InsideMicrosoft

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links for 2006-03-24

March 24th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Bookmarks, General | one comment



Playstation 3 News Keeps Coming

Lets be honest, the promotion of the Playstation 3 isn’t Sony’s best work (no, that would be the Dreamcast screwjob), but in spite of their bad decisions, there’s going to be plenty of chatter leading up to the PS3’s launch. Here’s some news items:

IGN reports that at GDC, Sony Worldwide Studios President Phil Harrison said in the Q&A that the PS3 will be region-free for games. Movies (Blu-Ray and DVD)will still be screwed by region coding, but games made in Japan will run just fine on U.S. consoles.

This is a great design decision, one that will help combat piracy. See, mod chips are made to beat region codes, but can also allow pirated disks. Cut off the legitimate and primary reason for mod chips, and the only people making or buying them are for illegal copying, and that means less development work and an easier job finding and prosecuting real criminals.

Couldn’t Microsoft give this a shot? Region coding accomplishes nothing except encourage people to buy less games, not more.

Wikipedia has a list of Xbox 360 games (and Xbox games with emulation) that run region-free.
(via Engadget)

Sony has also announced the Playstation network platform, which will launch with the PS3. It will be free for basic services, which will include matchmaking, scoring, ranking, video, voice chat, presence and avatars. There will be an online shop to buy content and options for subscriptions, pay to download and micropayments.

Gizmodo links that Major Nelson took a picture of a PS3 dev kit, with the screen either showing Windows XP or one real good Linux ripoff. The PS3 dev kit a Windows box? Shocker!

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March 24th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Xbox 360, Xbox, General | 2 comments