Monday 13 July 2009

Vidzone 1.03 Update Now Live


I Went on Vidzone this morning as usual and there was no hint of an update or anything. Just went on it now and version 1.03 was available. I downloaded it and it said that advertisements will now appear in the internet browser. Also for me the menus are now black instead of blue. Just thought Id let people know.





PS3 Slim Could Be Announced Next Month At GDC


I have posted about the PS3 Slim before on this blog, it appears a number of sources have been in contact with the TheSixthAxis site and are saying a price drop and announcement on the PS3 Slim will be made at the Game Developers Conference 2009 which runs from August 17 to the 19 in Cologne, Germany. That's hope we finally find out all the details about the PS3 Slim and price cut then.




The Future Of Trading In Games


The future of retail and online games stores seems bleak at the moment due to the ever change ways of buying our games, for the PC you have services like Steam that seem very popular where you pay a subscription to play what ever games you want when you want but never actually own them, then you have Xbox live, PSN and Wii shop channel for your home consoles in which you can download games, DLC, demos and trailers. In the future i'm sure these services will grow and become even more popular meaning we will buy more downloadable games instead of buying games from stores, also other services such as OnLive our on the way and may change the way we play games using the Internet and a monthly subscription on any TV or PC, this may mean by the time the next generation of home consoles releases they may be alot different from what we have now such as a download only like the PSPGO.

There are three possibilities

Disc and download
Download only
Subscription based

The problems with disc's and download's are that they can be pirated over time but subscribution based is alot better due to you never downloading the full game which makes it less likely to be pirated. My opinion is we may see download only consoles next generation, This helps the developers and publishers save money from not producing disc's, manuals, and case's. The other thing this helps the publishers do is sell more of there games instead of losing money from people buying traded in games.

What i would like to see if consoles become download only is the ability to sell the games we download via PSN store. The way this could work is when you go to the PSN store to buy a game you receive a redeem code which you then redeem and then download and play then when you want to sell/trade the game you delete the game from your hard drive and then go on to the PSN store and list the item and redeem code on a section just for trading in games and when it sells you get a certain percentage, Sony gets a percentage and the publisher gets a percentage.

Example
Battlefield 1943 cost's £9.99 to buy new you then play and then Sell on the PSN store for £9.99 you then receive something like 25%, Sony receives 25% and the publisher receives 50%

If this could be done in some kind of way i think this would help people who like buying disc's from shops as they will be able to still sell there games to buy others and would make it cheaper then buying the disc version's as a download only service is cheaper then a disc service, which means games that are £39.99 in shops now could sell for around £25-£30. This could be done if redeem codes are used and a system that changes the code once listed on the PSN store to stop you from redownloading the game again.

As for retail stores they could also sell either PSN cards or the games using redeem codes for people who don't have there console hooked up to the Internet or for when you want to buy a game for someone else for birthdays or Christmas's

Whatever happens when the next generation comes around I'm sure downloadable content will be a huge part of how games are sold.



Home Screen Capturing Coming Soon



There as been alot of talk about picture frames in Home spaces and the ability to take pictures with in Home, according to Locust_Star (Home Manager in America) recently replied to a request about screen capturing within Home it's on it's way very soon.

"[It's] a simple feature that I know the devs are working on. My magic 8-ball says [it's] coming sooner rather than later."

Could this be coming this week? i think its more likely to come at some point this year and might be something to do with firmware update 2.90, maybe the ability to capture screens from within the game you are playing and within Home space's and then upload to a picture frame within your Home personal space.



Top 10 Selling PS3 Games Of 2009


Below is the top 10 selling PlayStation 3 games of 2009 so far, there are 5 exclusives in the top 10 (Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet, inFamous, MLB 09:The show and Yakuza 3) as of 4th of July.

28th Dec 2008 to 03rd Jan 2010
(No) (Title) (Publisher) (Weeks) (This Year)(Life Time total)
1 Resident Evil 5 (Capcom) 18 2,310,236 2,310,236
2 Killzone 2 (SCE) 19 1,728,191 1,728,191
3 Street Fighter IV (Capcom) 21 1,263,303 1,263,303
4 Call of Duty:W.A.W (Activision) 34 969,892 3,360,762
5 UFC 2009 Undisputed (THQ) 7 824,124 824,124
6 LittleBigPlanet (SCE) 37 599,457 2,268,506
7 inFamous (SCE) 6 596,088 596,088
8 FIFA Soccer 09 (EA) 40 545,396 2,249,537
9 MLB 09: The Show (SCE) 18 477,604 477,604
10 Yakuza 3 (Sega) 19 474,672 474,672

Also the PS3 as sold 3,770,886 so far this year, which brings the total PS3 sold to 22,447,800 (not 100% correct)