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By Joseph Tresca

It was the last hour of the last day of E3 and I knew exactly what game and peripheral I wanted to play before heading back to New York where Eyeballistic’s day to day operations take place. So I made my way over to Socom 4 in one of the Playstation Move showcase booths. I stood on a short line and I was assured by a Sony representative that I would be the last person they would let in before closing out the show.

I’d like to come out and say this first and foremost, Socom 4 is fantastic. If you had love for any of the previous Zipper Interactive developed titles then Socom 4 will feel natural and familiar. The new third person and over the shoulder camera views really help with shooting accuracy. You can go prone which is great for sneaking around just as in the older titles. The new cover mechanic is second nature and looks very cool. You really feel as though you’ve stepped into the shoes of a highly trained special forces soldier. All that said, this isn’t a preview of what to expect for Socom 4, so much as I’d like to give you an idea for what it was like controlling Socom 4 with the Playstation Move.

To some sum it up with one word I’d describe the experience as akward. I’m left handed so perhaps It was difficult for me to wrap my right-brained mind around how the controls should work. It’s also very possible that with some tweaking to the button mapping for the PS3 Move controllers I would be able to adapt perfectly. However as it stands right now and based on the titles I had the opportunity to play at E3, I remain skeptical of the PS3 Move’s appeal with the hardcore gaming public.

The Move controller itself is actually pretty light weight compared to what you might expect. This is a very good thing because your arm gets tired when holding even the lightest of objects in front of your body, especially during extended play sessions. Admittedly this wasn’t really a problem for me during my 10 minutes of demonstration time. The accuracy of the Move as a pointer/cross hair is excellent. I didn’t receive any jitters, hops or studders while aiming at enemies. The Playstation Eye, which was sitting just above the television, appear to do a fine job of tracking the glowing orb attached to the top of the controller.

Where things get a bit confusing is when you need to turn your character’s head (essentially the camera view) to pan accross the environment, the Move controller requires you to push your cross hairs to the edge of the screen so that you can pan your view to look in that direction. In its current state, this is really very slow. Any advantage gained in accuracy is lost to head turning speed. Also using the navigation stick in your other hand can take some getting used to. I was constantly pulling the trigger on the Nav controller to fire my gun instead of pulling the trigger on the Move controller, a small problem which I’m sure could be alleviated with configurable button mapping. It’s also worth noting that the Nav controller repeats the X and O buttons which are also located on the Move controller. I understand that this is supposed to allow for easy access, but it does add some confusion and complexity which at this point in time seems excessive.

Although my first experience with Sony’s motion control peripheral was less than perfect, I’m willing to give it another shot when it makes its debut. Perhaps it just takes a little longer to get acquinted with the new controls. Perhaps some developers will implement the controls better than others. Maybe it’s because I’m left handed and with a bit of time I’d feel like a pro. I think it’s worth giving another look when I can spend hours with a final copy of the game.

admin Previews Move, Nav, PS3, Socom 4, Sony, Zipper

By Brandon Miller

So as the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo approaches, I thought it might make some sense to take a snap shot of the industry and grade the performance of the big three up until this point.

Nintendo

While the world patiently awaits the arrival of the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo DS continues to dominate the handheld market. It doesn’t have the strongest processor, but there is no denying that the ever expanding game library continues to appeal particularly to Japanese gamers. I expect the 3DS to continue this trend while offering a wider appeal.

Meanwhile the Nintendo Wii is still number 1 in the console race. The Wii has almost single-handedly captured the casual gaming market. As of late though sales have finally started to decline. The next generation Wii will need to be much more than just a Wii in high definition if Nintendo wants to continue to be number one.

Grade: B+

Microsoft

Their is no denying the impact that the Xbox 360 has had on this generation of consoles. Once a newcomer to the market, Microsoft has proved their marketing and software savy. Aside from releasing the Xbox 360 with faulty hardware, there is very little to criticise about Microsofts game plan. They captured both the hearts and minds of the hardcore gamer this generation and with the release of Natal, Microsoft is threatening to take a piece of Nintendos casual marketshare.

Grade: A

Sony

How the mighty have fallen. Once the undisputed king of video games Sony has only recently started to get its mojo back. The PS3 was released too late and it was too expensive. Remarkably stupid comments from Sony executives did nothing to help their image. Sony honestly couldn’t have had a worse start.

Likewise the PSP never truly had the support that gamers were expecting even though it clearly had more capable hardware than its competition.

When we fast forward to today, we see a Sony that has completely reinvented itself. The PS3 slim and the release of several exclusive games with graphics which are simply unparalleled in the industry, are major factors contributing to Sonys recent success.

Marketing for their systems has improved 10 fold and the much needed price drop has seen Sonys PS3 outsell even the mighty Nintendo Wii. Meanwhile the PSP slim model is still overpriced for market consumption. It could use a price drop and a few more exclusives announced at a E3 but if I had to guess, I’d say Sony will be switiching focus to the impending PSP2.

Grade: B+

admin Industry News, Uncategorized grade, Microsoft, Natal, Nintendo, PS3, review, Sony, state of the industry, Wii, Xbox

By Joseph Tresca

As should be expected April 1st brought with it a torrent of practical jokes from several high profile companies. Google being one of the more well known, decided to name itself Topeka, an inside joke which resonates with people in the know.

However one company decided to pull a stunt that many might have dismissed as a practical joke initially, at least until it became a reality. The company was Sony, and the stunt in question was to remove the “Other OS” feature from their Playstation 3. What this means is that Playstation 3 users can no longer run their systems as a Linux computer.

