Games Archive

Playstation Network Coming Online Again

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-15 Games 14 Comments

As much as many of us are getting a bit of schadenfreude out of the epic Sony security fail, fact of the matter is that nearly 80 million ordinary people, who have nothing to do with Sony's abysmal customer track record, were affected by it as well. So, for those people - which includes a number of my friends - I'm happy to tell them that the Playstation Network has, in phases, been switched on again over the weekend.

PSN Outage May Not Be Fully Remedied Until May 31

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-09 Games 6 Comments

"It's now Monday, the week after Sony told us to expect some functionality to return to the PlayStation Network. Sadly, that has not happened: you can't play your games online, make digital purchases, or download demos; the service remains completely dead. Sony is claiming that it's still unpacking the extent of the attacks, and the industry has begun to try to put a dollar amount on the damages being suffered by the Japanese company."

Hackers Return Linux to the PlayStation 3

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-06 Games 34 Comments

"It all began when a young man named George Hotz began to work on the PlayStation 3, trying to gain access to the machine in a way that made Sony uncomfortable. In response, Sony removed the OtherOS functionality of the PlayStation 3 in a mandatory update, and the hacking community was not happy with this decision, resulting in a sort of cold war. PS3 hackers have once again gained the upper hand: Linux has been returned to the PlayStation 3."

Awesome Added to Awesome, World May End

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-06 Games 20 Comments

Somebody has just added the Portal gun to Minecraft. Your argument? It is now invalid.

Submitted by sawboss 2011-05-05 Games 75 Comments

There's fail, there's epic fail, and then there's Sony. You may've thought it wasn't possible, but Sony has just outdone itself on the fail scale, forcing us to add yet another notch. During the congressional testimony this morning, Dr Gene Spafford of Purdue University revealed just how badly Sony managed its Playstation Network servers. It's... Bad.

PSN Fail Turns Epic: User Data of All PSN Users Compromised

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-26 Games 123 Comments

After days and days of the Playstation Network being offline, Sony has announced it has taken the service down indefinitely. The cause is a lot more severe than previously thought: PSN has been systematically attacked, and personal information of all users has been stolen, possibly including credit card data. Sony is asking PSN users to keep close tabs on their credit card account statements. This has turned from a rather amusing slap on the wrist for Sony into a massive and truly epic security fail that could have tremendous consequences for millions and millions of people the world over.

Nintendo Announces Wii Successor

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-25 Games 69 Comments

Ah yes, this was pretty inevitable. Nintendo is facing dropping sales and earnings for another year, and as such, it should come as no surprise that they have just announced the Wii's successor. The Japanese gaming giant will unveil the machine during E3 in June, and the device is scheduled for release in 2012.

Sony: We’re Kicking Cheaters and Pirates Off PSN

Thom Holwerda 2011-02-16 Games 33 Comments

You'd almost forget it, but a few weeks ago, the Playstation 3 was hacked wide open - like a pristine cave deep in the world of Minecraft. This has let out all sorts of nasties, and now Sony is trying to clean up the mess. For once, I'm in full agreement with their position.

Sony Announces NGP (PSP2), Talks Android Gaming

Guest post by Amy Bennett 2011-01-27 Games 3 Comments

Engadget gets some hands-on time with a Playstation Phone but the big news is out of Tokyo where Sony held its "Playstation Meeting 2011" event where they introduced both Playstation gaming on Android and the PSP2, currently code named NGP.

How the Berkeley Overmind Won the 2010 StarCraft AI Competition

Thom Holwerda 2011-01-19 Games 7 Comments

"StarCraft, one of the most popular games ever made, also serves as the perfect proving ground for artificial intelligence. Here's the inside story of how a Berkeley team won the world's first StarCraft AI competition with code that can beat even pro-level human players."

Sony: We Will Fix PS3 Crack

Thom Holwerda 2011-01-07 Games 31 Comments

Sony has responded to the recent cracking of the Playstation3, and the company claism that they can fix the issue - which ought to be impossible considering the scope of the hack. "We are aware of this, and are currently looking into it," Sony said, "We will fix the issues through network updates, but because this is a security issue, we are not able to provide you with any more details."

