Just yesterday, Sony announced their gaming streaming service which will launch later this year for the PS3 and PS4, followed by the PS Vita. Dubbed PlayStation Now, thanks to streaming technology provided by Gaikai which was bought by Sony, gamers can now enjoy games like The Last of Us and God of War: Ascension to name a few on the PS4 or PS Vita, despite the game never having been designed for either console. Consequently, your PS3 will have access to games never designed for it as well. While we were skeptical of the service and expected to find trouble due to latency issues, after some hands on time with the service, we walked away quite impressed. While the service is still not ready for prime time, we’ve learned a few nuggets of information worth sharing which you can find after the jump.
Sony Corp.
Today at CES 2014, Sony announced a new game streaming service entitled PlayStation Now. This service will allow you to stream and play classic PlayStation titles to a variety of devices. Keep reading to see all of the details on this exciting new service.
News at last! We finally got to see what the Xperia ‘Amami’ is, as Sony unveiled a mini version of the Z1 flagship at CES named the Xperia Z1 Compact. Details of this mysterious ‘mini’ version have been leaking for a number of weeks. The Xperia Z1 Compact is a glossy, stunning powerhouse in a more petite form factor of only 127 x 64.9 x 9.5 mm.
Perhaps even more surprising than the Z1 Compact was Sony’s committment to the US market, presenting a variant of the Z1 flagship known as the Z1S, exclusive to T-Mobile due and is due in the US later this month.
Read on for the full specs, dates and lesser known features…
At 8:30am (PST) Sony CEO, Kaz Hirai is set to kick off CES 2014 with his very first keynote address. Besides going over the newly announced Sony products, Kaz will also be talking about the health of Sony and where he believes the company and technology sector is headed. We’ll be live blogging the whole event so be sure to tune in.
Is the current flagship being upstaged by a non-flagship?
The mini version of the Z1 flagship, Xperia Z1 f recently became available in Japan. An international version is widely expected to become available soon, possibly revealed very shortly at CES. This international version is expected to be the Z1 s and the only difference from the Japanese launch version is likely global network compatibility.
Sony fans in Japan have been comparing the Z1 and it’s mini brother to see if Sony has improved on anything. They have, the display it seems. But they may have enhanced the screen too much to remain just the mini version. Images from owners suggest a striking display superiority of the mini…over it’s larger, flagship brother… Is the difference consistent?
Check out the other comparisons and see for yourself…
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is nearly upon us and that means lots of last minute things to do in order to prepare the site for all the additional coverage. Previously, we asked what you’d like to see Sony present during the mega show and the response thus far has been great. In the past few years, Sony has used the show as a launching ground for many of their flagship products, including reinvigorating their mobile line with the launch of the Xperia S and Xperia ion which paved the way for the well-received Xperia Z. After the jump, I’ll share with you what I believe Sony needs to do to not only walk away from CES 2014 victorious but to win back more consumers and dig themselves further out of the hole that the company placed itself in the past decade.
Have you ever wanted to back up a small amount of files but thought having an external hard drive is too cumbersome? You probably have if you have a laptop and luckily, Sony has a solution for you. That’s because the company’s new Backup SD Card adds automatic back-up capabilities which makes it capable of backing up your files every time it’s inserted into the PC, eliminating the need for an external hard drive and doesn’t rely on you remembering to do the task. So let’s talk details about the Sony Backup SD Card.
If you’ve ever wanted to easily transfer a file between your PC (Mac, Windows) and Android device, or files between your Android smartphone and tablet that didn’t rely on the cloud, then you’ve been out of luck till now. Sony has announced a new dual 2-in-1 flash drive which houses a micro USB port on one end and a full-size USB port on the other end. This new dual USB drive will allow you to easily transfer files between devices without the need of the cloud, Bluet00th, or Wi-Fi. Now let’s talk details, including price and availability.
Sony has announced that it will be selling off all of its stakes in Gracenote, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony. While not an in-the-spotlight company/division, Gracenote provides information and cover art to music and films on many devices that include Sony’s own home theater devices — though their reach is not limited to Sony products. So how much is Gracenote worth?
