Xbox 360: Streaming music over Live may breach laws
At E3 last week Games Toaster was shown an Xbox Live
demonstration which showed the planned function of allowing users to
stream their music over Live to other players while playing multiplayer
games.
The streamed music could come directly from the senders digital
music player or PC, it would be heard by other 360 Live players, but
would not be saved on the receiver’s consoles. At the demo Games Toaster was assured this would not breach any copyright or broadcast law, because the music would not be saved.
However, when we contacted the Irish Music Rights Organisation
(IMRO), while stressing his comments were not a legal opinion, Brendan
Griffin Director of Finance Broadcast Licensing at the IRMO told
us “My initial reaction is yes”, and unlike Microsoft stance at E3
saying it just like playing music to your friends, the IRMO added
“playing music over the net between individuals is a public
performance of the work and usage would have to be licensed. It would
not be like playing music in your home”.
“Now who picks up the tab for this streaming is another matter
altogether — It would be probably be the content provider” Griffin
commented, before once more stressing “again this is not a legal
opinion”. And whether the content provider is Microsoft or the users
who would possible make copyrighted music available is a most likely
also another matter.
In reply, Orla Sheridan, Home and Entertainments Division Sales
Manager Microsoft Ireland said, “We are currently soliciting legal
advice from specific markets, but are confident that no royalties would
be due in the Irish market”.
Live could possibly be seen as the music-streaming-equivalent of web
torrents, not providing the content, but a means of distribution. Even
if royalties organisation, such as the IMRO, ignored Live at first, if
Microsoft was to grow the format to their ambitious targets could the
music industry afford to ignore the issue
Eurogamer.net slams Xbox 360 plans and marketing jargon
Eurogamer,
the site who claim to be the most popular multi-format computer games
site in the UK, have criticized Microsoft’s 360 plans, saying they
were lacking, and labeling most of the was said at the Xbox press
conference last night as rubbish.
Their article ‘Xbox 360 fails to convince in LA‘
goes into territory most games journalists and publications — even
professionals — would never dare to venture into, in what is seen as
a heavily PR-controlled media sector.
In at least some hardcore gaming circles in Ireland and the UK,
Eurogamer are highly respected and trusted, their sister business
orientated site GamesIndustry.biz have similar respect within the games
industry worldwide.
The article mainly centers on Microsoft comments such as “gateway to
gaming Zen”, and “beyond real”, and tries to knock MS’s plans to hugely
expand the Xbox’s users base. Eurogamer’s stance to a growing
trying-to-be-cool image coming from the Xbox team isn’t that different
from the reaction of gamers to the 360’s MTV launch program, as evident
on this thread on boards.ie.
The artical prompted a writer for an Xbox-only website to state on a
online industry forum that it was the “most bias, and unprofessional
article I have ever read on a site” of such a size, saying that “It’s
unbelievable… and that’s not from an Xbox site perspective, that’s
just plain down shoddy and unprofessional journalism”.
Meanwhile, GamesIndustry.biz’s approach to the same issue is quite simply ‘Xbox 360 is outgunned and outclassed by Sony’s PS3‘, with Rob Fahey, the editor of
the site, saying “I don’t want to beat on Microsoft too hard, because
ultimately there are still quite a few Xbox 360 games I’m looking
forward to; but it’s hard not to feel that suddenly, Microsoft’s hip
lingo and celebrity endorsements seem to ring very hollow:. but Sony
seemed to feel that its new console spoke for itself. It didn’t need
celebrity endorsements, or senior executives trying to be “down with
the kids” - thank god..”
E3 2005: Revolution?
Cian Ginty in Los Angeles, CA.
At Nintendo’s pre-E3 press conference this morning the company
brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘backward compatibility’,
showing a prototype of their next home console, the Revolution, they
said it would allow for download of some games released up to 20 years
ago, including games from the N64, SNES, and NES — as well as
compatibility with GameCube disks.
The 12cm disk drive will be a slot, not a tray, and a
“self-contained attachment” will allow for the use of DVD films and
other content. With 512mb flash memory, and a SD memory card port for
storage. Built-in Wi-Fi will allow for online and DS connectivity.
Controllers — like the 360 and PS3 — will be wireless, and the
console will host two USB 2.0 ports. The publisher is claiming the
controllers will be somewhat ground-breaking,
but did not elaborate on such.
Square-Enix is, according to Nintendo, working on a “WiFi game” of
Final Fantasy for the new console, with Metroid 3 and Nintendo’s other
’stars’ also lined up for the Revolution.