First Custom Firmware for Playstation 3 Working

Thom Holwerda 2011-01-05 Games 10 Comments

All the recent hackery news regarding the Playstation 3 has culminated in the inevitable: the first custom firmware for the Playstation 3. KaKaRoTo, its creator, did not release his custom firmware; in fact, he released the tools so you can modify your own Playstation 3's firmware update package. The feature set is extremely limited - but that's kind of the point. He left most of it untouched, and refuses to implement anything related to piracy.

OnLive Partners with Vizio, OnLive Integrated into Vizio Products

Thom Holwerda 2011-01-04 Games 10 Comments

Ah, OnLive. This company is trying to bring streaming gaming to the mainstream, and has has just announced a pretty significant partnership with Vizio, the US' largest LCD TV seller. Vizo TVs, smartphones, tablets, and Blu-Ray players will all come equipped, out of the box, with OnLive's streaming service.

Playstation 3 Code Signing Cracked Wide Open

Thom Holwerda 2010-12-29 Games 16 Comments

The Playstation 3 has been cracked so hard even its momma felt the blow. "Approximately a half hour in, the team revealed their new PS3 secrets, the moment we all were waiting for. One of the major highlights here was, dongle-less jailbreaking by breaking the PS3 loaders, giving complete control over the system. The other major feat, was calculating the public private keys (due to botched security), giving users the ability to sign their own SELFs."

The Best-Selling Computer of All Time – Sort of

Thom Holwerda 2010-12-07 Games 70 Comments

Sometimes, it's good to reminisce. To look back upon what came before us, in order to better understand what lies ahead. Last week, I bought a piece of computing history I missed out on, a piece I've desperately been wanting to have for a long time now. I bought what is most likely the best selling computer of all time.

Microsoft Wants You to Hack Kinect

Thom Holwerda 2010-11-19 Games 41 Comments

Ah, Microsoft's Kinect. Now that the technology has been released into the wild, one thing becomes clear: hackers and programmers love it. It's already been hacked to work on Linux and the Mac, and the first interesting hobby projects are starting to appear. Since Microsoft has already stated it's selling Kinect at a profit, I'm going to make a bold statement: Microsoft is loving the hackery. Update: Turns out I was right - Microsoft has stated that Kinect was left open by design.

Kinect Already Hacked, Linux Driver Released

Thom Holwerda 2010-11-10 Games 18 Comments

It took him only three hours, but here we are: Microsoft's Kinect motion controller thing for the Xbox360 has been hacked, and a preliminary open source driver has been made available for Linux. According to the hacker in question, it was surprisingly simple.

Bounty Offered for Open-Source Kinect Driver

Submitted by Debjit 2010-11-05 Games 16 Comments

"The first person who figures out how to build an open-source driver for Microsoft's much-hyped new Kinect motion controller could win a USD 2000 bounty offered by a leading open-source hardware developer. Kinect is currently available solely for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and may well someday be extended to the Windows platform. But for New York-based Adafruit Industries, that's not enough. And that's why Adafruit - led by MIT Media Lab alum Limor Fried and Make magazine Senior Editor Phillip Torrone - is offering two grand to someone who can figure out how to decouple the hot new device from Microsoft's gaming machine." Bah, motion controllers. Evolutionary dead end. A shiny object already on its way out. People play games to unwind, not to look like idiots flailing their arms and legs around.

Working 16bit ALU Implemented in Minecraft

Thom Holwerda 2010-09-28 Games 23 Comments

There are some things in this world that just happen. There's really no logical reason for it to happen, there's no explanation as to why it happens now, and not, say, three years ago. Minecraft is one those things. It's a game, but not entirely. It's digital Lego, but not entirely. It's impossible to explain what it is in words alone - you need to experience it. All I have to point to is this: someone has created a working 16bit ALU inside Minecraft. Which is a videogame. An ALU running inside a videogame running on a processor which has an ALU. In blocks. Wait, what?

Submitted by sawboss 2010-09-27 Games 42 Comments

The PlayStation 3. For a long time, it was a rather well-protected machine, and it wasn't until early this year that George Hotz finally managed to crack the thing wide open. In essence, it was now possible to jailbreak the PlayStation 3 like you would jailbreak your iPhone, but of course, Sony wasn't pleased. With the recent firmware update, v3.50, Sony went from surgical precision to the battle axe - they blocked all non-Sony ~~USB devices~~ controllers (and a lot of PS2 > PS3 controller adapters) from working.