Archived snapshot of Three Speech (2006–2009), the semi-official PlayStation 3 blog. Preserved as a static archive — comments, search and polls are read-only. Complete post index
The Resident Evil: Extinction Blu-ray disc, released on 2nd January in the US, will contain demo versions of Resident Evil 5 and Devil May Cry 4. Also featured are plenty of Profile 1.1 features including picture in picture commentary, and Blu-Wizard 2.0 which enhances interactive menu features such as organisation.
Tech specs for the disc are the usual 1080p AVC-MPEG4 video transfer as well as an uncompressed 5.1 audio track. Extinction will also be released as part of a trilogy set including the original first Resident Evil film on the same date.
No word on a UK release date yet – we’ll keep you posted.
Bernie Stolar from Adsense For Games believes that in-game advertising is going to be very big. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, he reckons that by 2010 it will be a billion dollar industry – and that, by then, 80% of games will contain in game ads.
But he warns: “The demographics have changed. So the rules have changed. At the end of the day, we can’t p@ss off the customer. We can’t over-populate a game with ads. If you’re going to do that, you better give the game away for free.”
In a recent interview, Insomniac’s Brian Hastings discussed his opinions on the PS3’s hardware and how gaming on the PS3 will develop in the future.
“The amount of action we’re able to put on the screen at 60 frames per second really dwarfs what we were able to do a year ago at 30 frames per second,” said Hastings. “What’s most exciting is the way things are headed right now I think we’ll see just as big a leap from our second generation engine to our third as we did from the first to second.”
When asked about the PS3’s cell processor and the SPU, Brian had the following to say: “Collision and physics are entirely running on SPUs now, which allows us to put much more on the screen at once than we were able to with Resistance. Moving more and more code to the SPUs is an ongoing process and I think we’ll continue to see major benefits from this for several more years.”
More news on the SingStar front. The PS3 version will come with exclusive next gen online features, including the option to play whilst downloading new tracks and the abililty to upload your performances to be rated by the waiting world - rate others, view the highest rated and build your own profile. (Could this be a new A&R source for the music industry?)
The SingStore comes with 44 songs at launch, including some SingStar PS2 titles (so you know, SingStar shipped over ten million copies for the PS2), as well as brand new tracks. New music includes tracks from the Manic Street Preachers, Zutons and Depeche Mode with existing titles from the likes of Gwen Stefani, OutKast, Coldplay, Pussycat Dolls and Razorlight also available.
The store will grow rapidly, with updates happening regularly, starting on December 17, with the aim of having in excess of 350 songs available to download over the coming months. The PS3 version will also come with a sleek new look, new voice effects and wallpapers.
The first full reviews of Drake’s are coming through - they are looking pretty, pretty good.
“Truly, Uncharted is the first game I’ve seen to date that makes me wonder if it could be done on the Xbox 360, and as a huge admirer of the software line-up on Microsoft’s system, that’s saying a lot.” Eurogamer
EDIT: For those that can’t reach certain sites due to work restrictions (like our SH4RKY), IGN scored Drake’s 9.1/10 (Outstanding!) with Eurogamer giving it 9/10.
We also received a rather nice promo box of bits for the game - photos of it this afternoon.
In: Uncategorized by: Three Speech @ 12:04 pmComments (23)
In the penultimate article in a series about supercomputing, Dazed & Confused technology editor Chris Hatherill assesses the just-released TOP500 world supercomputer ranking - and picks out a few surprises. Over to Chris…
Every six months, TOP500.org releases an updated list of the world fastest supercomputers, along with statistics, country-by-country breakdowns and predictions for what we can expect to see in the future. Though the top spot in the brand new ranking hasn’t changed, there are a few surprises, both individually and overall.
Fastest, by some margin, is the Blue Gene/L System, a joint development of IBM and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration that’s installed at the DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. This recently souped up supercomputer is now pushing 478.2 teraflops (that’s 478.2 trillion calculations per second), compared to 280.6 just six months ago. As we mentioned last time, BG/L’s main function is to model ageing nuclear weapons to make sure they’re safe, or, as they put it, to run “atomistic simulations of shock ejecta from copper, a fragmentation and atomization process that is very difficult to study experimentally.”
Some news for FPS fans. Ubisoft have confirmed a December 14 launch date for Haze, meaning there’s only one more month to wait before our long awaited fix of Nectar.
Check out the latest Haze video below - not exactly a trailer but a humorous look around the Free Radical studio, entitled ‘Streets of Britain’.
In: Uncategorized by: Three Speech @ 4:58 pmComments (13)
