Can Sony keep pace at E3?

LOS ANGELES--Question: if everybody already knows what you're going to announce at a press conference, can you still surprise people?

Microsoft proved on Monday that the answer is yes; everyone knew that the company would be releasing some kind of motion-sensitive control system, yet no one was prepared for how polished the product, Project Natal, actually turned out to be.

Now, Sony is getting ready for its own moment in the spotlight at E3 here, and the pressure, as always, is on. Almost certain is a newly redesigned PlayStation Portable, or PSP Go, as it's being called. And there's also been talk of Sony having some kind of new motion-sensitive controller, as well.

For more on what Sony actually does announce, stay tuned to this page. We're live-blogging Sony's press briefing, which started shortly after 11 a.m. Pacific. You can also watch the live stream of the Sony keynote.

The stage is dark as people file into the Shrine Auditorium for Sony's E3 press briefing.

(Credit: Gamespot)

11:14 a.m.: Sony Consumer Electronics of America President and CEO Jack Tretton begins by joking, "given this industry's ability to keep secrets, I was worried there wouldn't be any reason to come to this press conference."

11:16 a.m.: Tretton, in his introduction, touts the strength of the entire PlayStation platform--PS3, PS2, and PlayStation Portable--and said that 30 percent of the industry's sales in 2008 were from Sony's combined platforms.

11:19 a.m.: He adds that with the PS2 selling for $99, it continues to be the Sony standard bearer. There are currently more than 2,000 games for the PS2, and will be an additional 100-plus new games this year.

As for the PS3, there have been 22 million units sold globally so far, and Sony predicts sales of 13 million more in fiscal 2010.

Evan Wells shows off Uncharted 2

(Credit: Gamespot)

11:21 a.m.: One of the biggest games coming to PS3, Tretton says, is Naughty Dog's "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves." Starting tonight, the game will go into open beta. The game is one of 35 titles that will be exclusive for PS3 this year, Tretton added. Another he touted excitedly, and which got a loud reception from the audience, is InFamous. One thing is clear from that audience reception: Sony has its own passionate fans, much like Nintendo does.

Evan Wells from Naughty Dog comes on stage to show a demo of the "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves."

An ear-splitting demo of "Uncharted 2" gets very loud, excited applause.

11:27 a.m.: Next up, Zipper Interactive comes up to show off its forthcoming PS3 game, "MAG," which can support 256 simultaneous players, including people playing remotely.

Jack Tretton introduces Mag

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

11:37 a.m.: Tretton is back on stage, talking about the functionality of the PSP. Last year, he says, Sony sold 15 million PSPs, pushing the device to more than 50 million units sold in its lifetime.

He says there are a series of hot games coming to the PSP, including "City of Final Fantasy," on August 25, and "Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines," on November 10. Sony is also working with Disney to introduce a Hannah Montana bundle, complete with a colored PSP. It will be available this July.

Next up, Kaz Hirai (CEO of Sony's Networked Products and Services Group) came on stage to introduce the much-anticipated the PSP Go, also known, he joked, "as the worst-kept secret" in the video game business.

"The PSP Go is 50 percent smaller" than the existing PSP.

Kaz Hirai introduces PSP Go

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

PSP Go from the back

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

11:41 a.m.: The PSP Go, Hirai says, will feature 16 gigabytes of internal Flash memory; built-in Wi-Fi; integrated Bluetooth and a new system, Media Go, which will be the application used on the PSP Go to access the PlayStation Store.

PSP Go has slideout controls

(Credit: Gamespot)

The PSP Go will be available on October 1, simultaneously in North America and Europe. It will cost $249.99. Hirai says "All PSP titles going forward will be digitally distributed on the PlayStation store, as well as at retail on (the UMD format).

11:42 a.m.: He also says that Sony's video service will be available natively on the PSP Go, making it easier than ever to download video to the device.

11:43 a.m.: Video content will be available from leading providers like Showtime, G4, E, Starz, and others. One big game that will be available on the PSP, will be "Gran Turismo."

11:50 a.m.: Hirai says "Gran Turismo" will be released for PSP on October 1.

Resident Evil comes to PSP with the Go

(Credit: Gamespot)

11:51 a.m.: Next up, Hideo Kojimo from Kojimo Productions comes on-stage to introduce "Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker" for the PSP.

