High Technology Product Reviews | Trends and News

To the casual observer, there's nothing particularly slim about the new Sony PlayStation 3's ($299.99 direct) sleek black housing—it's only when you compare it with its nearly three-year-old counterpart, the previous-gen PS3, that you see how much smaller it is. The bigger news here, however, is the $100 price drop; the original PS3 retailed for $600 when it launched in 2006, and up until last week, the least-expensive PS3 you could buy was $400—and that was for a console with an 80GB hard drive. A more-reasonable $300 now buys you an incredible gaming device that's more compact, sports a roomier 120GB hard drive, and is one of the best Blu-ray players you can find. In general, the new PlayStation 3 offers a near-identical experience to the previous-generation console, which, incidentally, is still available, but for $100 less. It's also $299.99, but with the larger case and a smaller hard drive (80GB), it's hard to see why anyone would opt for it over the PS3...

Has someone already won the $2,000 bounty for delivering open-source drivers that work with Microsoft's recently released Kinect motion-tracking system? Odds are looking good! Here's the background. Adafruit Industries announced a $2,000 prize last week for anyone who managed to hack into the Kienct in an effort to unlock the device for use with hardware other than the Xbox 360. In short, here's the official challenge: "Upload your code, examples and documentation to GitHub. First person / group to get RGB out with distance values being used wins, you're smart – you know what would be useful for the community out there. All the code needs to be open source and/or public domain." Well, user AlexP over at the NUI Group Community Forums has posted a video that appears to show a Kinect being controlled via a standard PC interface. That's the only background we have so far, so it remains to be seen whether the potential submission will actually fulfill all ...

The Sony PSP has been a premier mobile gaming platform for the past five years, but it was always a bit large for a portable system. Sony's answer: The PSP go ($249.99 direct), a shrunken-down version of the PSP that eschews the UMD optical drive and game cartridges for 16GB of internal storage, download-only titles, and a new slider design. The screen is bright, the controls are responsive, the storage is sufficient, and Sony's online download store is reliable and robust. The problem is that the PSP go is really only for gamers who are new to the PSP platform, not the faithful who have stuck with Sony for a half-decade. If you fit into the latter group, you're better off sticking with your original, albeit chunkier, PSP-1000, or buying the slightly smaller PSP-3000 ($169.99 direct) if you want to get in on multiplayer games. With the PSP go, Sony is poised to compete with other portable gaming platforms, including the Nintendo DS Lite and Apple's iPod touch—at least...

Microsoft was the first to enter this current console-gaming generation with its original Xbox 360, a hulk of a system that beat both Nintendo and Sony to the punch. Despite the millions of Xboxes sold (or possibly because of it), the 360 line—encompassing the Xbox 360 Core, Xbox 360 Elite, Xbox 360 Pro, and Xbox 360 Arcade has been plagued by the infamous red ring of death, a fatal design flaw that caused some overheated Xbox 360 units to shut down and become inoperable. It also lacked built-in Wi-Fi (a feature that Sony's competing PlayStation 3 has included since it's launch), and the hard drive, which protruded slightly from the system, gave it an even bulkier appearance. Microsoft aims to remedy all of these ills with its latest $299.99 (list) Xbox 360 (250GB). Dubbed the "Xbox 360 slim" by both journalists and consumers, the redesigned Xbox 360 has the same horsepower, game library, and rich online experience as previous Xbox 360 models, but contains several key...

Motion-control-based gaming entered the mainstream with the introduction of the Nintendo Wii back in 2006. A game console that turned the gaming industry on its ear with its innovative controllers that let gamers interact with games using wrist flips, arm motions—and with the addition of the Wii Balance Board—their whole bodies, the Wii is a smashing success with a huge fan base. Microsoft and Sony, naturally, want to snag some of those fans, and Sony gets there first with its PlayStation Move, an add-on for the Playstation 3 that goes on sale on September 19th, and brings motion controls to Sony gamers. Microsoft's competing Xbox Kinect won't be available until early November. What Exactly is the Motion Control and What Do You Need to Play? The PlayStation Move consists of two parts: Sony's PlayStation Eye camera, and a wireless, Bluetooth-enabled wand that looks a little like the Nintendo Wiimote, except it has an illuminated orb attached to its top. Your investment wi...