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Written by Wikipedia
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Tuesday, 16 March 2010 12:13 |
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The first conceptions of the PlayStation date back to 1986 in Japan where it was created. Nintendo had been attempting to work with disc technology since the Famicom, but the medium had problems. Its rewritable magnetic nature could be easily erased (thus leading to a lack of durability), and the discs were a copyright infringement danger. Consequently, when details of CDROM/XA (an extension of the CD-ROM format that combines compressed audio, visual, and computer data, allowing all to be accessed simultaneously) came out, Nintendo was interested. CD-ROM/XA was being simultaneously developed by Sony and Philips. Nintendo approached Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on, tentatively titled the "SNES-CD". A contract was signed, and work began. Nintendo's choice of Sony was due to a prior dealing: Ken Kutaragi, the person who would later be dubbed "The Father of the PlayStation", was the individual who had sold Nintendo on using the Sony SPC-700 processor for use as the eight-channel ADPCM sound synthesis set in the Super Famicom/SNES console through an impressive demonstration of the processor's capabilities.
Sony also planned to develop a Super Famicom-compatible, Sony-branded console, but one which would be more of a home entertainment system playing both Super Nintendo cartridges and a new CD format which Sony would design. This was also to be the format used in SNES-CD discs, giving a large degree of control to Sony despite Nintendo's leading position in the video gaming market.
The DualShock controller.
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Written by Dan Adams, Steve Butts, Charles Onyett
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Tuesday, 16 March 2010 11:57 |
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When it was decided all of the IGN platform channels of "last generation" would need to put together a Top 25 [Insert Your Platform Here] Games of All Time, we PC guys let out a shudder of dread. While the consoles of last generation have five years of games to pick from for "All Time", we have a considerably larger pool of titles. If we had been smart from the beginning and only used games from the last generation of PC games (Windows XP or DirectX9 probably), things would have been easier. Unfortunately for us, the whole "Of All Time" thing basically sent us back to the beginning of PC games.
With such a large catalog of games, it's pretty easy to find 25 games that are worthy of contention as the best. In fact, we had to narrow the list to 25 from about 90 games that all were good enough to at least be brought up in conversation. So we had to make some decisions about what would be included. We came up with some loose criteria to work with to help. We looked at how good the game was in general, the kind of impact it had on the industry, and lastly, how fun it is to play by today's standards. The durability test was important to us since there have been so many excellent titles worthy of noting since last we tried to piece together a list like this in 2000. If we had just gone by importance, we'd have a hard time including anything but the games that started genres or pushed them into mass popularity.
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Written by Polybren
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Tuesday, 16 March 2010 11:13 |
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It's no secret that Nintendo has experienced incredible success since the launch of the Nintendo DS and the Wii. However, a report from Financial Times this week is attempting to put that success in proper perspective.
According to the article, Nintendo is on track to earn $1.6 million in profit this year--for each of its workers. Given the publisher's latest revenue projections and a workforce of less than 3,000 permanent employees, the business-focused site believes the Wii maker will top the per-employee profit numbers of heavy hitters like Google and Goldman Sachs. The Financial Times believes the search engine giant pulled in about $626,000 for each of its employees, while the global investment firm managed $1.24 million.
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