Epic Games: Sony's Next Gen Portable is a "Pretty Huge Deal"

Launched earlier this week, Sony's hefty NGP already has quite a number of game developer fans. Among them is the company behind Gears of War, Unreal Tournament and Bulletstorm.
"I've played our demo on it and I've played Dungeon Defenders on it," said Epic vice president Mark Rein. "I think Sony has done a great job with this device and that it caters to many gaming experiences."
Unreal Engine, the popular game engine found in titles as diverse as the iPhone's Infinity Blade, Xbox 360's Gears of War, has already been customized to work on Sony's new platform, Rein said. Adding that the NGP is "in the same class as the Playstation 3."
"We're already impressed with what we're able to do with it today and we're really just getting started," he said
Rein declined to say what games his company may be working on for the device, but pointed to how quickly the cross-platform tactical RPG Dungeon Defenders was able to make the jump to the NGP.
"At Sony's PlayStation event we showed Trendy Entertainment's Dungeon Defenders game on NGP," he said. "It was a great demonstration of Unreal Engine 3's fantastic cross-platform capabilities.
Trendy had never even seen NGP prior to coming to our office and in under a week they delivered the fully playable version of the game we showed on stage... If we had given them another week they would have shown us NGP playing against PS3 as well – they already plan to deliver that functionality when they ship the game."
Rein calls the NGP a "pretty huge deal" for not just Playstation fans, but gamers.
"A truly portable high-end gaming experience just seems so awesome to me," he said. "I've said for a while that triple-A isn't going away, it's going everywhere. The idea of a portable device that delivers the kinds of high-performance dual-analog stick experiences I can get on a console definitely appeals to me as a gamer and the NGP can do that and so much more."

Business interests of shareholders Game Analysis

Abstract Based on the pioneering team of fissile survey, venture shareholders game analysis, put forward the process of entrepreneurial teams in the interests of the game in the success of the disadvantaged shareholders observe a weak concept and support this concept from the inside out under the "number two" business practices.
     Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management Game abide by the interests of the weak success
    
Entrepreneurial team of meeting and separation, has always been entrepreneurs to start a company but were concerned by regret helpless, it seems that we can only lament that a "total pain easy to difficult with the willing" and the immortal line only. However, in the numerous cases of people facing the trance, in the further analysis of prescriptions after the show - even though everyone would like to have such a prescription? I open no prescription, but would like to start by the fundamental interests of the team game analysis, and set realistic business in the process of entrepreneurial teams in the interests of the game in the defensive weak point of view of success and the support of this concept from the inside out under the "two handle "business practices. This view is also a writer for many years entrepreneurial Experience bit by bit, understanding.
Entrepreneurial team behind the parting in the end, what deep-seated reason for this? In June 2004 more than 200 in-service training courses in Business Administration students organized an "entrepreneurial management survey" activities, which designed the question: Would you please list the current stage of China's three Sanhuo entrepreneurial team, the main reason? Statistical analysis, because the top three teams conflicts (26%), the distribution of benefits (15%), effective communication (12%). The team behind the more or less contradictory elements of interest in, if these two together accounted for 41%, while rival defeated by only 1%. Reading these figures, we naturally think of the "A Fanggong" inside the line: eliminate those six countries, six countries also, non-Qin also. Qin clan who, Qin also, non-world also.
In the entrepreneurial team, one of the most direct interest in the form of entrepreneurial team members down the law in the form of confirmation. In fact in our country at this stage, there is a part of the shareholders in a latent form of the rules of the form or forms to display the hidden, or that it could not use words to describe. Whether the former or the latter is clearly a means to express a hidden way, in the business enterprise management, decision-making, operations, distribution of benefits and so on will have to be strong, the weak performance. Modern Economics in the analysis of Economic issues, people assume that economic man is a rational economic man, human behavior is rational self-interest. Therefore, the entrepreneur team, the allocation of interests in the business have different motives, performance.
Suppose a company's existing one million yuan of profits available for distribution, enterprise there are two strong shareholders, the shareholders are A, minority shareholders B. A company's shareholders, accounting for 60% of the shares of companies accounted for 40% of the shareholders of B shares. If the parties to share in accordance with the distribution of company shares is a very good calculation, A distribution of 600,000, B allocate 40 million (see attached map). A shareholder in the daily operations management of the company's financial and market, when the company has cash flow problems when the shareholders of A are often able to provide cash support for the company, shareholder B of Technology shares, and is responsible for corporate R & D and Engineering services work.
If a dominant shareholder A would like to keep all the profits that can be allocated 1 million, no matter what the minority shareholders with the distribution program, will be there may be profit-distributing the number of "cost overruns" phenomenon. Under such circumstances, the strong shareholder A will appear exclusive distribution scheme of war or resistance. Strong shareholder would think, how to gain much more through rule-making also can stimulate the B shareholders do? From the shareholders point of view of B, if we adopt the distribution of a program benefits the largest shareholder of A might not mind receiving, while the Financial Management by the shareholders of A, the last possible situation is that shareholders of A agreed, but the shareholders can not get B distribution of profits in cash, the allocation of the program to become a distribution of profits on paper "specimens." "Time is money," one time, to shareholders B is a huge challenge. If the shareholders of B can be allocated to the cash last the longer effects of B shareholders will be greater, the shareholders of B will become increasingly vulnerable. The uncertainty from the business concerned, the longer the uncertainty of profits available for distribution increased. In real life, distribution of profits may be shrinking very subtle way, different situations have different manifestations at different speeds, it is worth entrepreneurs carefully analyzed. In a comprehensive analysis of a variety of possible circumstances, the shareholders of B occur several times in the company thought of the cash flow difficulties, operational difficulties arise in the company when the shareholders of the company A cash support, so the need for incentives to shareholders A in exchange for the distribution of speed, effect, reflecting the value of time. Shareholders of B in the program is to communicate with the distribution plan proposed by two, to shareholders of A to incentives. A start to think about shareholders, but also have an exclusive right of shareholders to consider B's incentives. So both sides will accept the reality of the allocation of program 2, A shareholder of the allocation of 800,000, 200,000 shareholders, the allocation of B. Weak shareholder B, the program can be characterized by an epidemic was not as good as the words that are too many

