By Cynthia Herbert :: 9:09 AM
Sony yesterday sent the gaming world into a tizzy when it teased out news about a PlayStation event scheduled for Wednesday February 20.
In a video posted to their blog, Sony invites PlayStation fans to “see the future.” However, the video isn’t showing fans much of anything, only a stylized rendering of the well-known PlayStation controller symbols. The lack of information in the video, however, is just fueling fans to believe that the company is indeed gearing up to make the next-generation console announcement.
At only 45 seconds long, with the last 10 seconds just fading into the logo and announcement date, the video is certainly just a tease, and while we’re not likely to get much more official information before the February 20th event, it is likely that leaks and rumors will start to intensify over the next several weeks.
Many online gaming news sites had this announcement pegged for later this Spring, thinking that both Microsoft and Sony would be planning major press conferences sometime in March for their respective next-generation consoles. Microsoft’s is currently dubbed the Xbox 720.
In the latest console build to game developers, it looks like the PS4 might have specs that include 8GB RAM, a 2.2GB video memory, 4x dual-core AMD64 processor – “Bulldozer†inside, 4 USB ports, 2 Ethernet ports, a Blu-ray drive, 160GB of storage, and an HDMI video port out.
The teaser video from Sony is below, and the company is also encouraging fans to sign up on their website for additional information about the mystery announcement.
By Gilbert Falso :: 8:51 AM
The 5th installment in the widely popular and successful Grand Theft Auto game series finally has a release date attached to it. Rockstar Games
A sequel to 2008’s Grand Theft Auto IV
This will be “the biggest, most dynamic and most diverse open world Rockstar Games has yet created, blending storytelling and gameplay in new ways as players repeatedly jump in and out of the lives of the game’s three lead characters, playing all sides of the game’s interwoven story,” said a company release.
The three lead characters are Franklin, a former street hood, Michael, an ex-con in retirement, and Trevor, a violent maniac who will stop at no costs. The game, of course, will be rated only for mature audiences.
Rockstar Games had first announced that there would be a 5th installment in the series in 2011, and released a trailer for the game at that time.
By Gilbert Falso :: 3:05 PM
Amazon.com is the latest web service to have trouble today – visits to the site result in an error that reads “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable.” The downtime began around 3:00 pm, and no status update has been posted by the company.
Many inside pages of the site still appear to function as expected, the error seems to occur most on the homepage, amazon.com. As an example, this link to Amazon’s MP3 page
Amazon is not the only web service to encounter problems today, Twitter was experiencing downtime earlier this morning.
As of 3:45 pm, Amazon’s homepage
By Paul Thomson :: 1:09 PM
File this under the “not a good idea” tab – buying tickets to the Super Bowl over Craigslist.
AÂ couple from the San Francisco Bay area who are 49ers Fans arranged a deal for four tickets to the game for $5,900. They wired the money to the seller electronically, something that Craigslist warns users not to do, and ended up with just a taunting note in the mail instead of seats in the stadium.
A FedEx package arrived a couple of days after the wire transfer, and contained a piece of paper that read, “Go Ravens! LOL!”
The local newspaper picked up the story, and the couple will receive free tickets to the game, courtesy of the 49ers management and TicketMaster.
As for the seller, it looks as if they filled out the FedEx information form with their correct address and telephone number, which have been forwarded to the Alameda, Calif. County Sheriff’s office for investigation.
[Picture, above. 49ers fan Sharon Osgood, at a game earlier in the season. Osgood will receive free tickets to this year’s Super Bowl.]
By Gilbert Falso :: 12:52 PM
Yes, Twitter was having some problems earlier this morning, and some of those issues are still persisting throughout the microblogging service.
Twitter updated its official blog with this message, “some users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter. Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue.”
This marks the third time during this month that Twitter has had an outage that they have reported via their status blog. The first instance, was on January 16th, and the second was on the 21st.
One of the earlier outages this month took place during the high volume tweeting happening around the second inauguration of President Obama.