E3 2005: Resizing the GBA, again
Cian Ginty, in Los Angeles, CA; Nintendo has become infamous for repacking old software and
hardware - with the latter normally with slight design changes - and usually
selling them again by the bucket load. The company has now redesigned the
Game Boy Advance, making it yet again smaller.
Although they made it clear this
is not the GBA’s successor, the announcement was made early this morning at
their yearly pre-E3 press conference at the Hollywood and
center on
The third GBA revamp, the Game Boy Micro, will see the handheld
console shrink to 4″ wide, 2″ tall, and 0.7 thick, according to the company
weighting around the same as 80 paper clips, or 2.8 ounces. Sporting a backlit
2″ screen, it’s virtually the same insides.
E3 2005: More on Xbox 360
Further to the main reveling
on the 360 early last Friday morning, at the pre-E3 Xbox event it was
confirmed that the console will be backward compatible, and will launch
at the same time in Europe, North American, and Japan, although it’s
still sometime before the end of the year.
E3 2005: PlayStation 3
Cian Ginty, Los Angeles, CA. Just
hours ago Sony revealed their upcoming PlayStation 3 console at their
pre-E3 press conference outside LA at the Sony Pictures Studios in
Culver City. On the outside the console comes in three colours, white,
silver, and black, it’s has convex sides - the opposite of Microsoft’s
concaved Xbox 360.
The PS3 is set to launch in spring 2006, although we have no confirmed European date at this moment.
Game screen shots running on the PS3 cell-based system can be found here, while photographs of the launch press conference are here, and images of the console here.
Games which were on
show include Eyedentify (SCEJ), Devil May Cry 4 (Capcom),MotorStorm
(Evolution Studio), KillZone (Guerrilla)l, Gundam (Bandai), WarHawk
(Incognito), I-8 (Insomniac), NioH (Koei), Formula 1 (LiverPool
Studio), Tekken (Namco), Heavenly Sword (Ninja Theory), Vision GT
(Polyphony Digital Inc), Fifth Phantom Saga (Sega), Getaway {Screen
Test} (Team Soho), and Killing Day (Ubisoft).
The cell processor
was touted as a mini-supercomputer which for the first time brings the
graphics seen in modern film CGI to real-time game play. Sony
claims the PS3 will be twice as quick as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 which
will launch before Christmas.
The console will be
backward compatible, and - as known for some time - the new Blu-ray
disk format will be use; the drive will also be able to read most CD
formats since CD-ROM.
Up to seven
controllers can connect to one console vie the Bluetooth wireless
standard. And the console can connect to a PSP vie WiFi. It’ll have
six USB (2.0) ports, four at the front and two to the rear, and will
also feature Memory Stick and CompactFlash slots. Full system specs are
here.
“SCEI has
continuously brought innovation to the world of computer entertainment,
such as real-time 3D computer graphics on PlayStation and the world’s
first 128 bit processor Emotion Engine (EE) for PlayStation 2″ said
Ken Kutaragi, President and CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc,
“Empowered by the Cell processor with super computer like
performance, a new age of PlayStation 3 is about to begin.
Together with content creators from all over the world, SCEI will
accelerate the arrival of a new era in computer entertainment.”
E3 2005 PHOTOS: Sony press conference
MORE> http://gamestoaster.typepad.com/photos/sony_e3_2005/
E3 2005: PlayStation 3 specifications…
Are as follows…
>
|
Product name |
PLAYSTATION®3 |
||
|
Logo |
|
||
|
CPU |
Cell Processor PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz 1 VMX vector unit per core 512KB L2 cache 7 x SPE @3.2GHz 7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs 7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE * 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy total floating point performance : 218 GFLOPS |
||
|
GPU |
RSX @550MHz 1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines |
||
|
Sound |
Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell-base processing) |
||
|
Memory |
256MB XDR
Main RAM @3.2GHz
256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz |
||
|
System Bandwidth |
Main RAM 25.6GB/s VRAM 22.4GB/s RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read) SB 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read) |
||
|
System Floating Point Performance |
2 TFLOPS |
||
|
Storage |
HDD |
Detachable 2.5″ HDD slot x 1 |
|
|
I/O |
USB |
Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0) |
|
|
Memory Stick |
standard/Duo, PRO x 1 |
||
|
SD |
standard/mini x 1 |
||
|
CompactFlash |
|||
|
Communication |
Ethernet |
(10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x 3 (input x 1 + output x 2) |
|
|
Wi-Fi |
IEEE 802.11 b/g |
||
|
Bluetooth |
Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR) |
||
|
Controller |
Bluetooth (up to 7) USB2.0 (wired) Wi-Fi (PSP®) Network (over IP) |
||
AV Output |
Screen size |
480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p |
|
|
HDMI |
HDMI out x 2 |
||
|
Analog |
AV MULTI OUT x 1 |
||
|
Digital audio |
DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1 |
||
|
Disc media * read only |
CD |
PlayStation® |
CD-ROM |
|
|
PlayStation®2 |
CD-ROM |
|
|
|
CD-DA |
CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW |
|
|
|
SACD |
SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD |
|
|
|
DualDisc |
DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side) |
|
|
DVD |
PlayStation®2 |
DVD-ROM |
|
|
PLAYSTATION®3 |
DVD-ROM |
||
|
DVD-Video |
DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW |
||
|
Blu-ray Disc |
PLAYSTATION®3 |
BD-ROM |
|
|
BD-Video |
BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE |
||
Xbox 360 officially revealed last night
Microsoft’s second games console was officially publicly revealed
last night on the viral marketing website OurColony, and then on MTV in
North America, although renders of the console have been online for
sometime, and photographs from the MTV program were leaked after the
show was pre-recorded.
