theMediaman.com

So now the move is complete to the new Blogger interface (my end, not your end).

It turns out that my comments are supposed to be moderated, so posting a comment would only go into a queue for my approval. I probably enabled that after Andrew posted something stupid. Anyway, old comments are back up, and now there’s a flag when I log in to approve new comments. Hooray!

Back to my PSP discussion. They’re trickling out information about the new 3.0 firmware (which was updated to 3.01 less than 24 hours after release). PlayStation 1 games will be available for download ranging from $5.99-$10.99. As I said before, I am willing to pay for some games I’ve already played, but I won’t pay the PS3’s $700 pricetag for such a privilege.

I have to start working on my Christmas wish list, and for the first time in years, I’ll have a few video games on there. Right now I’m trying to see if there’s a really good RPG available, although I feel like shopping for one is like I’ve already given up on downloading Final Fantasy VII.

As it turns out, the PSP doesn’t have any spectacular RPGs. Sony’s PS1 and PS2 are the King Consoles of RPGs. It’s hard to find any reviews that give the PSP games more than 6.5/10. It would also seem that there are 2-3x as many RPGs in Japanese than in English. Understandable, but still irritating. Maybe I should just learn Japanese.

I need another car racing game. Wipeout Pure is great, but the UMD case broke. That’s not the only reason - after all, Need For Speed: Carbon looks pretty sweet. Stupid how I still have all of my 15 year old NES cartridges, but the PSP cartridge can’t last 6 months without breaking. I’ve read a tutorial on how to fix it, but I need to stop playing Katamari just long enough to try.

I got my PSP back from the repair shop, and still have the freezing problem. Apparently, other people are too. Some people are getting it from running homebrew (custom) software but others, including myself, continue to have the system freeze when exiting a game. Really irritating.

There’s a function on the PSP to connect to the Wireless LAN and see if there’s any new update, and as of last night, there is. If you go to the PSP web site, they still have the 2.82 firmware posted. Following last week’s release of the PlayStation 3, there’s the 3.0 firmware for the PSP. Nowhere near as revolutionary as the 2.0 software was, it still has some promising new features… almost entirely dependent on whether or not you have the top-of-the-line PS3.

Features like playing movies or music from your PS3, and playing a limited number of PlayStation 1 games on your PSP is great, but you need to have the more expensive of the two models offered. The “cheaper” option has a 20 GB hard drive and no built-in Wireless LAN capability.

This is particularly annoying because I’ve been trying with limited success to keep myself from getting too hyped up about the possibility of playing Final Fantasy VII on my PSP. The Nintendo DS is supposed to have classic NES/SNES games you can download for about $7. I’d pay $10, even $20 for the chance to play that game on-the-go. I never had a PS1, so there are a lot of games I never got to play but wanted to. I would have few reservations about plunking down ten bucks to play any one of them.

But if it’s going to cost $700 to play ten year old games, I don’t think so. From a few articles I’ve read about the very few details surrounding the downloadable games, you’ll need to connect to the “Sony Network Store” through the PlayStation 3.

That sucks.

Sony has had a bad year… a very bad year for publicity. The PSP is losing to the DS as the gamers handheld of choice. Opening up the entire PS1 catalog (or even 1/10th of the collection) for on-the-go play would reestablish Sony’s footing, and get people to graduate from the PSP to the PS3, rather than PS3 owners seeing the PSP as a clever “toy” or “accessory” for their new console. It worked for Apple. Millions of iPod sales turned into a growth in the iMac sales.

The argument for why the PS3 will succeed is largely based on what happened with the release of the PS2. It was released a year after the Dreamcast, was far more expensive, but had the “cool thing” of a built-in DVD player and it was backwards compatible with old PS1 games. It worked for Sony in the end, but can they pull off that trick again?

Rootkit fiasco, exploding batteries, and the wealth of problems with PS3 before and after launch. Will Sony get anything right this year?

Everyone I’ve asked about the “pink products” supporting Breast Cancer Research has known exactly what I was talking about. Ralph Lauren t-shirts, trenchcoats, Papermate pens and even Barbie dolls are being sold in the key colour pink.

When I first saw it, I figured it might only be a bit of time before the other causes find benefit in dropping the traditional ribbon, and wearing consumer products on their figurative sleeves. Sure enough, the Fight Against AIDS has kicked in with a whole, organized campaign named (PRODUCT)^RED. The newest product, announced today, was the RED iPod Nano.

When one organization does it, it’s an idea. When two organizations do it, it’s a trend.

I searched, and found a page with a list of all the causes and their corresponding ribbon colours. I have yet to decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I picture people asking themselves, “what Cause goes with this top… maybe Acid Reflux Disease?”