RIM is keeping the PlayBook party going. While speaking at a BlackBerry World breakfast with RIM CEO Thorsten Heins stated the company plans to launch an LTE-enabled PlayBook by the end of the year. However, the CEO didn’t detail the projected release date, price or available wireless carrier.
This is a smart move for RIM. Rather than spending the time and resources producing another tablet, RIM is instead concentrating efforts on making sure upcoming software works on existing hardware. During a recent trip Rim’s Waterloo campus, the company made it clear to TechCrunch that it is very much committed to bringing BlackBerry 10 to the PlayBook. → Read More
Like a line of hard-marching Lemmings (or a swarm of Patapons), Sony’s countless, niggling enemies would like nothing better than to distract and steal the company’s hard-won fan base. The Playstation has long been the gold standard in console gaming, despite the Xbox’s recent challenges to the throne. And Sony does a good job. Graphics are better, gameplay is or can be more immersive, and in the battle for RPG dominance the PS3′s library is peerless.
But now Sony is fighting against lots of great ways to waste your time. Stuck in a long line? Whip out the iPhone, RAZR, or Blackberry. Want to play something bigger and bolder? Pull out a tablet and rock a few hours of Civilization Revolution or Need For Speed. Want to watch a movie? Bring up Netflix on any device in the house save your kitchen blender. There’s not as much space for a dedicated gaming device out there as there used to be, and both Nintendo and Sony know it. → Read More
If there’s been one complaint my contacts inside large CE companies have had, career-wise, it’s been the inability to rise far in the hierarchy. While there are clear exceptions to this rule, the complaint has always been that succeeding in Asian companies has been contingent on (literally) speaking the language and knowing the rules of the road, as it were, culturally.
When Sir Howard Stringer took the reins at Sony, it looked like this tendency had been bucked. However, with the appointment of Kazuo Hirai, it looks like Sony is going back to the old ways – but why? → Read More
Sony Computer Entertainment reported some solid sales numbers for its various PlayStation systems for the past holiday season today. Sony says that they moved a total of 6.5 million PlayStation 2/3/PSP/Vita units worldwide (Sony defines “holiday season” as between November 21 and January 5 in Asia, November 21 through December 31 in America, and November 18 through December 31 in Europe). → Read More
Back at E3, the gaming world let out a collective groan when Sony announced they were making a special 3D TV for the PS3. However, that groan swiftly turned into a clamor of adoration once it was explained that the TV, in addition to displaying 3D content, would also allow two players to play side by side, seeing different displays through two pairs of 3D glasses. Called SimulView, it was pretty darn cool.
Fast forward to December and the 24-inch TV has shipped and costs $499. The display has two HDMI ports and little else – you plug in a PS3 and start playing games and Blu-Ray disks. Is this PS3-branded widescreen 1080p monitor good? Definitely. But is it a necessary accessory for gamers and non-gamers alike? That remains to be seen. Read on.
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Owners of the Tablet S from Sony: listen up because your Android-powered slab of glass just became that much more fun. The PlayStation Store for PS-certified devices has officially gone live, with 10 PS1 titles available at launch.
The Store is now accessible in nine countries, the U.S. and Canada included. Sony says that most of the Tablet S-optimized titles will cost $5.99 to download. The company hasn’t mentioned anything about PS Store availability for the Tablet P, but it’ll likely take longer to optimize games for the dual-screen Sony tab.
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Sony is suffering from yet another hack attempt on its networks. But this time, the company seems to be better prepared, and apparently all credit card information is safe. Philip Reitinger, Sony’s Chief Information Security Officer, has posted an article on the official PlayStation blog explaining the incident.
According to Reitinger, the Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment Network were affected. The company halted about 93,000 user accounts across these networks and warned users to secure log-in details via e-mail. → Read More
The launch of Sony’s new handheld console Vita in Japan is just two months away (December 17), so it’s about time big S made some official announcements regarding software prices. In a nut shell, the first batch of titles will not be sold for cheap.
To be more concrete, the prices for a total of four launch games are now fixed. → Read More
Apart from fixing the Japan release date for the Playstation Vita (December 17) today, Sony also announced [press release in English] the handheld’s full launch line-up for its home market: a total of 28 different titles (games and applications) will be made available for early buyers of the device.
Sony also said there are a total of 100 different games being developed by companies worldwide for the Vita currently (details), but here’s the full list of which titles will be ready by the time the device launches in Japan. → Read More
Sony is currently holding a press conference in Tokyo where the company said that the Playstation Vita, its new handheld console, will hit stores in Japan on December 17, just in time for the holidays (this decision was kind of announced last month actually). For the 3G connection, Sony partnered up with Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo and laid out 3G pricing plans for the first time, too.
Japanese Vita owners going for the 3G model will be charged 980 yen (US$13) for 20 hours of pre-paid or 4,980 yen (US$65). In the US, AT&T will be handling the 3G service for the Vita. → Read More
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. → Read More
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. → Read More
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. → Read More
Sony just announced that the Playstation Network is back up for almost everyone. People in Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea are, sadly, still SOL. → Read More
Like many of you, I have loved playing games on my phone ever since I got my first Nokia handset that came pre-loaded with Snake. Since then, mobile gaming has reached an entirely new level, and then when the smartphone appeared, a few more levels after that one. Still, no matter which handset you choose, your device is a phone first, and a portable gaming device second, or third, or fourth. → Read More
Sony is performing the old salt-in-the-wound trick by informing Bloomberg that the PSN/Quoricity outage should last another 22 days with an expected return date of May 31. This came from an interview with a Sony spokesman in a Bloomberg interview. Security is the key here. Sony is adopting new techniques and practices to beef up its online services and apparently that takes some time. → Read More
Unfortunately for PlayStation Network and Qriocity services users, it looks like the widespread network outages will continue.
Since Sony’s PlayStation and music networks went down two days ago, there has been a fair amount of public speculation over the cause of the outage. (Largely due to Sony’s tight-lipped handling of public relations.) Many blamed vengeful gremlins loose in Sony’s server clusters and datacenters, while others immediately pointed the finger at Anonymous, the merry band of hackers that metastasized out of 4chan.
Thankfully, after 24+ hours of communication silence, Sony has updated its blog and ended the speculation. According to the electronics colossus, “an external intrusion” is responsible for the ongoing outages of the PlayStation Network and Qriocity. (It probably sounded like this at Sony headquarters. Or this.) → Read More
Sony’s PlayStation Network, its online service for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable consoles, suffered from a major outage today, which remains ongoing. According to Sony’s blog, the interruption in service may last into the long weekend — for at least another “full day or two”. The Sony Network currently has more than 70 million registered users, many of whom have taken to Twitter and other social networks to express their frustration over the prolonged downtime. Millions of unhappy gamers (and Netflix customers) a PlayStation outage makes.
Not to mention, the outage comes on the same day that Amazon’s cloud-based web services crashed, taking Reddit, Foursquare, and Quora (among others) with them. Unfortunately, it seems that today has become a fairly drastic example of the vulnerability of the cloud and the extent to which these outages can effect business-as-usual on the Web. → Read More
At their PSP2 launch event today, Sony did not only unveil the new device but also introduced “Playstation Suite”, a new cross-device game platform the company will use to bring Playstation 1 titles to Android phones and tablets (version 2.3 and up). In other words, Sony games will not exclusively be distributed to owners of the Playstation Phone that’s supposed to be officially announced next month. → Read More
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