Konami just doesn’t think that a $100 price cut will have enough of a positive impact on the PS3’s sales. Konami just doesn’t think it’s enough for Metal Gear anymore.

“I wonder if Sony can win back user support by the price cut of just $100,” speaks Kazumi Kitaue, head of Konami’s North American and European operations.

Konami is considering releasing it on other formats to pay for the development costs that went into the game. They would like to hold it as a PS3 exclusive since it was “born” with Sony, however with the PS3 costing as much as decent personal computer they’re reconsidering keeping it with Playstation.

SCEE(Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) contacted Gamesindustry.biz regarding a  major announcement that they will be making Thursday at the E3 Media and Business summit.

They weren’t specific, however they mentioned it will be related to the recent price slashing and introduction of an 80GB version in North America.

Cross your fingers Europeans.

Well you gotta say the PS3 does look amazingly obscene with its J. Lo curves and its Ice Cube grill. I proudly own one of the amazing machines but with all my biaset comments as such I will put them in the cupboard and lock them up and really see if its worth around £500.

Well the GUI (Graphical User Interface) well for some of you normal people this is just the menu screen which basically the same as the PSP menu but with just one different menu this is the user where you can set up your account for each other. So really they have not made the menu any advanced compared to the processor power which is included in the PSP. Another great thing but can be awkward menu is freinds which can be very useful but chat and other things have not been devolped fairly well but can be sorted through firmware.

The PS3 is definetly over priced but if used to full capabilities, is a machine to have but many customers just wanna play games so this is overlooked as a pricy console but soon people will appreciate this console…

Is this just another failure such as the UMD . . .

NEWS UPDATE: Sony may scrap UMD.

The other day when I was at a local department store, I decided to take note of prices and what was in stock. Here is what I saw from each of the three main console companies:

First is Sony. There were plenty of slim PS2’s in stock for the price of around $130. The games had a price of about $20-$30 on average. The PSP’s price was around $180. The games were selling from $20-$40. Finally, the PS3. The store seemed to be overflowing with them, and it’s no wonder with the price of the console at $600 and games selling for upwards of $60.

Next is Nintendo. There was the DS that was selling for about $80 and the game for around $30. There wasn’t anything really special to comment on for the DS but I saw something that was pretty rare. There was a Wii in stock (Though it’s probably gone now) and it was selling for $250 with games selling for $40. And for the Gamecube, I happened to overhear an employee telling another customer that they were trying to get rid of all Gamecube games except for Zelda: Twilight Princess. The console was selling for its usual price of $100 and the games were selling for about $20-$30.

Last but certainly not least is Microsoft. Their XBox 360 appeared to be doing very as there were only a few in stock and I saw a couple people buy a 360. They had both varieties, the $400 and $300 and the games were selling for $50 mainly, though there were plenty of $40 games a few $30 and $60 games.

So in conclusion, PS3s weren’t moving but 360s and Wiis were going off of shelves with the PS2 still attracting a few buyers, and in the handheld side of things PSP and DS had been going at a fairly healthy rate.

Comments are encouraged.

-Unstable

NOTE: All prices are USD.

 

A few of the songs that will be on Guitar Hero III have been announced. What I’ve learned is that the game will be 1980’s themed and this is just the first batch. Here’s the list:

 

ORIGINAL RECORDINGS:
“Cult of Personality” by Living Colour
“Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones
“Cherub Rock” by Smashing Pumpkins
“Sabotage” by Beastie Boys
“The Metal” by Tenacious D
“My Name Is Jonas” by Weezer
“Knights of Cydonia” by Muse
COVER SONGS:
“Rock And Roll All Nite” as made famous by Kiss
“School’s Out” as made famous by Alice Cooper
“Slow Ride” as made famous by Foghat
“Barracuda” as made famous by Heart

(Source: GameSpot.com)

 

The game is going to be for XBox 360, Wii, Play Station 2 and Play Station 3.

More details later and comments are uncouraged!

-Unstable

Now that Sony has a good supply of Blu-Ray diodes but now those same diodes might cost less. All the way down to $8 each. Now that the part’s price has been cut can we expect a PS3 price cut?

Maybe, as Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter says, Sony is “definitely in a position to cut prices.” He continued on to say, “God knows whether they will, but lower costs usually lead to lower prices. The right question to ask is whether the full bill of materials is below US$ 499, allowing them to cut price and still avoid losing money. I’m not competent to answer whether it is, but I am competent to say that when cost is below US$ 499, we should look for a cut to that level.”

