Gaming

SAN JOSE, CALIF.--Sony is committed to launching the PlayStation 3 worldwide in November, the president of the PlayStation group said Wednesday.

In a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference here, Sony Computer Entertainment president Phil Harrison said that the company is set on the November time frame.

Thought Sony had talked about the worldwide release previously, it is still surprising given the troubles Microsoft has had with its worldwide rollout of the Xbox 360.

To some, it would probably be a surprise to learn that there are professional video-game teams. To others, the fact that there are teams made up entirely of women is second nature.

Ubisoft is hoping that it will inform and entertain both groups with its search for a new Frag Doll, the company's sponsored roster of hard-core gamers, who all happen to possess two X chromosomes.

As such, the company announced Tuesday night its eight finalists in an eight-month-long national search for a new Frag Doll.

Among them are Nin9tyNin9, a "Halo 2" and "Quake 3&… Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Since last spring when the Xbox 360 was first announced, one of the biggest concerns was that it would be too expensive for most game developers to create games for the next-generation console.

In the end, it's hard to judge whether those concerns were valid, since the Xbox launched with a pretty solid lineup of games. However, almost all of those games were published by the big dogs of the industry: Electronic Arts, Activision, Sega and the like. Not so many mom and pop-type development shops were in the mix.

But at the Game Developers Conference here … Read more

CNET Reviews' Will Greenwald writes about a terribly cool new gadget for the Sony Portable PlayStation in his blog "'Real' 3D coming to the PSP?"

The game "Metal Gear Acid 2" is going to ship with Solid Eye, a 3D adapter that fits over the PSP. The adapter is essentially a pair of 3D glasses formed around the PSP, letting gamers play the game in 3D. These 3D glasses will let gamers feel like they are in the middle of the game instead of on the outside, looking in. Surprisingly, the extra set of glasses is … Read more

Four months after its release, the Xbox 360 has had its firmware hacked, according to Xbox-Scene.

What does this mean? Well, it doesn't mean, for now, that people will be able to run homebrew games on their Xbox, but it does mean, according to the site, that players will be able to run bootlegs.

It's not easy, apparently, requiring some experience with assembly language. But for those for whom hacking is a way of life, beating the new Xbox at its game should be possible.

For now, and until Microsoft fights back. Though it's unclear how the … Read more

Cabin fever gets bad in the north. Five months of snow and road construction pass before there's even a hint of flowers or freshly hewn golf courses. Football fans have the luxury of spending the low-light hours indoors with friends--good friends if they brought the beer. Until now, golfers didn't have anything to fill the void except for the occasional televised PGA tour. Five months without being formally reintroduced to the sun will lead to cabin fever, bad mood swings and bad golf swings.

DancinDogg Golf has filled the void with the DancinDogg Personal Golf Simulator, which it … Read more

While the Origami hype is finally dying down, the rumors of a Microsoft portable gaming device are heating back up.

A story in Monday's San Jose Mercury News suggests that the combination music and gaming device is moving from possibility into project, though it still could be years off.

The Merc reports that some of the top names from the Xbox unit are working on the product, including J. Allard and Xbox 360 designer Greg Gibson, along with division finance chief Bryan Lee.

BusinessWeek reported back in January that Microsoft was considering such a product, but had yet to … Read more

Sony announced Wednesday that it will ship new PlayStation Portable add-ons in October. The add-ons will support voice over Internet Protocol, RSS feeds and Flash games in addition to the existing PSP features.

The new PSP-300 VoIP add-on and PSP-290 GPS receiver will also be available in October. Pricing for the new unit and add-on was not announced.

The PSP will still be compatible with existing game titles, movies and music. Currently, more than 107 games and over 347 feature films, TV programs and videos are available.

In a related trend, Sony and its movie partners will be shipping DVD-UMD (… Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--There's one thing that was clear after the "Secret Sex Lives of Video Games" panel at South by Southwest here Tuesday, and that's that there has never been a better time to be designing sexually oriented games.

To be sure, there has been sex in video games almost since there have been video games, but to hear the panelists--a collection of bloggers, journalists, magazine editors and game designers--talk about it, there's more interest and fewer roadblocks today to such games than ever before.

In one sense, that's surprising, since the political firestorm surrounding … Read more