Now that the PlayStation 3 has been cracked wide open, it's time for me fulfill my secret desire of reprogramming my console into an exact replica of that robot maid from The Jetsons.
News Blips:
Massive Entertainment (now Ubisoft Massive) founder Martin Walfisz thinks the PS3's hacking woes are far from over. On the heels of Sony's lawsuit against hacker George Hotz and his band of merry men, Walfisz told GameIndustry.biz that the company will have difficulty regaining control. "If that hack works as reported, I don't believe that Sony can regain any control," Walfisz said. "They could try to employ a similar system to Xbox Live, so that people running hacked systems won't have access to the PlayStation Network. But Sony won't be able to stop people from running pirated game copies as long as the machines are not hooked up online." Walfisz added that Sony should look to releasing new hardware as a foolproof method to combat piracy, "a long and expensive process" — especially considering the asking rates of Sony's manufacturing team in Isengard.
Microsoft apparently "ran out" of Xbox 360 consoles during the holiday season. In a Twitter post, Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson) believes the dearth of units won't "win" the NPD Group's December sales figures against Sony and Nintendo. "NPD tomorrow. I found out we ran out of consoles at end of the month so don't expect to win Dec," Hryb wrote. "Jan/Feb supply is tight as well. Likely amazing year over year growth numbers for Xbox." How does one "find out" that all the consoles are gone? Stumble into a suddenly empty warehouse?
Square Enix has seemingly registered a domain name for a direct sequel to Final Fantasy 13. Supererogatory reports that "finalfantasy13-2game.com" was snatched up earlier this week by the excitingly named Corporation Service Company who, according to Supererogatory, is Square's "normal registrar" for its game websites. If true, this will be Square's second direct sequel of a Final Fantasy game following Final Fantasy 10-2, which offered new characters, multiple endings, and Rikku in a bikini.
Sony is planning to set five new gaming world records during its launch of LittleBigPlanet 2. From January 17 to January 19, a crack team of gamers will celebrate LBP2's launch by…er, commandeering a Sony store in New York City to set the records. Under the watchful, smoldering eyes of robed Guiness World Records arbiters, the players will attempt to set the following records:
• Longest marathon playing LittleBigPlanet 2
• Longest marathon playing a platform video game
• Most video game genres played in one video game in 24 hours
• Most user-generated video game levels played in 24 hours
• Most user-generated video game levels played in a marathon
LittleBigPlanet 2 will release on January 18 for the PS3, and if any NY citizens are reading this, you better get your Sony shopping done now.
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