Turn on your PlayStation 3, have a nosey under the Music tab, and you'll discover Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity.

It's a subscription streaming music service just launched by Sony. Eagle-eyed reader Wesley Nutt alerted Eurogamer to the addition this morning.

According to a report on PCWorld, Music Unlimited is only available in the UK and Ireland, but Sony plans to expand the service to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, New Zealand and the US next year.

Music Unlimited has a whopping six million songs at launch. Two options are available. The basic plan offers genre-specific and era-specific channels of non-stop music. The premium service adds on-demand access to all songs in the library and additional channels with new music.

The basic plan costs £3.99 or €3.99 a month. Premium sets you back £9.99 or €9.99 a month.

Sony's Qriocity aims to link all of its network-enabled consumer electronics products and shares the same base as the PlayStation Network that links Sony's gaming devices.

Music Unlimited synchronizes existing playlists to the service, if you so desire. It can scan files in your PS3 music library and digitally fingerprint each song. The data is then uploaded to the service and the songs are added to your library to use on demand across all devices. But if your songs aren't among the six million available, they won't be accessible.

Predictably, the service doesn't work with music file formats with digital rights management. Sony plans to later add support for protected music files.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ed-sub-service ...

Why is PlayStation 3's virtual world Home free? Because you lot keep buying virtual items.

Home, which enjoys 17 million registered users and contains 236 games, has suffered criticism from the press and gamers since its 2008 launch, but Sony has maintained its profitability through the sale of 7000 high-margin virtual items.

That, according to PlayStation Home director Jack Buser, is big business for Sony.

"If you look at the first quarter of this calendar year, we actually tripled revenue from the same time period of the year prior," he told Gamasutra.

"The business model works, and we like it quite a bit. It's one of the reasons we're able to offer PlayStation Home as a free service."

Looking to the future, Buser said the quality of games within Home will keep it growing.

"Games are the killer app for the platform," Buser said.

"I think once gamers find out that they have hundreds of games built into PlayStation Home, most of them free-to-play, [they will try Home]."

And what kinds of games will they be? Buser expressed interest in virtual item sales and free-to-play microtransaction-based games. Microtransactions are Home's "bread and butter", he said.

"Here we are in the console space becoming very comfortable, very familiar with the latest and greatest business models of the game industry, putting us just miles ahead of the competition in this regard."

Not everyone is convinced, however. Earlier this month Microsoft described Home as a "nice chat room" and "not an awful lot more".

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...keep-home-free ...

Do not melt your Wii Wheel into a hunk of more useless plastic yet. Brave inventors have found a way to make the Wii Wheel steer... what's this? A small car? Hooray!

Source kotaku ...

The guys over at geeksugar recently did a feature on the most awesome geeky cookies they could find. My personal favorite of the bunch – these video game controller cookies from Ms. Humble of Not So Humble Pie.

All three of the major current-gen consoles are represented in baked-good form, including a pair of PS3 DualShocks, a duo of Wii-motes, and just a single Xbox 360 controller. Why just one? Maybe it took twice as much cookie dough to make – they are rather bulky, aren’t they?

Source technabob ...

Recently, some evidence has appeared suggesting that Sony is planning to market a new Android-based phone built on the legacy of one of the company's existing product lines.

That product line, of course, is Xperia, Sony Ericsson's smartphone line.

According to European trademark filings spotted by PocketNow, Sony is releasing something under the name "Xperia Play" -- a name that would make sense for a Sony Ericsson phone designed to play games, which is exactly what the rumored (and very well-photographed) "PlayStation Phone" is. The Unofficial Xperia X10 Blog found XperiaPlay domain registrations set up by a marketing firm that works for Sony Ericsson. Pocket-Lint reports a rumor that the phone will be revealed at February's Mobile World Congress for an April release.

None of this is any guarantee that the "Playstation Phone" will be released as the Xperia Play -- or even that the Xperia Play name will be used for anything -- but in our opinion, it would be a pretty huge mistake to torpedo the product by associating it with any brand other than PlayStation. Perhaps Sony will launch an "Xperia Play Mobile App Store Powered by PlayStation" or some similar confusing half-step.

Source joystiq ...

via Computer and Video Games


Shigeru Miyamoto has admitted that The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword is only "half-complete" with Nintendo still working hard to make sure the gameplay experience is "more dense."

