Instead of releasing all three of the remastered PS2 Prince of Persia games at once – as SCEE did in Europe last month in the form of a Blu-ray compilation – SCEA has chosen to split them into three separate releases and sell them as downloads via PSN

New features in Warrior Within include the ability to “wield two weapons at once, manipulate the environments and control your enemies”.

All three games don HD visuals and support for stereoscopic 3D as well.

The third game in the trilogy, ‘The Two Thrones’, is also slated for release this month.

Via CVG

You read that right. In a clever design feature, the TV stand has a built in PS2 so you can pay your PS2 games. The TV also comes with internet video access for YouTube clips and 4 HDMI ports for 720p display.

The TV costs £199.95/US$314.

He told that the PS2 in its days did not have so much competitors to deal with and was the ”unreachable” console in its life-span. The PS3 with competitors like Wii and the Xbox 360 will have low sales and hard times, according to him.

“I hope PS3 can match PS2, but I think the market dynamics are slightly different,” said Harrison.

“For a large chunk of its life-cycle, the PS2 didn’t really have any competition anywhere in the world, so Sony was able to sell a huge number of units. If PS3 does reach the same level it will take longer and it will be a more difficult challenge.”

However he wishes the PS3 to be a great success like the PS2.

Sony Computer Entertainment founder Chris Deering is more optimistic:

“In the case of both PS1 and PS2, we sold more Slim units than original models,” he said. “The PS3 Slim has only been out a couple of years. If you could get a PS3 for a hundred pounds… Can you imagine? It could go much higher and last longer,” said Deering.

The PS2 has sold 142 million units whereas the PS3 has sold 43 million units as of yet.

Via Strategy Informer

However, sales in the game category specifically were down 12.9 per cent, to ¥171 billion ($2bn), compared to ¥196 billion ($2.4bn) for the same quarter last year.

Unit sales of the PlayStation rose from 3.2 million to 3.5 million compared to the same period last year, but PSP units dropped 50 per cent from 3 million to 1.5 million.

The PlayStation 2 sold as many units as the PSP during the three months, down from 1.9 million last year.

PlayStation 3 software sales were up from 23.9 million to 35.3 million units, with PSP game sales down from 13 million to 11 million units. PlayStation 2 software sales dropped from 11.4 million to 5.6 million units.

Full year unit forecasts remain unchanged, with expected sales of 15 million PlayStation 3 units, 8 million PSP units and 6 million PlayStation 2 units, said Sony.

Significant reductions in hardware costs, higher sales for the PlayStation 3 console and the addition of the Move peripheral were singled out as improving sales and operating revenue for NPS, along with strong PC sales, overall showing a year-on-year increase of 5 per cent to ¥369.1 billion ($4.44bn).

The entire Sony Corporation recorded a profit of ¥62.7 billion for the period, a big improvement over the ¥26.3 billion loss for the same period last year. Operating income was ¥68.7 billion, up from a ¥32.6 billion loss.

source GI.biz

Sure it seemed likely, having a cool $51 billion in cash lying around.

Sorry gamers it’s not happening anytime soon.

The latest BusinessInsider article has put those claims to rest once and for all:

“Most mergers destroy value, and Jobs is acutely aware of it.”

So why would Apple do something that would lessen their stock value?

Why it’s not Sony: “Sony also has a movie studio and dozens of product lines in consumer electronics that Apple doesn’t want. Sure, it might sell those off, but again — does Jobs want to be stuck with that headache for the next five years?”

So, maybe a smaller acquisition like Netflix? “[Jobs] would have to overpay massively given where the stock is (and that Amazon and Google would probably bid up the price if nothing else)”

To sum up the rumors in one sentence: “That cash is staying on the balance sheet.”

You can rest easy now.

via BusinessInsider

We’ve had great gaming memories together ‘ol buddy, we’ll never forget you.

The PS2 launched in America on Thursday, October 26, 2000. If you’re feeling nostalgic, here is the launch footage of the PS2:

PS2’s 10 Year Life Cycle Makes Sense Now – Here’s Why

IGN reports that the PS2 launched with 29 games:

