Nintendo, EA, and Sony Electronics Pull Support for SOPA…Sortof?
Right now, with GoDaddy staring down the barrel of a boycott over their initial support for the Internet-censorship bill SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) other companies are beginning to follow suit and renege support for the bill.
World’s largest video game producers Nintendo, EA, and Sony Electronics have yanked their direct support of the bill and this is a good thing.
However, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)—an alliance among whom EA, Nintendo, and Sony happen to claim membership—still supports SOPA. Unless the big three listed above remove themselves from that alliance they are still supporting SOPA by proxy (and with their money.)
Pulling their name from the list is
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SiliconANGLE: Free Realms Hits 20M Registered Users
It looks like Sony Online’s Free Realms is doing really well for itself, recently, they’ve hit 20M registered users. According to Kit Dotson over at SiliconANGLE, though, this doesn’t say very much about the overall health of the MMO game:
This may be a wonderful milestone, but it’s still not as useful as the monthly user count. The reason is because Free Realms happens to be a free-to-play MMO, which means that users can fire-and-forget their accounts and it will build their registered user base. Subscription-based MMOs, such as World of Warcraft and RIFT both continue to charge participants whether they play the game or not (thus generating revenue even
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Sony Yanks Down their Trousers and Moons Customers with Class-Action Arbitration Clause
In what looks to be a bid to avoid civil class action litigation in the future from users who may have lost personal or financial information when Sony gets hacked again, they’ve added language to their TOS and EULA that forces arbitration on users. This fact, recently mentioned by Kit Dotson over at SiliconANGLE, rather puts a crimp in Sony’s apparent loyalty to responsibility.
Or lack thereof,
According to an article from the BBC, the updated EULA has added a few new clauses, so-called the “Binding Individual Arbitration” clauses which compel the licensees (the customers) regarding “any Dispute Resolution Proceedings, whether in arbitration or court, will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class or representative action or as a named or unnamed member in a class, …
Hackers Hit Square Enix, Find Hidden Items
The hits just keep on rolling. Square Enix, best known for the Final Fantasy series that defined and ruined console RPGs, reports an attack against several of their web pages that may have exposed up to 25,000 e-mail addresses and 350 job applications. Computer Weekly has the story.
What network technology does PlayStation Network run atop anyway?
It’s been a strange week for Sony, being involved in one of the heaviest publicized data-losses of this year (decade?) when hackers broke into vulnerable user information databases. Initially, it took them almost six days to come forward with the breach and as a result they took the entire PlayStation Network offline; then, after a week of that they discovered that Sony Online Entertainment had also suffered as part of the breach. The original emissions from the company suggested that their credit-card information was not revealed, but when they discovered SOE’s data loss they revealed that credit card numbers had been taken.
This is what we know so far about the breach itself: it happened because Sony was running outdated, unpatched
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Sony Answers to Congress Over PSN Customer Info Loss
The House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce recently held a hearing concerning the customer and credit info drained from the exposed guts of Sony’s Playstation Network and their Sony Online Entertainment system. Sony did not attend the hearing, but answered with a letter blaming Anonymous. USA Today has the story.
The Tester, Sony’s New Online Show, Opens Casting Call
No doubt in an effort to compete with Microsoft’s own “1 vs. 100″ show, Sony has issued the edict to conscript a number of gamers to struggle in a live action show over the Playstation Network. The show, called “The Tester” will reward the winner with a job as a game tester, in Q&A.
That’s the gaming equivalent of becoming one of those tech support guys you call when your Wal-Mart computer pukes its guts out.
If jumping through game show hoops for a chance at a dead-end, menial grind appeals to you, then check out the details and links off the Playstation Blog.
Xbox 360, Playstation 3 Slash Prices
This Friday, Microsoft will drop the price of its top-end Xbox package, the Xbox 360 Elite, by $100 to compete with a similar sticker slash from Sony. These cuts come at a good time, just into the holiday season and with newer, hit titles to back them. Both Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 carry the latest Madden title, John Madden NFL 10, as well as Batman: Arkham Asylum. Word on the street puts the new Batman game as a solid Game of the Year title, so that should help sales on both consoles.
When asked when they’d cut prices on the Wii, Nintendo responded with the finger from atop their ever-growing tower of raw cash.
Game Publishers Pressure Sony to Slash Price of Playstation 3
Who would have thought? Priced about $150 more than the incredibly fun and exciting Nintendo Wii, and a good $200 more than the entry level, yet highly social, version of the Xbox 360, Sony’s Playstation 3 makes for a hard sell. Costing something around two paychecks and a first-born son, the Playstation 3 has come up short in the console wars.
This has caused developers for the platform to consider if their money and time might be better spent courting a larger installed base, like, say, that Wii system that’s been flying off the shelves for the past two years. While the Playstation 3 is perhaps the most powerful of the current generation of machines, power alone doesn’t make for good games. Consumers have been teaching this lesson to Sony in the form of falling market share for a while now.
Developers have urged …
Holiday Travel is the Season for Portable Game Systems
Thanks to the blisteringly efficient airports of our fair nation, holiday travel this season looks to offer plenty of opportunities for portable gaming. Airports aren’t the only place you’ll be seeing popped open Nintendo DSes and flashing Sony PSPs. As people move around to meet spend the day with their families in mute and hostile compliance to our national social rituals, they’ll be dragging along their game players in the car, on the bus, and through the trains. Likewise, travel and adventure services like cruises and tours are making use of video games in new ways. Wii consoles, especially, are appearing in hotel rec centers and aboard luxury liners. The Wii’s energetic and active controls combine with the broad appeal of Wii Sports, Wii Fitness, and various party games to make the little white monolith popular with patrons of all ages.
To help take advantage of …
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