N4G.com : News Feed : tech

New Advert confirms Sony PSP 4000

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:13:26 GMT

The Lost Gamer writes "The advert, from Accessories4Gamers Ltd., details that it is suitable for 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000 and PSP Go models too… wait… 4000?! Uh oh, seems like someone has maybe confirmed recent rumours too soon!"

Gizmodo: Microsoft Beats Xbox to Pieces for Getting an RRoD

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:02:48 GMT

Rosa Golijan: Nic H tells us that this is how his Xbox was returned after being sent to Nurse Microsoft. If that's really true, then it looks like Microsoft is getting brutal on Xboxes that dare get an RRoD.

Microsoft Fined For Abusing Power to Harass Pirates

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:17:07 GMT

The Delhi High Court has fined Microsoft for harassing alleged software pirates by taking them to court in the national capitol, instead of the cities where the crimes had supposedly occurred. According to the ruling, using money as a power tool is not condoned without repercussions.

'Natal lag issues will hurt game development'

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:55:48 GMT

Microsoft has invested significant money and time to ensure its upcoming motion controller Natal is as accomplished as its host console, yet suspected "lag issues" may curb the peripheral's chances of success.

That was the view offered by Traveller's Tales company director Jon Burton, who told Develop that his own experience with the hands-free controller raised doubts.

"I was actually more impressed with Sony's motion capture solution than Microsoft's Natal," he said.

"[Natal is] exceedingly clever, but the lag on the input and lack of physical buttons is really going to restrict the kind of games that can be done with it," he added, before going on to praise Sony's (currently nameless) alternative.

PS3 OS memory footprint slashed

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:49:52 GMT

PSUni: One of PS3's original memory weaknesses was its large Operating System memory footprint, but it has once again been slashed. The console originally had an OS footprint of around 120MB's spread accross both the XDR and DDR Ram, which was soon reduced to 96MB (64MB on XDR and 32MB on DDR).

Compared to the Xbox 360's total 32MBs used for its OS, the PS3's was incredibly bloated.

Another MW2 hack, collect 22/45 intels by collecting only 1 intel

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:16:35 GMT

We've seen several savegame hacks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. We've seen the leaderboard hack, prestige 10, spec ops 69 stars hack and a hack which gives you all the trophies for the singleplayer missions on veteran. With patch 1.16 we'd all think that these hacks would be patched but it isn't. Because now there's a hack which allows you to earn 22/45 intels. Of course there's a tutorial of it. We hope Infinity Ward will patch these hacks as soon as possible.

Nintendo Wii Supreme is Most Expensive Wii in the World

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:11:31 GMT

The folks over at the official StuartHughes web site have come out with a Wii called the Nintendo Wii Supreme, which is hailed as "officially the most unique and expensive in the world".

ATI Catalyst 9.12 released

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:30:10 GMT

Fresh out of the oven, AMD has just served up a brand new Catalyst driver for Radeon HD 3000, 4000 and 5000-series GPUs.

SteelSeries' Iron Lady Headset Under Scrutiny

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:46:39 GMT

IncGamers' writer Belinda Vaughan takes a look at the Iron Lady headset by SteelSeries:

"I was initially thrilled at the prospect of trying out this swish new headset, but when the package arrived the next day I must admit I was slightly put out after opening the box. You see, this headset is bright pink."

Microsoft Declares War on Software Pirates

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:04:55 GMT

The software giant currently takes legal action against about one UK reseller a week, but expects that number to rocket over the coming months.

Tiny Nuclear Batteries to Power Micro Devices

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:56:21 GMT

Typical chemical batteries just don't cut it when a device needs to run for years without fail. Enter the betavoltaics, or tiny nuclear batteries that harvest energy from radioactive sources such as tritium.

Now a company called Widetronix has developed new betavoltaics that can run for up to 25 years and perhaps power tiny devices in everything from military hardware to smartphone sensors.

Supercomputer Blizzard: Over 8,000 CPU cores to calculate climate models

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:16:07 GMT

A new supercomputer has been brought online in Germany. The Blizzard as the HPC Cloud is called has more than 8000 CPU cores and is used to calculate climate models.