Perhaps the writing was on the wall when Sony announced back in August 2009 that they would be removing the feature from their new PS3 Slim. Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media said, “This feature enabled users to install an operating system, but due to security concerns, Sony Computer Entertainment will remove the functionality through the 3.21 system software update.”

Now the impact of the removal of this feature may seem fairly innocuous at first. Until you realize that there is an entire sub-set of PS3 owners who purchased the device without ever planning to play a game or buy a Blu-ray movie for it. In 2007, the researchers at North Carolina State University clustered eight PS3 machines that ran Fedora Core 5 Linux (ppc64). That same year a University of Massachusetts team found that putting together an eight-node PS3 cluster together (for a cost of about US$4000) would perform with the same processing power as a 200-processor supercomputer.

As you might expect many in the Playstation community are very unhappy with Sony’s decision. Specifically those interested in the fields of science and bio-technology. Although the firmware upgrade is required for those who wish to continue playing games on Sony’s Playstation 3, a great many of those who are using the PS3 as a linux box will remain unaffected by simply choosing not install the patch. Sony may want to consider changing its current campaign slogan from “It only does everything” to “It does everything but Linux.”

admin Industry News April Fools, feature removed, firmware update, Not Joking, Not Kidding, other os, Playstation, PS3

By William Countiss

Recently Destructiod’s Jim Sterling wrote an article which scolds gamers that think that Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII development may have been negatively impacted by it being developed as a multi-platform game.  More specifically Jim does not mince words when he states that “Only idiots blame the 360 for FF XIII’s problems.”

Since it’s fun to play devil’s advocate, lets look have a quick look at the main reason why the people with an opinion other than Jim’s aren’t as he puts it, “idiots”.

I’m sorry Jim, but DVD9 just doesn’t cut it anymore. If file size constraints were an issue, an XBOX version could have negatively impacted the development of the game for no other reason than to maintain parity between the platforms. Although I can personally vouch that many games can certainly compress a good amount of data so that it would fit on a disc, one must also consider how much FMV is included in this particular game. Simply put, Final Fantasy XIII relies on full motion video much more heavily than most games. Video data can certainly be compressed, but that compression can be very noticeable. Higher bit rates on HD footage or at the very least footage that will be displayed on a high definition television can still be prone to ugly artifacts. We notice this on the Xbox version of the game and not at all on the PS3 version of the game. It is not hard to make the argument that if we’re noticing these artifacts then Square needed to squeeze Final Fantasy XIII’s total game data into the limited size of the DVD format. This hypothesis is further supported by the fact that the 360 version of the game is on multiple discs. There was no extra space to be had. Now the impact of space limitation alone could be the source of almost endless conjecture. How would multiple discs impact the visiting of different town? I’ll tell you how, you’d need to rely on the hard drive to cache town data. On the PS3 this technically isn’t a problem, however on the 360, the lowest common denominator of the system doesn’t include a hard drive. One option would be to remove towns completely and to re-design the game in a very linear way.

Jim argues that since the game has been in development for such a long time we’d be foolish to assume that Square made changes at the last minute to accommodate the 360 version of the game. Again this is completely untrue.  Removing towns from the game, which is one of the biggest gripes most reviewers have with FFXIII would not be a small task, but certainly would not be impossible. Yes it would mean a tight deadline, but with enough money and more than 6 months of time, just about anything is possible. What Jim fails to tell his readers is that a majority of the time spent during the four plus years of development time was mostly related to developing the ‘White Engine’ and then creating a cross platform game engine solution which eventually became known as “Crystal Tools.” Game development changes all the time, sometimes with just 6 months of time left until release.

Here is the thing Jim, you are journalist, not a game developer. I actually develop games for mobile platforms such as the iPhone and Android as part of my day job. Now I’m not going to claim to know more than you do about journalism but I’m pretty sure calling even the smallest fraction of your readership stupid for having a differing opinion, only serves to delegitimize your perspective. It’s your job to be as fair as possible. You can politely disagree, present all the facts and then let people decide, but you’d do well not to call your readers stupid. You must realize on some level that hurts Destructoid in that it encourages an intelligent discussion to devolve into a petty argument.

That said, we do agree on one thing. We should be blaming Square Enix for their failures no matter what the reasons were. We as gamers should vote with our wallets. If we don’t want development quality to be impacted by hardware limitations than we need to let Square Enix know. I can think of no better reason than simply refusing to purchase the game. That’ll get their attention much more effectively than any signature list would.

admin Industry News 3, Final Fantasy XIII, Gimped, Negatively, Playstation, PS3, Town Removal, Version, Xbox 360

By Joseph Tresca

Just over 24 hour ago many  Playstation 3 users were completely unable to access the Playstation Network due to a serious error. What made the error twice as serious was the fact that many offline games such as the recently released Heavy Rain were rendered unplayable to due to trophy synching errors. Gamers everywhere were left without answers as to why this occurred. The error 8001050F seemed to only affect older “fat PS3s” which made the issue all the more confusing as PS3 Slim owners were unaffected. Last night the problem was alleviated and all appears well again. Gamers everywhere breathed a sigh of relief that their Trophy data, which during the error read as corrupt, had been fully restored. Today we’ve learned why the error occurred. The system clock and server time apparently went out of synch when the Playstation hardware treated February 29th as a leap year in 2010. Essentially older PS3s treat every even year as a leap year. So when the system tried to access the server time and that date and time didn’t exist, everyone with older PS3s received the error. Sony apparently fixed the error by pushing the server time forward temporarily to allow access to the network again.

admin Industry News Leap Year Error, Network Error, Playstation 3, PS3, PS3 Fat, PSN Error