Hasta La Gadget!

Yeah, sure, we knew the Harmony IR-to-Bluetooth remote adapter was coming down the pike, but even with FCC filings and official confirmation of the device from Harmony, the PS3 owners among us are breathing a small sigh of relief now that we’ve got our hands on a unit that prove it will make it to market. We have a love/hate relationship with the PS3’s Bluetooth remote control — the range and total non-directionality of it are great, but having a separate remote control just for the PS3 is a real stick in the eye of our couch potato lifestyles. There are a few choices for solving the PS3 remote control conundrum, but on first blush this unit has three things going for it: support from a big name like Logitech (of course including codes in the Harmony database), it does not eat up one of your PS3’s USB ports, and it handles switching the PS3 on and off (not unique, but some other solutions don’t). We’ll give the IR-to-Bluetooth converter a full rundown in due course, but follow us past the break for our initial impressions, an official fact sheet and a link to a Q&A section on the Logitech blog.

Continue reading Logitech Harmony Adapter for Playstation 3 — official, real, and in our hands

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Peripherals

Logitech Harmony Adapter for Playstation 3 — official, real, and in our hands originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 May 2009 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gamers will no doubt be interested to see that their favorite consoles — the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and Sony’s Playstation 3 (just to name a few) — are just as beautiful to behold on the inside as they are on the outside. A courageous enthusiast named Reintiji’s uploaded a whole set of x-rays to Flickr, and we have to say they turned out pretty artistic. There’s one more image (of the Xbox 360) after the break — but be sure to hit the read link for the entire, captivating set.

[Via Technabob]

Continue reading Well-loved gaming consoles exposed in shocking x-ray portfolio

Filed under: Gaming

Well-loved gaming consoles exposed in shocking x-ray portfolio originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 May 2009 07:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Two years after we thought it was all over, it sounds like the saga of Sony, Immersion, and the rumblin’ DualShock has yet another chapter: a New Jersey electrical engineer named Craig Thorner is now suing Sony and its attorneys, claiming that he was more or less duped out of one of his patents in a shady deal designed to help Sony and PDP/Electrosource beat Immersion’s cases against them. Oh yeah, it’s a tangled mess — Thorner first signed over his patent to Immersion, hoping to score a little slice of royalty pie when the lawsuit settled, but then took it back when he decided Immersion wasn’t pursuing it hard enough and signed it over to PDP/Electrosource, who promised him $150,000. So where does Sony come in? Thorner says PDP and Sony were teamed up to beat Immersion, and that Sony was secretly the one licensing the patent but trying to remain out of the picture to keep the price down — and he’s got proof, in the form of a $150,000 wire transfer between the two companies. Not only that, but Sony’s attorneys apparently promised Thorner that they could “wear two hats” during negotiations and represent both him and Sony, which is ten kinds of shady. You can guess what happened next: Sony lost, PDP settled, and Immersion sued Thorner for breaking his agreement — and Sony’s attorneys didn’t help him defend the lawsuit. Did we say ten kinds of shady? Eleven kinds. Of course, it’s doubtful that Thorner is totally innocent here, so it’ll be interesting to see how Sony responds, but at this point we’re treating the DualShock 3 as a miracle of nature and leaving it at that.

[Via Joystiq]

Read – GamePolitics article (with PDF of the complaint)
Read – Law.com article

Filed under: Gaming

Sony sued for cheating man out of rumble patents originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s a lot to love about the special edition 160GB Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete Cloud Black PlayStation 3 bundle that was unleashed this week in Japan — a fancy Strife Wolf emblem, a copy of Advent Children Complete on Blu-ray, and a Final Fantasy XIII demo you can’t play anywhere else — but perhaps our favorite part is the console’s matte finish. For us, a smudge-resistant PS3 is well worth the 49,980 yen (US $505) price of admission. 1UP has the unboxing, hit up the read link for more pics.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming

Special Edition Advent Children PlayStation 3 unboxed in all its matte glory originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hot on the heels of XCM‘s Dominator joystick comes an even more irresistible iteration, making those that took the plunge in January inevitably jealous. The newfangled Rumble Joystick for PlayStation 3 isn’t terribly different from the original… save for the fact that this one shakes, rattles and rolls, of course. Described as the world’s first PS3 joystick to rumble natively, this bugger also packs four memory buttons for programming all sorts of sick, twisted macros alongside independent Rapid Fire and Turbo buttons. Moving on, we’ve got the all new XO Adapter for PS3, which adds support for macros, Rapid Fire and Turbo to any vanilla Dual Shock or SIXAXIS controller. There’s no mention of pricing for either, but we suspect that’ll change in the near future (like, real soon, given that they’ll be shipping in under a month).

Read – Rumble Joystick for PS3
Read – XO Adapter for PS3

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

XCM introduces Rumble Joystick and KO Adapter for PlayStation 3 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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