Source Gamespot

When Sony launched its Connect music-download service in May 2004, it was with the obvious intention to try and take down Apple's iTunes service. Nearly 20 months later, iTunes is breaking records, while Connect--which uses Sony's proprietary, non-iPod-compatible ATRAC3 audio format--is used by only a tiny sliver of the market.

Yesterday evening at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Sony executives announced that in March, the company will relaunch a new version of Connect. The revamped service will offer movies, video, and games for download onto Sony's multimedia and gaming portable, the PSP.

"Soon, Sony will be rewriting the rules once again," the company said in a statement. "The Connect service will enable you to download hundreds of videos, games, and TV shows as well as films and other content. You'll even be able to browse from a wide selection of books."

The mention of games raises the likelihood that Connect will have an Xbox Live Marketplace-like section which will let PSP owners download titles. Currently, games on Xbox Live Marketplace cost between $5 to $20 and feature classic arcade titles like Joust and new casual games like Hardwood Backgammon. However, Sony did not mention any specific titles.

No specific movie or video titles were mentioned either. But Sony, by virtue of owning the studios Columbia/Tristar and MGM, has a massive film and television catalog to draw from. Sony executives did not mention what movie and video downloads would cost. However, as Connect's music prices mirror those of iTunes--$0.99 per song--expect a pricing scheme similar to iTunes' video offerings, which go for $1.99 per music video or television show. Moviesquare, the movie-download site Sony currently runs in Japan, may also offer a clue. It offers more than 260 movies for the PSP, priced from 210 yen ($1.78) to 1,260 yen ($10.71) depending on the feature.

It appears Sony wants to emulate the success of iTunes' video venture, which has exceeded expectations, and Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace, which has seen four million downloads since it launched in November. However, one big issue may inhibit the growth of Connect's video and game service. While video iPods have 30GB or 60GB of storage built in and the Xbox 360 has a 20GB hard drive, the $249 PSP Value Pack comes with only a 32MB Memory Stick Duo, which is adequate only for game saves and very limited audio offerings. That means those who didn't pick up the $299 PSP Giga Pack over the holidays will have to purchase a separate high-storage Memory Stick Duo to be able to download PSP movies and games, which usually come on 1.8GB Universal Media Discs (UMD). ...

For gamers, no event at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show was as anticipated as Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer's keynote. While yesterday's Microsoft presentation did have some surprises--like an HD-DVD peripheral and Capcom Xbox Live Arcade games--the fact the Xbox 360 is already on the market made it largely moot, from a gaming perspective. Not so Stringer's address, which many hoped would offer a new revelations about Sony's next-generation console, the PlayStation 3.

Unfortunately, Stringer chose to focus more on Sony's overall vision of a "digital future" than games in particular. After a series of flashy multimedia presentations, the wealthy Welshman began a keynote which hewed closely to the official Sony CES 2006 Web site.

Both the site and Stringer's speech outlined the company’s four-pronged plan of attack for the digital age. The first prong the CEO mentioned was e-Entertainment, the concept of using--what else--Sony electronics to access entertainment in new ways from any location. As examples, Stringer trotted out the new Sony Ericsson W810 mobile phone with Walkman music playback and the Sony Reader, a slim new e-book device.

However, it was only when Stringer whipped out a PSP that gamers' ears perked up. Stringer used the handheld to show off LocationFree, Sony's internet-enabled video system which streams video to multiple TVs, PCs, or PSPs wirelessly or over the Web. To demonstrate, Stringer showed a live East Coast TV broadcast being played onto the PSP via a nearby Wi-Fi hotspot.

Several celebrities joined Stringer to help tout the second aspect of Sony's four-part plan, Digital Cinema. Unsurprisingly, all three--actor Tom Hanks, director Ron Howard, and producer Brian Grazer--are involved in a major Sony film production, Columbia Pictures' forthcoming Da Vinci Code.

Of greater interest to gamers was Sony's third prong, Higher Definition. Similar to Microsoft's prophecy of the forthcoming "HD Era," this part of Sony's plan outlines how it will (hopefully) dominate HDTV entertainment. Its cornerstone is Blu-ray Disc, the next-generation media format that is vying against HD-DVD, backed by Microsoft and Toshiba, to succeed the current standard, DVD. The PlayStation 3 will come with an internal BD-ROM drive, while the Xbox 360 will require users to buy a external HD-DVD peripheral.

To help drive home the importance of Blu-Ray, Stringer was joined on stage by Michael Dell, founder and chairman of Dell Computer. In a presentation tailor-made to counter Microsoft's hyping of HD-DVD the previous evening, Dell said that BD-ROM was a format that would last over 10 years. He also reiterated his company's support for the format, which can store upwards of 50GB of data on a single disc.

