Posted 11/19/09 at 07:33:48 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Firefox is a force to be reckoned with in the desktop browser space. But could the Mozilla foundation be looking to port it to the PS3? Playstation Insider claims that Sony and Mozilla are in talks to do just that. "We recently received a tip from a source very close to Sony who says that they have been in talks with Mozilla lately about possibly porting Firefox over to the PS3," said Playstation Insider’s Dustin Rudzinski.

It’s no secret that the Playstation’s current browser is nothing to write home about. So access to a “real” browser would be a real treat for PS3 owners. The tipster didn’t know if any deal had actually been struck, but what a pleasant firmware update that would be. So PS3 owners, if you had Firefox on the console, would you actually use it to browse?

Read More

Posted 10/15/09 at 03:34:15 AM by Nathan Grayson

CryEngine 3's officially ready for third-party consumption, and Crytek's released a new trailer to celebrate. Despite Crytek's jaunt into console land, the trailer's still bonkers beautiful. Don't believe us? See for yourself. Or, if you'd rather read about the feast your eyes are gearing up to scarf down, look at this:

“CryENGINE 3 also introduces CryENGINE 3 Live Create™,” reads the press release. “It allows developers to work with a single editor, but see and play the results in real-time on PC, PS3 and Xbox360, hooked up to a single dev PC. The engine takes care of the conversion and optimization of assets in real-time; enables instant, cross-platform changes to any part of game creation and as a result materially increases the speed, quality and significantly reduces the risk of multiplatform development.”
 
Granted, everyone and their ITT Tech professor is developing cross-platform games these days, but we still think this has the potential to radically alter the triple-A game development scene. Less muss and fuss over the eccentricities of other videogame platforms (*cough*PS3*cough*) could lead to faster development cycles. And developers might also end up saving a buck or two here, which is never a bad thing. This is all just speculation on our part, though.

Would any game developers in the audience care to enlighten us?

Read More

Posted 05/13/09 at 11:30:00 AM by Chris Comiskey

So you’ve installed that shiny Ubuntu distro onto your PlayStation 3 and finagled a couple of cool applications to boot. And yet, there’s still a lot of empty real estate on that newly formatted hard drive, and you’re no doubt pondering what else you can load up on your now living room-friendly PC. Turns out, there are literally thousands of options available; but the task of sorting through the seemingly endless lists and testing each and every app to see if it suits your tastes and jives with the PS3 can be a daunting task. But luckily for you, we’ve done exactly that; we rolled up our sleeves, burned the midnight oil, and muscled the necessary digital elbow grease to whittle down the Ubuntu archives to the top nine absolute keepers. So what are you waiting for? Plug in your PS3’s keyboard and mouse, fire up Jaunty Jackalope, and read onward to get cracking.

Read More

Posted 04/01/09 at 12:00:00 PM by Chris Comiskey

If you're only using your $500 PlayStation 3 for console gaming, you're missing out on half of its hidden versatility: the ability to upgrade into a fully functional PC! Inside that shiny plastic shell resides some decent computing silicon, just waiting to be released from its undeserved console shackles. And while Windows Vista and OSX are no-goes due to legal issues, there's no reason at all not to dual boot into a perfectly serviceable Linux platform when the need arises.

The installation process is fairly straightforward, and the hard drive is easily upgradeable if you don't mind spending a little extra cash on the side. And while Ubuntu for PlayStation has a few functional limitations, you can find myriad excellent applications for you to enjoy from the comfort of your own living room, including VLC for encoded video playback, Amarok to blast your digital music library, and some classic SNES emulation software that you can play using your PS3's Sixaxis or Dualshock controller. This guide will show you how to do all of the above, so let's get started!

Read More

Posted 03/20/09 at 03:00:00 PM by Paul Lilly

Nvidia has been quite the busy body in the console market as of late. Earlier this week the graphics chip maker announced it had signed a tools and middleware license agreement with Sony to offer its PhysX technology software development kit (SDK) for use on the PlayStation 3 console, and then two days later, made a similar announcement regarding Nintendo's Wii console.