After announcing plans to give the QX10 and QX100 a host of improvements via a new firmware update come this January, Sony released a new update for the PlayMemories Mobile app. The app which is available for iOS and Android devices is required since the lenses lack their own screen. So what does PlayMemories Mobile app version 4.0 bring? Lets talk details.
Sony’s latest flagship smartphone, the Xperia Z1 has been the exclusive home of Sony’s Motion Shot camera app. For those not familiar, the app allows you to capture a short movie by automatically rendering the movement into a single still image so that it appears to be a continuous picture. Now, thanks to a porting effort, anyone running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich and above can download and run the free app. This includes devices like the Xperia S, Xperia ZR, Xperia ZL, and even the Xperia Z Ultra.
Strength of the Sword 3 is a recently-released PlayStation 3 exclusive sword fighting game from the two-man studio Ivent Games. If you are anything like me, you might be curious as to how you missed the release of Strength of the Sword 1 and Strength of the Sword 2. The reason you haven’t heard of the first two games is quite simple; they do not exist. The creators have jokingly said that they do not believe in creating sequels to their games, so they have jumped to the conclusion of the trilogy right away. The humor of the developer is apparent throughout this very challenging game. Keep reading to see what I thought about the marriage of challenge and humor in my complete review.
My friend GI Joe described All Is Lost this way: “it’s Gravity on a boat.” And to that extent he’s not wrong. Hollywood often copies itself. Two different volcano disaster movies came out at the same time. Two different meteor from space will crush the earth movies showed up simultaneously. And now, two different I’m alone In the middle of nowhere movies are out. But given how risky, groundbreaking, and otherworldly Gravity was, it’s hard to imagine Hollywood knew they needed to throw out another lone survivor movie to compete. So I like a different way to compare them. Which is to say both films have been brought to this world via bold and visionary directors with a singularly different way to tell stories.
Here’s my safety suit. It doesn’t float.
For me, it’s getting to the point where we can take David O’Russel, Wes Anderson, P.T. Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Alfonso Cuarón, throw in All Is Lost’s J.C. Chandor, and basically the rest of us can go home. Notice that every single one of these people write and direct their own films.
There’s not a lot to explain. Robert Redford plays a man, who’s name you never learn. It’s not important because he’s the only person in the entire film and says about one paragraph of words throughout, most of which come in the opening stanza: a letter he is writing explaining that he tried his hardest to survive but seems to have failed. At which point the movie jumps eight days into the past to show us what happened. I’m generally not a fan of flashbacks. They seem like a cheap trick to make us interested in a story as we try to piece together how it leads back to the beginning. It also generally implies that a story isn’t interesting enough to just start without that trick. And in this case I would have loved to know whether that was true or not. It certainly was okay for Gravity not to flashback, which is a faster paced and probably a better movie. However All Is Lost holds it’s own in comparison.
Have you noticed any classic game that is missing from the launch of this console generation? WipeOut anyone? Besides being a favourite on console since the original PlayStation, the futuristic flier also became a very popular series with PSP and Vita fans. Sadly, the studio behind it, Sony Liverpool closed it’s doors in 2012. But now it appears that many of the big guns behind past studio hits are resurfacing as the new studio Firesprite and games are coming.
Studio Liverpool, previously named Psygnosis has produced some of the most influential hits in the PlayStation lifetime. Besides producing some of the most iconic and thrilling early PlayStation games, you may remember the awesome beats they rocked in WipeOut. It must be something in the water, Liverpool, UK also being home to the legendary dance nightclub brand Cream. Now that much of the old team is reborn under Firesprite, could we see more WipeOut and Formula One games?
As the title suggests, Sony has created a patent for a device they call the SmartWig. As the name suggest, the SmartWig follows the tradition of other wearable devices like smart glasses by incorporating tech in a wearable fashion. According to the patent, the SmartWig could be made from
horse hair, human hair, wool, feathers, yak hair or any kind of synthetic material
The wig then incorporates a hidden circuit board and microprocessor that can talk to a “second computing device” wirelessly like your smartphone. Once a connection is place, the SmartWig could then “provide tactile feedback to the user.”
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