11:52 a.m.: Kojimo says the new game takes place 10 years after the events of "Metal Gear Solid 3." So it takes place in the 1970s.

11:59 a.m.: After a rousing video demonstration of the new "Metal Gear Solid" PSP game, Hirai thanks the audience and brings Tretton back on-stage. Tretton then introduces "Resident Evil: Portable," the latest title in a long-standing franchise. It will be available next year, and will be the first time the franchise will be available on PSP. Tretton says "Little Big Planet," "Hannah Montana," "Harry Potter," and a few other franchises will also be coming to PSP for the first time.

12:05 p.m.: Tretton says the PlayStation Network now has more than 24 million users who have collectively downloaded more than 475 million pieces of content. There are more than 200 titles available on the PlayStation store, 90 of which are exclusive.

He also says Sony is bringing almost 50 PlayStation 1 classic games to the PlayStation store this year, including "Final Fantasy VII," which is available as of today.

12:06 p.m.: Next up, Tretton talks about Sony Home, the company's online virtual world. He says Home now has more than 6.5 million users worldwide, and that the service is adding more than 100 virtual items each month.

12:08 p.m.: Now, Tretton rolls a video to show the audience "what's on tap for PlayStation 3 this year." It includes clips from "Uncharted 2," "Infamous," "Madden NFL 10," "Final Fantasy XIII," "MAG," "Overlord II," "Batman: Arkham Asylum," "Brutal Legend," "Ninja Gaiden 2," "Mafia 2," "Karaoke Revolution," "Heavy Rain," "Battlefield 1943," and other games.

Windows 7 to launch October 22

Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday that it is planning for Windows 7 to hit retail shelves and start showing up on new PCs on October 22.

To reach that milestone, Microsoft plans to wrap up development of the operating system by the middle or end of next month, Senior Vice President Bill Veghte said in an interview.

"The feedback from the release candidate has been good," Veghte said.

Microsoft made the near-final release candidate version available last month. Shortly after its release, Microsoft finally confirmed that it was aiming Windows 7 for a holiday 2009 release, something that was widely anticipated, but not confirmed by those in Redmond.

In an interview, Phil McKinney, chief technology officer of Hewlett-Packard's computer unit, said that he feels good about Microsoft's launch date.

"We're locked and loaded for the launch," McKinney said. "The quality of code is just absolutely stellar."

The software maker also confirmed, without giving details, that it plans to offer some sort of "technology guarantee" giving those who buy Vista machines close to the Windows 7 launch a free or discounted copy of the new operating system. As with past similar programs, details on pricing will be up to individual computer makers, although Microsoft did say the upgrade program will apply to Vista Home Premium and higher-priced editions (meaning not Windows Vista Basic).

The tech guarantee program is not beginning immediately, but Microsoft did raise the possibility it will offer some sort of lower-cost upgrade to those who are already using Windows Vista.

I've gotten a lot of e-mails suggesting Microsoft do something along those lines, but its comments this week were the first time I had heard it acknowledge that it was considering such a move.

As for the technology guarantee program, it likely means that Microsoft will do some deferring of Vista-related revenue, though Microsoft again did not spell out details.

"Depending on when we do it there will be the associated accounting for it," Veghte said.

Google appliance now searching by the billion

Google's latest internal corporate search tool, the Google Search Appliance 6.0.

(Credit: Google)

Google sells hardware, too, and announced Tuesday that its Google Search Appliance can now find documents by the billions.

Google Search Appliance 6.0 (GSA) is the company's product for helping enterprises locate and manage the reams of internal corporate data that doesn't get indexed by Google's search bots, but which needs to be found by managers and employees. The latest version is all about scaling, or the ability to link dozens of these appliances to allow even the biggest companies to search their networks for presentations, spreadsheets, and other documents.

There are two hardware models that are capable of searching different numbers of documents: the high-end GB-9009 can search 30 million documents by itself and reach into the billions if a company links several appliances together. The appliances are built on the Dell's PowerEdge R710 design.

Google charges businesses a licensing fee for several years of internal document searching, based on the number of documents inside their organization.

Kindle display creators to merge

Two companies that teamed up to create displays for the Sony Reader and Amazon.com Kindle e-book readers are officially joining forces.

