Are you folding@home yet? Why not? Download the application now and donate a small portion of your electric bill to help science solve problems that may find the cure for Alzheimer's Disease or cancer. Let's do this together! Join my folding@home team: LifeFolders.

All you have to do join my team is to start the folding@home application on your ps3, press triangle, choose "Identity" then "Join an Existing Team" and input the team number 62766. 

Thanks for doing this! :)

But the second best cost money. I'm now the happy owner of a PS3 and I'm quite satisfied :) It is a nice looking piece of machinery. I'v been playing MotorStorm and having a good time. All I need now is some friends on my friendslist ;).

Feel free to send me a friend request on the PS3 or leave your PSN ID here - mine is LeoTheLudo - see you online.

So, I haven't been blogging in a while. Not since my "Enjoying without playing" post in October. I guess I kind of needed a break from playing. But things have happened since!

I was saving up to buy a new HDTV in time for the ps3 release in Europe coming this Friday. But one Saturday in November I got really bored and went out and bought myself the TV I'd been drooling over for quite some time: a gorgeous Sony Bravia 1080p. And, while I was at it, I picked up an Xbox 360 and some games.

I never planned to buy a 360, because I figure I didn't want to have two next-gen consoles, and having already preordered the ps3, that was going to be my choice. But what do you know? I'm soon to be the proud owner of two next-gen systems after all. I must say I'm very pleased with the 360 and have enjoyed especially Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas.

Buying the new HDTV has had some consequences, though. You see, next to this wonderful TV running the beautiful graphics from Gears of War, my amplifier and speakers all of a sudden started to look and sound very "last gen". So to make a long story short: my living room is now turned in to a pretty awesome home cinema theater with my new 7.1 setup and a subwoofer that makes me worry about the foundation of my house :).

So with the imminent ps3 launch (I have the number one preorder at my local store), my first Blu-ray movie already sitting on my shelf and the 360 in place, I am ready:

The next generation has begun and I'm enjoying every minute of it! :D  

I find that I spend more and more time reading about upcoming games, and less time actually playing the games I already got. I really enjoy finding out more about the games I'm anticipating, reading up on the news and previews.

I have great games lying around that I haven’t played yet, like Mercenaries, Splinter Cell: Chaos theory, Resident Evil 4 and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. This is only my ps2 games and even though I have finished Snake Eater twice, and the fact that Resident Evil 4 is really too scary for me, I just don’t seem to get in the mood to wrap my hands around those games.

It’s not like I don’t have the time to play them because I’m spending a lot of time online reading about other games that I’m looking forward too. So why is that? Am I getting tired of games? If so, why do I spend so much time reading about games? I subscribe to EDGE magazine, and I’m still exited every time a new issue drops into my mailbox.

My PSP haven’t seen much attention lately, either. And that’s with games like Exit and LocoRoco sitting nicely on my shelf. Both games was exactly two of those games that I previously was anticipating and reading a lot about, before they where released, just like I am now anticipating and reading about other games. Maybe I’m waiting for my traveling to pick up, so I can play my PSP on airports and other potentially boring places? Will Okami and God of War II also end up just sitting on my shelf?

Maybe I have become a game enthusiast; you know, like a car enthusiast that reads car magazines to get the latest news from Ferrari or Porsche, even though he (or she) never will be able to afford the cars he’s reading about, it still gives him pleasure to read about them. Maybe that what I’ve become; more of a game enthusiast that always stays in the news, but don’t really play games that often any longer? Or it could be a case of the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence?

I have preordered my ps3 months ago, even before I knew that I would not get it this November, but would have to wait until March 2007. But it doesn’t really bother me that much. I’m still looking forward to MotorStorm and Resistance, but sometimes the anticipating of something can actually be better then the thing you are anticipating.

I think my interest of playing videogames has turned into an interest in videogames as a whole. Like a wine collector buying bottles of wine he has no intention to even open. I know I will still open my bottles of wine, and still be playing games, but the subject of videogames has all of sudden become just as interesting as actually playing the games.

So I continue to enjoy the world of games, just in a slightly different manner than I would have imagined when I first got my Game & Watch 25 years ago.

