Yup, the StreamMyGames server is free. The server works by remotely converting the game’s video and audio into a Game Stream and sending it over your LAN network to a second computer, laptop, or Linux enabled PS3. PC games can be played on the console/second computer without any lag or having to install the game on this machine. Crysis and PS3 unite!

Richard Faria, CEO of StreamMyGame talks of the service’s advantages:

Playing the latest PC game on the PS3 is now a reality at HD resolution and fast frame-rates. I have a PS3 in my living room and PC in my office and my two kids both have old PCs in their bedrooms.

Now we can play games anywhere around the home. StreamMyGame’s technology networks the power of a main PC so it can be used to play high end games on other PCs, PS3s and Linux devices.

What’s the catch? Well there’s two. Currently this streaming only works over an LAN network, but the service is set to expand to broadband in March this year. This means you’ll be able to stream games further than your living room, to anywhere in the world even.

The second catch is that only the basic version is free, which is stuck at streaming a 640×480 video output. For HD you’ll have to subscribe to a years membership for $9.99, or $19.99 for the premium service, which doesn’t appear to have any observable advantages.

In the below video you can see Crysis being streamed to a PS3. Most would question why the guy doesn’t just get a long lead to plug his PC into his HDTV. However, those people would lack foresight! Your PC might be upstairs, and your HDTV downstairs!

Seriously though, this is reminiscent of PSP streaming from the PS3, and so begs the question; Could we be playing Crysis on our PSP, on the train to work? Streaming from your PC to your PS3 and then to your PSP doesn’t sound outlandish. Sony will most likely be the ones to stop us in our tracks, and the lag might be unbearable, but it’s worth dreaming isn’t it?

You can learn more about StreamMyGame here and even register for the free software.

Via Beyond3d

How many gaming facts can you get wrong in one article? The New York Times says five. Five relatively well known gaming facts were right muddled up governor! The New York Times needed to get things straight, and it took them a week to do so.

Last Friday the New York Times discussed “essential hardware”, which was fine until reaching the joy that was the gaming section of this piece. It was full to the brim with factual errors that’ll make you cringe.

First up is Gran Turismo 5. According to the New York Times this game has already been released and is a worldwide bestseller for the Playstation 3. If only it had been released, but GT5:Prologue is only just reaching those in Japan.

Moreover, the author wrote with vigour that the Playstation 3 was available for a low price of $299. We wish! Does this inaccuracy reflect on the position of the Playstation 3 in the US psyche? No, it just shows the Time’s disinterest in video games. A theory supported by their following errors.

Halo 3 is not the first Halo outing on the Xbox 360, according to the Times. Since the original Halo games are playable on the Xbox 360 through backwards compatibility, they are apparently Xbox 360 games. At least they knew the game was out, and could justify writing about it being a best seller.

But wait, the New York Times can top this all with the piece de resistance: the Xbox 360 is powered by Cell. Aye, Sony has joined with Microsoft to put Ken Kutaragi’s brain child into the Xbox 360. That’s one of the Playstation3’s selling points, no wonder the Xbox 360 is trouncing it in the US.

Here’s the New York Time’s full correction in all its innocent glory, posted on the 4th December:

An article in Business Day on Friday about favorite gadgets of executives referred incorrectly to the video game Gran Turismo 5. It has not yet been released, and thus is not a best-selling game. The article also referred imprecisely to the game Halo 3. It is the first game in the Halo series designed for the Xbox 360; the earlier games, though playable on the Xbox 360, were designed for the original Xbox. The chip in the Xbox 360 also was misidentified. It has a Xenon chip, not a Cell processor. And the article also misstated the price of the Sony PlayStation 3. The PlayStation 3 starts at $399, not $299.

Bless. I said it’s like your Grandmother attempting to talk about the Pussycat Dolls; it’s also reminiscent of the current Prime Minister of Great Britain name dropping the Arctic Monkeys. Cringe.

Assassin’s Creed is one of the few “next-gen” games we’ll be experiencing this year – whatever that means, seems to be the buzz word these days. Coming from the makers of the classic Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, it has lofty expectations to live up to.

The game takes place during the Third Crusade, with the player taking the role of a secret Assassin, Altair. Altair means “the flying thingy” in Arabic, where the word “thingy” should be replaced with “one” to avoid any childish visions. This flying bloke, or Altair as he will henceforth be referred to, has the objective to slay individuals who promote hostilities. What hostilities? The Third Crusade, young one. Pay attention.

The game promises to contain historically accurate cities and interactive environments. You’ll be able to climb any building you fancy, buildings complete with historically, accurately, coloredly bricks. You are but an archaic Spider-Man (minus the red and blue tights) making your way through cities dressed in an assassin’s hawk outfit.

Yet, there is something on top of all this “gloriousness” that Ubisoft Montreal has kept swept under their grandmother’s carpet; a “sci-fi” twist that is suggested in the game footage. But should we give a monkey’s (or a rat’s ass as you American’s like to say) about this twist, and could it potentially spoil the game’s integrity?

