In today's issue, find out if you can fry an egg on the PlayStation 3, find out if GameTap deserves so much ink, find out if a certain senator is thinking straight and find out just why you're suddenly feeling so old.
More Sony Woes: Two Wall Street Journal articles Wednesday expressed more bad news about Sony. In one article, the Journal revealed that Sony shares had fallen 5.3 percent during the previous week. The company closed down 2.7% to 4,600 yen ($39.09 in U.S. dollars) Tuesday, a day on which the Nikkei Stock Average was nearly unchanged. In a report issued by Macquarie Securities analyst David Gibson, PlayStation 3 units on display at the Tokyo Game Show suffered overheating problems and had to be reset several times. A Sony spokesman told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday that the company was unaware of any technical problems with the PS3. In another WSJ article, Fujitsu announced that it would recall 287,000 Sony battery packs from its computers. That brings the total in the Sony battery scandal to more than 7.6 million batteries. Here are the current recall numbers, as of Tuesday, Oct. 3:Dell...........4,200,000
Apple..........1,800,000
Toshiba..........830,000
Lenovo...........526,000
Fujitsu..........287,000
TOTAL..........7,613,000
Is GameTap Evil or Just Stupid? That's the question asked in two different recent stories. Manifesto Games co-founder Greg Costikyan tells Gamasutra, "I'm skeptical that their business model is sustainable." Meanwhile, on his own blog, Costikyan says that while a $60 price for a video game is too high, $10 is just too low.
Senator Wants to Impose Government Regulations on Game Ratings: U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, last week introduced a bill, The Truth in Video Game Rating Act, S.3935, that would direct the Federal Trade Commission to require that reviewers consider the full content of a video game before issuing a rating. Brownback's press release stated, "Currently game reviewers do not play the games before determining ratings, and their reviews are based on taped segments of the game submitted by the game's producer to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. Such taped segments may or may not fully represent the game's content. The bill would prohibit video game producers and distributors from withholding or hiding playable content from a ratings organization." Brownback said, "Game reviewers must have access to the entire game for their ratings to accurately reflect a game's content." Want to comment to the senator directly? Just call his office at 202-224-6521. Tell him the Sistahs sent you.
Brings Out the 1986 In You: Just released, Voltron: Defender of the Universe Collection One focuses on five lion robots and their pilots as they defend the galaxy and planet Arus vs. the forces of King Zarkon and Prince Lotor from planet Doom. You're going to want to own this one, I bet.
Labels: Apple, Computers, evermore, Games, PlayStation, PS3, Sony, Tech
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