Sony has unleashed VidZone TV on PlayStation 3.

This offers over 100 pre-programmed, telly-style music channels to watch for free.

Apparently the idea is to do away with the need to spend time building playlists. You simply pick a themed-channel - seventies, eighties, hip-hop, dance, etc. - and let it play.

Previously VidZone required you search and compile your own on-demand playlists and put in a bit of effort. You can still do that, but that would be like actually walking around a supermarket instead of ordering online! Idiot!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/so...zone-tv-on-ps3 ...

Rockstar has high hopes for the upcoming Red Dead Redemption, but US analyst Michael Pachter has questioned whether it will become the blockbuster that publisher 2K Games intends.
UK Rockstar boss Neil Stephen told MCV earlier this month: “RDR is incredibly beautiful and on an unprecedented scale. This, combined with our most ambitious multiplayer offering to date, leaves us with very high expectations for what we think is our next blockbuster gaming franchise.”
However, speaking to Industry Gamers Pachter has questioned the appeal of the Wild West setting.
“I’m sure that the quality of Red Dead Redemption is extraordinary, and I expect the game to garner review scores of around 90,” he conceded.
“Whether the game is a blockbuster franchise will depend upon whether the game resonates with a large segment of the market. The trick in getting a game to sell a lot of units is not as simple as saying it will be a blockbuster. Rather, the game has to be great (likely), has to appeal to a large potential audience (questionable), and has to have solid marketing support (likely).

“I am not sure that a game set in the late 19th century has tremendous mass appeal. I would have said the same for Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia, God of War, Dante’s Inferno and any other “period” pieces, yet most of these sold quite well.
“My bias is that a game that is set in the US West will not be particularly appealing to European audiences, and a game where the most powerful weapon is a Gatling gun will not be particularly appealing to US audiences.
“With that said, I suppose that the game could sell 2-3million units with a review score of 85 or more and solid marketing. I remain skeptical that the game will be considered a ‘blockbuster franchise’ and certainly do not expect sales to rival those of GTA.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/38689/Does...ve-mass-appeal ...

What are we to make of the iPhone leak this week? To reference Donald Rumsfeld "There are known unkowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don't know. But, there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we know."
And what I know is that this leak has all the makings of a massive conspiracy. Oh yes.
I'll use another quote here, this time from All The President's Men: "The list of the people involved is longer than anyone can imagine. It involves the entire U.S. Intelligence Community. FBI... CIA... Justice... it's incredible."
Just to refresh your memories, Apple engineer Gray Powell left his prototype iPhone 4 on a barstool earlier this week, and it eventually got into the hands of tech blog Gizmodo.
Reports suggest Gizmodo paid $5,000 for this 'stolen' bit of kit, which strains the ethics a bit. And it explains why the blog kept referring to Powell's innocent mistake in losing his phone 'just like Steve Jobs or Jonathan Ive".


This translates as 'please don't sack him, because that would make us feel really bad."
Sack him? I think it's more likely he'll be killed. Perhaps by stoning. Using Apple's old stash of Motorola ROKRs.
(By the way, if you find an interesting mobile prototype in a bar, send it to me and I'll make sure it's 'returned' to its owner. Don't for God's sake send it to Stuart Dredge. He's well known to the police)
Anyhow, within hours, the inevitable conspiracy theories began. There were whispers that Apple planted the device itself to start the hype for the real launch in June. That's been discussed liberally. But let's look at some of the other possibilities.
Microsoft
Could the Redmond giant be behind this? The device is exquisitely conceived and beautiful to look at - all the hallmarks of Microsoft at work.
Google
Jobs and Schmidt were recently pictured having coffee together, Maybe they were cooking this up. They are evil, after all.
Nokia
How to distract attention from poor financials? Mmm, focus it on your best competitor. OK, maybe not Nokia.
Al Qaeda
Terrorist cells? Cellphone? Eh? Eh?

