Playstation

NEW YORK -- Sony Computer Entertainment unveiled its next generation PlayStation 4 on Wednesday, calling the device the industry's "most personalized gaming experience. " Sony boasted of more power, faster response time, higher performance, better playability and the increased mobility to "take gaming out of the living room. " Before an invited audience of 1,200, Sony executives and game designers -- via videotaped messages -- discussed statistics and showed  how the new game controller uses "cloud" processes to bring gamers a heightened experience and better facilitate game-sharing.

After the coffee. Before ordering my limo for Sunday night. The Skinny: I'm starting to watch the Netflix series "House of Cards" It's my first foray into the world of Netflix, so if you don't see me for a few days (or weeks) you'll know why. Thursday's stories include a look at all the work Wolfgang Puck has to do as the chef for the Governors Ball, which follows the Academy Awards. Also, Walt Disney Co. has struck a deal with British Sky Broadcasting for a new channel and Sony unveiled its latest version of the PlayStation.

Sony Corp. slashed $100 off the price of its entry-level PlayStation 3 game console to $299 on Tuesday in an effort to goose sales ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season. The Japanese electronics giant also unveiled a thinner model of the PS3 that packs a 120-gigabyte hard disk drive. The newer model, 36% smaller and 32% lighter than the 80-gigabyte version, is expected to hit store shelves by Sept. 1. The 160-gigabytye PS3 also took a price cut, and is now $399. "This is a game-changing moment for us," Peter Dille, Sony's senior vice president of marketing, said in an interview.

NEW YORK -- Sony Computer Entertainment ended weeks of speculation and unveiled its next generation PlayStation 4 Wednesday at a presentation at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom. Calling it the “most personalized experience available today,” Sony highlighted the increased mobility, decreased download times, and strong social-networking component of its new device. The PS4, the first new PlayStation available in seven 7 years, will be available commercially in time for the year-end will holiday season, 2013, marking an unusually fast turnaround of less than a year.

A congressional subcommittee has sent a letter to Sony Corp. seeking information about a security attack on PlayStation's online network by hackers last week. Addressed to Sony Chairman Kazuo Hirai, the letter requested answers to a detailed list of questions regarding the breach, which exposed the personal information and possibly credit card data of 77 million customer accounts. The letter, written by the House subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing and trading, addresses a number of security concerns, including when the breach occurred, how much data was stolen and why Sony waited a week before it notified customers.

After the coffee. Before ordering my limo for Sunday night. The Skinny: I'm starting to watch the Netflix series "House of Cards" It's my first foray into the world of Netflix, so if you don't see me for a few days (or weeks) you'll know why. Thursday's stories include a look at all the work Wolfgang Puck has to do as the chef for the Governors Ball, which follows the Academy Awards. Also, Walt Disney Co. has struck a deal with British Sky Broadcasting for a new channel and Sony unveiled its latest version of the PlayStation.

After a two-year hiatus, John McEnroe and the senior tennis tour are returning to Newport Beach. McEnroe, Henri Leconte and Pat Cash have committed to play in the Newport Beach Champions event, an eight-man, round-robin tournament at Newport Beach Tennis Club. The May 9-13 tournament is the fifth and last stop on the Success Magazine Tour, formerly called the Nuveen Tour. "We're excited for Orange County and for our club," said Scott Davis, the director of tennis at Newport Beach Tennis Club who also will play in the tournament.

The opening scene for Sony Corp.'s God of War III video game shows a muscle-bound ancient Greek warrior named Kratos vowing, "My vengeance is now." Punishing rivals is what Sony hopes to do with its hugely anticipated, big-budget video game, which launches Tuesday. To recoup high production costs, most video games are made to be played on multiple systems, reaching the largest pool of buyers possible. But the Japanese electronics giant produced God of War III solely for its PlayStation 3 console, hoping it would boost sales for the device, which has lagged in third place behind rivals Xbox 360 from Microsoft and Wii from Nintendo.

Sony Corp.'s fiscal second-quarter profit plunged 72% as a surging yen wiped out the benefits of strong flat-panel TV and PlayStation 3 sales, as well as box-office revenue from the movie "Hancock." Sony said Wednesday that it posted a net profit of 20.8 billion yen ($214 million) for the July-September period, down from 73.7 billion yen ($696 million) a year earlier. Sales slipped 0.5% to 2.072 trillion yen ($21.4 billion). Sony said its core electronics sector enjoyed particularly healthy demand for flat-panel TVs, Vaio personal computers and single-lens reflex cameras.

Pick a toy store, any toy store. You'll see all the old standards there: The "Sweet Faith" doll that recites the Lord's Prayer in honey-dipped robot tones. Buster the Robot, who, its makers brag, enjoys "full directional mobility." The robotic Tyrannosaurus rex that stalks, growls, moves its immense head around, and does everything saurian but gobble down cavemen. (OK, kid. I know that 65 million years or so separated T. Rex from the cavemen.