As of right now? I’m enjoying a glass of wine, reading the latest issue of EDGE, while MGS3 Subsistence sits quietly in my ps2 with its red power off light greeting me gently in the night.

I mean I'm stuck! I don't really care that much about the emblems and levels and stuff, but being on level 20 is getting kind of annoying as of now. Leveling up through 10-20 was a breeze, but I've been on level 20 for weeks now.

Apparently it's a glitch, so I just have to be patient. Can't wait to move on...

EDIT: So i finaly made it to lvl 21 :)

Anyone looking for some good PS3 hardware pictures?

Try these

:D Yup! Paid the deposit, and preordered my ps3 today! It's the 60 GB version, and the store couldn't tell me what color they were getting, but I think I read somewhere that it's only the black one that will launch in Europe. The preorder came with a DVD with some info about the system, pictures and 10 high def game trailers. A code for registration online was also included, but the link doesn't work :(   www.ps3.preorder.no  But that registration is only for news updates anyway.

I guess I have to start saving for that big fat HDTV now.

Edit: The link is working now

Norwegian developer Momentum announced today a new Rally Game for the ps3 and xbox360. The title have been a work in progress for two years and so far 25 mill NOK (app 4 mill dollar) have been spent on development costs.

Norwegian rally driver, and 2003 world champion, Petter Solberg will be assisting Momentum in the development, and will also lend his name to the title (as rally drivers Colin McRae and now deceased Richard Burns has done before him). Petter is quoted saying "I know how these kind of games should be, and together with the team we are going to make the right game". Petter and his older brother Henning (who also is a WRC rally driver), use to play the official WRC games a lot on their ps2.

Not much else is known about the game so far. Source (in Norwegian):

http://pub.tv2.no/nettavisen/spillmagasinet/ps3/article715788.ece

This is a rumor that doesn’t seems to go away easily – it still (!) shows up on this forums – usually with a lot of “omg” and “!!!” in the title. Here’s the short of it:

The ps3 will play used and rented games.

The longer story goes somewhat like this: The reason for all the racket behind this hard to kill  rumor is that Sony in October 2000 secured a patent (US patent # 6,816,972) for a disk technology that prevents the use of used, as well as pirated, software. From the registered patent description:   

"A device and method for protection of legitimate software against used software and counterfeit software in recording media… A specific title code is read, and if this title code has been registered, the main unit shifts to a normal operation. If the code has not been registered, verification software is initiated… If matching does not occur, the disk is processed as illegitimate software… Since only titles for which legitimate software has actually been purchased and which have been initially registered in the machine table can be used, resale (so-called used software purchase) after purchase by an end-user becomes practically impossible."

Sony has said that they will not be using this patent in the ps3. Regardless, this story keeps popping up all over the nets boards and forums and from time to time on more or less reliable sites. Last one out on July 10th was the L.A. Times, where writer Dawn C. Chmielewski is quoting game industry analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities "I actually think they're toying with this idea". The article goes on quoting several bigwigs about copyright laws and the effect this will have on the industry, should Sony apply such technology.

However the L.A. Times was a little late to the story. Gamesradar posted this on May 24th which created a quite a lot of buzz on the net at the time. So much in fact that Sony themselves were quite surprised this rumor was out again “there has been no official comment on this since the story that came up a few months ago - it hasn't changed since then, and we're quite surprised by why this has popped up again, to be honest." said Sony Computer Entertainment UK spokesperson, Jennie Kong reported by Gamesindustry.biz the next day. "We have definitely not been communicating that. It's false speculation. We don't have any further knowledge about this topic - either officially or unofficially, to be frank."

The story was old even in May, as joystiq reported on the patent as early as November 8th 2005. At the time, according to Eurogamer.net, Sony completely debunked the rumour - telling UK newspaper The Guardian in no uncertain terms that: "PlayStation 3 software will not be copy protected to a single machine but will be playable on any PlayStation 3 console."

I haven’t looked for any earlier report of this, but I hope that we won’t have to see any more topics about this long dead rumor.