Sony Retracts Bloatware Removal Fee

-from The Washington Post
So A few days ago Sony announced that they wouldn’t instal all the crappy software that slows down for computer slower than molasses in the Alaskan winter. The catch? They would do that for 50 buck. Yep, you pay them not to instal something on your computer. Well Today they announced that they are no longer charging you the $50. All because people were angry about it. I guess the power of the people finally worked for once. Click the link at the top for more info.

E3 Schedule Released

-from gamewad
E3, or at least the shadow of the former expo, “min-E3,” will be held this year from July 11th to the 13th at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. The ESA recently released a schedule of events for the show on the official E3 website.

Microsoft will get things started this year with their pre-E3 conference at 8:30pm on July 10th. Nintendo will be up next, hosting their conference at 9:00 the next morning. Sony will take up the rear with a conference at 11:30am on the 11th.

Third parties will be granted conference time, as well. The full show schedule follows:

7/10/07:

* 8:30pm – Microsoft Press Conference

7/11/07:

* 9:00am – Nintendo Press Conference
* 9:00am-5:30pm – Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
* 11:30am – Sony Press Conference
* 1:00-6:30pm – Barker Hanger open to view games
* 2:00pm – Electronic Arts conference
* 3:15pm – Activision conference
* 4:30pm – Midway conference
* 5:45pm – Konami conference

7/12/07:

* 8:00am – Take-Two conference
* 9:00am-5:30pm – Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
* 9:15am – THQ conference
* 10:30am – Ubisoft conference
* 1:00-6:30pm – Barker Hanger open to view games
* 1:00pm – Namco Bandai conference
* 3:30pm – Disney Interactive conference

7/13/07:

* 9:00am-3:30pm – Meeting suites open at the Fairmont Hotel
* 11:00am-3:30pm – Barker Hanger open to view games

On the hangar floor, booths will be set up for over 30 companies. Some notables who won’t have formal conferences include Capcom, Square-Enix, and SEGA, among others.

*Eddie R Inzauto – Senior Editor, GameWad.com

PS3s already pwning Folding@Home leaderboard; tonight’s Foldathon to bring total dominance

-from engadget
If you want to try it you can download the program here, just remember to run it when your not using the computer.

Well we knew that the Cell processor — which makes the PS3 a pretty cheap supercomputer,along with its myriad other roles — was well suited to the task of crunching numbers for Stanford’s Folding@Home project, but there’s no way we could have expected the unbelievable impact made by 35,000 some gamers in only a few days. In what can only be described as a total hijacking of the leaderboard, PS3s are currently accounting for 734 of the 990 teraflops Folding processes at peak capacity; in other words, Cell processors have more than tripled the project’s power even though they only account for around 13% of the total machines grinding away at any given time. Now keep in mind that Sony’s boxes have only been pitching in since midweek, and with tonight’s Sunday Night Foldathon — an event which encourages PS3 owners to simultaneously run the app while they sleep — we should see even more impressive performance as the slumbering masses donate record numbers of cycles. This would also probably be a good time to direct you towards instructions for joining Team Engadget, and also to suggest that even though this is primarily PS3-centric, that shouldn’t stop other PC-equipped team members and owners of even bigger supercomputers (we’re looking at you, IBM) from participating.

News from the frontlines of the console wars

well I just heard that Devil May Cry 4 and Ace Combat 6 are headed over the to 360 now, which would make the good exclusive, in my opinion, Metal Gear solid 4. This hoilday season wll be Sony’s make it or break it time, because if they fail here it’s over.

PS3 or beer? Microsoft poses the ultimate question

-From Engadget

While we might’ve put down a few of Microsoft’s last night Europe exploits as a tad immature, we aren’t going to deny the genius here: Microsoft’s message to gamers is that the Xbox 360 = the PS3 + £146 in beer money. Of course, such a mental exercise is nothing without a bit of illustration, so Microsoft carted in just that much beer to the offices of the UK’s CVG magazine (above) and Auckland, NZ’s GamePlanet store (pictured after the break). Naturally, Sony will have the last laugh when its utterly sober fanboys use keen rhetoric to destroy their tipsy MS fanboy opponents in the comments section following this post.

[Via Joystiq]