The console’s name, Xbox 360, has been confirmed along with the
white colour (or “Chill” according to MS), wireless controllers,
and a removable 20Gb hard drive. All of which was revealed vie reliable
sources before.
Technical system specifications (you’ve been warned:) boast
three IBM PowerPC processors each at 3.2 GHz, 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM @ 700
MHz, 10MB 500 MHz ATI graphics card, with high-definition out of the
box.
Paid for hardware add-ons include up to three extra controllers, a digital camera, and a wireless networking WiFi adaptor.
The WiFi adaptor or a cable will allow the console to connect to
home networks. The console will be able to connect to Window XP PCs,
and directly vie USB to MP3 players and digital camera to listen to
music or view photographs.
Xbox 360’s updated Live online multiplayer service will come in
Silver or Gold editions. The Silver is free, but will only allow you to
play multiplayer at the weekend. While Gold will apparently allow for
transfer of an original paid-for Xbox Live account, with
‘intelligent’ matchmaking based on skill. Both will allow for some
type of file sharing and the downloading of free and paid games content.
The
star-studied MTV preview show was recorded at a Hollywood night club
last week with Elijah Woods, Snow Patrol, the Killers, Robbie Williams,
Tony Hawk, Xzibit, Tim Burgess (the Charlatans), and a host of others.
Meanwhile the games industry and associated press are converging on
LA for the trade-only E3 2005, where over one thousand games go on
display on the show floors and behind closed doors — what is seen as
the most important event in at least the calendars of publishers, and
the media. The events kick off with the Sony press conference on Monday
afternoon, followed swiftly by Microsoft’s Xbox briefing.
Games
Toaster will be in LA for the week for on-site coverage, and for the
less apparent act of enlightening our selves for the year to come.
REVIEW: Midnight Club 3 (DUB edition)
May 11, 2005 by
Filed under Reviews
Developer: R* San Diego |
Publisher: Rockstar | Format: PS2 (Xbox, PSP)
Reviewer: Craig Gallagher For the past few years
Rockstar have had one triple-a series that towers above all competition, Grand
Theft Auto. But now they have a new addition to the fold, the Midnight Club
series. Those of you who have missed the series thus far, (myself included) be
prepared for a nitrous oxide kick to the head. [Those of you haven't missed it
so-far will know it is also a triple-a series, just less known then GTA -- ed]
The game
borrows from all the greats. The realism of Gran Turismo, the OTT madness of
Burnout and the real city plan of Project Gotham. This coupled with to new
additions, usage of racers slipstream to gain a momentary speed burst and the
usage of waypoints that allows you to find and utilize shortcuts.
Who wants to
race around a fixed track against a handful of other players? Admit it; it’s
not that much fun. You want to hurtle around suburban cities, avoiding oncoming
traffic and pedestrians as you race to the finish line. And with three
armed with cops on the look out for illegal racing, there’s always a lot to do.
The biggest
let down is the customisation option. It sets out to capture the spirit of
MTV’s Pimp my Ride but fails. But hey who wants to spend hours customising a
pixel car when you can be hurtling down busy traffic riddled streets [in
Burnout, also in a "pixelated" car -ed].
Midnight Club 3 is one of the
best racing games around and after a few hours play you’ll want to boost your
very own street car from in front of some shop.