Final 3-D Blu-ray Specification Announced

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:15:07 GMT

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) today announced the finalization and release of the "Blu-ray 3D" specification. It leverages the technical advantages of the BD format to deliver "unmatched picture quality" as well as uniformity and compatibility across the full range of Blu-ray 3D products, both hardware and software. The specification is also designed to allow the PS3 to play back Blu-ray 3D content in 3-D.

Notably, the specification allows every player and movie supporting it to deliver full HD 1080p resolution to each eye. Moreover, the specification is display agnostic, meaning that Blu-ray 3D products will deliver the 3-D image to any compatible 3-D display, regardless of whether that display uses LCD, plasma or other technology and regardless of what 3-D technology the display uses to deliver the image to the viewer's eyes.

Regarding compatibility, the specification supports playback of 2-D discs in forthcoming 3-D players and can enable 2-D playback of Blu-ray 3D discs on the installed base of Blu-ray Disc players currently in homes around the world.

Fermi GTX 380 / GTX 360 benches are fake

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:43:23 GMT

Over the past couple of days several benchmarks pitting two Nvidia Fermi cards against ATI Evergreens have surfaced on the interweb. The results indicated a single Fermi-based Geforce GTX 380 should beat ATI's dual-GPU HD 5970, however, the slides don't appear to be kosher.

Laptop and Desktop Gaming Done Right

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:29:09 GMT

"We have been building and supporting systems for industry for many years and are all gamers at home. Looking at the competition, we saw configurations being offered that seemed to be based more on marketing than science. For example, paying hundreds extra for the extreme processor in a system that is not poised to take advantage of the extra horsepower. This, in our opinion, didn't seem fair to the buyer and lead them to believe that by paying more they'd get more frames per second in their games. Also, many competitors offer a dizzying array of options which allows the customer to potentially configure a system that is not balanced and therefore would have a poor performance to price ratio.

Furthermore, we saw the opportunity to cater specifically to the World of Warcraft (WoW) community and set forth to design systems that were geared for that game (as well as others). We lab tested and benchmarked many different games to find a well-rounded solution at each price point. We also decided we wanted to openly publish the benchmark results we observed in our lab so the customer can make an informed buying decision and will have appropriate expectations."

Gameplanet: PC Buyer's Guide: Monitors

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:42:42 GMT

Gameplanet writes: "In the buyer's guide this week we are looking at monitors - specifically what features and specifications you should be looking for, and what is available in New Zealand right now.

There are a lot of variables when it comes to monitors such as size, resolution, response time, contrast ratio/brightness, inputs, aspect ratio and panel type to name a few. Let me take you through a few of these main ones before we jump in and see what is out there."

New ORIGIN gaming PCs unveiled

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:53:23 GMT

Former Alienware execs re-invade the PC gaming space with aggressive, customizable gaming rigs.

Good Gear Guide: "ORIGIN, a new custom PC manufacturer founded by ex-Alienware executives, has unveiled its first pair of gaming systems: the GENESIS PC desktop and EON18 laptop.

Both models put customization at the forefront, with a swathe of colors and airbrushed designs to choose from (you can even send in your own graphical designs). Squarely aimed at hardcore PC enthusiasts, each ORIGIN system delivers a high-end gaming performance characterized by overclocking, liquid cooling and dual-GPU graphics cards."

Double the memory for next iPhone/iPod Touch

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:35:11 GMT

It seems that every time that Apple has upgraded the iPod or iPhone product lines, one of the most important feature announcements from them is that they will be adding more storage space. In the case of the iPhone and all of the iPods, except the hard drive based classic, this storage is added using NAND flash memory.

Cooler Master HAF-932 AMD Edition Review (BmR)

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:53:12 GMT

Benchmark Reviews: What is the purpose of a computer case? The unimaginative might reply that it's to support and protect the components that comprise your computer. But just as the base purpose of a car- to transport people and goods- is frequently a secondary consideration to style and power, so to are there other reasons to select a particular computer case: to look cool and to impress your friends! Functionality doesn't hurt, of course, but there are many examples of cases where function takes a distinctly secondary seat to style. Cooler Master's HAF 932 case has successfully melded the two, and now they've introduced an AMD commemorative version, the Cooler Master HAF 932 AMD Edition AM-932-RWN1-GP full tower computer case. Does it work as well as its forebear? Benchmark Reviews examines the case and builds a system in to let you know.