أغر؟´«أ½

PlayStation bounces back

• Darren Waters
• 24 Feb 08, 23:30 GMT

It was hard not to spot the optimism beaming from both Sony execs and developers about the future at the Game Developers Conference last week.

The concerns and hushed whispers at last year's GDC about whether Sony had made fatal errors with the platform's launch have given way to positivity.

Sony's Phil Harrison, head of worldwide studios, looked relaxed when I spoke with him on Thursday, although that may have been more to do with the fact he was not giving a keynote this year and was able to enjoy some of the sessions.

I had spoken to Mark Rein, of Epic, earlier in the week and he told me he had never doubted that PlayStation 3 would be anything other than a success. Of course Epic did release on PS3 this week so his comments have to be seen in that light.

UT is the kind of franchise PlayStation has been crying out for - a hard core first person shooter with credibility. The Xbox has long been seen as the platform of choice for FPS fans who don't play on PC.

The 360 of course has Halo 3 and many feel that game set the benchmark for online FPS play.

Mark Rein told me: "We've surpassed what Halo 3 offered."

I'll let you - the readers - argue over that one.

Epic are one of the finest exponents of hard core action titles and UT's availability on the PS3 before the Xbox 360 will delight Sony.

In term of what's to come for the PS3 I was given a sneak peek at titles in the works in London two weeks ago.

Unsurprisingly, sequels for the platform's biggest launch titles are in the works. Cynics will say that studios are merely fixing problems in the original versions, the result perhaps of having to rush the titles out in time for launch.

Here's what I was shown:

Motorstorm 2 is due out in time for Christmas and moves the action away from the desert locale of the original. Gamers will be able to race around a lush island environment, full of interactive vegetation.

The game will feature four-player split-screen action, righting one of the obvious failings of the first game.

The title is some months away from completion but the game's engine looked rock solid and the graphics were as impressive as one would expect from one of the best-looking racing franchises.

Resistance Fall of Man was a bit of a disappointment when it was released. The game promised much but suffered from a lack of originality and flat game design. The world the designers had created was interesting but playing in it felt dull.

So what will Resistance 2 offer? I was shown only a trailer but it's clear developers Insomniac want to make a statement. Online the game will host 60 players simultaneously. It screams epic and tellingly it concludes with the line: "You haven't seen what we are truly capable of."

So what else was I shown? Well, I was shown a trailer for a game not due out till 2009 but was sworn to absolute secrecy. Apparently, Sony just wanted to give a glimpse of what the console will be capable of.

In fact, the game is such a secret that when I mentioned the game to Phil Harrison last week he was unsure at first whether even to admit the title existed. When I explained I had been shown it under strict Non Disclosure Agreement terms he looked relieved.

I don't mean to be a tease - all I can say is that I was left speechless. If the footage I was shown truly is "in game", as told to me by the Sony PR people, then we could be on the brink of a step change in what games consoles are capable of in terms of story-telling and immersion.

And there I'll leave it. Feel free to speculate on what I was shown. I cannot, of course, confirm or deny what it was....

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Learning more mobile lessons

• Darren Waters
• 24 Feb 08, 20:51 GMT

I've just spent a week using my mobile phone - a Nokia N95 - almost exclusively to blog text and video back to the Dot.Life blog.

It's been a steep learning curve but I thought I'd share what has worked and what hasn't.

The original aim was to use the phone to test the limits of what was possible with these devices and examine how the web can be used as a vehicle for delivering content more quickly to the blog.

The positives:

I've been impressed with the video quality of the N95. It tends to drop out when moving the device around but if you can keep it steady then you'll get decent footage, in decent light.

I've used a tripod for some of the filming, but given that the phone wasn't designed to work with a tripod I've had to strap it on in the most clumsy manner.

Most of the stuff I've done handheld and this gives more freedom to move around the subject matter. I could have then edited footage together to make a more polished package but that was never the aim.

I've been using an application called to do the heavy lifting of filing my video. Shozu is a free application and you can set it to send content to a number of different places, including YouTube, Blip.TV, blogs and even FTP.

I have it set to send to the أغر؟´«أ½'s FTP servers, for example. The application will also send photos to places like Flickr, and can move between using your cell network or an available wi-fi hotspot.

The ability to file to a third party website, like Blip.TV, means we can get video from the phone and on the blog often within 30 minutes. It's not always the case that we will need that sort of speed but having the option gives us more flexibility.

I can also envisage a time when for breaking news purposes the ability to shoot video and deliver it back to the أغر؟´«أ½ quickly and in reasonable quality - without the use of a satellite connection - is very useful indeed. I have resolved to always have this equipment with me.

I've been very impressed with people's attitudes to pulling out a mobile phone and suggesting we shoot some video. I had expected people to be horrified but in fact most people were extremely receptive and many were impressed by the novelty.

The negatives:

The N95's internal microphone was designed to deliver phone conversations and not audio from filming. We tried unsuccessfully to get a broadcast mic into the phone and attempts to have Nokia loan us an adaptor they have made for such a purpose failed. To be fair to Nokia the adaptor is not commercially available and they couldn't build one for us in the timeframe we presented them.

I've effectively had to do interviews twice to get the material I need for both the website, for radio and on the mobile phone. Shooting two minutes of video is fun but I was not getting the quotes, background info etc I needed for a fuller written piece. So my working methodology was to do the interview for radio or online first and then shoot a bit of video.

The Bluetooth keyboard I have been using works well enough but it is rather fiddly to type on.

Unsurprisingly, shooting video and sending it back to websites using wi-fi or the cell network drains the battery very quickly. Luckily I had spares to hand.

Follow up:

I'm testing out later in the week for live video broadcasting from the phone. I'm excited about the potential.

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YouTube goes down

• Darren Waters
• 24 Feb 08, 19:54 GMT

A few friends have alerted me to a possible outage at YouTube. I certainly can't get on to the service.

According to some, YouTube has been down for more than an hour....

I'll be keeping an eye on it from my Twitter account. Follow me .

I've been using to look for people's comments about YouTube on Twitter. A very cool web app. Look .

Lots of people on Twitter are linking to block YouTube with the current - seemingly global - outage. I'd be surprised if there was a link as the net doesn't work that way...

UPDATE: I've contacted a Google PR in London who says the service is working for him but is checking on the issue. There are mixed reports - some are saying it is back, others not.

UPDATE TWO: David Ulevitch of OpenDNS that "Pakistan Telecom has decided to (accidentally probably) hijack their IP address space".

UPDATE THREE: I'm just writing a news story on this. Looks like Pakistan's attempts to hijack the YouTube IP addresses internally led to ISPs blocking the site globally.

UPDATE FOUR: There will definitely be some fall out from this. It would seem that all it takes to hijack a website globally is for a telecoms firm to instruct its ISPs that they now run a domain, and for one of those ISPs to announce that globally. So that other ISPs follow suit in a piggyback chain of confusion.

As one net engineer told me:

It is exactly like the "game of telephone" that kids play. For example, Pakistan Telecom says "I am responsible for 1.2.3.4 (some IP address)" and then they tell PCCW. PCCW tells Verizon Business and NTT and others. NTT tells us and so when my customers ask "Where is Youtube, we're just answering based on what we've heard..." But all we know is that we heard it from NTT who heard it from PCCW who heard it from Pakistan Telecom. If Pakistan Telecom was lying (or made a mistake), we'd have no way to verify it.

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