Hasta La Gadget!

Earlier this week, Sony announced that it would be dropping the price of its PlayStation Vita from 24,980 yen to 19,980 yen in Japan only starting February 28, hinting that a similar price drop may come to the US. However, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida says that a price drop for the PS Vita in the US isn’t coming.

Yoshida says that it’s all just a matter of economics, and the current exchange rate is the reason why Sony cut the price in Japan, exclusively. The exchange rate has been an issue for Sony, and it has also plagued Nintendo financially in the past. However, it’s still possible (and extremely likely) that Sony will eventually drop the price after the Vita has been on the market for a while.

This news comes after Sony officially announced the PlayStation 4 yesterday during a two-hour-long event in New York City, where the company unveiled the new DualShock 4 controller and showed off some new games from partner developers. However, Sony failed to show us the actual console, which Yoshida defends by saying that the company is leaving more unveilings for later on in the year.

Sony is focusing on many new key elements in the PlayStation 4 user interface, and integration is a big one. Sony will be pairing up the Vita and the PlayStation 4 in a big way, and gamers will be able to use the Vita to control some of the features on the PlayStation 4 console, which is great news for gamers who plan to own both devices.

[via Joystiq]

PlayStation Vita not getting price drop in the US is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

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Despite the PlayStation Vita getting a recent price cut in its home country of Japan, Sony says it isn’t getting a similar price adjustment in North America. The Vita recently dropped from 30,000 yen (3G) and 25,000 yen (WiFi-only) to 19,980 yen, but Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida tells Joystiq that that same price drop won’t happen in the US. He cited exchange rates as the primary reason — Japanese Yen has dropped in value to (currently) 0.93 cents to every US dollar, meaning Sony actually loses money in exchange on products sold outside of its home territory.

The Vita launched in February 2012 and has suffered from poor sales throughout the past year — Sony’s hoping to revitalize that a bit with PlayStation 4 connectivity. Via Remote Play, all PlayStation 4 games are streamable on Vita. Whether that’ll be a feature that consumers use is another question altogether; Remote Play exists on PlayStation 3 already, and it’s not what we’d call a great experience.

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, HD, Sony

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Source: Joystiq

As 3D printing and modeling moves into the mainstream, it’s interesting to see the rise of small players in the market and the capital raised. Take, for example, CGTrader. Originally designed as a marketplace for 3D designers and artists, it’s just raised nearly 200,000 euro from Practica Capital, a fund in Lithuania. Founded by Marius Kalytis, the company is based in Vilnius.

Most of the models are highly detailed objects aimed at video game creators and other 3D wonks. However, because a 3D model is a 3D model is a 3D model, CGTrader is able to sell almost any virtual object.

A major problem in the 3D model industry is notoriously low royalty rates for designers and artists – the creator of the model frequently receives only 40-60% of sale proceeds, or, in order to earn more, is often bound by exclusivity requirements. This makes selling 3D models online not a very attractive activity for designers, and therefore limits the potential of industry growth,” said Kalytis. He said the CGTrader is “a fair, author-friendly marketplace”

The company takes 6% of any sale and they can use the platform to support their customers when they have issues or queries.

“The funding will be used for developing the marketplace from the technical perspective, building the community further, and, most importantly, expanding distribution channels for our designers – including 3D printing,” said Kalytis. It’s one small step for 3D models of horses, one giant leap for the monetization of the 3D-printing as a holistic market.

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In 2007, Rousteau snapped candid shots of public sunbathers in all their brazen glory. The resulting photographs, voyeuristic yet non-threatening, resemble the imaginary lovechild of Rineke Dijkstra and TMZ paparazzi. We recently stumbled upon the shots over at It’s Nice That and immediately wished we were on the beach.

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