Armored Core 2 (Agetec, Action)
DOA2: Hardcore (Tecmo, Fighting)
Dynasty Warriors 2 (Koei, Action)
ESPN International Track and Field (Konami, Sports)
ESPN X-Games Snowboarding (Konami, Sports)
Eternal Ring (Agetec, RPG)
Evergrace (Agetec, RPG)
FantaVision (SCEI, Puzzle)
Gun Griffon Blaze (Working Designs, Action)
Kessen (EA, Adventure)
Madden NFL 2001 (EA, Sports)
Midnight Club (Rockstar, Racing)
Moto GP (Namco, Racing)
NHL 2001 (EA, Sports)
Orphen (Activision, RPG)
Q-Ball Billiards Master (Take-Two Interactive, Simulation)
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 (Midway, Sports)
Ridge Racer V (Namco, Racing)
Silent Scope (Konami, Shooter)
Smuggler’s Run (Rockstar, Racing-Adventure)
SSX (EA, Sports)
Street Fighter EX3 (Capcom, Fighting)
Summoner (THQ, RPG)
Swing Away (Paradise Golf in Japan) (EA, Sports)
Tekken Tag Tournament (Namco, fighting)
TimeSplitters (Eidos, First-Person Shooter)
Unreal Tournament (Infogrames, First-Person Shooter)
Wild Wild Racing (Interplay, Racing)
X-Squad (EA, Action)

The PS2 turned 10 earlier this March in Japan. The EU anniversary is next month.

Well now you do thanks to the video below.

It shows the creation of the LEGO Universe DVD.

Here are the updated data.

Global PS3 hardware sales stood at 2.4 million for the quarter, a rise of 118 percent compared to the 1.1 million sales the machine managed in the same period last year.

Worldwide PS3 hardware sales now stand at 38.1 million, and ever-closer to the global 360 total at 41.7 million.

PS3 software rocketed 68 percent in the quarter, up to 24.8 million compared to 14.8 million a year earlier.

NPS sales rose to ¥325 billion from ¥246.1 billion in the same period last year, up 32.4 percent.

The division narrowed its loss from ¥36.7 billion in the previous year to ¥3.8 billion this year.

PSP “go”? Not quite

The figures weren’t all smiles and light, however. PSP hardware sales actually dropped for the quarter, down from 1.3 million in Q1 ‘09 to 1.2 million in the same period this year.

Global PSP hardware sales now stand at 48.6 million.

PSP software sales rose slightly, up from 8.3 million to 9.2 million in the current year.

PS2 managed to keep its end up on the hardware side, with sales remaining static year-on-year and 1.6 million. PS2 software sales, however, continued to crash: they were down from 8.5 million to 3.4 million this year.

Thanks, VG247

The Japanese company reported that net sales decreased to 19,037 million yen (down 2.4% from the previous year). As for profits, operating income decreased to 1,005 million yen (down 72.6 % from the previous year), and ordinary income decreased to 216 million yen (down 94.8 % from the previous year). Net income for the current period decreased to 213 million yen (down 90.4 % from the previous year).

In flagship Consumer Online Games Business, profitability was drastically declined because the performance of “Lost Planet 2″ (for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) struggled to grow. Furthermore, the increase of new flagship titles release from the same term of the previous year, when most sales were made of repeat titles, resulted in the higher game development costs.

In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Reeves said:

“Two to three years, I reckon so. I don’t have any inside information. All the first-parties have got to be working on something. The tricky thing is when do you put a stake in the ground on technology? That’s the problem. You can be waiting a few extra months to implement something, but you’ve got to set a date to go with a certain chip at a certain point otherwise you’re going to miss the key milestones.”

He also taklked about Microsoft’s Kinect:

“If you map it out the Xbox 360 is right up in the corner and it has certain types of games associated with it. And Microsoft knows that in ten years time they can’t be there, they have to be appealing to families. And I reckon that strategically it’s absolutely the right move. It’s almost like two steps back and one step forward. They are right to separate Kinect from everything else”

Reeves talked about the cost of developing modern titles and the effect on DLCs:

“Where it has to get creative is with games like Grand Theft Auto and Halo, you’ve got to reinvent yourself for a new generation, and that’s difficult, especially as these games cost $50-$70 million. In terms of downloadable content as long as the content holders – the labels, the artists – aren’t too greedy, that’s really where the money is. Because otherwise you’re spending $60 million to create a new game. To produce Rock Band the guys at Harmonix are brilliant. They’re not doing a lot of graphical work, it’s not very expensive for them. SingStar was exactly the same, it becomes a licensing business in a way.”

David Reeves also talked about 3D technology:

“It only takes five or six lines of code to change it from a normal game to a 3D game. I remember working on MotorStorm and the guys did a 3D level in about three weeks. What I think we’ll see is that certain parts of a game will work very well in 3D and you won’t need to make a whole game in 3D. The other aspect is it’s quite a strange feeling to play games in 3D. I’ve played quite a lot, 15-20 games and not necessarily Capcom titles, and when you play them intensely like WipEout you get a sick feeling, so you have to be careful about it. When you look at racing games in 3D and a lot of action adventure games it is a step change. If it works well in 3D then publishers will do it in 3D because it’s not a massive expense to do that.”

