I’ve commented in the past that I perhaps don’t share Sony’s vision of the PSP as the de facto standard for portable video, not least because nobody in their right mind is going to buy UMD movies when they’re only playable on the PSP and I’m certainly not because they’re not in their OAR, but Bandai may have cracked the way to make them a success, albeit still on a far more limited basis than other, more mainstream, formats.

According to Engadget they’re going to be releasing a special set for anime series Eureka 7 which will have the standard DVD package, but for ¥1,260 (£6.16) extra you can get the same thing with another copy of the series on UMD. Obviously exchange rates have to be accounted for, but I’d pay £10 or so more for a movie that I really liked in order to own it on both formats. I’ve seen Spider-Man 2 on it so I know how much better the UMD movies can look than the low-bitrate MP4 files that a DVD rip would give and although this wouldn’t increase the liklihood of me repurchasing my DVD collection on UMD I’d definitely consider it for new releases.

In case you’ve noticed that the site has been dropping and giving you a random error message it’s because I’ve been testing a new design for the site. Nothing as extreme as the move from the crappy old tabular HTML design, but something that looks a bit more professional and less like the Kubrick theme that it’s currently based on while staying in the same spirit.

It’s been quite a venture to develop it for myself since it’s my first dabbling with using CSS for the design of the site (see the CSS Zen Garden to see what can be done) instead of dirty old HTML which makes for a much more streamlined page and code.

Anyway, it will go live in the couple of days. I’ve spent a lot of time looking for any bugs that need squashing but if you find any drop me a line.

Further to yesterday’s story about the OFT launching an investigation into Future Publishing’s planned takeover of Highbury, The Guardian reports that it was enough to get them to give up entirely. It’ll be the best thing for everyone.

Further to my earlier post about Xbox 360, I’ve just seen this story on Joystiq and it really is uncanny. It’s off-white, it fits the description of it being concave and “sucking in its cheeks” (originally seen on Eurogamer), and the weird patterns at the top and bottom look like cooling vents.

This could just be another example of Microsoft’s viral marketing but I really like the idea of us all seeing the design regularly for a couple of years before it comes out.

Another thing pointed out by IGN is that the car in the OurColony shot is a Ferrari 360. More covert confirmation of the details?

I’ve just had my attention drawn to a fantastic Half-Life 2 webcomic called Apostasy over at BrashFink’s WebWerx, made completely within the game’s engine. By using Garry’s Mod (great fun if you haven’t tried it – makes it possible to manipulate all characters and models using the physics engine and freeze the results, often with hilarious consequences) each frame was put together and turned into the pages of a completely original graphic novel set in the HL2 universe.

It’s incredible well done so give it a look if you’re a fan of HL2 or comics in general. It makes you wonder what could be done with that engine for a machinima project like Red vs Blue.

I’ve just seen that the Office of Fair Trading is set to investigate the potential acquisition of Highbury House (they own Highbury Entertainment, a games and computer magazine publisher who I’ve worked for in the past) by Future Publishing, the juggernaut of UK games journalism. Naturally the biggest company buying up its biggest competitor is going to do no good to the industry when it’s pretty much a two-horse race anyway. Many of the new magazines are simply one of them responding to one of the other’s publications – just look at the apparent synchronicity between the review scores of gamesTM and Edge. Would there be any reason to run two directly competitive magazines from the same stable? It’s only going to lead to people who might buy both picking one and sticking with it since they’ll be perceived as so similar.

I’m no big businessman and so can’t even attempt to try to put a spin on how this would affect the economics of games journalism if it is allowed to go ahead, but as someone who hopes to have a future (no pun intended) in this sector of the industry I would definitely support anything to keep as much variety and vitality around as possible. Combining Future and Highbury would be like combining EA and Ubisoft or Microsoft and Apple. There would be no synergy and no creativity coming from it, resulting in it being ultimately bad for everyone.