The limitations of online-only DRM are, perhaps, in truth only hypothetical. It’s possible to imagine a DRM scheme that must be online all the time, yet handles outages gracefully and never limits your play. Unfortunately, that DRM is not the kind Blizzard is installing on Diablo 3, one of the most anticipated titles of the year. At a briefing given to a few gaming sites, it was revealed that the game will indeed require an active internet connection at all times in order to play at all.

Remember the last time a top-shelf game did this? Remember the outages, the errors, the frustration, the lack of communication? Blizzard says it has to be this way because otherwise they can’t be sure you haven’t cheated to create your character. What a brilliant solution to the problem!

Here’s the money quote, as reported by 1up:

While Pardo recognizes that people sometimes want or need to play offline (such as internet outages, or playing on a laptop during an airplane flight), he notes that the increased security, plus benefits like the above, outweigh those other concerns. “I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that.”

What a great thing to say! What an incredibly lucid statement! He’s completely correct. There are other games to play. Other games that, unlike Diablo 3, I’ll be buying.

The very first thing I thought of was simply to make the system opt-in: you create a character on Battle.net and log in to play single player, collect loot, and are tracked the whole time. That’s the way persistent online games work. Has been for quite a long time now. But what if you just want to play offline? Why, you create an offline character, who can never be played online. The online character is stored entirely on Blizzard’s servers (like, say, my guy in Bad Company 2), and the offline character is stored locally (oh, like my other guy in Bad Company 2).

Blizzard isn’t stupid — or perhaps I should say, they aren’t stupid in a way that would prevent them from thinking of this solution. But they are stupid if they think this is going to work. Battle.net might be one of the biggest online gaming presences in the world, but if Blizzard thinks this little obstacle won’t be cracked and Battle.net spoofed, they’ve got another think coming. And if they think breaking paying users’ games will decrease piracy, they’re just plain nuts. A little more banter can be found at PC Gamer’s writeup of the briefing.

And a note to Blizzard PR: suggesting people play other games than your own because yours will be deliberately inaccessible isn’t really selling it.

Battlefield 3 is perhaps one of the most anticipated games of 2011. It arrives in October and will likely see hundreds of thousands of sales on day one. As a AAA title, it behooves BF3 to debut on the 360, PS3, and Windows at the same time. But the last several years have seen troubling compromises in PC versions, obviously being made because of console restraints. Just recently I panned Dungeon Siege 3, a major production if I’ve ever seen one, for this exact problem. But it looks like the shoe is on the other foot with BF3: maps are going to be more “compact” and player counts reduced to from 64 on the PC version to 24 on console.

As a PC gamer myself, I believe I have a valid right to be smug here. The shoddy console ports we’ve seen have been so blatant that for years we’ve wondered why they bother at all. And here we have (as they promised) a game actually made for the PC and then scaled down for the consoles.

The consoles are years old and, although developers are managing to squeeze every last drop of performance out of them, it’s not an exaggeration to say they’re totally out of date with current graphics technology. Graphics doesn’t just mean things are shinier – it means making the graphical component of the game easier to implement, the art easier to apply, the levels easier to sculpt. More time can be spent designing the game and less coming up with a way to fit environmental reflection calculations into spare cycles.

And now is the crunch time. If we’re to believe industry sources, new consoles from Microsoft and Sony will likely come in 2013, perhaps with a 2012 announcement, but still some ways out. And until then the discrepancy in power between the consoles and PCs will only grow. If developers are planning a PC release, it makes much more sense at this point to design for the PC and then scale down, rather than vice versa. Because if they try to scale up, the results are so laughable that it should come as no surprise when port sales are low.

With the increase in downloadable and streaming game services, the PC is pulling ahead of the console once more, and it’s going to take time before they can catch up. The golden age of Half-Life and Everquest is over, but PC gaming get a second spring — if developers know what’s good for them.

We heard about the Playstation Vita’s online capabilities long before we even knew its name, but the official details are just now solidifying. We knew it would have a net-connected staging area for each game, and a proximity-based social tool (LiveArea and Near respectively), and although some of the functions there are intact, they’ve been tweaked a bit and the features have changed.

