Hasta La Gadget!

Sony’s PSN woes aren’t over just yet. The company has temporarily stopped taking PlayStation promo codes following a surge in traffic on the gaming service; for the moment, money cards and game vouchers won’t work. There’s no estimate for when code redemption will return. It’s easy to see the potential causes, however. Between the weekend, the PlayStation 4’s European launch and a big discount on PlayStation Plus subscriptions at Amazon, there’s guaranteed to be a deluge of PSN activity — Sony may have unintentionally created a perfect storm.

Update (12/1/13): According to the PlayStation Europe Blog, Sony is “continually increasing the availability of the voucher redemption functionality,” so you should see it soon if it’s not on your system already. The next step, which we should hear more about tomorrow, is to switch on the What’s New activity feed and Live Item in the Content Information Screen for users outside North America.

Filed under: Gaming, HD, Sony

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Source: PlayStation Community Forums, PlayStation Blog

For veteran gamers who enjoyed Doom and Quake, it’s the end of an era — id Software co-founder John Carmack has left the game studio to concentrate all his efforts on his Chief Technical Officer role at Oculus VR. It was just too “challenging” to divide attention between the two companies, he explains. id’s Tim Willits says in a statement that the departure won’t affect any existing projects, but it does leave the firm without the insights of one of the game industry’s brightest programmers. However, his exit is good news for VR fans; Carmack can now pour all his energy into developing cutting edge wearable displays. Check out our recent video interview with him after the break.

Filed under: Gaming, Wearables

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Via: Joystiq, IGN

Source: John Carmack (Twitter)

Microsoft thinks of the Xbox One as a complete media center, but many would say it’s unfinished without a way to catch up on YouTube videos. Thankfully, one is coming just in the nick of time — the company has revealed that a native YouTube client will be available when the system arrives on November 22nd — something that’s not available on the PS4 (yet), although owners of that system can watch videos in the web browser. The officially sanctioned player will support channel subscriptions as well as Kinect-based gesture and voice commands. Additional features like Snap mode support are coming in the future, Microsoft says. The app launch doesn’t mean that Google and Microsoft have resolved all their differences over YouTube, but it will let you stream cat clips and blooper reels from the comfort of your living room.

Update: We’ve checked the app on our Xbox One test unit, and there’s an additional treat in store for mobile viewers: you can use YouTube’s Android and iOS apps to send videos to the console.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, Internet, HD, Microsoft, Google

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Via: Major Nelson (Twitter)

Source: Xbox Wire, YouTube Blog

If you’re not keen on downloading more PlayStation 4 firmware in the wake of that giant Day One patch, we have bad news: Sony is already rolling out its first post-launch upgrade this evening. Thankfully, it’s a much smaller release this time around. The 1.51 update will both fix a few minor bugs and refine the interface, making it clearer when you’re downloading both a game and a patch at the same time. It’s not an exciting upgrade, then, but the PS4’s automatic downloads at least mean that you won’t have to lift a finger to run the latest software.

Filed under: Gaming, Sony

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Source: PlayStation Blog

There was little doubt that the PlayStation 4 would sell well on launch given the sheer amount of hype, but we now have proof: Sony has revealed that it sold over one million PS4s in North America during the console’s first 24 hours of availability. While that figure pales in comparison to the sales numbers we see for smartphones, it gets the company a long way toward its goal of moving five million units before the end of its fiscal year in March. It also suggests that Sony won’t face the same lackluster response that greeted Nintendo, which took a week to sell its first 400,000 Wii U systems in the US. The real question is whether or not the PS4 will preserve its sales momentum — with the Xbox One launch just five days away, Sony won’t keep the high end of the console market to itself for much longer.

Filed under: Gaming, Sony

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Via: Joystiq

Source: PR Newswire