Like Final Fantasy XII before it, it looks like FFXIII will be a huge game. But just how big will it be? Well, according to producer Yoshinori Kitase, the game will use all of the processing power of the PlayStation 3 console.
GDC 2009 marked the second anniversary of the PlayStation Home announcement, and Ars was invited to speak with Jack Buser, director of PlayStation Home for Sony Computer Entertainment of America, and Peter Edward, director of the Home platform. I started by asking how far we’ve come since that announcement. “I think everyone gets it, we’re starting to see large numbers of people in there. The user base is active. Content is constantly coming in… when you have the Guitar Hero space you pretty much know you’ve made it. The fact of the matter is, every major publisher for the PS3 now has some kind of plan for Home,” Buser tells Ars.
Team Phobic has been loyally updating the game ever since its release.
Super Mario fans gather around. If you have been looking for a side-scrolling platformer game for your iPhone or iPod Touch, you should be very happy with Bounce On!Team Phobic released Bounce On to the iTunes App Store on December 20, 2008. While the initial release left a lot to be desired, Team Phobic has been loyally updating the game ever…
Fans of action video games have now been given a new excuse for spending hours in front of a screen. According to research published in today’s issue of Nature Neuroscience, action video games may train our eyesight so we have a better contrast sensitivity function (CSF), which is our ability to detect shades and colors that differ from the background. Daphne Bavelier, from the University of Rochester, and her colleagues compared the eyesights of expert action and non-action gamers and found that only action games enhanced CSF.
As might be expected, GDC dominated the gaming news this week. Here’s a rundown of the most important gaming stories from the past week.
Today, I was lucky enough to grab ECA President and Founder Hal Halpin for a fascinating discussion of DRM, the ability to re-sell your PC games, and other issues he’s tacking with the Entertainment Consumers Association. We’ll provide the high points of that conversation next week after we’re back from San Francisco, but he did provide one nifty bit of news we want to share with you now: your ECA membership will now get you 10 percent off your software purchases at Amazon.com.
What if you could play all those great PC games that take full advantage of the latest hardware… without having the latest hardware? PC gaming can be an expensive hobby, especially if you play the latest and greatest games, but OnLive has the solution: allow them to do the computing for you—you just buy the games. Welcome to using the cloud for your gaming needs.
Look Ma, the system of checks and balances does work! After passing both the state House and Senate, Utah governor John Huntsman vetoed a bill that would make it a crime to sell mature-rated games to underage consumers. While the bill sounds
noble, the fine print imposed strict penalties on retailers, and as a concession, actually allowed them to opt-out from using ratings altogether. As such, the bill was largely viewed
as pointless legislation.
G.I. Joe is one of those franchises that’s been around for longer than most people realize. Though many younger gamers probably aren’t familiar with the history of the toy line, many of us grew up in the 1980s watching the cartoon series and playing with Hasbro’s action figures. After having spent some time checking out EA’s upcoming tie-in to G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, I can honestly say that this is a game that will bank a great deal on the nostalgia many of us have for the 80s cartoon, though whether or not the game will be strong enough to stand on its own remains to be seen.