“Near” is now a “gifting” system rather than a social discovery tool; it’s for leaving presents at certain locations, accessible to certain people or everyone and consisting of in-game items, challenges, and so on.

“LiveArea” is an all-purpose update system that will show things like notifications from friends, new DLC and updates for games, and (I’m guessing) promotions like PSN game sales and what have you. There’s actually an actual part called Live, which I think Microsoft might actually take issue with. In this case Playstation Live and Xbox Live might actually create confusion.

“Party” is a cross-game voice chat system, accessible throughout the system. You can override it for team-based games (dividing up into red and blue voice channels in-game, for instance) but otherwise it’s pretty much always there. It’s also a friends list thing, and you can build game-related groups for easy launching with your teammates or buddies. Hopefully they’ll add an exception for this so it doesn’t eat up your 3G bandwidth allowance.

Sounds pretty solid to me, although I’m thinking they kind of gutted Near. There’s a lot to be done with proximity-based gaming, more than they can feasibly launch with perhaps. I’d expect multiple updates to these capabilities, though, and of course developers will find interesting ways to use them, so we’ll continue keep an eye on the Vita.

One thing most 30-something people in tech have in common is video gaming nostalgia. Generation X (and Generation i) can go on for hours discussing the merits of our favorite Nintendo games, our programming experience in school, and of course our beloved Ataris. Sure there were C64s and Amigas and such, but Atari’s 2600 and its successors were truly groundbreaking in the gaming world.

You can still find a few here and there, working even, but to be honest the machine is a little more humble-looking than my memory has it. But Urchin Associates had the brilliant idea to preserve this piece of computing history forever… in 24-karat gold.

Look at it. Is it not beautiful? Now, whether it works or not, I’m not prepared to say. That gold-plated cartridge (I wonder what game it is?) looks removable, and I doubt they plated over the I/O ports, so unless the system they used was bricked to begin with, it probably works just fine. The controllers, however, may have lost a little functionality in the gilding process.

The whereabouts of this art project are unknown, and no, I don’t think you can buy one. But it’s nice to know that it’s out there somewhere — like Eldorado, or Bigfoot.

[via Technabob]

It’s been a while since we’ve posted any interesting Kinect hacks. They were coming fast and furious for a while, but this is the first I’ve seen in a while that really makes me happy. Robotics students at Stanford put this “JediBot” together from an articulating arm and a Kinect (and of course a little robotics know-how). The Kinect tracks the location of both “lightsabers” and has the robot make an attack or defending move based on their positions.

Right now it doesn’t go too fast, but considering what these robot arms are capable of, I’m not sure I’d want it going at full speed.

Check out Stanford’s news item on the project here, then move on to the Robocalypse tag to see why teaching robots to sword-fight is not the best idea.

The set includes the following items:

• Resident Evil Directors Cut (PS1)
• Resident Evil 2 (PS1)
• Resident Evil 3 (PS1)
• Resident Evil Revival Selection (PS3)
• Resident Evil 4 soundtrack
• Resident Evil Code: Veronica soundtrack
• special Resident Evil pin and sticker set plus original Resident Evil 5 spacer (that game isn’t included in the set)

Definitely of interest for hardcore fans, especially for this price: Capcom plans to start selling the box on September 8 for $95. It will, however, be only available through the company’s Japanese web store.

If you haven’t ever played the game, I’d actually recommend playing it the way it’s meant to be played first (there are ports available and the game is free), but if you don’t mind the tablet controls, this should be a real treat. This is just Marathon 1 – I’d expect 2 and Infinity a little later.

[via TUAW]

Watch the video, it’s easier to see it that way. But this just looks like a ton of fun. You could put together sweet racing courses and jumps, make little towns and such — the only problem is that it seems to see from the top down, so you can’t make caves or overhangs. Still, totally awesome.

It’s “in development” right now according to Monobanda, but I’m not sure whether they’re actually planning on making a commercial release (which would be difficult) or just let it stand on its own as a sort of proof of concept art game. I’m happy either way.

