All Articles Tagged sony

The PSPgo is Sony’s answer to the iPhone in a post-App Store world, but unfortunately it looks like charging more for poorly ported games is the question. Gizmodo explains the obvious — to everyone but Sony — problem:

You see, PSP Minis can’t have any network or online features. Nor can they support camera peripherals (a major focus of DSiWare innovation) or DLC. Kotaku just reviewed iPhone port Hero of Sparta. On the PSP it costs triple what you’ll pay at the App Store. Their review? “Simplistic controls, muddled graphics and abysmal sounds turn what was a fantastic iPhone game into a oddly disjointed Playstation Portable experience.” Kotaku’s review of Tetris was much better. But you know what? Tetris costs twice as much on the PSP as it does the iPhone.

Just like ATRAC and rootkits (ouch, we know), we’re beginning to wonder if anyone at Sony will ever get this brave, new, post-iPhone world?

According to Times Online, It now seems as if Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI are putting the finishing touches on their new album format, CMX, and are ready to do battle against Apple’s rumored “Cocktail” enhanced album format.

It was just last month we reported about Cocktail, which would feature new interactive booklets, sleeve notes and other features alongside music downloads in an attempt to lure consumers into making more full album purchases. Now, while it looks like “Cocktail” does exist, it seems that none of the record labels had any hand in creating it. According to this story, record labels first approached Apple 18 months ago to see if they wanted in on this new CMX format and Apple politely refused. Apple then created “Cocktail” in order to compete with Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI.

One senior record label insider said: “Apple at first told us that they were not interested, but now they have decided to do their own, in case ours catches on.

While most of us here at TiPb have no major quarrels purchasing our music digitally, there are a lot of people out there who feel when purchasing digital albums over the internet you are not getting the full album experience. Would this new format make purchasing digital albums any less painful for you? And would you rather go with Apple’s “Cocktail” or the music industry’s CMX?

Eurogamer spoke to Johnny Two Shoes (The Heist, Banana Dash), Normalware (Bebot) and Firemint (Flight Control) about how Sony’s new PSPgo platform may compete with the iPhone, and the answers were interesting:

• After an 80% price cut to PSP dev tool charges, bring the price down to $1500) it’s still much more expensive than Apple’s $99.
• Developers can’t target the existing PSP install base of 50 million, PSPgo has only just been released, and Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch have an install base of over 40 million devices.

However, Apple growing the download gaming market and PSP games traditionally being bigger and longer (as opposed to casual iPhone gaming) were seen as positives for Sony.

“In the end,” Maxwell Scott-Slade concludes, “the consumer wins for choice and developers win for a more direct access to their audience.”

[via PS3blog.net]

Oft rumored, is Sony ready to leverage both the struggling Sony Ericsson partnership and the still fairly solid Sony Playstation brand to produce a Playstation Phone? (PSP Phone? PSPhone? PSP Go-Call-Someone?).

Makes sense from a competitive point of view, and something we certainly thought we’d see sooner. If Sony can get passed their historic intra-company integration problems, and avoid doing anything silly like ATRAC DRM or root kits — if they could get a product manager who could cut through the quagmire and drive everything that’s good about Sony into the product — it could be an interesting contender.

For the iPhone, of course:

Nikkei says it will directly compete with the iPhone, and that a project team was set up last July to start working on the console/phone hybrid. So basically, it’s the same rumor we’ve been hearing for years, except this time from a reliable source. Whether it’s got any truth to it remains to be seen. Note: The above image is a mockup. Seems obvious but sometimes you gotta say it out loud.

[Gizmodo via Reuters]

We have covered the iPhone and gaming from top to bottom here at TiPb. The iPhone still has a lot of catching up to do in terms of the quality of the games and you can also toss in the lack of physical controls as a huge negative. All that aside, for the most part we’ve felt that if Apple plays their cards correctly, they could be a major player in the handheld gaming wars alongside the likes of Nintendo and Sony.

Maybe you’ve agreed with us, maybe you haven’t. If you’ve disagreed with our opinions and views that’s fine and dandy but maybe, just maybe, you will listen to Trip Hawkins. Who’s Trip Hawkins you ask? He started a little gaming company called Electronic Arts.

“The iPhone is by far our most effective platform. We make as much money with these games on one device as we do putting a game on 100 different cell phone platforms. Between the iPod touch and the iPhone, I think the platform is freaking out Sony and Nintendo.”

That is a pretty strong statement. It may be a great thing as more and more developers will take the iPhone as a serious contender and produce more and higher quality games, or it may prove to be one of the biggest pitfalls. It may encourage more developers to throw quality and innovation out the window and simply pump out below-average games just to make that quick profit. Up until this point we’ve seen a combination of some high quality games and some pure garbage. In the end, it’s about the almighty dollar and we get that. Hopefully game developers come up with ways to push the platform to the next level.

So where do you see this going in the long run for the iPhone as a gaming platform? Lets hear your thoughts!

[Via theappleblog.com]

According to CNet (via Apple Insider), Apple is in talks with the remaining 3 out of the Big 4 record labels who still refuse to allow iTunes to sell DRM-free music.

Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG currently provide DRM-free music to rival services like Amazon MP3 as a way to promote competition to iTunes, though the lack of availability of these services outside the US, along with iTunes continued (and growing) dominance in digital music, may be causing them to rethink that position.

EMI, of course, has been offering DRM-free music via Apple’s iTunes Plus service since it launched, and at double the bit rate (quality) of the regular music.

Hopefully we’ll soon see the day that big music decides to stop treating their customers as de facto thieves and realizes offering quality goods at fair market prizes is the only real way to stop piracy. Or am I the crazy one?

