Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment has just gone on official record stating that Sony was planned from the start to gimp Playstation 3 developers by providing complex and hard-to-use hardware to maintain the longevity of the platform.

“We don’t provide the ‘easy to program for’ console that [developers] want, because ‘easy to program for’ means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?” quote copied from gameindustry.biz

In other words, because the hardware isn’t powerful enough to actually last 10 years, Sony is gimping developers so that it’ll take close to 10 years to use the hardware fully… Great idea Kaz, maybe next generation you can shoot all the developers that report sales of less then 10 million to improve quality.

Read the full story over at gameindustry.biz

I’ve been drooling over getting Boxee to centralize my media for a few months. Everyone wants a simple way to use all your media in one place without having to move it around right? Well now it’s possible.

I had never thought about installing Ubuntu on my Playstation 3 before. I already had a computer and didn’t want to mess with my console. It’s great as it is. But then I realized I could install Boxee on ubuntu and use my PS3 as a media center… It’s made for this type of media use, it’s just not as good as Boxee. Or Ubuntu.

Shortly after this realisation I found that installing Ubuntu doesn’t change anything on my PS3 except take up some HDD space. Well I have a few GB’s over anyway. So there is no risk (PS3 backup before installing and your set to go) then install Ubuntu. It works. Everything works. Damnit, so simple. Install Boxee, damn. Works like a charm.

So now I’m the owner of a Playstation 3, including media center functionality such as streaming my music and video library form my Vista PC, my music from last.fm and series from Hulu. I can still play playstation games AND other games such as Eve Online.

Why didn’t I think about this before?

There is no excuse anymore, if you don’t own a PS3 buy one. This is the cheapest possible home PC running Ubunutu. It just happens to be silent, media expert and BluRay compatible as well. Why do I even own a PC anymore? I use it as a footrest.

Still, the Playstation 3 is a weird machine. It’s NOT the ultimate home console, but it just might be the ultimate home media computer.

The iPhone is here to stay. With over 10 million units sold the product is one of the most successful mobile computing products ever. Nokia and Sony Ericsson may sell a lot more phones but certainly not per model.

What makes the iPhone so special? Well it was first with Apple’s ingenious touch interface which has set the standard for a generation to come. But besides the initial shock of a good UI for mobiles the staying factor for iPhone is the application store. Or should I say Apple’s solution for including developers in the process.

Developers can buy cheap SDKs, build almost what they want and then sell their products for great margins through Apple’s store. This makes quality high, prices low and the incentive for developers volcanic. No matter what other mobile companies are doing they won’ catch up without an enormous amount of software that can sway the public. This is a hard trial for the much anticipated Android platform from google.

There are some successful games for the iPhone already, and expect to see a lot more as developers stop looking at what they can do and go back to designing what will actually be FUN on an iPhone.

The real question in this situation really has to be: why is the iPhone the first arena where this system for development has been put in use and why aren’t other companies (Sony, Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft) jumping on the chance to produce a similar development chain for other or competing platforms?

Steam isn’t far off. Unity is more or less there, even for the iPhone. Android? Running free without design or visual appeal, NOT a strategy that will work in the modern software world. Let’s hope for the best, I’m downloading an SDK asap.