JK Rowling
Could the iPhone 4 be a portkey? This is one of Rowling's creations – an object that once touched transports the owner to another destination. Is it possible that a Gizmodo hack will press a certain keypad combination and be whisked to an ancient graveyard where Jobs and other Death Eaters will be waiting to feast on his flesh? It's possible.
It's more than I can take. if someone gets hold of a next gen LG Pop I think I'll expire.

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/36883...ccording-To-ME ...

As reported by Joystiq, the PS3/PlayStation Network version of Final Fight Double Impact features a rather restrictive piece of digital rights management. In order to launch the game, you have to be logged into the PlayStation Network and if you're not, the game refuses to launch. This could be written off as a bug of some kind except for the fact that the error message that crops up tells you to sign in, suggesting Sony/Capcom intentionally included this 'feature.' Granted, you do have to log into the PlayStation Network to buy the title but as one commentator pointed out, logging in once does not mean you'll be logged in all the time. Curiously, the 360 version has no such restrictions, so you can play the game whether you're online or offline. But annoying as this feature may be, there may be method in Sony's madness.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/0...DRM-To-the-PS3 ...

Adept's Quattro, a placement and sorting arm, took the title of fastest robot last year, but it was only recently during National Robotics Week that it met its most gruesome opponents: nerds with Wiimotes. Visitors tried to keep the Quattro from placing and sorting on a small mechanized platform by moving it using the Nintendo video controller. The bottom line is that when it comes to simplified and repetitive tasks there's really no beating robotic prowess

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/1...us-the-Wiimote ...

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter has predicted that games consoles will boost Netflix subscriber numbers by around 3 million in 2010.

Pachter estimated that the Xbox 360 had helped Netflix to add around 800,000 users to its service in 2009 - a figure that he had initially expected to see both the PlayStation 3 and Wii replicate in 2010, when they began offering the service.

However, "subscriber growth exceeded our expectations in Q1," he said. "And the company increased full year subscriber guidance by 1 million, implying that contribution from the consoles may be running closer to 3 million this year."

In its latest Q1 financials, Netflix revealed that the number of its subscribers that were actively streaming content grew to 55 per cent of overall user numbers, up from 48 per cent in 2009.

Pachter put that growth, in part, down to the company's push to become the "de facto viewing medium of choice" on the consoles.

He added that once Netflix had saturated the installed base of consoles, however, new console subscribers would be limited to a percentage - estimated at around 5-10 per cent - of new consoles sold in the US each year. That would equal 300,000-400,000 people, per console, or between 900,000 and 1.2 million between them.

Pachter expressed doubt that the Netflix service would be as popular on Wii as on its two rivals, though, citing its lack of HD output and the limited number of Wii users connected to the internet as reasons why.

"Further, the Wii audience has demonstrated little commitment to buying videogames (attach rates are at historical console lows), leading us to suspect that many Wiis are relegated to the playroom or (heaven forbid) the closet," he added.

"It is possible that initial expectations for new customers from the Wii installed base may be overly optimistic, and we will closely monitor Netflix's subscriber growth over the next few quarters to see if the decline in growth is as significant as we have forecast."

Q1 financials for Netflix, reported on Wednesday, showed profits of $187 million and a subscriber base of 13.97 million.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-by-3m-in-2010 ...

New Super Mario Bros Wii has held the top spot in the Japanese software chart for a second week, and the PSP has remained atop the hardware chart.

Nintendo took the first two places in the software sales chart, with Friend Collection climbing three places from last week to take second place.

And Pro Baseball Spirits 2010 took numbers three and four in the top ten for another week - with the PSP and PS3 versions of the game respectively.

The only new entry into the chart was No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise, which entered at number seven with the PS3 version and number eight with the Xbox 360 version.

Positions in the hardware chart remained the same as last week, but sales numbers were down across the board.

The PSP was the number one standalone hardware, although combined sales of the DSi, DSi LL and DS Lite did just pip combined sales of the PSP and PSP go.

