With the popularity of online games such as Second Life, Farmsville, or SuperPoke! Pets, players constantly spend real, hard-earned money to purchase virtual goods that can only be used in the game.
What these players don’t realize, is that they don’t even own the virtual items they purchased! In most cases, you are required to accept their terms of service which clearly indicate all items in the game is a “service” that is owned and controlled by the company.
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In an attempt to help fans familiarize with the 2009 US Open Golf Course at Bethpage, the United States Golf Association has teamed up with a San Francisco tech startup called World Golf Tour (WGT) to create an online version of the golf course that lets fans “play” the U.S. Open. Fans can go to here to play the virtual Bethpage course for free.
With a crew of 18 people, the WGT team took more than 100,0000 photographs of the course back in last September. The team measured sunlight, shadows, wind speed at various points of day, took laser scans, and overlaid all the data on the photography.
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Sony has joined in the video game race by unveiling its new technology inventions last week - a prototype of a motion-sensing system with a controller that can be wielded as a sword, a baseball bat, a gun and even a bow and arrow. Creator Richard Marks told an audience at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, California. that the new system will hit stores in the spring of 2010.
Obviously Sony’s news is a direct response to Microsoft’s announcement of Project Natal - Microsoft’s motion-sensing controller. Nintendo also announced technological improvements to its popular Wii system. All three gaming companies seem to have agreed that the future of gaming lies in motion-sensing game play.
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Sony America has announced it will be dropping the 4GB Memory PSP Entertainment Pack that had been previously scheduled to be released in the US.
The company made the decision “following discussions with our retail partners.”
The latest move means consumers will but one choice for purchasing the new PSP-3000, and that is the Ratchet & Clank Size Matters PSP Entertainment Pack.
PSP director of hardware marketing Jon Koller added that the bundle was dropped because they expected low sales from the bundle after hearing feedback from retailers and customers.
The 4GB Memory Stick Duo will be available separately for $45 USD.
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Remember when you were a kid and you misbehaved? What was the first thing your parents did to make you learn your lesson? Well, mine would take away my playstation and my tv. I could go WEEKS without my gaming fix. I do remember wishing i could run away to a world of fun and games but you know, thats not really logical is it… or isn’t it?
Well, one 15 year old canadian kid lost his xbox 360 privalages and has been missing ever since October 13th. Apparentlyn his parents took away his console and Call of Duty 4 privelages and he went missing that very same day. Do we blame him? Poor kid.
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Good Old Games, a European gaming company, announced in July that it will begin allowing gamers to access and download old PC games that are very hard to find legally or have been abandoned.
The company will provide titles from as far back as the early 80’s and in a downloadable format that is completely DRM-free. The games will also be reasonably priced, ranging from $5.99 to $9.99 per title. Also, once you have purchased the title, you can download it whenever you want, all the times you want.
The store has now hit its public beta stage.
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Sony Computer Entertainment president Kaz Hirai has restated that hopeful gamers will not see a PlayStation 3 price cut this year and that the console is a “very good value proposition”.
“The answer is yes, if you’re asking, ‘Are these the prices we’re going with this Christmas?’” Hirai added. “When you really compare apples to apples, then I think we have a very good value proposition.”
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Ending all speculation, Microsoft has finally officially confirmed that it is cutting the price on its Xbox 360 Pro model by $50 USD as well as introducing a new 60GB model that will retail for $349 USD.
Starting today the 20GB Pro model will sell for $299. The software giant says the new model will go on sale beginning in early August. Strangely though, Microsoft will continue to sell their stripped down Arcade model for $279. The Elite model will stay with its $449 pricetag.
Albert Penello, Xbox director of product management, explained the release of the new model.
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Sony Computer Entertainment America and Europe have announced another partnership in the PlayStation’s growing advertising platform.
In October, Sony Computer Entertainment America announced it had formed a division strictly for developing in-game advertisements for all of the PlayStation platforms, including the PlayStation Network.
Early in June, Sony announced its first dynamic advertising partner would be IGA Worldwide to provide in-game advertisements, with a special focus on Home.
This week, both SCEA and SCEE announced a partnership with Double Fusion, the same company that yesterday announced a deal with Yahoo for its upcoming free ad-supported games.
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EA chief music executive Steve Schnur has finally set down a timetable for when video game soundtracks will be update-able using downloaded music, and has already confirmed some games.
While games such as “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” have update-able soundtracks that continuously expand other video game genres have lacked update-able music, at least officially from the developers.
“You’re going to see it in 2009,” Schnur said. By the time of “Madden ‘10″ gamers can expect “broader-based” EA games to have the ability to “continually recommend” new music that can be downloaded.
It is not known if an EA proprietary music download service will be successful however, as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 already allow users to create custom soundtracks from their own digital collections.
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