About Electronics

Next gen: Newly released figures show that Sony’s PlayStation Network has amassed a global user base exceeding 1.5 million registered users. The total is likely to have been boosted by a number of users registering multiple accounts, but it is nevertheless an impressive statistic considering that the console has only been on release for a little over six months.
The number of registered users has grown by 200,000 since Dave Karraker, Sony Computer Entertainment America’s senior director of public relations, revealed back in April that 1.3 million users had signed up to the service. (…)

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Next Generation: In an interview with Newsweek, God of War creator David Jaffe explains what he considers to be the philosophy behind Sony’s new e-Distribution service.

The ever quotable Jaffe, who is currently working on the upcoming PlayStation 3 downloadable game Criminal Crackdown, explained to Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal earlier this week why he thinks electronic distribution is so viable and why he’s having so much fun working in it.

Jaffe is quoted in the interview as saying: “’God of War, Twisted Metal, Resistance and Gran Turismo, those are like operas. These are like pop songs.” “…in the future, because I think these services are going to be really successful, I think it’s actually going to end up being more lucrative to write pop songs, just like in the real world, than operas.”

Throughout the interview, Jaffe compares Sony’s service to Xbox Live, explaining that while he does like Xbox Live, they distribute “Ashlee Simpson pop songs” and are an “oldies station,” compared to his goal of making games of similar quality to the pop songs of the Beatles. He also states that he would like to continue working in this space for as long as possible, saying of Sony Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison “Phil is a really big believer in this service.”

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BBC: The PlayStation Network will let PS3 owners play other gamers, chat, download extras, store images, video, or music and browse the net. The network will be free to play or chat but users must pay to get downloadable games and other extras.

The navigation system for the PlayStation Network is based on that used on Sony’s handheld game gadget – the PSP. This navigation system has a “Friends” area in which users manage online game play. In this area they can see if friends are online and what games they want to play. It also includes a basic social networking system that lets people swap text-based messages.
As well as giving users access to online gaming and the net, this browsing system gives access to any images, music or movies stored on the device. This multimedia content can be taken from the net, bought from the Sony PlayStation store or loaded via memory sticks or USB.
Via the store PS3 owners will be able to buy downloadable games, extras for games, movies and music. Downloadable games are expected to cost about 12 euro.

The PS3 is due to launch on 11 November in Japan, 17 November in North America and March 2007 in Europe.

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