Sony's New Camera Will Snap Your Wrists

Expected to be officially announced next month, Sony's latest venture into the digital photography realm looks to be the size of a pregnant Blue Whale.

The A77 is not an actual DSLR, but, in fact, uses semi transparent mirrors to capture images. Here's a chart. You figure it out.

The end result, though looks to be spectacular. 24 Megapixels puts it on par with a top-of-the-line DSLR from Nikon and HD video recording (presumably 1080p, though no details yet) puts it up against Canon's cinematic wrecking crew.

But the kicker is that the suspected price tag of this behemoth is expected to be around $1000. American. Not Surinamese. Duh.

This could be the turning point for entry-level auteurs. Canon's EOS 7D Mark ii is still closer to $3K and harder for those of us who have big dreams but shrinking wallets to get an traction on projects.

Who would of thought that someone like Sony would have the little guy's back?

E3 Impressions

This is the first legitimate blog entry I've made in a while. Here are my impressions from E3 this year.

Sony
Uncharted 3
The graphics here don't seem to have improved much since our last outing with Nathan Drake. There was a noticeable improvement in graphics and gameplay mechanics between Drake's Fortune and Amongst Thieves, but I can imagine that Naughty Dog might be reaching a plateau as far as textures go. I should note that the lighting is pretty impressive in the trailer we saw in the Sony presentation. The playable version of Drake's Deception was merely the multiplayer aspect of the game. My gaming crew and I will dabble in some competitive FPS action, but much prefer the co-operative story modes. File under: Promising but poor (presentation) form.

Resident Evil: Raccoon City
Another anticipated title from Sony, this entry in the Resident Evil franchise blends the full-on third person shooter with the over-the-shoulder shooting in a hectic Raccoon City during the events of Resident Evil 2 and 3. It also smacked of Modern Warfare having seemingly abandoned the creepy mood and puzzles of previous RE titles (*cough*RE4*cough*) that won so many over. The four player co-op will definitely be a selling point, but I did not see much of a story there.

Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One
I just want to preface this by saying I saw Ratchet being escorted from the Sony prep room like a blind geriatric. His handler saw me laughing at the sight and emphatically insisted "HE CAN'T SEE ANYTHING!" there's a metaphor in here somewhere...

R&C:A4-1 (an acronym that sounds like a gun) was sorely lacking in eager participants in Sony's demo stands, which is a shame because this family-friendly title is definitely bound for some fun. The four player co-op seems like Sony's answer to Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros Wii/Mii but still retaining all the awesome/silly weapons that are a staple of the franchise. The demo booth had two screens of regular gameplay and one screen of the Stereoscopic 3D gameplay. Presumably it was the same game, but with less depth perception-related fatalities.
Count me as optimistic.

Nintendo
You might have heard me squeal like a little girl during the press announcement, but other than the WiiU's premiere there really isn't much to speak of for the Nintendo this year. Here's what I've got.

WiiU
Full 1080p. Backwards compatible with Wii titles and peripherals. 6.5-inch touchscreen built into the controller. Optical disc are non-blu-ray with storage up to 25GbBasically a home theater DS. While I was initially woozed and excited by the prospect of having an HD Wii, a cloud began to grow in the back of my mind. I asked a Nintendo representative at E3 about further backwards capabilities. Would we be able to play/keep our Virtual Console titles (I have dozens of titles)? Can you still use the amazingly, versatile Wavebird? Will the SD card reader support SDXC? Will Gamecube titles be playable as on the wii, will they be downloadable or shall they be forsaken all together? Will the price range be closer to wii or PS3 launch prices? Sadly the representative could not answer a single question. These lingering questions in conjunction with the lack of definitive titles for the platform gives me pause. Until I get some solid answers about the hardware and specs, I'm cautiously optimistic.

UPDATE: Our man Reggie Fils-Aime has confirmed that the WiiU will NOT support Gamecube games. And as there are not ports for it to connect, this rules out the Wavebird as a possible controller, barring some unsightly adapter. RIP you glorious bastard. Further details about the hardware have emerged, specifically the inputs of the console. 4 USB ports - 2 front, 2 back Could these be for charging the controller?. HDMI as well as Video-Out ports. Sensor bar port. SD Card slot (still no word on if SDXC is supported). There is no network connection so it can be assumed that the WiiU will be entirely Wi-Fi driven or support the LAN adapter from the Wii.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
The next chapter in the chronologically-confusing Legend of Zelda franchise takes to the skies with an emphasis on straining your wrist using the Wiimotion Plus controller. I got a chance to watch several people (because the dicks wouldn't give up the controller) play select stages of the game. One stage was a competitive flying race similar to the flying mini-game in Twilight Princess. It seems Epona has been cashed in for a creepy red bird in Skyward Sword, but that makes sense. You can't have link mount a horse an d they sully forth over the edge of the floating-rock-thing. Though that would be hilarious. The dungeon demo level showed off a couple of new and improved gameplay mechanics. Link can now use a homing beetle device to retrieve items and damage far-off foes. Seeing this in action left a much more favorable impression than the first trailer for the game left. It actually looks kind of fun. The HUD has been tweaked as well so that the garish outline of the wiimote has been removed, leaving the screen more reminiscent of the item system of Twilight Princess. Link can now dash/sprint for short distance thanks to an incorporated dash meter. No more shoulder rolling like a cracked-out ninja turtle. Overall, I'm interested to get some real time playing this game.

