Warning: This post contains some mild profanity.

This is just an short update while I work on my main post (which should be out over the next couple of days), but there’s an article over on ZDNet which  essentially states that the 3D TV “revolution” is a waste of time!  I could have said that ages ago, but yeah… 3D TV is totally pointless.  I’m actually even wondering if the 3DS might be a bit giimmicky, but I’m gonna let it slide for now.  3D TV itself is rather pointless as a technology, but then the companies seem to expect (or rather hope) that we’ll spend money on a technology that at present is nothing more than a gimmick, especially when we’re barely taking advantage of HD at present!  Yes, I’m all for innovation and all that, but honestly, 3D TV is pretty much just a fad at present and I don’t see it becoming any more than that considering we’re still trying to get used to HD, which as of yet still isn’t a standard technology.  The ZDNet article implied that instead of adding a new gimmick to TVs, they should focus on making HD TVs more affordable and available to the masses.  And given in the UK there’s a Digital Switchover planned over the next couple years, I do think this is more important.  Admittedly though, where I live has no digital coverage at all, and only poor analogue coverage… I wish that were sorted out.  So, instead of fixing present tech, people seem more focused on “The Next Big Thing”, even though in this case, what’s being touted as such is just a gimmick.

Okay, maybe I should go back to the 3DS; I had a chance to play one for a little while, both at the airport before flying to the States and also in a local Walmart, so I am at least reasonably well informed about the 3DS.  I have also glanced at the 3DS Wikipedia article, and while I’m intrigued by the majority of the 3DS’s specs, I’m still not 100% sure about the 3D aspect.  Even more amusing is the fact that the cameras haven’t even been upgraded from the 0.3MP!  It’s not like I’m expecting something like 16MP with the cameras, but the least they could do is increase the sensors to 1 or 2MP; those are cheap enough to at least provide decent resolution on a larger monitor; consider the fact that the SD Card can be used elsewhere, like for printing pictures to paper… also consider that a picture resolution that is over 3-6 times larger than the camera of the DSi, which means sharper pictures.  There has already been comments (based on what has been said in the article) that 3D versions of movies look worse than their 2D counterparts, but then again that is to be expected given the way the films were initially filmed.  I suppose though, to give Nintendo its due, it did at least stick 2 camera sensors on the front so the 3D effect would probably look better than what you see in the movies.  Ironically, I was actually thinking Anaglyph 3D was cool (and still do to an extent), but I really don’t know how 3D adds to movies… sure, it looks good with a still image, but when it’s done with an entire movie, it starts to lose its appeal.

The reason why a still image in 3D is more appealing is because it’s just a still image and you can view it at multiple angles and it still can impress you.  Okay, maybe I’m easily amused, but that’s what I think; you’re free to disagree.  Ironically, I haven’t actually seen any 3D movies, but from the way it sounds, it’s probably best that I haven’t.  I’m also not entirely sure if it’s the sort of pop-out 3D (which is the more impressive kind) or the hologram type 3D where the background appears to have depth, although my point still remains that the tech is presently gimmicky.  However, what Jonny Chung Lee has done with 3D on the Wii strikes me as one of the most impressive uses of 3D.  Granted, this is moving into the realms of games (like I haven’t already gone there talking about the 3DS), but using 3D in games seems just a little less gimmicky than using it in movies, which just seems like an excuse to push 3DTV (and movies) in a world that’s still not fully gotten the hang of  HD yet.  At least in the case of games, there’s a better case for using 3D, although at the present stage of things it’s still not much above 3DTV.  That said however, if a game were made to properly take advantage of the 3D tech, instead of just it being an optional thing, then it may start to become worth it… but honestly, we’re looking at a few years down the line before a proper company goes down that route; you’ll find that it’s the indie and homebrew developers that embrace it first; again, look at Johnny Chung Lee’s efforts with the Wii, a system not even designed for 3D, and not only that, it’s a pretty cheap form of immersive 3D!

All that said though, Nintendo do have a better grip on 3D compared to most companies, when you consider the existence of the Virtual Boy, which was their first foray into 3D gaming.  Granted, it didn’t sell well, but Nintendo certainly learnt from their mistakes in releasing the 3DS (except for maybe still having really low resolution cameras!).  The technology is still in its infancy though, but at least the 3Ds isn’t entirely reliant on its 3D capabilities; it does have the vast DSi and DS library, in addition to the Virtual Console and other downloadable stuff to keep it going, in addition to the gradually increasing library of 3DS games.  The lesson Nintendo clearly learnt here is don’t solely rely on a gimmick to shift consoles.  The enhanced 3DS specs also mean that the system has a fair bit of untapped potential as well, so even if we don’t have games that use the 3D mode, we should at least have games that make use of the enhanced hardware of the 3DS, which will be a great prospect in itself… maybe we might finally see Final Fantasy 7 on on the DS?  That said though, I don’t quite know if the game could be fit onto a single 3DS cart, although after stealing a quick glance at some of the search results in Google (this is going to do wonders for my search results!), the cartridges apparently can store up to 8GB of data, which is more than enough for FF7, hell FF7 could fit on a UMD… though I amn’t confident to fully assert this, given I don’t know how many CDs FF7 takes up off the top of my head, so if anyone happens to know, I would appreciate being told.  Still though, even if it may just barely fit on a UMD, it should be able to fit on a 3DS cart at the very least, and even then the full 8GB capacity won”t even be needed!