The Japanese software chart for the week ending April 18 was as follows:

01 New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)
02 Friend Collection (DS)
03 Pro Baseball Spirits 2010 (PSP)
04 Pro Baseball Spirits 2010 (PS3)
05 Fist Of The North Star Musou (PS3)
06 Pokemon Ranger: Tracks Of Light (DS)
07 No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise (PS3)
08 No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise (Xbox 360)
09 Wii Fit Plus (Wii) – 15,000
10 Yakuza 4 (PS3)
The Japanese hardware chart for the week ending April 19 was as follows:

PlayStation Portable - 28,635
PlayStation 3 - 25,590
Nintendo Wii - 24,344
DSi LL - 17,146
DSi - 11,240
DS Lite - 2869
Xbox 360 - 2442
PSP go - 1915
PlayStation 2 - 1531

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...software-chart ...

Sonic publisher Sega is to axe 73 jobs in the west, as it looks to shift the business into a position to take advantage of more digital business opportunities.

In London, 37 staff will lose their jobs, with the division continuing to focus on more traditional games publishing. The San Francisco department will refocus on digital markets, at the cost of 36 employees.

"We've been going through the planning process the past six months, taking a look at the future of the market and where we think our investments need to be," Mike Hayes, president of Sega West, told Industrygamers. "It's no surprise that the share of digital is growing as an overall part of the videogame business, so we decided we have to invest more in that specific area. And notably, we had to get our business groups appropriately sorted to provide the right focus."

"Traditionally, Sega of America and Sega Europe had been running a dual company where both would look at traditional goods and both would look at the digital side. What we decided to do is to make San Francisco the kind of hub for our digital efforts, and therefore make London the hub for the traditional packaged goods part."

He added: "I would stress, however, that this is very much administrative reorganisation, because clearly we want to be very successful with digital globally. Likewise, we want to continue to be successful with traditional goods. So the reorganisation allows us to be much more efficient in terms of our costs, but probably more importantly in the way that we can look at the future business."

Parent company Sega Sammy said this month that it expected higher profits for the full year ended March 31, 2010, but also pointed to weak software sales outside of Japan. However, Hayes claimed the cut in headcount was not a decision made in Japan.

"This was an initiative taken by the West," he said. "Of course, we're always under pressure from our head office – who isn't? But this is definitely something we looked at as a business as the Western business managers.

"We wanted to figure out how to be more effective in this incredibly growing marketplace and how to be more cost effective. It's something that the management teams in San Francisco and London have embarked upon."

Hayes indicated that the digital division will continue efforts on XBLA, PSN, iPhone and iPad, and also noted the success of downloads of PC games such as Football Manager. The company is also looking at gaining expertise in the social gaming category, but could not say how significant digital would be to the overall business.

"All we know is it will be a bigger part of the business as we move forward, but in terms of the goals and how much digital is going to be, that's something we're going to have to work on with this new group and figure out over the next few months. Do we want to move everything from traditional into digital? Absolutely not. We're taking what we feel is a very balanced approach; it'll be an evolution, not a revolution."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...uk-and-us-jobs ...

iPhone developer Engineous Games has announced that more than 800 UGC games have been created in two weeks using its Sketch Nation Shooter app.
The app lets people create their own shoot 'em ups by drawing enemies, backgrounds and ships on a piece of paper, then photographing them using their iPhone's camera, to import into their game.
The 99-cent app is about to get its first update, with a feature helping users to share their games on their Facebook walls.
The 800+ user-created games can be downloaded within the app, making it (sort of) iPhone's equivalent of PS3 game LittleBigPlanet. Except with more shooting, obviously.
"I've been overwhelmed by the response to Sketch Nation Shooter – it's very fulfilling to see so much unique and imaginative content being created by the community already," says Engineous CEO Nitzan Wilnai.

http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/300...enerated-games ...