[via Indie Games]

The devs said there would be major graphics upgrades available for PC gamers, and we’ll have a proper high-res interface, quicksaves, and other interface tweaks. Perhaps most importantly, they assured fans that mod support was high priority; after all, part of the reason Oblivion and Morrowind have enjoyed such long-lasting popularity is the wealth of improvements, maps, items, and other mod fodder.

Compare to Dungeon Siege 3, where they couldn’t be bothered to even add keyboard config and mouse support appeared to be an afterthought. Looks like the PC will be home to the “definitive” version of Skyrim, which is, of course, as it should be.

Taiwanese daily Digitimes is reporting that Sony is planning a PS4 launch for 2012, based on manufacturers’ claims. Foxconn and Pegatron are supposedly to assemble the systems in late 2011. Digitimes usually has its finger on the pulse when it comes to this sort of thing, but I can’t help feeling there may be some misinterpretation here.

Sony has always considered its PS3 to be a long-lived device. They said in 2006 (when it was ludicrously expensive and had few must-have games) that they were playing a ten-year game. Sony doesn’t tend to joke about that kind of thing. I suspect that 2013 represents the earliest time we’ll see a truly new console, either from Microsoft or Sony (some say 2014); as it is, they’re barely keeping a margin on their hardware, and have been working mainly on driving down the cost of the components. A new system now would likely be very expensive and require a price drop on the old consoles — something neither company can really afford.

We heard rumors of a new Xbox a while back, but Microsoft quickly denied them (though they would) and it seems that Sony is still in active development around the PS3, since they have a new version coming out this summer in Japan. Supposedly the new Playstation would feature “body movement-based control like Kinect,” but I wonder whether Sony is dumb enough to copy-paste its competitors twice in a row like that. Don’t get me wrong, the Move is fantastic, but it didn’t sell for… well, a number of reasons, but among them that it simply wasn’t original.

I’m sure we’ll hear more soon if there’s anything to these whispers. In the meantime, I’d take the “PS4 in 2012″ thing with a grain of salt.

It took them a while, but Sony today announced [JP] that they will fully restore all PlayStation Network services plus streaming media-on-demand service Qriocity in Japan this Wednesday. Sony’s home market is the last country in which the company is done picking up the pieces after that massive data breach from last April.

The hacking attacks affected more than 100 million PlayStation customers worldwide, with Sony expecting the (financial) damages to amount to $170 million this financial year.

The company started restoring services affected in other parts of the world (including the US) last month.

Solid single-player, awesome multiplayer, just a fantastic game. Add to cart.

Last year, Sony unveiled PlayView, a service for the PS3 that makes it possible to view high-resolution images on your display, for example in manuals or guides for games. And yesterday, big S announced in Tokyo that PlayView will be able to produce pictures in 4K×2K (4,096×2,160) resolution, or, in other words, four times the resolution of full HD.

The next version of PlayView, due out next month, will also support 3D in 4Kx2K resolution, which is pretty cool.

At a press conference yesterday, Sony said that their technology will be used to launch in Japan the so-called PLUP SERIES of digital “visual magazines”, which will be the first in the world to feature 4Kx2K resolution.

PS3 owners in Japan can buy the first digital magazine of that kind, iQueen, on August 9 for $26 in the PlayStation store (a print version will be released at the same time). Buyers get a boat load of pictures, some in 3D, of lovely Japanese actress Masami Nagasawa (the print version has 96 pages in A4 format).

Via AV Watch [JP]

Some standouts: Valve Complete Pack (Portal 2 included) for $50, Borderlands for $5, a great id pack for $30, and the Rockstar Collection for $40. Ah, Summer!

Who said Japanese players don’t appreciate video games made outside their home country? I just went out to buy the newest issue of the Famitsu, Japan’s leading video game magazine (which came out about 3 hours ago/it’s currently 3am Thursday over here), and saw what you see above: L.A. Noire, one of the biggest game titles this year, missed the perfect review score by just one point.

Three out of four editors gave away ten out of ten points but one went for only nine (without really explaining why). In total, L.A. Noire scored a still excellent 39/40 points for both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions from the Famitsu.