Sony posts $852m profit: PS3, PC sales up

Sony got itself back in black with a $293m profit last quarter courtesy of improved PS3 and Bravia sales, and the good times continue: the company just posted a second-quarter profit of ¥68.7b ($852m). The Networked Products and Services division that encompasses PlayStation and VAIO was Sony's strongest performer, with revenue going up five percent to ¥369b ($4.6b) on top of 3.5m PS3 sales (a slight increase), a 40 percent increase in PS3 software sales to 35m units, and "significant hardware cost reductions." PC sales were up to 2.3m units from 1.4m units last year, and Bravia and digital camera sales also increased, to 4.9m and 6.2m units, respectively. Now for the bad news: PSP sales continued their precipitous decline, down 50 percent to 1.5m from 3.0m last year. By way of comparison, that's the same number of PS2s Sony shipped this past quarter -- maybe it's time to break out a totally new PlayStation Phone, eh, Sony?

next gen portable psp2

As expected, Sony has outed its “PSP2“, currently codenamed the Sony next generation portable entertainment system or NGP, and expected to go on sale at the end of 2011. Based on a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 processor and Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU, the NGP has a 5-inch OLED 960 x 544 multitouch-capable touchscreen on the front and a multitouch pad on the back, for what Sony describes as “touch, grab, trace, push and pull” gestures in gameplay.

There are also two cameras, one front and one rear, and a suite of sensors including six-axis motion-sensing (pairing gyroscope and accelerometer), a three-axis digital compass, GPS and WiFi. There’s also 3G, WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR with support for A2DP stereo headphones. Sony is now using a flash memory card to store games, but there’ll also be access to the new PlayStation Suite, also announced today, which offers titles for the NGP and for Android smartphones.

As with the 3DS‘ StreetPass feature, the Sony NGP will use a new service called Near, part of the PlayStation Network, to flag up gamers in the vicinity and show what they’re playing now or having been playing recently. There’ll also be wireless multiplayer support. Each NGP game will LiveArea access, with a log of activity and other information.

The whole thing measures in at 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5 mm and has dual analog sticks, the usual directional buttons, action buttons and shoulder controls. No word on pricing; that won’t be revealed until closer to launch at the end of the year

What is social analysis?

Social analysis at the World Bank involves examining the socio-cultural, institutional, historical and political context within which the World Bank works. Through social analysis the World Bank assesses whether its programs and operations are likely to meet their social objectives and identifies measures that will ensure that these objectives are achieved. Social analysis also helps to assess the likely outcomes, impacts and social risks that need to be considered in the design of projects and programs, including the views and priorities of relevant stakeholders.  

Complementing economic analysis, social analysis assesses the likelihood that the World Bank’s operations will be socially sustainable and that its social benefits and economic opportunities will be widely shared. It identifies opportunities and constraints arising from the country's socio-cultural, institutional, historical and political context to prepare strategies and programs that contribute to the country's development objectives as well as to the Bank's core mission of poverty reduction. In particular, social analysis helps to incorporate the goals of equity and social inclusion into the World Bank’s projects and programs.

