Games and Gadgets: How I see them.

US gamers can stop hating their Japanese counterparts now. The limited edition gunmetal grey Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 hardware bundle is official for the US market.

Setting your wallet lighter by USD600 (RM1980), the bundle will be available from March 19, 2008 but ONLY exclusively from Konami.com website. The bundle will include a 40GB gunmetal PS3 console, a matching color Dualshock3, Metal Gear Online starter pack, an exclusive blu-ray disc containing “making of documentary” and production team look, and the Metal Gear Solid 4 game disc, of course.

As the set is limited in quantity, better rush to Konami’s website on March 19 if you want it.

The 1080P High Definition Video format war is over. When HD-DVD exclusive Warner Bros studios switched to support the Blu-Ray format exclusively, the winner was effectively decided. Shortly thereafter, Toshiba (the main player in the HD-DVD format) too announced that they will cease to produce new HD-DVD players and withdrawing from the format war.

Now, its reported that Sony is talking to Microsoft about adopting the Blu-Ray format to its systems. While Sony have approached Apple for the same talks too (Microsoft and Apple are supporters of HD-DVD format), there are now strong rumors that Xbox360 may feature Blu-Ray as standard drive format.

While these are rumors at this point of time, it is not impossible for Xbox360 to adopt the Blu-Ray as the format due to the larger storage capabilities and as games becomes bigger (Lost Oddessey will fit in one dual layer Blu-Ray disc instead of four dual layer DVD dics). Alternatively, Microsoft could come up with a Blu-Ray add-on drive, as they have done with the HD-DVD add-on drive.

This will be interesting to keep watch, to see how Microsoft will react.

Hackers working on PS3 have manged to run PS3 retail games back-ups off its internal HDD or via USB HDD! This may soon lead to piracy issues similar to Sony’s PSP UMD games being run off the Memory Sticks. While there seems to be more that needs to be done before this leads to mass piracy so rampant on the PSP, but things are slowly creeping towards that eventuality. Oh no!

While some are quick to point out that blu-ray discs can contain up to 25GB of data in one single layered disc, it must be noted that cross platformed games appearing on Xbox360s and PS3s does run on dual layered standard DVD (9.6GB) for the Xbox360 console. This simply means that current games are not using the limit of the blu-ray discs yet. So a 40GB HDD PS3 could still store up to 4 dual layered DVD games, theoritically speaking.

This will be very interesting to watch, as the PS3 is seemingly close to being fully hacked for piracy.

Link to the mumbo jumbo tech stuff here.

Firmware 2.10 is out in US. It adds DivX (and xviD) and WMV support to the PS3. Also added are Blu-Ray Profile 1.1 which adds features like Pic-in-Pic capabilities (something HD-DVD have long time ago).

Firmware 2.10 is not yet available for Asian region yet (www.asia.playstation.com) but I am sure it will be there few hours later, so check it again later.

Spiderman 3 (2 discs Special Edition), of the blu-ray flavor, can be found in local video stores now (although you may need to do a bit of walking to find them on shelves). One store indicates the price of the blu-ray set at RM179.00.

Happy hunting.

The internet as well as traditional media have been abuzz with the rumored 40GB PS3. Many industry watchers are suggesting that Sony could be announcing the 40GB PS3 sometime next week, in a bid to steal some of Halo 3’s street release date.

There are more rumbles in the hardware industry players, with some unamed “electronic manufactuing news source” have revealed that Sony have enlisted FoxConn (Taiwan based company that currently produces the Playstation 2) to produce 40GB PS3. Rumors have even planted the 40GB PS3 with a USD$399.90 price level, but fully expecting other lesser specs (no bluetooth, no card readers, no WiFi?) at that price level.

Personally, although I am taking this rumor with a pinch of salt, there are several advantages for Sony to do so.

1) USD$399 price point is seen by industry player as the ceiling price consumers will buy for electronics goods.
2) At USD$399, it makes the (40GB) PS3 a very cheap blu-ray movie player with HD gaming capabilities, as the cheapest HD-DVD standalone players from rival camp Toshiba will be retailing at USD299.
3) With more total PS3 sold, this will also increase the total numbers of consumers of blu-ray movie discs.
4) With Sony deep entrenched in the blu-ray camp, increasing PS3 and blu-ray consumers makes perfect business sense as they will stand to earn from license of blu-ray players, movie deals (they do own several studios) and they dont want a repeat lost of technology format (remember Sony’s betamax videotape lost the format war against JVC’s VHS format).

As Sony is eager to win the next gen DVD format, by push more PS3 into homes with a cheaper USD$399 entry level 40GB PS3 makes perfect business sense to me. We will see if this turns out to the truth in the next few weeks.

Spiderman 3 will be released to Malaysian stores today, available on standard def DVD and VCD version. It is unclear which DVD version (or contents) will the stores gets, as the shipments is due to arrive in stores later this evening. No mention of cost either.

There are three standard def DVD versions for the US market (Region One DVD), so I am speculating that the Asian version (Region Three DVD) will contain similar content: -

The single disc version - with bloopers, picture galleries and two commentary tracks.

2-Disc Special Edition - same as the single disc, with additional 11 featurettes in the second DVD. Available in high def blu-ray double disc version too.

The 3 DVD disc pack (highly unlikely) containing all three Spiderman movies in 3 DVD in one pack. Available in high def blu-ray versions too.

Incidentally, the US release of the DVD and Blu-ray of Spiderman 3 sets is scheduled for Oct 30, 2007, so this is a nice early surprise for the Asian region. Please take note that the blu-ray versions of Spiderman 3 is not coming out today, and no news of when it will be here.