NEW YORK -- Sony Computer Entertainment unveiled its next generation PlayStation 4 on Wednesday, calling the device the industry's "most personalized gaming experience. " Sony boasted of more power, faster response time, higher performance, better playability and the increased mobility to "take gaming out of the living room. " Before an invited audience of 1,200, Sony executives and game designers -- via videotaped messages -- discussed statistics and showed  how the new game controller uses "cloud" processes to bring gamers a heightened experience and better facilitate game-sharing.

Sony is set to make a PlayStation announcement next week, but a picture of what's believed to be the controller for the rumored PlayStation 4 has already hit the Web. A photo posted on video game news website Destructoid shows a controller similar to the PlayStation's DualShock control, which has been used since the late 1990s. But there's one key difference: The controller in the picture seems to have a touch screen. Other differences include a blue pad or light at the top of the controller, which some believe could be a motion sensor.

Sony sold 525,000 PlayStation 3 units during the crucial Thanksgiving week, the Japanese electronics giant said Friday. That's fewer than the 750,000 Xbox 360s that Microsoft sold the week of Thanksgiving, but it beat Nintendo's Wii U and its Wii, which sold 400,000 and 300,000 units that week, respectively. Sony said total sales of PlayStation hardware, games and peripherals were up 9% from Thanksgiving week 2011. The company said it also sold 160,000 of its portable PS Vita devices, whose sales have been struggling.

YANTAI, China - The five schoolboys weren't of legal age to work on an assembly line. But when their vocational school sent them to a Foxconn manufacturing plant last month as part of an internship program, they were soon piecing together Sony PlayStations 12 hours a day. One boy said he worked an overnight shift that started at 7:30 p.m. looking for imperfections on finished gaming consoles. Another struggled to stand after spending hours screwing together thousands of devices. The intern assigned to lug plastic cases for the product bore red welts on his neck from hoisting heavy loads onto his thin shoulders.

"Sound Shapes" is in many respects a traditional video game, some may even say old-fashioned. Users control a character, in this case a ball, and move it left to right or top to bottom across a screen. Simple enough. Except dig a little deeper and it becomes clear that "Sound Shapes" is not a traditional game at all. It can even be argued that "Sound Shapes" in an instrument masquerading as a game. Released Tuesday as a downloadable game via Sony's PlayStation Network, "Sound Shapes" contains original music from local pop eccentric Beck and EDM star Deadmau5, among others, and invites users to shred the songs, piece by piece, and then reassemble them to create a music-based universe.

It's not often that a brand new company would attempt to take on giants such as Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, and rarer still that it would succeed. But that's what Ouya (pronounced ooh-ya) proposes to do. The Los Angeles start-up wants to develop a game console that features the type of "free" games that are popular on smartphones and tablets but have been largely absent from living room televisions. But Ouya needs more money to get its concept off the ground -- $950,000, to be exact.

Even though Army of Two: The 40th Day improves on its predecessor in nearly every way, this action war game won't make anyone put down Modern Warfare 2 any time soon. In the first outing, released in 2008, the great concept of playing as part of a tandem of mercenaries out to get rich by killing enemies was ruined by the lousy artificial intelligence your partner had. Any place you wanted to be, he would stand, ratcheting up the frustration levels. Add that to a forgettable story and mediocre controls and you wonder why the game was such a success and a sequel was even considered.

When a game is hailed as "the most anticipated title of the year" and is the third installment in a franchise that blew away nearly all the competition from the last generation of console gaming, expectations are high, and there is almost certain to be a letdown. While God of War 3, which hits store shelves Tuesday, is excellent gaming, it fails to live up to the hype. Kratos -- the buffed, bald, red-and-white-painted hero -- is on a mission of revenge against Zeus and the other gods of Olympus.

Sony Corp., which for the last 18 years has centered its game business on its PlayStation consoles, is making a major shift in its strategy by acquiring Gaikai Inc. for $380 million. Based in Aliso Viejo, Gaikai is one of the leading companies in the new business of cloud-based video games, through which people can play on almost any Internet-connected device. Just as with Netflix's Instant video streaming service, games on Gaikai are stored on a remote server and streamed to a computer, tablet, smartphone or TV set without the need to download or install special programs.

Video game consoles aren't just for gaming anymore. Increasingly, people are using their Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii devices to stream movies and TV shows, according to a survey released Wednesday by Nielsen Co. Because all three consoles readily connect to the Internet, viewers can use them to access video-on-demand services like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Major League Baseball Network and ESPN to watch on their TV screens rather than on...