The Sandbox

Amid all the smack-talk between the warring formats of HD DVD and Blu-ray, Mitsubishi weighs in with some interesting Blu-ray development. This week, the company demoed a new Blu-ray player that, along with a special pair of goggles, brings 3D to DLP televisions and projectors. There's also talk of integrating the technology with a console gaming system.

Of course just the uttering of the word "goggles" is enough to turn any gamer's stomach. The vaporware dream of immersive Lawnmower Man style gaming has been just that (remember Dactyl Nightmare?). The key is not just making the gimmicky glasses, but creating smart games that support it.

An old coworker (or, the shibboleth of an old newsgroup of mine, cow orker), Jason Booth, has blogged about his low opinion of the PS3, and was inundated with a lot of Sony defenders saying all kinds of, well, web-forumish things.

Trouble is, he's right, guys. Face up to it.

Because I finally bought Heavenly Sword, and it's beautiful. I don't care about whether or not it's short, because with a new baby in the house, I don't really have time to play a super long game. I am very impressed with the art direction and animation, and I have enjoyed every minute of the game so far.

The news about the new MacBook Air cannot have escaped anyone reading this: if you're online at all, you have seen effusive mentions of this new, incredibly tiny, laptop. And it is pretty cool, if you don't mind sacrificing almost everything on the altar of size.

But for gamers, the sacrifice is large. Integrated Intel GMA X3100 graphics with 144mb of shared video memory is a poor display driver, very poor, and games from six or seven years ago can tax it. While obviously Apple has no intention of targeting gamers with this road warrior laptop, it is another sign that Apple never targets gamers. Which I find odd: the Aqua UI and technology like Quartz Extreme run better the better your video card is. If you please gamers, you'll please everyone with your performance. And you'll be able to run the most lucrative consumer software outside Microsoft Office.

From Gamasutra.com: for the second month in a row, the PS3 has outsold the XBox360 in North America. The interesting thing is that I'm guessing this has a lot more to do with the fact that it's pretty much the cheapest Blu-Ray player out there, or at least the cheapest that anyone knows about, because as you can see on the software chart at Gamasutra, there's only one PS3 game in the top ten, compared to six XBox titles. And the PS3 title, Devil May Cry 4, is behind the XBox version.

This says folks aren't seriously gaming on the PS3s they're buying, they're finally buying hi-def DVDs players, now that the format war is over.

[via 1up] Microsoft may be looking to unload its crushing hardware cost burden onto other folks, and license other companies to produce XBox consoles. As an exercise in expanding the brand, it's a brilliant move: XBox consoles are expensive, and Microsoft has already established a serious presence with the console and with XBox Live. Now they can continue to make the pie bigger by inviting hardware competition in increasing the platform's spread, driving costs down, and hopefully resulting in better quality (not to mention quieter, sheesh) consoles. Let's hope it happens.

So my hand is sort of cramped up from playing Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS, and it just got me thinking about the world of input devices, and how this is really a new golden age of interesting ways of interacting with games.