The Games News

Sony announced that they’ve reduced the retail price for the PlayStation 2 from $149.99 to $129.99. PlayStation 2 new price will be most for those who want to save money, because Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony and Nintendo will launch their next-generation consoles this year, making it real expensive for gamers.

PlayStation 2 is the most popular gaming platform in North America, Europe/PAL territories and Japan/Asia, with more than 101 million PlayStation 2 units and approximately one billion pieces of software for the PlayStation 2 have taken worldwide, making it the fastest-selling gaming platform in the world.

According to Revogaming.net, which has a great report about the incredible success of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, 264,400 unique users are logging onto the Wifi Connection every day, and usually receives above 300,000 users on weekends.

Company’s own website, at www.nintendowifi.com, displays a chart for each of its games, as well as an overall chart, showing how many people are logging on each day for the previous two weeks. In less than four months, the Nintendo WiFi Connection service, which offers free online multiplayer for a host of Nintendo DS games, has over a million unique users.

Here is the list of how each game performs:

• Animal Crossing: Wild World 116,901 (44.2% of total)
• Metroid Prime: Hunters 70,954 (26.8% of total)
• Mario Kart DS 59,544 (22.5% of total)
• Tetris DS 15,842 (6% of total)
• Tony Hawk: American Sk8land 1,159 (0.4% of total)

Its official, Sony has announced firmware update, v2.7, to owners of its PSP game, unfortunately only for Japanese PSPs starting today. The update includes support for Macromedia Flash 6 for the PSP web browser and will also include additional support for Apple’s AAC music format, as well as the ability to save podcasts directly to the PSP’s memory stick. But most important the update allows users to select both Simplified and Traditional Chinese as the PSP’s native language.

According to TV.com, ABC will be launching a massive interactive game based on its hit series Lost. The game “The Lost Experience”, which will also feature new characters, is set to become the largest interactive game ever based on a TV show.

Although the story of the game will be different from the one seen in the show and users will have to watch the show for clues and other information for the game, the network hopes that the game will appeal to both fans and non-fans of the TV show.

ABC is hoping that teaming will bring the “The Lost Experience” to continents, each part of the world will be receiving different clues.

Microsoft Corp. said has signed an agreement with Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing of California for upgrading CPU (Central Processing Unit) products for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game consoles. Chartered will upgrade the CPU used for Xbox 360 games console early next year. Technical specifications of the new chip have not been announced. However, Chartered said that the CPU will also be based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology.
Currently, the chip is made on a 90nm process. However, IBM has announced that it is rolling out 65nm processes making the 360 processor smaller and more efficient, meaning it should produce less heat.