Yes, a month after Miyamoto himself declared that development on Zelda: Skyward Sword was "going gangbusters", it now appears unlikely that the game will be released in in early 2011 as Zelda veteran Eiji Aonuma had hoped.

Speaking with Pocket Lint, Miyamoto also revealed what the Skyward Sword development team is working on right now.

It looks as thought Nintendo is going to deliver on its promise to only release the game when it's perfect. ...

Newly released/updated for the Caanoo:

PlayStation эмулятор для caanoo игровой консоли

More... ...

Thanks to Gama coder, we have this new version of GameMusicGear.

It now includes a new VGM plugin based on VGMPlay written by ValleyBell (http://www.smspower.org).

The plugin emulates various chips and plays .VGM files wich can be ripped from many arcade games (for example Neo-Geo) using MAME_VGM and FOX_M1_vgm (created by ValleyBell). For the OPL4 chip you need to provide the samples rom file (yrw801.rom).

Also updated game music emulator, modplug and UADE.

Download Game Music Gear v1.5 here http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?bspr11zuf5xuxd9 ...

New from iShopvideogame

CycloDS iEVOLUTION- the real DSi flash card for DSi V1.4.1 firmware
CycloDS iEVO DSi flash card from Team CycloDS is the first real DSi backup cart that support DSi only features such as the built-in camera and SD card access for storage, which will be launched at earler of January 2011 . Pre-order now . IEvoUnlike other DSi Compatible cards that run in DS MODE on the DSi the iEvolution cartridge runs in true full DSi mode and so it can use the full potential of the improved hardware like the faster CPU clock.

More processing power that CycloDS iEvolution unlocks will come in handy when DSi homebrew is concerned. Team Cyclops already supports the homebrew scene by shipping free dev units to developers.

Cyclops iEVO flashcard is compatible with all Nintendo DSi and DSi LL (Japanese) and XL (USA / Europe) consoles. Old NDS and DS Lite is also supported, but on ti there is no point in using a more expensive iEvolution card as DSi MODE will not work on NDS. (No camera or SD slot on it)

Be advisedSince it is a pre-ordered item and CycloDS team announced that it is supposed to be released by the earlier of January 2011. So please make it sure you do not have any problem to the devliery time before order . Thank you for your cooperation .



A quick clarification in relation to DSi mode for iEVO. Only USA and European consoles will be supported initially in the first iEVO firmware release shipped with the cart. Later firmware builds will support other regions, once our development team has completed the necessary stress testing. Please be assured that only a software firmware update is required, and no additional hardware or hardware revisions will be required to cater for these regions of consoles.

FeaturesiEvolution flash card are very similar to the CycloDS Evolution, but the team has also come up with some new features to justify the purchase of yet another DSi Flash Card.

CycloDS iEvolution features at the time of release include: (more will be added with Firmware updates)

Cheat code support from Action Replay Data Base
Extra 8 MB RAM onboard
Upgradable Bootstrap so Nintendo can not block the cart
Full support or micro SDHC cards up to 32 GB and microSD up to 2GB
Supports Wii Connection for games
Slow Motion for games
Real Time Save and Restore as seen on the R4i RTS cards
USB Reader / Writer + special firmware upgrade module in the package
Download play support so you can share games over WiFi
Multi Language Operating System and interface

iEvolution will include 8 MB of on-board buffer memory for speeding up file access speeds, which is four times larger than what we had on the CycloDS Evolution which came with just 2 MB.

DSi firmware updates from Nintendo will not be able to block iEVO, because the flash cards boot ROM is upgradable and cart comes with the upgrade module (the circular puck like adapter with a USB plug and a slot for DS cart). And lets not forget that the iEvolution comes with all of the other amazing features that CycloDS Evolution had, including the Enhanced in-game menu and other exclusive features.

From CycloDS Team - Clarification about the compatibility:
An early clarification of how DSi iEVO will work. Only the U.S. an European DSi console will be compatible wit the first firmware version, later firmware versions for iEVO will add support for Japanese and Chinese DSi handhelds. Support of other regions, once completed our development team, the stress test is based needs. You can be sure that only a software update is required, and without any change or additional hardware equipment required to meet compatibility targets for these areas of consoles. ...