[From:Gamepro]

What's going on with Sony's online plans? GamePro speaks with Susan Nourai, the senior director of the PlayStation Network, for a peak at what's to come for PSP and PS3 owners.

For starters, what is your role at SCEA?

SCEA created a new organization focused solely on our PlayStation Network business. The goal for this team is to create a center of excellence for online services and digital entertainment delivery. My role is to drive and oversee SCEA's network business strategy, operations, content strategy and marketing across all of our PSN services including the PS Store, playstation.com and PlayStation Home.

The PlayStation Network takes a somewhat different form than other gaming networks. How does this architecture reflect Sony's philosophies about online?

We look at PSN as an emergent entertainment network. Our goal is to take a consumer-centric approach in both user experience, and just as important, to provide the type of content that consumers expect from PlayStation. This is evident in the types of games we offer on the PlayStation Store, like Flow, and the upcoming Calling All Cars and Little Big Planet.

Read more here: http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=108929 ...

HanSooloo has shared some interesting results from a preliminary HDD analysis…

1. The HDD is encrypted with a (most probably) Sony proprietary format.
2. If Linux is setup on the machine, the HDD will contain the relevant ext2 or ext3 partitions, but it will NOT be visible to a regular OS. This is because, the HDD does NOT have a standard partition table. If one uses WinHex to scan the HDD, then the program will find the ext2/ext3/swap partitions at their respective offsets.
3. A program has been written to scan blocks of 16bytes for where contiguous data is on the HDD. This program has identified major blocks of data on a freshly formatted 60GB HDD.
4. Of major interest is that right around the 380MB marker, we start seeing blocks of 64KB data, and this repeats itself EVERY 183.72MBs. Why does a system need 64KB worth of markers every so often, is a mystery at the moment.
5. Each HDD is "individualized" the moment it is formatted on a particular PS3 unit. An individualized HDD CANNOT be used in another PS3 unit due to (in theory) a unit based signature being written to each HDD.
6. A project is underway to "individualize" 2 same make and model (Seagate Momentus 60GB 2.5" SATA) HDDs and perform a byte level diff to spot differences in the disk layouts.
7. This diff will also be analyzed by the data block scanning program mentioned in Item-3 above.

I wonder… Will the long overdue ISO loader be able to play backed up images off the HDD? Hrm…


Poster's Notes:

It doesn't surprise me that Sony would have encrypted the PS3 partition of the hard-drive, making it somewhat tamper resistant. However this encryption does seem to have some implications with 3rd party developers.

For instance, there are so far, two game companies (that I know) developing titles for the PS3 that seem to believe that downloadable content may not be possible for it. While its strange to hear of that, considering other companies have released updates and content for games on PS3, its also something to be concerned with.

Does this belief that downloadable content for PS3 is not possible stem from the strange encryption encountered on the PS3 partition of the HDD? Is it due to the fact that these companies are unwilling to research and develop a content delivery method that would accommodate the PS3?

One of the companies I know to have said this is Bethesda, the makers of Oblivion. They have 3 platforms for which Oblivion is home to: PC, Xbox360 and PS3. The ease of installation of mods on PC is nothing short of spectacular; however, the official mods are not unified; one must download the mod for PC AND for the Xbox360 if they wish to have the same features in both copies of the game.

Having to also accommodate the PS3 may not be something that Bethesda is interested in, especially if they need to 'start from scratch' with every mod they want to make on the PS3.

What are your thoughts? ...

[From:Softpedia]
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Xbox-...es-51980.shtml

It's crystal clear that Microsoft's
Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii leave Sony's PS3 in a trail of smoke and dust more and more with every day that passes. But who's winning when there are only two consoles to be mentioned: the Wii, or the 360? I found this article today on Gamespot saying that Microsoft might have just mugged their own sales figures. How? By stuffing the retail channel.

Here's how it goes. A company like Microsoft has a fiscal year to end. As the end of that fiscal year approaches, the company realizes that only 9 million units of their product have been shipped (sold units are something to bother their heads with later) out of the 10 million target. The company then “stuffs retailers” with the extra 1 million units and they can happily say they've ended their fiscal year. But all this is like a boomerang and if this is indeed Microsoft's case, it will come back and hit them in the face.

“Strong companies confident in their strategy and performance don't do these things," the Ehrenberg blog says. “They don't have to. What kind of a message does this type of behavior send to the investor community and, more importantly, your customers? Weakness. Fear. Short-term thinking. Nothing that represents a positive signal for a better, brighter tomorrow.” Roger Ehrenberg, president and COO of investment analyst service Monitor110 financial blog, got his information from the Apple-focused Blackfriars' Marketing. They imply that “Microsoft threatened to withhold copies of its Vista operating system--released in January--from retailers who didn't play along and choke down excess Xbox 360 inventory.”

So what do you think? Is Microsoft capable of pulling a stunt like this? If they are, we're surely in for some good news later on as these kinds of actions have severe repercussions.

If this is true, what does it mean for the whole 'Console War' and more importantly what does it mean for the consumer? I would like to believe this kind of behavior is unthinkable, however, Microsoft has done exactly this in the past, when trying to get Internet Explorer more popular when Netscape was by far a better browser.

What do you all think? ...

Source: 1up.com

TGS 2006: Unreal Tournament PS3 Supports MODs
Microsoft 'quite negative toward user-created content.'
By Patrick Klepek, 09/22/2006

Amidst all the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hands-on impressions and high-resolution videos, Gamasutra sat in on a Q&A session with Epic Games' CEO Tim Sweeney during TGS, where he discussed the difficulties and benefits of working with the PlayStation 3 hardware, how game development will change in the future and his enthusiasm for Sony's "enlightened business model" when it comes to online gaming.

Sony's approach will enable Epic Games to grant fans access to create their own content for Unreal Tournament 2007 using Epic Games-released development tools and distribute them to PlayStation 3 users. Nothing like this has been attempted on consoles before because it wrestles control over content from the publishers, but Sweeny says he "would love to transfer this mod community over to the console platforms."

Read the rest here: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3153936

Mods have and perhaps always will prolong the life of a game and it is interesting that Sony is allowing this, but the question begs to be asked: Will other game companies follow suit? Do you think this move will help the PS3 or hamper it? What do you all think? ...