Of course Micro$oft wouldn’t be Micro$oft without charging you through the nose for the privilege of using their ‘bespoke’ run of the mill 250gb laptop hard drive. A straight conversion from yen is $172, roughly translates to £110, for hardware that usually costs £50 for 320gb.

The monopolist muggery doesn’t stop there with Micro$oft as they plunge into your pockets again for a piece of hardware that is; 1. overly expensive and 2. should’ve came with the console in the first place. The wireless N adapter for the 360 is reported to actually be able to hold a decent connection this time and cost another $100 or £60 according to geek.com, for something that was integrated into its competitors consoles from day one.

I apologize for the spelling errors, My keyboard seems to have switched to an American layout as opposed to the UK layout… when writing… the word… Micro$oft…sniff.

Sony Director of Hardware Marketing, John Koller, said to the Wall Street Journal;

“Apple’s entrance into the portable gaming space has been a net positive for Sony. When people want a deeper, richer console, they start playing on a PSP.”

Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo said in an interview (AP via NY Times) of the iPad; “It was a bigger iPod Touch” and “There were no surprises for me” Particuclarly underwhelming responses in the light of all the hype for the new gadget and seemed more concentrated on his own work rather than competitors efforts, which is the way it should be, shouldn’t it?. Stop all of the ‘mine’s is bigger than yours’ pratter and get back to working on the new Wii Motion Plus controller with optional telepathic capability… its going to happen, I can see it.

Personally I agree with Iwata, but, thats just me, so this article on some possible reasons from Aaron Vronko, CEO of Rapid Repair on why Sony and Nintendo are so underwhelmed by Apple’s new outing(read the comments they are particularly hilarious).

Jack of some trades… better buying a netbook, a PSP 3000 and a DS for the same price as the iPads most expensive model($699, $829 with 3G)… in my opinion, succint, I know.

This gives gamers the choice of special Premium features such as; Free access to PS1 classics, access to game betas, extended 3 year console warranty, discounts on the Playstation store, early access to PSN store content, PSP Minis and my personal favourite Cross Game Chat, with many more features proposed.

There are several price plans available ranging from £19.99 per annum to £99.99 per annum, or if the free features are sufficient, stay put. This is great news for the PS3 and far less restrictive than the 360 online system.

And for a newly converted PS3 gamer, I’m very excited about this new development, if only for the 3 year warranty.

An extract from ProjectExciteBikes blog:

The point of the device is to capture the pedaling speed from an exercise bike and make it control a single button on a gamepad, which in turn can be the ‘gas pedal’ for racing games. We have this working with an xbox 360 gamepad but it can be adapted for other controllers and game systems easily. It would be simple to adapt this to a steering wheel controller, for example.

Using the prototype is surprisingly fun, and remarkable in its ability to make you forget just how hard and long you’re working out. It’s tedious to return to working out just to hit a time or distance threshold when you’re used to more direct pedalling imperatives.

I’m all for it, as this winter in Scotland has been lovely and white but not that conducive to cycling unfortunately, so this interested me a lot. It also uses the wireless of the gamepad so there are no wires to worry about and can be made to work with multiple systems.

Maybe not necessarily gaming news, but, interesting none the less, at least to the custom modders out there.

Source: Project Excite Bike

The important part of the press release, roughly translated;

Recording and playback capabilities by entering a keyword in the search menu and program genre, and instantly shows the appropriate list, you can easily record book.  PS3 ® even when in standby, games and Blu-ray Disc / DVD and enjoy even while the show is now set to automatically record. PS3® USB HDD In addition, PS3 ® built-in HDD as well as body, PS3 ® to connect external USB HDD is possible to record programs directly. The video playback is also available to play and a scene search function Hayami.

So far it has a release date set for March 2010 in Japan for around 9,980 yen (£70 or $110 approx.) very reasonable considering you can record programs to the hard drive and even external hard drive storage. Programs are recorded in the background, so you can play your PS3 games while recording TJ Hooker or Magnum P.I or whatever you kids like to watch these days. Even better, the recorded programs can be put onto a MicroSD or M2 card to be played back on your PSP.

All very promising but Unfortunately, no sign of a US or EU release date by Sony has been set, but of course, I’m going to be optimistic.

Source: jp.playstation.com