There's been a small horde of really cool announcements lately and I just keep thinking: this is the stuff!
Nearly all of them stem from the simple fact that Sony is taking is a very open approach to the PS3. Off the shelf flash drives, hard drives, headsets, keyboards and mice, printers, etc all tend to work with the system immediately. Some of these are just announced, some are old hat - but they all seem (to me) at least to be small, seemingly separate, pieces of a larger, concerted strategy. +) Awesome Thing: Unreal Tournament's MOD Capability It may be old news now but the fact that any PC-based content for this game can be used on the PS3 is nothing short of revolutionary. That the huge world of PC-based MODs can (admittedly, with a conversion process and a bit of finagling) migrate to a console is a sea-change. We have the possibility of any game providing a direct, open conduit into its world. While Unreal Tournament provides for huge, foundational changes via mods other games might provide much simpler content which could dramatically improve the experience. What if you could just obtain a constant flow of new books and stories in "Oblivion"? +) Awesome Thing: Burnout Paradise's "My Discovery Map" Criterion's Burnout Paradise is a tremendous game but simply discovering all of the events in its non-traditional open world can be challenging (forget about actually beating those events). This PS3-exclusive feature allows you to copy your save game file to a USB stick (or memory card if you're so equipped) and upload it to the Criterion website. The file will be analyzed and you will be rewarded with a customized map of Paradise city featuring your current progress and everything you've missed. Think about this for a moment: the ability (completely supported by the console) to transfer personal game data to another medium and use it... however you (well... the publisher) likes. Clearly you could do something similar in the game itself (via a patch) but in this case the PC (more specifically the PC printer) is really the preferred target. This openness allows the developer to try experiments or publish quick "toys" without the extensive testing and approvals that any published patch must go through. I assume that the save game file (which is obviously readable) could be actually modified if a developer chose. Imagine how this might used. Upload your character in a role playing game for customized wallpaper or themes or avatars or whatever. It would be neat to use my painstakingly designed "Oblivion" or "Mass Effect" character as an Instant Messenger avatar (and I'd be more likely to actually spend real time using the customization features if my creations had more utility). Same goes for any customizable assets (cars in racing games come to mind). Stuck on game? Upload your saved game and get automatic hints for the area where you last saved. There are points in "Folklore" where I would have liked to have some hints on where to find some of those last few folks. A site like "GameFaqs" is great, but not personal: this could change things. Pop in your "Drake's Fortune" save and a custom website would be presented. Sections might include "Tips for your current location", "Treasures you've missed", "Weapons you're under utilizing", etc. That last one might note that you haven't been using the sniper rifle and link to a video of a level you've already beaten and present a video of how it might have been easier with the sniper rifle. Unlike a generic "faq" such a site, because it's based completely on your personal information, would focus on your current needs and your past performance: no spoilers! +) Awesome Thing: PixelJunk Eden's YouTube Connectivity Sony continues to add features to its developer's toolbag and one of the latest items was the ability not only to capture video directly from a game (they've allowed you to capture still pictures from the beginning and many games already do this) but to actually upload that video directly to YouTube. PixelJunk Eden, a PSN title, will be the first to support this. Here we have a completely supported, generic library allowing games to interact with a popular service (I can't stress enough that this is supported in the PS development libraries directly - any game could use this). While "Eden" may not be the killer app for this it will pave the way and I fully expect to see support in some of the important holiday releases (I'm betting you'll see this in "Resistance: The Fall of Man II" for example). It's hard to understate how important such integration could end up becoming. Most gamers like to watch clips from games, but making them was often either a very high-tech (running game consoles through video capture cards on a PC) or low tech (shaky camera-phone footage) affairs. This allows anybody to capture and publish their play easily and immediately. Did you finally frag one of your rivals? Publish it! He might respond with a collection of videos however. This kind of public rivalry has parallels in sports and other competitions and generally increases the public demand of those events. On the more peaceful note you might use the creative aspects of some games to create a homage or a gift for a love one. At the very least we should see a generous crop of "how-to" videos helping those having trouble. Of course the next step is to expand the list. YouTube is actually one of the more difficult services to interact with (and I'm glad they tackled it first) - it should be relatively simple for games to contribute to sites like Flickr (the dev library already allows for in game screenshots), MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. There's really no reason that your PS3 couldn't update your blog with "what am I playing now" information. So there are three examples showing how the PS3 can allow for new (even unofficial) information to be added to a game, how in-game information can be used outside of a game and how games can connect and interact with popular third-party services (and, I hope, eventually with popular social networking services). There's a lot of good stuff on the PS3 in general, but these are specific example of how Sony is attempting to blur or eliminate the lines between a closed, console eco-system and the open online community. This is something that neither Microsoft (who has built up an excellent, tho' rigidly closed online system) and Nintendo (who, it seems, is utterly retarded when it comes to online) have shown no interest in. Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;192386516;25150098;k Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:261688 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
