If you’re wondering where the DivX support for PS3 announced a while back is, you’re not alone. Gizmodo met with the DivX team yesterday to discuss future plans, and those for the PlayStation 3 were brought into the conversation.
“According to the company, they expect the previously announced firmware update to hit the PS3 soon, which will enable full DivX support for the console. Though no specific time frame was given for this upgrade, their particular emphasis on saying it was coming soon leads us to believe it’s ‘coming in a week or two’ soon, as opposed to ‘four months down the road’ soon.”
While there’s still no exact date, at least it looks like it will be sooner rather than later.
If you scoured the games industry from top to bottom, you’d be hard-pressed to find a cooler dude than Masaya Matsuura, President of Japanese developer NanaOn-Sha. Mind you, geekishness isn’t a quality you would expect to find in a man who, from 1983 to 1996, was the talent behind the dodgily apostrophised and enormously successful J-Pop band, Psy’s (pronounced “Size”).
Being a pop star wasn’t enough for Matsuura, though. He first encountered Ken Kutaragi, legendary “Father of the PlayStation”, when Kutaragi-san was working on the ill-fated SNES-CD for Nintendo’s Super Famicom, which eventually evolved into the original PlayStation. And, in 1996, Matsuura had some sort of epiphany, during which he decided that videogames were the way forward.
According to a preview by MTV Multiplayer of upcoming mind boggling puzzle title Echochrome, the game will include its very own level editor for you to design your own puzzles and maps - though exact details of how these features will work weren’t available.
To be distributed via the PlayStation network, with this, Unreal Tournament 3 and, of course, LittleBigPlanet, it looks like user created content is finally on the increase on home consoles… check out MTV’s thoughts on the game here.
Here’s a quick trailer released by EA today showcasing features of the demo for Burnout Paradise – which is due on the PlayStation Store in today’s update.
An update to MotorStorm has been released, adding a few extra features to keep the game going. Firstly, you can now view the vehicle selection screen in 2D rather than the original 3D view, which should speed up the selection times. There’s also a proximity meter in MotorStorm mode, and a couple of new soundtracks – ‘Devils Crossing’ by Elite Force and ‘Beat the Devil’ by Jiffster. On the online multiplayer side of things, you now can mirror the tracks which should provide some extra variation.
Phew – we can almost consign 2007 to history, writes Steve Boxer. At least we PS3 owners have now weathered the storm, and we can look forward to finally reaping some benefits in 2008.
Not that it was quite doom and gloom for PS3 owners throughout 2007, as anyone who, in particular, recently purchased and played the mighty Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and the thoroughly excellent Ratchet & Clank will attest. And, of course, that old staple SingStar made the next-gen leap.
So we’re already feeling a bit happier about owning PS3s – but what is on the agenda for 2008? Nothing less than seeing the PS3 finally hitting its stride and leaving the doubters looking like fools.
Paul Davies has been a gaming journalist since 1992, including editing Computer and Videogames (CVG) magazine and more recently writing for Top Gear, GameTap (in the US), London Evening Standard and Yahoo! UK. He has also experienced life on the other side of the fence, working in Concept Design Management for various gaming companies and on titles including Burnout and Airblade, amongst others.
We asked him to take a look back over the past year in the life of the PS3 and how he thinks the future is looking. Over to Paul.
::
While you’ve been enjoying yourself and generally living your life to the full in 2007, some of us have been getting our knickers in a twist over the new PlayStation. Like our life depends on it, in fact. And maybe it does? Nah, shut up.
In its own way, to a select group of observers, PlayStation 3 has been the spectacle of the year and not always in a good way. It has almost been an Amy Winehouse experience from the point of view of games industry professionals. How could something so valuable and desired, so dear to its management and loved by its audience, suddenly be collapsing into confusion and having its most dedicated followers turning their backs? Sony had appeared to have lost the plot: launching in March (‘late’) at an elitist price-point; an attractive but unconvincing range of launch titles; that whole business (still ongoing) regarding backward compatibility.
But the ongoing trials of PS3 have gone largely unnoticed by UK punters. Discussing PS3 innards is about as thrilling as fretting over design specifications of a washer / dryer. It keeps specialist websites busy, and bizarrely even sites whose role it is to satire the specialist sites, but there has been no real scandal. Very few people are waking up in the early hours of the morning in a cold sweat because Unreal Tournament 3 will now be released in early 2008 instead of late 2007. My Dad isn’t phoning me to discuss the lack of USB ports on the £300 model PS3.
Looks like Threespeechers have been behaving themselves this year: special Christmas treats all round in the shape of Operation Omega Dawn - the new Warhawk expansion pack. It will be released on the PSN on December 20 and is priced at only £3.99. Enjoy!
Back in August we brought you news of a forthcoming title from Sierra Entertainment called Prototype. Almost four months down the line we get our first glimpse of the game in video form. Enjoy.
