing if I buy it, there will be things for me to do with it. Expect it to ship early next holiday season.

Xbox360 & "Project Natal" - Microsoft too  has found some issue with their new motion sensing device, and apparently the cost was too high for 'Natal' to have its own processor. Now games will have to give up 30% of the 360's core and games will be limited in scope. Apparently this will not be affecting the release schedule though and consumers should expect to see it early next holiday season as well.

*Note: All images are a result of Google Image search

PS3 Hard Drive Swap

I was fortunate enough to receive a new hard drive for my PS3 this christmas and thought it would be a piece of cake. Enough blogs gave me that impression, but few mentioned how difficult the process of backing up the data on your PS3 could be. Here, let me draw up the scenario; I have a 300 GB NTFS external hard drive, should be suitable for backing up a 60 GB PS3, right? Wrong... For some reason the PS3 OS will only recognize external devices formated in the FAT32 format, not NTFS. Oh wait, that is not the only catch, the kicker is Microsofts operating system limits the size of a volume which could be formatted in FAT32 (32 GB). So I had a bit of a dilemma, since my hard drive had about 55 GB of data on it. I tried a couple 3rd party applications, but since they were not Windows 7 compatible and I could not get anything to trick windows into formatting over 60 GB. Rather than suffer any longer by continuing to search the internet for another couple of hours, I broke down and deleted enough off the drive to be able to backup at least 30 GB. From here on out it was really a piece of cake. Step by step:

1. 
   
   Plug in your external Hard Drive, and turn on the PS3
   
   
   
2. 
   
   In the XMB find Settings > System Settings > Backup Utility and run that guy
   
3. Once the back up is complete, power down everything and pull your PS3 out
   
4. Lay the PS3 down Horizontally and remove the small panel from the bottom of the PS3
   
5. There you will see the Hard Drive cage behind the blue screw.
   
6. Unscrew, flip handle and slide right. Now pull out the Hard Drive
   
7. Its a standard SATA laptop Hard Drive mounted in a cage by four screws.
   
8. Remove the four screws CAREFULLY! You can really strip these bad without a small tipped phillips...
   
9. Mount in the new Hard Drive to the cage, push down and slide left. You should feel a click.
   
10. Replace blue screw, cover and reconnect your PS3 to the entertainment center
    
11. The PS3 will need to format the new drive.
    
12. Once that is complete, reconnect the external Hard Drive, In the XMB find Settings > System Settings > Backup Utility and Restore Backup
    
13. Enjoy your beefed up PS3