Taiwain-based Prime View International (PVI), a leading display maker, said Monday it plans to acquire e-paper manufacturer E Ink for $215 million.

PVI creates displays for digital devices, including cameras, TVs, GPS systems, and e-readers. The company has its own e-paper unit and is a top worldwide supplier of flexible display panels. Cambridge, Mass.-based E Ink makes digital ink technology that goes into cell phones, e-readers, and other portable devices.

PVI and E Ink have already had a relationship. PVI has been one of E Ink's biggest customers, having switched from LCDs to electronic ink for its display panels. Electronic ink offers higher resolution and chews up less power than traditional LCD panels. The two worked together to create the displays for Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader.

The combined company hopes to capitalize on the growing e-reader market.

"Combining E Ink and PVI creates a single public company that is dedicated to electronic paper," said Russ Wilcox, E Ink's co-founder, president, and CEO. "With a common ownership structure, we can get closer to customers around the world, streamline the supply chain, and speed up new product development."

The surging demand for e-paper is likely to continue. A recent report from Forrester Research predicts a boom in e-readers in the U.S. over the next few years. A report from market researcher In-Stat predicts that worldwide e-reader shipments will jump to 30 million by 2013.

Since its inception in 1997, E Ink has depended on cash infusions from other companies to stay afloat and keep growing, including from Intel, Motorola, and Philips. Over the years, E Ink has received $150 million in financing, with its investors waiting for the e-book market to pay off.

With its acquisition by PVI, E Ink may finally have the resources to take bigger strides. Referring to PCI, Wilcox said, "They've been at it for years, they feel the growth, and they've decided to focus their company on electronic paper. With their resources, we're going to be able to accelerate our research and development and expand capacity more quickly."

The acquisition is subject to approval by shareholders of both companies. Under the plan, E Ink will become a wholly owned subsidiary of PVI, keep its headquarters and staff in Cambridge, and expand its research and development on e-paper. E Ink also plans to add another 20 workers to its 120-member staff.

EMC, NetApp compete to buy Data Domain

EMC swooped in Monday with a $1.8 billion, or $30 a share, offer for Data Domain.

The rub: rival NetApp already had a plan to buy the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company for $1.5 billion, or $25 a share.

EMC said its all-cash offer is a 20 percent premium over NetApp's stock-and-cash offer on May 20.

Simply put, EMC wants to acquire Data Domain in order to thwart NetApp's offer--or at the very least make the acquisition more expensive. Joe Tucci, EMC's chief executive, said his company's offer is a "superior proposal" and a "win-win."

He added that the acquisition will strengthen EMC's position in the "next-generation disk-based backup and archive market."

Data Domain offers "deduplication storage appliances for disk-based backup, archiving, and network-based disaster recovery," according to its profile on Yahoo Finance.

On a conference call, Tucci said the Data Domain offer is about driving growth. "We had our eye on Data Domain, but obviously someone got there first," he said. He added that the growth profile of the combined companies makes the higher price worth it and that the combination of three products--EMC's DL4000 and Avamar and Data Domain--will be a $1 billion business.

Certainly, Data Domain shareholders were happy about the EMC offer:

Motorola turns to consumer electronics

Motorola is turning to the consumer electronics market as it looks to expand its troubled wireless business in new directions.

On Tuesday morning, the company will announce plans to sell wireless broadband modules that device makers can use to put into consumer electronics products or monitoring devices to provide broadband wireless connectivity. Specifically, Motorola is putting its homegrown wireless technology into embedded modules so that laptops, Netbooks, digital cameras, and other devices can connect to the Internet using 3G HSPA networks, as well as 4G wireless networks using WiMax and LTE technologies.

Motorola's entree into this market is significant because it marks the first time the iconic cell phone maker has sold its wireless technology to other device manufacturers. Up to this point, Motorola has kept its wireless technology for its own products.

But Motorola executives say they see a big opportunity in the consumer electronics and machine-to-machine markets. And right now as Motorola struggles to get back on track, the company could use a new market opportunity to add some extra revenue.

"We see wireless broadband in consumer electronics being a tremendous growth opportunity not just for Motorola, but for the entire industry," said Gary Koerper, vice president of Engine Systems for Motorola Mobile Devices. "In the next five to seven years everything you own will be connected to the Internet."

