Ask PS3 Fanboy: Volume 2
Welcome to Ask PS3 Fanboy: Volume 2: The bad news edition! Today I disappoint people on a variety of topics, including Eight Days and 720p game upscaling. Read on to have your hopes crushed! And as always, you can e-mail me with your questions and comments, and I'll do my best to answer your questions during next week's column.
Q: I've read in the manual for PS3 that EDY viewer is only available on PS3 systems sold in Japan. Is their any way of using this system on American PS3 units?
A: No, unfortunately the EDY integration is something that's limited to only Japanese systems right now. And since the EDY system is purely a Japanese service, it's unlikely that this will change any time soon. If the service is ever rolled out to Europe and America, like originally planned, than maybe we'll see our PS3s updated -- but thats a pretty big if.
Q: What is going on with Eight Days?
A: Eight Days was one of the most impressive titles shown at last year's Sony E3 event, but has completely fallen off the radar since then. Earlier this year there was rumor swirling around that it was going to be turned into an episodic game, with each day consisting of one episode, but it turned out this was just a case of mistaken identity. The rumor actually applied to a point-and-click adventure title for the PC, called 8 Days. Overall, I'm pretty skeptical of the game actually coming out though. The complete lack of information for over a year is never good and the trailer was pretty clearly a mock-up. Info may come out at next month's E3 -- but if it doesn't, there's a very strong possibility that this game DOA.
Hit the jump for the last e-mail!
Q: And word on 720p games upscaling to 1080i?
A: This is a popular question and one of the top complaints about the PS3 (now that background downloading and DVD/PS2 game upscaling have both been implemented). Unfortunately, right now Sony has not given any indication when/if this feature will ever be added. All is not lost though, Sony was similarly skittish about the possibility of DVD/PS2 upscaling but came through in the end, and according to a recent interview - they have 30-40% more that they can do to improve the upscaling quality. This could very well mean that 720p>1080i upscaling for PS3 games is coming, unfortunately we just don't know when.
That's it for this week, sorry for all the bad news. Hopefully next week will be better!
