It’s been three years since Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) gave us the money-grab that was “GT5 Prologue” and over five since GT4 spun away in our PS2′s so you can forgive many people for placing Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) in the “believe-it-when-I-see-it” basket along with other great memories such as “Duke Nukem Forever” and unicorns.
With advertising abound at this years’ Le Mans one week prior to E3 it was no surprise to finally receive a solid release date (November 2nd, 2010) at the expo, for what is undoubtably one of the PS3′s most anticipated titles.
The latest instalment includes 1000 cars to drive around 20 pre-loaded tracks. Naturally it’s all coming to you in Sony’s latest push of 3D-headache-inducer and touts a laundry list of new gimmicks features such as Youtube uploads, split-screen racing, custom soundtracks, head tracking (via the Playstation Eye) and track editor. Justification for a five year hiatus? We’ll have to wait and see.
Not being a die-hard racing simulator type of guy I can’t help but think that many may have found their fix via other means. Forza 3 for the Xbox 360 has been available for quite some time now and it’s near-real sim Project Gotham has had two iterations in the current gen console wars. That said for the PS3 only households the likes of Motorstorm and Burnout just aren’t going to cut the mustard.
All said and done GT5 will be many a stocking stuffer come Christmas 2010 I have no doubt, let’s just hope it lives up to the wait. The “Top Gear” test track alone will be enough for most punters I’d say.
Apple released a long anticipated update to its Mac Mini line Monday morning. The new enclosure with in-built power supply and HDMI connectivity alone has home-theatre PC (HTPC) enthusiasts salivating whilst further blurring the line between the AppleTV’s usefulness and novelty factor.
The new 2010 Mac Mini includes:
2.4GHz or 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1.4″ thick Unibody enclosure
NVIDIA GeForce 320M Graphics Card
Built-in Power Supply
HDMI port and Mini DisplayPort
User accessible memory slot
Ethernet, FireWire 800, 4xUSB 2.0 ports
Secure Digital (SD) card slot
Analogue/Digital Audio Line out
Whilst the updates (and the immediate availability) are a welcome announcement the additional US$100 price tag has many punters up in arms. The Mac Mini is available starting from US$699 (AUD$999).
In their pre-E3 keynote Microsoft has debuted a new version of the Xbox 360 console. The new “modern” enclosure sports some nice perks over current models (in-built 802.11n for starters) whilst, what’s the most important update for many, delivering a far quieter machine. In un-boxing videos currently clogging up gaming sites world wide a distinct lack of noise emanated by the machine putting today’s whirring banshee to shame.
The new Xbox 360 will be available in Australia July 1 for A$449, the same price as today’s Xbox Elite. The console includes 1xHDMI (no cable), 5xUSB, 1xcomponent, in-built 802.11n Wi-Fi, Kinect port and a 250GB (Xbox proprietary) hard drive. Of significant notice, the new model will only include a 1 year warranty, not 3 like the current models with the red-ring-of-death.
In conjunction with the updated console Microsoft also announced the official release of their “Project Natal” full-body-controller accessory to be named “Kinect”. Whilst we’re yet to see anything particularly exciting (in my opinion) bare fruit from this a group of sport/exercise related launch titles were shown along with mention of Forza 3 support upcoming.
Australian delivery and pricing has yet to be set for the Kinect however the US have been set a holiday release of November.
