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.
“It’s a fully functional physics engine as advanced as any console game out there,” says Cheng. “But instead of drawing objects and surfaces, we take photographs and bend them into a 3D world.” The result is an immaculate recreation of the course with none of the cartoon-y feeling of console golf games; every shot plays as it would in real life.
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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.
During the live presentation, Sony presented a man wielded a hand-held remote with a small, glowing globe on its end. As the man swung the controller, a disembodied sword moved back and forth on a giant video screen above.
Nintendo’s new technology invention is called Wii Motion Plus, which is a add-on to its Wii remote to make the games feel more natural and intuitive. The company’s president, Satoru Iwata, also debuted a new device called the Wii Vitality Sensor, which is intended to help players visualize and control their pulses.
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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.
Anyway, jokes aside. Microsoft has decided to double the reward for the safe return of the child which currently stands at $25,000 CAD. Microsoft will also be revealing the information of the people he last played the game with in hopes that they will have more information for the canadian police.
This just goes to show how seriously these kids take gaming. It seems to resemble an addiction in my eyes.
If you are from canada and have more information, please use the contact form to email me. Right now i am going on information from various other blogs.
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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.
“You won’t find any intrusive copy protection in our games; we hate draconian DRM schemes just as much as you do,” says the site. “Once you download a game, you can install it on any PC and re-download it whenever you want, as many times as you need, and you can play it without an internet connection.”
If you are interested, the full catalog of games is available here: Good Old Games: Game Catalog
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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.”
Sony’s decision to not cut the price of their console for the holiday season could put them under pressure from Microsoft which has recently cut the price across the board for their rival Xbox 360 console. The current global economic downturn could also put added pressure on Sony.
Hirai believes the videogame market will do just fine even with the economic downturn. “As long as we can generate excitement, then we will be less affected than other industries,” he said but also added, “we’re getting to the point where price becomes more important”.
Without dropping the price however, Sony has added more value to its PS3 line by selling an 80GB model with a free game for the same price as the currently priced 40GB model.
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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.
“No one device offers the depth and breadth of entertainment that Xbox 360 can deliver, and now you’ll have three times the storage to manage all that great content,” he said.
The confirmation puts an end to a poorly kept secret. For weeks now flyers from different retailers have shown off the $50 dollar price cut, yet Microsoft refused to comment.
The price cut is seen as a way for the company to pick up lagging sales. For 2008, the console is constantly being outsold by the Wii and the PlayStation 3 and both Nintendo and Sony have said they are not planning a price cut for 2008. The Wii retails for $250 and is still hard to find on retail shelves, while the 40GB model of the PS3 sells for $400.
When asked about the new price cut, Sony’s Howard Stringer said that it was simply “evidence that the Xbox 360 was falling behind in the contest for sales.”
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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.
Unlike the pre-, post-, and mid-roll ads that Yahoo said it will put in its free games, Sony looks to provide more “contextually relevant and well-crafted” advertising in its games. Some of Double Fusion’s projects thus far have included creating in-game content for Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler, which have ranged from simple environmental advertisements (a billboard in a city scene) to genuine product placement (the product itself appears in the game).
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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.
It is also unknown whether users will have to pay for these new songs, but assuming EA keeps on its trend (see: charging users for new weapons in “Battlefield”) then a $1 USD or $2 dollar price tag seems likely.
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You know what they say about work and play, so even as Yahoo gets eyed by Steve Ballmer, interrogated by investors, and generally abused by Carl Icahn, here’s a nice side project: it’s trying to offer a lot of downloadable games for free.
Around 400 of the things are expected to become available by year’s end. What players might view as a catch - and what Yahoo hopes they won’t - is the fact that the games will be supported by advertising.
“Top technology providers, Double Fusion and NeoEdge, will sell and integrate pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll video ads into the Yahoo! Games catalog,” according to a corporate statement.
For the sake of saving money and having fun, people will probably be able to get past this detail. The real problem (from Yahoo’s perspective) might be getting them to click on the ads - are folks who play free games really that interested in spending cash? - but any income will count as welcome income.
Now, to return for a moment to more serious stuff, it seems the gaming news didn’t do much for Yahoo’s stock - it’s currently down 2.18 percent for the day.
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