Mass Effect 2 Issues Unfixable

It seems that those who’ve found that they have issues with Bioware’s phenomenally successful Mass Effect 2 on standard-definition TVs are out of luck, with the developer indicating that a fix is impossible.

For those who’ve been blissfully unaware of the trouble, it seems that anyone trying to play Mass Effect 2 on a TV that doesn’t display in some flavour of high-definition (it seems that 1080p isn’t a requirement, you should be fine with 720p) has been having trouble with text. The issue stems from the face that the text in Mass Effect 2 seems to have been sized with high-definition TVs in mind, meaning that it’s so small that it essentially becomes unreadable on older displays.

Microsoft Talks Innovation

Microsoft is no stranger to criticism, whether justified or not, but it has responded to a recent piece from a former employee, Dick Brass, who essentially alleges that the company’s best work is behind it.

Gloves off, gauntlet thrown down, metaphores mixed

Brass was once Microsoft’s vice president in charge of ClearType and responsible for its ebook and tablet efforts back in the day when Microsoft was one of the very few companies that seemed to be taking the whole affair seriously. In a recent editorial piece for the New York Times, Brass paints a fairly sad picture of Microsoft, describing it by saying that,

“Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosectution of the 1990s.”

Sony Considering Charging for PSN

It seems that the rumours that Sony was seriously considering implementing a charge for the use of its PlayStation Network service weren’t entirely unfounded. Sony execs have admitted that the idea is an attractive one.

Word comes from IGN of an interview with Sony’s senior vice president of marketing, Peter Dille, who wouldn’t be drawn as to just whether or not Sony had already made a decision on whether or not it would charge for the service yet, but he puts paid to any lingering doubt about Sony wanting to monetise the service current service. If so, it could well be the beginning of a fairly fundamental shift in the console landscape.

Buffalo to Release PS3-Specific Drives

It seems that Buffalo is to launch two new drives, specifically made to cater to those of us using Sony’s PlayStation 3 console as a media player, and somehow, it seems an interesting prospect.

TGDaily is carrying word of the two new drives from Buffalo, news of which has hit in the same week as the announcement that Microsoft is to offer a 250GB external drive for sale, initially at least, only in Japan for its Xbox 360. Still, the drives from Buffalo seem a little heavier-duty than Microsoft’s offering, boasting fully 500GB of external storage for the Sony device.

Big in Japan Only – Xbox 360 250GB Add-on

Maybe Microsoft aren’t aware how many Xbox junkies there are around this part of the world as, for now anyway, they have announced that a new 250GB hard drive add-on which they have developed for the Xbox 360 will only be available as a stand-alone product in Japan for the foreseeable future. Kei Iwasaki, a Microsoft spokesman in Tokyo, says that the company has no plans to send the HDD across the globe.

The 250GB HDD Xbox add-on would find more than a few fans if it ever makes its way to Ireland.

Currently being offered in the Land of the Rising Sun and in some other foreign territories as part of a bundle with a new console,  the add-on will reach Japanese consumers  as an individual product in the middle of next month. More than doubling the storage capacity of the Xbox 360 Elite (which stands at 120GB), there’s plenty of Xbox addicts worldwide who would love to get their hands on this if possible.

PlayStation 3 Hack Released

It seems that the recently revealed hack for Sony’s PlayStation 3 has now been released to the web at large through the medium of the hacker, George “Geohot” Hotz’, blog.

With many questioning the veracity of Hotz’ claim that he had managed to hack the PlayStation 3, or simply to what extent that hack might be useful, it seems that the most sensible move would be to simply release the hack into the wild and see just what the community at large can do with it. Still, it’s well worth keeping in mind that this is the same man who originally managed to hack the iPhone.

Perhaps the most detailed (without being so complex as to be practically incomprehensible) writeup on the first exploit to hit the PS3 has come from Eurogamer.net, which quickly points out that,

Mass Effect 2 Sees Vast Pre-Release Piracy

It seems that Bioware’s upcoming sequel to its hit science-fiction RPG, Mass Effect, has been leaked to bittorrent sites, with many users rushing to illegally download the game before its release.

Mass Effect feels the mass downloading effect 😦

Word comes via TorrentFreak of the leak, which has apparently resulted in an inordinate amount of illegal downloads. Indeed, the figure was initially reported to be “more than 300,000” to be somewhere in the process of downloading or having already downloaded the game illegally. This is thanks, in no small part, to the fact that the first Mass Effect game managed to win such critical acclaim for itself.

Komplett Recommends – Monitors

We’re often asked what display we’d recommend for people looking for a monitor for around a certain price. It’s a relatively easy one to do, but given the sheer number of inquiries we get, we thought some of you might appreciate a blog post that outlines some of the monitors that we really like and think offer excellent value for money at their prices.

We’re going to recommend entry-level monitor, two mid-range and one relatively high-end display. It’s relatively simple, so we’ll get straight into it.

Entry Level:

Whenever someone asks us to recommend a monitor that comes in at as low a price as possible but that they can still rely on to give them a good image reliable, we always recommend the Acer 18.5” LCD.

Click through to see our page for Acer's 18.5-inch LCD 🙂

Considering its genuinely surprisingly low price, it’s a very solid device indeed. At 18.5” and such a low price, it’s not going to be too surprising that it doesn’t quite manage Full HD, but it does boast a maximum output resolution of 1366×768, which isn’t something to turn your nose up at. Moreover, as the name implies, it is a widescreen display, so it’s still an excellent one to plug into a notebook if you’re one for watching movies directly from machines with a smaller screen.

Of course, the one downside is that it only takes VGA as input, so that could well limit your options a little. Still, it’s not too hard to pick up an Xbox 360 to VGA adaptor, and considering the fact that the combination of an adaptor and this display will set you back relatively little, it’s an excellent way to free up the living room TV if you’re living in a house with any avid console gamers. It’s also got a response time of 5ms, which should be plenty fast enough for most gamers.

Acer’s 18.5” Wide display is only €108.55, which has inspired at least one of our readers to pick up no fewer than four of them; it’s an impressive array, though what he thinks to do with four displays I can’t imagine. I’m sure one is permanently sitting on Facebook by now…

OnLive Beta Shows off Remote Gaming

Gamers have been excited about the idea of OnLive for a while now, since the proposed subscription service would essentially allow for high-end performance without the cost.

It certainly looks the part alright...

Essentially, what OnLive offers is a service by which users pay to have remote access to a system playing whatever game it is they want to play. The simplest example is that if someone wanted to play a game like Dragon Age, they could do so simply by plugging the OnLive hardware into their TV and let the service handle the network magic needed to mediate the experience between the pad in the player’s hands and the Xbox 360 or PS3 off in the ether somewhere.

PS3 Motion Controller Delayed

It seems that Sony will see its PlayStation 3 motion controller delayed until Autumn of this year, after relatively recent reassurances that we’d see it this Spring.

While Sony describes its motion sensitive controller as the “Motion Controller (Tentative Name),” the news of the delay comes alongside some new rumours about the device itself, which it seems could well end up being called the PlayStation Arc, which would certainly help describe the motions to which it might be ascribed. Sony’s CEO, Kaz Hirai, detailed the delay in a statement from Sony, saying that,