*sigh*  what’s a gamer to do when ‘news’ channels start knifing gamers in the back by preying on the fear (and stupidity) of the the non-gamer human?

So here’s a story (it’s FOX.. what do you expect?) with the nice bold headline of: [Cop Killing Video Game Makes Big Debut], by Sharita Hutton posted just this morning for the Kansas City News.

Where as nothing was said about the record sales, nor about the spammers trying to steal your pre-order copy, or anything about store (like EB) funking up your pre-order and store sale-outs… Nope this is all got to be about the violence of the GTA series.

The whole news story starts off with such a negative overtone that you wouldn’t like the game before you even knew anything about it.  However, even WAL-MART the king of ‘you will like what we give you’ is selling the game.  I guess money does talk. 

Though a couple of things about this article struck me as funny: “An online preview of the game describes the game, saying its as violent as the past three versions and more realistic, with 1080p resolution.”   

So this tells me Sharita got all her information by looking at the web site.  Didn’t FOX already get into trouble for pulling this kind of BS?   And if 1080p makes pixels look more realistic, then watch out Microsoft paperclip!  you’re heading into the real world!!!  (you know since, Computers can produce higher resolutions then the Xbox 360, or the PS3)

She also states: “the game is only for X-Box 360 and PlayStation 3 games. “

Well we know they are games.. perhaps you mean CONSOLES?    So what’s this also tells me is that Ms. Sharita doesn’t know her ass from a C Prompt.   My advice? report on what you know. You obviously don’t understand Gaming.

And reporting on a 3 year old bill, where as there have been multiple attempts on the same type of bill across America ALL of which have failed, is moot, a waste of space, and just prays on the peoples un-founded fear of technology.  

Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) could be about to charge gamers a subscription fee to use the PlayStation Network. The proposal offering could see gamers charged a monthly fee in order to receive unlimited PlayStation Portable (PSP) and PSone game downloads, according to our sister site CVG.

The story originated from a Sony questionnaire in Asia which asked PlayStation gamers whether they’d be prepared to pay a monthly fee.

PSN vs Xbox Live

The PlayStation Network is currently a rather feeble service in comparison to the Microsoft’s mighty Xbox Live. SCE will have to significantly improve things if it wants gamers to pay for the privilege of using the PSN.    Luckily, paying for good service is something most gamers are prepared to do.

[Via Tech.co.UK]

————————————————————————————

*sigh*  I told you so.

This morning one of my gamers stated:  “So, i was listening to the cranky gamers UK podcast this morning, and they reported that gamespot UK had found out that when Sony said they would give that 52″ bravia hdtv away to the first people in line, actually turned out to all be Sony PR people.. “

Now I’ve not been able to confirm this news.. but, if proved true, what in the heck was Sony thinking!?

PS3 Theme Extractor Tutorial

Have you ever downloaded a ps3 theme, .p3t file, that you would like to customize? Some have icons you love but would like to use them with a different background. Well Anoop has saved the day. He has released P3T Unpacker v0.3

This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t). By default, it will extract the contents of the theme file to the directory ‘extracted’ in the current directory.

IMPORTANT: You need to have the binary ‘p3tcompiler.exe’ in the same directory as this program, even when it is being run from Linux. This requirement will probably be removed soon.

This program is still in alpha stage and probably has dozens of bugs. If you find any, please let me know!

Here’s a quick tutorial:

• Download p3textractor.zip from codelogic.googlepages.com/PS3ThemeExtractor.
• Extract the folder \p3textractor
• Copy p3tcompiler.exe from PS3_Custom_Theme_v101-E.zip into the \p3textractor folder, which you may have already if you create your own themes.
• As an example lets use the official Pixels theme - place Pixels.p3t into \p3textractor
  
• Start a DOS window. Start - Run - CMD.
• Find your \p3textractor folder and type in >p3textractor Pixels.p3t