An Assassin fallen from grace, Altair must prove himself to be a worthy stealth killer by assassinating nine historical figures who are propagating the Crusades. The Crusades? How interesting. Please tell us more, you cry. Well, if I must.

It says here on Wikipedia, that the Third Crusade is also known as the King’s Crusade. Good website that Wikipedia is, and if you type in my name there, it’ll come up with a “List of Winniepeggers”. Now, I don’t know what they are exactly, but they sound amusing, and I’m vaguely proud to be associated with them. Anyway, the Third Crusade, also known as the King’s Crusade, saw European leaders trying to reconquer the holy land from Saladin.

Who’s this Saladin fellow? Did he make salad? Actually he should properly be introduced as “Salah al-Dīn Yusuf ibn Ayyub” better known to his friends by his hip short rapper name “Saladin”. He was a Muslim leader from Iraq who led the resistance against the European Crusaders from infiltrating Jerusalem, which Saladin had captured years before.

Well, little Saladin was defeated by Richard I of England at the end of 1191, and the two came to an agreement over Jerusalem in 1192, where it would remain in Muslim hands but was open to Christian pilgrimages. This was a time when the opposing rulers had large mutual respect for one another, so much so that Saladin offered his personal physician to an injured RIchard I, sending replacement horses, providing fresh fruit, and even giving the King snow to keep his drinks cold. Ah those were the days. Fast forward to 2007, and we’re stuck with a pleb who calls an air strike against an adversary for hiding “invisible weaponry amongst oil reserves. That’s the end of our history lesson, so we must move on.

As Altair, the bird man, you have the power to impact events in the year 1191 AD, by tracking down and assassinating key figures on both sides of the conflict. Three cities will be your playground: Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. But why is Altair called the flying thingy? Does he have wings, or a nifty glider to glide him from place to place, or perhaps even a funky colored hot-air balloon. No, he has no such transport, though at times, a wee pony will be gracious enough to carry him on her back. What he does have are some amazing abilities in free-running.

You might have seen “free-running” at the beginning of Casino Royale, or even better you might have watched Top Gear where James May raced a couple of free-runners through Liverpool in a Peugeot 207 – the runners won of course. Yes, it’s that jumpy jumpy, climby climby stuff. To escape from the deed you have done, you must climb the buildings, jump over the roof tops from beam to beam, and generally act like a flying fox floating from place to place with your nimble feet.

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You must agree that this sounds beyond splendid. Playing an Assassin in the Third Crusade, targeting individuals from both sides of the conflict whilst skipping from location to location, sounds like a veritable ball. Some might say that Jerusalem is a bit of a touchy subject, but how many World War II games have we seen in the past years, glorifying the Americans, and vilifying the Germans as Nazi encrusted robots? Moreover, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare takes place in a fictitious adaptation of the present day Middle East. Thus I think, in comparison, 816 years is plenty of time between now and The Crusades for it to be a safe and welcome change from other games.

There must be a catch, right? A catch maybe not, but there is a twist – a sci-fi twist. In interviews and game footage there has been a suggestion of “something else” in the Assassin’s Creed universe. There are visible effects, such as electrical interference encroaching across the screen like a TV with bad reception, and character’s outlines flashing with a blue glow when you approach them. Some have theorized that the historical setting may be a simulation, or even the “genetic memory” of present day people trying to discover information about past conflicts. This was put into the minds of those who frequent the sticky web that is the Internet by one of the character actors for the game, Kristen Bell. She said in an interview with IGN:

“It’s actually really interesting to me. It’s sort of based on the research that’s sort of happening now, about the fact that your genes might be able to hold memory…And it’s about this science company trying to, Matrix-style, go into people’s brains and find out an ancestor who used to be an assassin, and sort of locate who that person is.”

Well since then, the game’s producer, the stunningly gorgeous Jade Raymond (I wonder if she’s an unlockable skin in the game…hmmm), has stated that it’s not like the Matrix, and Altair is not a time traveller. Yet, in a gameplay demo at X06 a few little snippets seemed to support the genetic memory theory, with the words “memories/01”, “hard drive” and “access your genetic memory” appearing after Altair had died. Furthermore, in the background of the official website and in the “making of videos” are visible DNA strand patterns. So, the plot thickens for Assassin’s Creed, the supposed historically accurate game set in 1191AD. What’s clear is that the developers don’t want to talk about any of this yet, but have tried to make it certain that this is not a gimmick.

Now this worries me, because if this twist is an integral part of the game, then it’s not really set in 1191AD, and you can’t really get immersed into the atmosphere of Jerusalem and the Crusades.

What really gets on mon wick as I watch game footage, are these electrical glitches that interfere with the screen, which are said to have roles in the gameplay – such as being able to change the camera angle in real-time cutscenes. Even worse are the electrical readouts and outlines around the many characters within these cities, that apparently identify who you can interact with. Still, these effects are far from subtle.