I just hope they don’t make it 3D as it really doesn’t need it; what it could probably do with though is a graphical overhaul, but I’d be happy with being able to play the game as it was back in the day, or even similar to what it is like in FF3 or FF4; the fact both those games (which are pretty large, though maybe not as large as FF7) could be done in a similar style to FF7 shows that it should be possible to put FF7 on the 3DS at the very least… I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it could work on the DS with one cartridge though, especially because the DS carts hold 1 Gigabit of data, which roughly equates to about 128MB; I’ve seen the size of DS ROMs, so I know by default that it wouldn’t even store a CD’s worth of data!  Still though, FF7 appearing on the 3DS, or indeed any console is just a fanboy dream; I’m not expecting it to appear to be honest, but it’s nice to dream… it would be nice to see a remade version on the PS3 though.

Speaking of the PS3 and potential, I bet people are surprised to hear me not comment on the recent PSN outage.  Truth be told, that given I’m not home at present, there’s been less of a push for me to comment on issues that would normally affect me.  However, given that the PS3 is also related to the 3DTV gimmick, both through BluRay and also through 3D gaming (indeed, there was a patch released to help with it), it seems appropriate to talk about the PS3, or rather PSN.  A friend of mine showed me this article on IGN the other day, and I was not impressed with it.  I’m aware that it’s a joke, but all it really does is piss off those who use PSN, while giving the PS Haters and 360 Fanboys more ammunition to say how “crap”the PS3 is; the article comes across to me as somewhat immature and a slap in the face to those who use the PSN service.  I’m totally aware that the same thing would have happened if XBL is down, but that sort of article in any case seems immature and/or a tad petty.  Like one of the commenters said, if you’re a gamer, it shouldn’t matter what console you own.  My reasons for not having a 360 aren’t really anything to do with hating Microsoft (though I amn’t exactly a fan of theirs either); my reason is that I cannot justify yet another MS system in my house, given I already have 2 Windows desktops, as well as this Windows laptop and a broken Windows laptop.  There’s also the fact that I have a rake of PS1 games which I wouldn’t want to give away and also I wanted a Bluray drive, so my reasons for buying a PS3 were purely based upon practicality rather out of dislike.  Admittedly, I’d have loved a 60GB PS3 (a US version), and the restored option to install Linux (hint hint Sony), but the system itself (and PSN too) is pretty solid.

I would also say the same about the XBL service too, given there’s never been any problems that I have been made aware of.  I do quite enjoy playing on the 360, even if it’s only Rock Band 3 mostly, although I’m not a big fan of the controller, but that said, it’s not mind-bogglingly difficult to use; my dislike of the controller stems more from the fact that I prefer how a PS controller feels.  Anyway, I digress… PSN outage opinion, yes?  My major concern would lie with my account details,which may or may not have been compromised; as a result, as soon as I’m able to I am totally going to have change my accounts system around for websites I access, just to prevent my details from being compromised elsewhere.  My payment details are thankfully safe, because I’ve had 2-3 new cards issued since then, but even so, others wouldn’t necessarily be so lucky (though perhaps the payment details are safe if they’re separate from account details).  Given PSN has 60 million users around the world, even some of those account details being compromised is still dangerous; we’re still looking at a figure in the millions at least, which makes me think if I ever want to buy something on PSN (or anywhere else like that in the future), I’m gonna stick to the pre-paid cards instead… it’s certainly safer!  That’s enough about me though… what about Sony’s way of handling things?

Well, from what I hear, Sony is handling things poorly, although given what they’ve done in the past, that’s kind of par for course with them anyway; that’s not a stab at all, just look at what they’ve done in the past and you’ll see what I mean.  I can’t help but wonder if this “attack” is related to what happened with the “GeoHot Incident”, as well as the removal of Linux, amongst other things it could be.  I know Sony isn’t exactly in people’s good books at the moment.  I know another company in the games industry who also isn’t in people’s good books either… you could say that some people are “barking mad” about one of their releases, but I won’t be discussing them here; this is merely a hint of what I’ll be tackling next.  In fact, I do actually have a lot of the post done, but it still needs working on.  Anyway, enough about that, let’s get back to Sony/PSN.  Sony being tight-lipped about the entire incident isn’t really going to do it any favours either… nor is the lack of compensation due to the outage.  The fact that MS actually gives every (Gold & Silver) XBL Member a free XBLA game for any outages is something that Sony should really take note of.

