Tech Culture

Even though Sony's PlayStation 3 is far behind both the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 in console sales, analysts at Strategy Analytics contend that when all is said and done, Sony will sell more consoles than its competitors.

In a report titled, "Taming the Waves: Games Console Life Cycles and Platform Competition," analysts from Strategic Analytics said the PlayStation 3 will have a much longer shelf life than current market leader the Nintendo Wii.

In fact, the analyst firm claims that the PS3 will be a "commercial platform five years after the Wii has been replaced." Because of that, it believes that lifetime PS3 sales will hit 127 million units, while Nintendo will sell a grand total of 103 million Wii units.

"Nintendo has done a great job with the Wii in bringing console games to new audiences," David Mercer, Principal Analyst at Strategic Analytics said in a statement. "But its sales are now falling, particularly in mature markets, and its installed base will peak in 2011."

Mercer believes that PlayStation 3 ownership will hit its "highest point between 2012 and 2014."… Read more

Ngmoco's Eliminate for the iPhone was a groundbreaking game in two ways. One was its pay-to-score business model, which offered the game for free, but required users to have virtual energy units (which could be bought) to gain rank and equipment bonuses. The second, and more important one, was the back-end server technology that let players hop onto online matches over 3G.

This feature was not so simple to implement, as Ngmoco's director of engineering Stephen Detwiler and lead engineer James Marr mapped out during a talk at Tuesday's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. As Marr … Read more

Palm is hoping its new developer's kit can lead to better games and richer apps for its smartphone users.

Palm announced on Tuesday that a public beta version of its new WebOS Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) is ready for developers to download via the company's Developer Center Web site. The PDK lets programmers create plug-ins using C or C++ to enhance existing WebOS applications.

The WebOS is the software platform for Palm's Pre and Pixi smartphones.

Unveiled at this week's Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, the PDK is being targeted to designers who want … Read more

It looks like gamers can finally start taking the Mac platform seriously. Confirming recent stirrings, Valve announced Monday that it will bring its gaming service Steam, and Source, its proprietary gaming engine, to Macs.

Started in 2003, Valve is now arguably the biggest online distributor of games. By last month, Valve revealed that it had more than 25 million active Steam user accounts and, at any given time, about 2 million gamers are using the service. There are more than 1,000 games available on Steam. Not all of them will be immediately available on the Mac platform as this … Read more

Game demos have become de rigueur for publishers. To help entice gamers to plunk down their hard-earned $50 or $60, companies will often put a sample level from their games on their Web sites, Xbox Live, or the PlayStation Network. Until now, those demos have remained static, meaning publishers effectively give away a chunk of their games in the hopes that it will lead to consumers scooping up the whole thing.

Sony, apparently, wants to change the demo paradigm. Its application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office became public on March 4 and was uncovered by Siliconera. In … Read more

I'm not one to fawn over online maps, but 8-Bit NYC appeals to my two loves: usefulness and 1980s adventure video games.

The 8-Bit NYC map is simply fantastic. The service displays New York City in a depiction that's modeled after maps in adventure video games from the 1980s. Even better, all the content in 8-Bit NYC is accurate, making it a viable mapping tool, as well.

"I hope to evoke the same urge for exploration, abstract sense of scale, and perhaps most importantly unbounded excitement that many of us remember experiencing on the Nintendo Entertainment System, … Read more

Whoa. During the keynote presentation at TechEd Middle East in Dubai, Microsoft's Eric Rudder played the same Indiana Jones-ish game on a Windows computer, a Windows Phone 7 phone, and an Xbox 360. Gaming is about to get really ubiquitous.

Not only is the game itself playable on all three platforms, but the session is maintained when you move from device to device: if you're playing on your Xbox and have to run out the door, you'll be on the same level when you fire it up on your Windows Phone 7 Series phone. Basically, you'll … Read more

Secret Exit, maker of the popular and very odd iPhone game Zen Bound, announced Friday that not only is it porting the title to the iPad, but it's enhancing the game for the new hardware and including new levels and controls.

Zen Bound 2 is being billed as "both a sequel and a revision" to the original, which sounds interesting. Rebooting games for the iPad seems like a no-brainer for iPhone game developers, and Apple has said that it expects many developers to create updated versions of their games to take advantage of the tablet's larger … Read more

Imagine you are somewhat advanced in years. You still get your news from a physical newspaper. You still get your pleasure from a physical person.

Then along comes your wacky nephew, or just some distantly removed acquaintance, who decides that you have to work a little to get to their wedding. This may well be the dilemma facing the invitees to the wedding of a couple of German geeks, Darina and Niko.

According to Offbeat Bride, a place where couples share their propensity to waft away from "beaten aisle," Darina explained in an entirely harmonious way: "We … Read more