Unfortunately, when it came to the fourth part of Sony's digital future vision, PlayStation, the Sony keynote disappointed. Stringer, a masterful presenter, ceded the floor to Kaz Hirai, the similarly smooth President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, who talked about … the PlayStation 2. Hirai said the console actually saw a 10 percent year-on-year increase in holiday sales, contradicting many analysts' predictions. He also said the PSP sold well, and elicited chuckles by pointing both the console and the handheld outsold the hard-to-find Xbox 360 over the holidays. He also took a verbal swipe at Sony's next-gen rival, saying, "the next generation doesn't start until we say it does."

When the subject did turn to the PlayStation 3, Hirai offered no major new information. He did say that the console is a "key pillar of Sony growth in 2006"--re-confirming its release this year--and said Sony has shipped out 4,000 software development kits for the console worldwide. Otherwise, though, Hirai merely restated previously known information about the PS3. He said its CPU, the vaunted Cell processor, would only use seven of its eight cores, and, yes, the console would be backwards-compatible with both PS2 and original PlayStation games.

Hirai's multimedia presentation also contained nothing new about the PS3. After running through a series of slides showing a nonfunctioning PS3 console and its controversial "batarang" controller, the lights dimmed. Then trailers for MotorStorm, Formula 1, Vision Gran Turismo, Lair, and Warhawk were shown--the same trailers Sony showed at E3 last May. The only one with any discernible additions was Vision Gran Turismo, which had a flashy new introduction.

With that, Stringer retook the stage to deliver his closing comments. But by that time, many gamers in the audience had tuned out, already calculating when they might get a closer look at the PS3. Luckily, it won't be long until their next opportunity--the 2006 Game Developers Conference is less than two months away. ...

Divineo China have posted this news:

M3 Adapter has now released the PassKey 2, compatible with all Nintendo DS consoles.



M3 Adapter is made for those who want to download freeware games, movies and music from a PC to a GBA(SP) and/or Nintendo DS. You can use your PC and normal Compact Flash Card Reader to transfer and convert you movie & music files to the Compact Flash Cards. Then, insert M3 Adapter with CF/SD Card into GBA(SP) or Nintendo DS, and the files will be available after boot up of the console.

Its features are just the same as any other MP3 Player on the market but also playing games and movies instead of playing music only.

One of the coolest features of an M3 Adapter is that you can directly run third party software on it – that includes emulators of the video game system. ...

Schan has released a Snakes game for the GP2X:



Download Here --> http://gp2x-emulation.dcemu.co.uk/snake2x.shtml ...

Iceonly has released a port of Vectoroids, a remake of Asteroids, this version has No sound yet, heres a screen:



Download Here --> http://gp2x-emulation.dcemu.co.uk/vectoroids2x.shtml ...

Source - http://www.pdroms.de/index.php

gP32oPie is a Linux version for the GP32. Changes:
1) Kernel update (recent Kernel 2.4 in GP32LINUX micro2) - I tried Kernel 2.6, but boot failed.
2) Edit 'start' file
3) And small changes
Read readme.txt for more information.

http://www.gp32x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,18,986 ...

bluescrn posted this:

"The early version was discussed here (it's based on the display capture/dual pass demos discussed there):

http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=7958

But as I've just uploaded an updated demo - which looks nicer and now runs at 60fps (although it's still C, and there's a few optimizations left) - I thought it deserved a thread of its own...

The demo (with source) is here: www.bluescrn.net/dsbloom.zip (It's still based on those previous examples, and using the ship model/rendering code from them)

And my hopeless attempt to take a screenshot: www.bluescrn.net/dsbloom.jpg

Anyone else got interesting ideas for postprocessing a capture of the 3D? - already suggested was antialiasing - you could do supersampled 2xAA at 30fps by rendering a buffer twice the size of the screen in 2 passes, then resampling it down with the CPU.

I suppose the capture system could be used for very constrained render-to-texture effects (shadows/reflection maps?) But in practice it would probably be better to have a software renderer for those things, to avoid the huge VRAM/framerate costs that could be involved?" ...

Evil dragon posted this news:

kounch released a new version of Selector, the GUI for command line programs.

New in this release:

* Working at 66MHz, restoring the original state of CPU when launching another program or getting back to GP2X menu.
* Preliminary skin support (at the moment, a PNG background image).
* Multilanguage (Spanish and English, collaborations for other languages are appreciated)
* Better docs, including more examples (GNUBoy2x, Neopop, Vice, GNUBoy) and skin examples

Screenshot and download via the comments ...

Sata has updated his MP3 Player for the Nintendo DS that has support for many flashcards.

its in japanese so i havent a clue, anyone who knows japanese please tell us

Download below via the comments ...