I sure hope for a cut too

Oh, it looks like Spiderman is releasing a game along with another one of its movies! Hopefully this one will be different from all the other Spiderman games. The 3rd movie game will be released on May 4th, 2007.

I, personally, wasn’t convinced this game will be different from the other Spiderman games when I read other previews. However, the makers of the game have not released much information about this game, but so far it looks like it will take the same structure as the others.

Like past spidey games, the popular feature of a roaming freely environment is still available in similar concept. But unlike the others, a new feature, almost all the movie cast will be vocally included in this game, which really is amazing.

As well as this game including the minor villains (such as the mysterious dragon boss) it will also include the main villains of the movie (such as Sandman, Venom and the new Green Goblin) .

As i said, not much information on this game has been released, but undoubtedly more info. Will be available as the release date grows closer.

Now the news is straight from Sony and the rumors confirmed. The 20GB version of the Playstation 3 will no longer be offered in North America. The choice was mostly made since for every 20GB version sold ten 60GB versions were sold. It just wasn’t in style.

“Dave Karraker of Sony America states, “At launch, we offered two separate models of PlayStation 3 to meet the diverse needs and interests of our PlayStation fan base. Initial retail demand in North America was upwards of ninety percent in favor of the 60GB SKU, so we manufactured and shipped-in accordingly. Due to the overwhelming demand for the 60GB model from both retailers and consumers, we have ceased offering the 20GB model here in North America. In addition to the larger internal hard drive, the 60GB PlayStation 3 features added storage media slots and built-in Wi-Fi not found in the 20GB system. Based on retailer and consumer feedback, we have decided to focus our current efforts on the more popular 60GB model.”"

-Joystiq.com

See ya later 20GB version, the 60GB version was too cool for you.

A user simply known as “HanSooloo” on PS3News.com ran a analysis on the PS3 harddrive and here are his interesting results,

From the analysis performed so far, here are some of his findings:

1. The HDD is encrypted with a (most probably) Sony proprietary format.
2. If Linux is setup on the machine, the HDD will contain the relevant ext2 or ext3 partitions, but it will NOT be visible to a regular OS. This is because, the HDD does NOT have a standard partition table. If one uses WinHex to scan the HDD, then the program will find the ext2/ext3/swap partitions at their respective offsets.
3. A program has been written to scan blocks of 16bytes for where contiguous data is on the HDD. This program has identified major blocks of data on a freshly formatted 60GB HDD.
4. Of major interest is that right around the 380MB marker, we start seeing blocks of 64KB data, and this repeats itself EVERY 183.72MBs. Why does a system need 64KB worth of markers every so often, is a mystery at the moment.
5. Each HDD is “individualized” the moment it is formatted on a particular PS3 unit. An individualized HDD CANNOT be used in another PS3 unit due to (in theory) a unit based signature being written to each HDD.
6. A project is underway to “individualize” 2 same make and model (Seagate Momentus 60GB 2.5″ SATA) HDDs and perform a byte level diff to spot differences in the disk layouts.
7. This diff will also be analyzed by the data block scanning program mentioned in Item-3 above.

Here are 2 files of interest for the DEV community.

DISCLAIMER: these files are posted here for STRICTLY EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. I hereby disclaim any harm that may arise from the use of the programs and the information posted here. You accept that you are doing this at your own risk.

Some information about the files:

HDD Info.xls: contains Start and End addresses of a minimum of 16-byte contiguous data blocks. Contiguous data block is defined as any 16-byte block that is not ALL ZEROES.

scan.rar: compressed source code for the “scan hdd” program that has been compiled on Linux. It currently does NOT support large HDD addresses due to 64-bit limitation on variables. It is planned for the program to have 128-bit variable support with publicly available libraries. Any suggestions are welcome.

I have posted the files on the Gamesoul forum for all to download, click here for the thread. Feel free to discuss these findings there as well.

(more…)

After being released just one week in the UK the sales have dropped 82% reveals official Chat Track figures. Chart Tracks figures are extremely close to the actual numbers since they gather information from over 7000 UK stores which all together represesent over 90% of the UK market.

Sales of the most popular games, Resistance: Fall of Man and Motorstorm fell over 60%.

I guess all of the PS3 lovers either got their fill of PS3 or don’t have the money.