Category: Kev’s Blog

Posted on

Barrier to entry for new PS3 – $499 and $599 versions?

Sony annouced the exact launch dates, configurations and prices yesterday for the much awaited PS3, with it’s 7 core processor, the Cell.

At $499 for the 20GB version and $599 for the 60GB version, one can only think that this is priced way too high for the ‘casual gamer’ and average consumer – you are not going to get the average family pass the electronics store and pick one up without some serious consideration first. However, since Sony bets on a 10 year lifespan for their gaming consoles, is this configuration well placed to last the next 10 years? Yes, probably.

Even at these prices Sony is expected to be taking a serious loss per unit sold, at a cost to manufacture estimated at approx $800 per unit.

The launch date for the new PS3 will be Nov 1 in Japan, followed by Nov 17 in North America.

According to Joystiq, here’s the difference in features in terms of the $100 difference:

<ulL

  • 20GB base vs. 60GB

  • You lose HDMI output
  • You lose MemoryStick / SD / CompactFlash slots
  • You lose 802.11 b/g wireless

    This looks like a substantial difference, so it’s not just the HD upgraded size.

    • Posted on

    Sony set to unveil PS3 at pre-E3 press conference this evening

    This week is E3 week in LA – new game releases a plenty, however the big and much awaited news is going to be Sony’s unveiling of a working, playable PS3 console. Sony are hosting a pre-conference press conference this evening, to supposedly unveil a working PS3.

    Yes, we’ve seen the specs, pictures, the prerendered movies, but this week the big news is going to be a playable console on the floor that people can actually play.

    Posted on

    Selecting a Java Code Generator – update 2

    Last week I wrote a short article about selecting a Java code generator.

    So far I have not had much luck:

    • I’m still disappointed with the Netbeans 5.5 daily builds (last I tried was NetBeans IDE 5.5 daily build 200605050500). This has the most promise, but is still full of bugs and I haven;t been able to get the ‘JSF pages from Entities’ generator to work or deploy successfully to JBoss4.04RC1. The annoying thing so far is when you create a new ENterprise app, if you create Entities in the EJB project, the web project cannot see the Entities and you get no-where with the wizard. If you create the Entities in your Web project then the wizard works, but the JSF pages generated are still not compatible with JBoss 4.0.4 (despite having created defects on the Netbeans site and have them supposedly resolved).
    • The JAG generator gave NullPointerExceptions importing my XMI exported UML model from Poseidon CE1.6.1 UML designer, so no luch there either.

    Next is to go back to Eclipse with with JBoss IDE plugin, and use the Hibernate Tools option to generate a CRUD app skeleton for their JSF/Seam Framework… I haven’t been able to work this out yet without digging into the docs, so time to install the latest versions, browse through the docs and give it another go… by the way, here’s a link for a complete walk-through using the Hibernate Tools: http://www.jboss.com/products/seam/SeamHBTools.html

    Proudly powered by WordPress