It’s ironic that a company like MS that is disliked by so many people actually knows how to properly treat its customers… then we have Sony, who caused a lot of controversey with their rootkit installer in 2005, and more recently removed the option to install Linux, after promising months before that it wasn’t going to be removed, and then subsequently locking people out of PSN if people refused to update.  When you consider the most recent incident, along with the Geohot thing that was recently settled, it’s no surprise Sony got attacked.  I’m not saying it’s right or anything (why would I, given my personal details are on there too?), but it’s easy to see why Sony were attacked, and the way they’re acting now just goes to show how much the consumer is getting screwed over by them.  On a random note, if this did happen to XBL, I realised I’d get a free game out of it, simply for being an XBL Member, which is nice, but yeah… that was just a random thought.  I understand that a company is out to make money, but at the same time, it’s not exactly morally right to essentially take a customer’s money, then screw them over by denying them advertised features… I don’t think even MS were that bad, and even if they were, they have at least learnt from their mistakes.

Someone I spoke to (though don’t like) on a chat room I frequent said that he hoped Apple would be next, although I’m not quite sure that Apple have generated quite the backlash against people that Sony have.  Granted, I’m not exactly happy with Apple, given how they have screwed developers over, the fact you need a Mac to develop for their systems, the fact they want to clamp down on open standards and that their iStore is subject to extremely draconian rules, but even then they haven’t quite generated the amount of shall we say “fury” that Sony has.  I certainly won’t be buying another iPod ever again in any case, and in fact, I’m quite happy with my Sansa Clip Plus, although I need to pick up a 32GB SDHC Card for it so it can store up to 40GB of songs; for what is roughly a matchbox-sized device, it is really impressive with what it can do… I certainly can’t wait to properly put it through its paces from next week.  I especially like that the playback time for MP3s is in the double digits… I think 16  hours was the advertised battery life, which will be great for when I fly home, although the plane I was on when flying between Canada and the UK did have a USB port, so I can recharge it, plus listen to their music and watch movies, so I won’t rely on it too much till after I touch down in Heathrow.

All that aside though, it’ll be interesting to see how long before PSN is back up, and what Sony will say happened, and also what the damage is.  I am expecting an email about that either by the end of this month or early into next.  Suffice it to say, I think I need to start beefing my security methods up a bit, especially where it comes to my money or access to it.  I’d be recommending that others do the same as well, in case an attack of this magnitude happens again… that first attack may have been just to prove a point as I’m not sure if anyone claimed responsibility for the attack yet.  What I do know is that the downtime has cost Sony allegedly between $20 Million to $24 Billion, although I think the latter figure’s a bit extreme.  And my bad, it appears (according to this article) that Sony may actually compensate users after all.  It’s kind of hard nailing details down when this post is being written on the fly, though I’m expecting more additions and edits to be made when the proper story comes forward, because there’s a lot of rumours flying around too about this story.  Rest assured that while I don’t know the full extent of the details now, I will eventually find out, between reading subsequent news articles and also reading the comments below.

I should end this post now as I’m nearly at 3000 words for this post, but suffice it to say, I will be watching the PSN outage with more interest and will be sure to update this post (and future related) with more factual details on this as and when I can.  I still think $24 Billion is a a it much though, but then I realise there are 60 million PSN users, so the maths do add up.  I really can’t wait to get the Gamed Up site up and running though, so I can finally do some proper reporting with stuff like this.  Anyway, that’s it for now… I’ll be back soon with another post.

Oh, actually… one last thing… I’ll end up doing less DiggerCast and DiggerFeast episodes than I originally planned, due to financial and hardware issues, but some will be done… also expect that the Stormhaven Media website will be up soon as well.  Also, Stormhaven Networks is essentially being downsized; it instead will merge everything (Stormhaven IT, Stormhaven IP, Storm Servers and Stormhaven Networks) into a single company called Stormhaven Developments, which will focus solely on software development, be it games, business software or web-based software.  I also have to develop a 5 year plan for the company soon as well.  Rest assured that nothing will really be hugely affected, though you may notice minor changes involved with Stormhaven Networks, and perhaps FSIRC, but that will be discussed at a later date.

Edit: It appears that customers’ credit card details are secure, according to an article here; it also links to the official Sony thread.  The payment data is encrypted, but that doesn’t mean it’s not 100% secure, so be warned.  It also appears the amount of PSN users is 77 million, which is a lot.  I read that the average cost of identity theft is about $319 which is where the 24 billion comes from. Admittedly, while it is nice to finally get some answers, they should have said something sooner, even if it was just to say that they are assessing the damage and to please bear with them, but I guess someone would complain about it.  There is a lot of stuff out there at the moment about this story, so I may need to revise a few things later…

Edit 2: Anonymous have stated that the PSN network outage has nothing to do with them, although they were responsible for a previous network outage at the start of the month.  Sony seems to be getting attacked a lot this month!  I did wonder if Anonymous had something to do with the attack, but given they had orchestrated an attack before, I don’t think they felt the need to proceed with another.  The hacking therefore is a concern, because as far as I’m aware, it’s not known who actually performed the attack, meaning there is an increased danger that the payment details could be compromised, even if it is encrypted.