Kirby Wii
Not much to say about this one. It's New Super Kirby Bros Wii. You play as Kirby, Dedede, Metaknight or Random Dude X in Dreamland or wherever. The level design is cutesy, but has a distinct smell of the side-scolling levels of the Subspace Emissary mode in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Super Mario Bros Mii
This is neat fun, but might come as disappointing to those of us who shelled out $50 when the original dropped a couple of years ago. Nintendo is re-releasing NSMBW but you are allowed the option of playing as your own Mii. You still have all the hats and power-ups and you can still play as the Bros, but you play as yourself. Seems kinda fun. The first thought I had was, If this was on PS3 this would be DLC. Not a new title.

Super Smash Bros
During the press conference, Nintendo hinted at a new Smash Bros title, but it was all just a big cock-tease apparently...

God, I love being right...

Hey.

Remember back in the day when I said that Liquidmetal would be used to make the newest version of the Macbook Pro? Well another refresh came and went without a new body. New processors, graphics and features, sure. But it's still the same unibody design with the same materials. But there are very low rumblings that Jobs has another trick up his sleeve. Supposedly, if we aren't wiped out by The Rapture, Apple will release a completely redesigned Macbook Pro, possibly with the new "rapid, low-cost fabrication" metal. The company's stocks have seen a rise since rumors speculated that the newest version of the iphone would NOT be using liquidmetal and that it's most likely for the Macbook Pros. So I wasn't wrong, just a little early.

So bide your time and stock up on liquid nitrogen, in case it's nothing more than another trap from Skynet.

Yeah, it's the same joke. I'm lazy.

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle...

At today's Mac event, Commandant Jobs unveiled some fairly lackluster updates.

Something about iPhoto. I don't really care since I happily use picasa and flickr. And if I were to pay for something to edit my photos, I would save up until I could afford to get Aperture.

Something about Garage Band, which, again, is boring as I don't play music. I don't even play Rock Band for that matter.

But there were a couple of hopeful glimmers.

Jobs dropped the bomb that they were working on their next OS system: Lion. The biggest advances seem to be aimed at bringing the functionality of an iPad back to the Mac. this means they want to be able to run full-screen apps and have multi-touch control for the macs. If they can incorporate this multitouch into the next generation of Macbook Pros with the Liquidmetal design, the proposed cooling patents and somehow keep the machine from becoming sentient and trying to destroy mankind, it should be a pretty solid machine. But it kind of seems that Jobs has painted himself into a corner with the name of the system. Lion? The king of the jungle? What will they call the next OS afterwards? Sabretooth? Tabby? Or will there be a shift to a new animal-avatar? "Presenting Mac OSX...Koala."

Steve also managed to sneak in his characteristic "Once last thing..." before closing out the hour-and-a-half long schpiel. A newly redesigned Macbook Air. What really caught my attention about these updated models was the complete abandonment of a hard-drive. As of late I have been warming up to Solid-state Drives as the future of storage on computers. They're faster, quieter, cooler, smaller and less prone to mechanical problems than regular disc-based hard-drives. The new Airs instead use flash memory as storage. Consequently they are only able to hold between 64 Gb and 256GB. In a world where Terrabyte storage is becoming more common place and the Petabyte is looming ever closer, this amount of storage is paltry at best. And also, it might just be my own personal experience with the program Flash, but the name itself brings to mind negative connotations. Time will tell if this system will be preferred over regular hardware found in the grown-up version of laptops, or if this was merely the bastard son of a drunken tryst between a Macbook and an iPad.

Overall, it was another bland entry of a Mac Event. I guess I'm just jaded against anything that isn't a mind-blowing hardware revelation. Guess I'll just have to wait until the next generation of workhorse.

New Mac Update Makes Me Want to Rob a Bank.

After another year of hibernation, Mac has souped up their line of wallet-shattering Pros. Gizzy talks about it here, but you can scope the new products directly here.

Granted you can't get one until August. But if you can't render CGI, process RAW photos, download new Adobe software and look at Daily Puppy at the same time, you might want to think about getting one.

They start at $5000. I'm not even sure my car is worth that. If you spec it out enough it can run you close to $30,000. I'm positive my car isn't worth that. One thunderstorm and/or a glass of Cabernet later...

At any rate, if you're just looking for a new workhorse you might just want to wait until the end of the year when Mac is expected to quietly upgrade the Macbook Pro to include a 1 Tb hard drive to go with its already sexy i7 processor, who look to be bumped up to 2.8GHz as well.