  • C:\p3textractor>p3textractor Pixels.p3t

    Writing file: ‘extracted/preview.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_user_1124.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_setting_1200.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_photo_1276.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_music_1352.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_video_1428.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_game_1504.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_network_1580.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_friend_1656.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_tv_1732.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_newuser_1808.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_update_1884.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_game_setting_1960.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_bdvd_setting_2036.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_music_setting_2112.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_chat_setting_2188.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_system_setting_2264.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_theme_setting_2340.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_datetime_setting_2416.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_accessory_2492.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_printer_setting_2568.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_display_setting_2644.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_sound_setting_2720.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_security_setting_2796.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_remoteplay_setting_2872.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_network_setting_2948.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_setting_item_3024.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_mediaserver_search_3100.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_ms_3176.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_sd_3252.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_cf_3328.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_usb_3404.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_pspms_3480.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_usbcamera_3556.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_usbaad_3632.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_gamedata_3708.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_savedata_3784.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_vmc_3860.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_newvmc_3936.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_onlinemanual_4012.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_remoteplay_4088.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_browser_4164.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_download_4240.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_accountmanage_4316.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_blocklist_4392.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_addfriend_4468.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_playermet_4544.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_chat_4620.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_chatroom_4696.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_mbox_4772.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_mbox_received_4848.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_mbox_sent_4924.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/icon_mbox_create_5000.gim’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/hd.jpg’
    Writing file: ‘extracted/sd.jpg’

    magic: “P3TF”
    version: 272
    tree_offset: 64
    tree_size: 5252
    idtable_offset: 5328
    idtable_size: 1090
    stringtable_offset: 6432
    stringtable_size: 292
    intarray_offset: 6736
    intarray_size: 0
    floatarray_offset: 6736
    floatarray_size: 0
    filetable_offset: 6736
    filetable_size: 658208

• There should now be a folder \p3textractor\extracted which is Pixels.p3t extracted
• Now you can use the icons or backgrounds in Pixels.p3t for any theme that you create.
• Here’s a quick tutorial on creating ps3 themes using the images you just extracted.

Posted by ken_vs_ryu at 8:21 AM    

PlayStation 3’s worst week in Japan

The age of TV consoles over in Japan? Handhelds dominate software sales in Japan as TV console sales fall.

The latest figures from Media Create Co don’t make for happy reading for Sony investors. According to the numbers for the week ending January 14th as reported by Yahoo, Sony sold just 25,531 consoles.

It’s been a poor week for TV console sales in Japan, with the lowest sales recorded since the launch of Wii on December 2nd 2006. Total sales of PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii sold just 128,274.

The clear winner was Nintendo with sales of 93,708 for Wii, but again the worst week for the console since its launch in the country.

As you probably expect by now in a country that doesn’t really care about Microsoft’s console, Xbox 360 managed just 9,035 units sold during the same period.

What must be worrying for Sony though is that Wii is selling nearly four times the number of PlayStation 3 and Microsoft, despite having a console no-one in the area cares much about, is almost selling half the number of PlayStation 3.

[tags]Playstation 3, Sony[/tags]

Wii topped software sales, with 61,399 for Wii Sports and third place with Wii Play at 54,578. All the rest of the top ten places were taken by handheld games, all for DS except Metal Fear Portable Ops at number eight. There were no Xbox 360 games in the top 50 and the highest PlayStation 3 game was Resistance: Fall of Man at a lowly number 40.

Is Japan’s significance over in terms of TV consoles? It seems that the market there is mad keen in handhelds while the bigger consoles don’t seem to be garnering the same interest they used to?

(Note: Media Create’s figures are based on sales to customers in around 3000 stores across Japan, extrapolated to create an estimated total figure.)

Sure — the Nintendo DS is leagues better than the PSP. But what about us poor schmucks who bought one at launch? Turns out there’s lots of reasons why we should be happy we sold our kidneys to buy a PSP, and the best might actually be yet to come.

Source: Five reasons to own a PSP
Originally published on Mon, 01 Jan 2007 07:30:02 GMT