Thanks to Gamersworldbd reader Rabbi for the original tip.

“We certainly hope that’s going to be the case,” he said regarding 360. “We are confident that we have a huge amount of momentum and we see that from all of our partners in the industry at retail and third party partners.

The buzz is about where the PS3 is headed in the future, and I truly believe that future-proof message is a big part of that. A lot of developers, a lot of publishers out there are saying, ‘Wow, we like what the Move is offering, we like that you guys are on the cutting edge of 3D, so we’re going to get involved now, because when the PS3 really hits its stride we want to be there with it.’

So we’re very confident that we’re in a very good spot right now. And our partners are echoing that sentiment back to us”.

A follow up is in order. But instead, let’s take a look from Bangladeshi perspective. If you are a Bangladeshi gamer, which would be better, PCs or consoles?

The Good Ol’ Days

Whether we like to admit or not, most of us started as a PC gamer. Remember the old days of NFS and Prince of Persia on AMD K6/Pentium I PCs in Bangladesh?

Back then gaming was simple on Windows 95 or the DOS-era if you were lucky enough to own a PC at that time. There was no need to worry about system requirements. Most games we played were limited to the ones that came pre-installed. Or we would have some elder relative (who happened to be a PC nut) and install the next NFS in our PC.

Bangladesh was gripped with Doom, NFS, Prince of Persia and Road Rash fever that took long to break out of.

Consoles were gaining in popularity, mostly the Sega Mega Drive and Sonic. Consoles were simple and lasted longer (I’m looking at you RRoD) than their controllers. I fondly remember going to Eastern Plaza every few months to replace a busted controller. Games came in cartridges, we couldn’t imagine playing directly from a spinning disc.

New Kid On The Block

And along came this box called the PlayStation that would play games on the TV. It was a toy for the rich only, and most of us mocked the “retarded” gamepads that they used. However the first Gran Turismo and Metal Gear Solid proved us wrong.

Mind you, PC gaming was at it’s pinnacle (and it still is now) in the PlayStation era. Consoles began gaining in popularity with the advent of the PS2. The original Xbox was less well received in Bangladesh.

The Rise Of The Consoles

Fast forward today and most households (in Dhaka) own a gaming console. Why?

For the half that you spend on your PC, you will most likely find a top-of-the-line next generation console. Then there isn’t the hassle of ensuring that your system meets the requirements to play the game, just pop the disk inside your console and start playing – even no installation required! Unlike PCs, you don’t have to constantly upgrade your consoles meaning that your “investment” won’t get obsolete by the next year or just six months from now.

The PC Strikes Back

But all is not lost for PC gamers. Sure, consoles have overtaken PCs in popularity in the US/EU but here in Bangladesh, PC reigns supreme.

As a reader Moontasir points out, a PC equipped with two ATI HD 5870 in CrossFire will beat the graphical quality of consoles. This is true, consoles are limited to a resolution of 1920X1080 whereas PC gamers can enjoy 2560X1600 (the ATI EyeFinity supports a maximum resolution of 7680X1600 across multiple monitors).

But why stop there? A core i7 rig, with two HD 5970 in CrossFire (for a total of 4 GPUs) and 12 GB of RAM will blow the consoles out of the water.

For comparison, a PS3 uses a 3.2 GHz Cell processor with a NVIDIA GPU pushing at 550 MHz.

The Xbox 360 also uses a 3.2 GHz PowerPC triple core processor. RAM is at a paltry 512 MB and the ATI GPU is clocked at a laughably 500 MHz.

So The Hardware Is There But……

But specs alone won’t save the PC (if you are crazy enough to spend that much anyway) since most developers won’t take advantage of the hardware. The reason we are seeing games like Halo Reach, Uncharted 2, etc. is because developers take full advantage of the console architecture. They are designed for gaming, and even with inferior hardware, gaming on consoles is smooth and ultra-realistic thanks to hundreds of man-hours developer spend on optimizing their code. Most PC games are lazy ports of their console counterparts and hence the lower framerates.

A Gamersworldbd visitor explains the difference between architectures:

“As always, computing hardware is always superior to console hardware – by raw numbers. But what makes the average high-end gaming rig inferior to a PS3 or Xbox 360 are the multiple GPU cores. Console hardware is manufactured for one sole task – render animated polygons or vectors. PC hardware is, on the other hand, manufactured to do a multitude of things.”