No hit since Razr
Motorola's wireless business has been faltering for more than two years. The company hasn't had a hit handset since the 2004 introduction of the Razr. And it's steadily been losing market share to competitors, such as Nokia and Samsung. In an effort to revive the failing business, the company ousted its CEO and announced a plan to spin off the handset business.

The company hired Sanjay Jha as a new CEO for the division to steer it back to recovery. But the plan for the spin-off was tabled when the economy tanked. Since then, the company has announced a new plan, which involves cutting back the number of operating systems it uses for its devices and standardizing on only a few operating systems, such Google's Android platform. But so far the fruits of these plans haven't been seen.

The original Razr

(Credit: Motorola)

Meanwhile, competition is heating up amid its traditional cell phone competitors. And newcomers, such as Apple with itsiPhone and Research in Motion with the BlackBerry, have posed a threat to the company at the high-end with stronger sales in smartphones. This competitive pressure appears to have spurred Motorola to look to other markets to supplement its shrinking wireless revenue.

But Koerper also said that Motorola is not giving up on its plans to revive its handset business.

"The core of Motorola's wireless devices business is still cell phones," he said. "We are still focused on smartphones and Android handsets to drive that market going forward."

Koerper pointed to the emerging Netbook market and smartgrid market as examples of where Motorola's technology could be useful. Carriers such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless are starting to sell mini-laptop computers for a subsidized price with a two-year service contract for their 3G services. And there is a major movement already under way to get the nation's energy companies to put remote monitoring devices into the electrical grid to create a more efficient energy system.

Koerper believes these two markets offer a major opportunity for Motorola because the company has already been developing the 3G and 4G technology necessary to connect these devices to a wireless broadband network for its own wireless products.

"I think it's the culmination of our quiet investment in the things we have already been doing in wireless along with a need in the consumer electronics and machine-to-machine markets for wireless broadband access coming together to create this big opportunity for us," he said.

Big opportunity
Indeed, this could be a big opportunity for Motorola and any company looking to embed wireless broadband technology into consumer electronics devices, such a laptops, Netbooks, digital cameras gaming devices, and other devices.

By 2014, market research firm Strategy Analytics predicts, there will be 100 million devices with 3G and 4G technology embedded in them. Initially, this market will be dominated by laptops and Netbook computers. By the end of 2009, more than half of the 8.4 million consumer electronics devices installed and enabled for 3G and 4G will be notebook computers, Strategy Analytics predicts. And the firm believes that the entire market of 3G and 4G enabled products will nearly double to 16.6 million in 2014

Wireless operators, such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless, are already moving toward 4G networks. Verizon Wireless said it plans to test its 4G LTE network this year and will offer its service commercially in 2010. AT&T is also upgrading its 3G network with a faster generation of HSPA technology. And Clearwire, which is backed by Sprint, Google, Intel, and cable operators Comcast and Time Warner, is also adding more cities to its 4G WiMax network this year and it plans to continue to expand that network in the next few years.

Motorola plans to offer solutions for all three network technologies. Specifically, the company is announcing the Motorola WTM1100, a WiMax network adapter that operates in the 2.5 GHz or 3.5 GHz spectrum to provide WiMax connectivity. The Motorola HTM1000 is a 3G/2G HSPA, EDGE and GPRS adapter that supports downlink speeds of up to 10.1 Mbps and uplinks of 5.76 Mbps uplink, the company claims. These products will be available in the third quarter of this year for testing. And Koerper said they will likely be offered in laptops and Netbooks by the end of the year.

The Motorola LTM1000, a module developed for LTE networks, will offer download speeds up to 100Mbps and upload speeds up to 50Mbps,the company said. This product will be available for device and network sampling by the end of the year and products will likely hit the market starting in the middle of 2010.

Motorola hasn't announced any consumer electronics or machine-to-machine manufacturers that it is working with yet, but the Koerper said the company is already in discussions with companies.

Of course, Motorola isn't the only company going after this market. There are already several companies developing wireless modules for embedded devices, including Novatel and Sierra Wireless. But Koerper said these companies typically use components and technology from other companies, such as Qualcomm. By contrast, Motorola is using all its own technology, which he claims is an added benefit to the company's products.