"Nintendo has reshaped the home entertainment and video game market with the success of the Wii console. Adding a PhysX SDK for Wii is key to our cross-platform strategy and integral to the business model for our licensed game developers and publishers,” said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of content and technology at NVIDIA. “With NVIDIA PhysX technology, developers can easily author more realistic game environments for the evolving demands of a broad class of Wii gamers."

Three months ago, AMD had painted a gloom-and-doom future for Nvidia's PhysX technology, saying "There is no plan for closed and proprietary standards like PhysX. As we have emphasized, with our support for OpenCL and DX11, close and proprietary standards will die."

AMD wasn't just being a wet blanket, as they weren't the only ones to question to closed standards when it comes to in-game physics. This makes Nvidia's latest partnership with two major console makers a particularly interesting one, which could very well end up seeing more widespread PhysX support trickling over to the PC as a result.

Read More

Posted 12/31/08 at 06:11:11 PM by Andy Salisbury

It looks like MITM attacks aren’t the only things ripping off SSL certificates these days, it looks like Sony’s PS3 is capable of the act as well!

In a recent study conducted with more than 200 PlayStation 3 consoles, researchers were able to create a secure sockets layer certificate for absolutely any web page. The forged certificates were made through a proof-of-concept attack. This particular attack runs by generating millions of possible certificates, and once a pair that contains a special collision in the MD5 hash is found, a legitimate website certificate is requested from one of the authorities that relies on only MD5 to generate signatures. These certificates have been accepted by every major browser.

“This break is major,” stated Karsten Nohl, cryptography expert and researcher at the University of Virginia. “It definitely is the most wide-scale attack, because anything short of patching all browsers in the world to not accept the certificates, there's nothing you can do to prevent it.”

Still, there’s no stated fix for the issue today. Let’s just hope that since the researchers possess the information on how the attack is conducted, they’ll be able to make one soon.

Read More

Posted 12/12/08 at 11:06:04 PM by Nathan Grayson

With pirates closing in on all sides, many publishers abandoned PC gaming's ship as though it were already a potential set for Little Mermaid 9: I Don't Want to Be A Mermaid; I Want to Be A Boat. PC Gaming Alliance president Randy Stude obviously wasn't one of those naysayers, but he does have a few choice words for them.

"If someone wants to leave the PC market [because of piracy], we’ll miss you," he told Gamepolitics. "We’ll watch with admiration as your titles ship in a diluted fashion without a whole lot of game play innovation, at least until you copy the innovation that occurs on the PC. We'll find the great games on PC and we’ll play those."

On top of that, Stude believes PCs and consoles aren't so different from each another, and thinks the two walks of life will end up meeting somewhere down the road.

"The guts of every console should tell you that the capability is there for the PC to act as the central point for all the consoles," he said. "If you bought a PC and as part of that equation you said, Okay, when you’re on the phone with Dell, 'Hey, Dell, on this PC, this new notebook I’m buying, can you make sure it has the PlayStation 4 option built into it?'"

"Well, why not? Why shouldn’t that be the case? [Sony is] certainly not making any money on the hardware. I mean, can’t they create a stable enough environment to specify  that if Dell’s going to sell that notebook and say that it’s PlayStation 4 [compatible] that it must have certain ingredients and it must meet certain criteria? Absolutely they could do that."

Four more years! Four more years!

Read More

Posted 10/02/08 at 05:22:00 PM by Paul Lilly

One of the high points with the technology used in Sony's Playstation 3 console is the Cell processor technology. A similar concept could be coming to the PC, and you'll have Toshiba to thank, not Sony.

Toshiba's SpursEngine is based on the same Cell processor technology as found in the PS3 and is used to process HD video with its four Cell cores. The technology makes easy work out of encoding and decoding HD content and can upscale standard-definition video to high-definition video without bogging down the CPU. Toshiba is already using the technology in its Qosmio G50 and F40 notebooks and hopes to expand to the desktop market via add-in cards by the end of the years.

LeadTek and Thomson are already on board with plans to release a SpursEngine card within the next few weeks. LeadTek's version is expected to debut this month at about $286 and its Winfast PxVC 1100 card has already been shown at the Ceatec Exhibition in Japan. Thomson is targeting a November release in the $375 to $400 range

Read More