Online Gaming News

Netflix on PlayStation 3: The Great Sony-Microsoft Equalizer? (PC World) October 26 @ 5 PM source

PC World - Surprising no one, really, streaming video maven Netflix will roll out its online TV and movie rental service to North America's nearly 10 million PlayStation 3 owners in November. Sony will announce the deal later today in an action that knocks one of the Xbox 360's "exclusive" pillars out from under Microsoft's games platform.

Sony in PS3 movie streaming deal with Netflix (Reuters) October 26 @ 6 AM source

Reuters - Sony said on Monday it is partnering with Netflix to provide access to the online movie rental company's library through Sony's PlayStation 3 video game console.

Game Retailers Facing Digital Distribution Transition October 25 @ 6 PM source

This editorial at Eurogamer examines how the games industry is dealing with the growth of digital distribution — a transition they're handling better than other entertainment industries, but not without a few stumbling blocks of their own. "The examples from other industries undergoing this transition are not promising, since they tend largely to focus on metaphors involving creeks and a distinct lack of paddles. Bricks-and-mortar retailers of music and movies have largely sat back and grumbled while their businesses were hijacked, first by online retailers of physical product and then by digital distribution services. ... Specialist games retailers who follow that model face little more than a decline into insolvency in their medium-term futures. Worse again, they face competing with far bigger companies to retain their slice of an already shrinking pie — as boxed game retail sales fall off in favor of digital distribution, supermarket chains are increasingly seeing high profile games as a worthwhile loss-leaders."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MySpace Trying To Regain Lost Ground With Games and Music October 24 @ 8 AM source

Over the past several years, MySpace has lost a significant amount of the social networking market to competitors like Facebook. Now, MySpace is trying to recapture lost interest by increasing the site's focus on games and music, as well as keeping an eye out for new technologies that would directly benefit their users. "[News Corp.'s Jonathan Miller] said he is 'obsessed' with real-time technology, such as the one Twitter has exploited in its social networking and microblogging service, and he wants to see MySpace incorporate it. He also said MySpace is lagging by having a platform that has been 'too closed' to external developers, something that he wants to see changed, especially for the sake of MySpace's gaming offerings. In addition, he wants to see MySpace push ahead in mobile."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NVIDIA Targeting Real-Time Cloud Rendering October 21 @ 5 PM source

MojoKid writes "To date, the majority of cloud computing applications have emphasized storage, group collaboration, or the ability to share information and applications with large groups of people. So far, there's been no push to make GPU power available in a cloud computing environment — but that's something NVIDIA hopes to change. The company announced version 3.0 of its RealityServer today. The new revision sports hardware-level 3D acceleration, a new rendering engine (iray), and the ability to create 'images of photorealistic scenes at rates approaching an interactive gaming experience.' NVIDIA claims that the combination of RealityServer and its Tesla hardware can deliver those photorealistic scenes on your workstation or your cell phone, with no difference in speed or quality. Instead of relying on a client PC to handle the task of 3D rendering, NVIDIA wants to move the capability into the cloud, where the task of rendering an image or scene is handed off to a specialized Tesla server. Then that server performs the necessary calculations and fires back the finished product to the client."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ohio high court hears online communications case (AP) October 21 @ 1 AM source

AP - Booksellers, video game dealers, newspaper publishers and other critics of an online child protection law encountered skepticism from state Supreme Court justices Tuesday for their free-speech arguments.

Heavily armed "Borderlands" videogame hits US (AFP) October 20 @ 9 PM source

AFP - "Borderlands," a videogame brimming with weaponry and battle, hit North America on Tuesday.

No Dedicated Servers For CoD: Modern Warfare 2 October 20 @ 11 AM source

An anonymous reader writes "Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling (aka fourzerotwo), in an interview with BashandSlash.com on October 17th, announced that one of the mainstays of PC multiplayer gaming, dedicated servers, won't be in IW's upcoming sequel to Call of Duty 4. Instead, players will use the unknown 'IW Net' for matchmaking purposes. No dedicated servers means no player mods, no player maps, no organized competitive play, no clan servers, etc., and strips away what makes PC gaming different from console gaming. Many vocal gamers have canceled their pre-orders, and a petition to reverse this decision is already past 86,000 signatures."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Assassin's Creed" films to premier on YouTube (AFP) October 19 @ 11 PM source

AFP - Ubisoft said Monday that a short film based on its blockbuster "Assassin's Creed" videogame will premier online at YouTube on October 27.

Xbox Live: Worth a Price Hike? (PC World) October 19 @ 7 PM source

PC World - Microsoft's Xbox Live is the pinnacle of the online gaming experience. Although its competitors Sony and Nintendo offer their respective online services for free, Microsoft often beats both in terms of organization and overall experience. The Xbox Live Gold membership costs players $50 a year and provides full functionality, including messaging, streaming Netflix, multiplayer online games, and more. Microsoft claims 20 million people use Xbox Live. But that $50 price may double over the next few years, according to financial analysts.