Nobody Owns The PC Gaming Platform

The other reason is that nobody owns the PC gaming platform (even though Windows has the majority market share). The reason why consoles get such superb exclusives is because Microsoft and Sony took the initiative to make such games in the first place. It is in their best interest to make a triple A title which sells a lot of hardware and generates even more profit. In comparison, the latest PC exclusive is unlikely to sell more copies of Windows. Sure, hardware sales might increase but Microsoft has nothing to gain (and hence the lack of interest on PC gaming on part of the Redmont juggernaut).

As another Gamersworldbd reader Enamur Reza so succinctly puts it: “Of course PC delivers out the best in graphics but it cant give me the Uncharted II or Bayonetta, or, Ninja Gaiden II or Assasin’s Creed II ( at the right time), or Gears of War II, or most importantly God of War III.” Well said sir.

However, for FPS and RPG games PC is the place to go. I kid you, try to beat Left 4 Dead 2 at hardcore (on realism mode) with your Xbox 360 gamepad and try it again on a mouse and keyboard.

And you don’t see consoles with World of Warcraft and 11.5 million players.

So Which Is The Best In Bangladesh?

PC games are the cheapest in Bangladesh, followed by Xbox 360 games and lastly, PS3′s original games. Although that is soon about to change with the PS3 hack.

Dhaka is hitting the console fever but everywhere else in Bangladesh, it’s still PC. That said, if you are a hardcore gamer, you surely own a gaming PC plus a console (or two).

If a game releases on multiple platforms, I always get the PC version since it’s cheaper. I also own a Xbox 360 and PS3 for the exclusives that simply aren’t available on the PC.

I was born a PC gamer and will be a PC gamer for life.

Also check out: PC Gaming is Doomed – Why That’s A Bad Idea.

To celebrate the occasion, Kojima has launched a limited edition autographed white PSP. It will not be sold in stores, but you can try your luck by entering in the contest of Vol. 460 issue of Dengeki PlayStation Magazine. Check out the brand new Sony PlayStation site regarding the PlayStation timeline.

Check out this amazing life-size PS3 cake

But now I’ve garnered a certain itch, enjoying the frantic fast paced combat in God of War I & II, delving deeper into the Final Fantasy universe and can’t get enough MGS action. I’ll probably get a PS3 (I’m down to my second 360 by now), but I’m glad Sony stuck true to its word and still support the PS2. 7 reasons why:

1. Great library of games, this is probably a no brainer. With 1800+ titles and of course, there’s MGS, God of War, Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo, Jak and Ratchet & Clank. Although the PS3 is backwards compatible [Ed- the news ones aren't anymore] with a great number of titles, but not everyone’s willing to shell out for the PS3 just to play previous gen titles.

2. Reliability. The PS3 PS2 has a great shelf life, I plugged it back in after 3 years and still works like a charm. Sadly, my 360 RROD’d just after a year.

3. Console is still sold in stores, unlike the Xbox. You can’t find brand new Xbox games but almost every GameStop has a PS2 section. New games are still being released for the PS2.

4. Works great as a DVD player and the slim models take up less space than many DVD players. It fits nicely in the living room.

5. Graphics has aged gracefully, I’m surprised how good old gen games look, especially on a standard def TV. But I can’t say the same with a HDTV, it appears washed out and fuzzy.

6. Free online play. The PS2 had it and so does the PS3. Being able to play SOCOM II is still a blast, especially with no monthly or yearly fees.

7. Price point. At 100 bucks it’s even cheaper than the Wii, sans the motion controls. This is great for casual gamers before they “graduate” to a 360 or PS3.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Share your thoughts below, why you still love your PS2.

Police are holding the money under the Proceeds of Crime Act while the matter is investigated.

An eBay spokesman said the parcel’s contents were “somewhat unusual” and it would help police with their inquiries.

The boy’s parents, who are not commenting, alerted police when the parcel arrived on 20 March.

Family claim

Magistrates have given Norfolk Police until September to hold on to the money before the case comes up in court.

But, if the money remains unclaimed, the family could potentially apply for it to be returned to them under the Police Property Act.

A police spokesman said: “We have until 22 September before we have to go back to court to apply for a further order if necessary.”

A spokesman for eBay said: “We know that eBay is a great place to pick up a bargain, although in this case, we agree that the contents of the parcel were somewhat unusual and we will assist with any inquiries the police may wish to make.”

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Source: BBC UK