You can read our extensive review of the Rockstar game here.

For your reference, here’s a list of all games that scored a perfect 40/40 from the Famitsu. L.A. Noire would have been the first not made by a Japanese company:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, for Nintendo 64)
2. Soul Calibur (1999, for Dreamcast)
3. Vagrant Story (2000, for PlayStation)
4. The Legend of Zelda – The Wind Waker (2003, for GameCube)
5. Nintendogs (2005, for the DS)
6. Final Fantasy XII (2006, for PlayStation 2)
7. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008, for the Wii)
8. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008, for PlayStation 3)
9. 428: Fusasareta Shibuya de (2008, for the Wii)
10. Dragon Quest IX (2009, for the DS)
11. Monster Hunter Tri (2009, for the Wii)
12. Bayonetta (2009, for Xbox 360)[
13. New Super Mario Bros. (2009, for the Wii)
14. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010, for the PSP)
15. Pokémon Black and White (2010, for the DS)

Following the security breach in the PlayStation network in April (77 million PlayStation Network user accounts were compromised), Sony saw a radical management reshuffle in its gaming division, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI), today. As you could expect, big S denies a connection between both incidents, but today’s decision probably doesn’t surprise anyone.

So what will happen? On September 1, Kaz Hirai, the current President and group CEO of SCEI, will take on the role of Chairman of Sony’s video gaming division. At the same time, Hirai’s position will be taken over by Andrew House, who is currently President, CEO and Co-COO of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE).

In March, Sony boss Howard Stringer called Hirai the “leading candidate” for the job as the company’s next CEO. Sony also announced that one day before Hirai becomes Chairman of SCEI, Akira Sato, the current Chairman and one of the founding members of the video gaming unit, will step down.

What’s also interesting is that Ken Kutaragi, legendary father of the PlayStation, retired from his role as Honorary Chairman of SCEI to become a “senior technology adviser” of Sony proper – effective as early as today (Kutaragi is also a former Chairman and chief executive officer of SCEI).

In the months to come, the new SCEI team will have to manage the aftermath of the security breach from this spring, the launch of the PSP successor Vita, and the launch of Nintendo’s Wii U as a new PS3 competitor, among other things.

Yet here in the states, the 360 is selling like hotcakes. Well, what can you do?

The PS Vita is coming relatively soon, but Sony Japan today announced [JP] something nice for all users still in need of a PSP: a total of three new PSP value packs. The bundles will include a PSP in Piano Black, Vibrant Blue, or Blossom Pink – and they might be the last ones you can get, at least before the Vita goes on sale.

Apart from the PSP itself, buyers also get a pouch, a cloth, a Memory Stick Duo (Mark 2) with 2GB capacity, an AC adapter, and a battery pack.

Compared with previous PSP value packs, the summer versions are $25 cheaper: the bundles will cost just $220 when they hit stores in Japan on July 28.

As part of Bungie’s big 20th anniversary celebrations, they’ve finally released the complete Marathon to the development community, which actually isn’t that big of a deal, since they’ve had most of it for some time now. But as of today the whole series is officially free and open source.

What’s more, a “fan developer,” Daniel Blezek, is nearing completion of his port of Marathon to iOS. I’m not sure whether the on-screen controls are going to do it for me, but luckily, Marathon (like Doom) was simpler to control than games these days and doesn’t rely so much on the Z axis.

Now where’s my Pathways Into Darkness?!

Microsoft is still riding the Kinect wave, and may wait to see what tack Sony takes before doing any bundles or promotions. Add that to the apparent revised console Sony is producing and it’s looking more and more likely that we’ll see a new price point and slightly different hardware. Oh, and that TV.

Of course, a fall promotion like this means less bargaining power come the holidays, but Sony may be relying on the Vita for its fourth-quarter sales. Too bad it’s not shipping until December 31st.

Now, this rumor is based in the UK, so there’s no guarantee any price cuts (which may really end up giving them price parity with the US and Japan) would carry over to this side of the pond. It would probably be announced at the huge Gamescom convention in Cologne.