Hasta La Gadget!

The digital games you buy on your PlayStation 4 will apparently travel with you, virtually, when you move from console to console. Sony R&D senior team leader Neil Brown detailed as much at Develop today. “You can visit your friend’s house you can log into your account and play any game from your digital library,” he said. Paired with the console’s “Play As You Download” functionality, Brown promised that users will be able to instantly jump into their full library of digital games from any PS4 after signing in with their PSN ID. “This makes a digital library a practical option in the real world,” he added.

PlayStation 4 games are planned for digital launch alongside physical, thus making an all-digital game library a more possible goal. Should you purchase a physical copy, you can take the Blu-ray with you from console to console; the game will automatically install on the console’s HDD, though you’ll still need its disc in the tray for the game to play.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Sony

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Source: Official PlayStation Magazine UK

China’s 13-year prohibition on game console sales may soon come to an end, according to a report from the South China Morning Post. The compromise would see the likes of Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft able to manufacture game consoles in Shanghai’s new free trade zone — part of a larger governmental move to open up China’s economy to the outside world — and then market and sell said consoles across mainland China. Of course, the big three would still have to pass the Chinese government’s smell test, an approval from “culture-related authorities,” according to the report.

The news certainly lines up with China’s goal in its original ban: “to keep underage folks away from dangerous venues and unhealthy content,” Engadget China head Richard Lai wrote earlier this year in a piece detailing the history of China’s game console law. In fact, Nintendo’s currently able to sell game consoles in China, despite the long-standing ban; it currently markets its 3DS XL gaming handheld under the iQue brand, alongside a handful of first-party Nintendo software. Sony’s also had brief approval for console sales in China in the past, including a Chinese version of the PlayStation 2 — the company’s PlayStation arm even has a headquarters in Guangzhou as part of a government-backed project.

Lifting China’s game console sales ban is little more than a report at the moment, but now seems like an especially good time for the country to reconsider its stance. With new game consoles on the way from Sony and Microsoft, that’s a lot of money potentially being left on the table.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo

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Via: Kotaku

Source: South China Morning Post

Sony’s already said that it’s making game publishing on PlayStation 4 even easier than it is on the PlayStation 3, but Senior Account Manager of Development at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Agostino Simonetta today explained exactly what that means. Sony’s apparently applying a “four pillar” approach to publishing, as follows:

1. “Every developer is a publisher”
2. “Equality of opportunity”
3. “Personal relationship”
4. “No hurdles, just games”

It’s this multi-tiered approach that Sony believes will attract developers to the PlayStation 4. “Every single developer is a publisher, as far as we’re concerned. We don’t separate, we don’t segregate indies from traditional publishers,” Simonetta said, in reference to the current console generation’s “segregation” of indie (primarily digital) games from more traditional publishers (primarily disc-based). More specifically, individual devs can work with Sony one-on-one to establish promotions and other details. Perhaps most importantly, all developers will hear back on publishing approval within one week from Sony. Head to the source link below for more details from Simonetta, straight out of the annual Develop conference.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Sony

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Source: Digital Spy

The folks at YouTube are updating Sony’s PlayStation 3 YouTube app today with additional support for send to TV functionality, making it all the easier to share clips from your mobile device of choice with a living room full of people. Similar to the Xbox 360’s SmartGlass functionality, YouTube’s send to TV allows for a phone or tablet to be paired via a shared Wi-Fi network with the PS3, enabling videos on your mobile device in the YouTube app to be transferred “instantly” to the big screen — the service now pairs automatically rather than requiring a PIN. Moreover, today’s update looks to be yet another example of YouTube’s co-developed DIAL tech. YouTube also added some video stream stabilization in the latest update, should you be experiencing hiccups.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Sony, Google

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Source: Google

Apple’s App Store is infested with “Zombie apps” that are rarely downloaded and do little more than bolster the overall number of titles, researchers claim, with an estimated two-thirds of the total available being barely used. The download store celebrated its fifth birthday this week with a selection of high-profile freebies, but according to Adeven figures seen by the BBC, many of the titles in the store get little to no attention from users themselves. Updated after the cut.

Adeven, a mobile marketing tracking service, describes those unseen apps as zombies: software that never appears in Apple’s master list of most-downloaded apps across the world, which encompasses more than 300,000 titles. “579,001 apps out of a total of 888,856 apps in our database are zombies” the company claims.

However, Apple itself has been buoyant about how much attention even less popular apps get in the store. Speaking at WWDC, CEO Tim Cook claimed that 90-percent of all apps are downloaded at least once each month; total downloads have exceeded 50bn.

The tracking analysis firm says that the discrepancy in claims is down to what information Apple actually makes public. “We can’t say exactly how many downloads they have – Apple doesn’t reveal this – but it is very small” Adeven argues.

It’s not the first time the App Store has been criticized for focusing on total numbers and ignoring quality in the process. Back in 2009, another research company criticized Apple for not dealing with so-called “bulk apps”, where a basic template is injected with different sets of data, such as for travel guides and local search apps.

Still, you could argue that the real result is how much money the App Store makes. According to Apple’s latest figures, it has paid out $10bn to developers in the past five years, half of that in the last twelve months alone.

Update: PC Mag throws some cold water on the study, pointing out that Adeven has a vested interest in promoting the idea of “invisible” apps since it offers a service to promote titles for developers, and arguing that the so-called “zombies” are in reality the long-tail of software. That could mean bad or unloved apps, or it could mean particularly niche titles that are only really intended to appeal to a small subset of users.

App Store Zombie-infested claims research firm [Updated] is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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