News Round Up: 18/1/10 – 24/1/10
In recent years Sony hasn’t had the best of times when it has come to releasing new hardware. The original PlayStation 3 was hyped to near Fable-levels, and ultimately felt underwhelming upon it’s release. The PSP and PSP Go weren’t the global dominators that Sony hoped they would be. As for the PlayStation 3 Slim, well, that actually turned out to be quite successful, so perhaps it isn’t all bad news for Sony.
However, for gamers, things are not quite as rosy. Last week it emerged that Sony’s motion controller, rumoured to be called ‘Arc’ as reported by VG247 here, was to have it’s release delayed from a Spring 2010 launch, to some point later in the year, most likely in the Autumn. The SCEI President Kaz Hirai cited Sony’s aim to ‘offer an exciting and varied line-up’ of ‘attractive and innovative games’ as the reason for the delay. To me, this sounds as though Sony has only managed to develop a carbon-copy of Wii Sports, and so needs more time to think of different games which utilise the motion controller.
The delay of ‘Arc’ puts the peripheral in direct competition in Microsoft’s Project Natal, which is slated for release at around the same time. This could prove to be detrimental to Sony, as by releasing their controller at a similar point in time to Project Natal, they will have lost the 6 month head-start they would of had, had the controller been released in the Spring. Could ‘Arc’ be yet another hardware disaster for Sony, or have they managed to develop something which is genuinely and innovative, and will therefore sell regardless of it’s competition?
Also this week, Amazon announced that it would be releasing the Kindle Development Kit, a software development kit that will allow publishers to create content for the Amazon Kindle reader, content which could include games. Whilst I don’t think we’ll be seeing the next Zelda or God of War appearing on the Kindle, the device may be a perfect platform for word and puzzle games, and possibly even RPG’s. EA Mobile has already signed up to develop software for the reader, and it’ll be interesting to see if the Kindle could be the next iPhone in terms of portable gaming.
Finally this week, it appears that the final safe haven this world has to offer, Sony’s PlayStation Home, is no longer the Utopia it once was. A PSN user by the name of ‘Whoef’ claimed that her roommate was ‘sexually assaulted’ in Sony’s virtual world. Whoef states that her friend was ‘sexually assaulted near the Festive Tree while she was helping others with the puzzle’ and that ‘the harasser would follow, each time trying to get behind her and use the crouch gesture’. Just what the rest of the media make of this incident has yet to be seen.
Alex Wozniak
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