PS3

April 15 may be known as Tax Day, but the HD DVD backers over at AVS forum are calling it something else: Buy HD DVDs from Amazon Day!

As one forum member put it: "The idea is to show support for HD DVD by buying movies on a specific day. There is no better way to show support for HD DVD than by backing it financially. That is the language the movie studios understand best. If there is a strong demand for HD DVD software, then hopefully Blu-ray-only studios will at least go neutral."

So far about a … Read more

Say what you will about PS3 sales, but it seems clear that the game console is having an impact on the next-gen DVD war. This week the Blu-ray version of Casino Royale broke into the Amazon top 10 for DVD sales and four other Blu-ray titles sit in the top 100. On the other hand, the top title on HD DVD, Happy Feet, is currently ranked at No. 117.

In a recent column, I suggested to readers that they should keep an eye on The Departed--it's a Warner release and therefore available on both HD DVD and Blu-ray--to get … Read more

We speak not of Sega mascot Sonic the Hedgehog's romantic obsession with gold rings (creepy as that may be), but of Crush, an upcoming platform and puzzle game for the Sony PSP that we saw at Sega's spring press event here in NYC.

This puzzle game caught our eye with its unusual 2D/3D design. Players traverse the find-the-exit levels by temporarily "crushing" the game's geometry down to a 2D view, allowing the main character to get to otherwise impossible-to-reach places. It's similar in some ways to Super Paper Mario for the Wii, and … Read more

Spider-Man 3 is shaping up to be one of the biggest movies of the year, and like any blockbuster it's getting its own video game. Usually video games based on movies based on comic books tend to completely bite, but Spider-Man has so far managed to dodge the bullet. Though repetitive, Spider-Man 2 turned out to be a fun, attractive game that captured the web-slinger's web-swinging beautifully. So I still have hopes for the Spider-Man 3 game.

PlayStation 3 owners have even more reason to be excited about Spider-Man 3. According to IGN, the Spider-Man 3 game will … Read more

PlayStation 3 price cuts already? That's what Sony may be eyeing in a bid to break even on the console by the end of fiscal 2008.

According to the Associated Press, Sony senior vice president Takao Yuhara said that while no specific plans have been made, the company is considering reducing the price as a way to boost sales. "We may look at the price as part of our strategy to expand the market when the timing is right," Yuhara said.

Sony had already reduced the price of the PS3 in Japan prior to launch. But with … Read more

Much has been made of how the PS3 is Sony's not-so-secret weapon in the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war. But I actually held out some small hope--call me naive--that the PS3 might be able to breathe some new life into Sony's near-dead, high-fidelity audio format, SACD (Super Audio CD), which competes with another near-dead, high-fidelity audio format, DVD-Audio.

In case you hadn't heard, the PS3 supports playback of SACD discs. There aren't a whole lot of SACD discs out there, but I happen to own five of them. I made an effort to find them the … Read more

I woke up this morning and clicked on the System Update icon on my PS3 and lo and behold, the rumored 1.5 firmware update was available for download. Unfortunately, Sony doesn't offer a change log saying exactly what the firmware update does, but there are plenty of tidbits out there on blogs from PS3 enthusiasts.

The biggest issue that the update fixes involves backward-compatibility with PSOne and PS2 titles, some of which looked like garbage on HDTVs when played on the PS3. Titles that didn't support 480p output exhibited loads of artifacts and jaggies. Allegedly, all that'… Read more

Well, it's been a nice couple of months since the launch of the Nintendo Wii and the PlayStation 3. After the predictably massive crowds and instant sell-outs of the systems on launch day, stores have had plenty of time to restock and get the new next-gen systems back on their shelves. Unfortunately, that hasn't quite been the case.

The Nintendo Wii is still almost impossible to find, and this is a surprising frustration for guys like me who decided not to wait in line for hours to get one at launch. After some legwork and a number of … Read more

Is it possible to have a positive Webware experience on something besides a PC? Cell phones and small handheld Internet devices don't cut it with their tiny screens and awful browsers (at least until the iPhone arrives). So what if you could use that nice bandwidth you get at home and combine it with that large HDTV sitting in your living room? That question has recently been answered with Nintendo and Sony's more recent gaming consoles: the Wii and the PS3, respectively. Microsoft's Xbox 360 doesn't have a browser, likely because of the company's failure … Read more