Back in September, TiPb posted a few articles in regards to Apple becoming a major player in the hand held gaming wars. We faced off the iPhone against Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS.

The main question to be answered is should Sony and Nintendo be worried? I’d say yes, indeed they should be worried. Business Week seems to feel the same way as well. Some of their points are right on key with what we had to say back in September (see the articles linked above). While that is no doubt a coincidence, here is what they had to say:

Now look at Apple’s advantages over competitors. Apple already has more titles for its games than both of the other two combined. And aside from the free ones, games on the App Store sell at prices ranging up to $9.99 and sometimes a little more. Compare that with the $20 to $40 for Nintendo DS games and the $10 to $40 for games on the PSP.

This goes along with exactly what we said, doesn’t it? How about this one?

And with Apple selling via iTunes, there are no costs associated with the distribution of physical media. All games are downloaded directly to the device. And in the event the game is buggy, the developer can easily issue an easy-to-download fix. The developer gets 70% of the sale and Apple keeps 30%, with no one else to get in the middle. Nintendo and Sony partners have to worry about shelf space at stores, shipping, returns, defective merchandise, and even the occasional shoplifter.

Also a good point that we stressed a few months back. With the holiday season fast approaching, it should be mighty interesting to see just how the hand held gaming wars works out.

For more gaming coverage from TiPb be sure to check out these articles.

(Via Business Week)

For the last two weeks we here at TiPb have been taking a deeper look into Apple’s “Game On” push. Can anyone really doubt Steve Jobs is trying to make the iPhone/iPod Touch into the next big portable gaming device? Stop and think about it, he took the idea of a portable MP3 player and made it into a device that has dominated the music business ever since. Now, according to Jobsy, “you could make a pretty good argument [the iPhone is] the best portable device for playing games on.”

Michael Gartenberg, vice president of Mobile Strategy at Jupitermedia’s MobileDevicesToday.com, chimed in:

The not-so-subtle message was, ‘If you’re thinking about buying something like a PSP or a DS, maybe you want to think again because we’ve got this cool device that does all your mobile stuff and, by the way, is a pretty excellent game platform as well’

Steve Palley, Editorial Guru for Vivendi Games Mobile said:

The iPhone is going to make the mobile games industry into everything we always wanted it to be but failed to achieve.

Even Nintendo’s Denise Kaigler, VP of Corporate Affairs spoke out regarding the iPhone:

Any time you have a new company enter an industry, it’s always good for the consumer. It gives them choices and we welcome that. But we have found over the last 20 years, despite all the choices consumers have had, that the Nintendo devices have enjoyed a great deal of success.

I really can not argue with Nintendo’s comment. Nintendo is the king of the hill in the handheld gaming industry. Many have tried to overtake them, all failing. Here’s what I’m thinking, though, Apple may not be the top dog at the moment but by the time the next iPhone is released, Jobsy might just be saying “I told you so!”. Give the App Store a year to grow, software developers time to get the most out of the hardware, etc… And then lets see how things start to shake out. What are you guys and gals thinking?

[Via MSBC.com]

[Ed: We're bringing back the Wait-a-Thon and making it regular again. Sorry we dropped it off there for awhile, folks. With all those 3G and iPhone 2.0 rumors flying about these past couple of weeks, it almost felt like the release was already here. In the meantime, comment on any post tagged "Wait-a-Thon" for your chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card!]

This is not a response to Crackberry.com’s excellent article, Top 10 Reasons Why the iPhone Is NO BlackBerry. Quite frankly, the iPhone doesn’t need a response; it’s the rest of industry that’s so desperately trying to find one to the iPhone.

I don’t know about you, but it’s getting more than a little tiring hearing everyone compare themselves to — and constantly try to rip-off — the iPhone. I can’t surf a website or cruise the main without some claw-handed Crackberry addict, neck-bearded Palm artifact, or frazzle-haired WinMob frustrati glaring and frothing with barely-contained envy at the perfectly balanced, seamlessly integrated, lustfully convergent iPhone held ever-so casually in my grip.

They know the iPhone is beyond cool. Sure, they cling to their once innovative, formerly revolutionary (at least in the case of Palm and RIM) devices, the ones overwhelming nostalgia or massive business infrastructure investment won’t let them slam to the ground and stomp into the call-dropping, web-mangling, constantly crashing oblivion they so richly deserve.

So the comparisons to the iPhone just won’t stop, despite the fact that the iPhone is pretty much incomparable. Don’t believe me? I’ve got ten reasons to back me up. And these aren’t minor feature gripes or personal peccadilloes. In proper Apple fashion, these are just 10 simple little words…

Read the rest of this entry »

Not only did the iPhone serve RIM at the SDK event. But after Apple showcased the demos of Touch Fighter, Spore, and Super Monkey Ball on the iPhone, Nintendo and Sony better watch out as well. Game controls utilized the accelerometer and multi-touch while the graphics were displayed on that crystal clear screen–make no mistake–Apple is ready to revolutionize gaming.

With the early glimpses into the gaming capabilities of the iPhone, we’ve learned that:

1. The possibilities are endless
2. It looks really fun
3. Apple has a potential gaming jackpot in their hands

If we have learned anything from the current console “war” between the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii—consumers are more interested in buying the “fun” games as opposed to those that are graphically superior. At its bare minimum, gaming on the iPhone can be likened to a ridiculously advanced wii-mote. At its maximum potential? Quite possibly the best mobile gaming experience ever.

Earlier today Chad asked about what your favorite gaming experiences on the iPhone might be. But how will Apple deal with the business side of it? How can the iPhone conquer gaming? Find out after the jump.

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