Koerper said that fitting the technologies together so that they work well together is not trivial. And he said that Motorola has already developed technology to help manage power consumption and to seamlessly switch between wireless network technologies. As a result, he believes that Motorola has the expertise and experience to export its wireless technology to other device manufacturers and be successful in this market.

"There are only a few companies on planet that have shipped their wireless technology," Koerper said. "And there have been a lot of companies that have wanted to. Only a few have been able to do it successfully."

Earth Gets Billion-Year Life Extension

The Earth could be habitable for another 2.3 billion years, extending previous estimates of life’s horizon by more than 1 billion years.

King Fai Li and his colleagues at Caltech hypothesize that Earth’s atmospheric pressure has always varied, and that it could fall in the distant future, keeping Earth from frying for far longer than previous research had shown.

If the new idea proves correct and can be extended to other planets with biospheres, it could increase the chances that earthly civilization finds extraterrestrial life by doubling the percentage of time that planets could be inhabited.

“[T]he Earth will be identifiable as an inhabited planet for nearly half the total lifetime of the Sun, an important point to consider in the search for life on extrasolar planets,” the authors write in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Over the next hundreds of millions of years, the sun will continue to get brighter until eventually, Earth becomes too hot to inhabit. Previous calculations had pegged that time at about a billion years from now, but the new paper argues that earlier models had neglected the role of atmospheric pressure in regulating the temperature of the planet on astronomical time scales.

Atmospheric pressure is a key variable in the overall greenhouse-gas effect because it determines how much infrared radiation greenhouse gases absorb. Higher pressures mean more absorption and consequently, more heat. Lower pressures have the opposite effect.

Life itself would be the mechanism for these temperature changes. By “fixing” nitrogen, pulling it out of the air and eventually into the Earth’s deep ocean, microbes could be making the atmosphere lighter one atom at a time.

“I am glad that Li and colleagues have raised the issue of how overall variation in atmospheric pressure may have affected past and may affect future climate,” ecologist Ken Caldeira of Stanford University said in an e-mail. “This could be relevant for understanding climate change on the billion-year time scale.”

Despite this potentially important role, atmospheric pressure in the distant past has gone uninvestigated.

“We have a lack of data about the past history of the atmospheric pressure,” said Li.

Admittedly, that means that there is a lot of uncertainty in their calculations.

“I think more work needs to be done before we can say with any confidence how the total mass of the atmosphere has varied in the past and how it might vary in the future,” Caldeira said.

While there are implications for very long time scales, Li said the work was unlikely to have an impact on the models of anthropogenic climate change.

“We all know that the human activity which is influencing the atmosphere has a time scale of hundreds of years or thousands of years,” Li said. “Even if the biosphere is really controlling the climate, it’s not on that time scale.”

Li said that an important next step in the research field would come from astrobiologist Roger Buick’s lab at the University of Washington, which is attempting to measure atmospheric pressures deep in the past.

“So, the assumption that we’ve always had an atmosphere of the same pressure as now is widespread but there’s no justification for it,” Buick said. “The reason that everyone just assumes an atmosphere of roughly current pressure is that it is exceedingly difficult to measure in the past. The weight of the atmosphere doesn’t leave much record in geology.”

But Buick found a set of basalt rocks from 2.7 billion years ago in Northwestern Australia that he thinks bear the marks of that pressure. Gas bubbles trapped in the rocks could provide the answer to whether or not the atmospheric pressure was different way back then.

Using the size of gas bubbles to establish the altitude of an eruption is a well-known scientific practice — smaller bubbles mean lower, larger ones mean higher. Buick, though, knows from other evidence that the rocks were formed at sea level, so variation in the bubble size will be an indication of atmospheric pressure, not elevation.

“If you know that your basalt erupted exactly at sea level, you can use it as a paleobarometer rather than a paleoaltimeter,” he said.

Buick’s “got an open mind” about what he might find, but no matter what the data shows, he’s not confident that it’ll be well-received by the scientific establishment.

“If the number is substantially different, either greater or lesser from today, we’ll have quite a bit of explaining to do and I expect people will not believe it anyway,” he said.

Li’s group, though, is waiting on Buick’s data to let them know whether they’re on the right track with their speculations that Earth’s biosphere can actually change the weight of the atmosphere.

“If the atmospheric pressure is changing, the only effective mechanism we can think of is by the biosphere itself,” Li said.