It seems such a shame that Ubisoft Montreal have gone to all the trouble to accurately create these holy cities, from the architecture, to the clothes of the characters, to then just stab the player’s eyes with futuristic effects. Yes it’s a game, but games are meant to engage and engross and make you suspend disbelief. These “glitches” act as a knocking down of the fourth wall, taking you out of the immediate action and shouting at you “There’s a twist, don’t forget the twist young Assassin, oooh glitchy glitchy this is not as it seems, everything’s all Matrixy”. I’m all for twists and turns, but it fails to be a twist when the game tells you there’s a twist every five seconds.

Rumour goes that this sci-fi twist is actually revealed in the first 10minutes of the game, and that Gamesradar, the cunning foxettes that they are, have already worked it out by reading a chapter from the Assassin’s Creed comic. Let’s be honest, one is too cowardly to spoil the game by reading a piddly comic, and I doubt you, fine reader, would like the game experience to be spoiled like a freshly killed badger being run over by a two seater Cadillac (I mean I could have had that for my dinner!), either.

So, all in all, I could be wrong. This twist could in fact enrich the gameplay, supplement your interest in the game, and further engross you in the story.  All the while the game’s plot will play with your little mind, confusing your thoughts like a Bishop confuses a choir boy when he leads him to the confession box.

Anyway, the long and short of it is young hobbit, is that there’s something else in this game, something bigger, more clever, and we all know it’s coming (well, you do now) and I for one am not convinced that it will help this game. In fact, right at this moment, I think that this twist will detract from the gameplay.

There has been some discussion about the recently released demo of Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction for the Playstation 3 on the well known gaming forum Neogaf. A very select few have been having some visual troubles with the game, resulting in a pixelated mess on their HDTVs. This is surprising, since most who have experienced the beauty of Insomniac’s game can see that it is very sharp and pretty damn special to say the least. So what is going on here?

On some 1080p HDTV’s Ratchet and Clank appears to be pixelated, or in the best possible words – a garbled mess. Now reports of this have been few and far between, but it seems that although being a 720p game, when 720p is selected on the display options for the Playstation 3 the game does not appear as it should on some HDTV’s (a 52inch 1080p Sony Bravia is one of the mentioned televisions). When 720p is unchecked, leaving only 1080i and 1080p the picture in fact clears up but at the bottom-right of the screen is a block of broken up, fuzziness.

What could be the problem? Well some research has been done at the Beyond3d forums, suggesting that Ratchet and Clank is 704p or 704by1280 pixels instead of the regular 720by1280. This is unlike the Halo 3 problem of being a 640p image (or even Conan at 576p) being upscaled to 720p (and higher) since Ratchet and Clank is not upscaled by the Playstation3.

Upscaling from 640p to 720p would cause some strange exaggeration of aliasing, and other minor problems with picture quality. Instead, Ratchet and Clank cuts off 8pixels above and below, meaning the remaining image will still be rendered at 720p but with small black bars above and below, such as you would see when you watch an HD film on your television. A 1080p film will have black borders above and below, thus not using all the pixels, but the quality that is displayed still means it is 1080p. Ratchet and Clank is even less extreme than this, since the black borders would be almost unnoticeable if your HDTV didn’t use overscan to remove them completely. This image is sent from the Playstation to your television, and then the overscan of your television will make the final picture fit the screen, thus not showing the black bars.

Ratchet and Clank being 704p is thus a clever way to save some pixels without impacting visual quality, for Ratchet and Clank is so gorgeous to experience, especially at 60fps, that you will double check to make sure you are not playing through a Pixar film. But could this be a problem for some 1080i/p HDTV’s? It’s not clear if it is, but it could be due to these televisions upscaling from 704p without overscan.

Whatever the problem is, Insomniac seems to be keen to get it fixed for every HDTV out there. While we have yet to confirm that the following is indeed from an employee of Insomniac, it appears that one One of the Insomniac team members has personally posted on the Neogaf forum asking exactly what the trouble is. If it is a member of Insomniac, it would be This is proof of just how down to earth the developer is.

“Hey guys,

Can you send me any brand/model numbers of TVs you have if you are having issues and what the issue is, plus what settings you are running (screen caps are helpful too).

We believe the lower right corner garbling issue appears to only be happening with 1080i/p output forced and with no-overscan. The vast majority of people shouldn’t experience it, and we highly recommend ensuring your PS3 has 720p output enabled as RCF will look best at that resolution and it should correct the issue.

If you’re having the strange pixelation issues, we want to try to replicate that here. We’ve never seen it in-house on all of our various HD sets, and knowing what TVs we need to track down would be helpful.

Appreciate your help
JS”

So let’s hope Insomniac gets this fixed for those that have the problem, otherwise some sorry sods will be missing out on one of the best looking games the Playstation 3 has to offer.

(Note: Insomniac has not confirmed that the game is rendered at 704p.)

Sources: Neogaf, Beyond3d

Update – 10/16 7:36 PM EST
The poster on the Neogaf board has been confirmed as an actual employee of Insomniac. Well known to the board, and featured in several of Insomniac’s Podcasts.