At the World Bank, social analysis is undertaken on multiple levels.  The World Bank conducts social analysis on the country-level, as inputs into the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) process or other key policy documents, on the sector-level to support policy reforms and sector strategies, and on the project-level, as an integral part of project appraisal to judge whether the project's social development outcomes have been clearly identified and Bank support is justified. Additionally, a social assessment may be undertaken by the Borrower for the purpose of obtaining the views of stakeholders in order to improve the design of the project and establishing a participatory process for implementation and monitoring

The China Bubble

Gady Epstein, 12.10.09, 06:00 PM EST
Forbes Magazine dated December 28, 2009
China's economy is humming along in high gear, thanks to a fast-growing pile of dicey debt. Such booms tend to end badly

China's economy is the envy of the world. As developed nations struggle to eke out a bit of growth and to get unemployment rates out of double digits, Chinese output gallops ahead at an 8% annual rate. This $4.7 trillion economy, it seems, is the world's dynamo and the prototype for the future.

Take a close look, however, and you may come away thinking China resembles nothing so much as Japan shortly before its stock and property markets melted down two decades ago. A speculative frenzy of borrowing and bidding up is at work. If and when prices crash, there will be hell to pay.
Signs of the times: government bureaucracies funding themselves by foisting debt on state-owned business enterprises; local governments raising capital by selling land at sky-high prices to corporations they own; and a People's Bank of China lavishing liquidity on the entire system in a way that makes Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke look downright stingy.
"It's a Ponzi scheme whose head is the central bank, and it can print money," says Victor Shih, a China expert at Northwestern University.
The U.S. government's $7.2 trillion in debt at the end of June represented 50% of gross domestic product. The Chinese government's officially disclosed $840 billion in public debt represents less than 20% of GDP. But the People's Bank of China and the treasury are also on the hook for potentially $1.5 trillion in off-balance-sheet debt owed by cities and provinces and entities they control. They're also implicitly obliged to backstop $1 trillion, both in loans that "policy banks" were directed to issue, even when they made no economic sense, and nonperforming loans that the government removed from the books of state-owned commercial banks over the past decade.
Add it up and the national government is responsible for debt equal to over 70% of 2009 GDP. That doesn't count any loans generated this year that might go sour amid a 30% increase in debt balances nationwide. (The U.S. government, in addition to its direct debt equal to 50% of GDP, is responsible for cosigning of mortgage borrowers' obligations equal to another 18% of GDP.)

A visual journey into Japan's sex industry

Sex is everywhere in Japan, but most tourists don't see it. They walk past the men handing out tissue packages at train stations, and assume the neon signs in entertainment districts point to karaoke bars. But many indicate hostess clubs, oral-sex parlours, and “soapland” bathhouses. Those tissue packets advertise to men and are also used to recruit female workers.
According to Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex Clubs (Harry N. Abrams, $45), Japan's commercial sexual-services industry accounted for nearly US$20 billion in 2001. And although these clubs are a cultural phenomenon, they're strictly off-limits to foreigners.
Pink Box captures their inner sanctums in a photographic collection. It's not a coffee-table book you'd want your mother to see. Photographer Joan Sinclair visited over 90 clubs and returned with images of women working in nude theatres, peeping rooms, “touch pubs”, and “image clubs” with elaborately decorated fantasy theme rooms. Examples include a train replica where men pay to grope women posing as schoolgirls, and a department-store elevator, equipped with a mirrored floor and a uniformed, pantyless attendant. In “fashion clubs”, women provide services in true-to-life costumes—such as chain-restaurant uniforms, nurse outfits, officewear—or even dressed as anime characters.
On the line from San Francisco, Sinclair tells the Straight that she first learned of the clubs 10 years ago when she was working as an English teacher in Japan. She returned three years ago to photograph them. “ Pink Box is about the kitsch, the humour, and the over-the-top–ness of the domestic sex industry in Japan,” Sinclair says. “There is a sense of humour about it that's uniquely Japanese,” she says, adding that manga and Japanese graphic art are partly responsible. “There's something in Japanese society…that makes these archetypes of everyday life the heart of the role-playing fantasy.”
How did Sinclair gain access to these clubs? She speaks Japanese, and got to know the managers, workers, and customers. Once given permission to shoot, she worked with those who volunteered to be photographed for the book. “It's not an underground industry,” she explains. “They advertise, they all have Web sites…they have fan sites for the girls.”
Pink Box doesn't touch on the darker side of the industry: gritty brothels with Southeast Asian sex workers. Sinclair acknowledges that these exist but felt that was a different story to tell. She made the decision to shoot Japanese-style clubs that employ Japanese women. (Prostitution is legally a grey area in Japan, but Sinclair says one criterion they stick to is that they rarely risk employing those under 18.)
The book quotes customers and workers on their motivations. “It would take a year to earn the money for my [Louis Vuitton] purse if I was working in an office,” says a worker.
“All I ask is that viewers not assume that this profession is inherently degrading. It's more complicated than that,” Sinclair writes in the book. “These women are not powerless, they are not on drugs. They have made conscious choices; they have their own dignity.
“The clubs are a reflection of modern Japan, a literate society where the rules are written out, prices are not negotiable, and fantasies are predetermined, prescripted, and prepaid.” Sex and the city indeed.

from - straight.com