playstation

Sony may look to cut PS3 price

PlayStation 3 price cuts already? That's what Sony may be eyeing in a bid to break even on the console by the end of fiscal 2008.

According to the Associated Press, Sony senior vice president Takao Yuhara said that while no specific plans have been made, the company is considering reducing the price as a way to boost sales. "We may look at the price as part of our strategy to expand the market when the timing is right," Yuhara said.

Sony had already reduced the price of the PS3 in Japan prior to launch. But with … Read more

The Wii may get its first makeover

Regardless of which game console you prefer, the Wii apparently has it all over the Playstation 3 in at least one category: colors. GameDrift says it has confirmed that Nintendo will release its game box in red, black and possibly other hues at an undisclosed time, according to CrunchGear. If true, it would be a smart move (and we think an obvious one), given the success that custom shops have seen just by adding a little color to PS3s and selling them on eBay for upwards of $1,400. Why Sony itself is taking so long to figure this out, … Read more

Sony updates PS3 firmware to fix bugs and add features

I woke up this morning and clicked on the System Update icon on my PS3 and lo and behold, the rumored 1.5 firmware update was available for download. Unfortunately, Sony doesn't offer a change log saying exactly what the firmware update does, but there are plenty of tidbits out there on blogs from PS3 enthusiasts.

The biggest issue that the update fixes involves backward-compatibility with PSOne and PS2 titles, some of which looked like garbage on HDTVs when played on the PS3. Titles that didn't support 480p output exhibited loads of artifacts and jaggies. Allegedly, all that'… Read more

Where are all the Wiis?

Well, it's been a nice couple of months since the launch of the Nintendo Wii and the PlayStation 3. After the predictably massive crowds and instant sell-outs of the systems on launch day, stores have had plenty of time to restock and get the new next-gen systems back on their shelves. Unfortunately, that hasn't quite been the case.

The Nintendo Wii is still almost impossible to find, and this is a surprising frustration for guys like me who decided not to wait in line for hours to get one at launch. After some legwork and a number of … Read more

Console browsing: Not there yet

Is it possible to have a positive Webware experience on something besides a PC? Cell phones and small handheld Internet devices don't cut it with their tiny screens and awful browsers (at least until the iPhone arrives). So what if you could use that nice bandwidth you get at home and combine it with that large HDTV sitting in your living room? That question has recently been answered with Nintendo and Sony's more recent gaming consoles: the Wii and the PS3, respectively. Microsoft's Xbox 360 doesn't have a browser, likely because of the company's failure … Read more

Champagne PSP makes a toast

Normally, just adding new colors to a product isn't necessarily reason to get excited (unless you're Bono or Oprah). But given all the attention--and bidding--around the recent red and white Playstation 3 mod cases, we thought it might be worth mentioning that Sony is planning to release a champagne-colored PSP next month in Japan, according to Newlaunches. Sony has always been open to new colors for the PSP and, perhaps because of the success of custom cases on eBay, it'll get the message and take a paint brush to the PS3s as well.

Video grabber for iPod and PSP

Depending on where you get your video content, it can be a real pain to get movies and TV shows onto your iPod or PSP. Enter Streaming Networks' iRecord PRM-100 ($199.99), which lets you record video in real time directly to any USB mass storage device at a rate of around 3 hours of recording time per gigabyte in H.264/AVC format (with AAC audio tracks). Now you can record your gaming sessions and prove to your friends what a great Halo 2 player you are. You can even record music in MP3 format, though real-time music encoding … Read more

There's gold in PS3 colors

We suspect that some New Year's Eve merriment was involved in the bidding, but the much-hyped albino PlayStation 3 sold for $1,425 when it finished its eBay run Dec. 31. Nevertheless, the lucrative auction definitely proved that there was a market for the console in custom colors.

Now, we're shocked to find that the same guy who sold the white PS3 will be offering even more colors--shocked because it took an entire three days before it was announced. Joystiq says Michal Berecki of PS3 Center will add red and silver consoles to his repertoire "in the … Read more

Who Needs Sleep?

I heard from a friend that the PlayStation store at the Metreon was getting shipments of PS3s last week. I decided to take a shot at getting one on Black Friday, so I drove by around 1:30 a.m. only to see a line forming already. I joined these die-hard PS3 fans in line and nine hours later scored a 60GB unit, an extra controller, and five games. I've been playing Resistance: Fall of Man and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance ever since.