PS3: DCU online will be subcription FREE!

Courtesy of The Sony insider,

Another reason to get a PS3, Superhero MMO gaming with no monthly subscription fee.

Sony Insider had an opportunity to talk to Wes Yanagi, Senior Producer at Sony Online Entertaintment at Gamescom 2009, go hands on with the game, and came away impressed despite the game still being in pre-alpha. Wes revealed several details on gameplay, character creation, and one big suprise: no subscription fee.

From an interaction perspective, Yanagi stated he wanted it to be more action based in the vein of God of War than World of Warcraft. Character configuration continues to gain detail, but at the same time being true to the world of comics in regards to how abilities are represented. In building your character, you have 3 main areas to customize:

• Power: This defines your character’s main power. Ashram learned mimic skills like Connor Hawke, or telepathy like Saturn Girl?
• Source: This defines the source of your characters powers. Magic based like Captain Marvel or hell based like Jason Blood?
• Movement Power: This defines your primary movement. Prefer to mainline the speed force like Wally West or have fly like Captain Atom?

A few other interesting details from their interview and impressions:

• You have to prove your worth before your recruited by a group (such as the Justice League)
• The ability to map your buttons to a DualShock 3 or to a USB Keyboard
• Open platform servers for cross-compatibility between the PS3 and PC versions

As impressive as no subscription fee’s is, open platform servers is equally as impressive. To be able to play with or against people on either PC or PS3 could create quite an expansive world. Further to play your created character on either a PC or PS3 would be nice when the PS3 is not accessible.

So get ready to jump right in the thick of the Rann / Thanagarian war as the newest member of the Sinsetro Corps next year for free.

STOP GAMESTOP : BOYCOTT

GAMESTOP has done a few shady things over the years that I've happily of overlooked mostly because I'm a lazy bastard that just wants to get his game on quick and on the cheap. But the practice of opening new games and handling the discs and then selling the game as new is bullshit.

I don't know if this is happening in your neck of the woods, but here in New York, this shit is prevalent and getting on my fucking nerves. I know that these fuckers sign out used games to play at home, whats to stop them from playing with the "new" inventory? or selling me a used resurfaced game as "new" just by putting it in a nice shiny brand new case.

I define new the same way most stores do, once the seal is broken I got news for you, it's not new.

So to wrap this rant up, I'll get my new games from J&R or Best Buy or any other reputable game seller that doesn't tamper with the packaging and my used games will come from Ebay ( I'll take my chances) where deals are plenty.

As for Gamestop, you've lost at least one buyer entirely. Good luck when everything goes digital Assholes.

PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade : Success! (Things to know.)

I've completed the operation on my PS3 with less complications than expected. Now we're rocking a 500 gb drive that runs a bit quieter than the OEM 40 gb Drive.

Some things I'd like to share with my fellow PS3 owners:

• I was worried that the drive that I was going to use to back up my PS3 Data ( my PSP with a 4 gb card ) was not big enough I was right. To solve this little problem all I did was erase the GAME DATA from the PS3 ( this is the data that is stored on the PS3 hard drive from the game disk to help minimize load times during gameplay NOT THE GAME SAVES) this takes up anywhere between 1 gb to 8 gb per game.

• With the Game Data removed my back up went from 30 gb to 688 mb and I keep all of my game saves, files, pics wallpapers intact.

• Another great thing to know is that once you slap the new hard drive in and turn the system on, the internal PS3 memory retains your user ID even before you restore the data that you backed up! My user name, password and network settings where right there from the get go, if the back up failed for whatever reason, all I had to do was go to the PS store and download the software I had purchased and start my games over from the beginning ( thankfully that's not the case ) pretty nifty.

• I checked all of my save files in each game and everything from my Burnout paradise car collection to the hard to unlock characters in Street fighter 4 and weapons in Resident evil 5 are all still intact. All I have to do is update each game by popping it in once and downloading each game patch ( the downside of erasing the game data )

Good luck to anyone out there willing to DIY your PS3 hard drive upgrade, just remember, the hardest part is picking the right drive, everything else from back up to paying my saved game took me less than 10 minutes.

PS3 Hard Drive Upgrade : Choosing the drive

I've been a happy PS3 owner for over a year now, A good friend sold it to me for a price I could not refuse and I haven't gone back to Microsoft ever since ( the 360 has been relagated as my 2 year daughter's media player ).

The only concern I had was that this Ps3 had a 40Gb hard drive and I eventually would have to upgrade it... and that time is now!

After carefully researching what hard drive to buy ( cnet, user reviews, forums, etc ) I decided to go with the Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive ( available on newegg.com for a messily $89.00 w/ free shipping.) a lot of PS3 owners had made the switch and recommended this drive online.

So tonight I'll back up my current drive ( I'll let you know how that turns out ) and we'll see if it works for me or if I just fuck my whole system up ( I've been know to do that from time to time )

Cross your finger and wish me luck.

SCROOGE BUYS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE

Courtesy of the New York Times
By BROOKS BARNES
Published: August 31, 2009

Spider-Man and his Marvel Entertainment cohorts will join the Walt Disney Company in a $4 billion deal announced early Monday.

Disney said in a statement that it would pay a combination of about 60 percent cash and 40 percent stock to acquire Marvel, which has a stable of some 5,000 characters that includes the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Captain America and Thor.

Marvel has aggressively exploited its most popular characters through motion pictures and consumer products, and has a thicket of deals with various studios that will stay in place. Twentieth Century Fox will continue with the “X-Men” franchise, for instance, while Sony Pictures Entertainment will keep “Spider-Man.”

And Paramount Pictures will continue to release Marvel’s “Iron Man” films — at least until that deal expires. So essentially Disney is in business with a trio of rival studios.

Disney sees a deep opportunity to immediately patch the Marvel characters into its other businesses, however. Marvel characters will be added to Disney’s theme parks, while consumer products will be a huge component, particularly internationally where Marvel has made fewer inroads.

Marvel’s intellectual property tends to be more popular with boys — an area where Disney could use the help. While the likes of “Hannah Montana” and the blockbuster Princesses merchandising line have solidified Disney’s hold on little girls, franchises for boys have recently been harder to come by. Disney XD, a new cable channel aimed at boys, could be an immediate home for Marvel characters.

The acquisition, which has been approved by the boards of both companies but still must be approved by Marvel shareholders, started to come together several months ago when Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, reached out to Marvel’s chief executive, Ike Perlmutter. Talks heated up in the last two weeks, with Disney agreeing to one of Marvel’s top demands: that stock be part of the deal.

Under the deal, Marvel shareholders will receive $30 a share in cash plus about 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share. The deal is valued at $50 a share, a 29 percent premium on Marvel stock.

“We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation,” Mr. Iger said in a statement.

Mr. Perlmutter said: “Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses.”

He will continue to oversee the Marvel properties, and will work directly with Disney’s global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel’s properties.

The acquisition comes as Disney, with its vast theme park operations and television advertising business, has been struggling because of a lack of hit DVDs, soft advertising sales at ABC and drooping consumer spending at theme parks. Disney’s profit in the third quarter, which ended June 27, dropped 26 percent.

Over all, Disney’s net income fell to $954 million, or 51 cents a share, from $1.28 billion, or 66 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue fell 7 percent, to $8.6 billion. Earnings per share for the current quarter included a one-cent restructuring charge related to an accounting gain.