As we reported yesterday , E3 is alive and kicking, just in a much reduced and more efficient form. Next year's E3 will still be in LA, but will consist of many small press events and more "intimate meetings" between the press and developers instead of the monster show floor of years past.
In a press release, ESA President Doug Lowenstein said that "it has become clear that we need a more intimate program, including higher quality, more personal dialogue with the worldwide media, developers, retailers, and other key industry audiences...It is no longer necessary or efficient to have a single industry 'mega-show."
Downsizing makes a lot of sense. Many small shows that let press see and play games without having to deal with the crush of people all trying to get to the same place makes a lot more sense, and it should put the emphasis back on the games themselves, not huge video screens or live bands.
A job listing for the position of PS3 programmer appearing on Crytek's website is causing us to speculate that the dev's gorgeous PC FPS Crysis could be porting to Sony's new console. One of the responsibilities attached to the position, you see, is "Cross platform code development", while "Experience with next generation cross-platform development" is a requirement.
But the speculation could be purely crazy, and Crytek's PS3 construction could very well turn out to have nothing to do with Crysis at all. The studio has recently stated that it has several "vastly different" games in development at its Frankfurt headquarters, and speaking to us Crytek also gave firm word that Crysis would be a PC-only title. It wouldn't tell us naughty fibs now, would it?
Either way, if a console port does turn out to be in the works, it's unlikely we would see it anywhere near the launch of its PC counterpart, considering Crysis is due out in the first quarter of 2007 and the studio is only just advertising for PS3 programmers.
We'll let you know if any more info on Crytek's console development surfaces.
Next-Gen.Biz has ranked the top 100 games of the PlayStation 2 / Xbox / GameCube generation based wholly on unit sales. Analysis includes revenues, average review scores, commentary, spin-offs and more.
Entertainment Software Association president Doug Lowenstein has revealed the first details of what visitors can expect from next year's E3 - including a new name, a new venue and a new date.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Lowenstein said that the event will be known as the E3 Media Festival from now on. He did not discuss whether this means other types of media will also be on show.
Around 5000 people are expected to attend, a dramatic drop from the 60,000 visitors who were at this year's E3. According to Lowenstein, this is in a bid to meet the needs of exhibitors who felt the event had become too big: "Some companies were frustrated because E3 was such a huge, sweeping event it became increasingly difficult to get their messages out."
Next year's show will be held in July, rather than May as is traditional. It appears that the date change is designed to give publishers more time to work on products slated for a Christmas release.
And finally, E3 will no longer take place in the Los Angeles Convention Center - instead, the ESA plans to use two hotels, holding press events and meetings in suites and conference rooms.
Disney/Pixar movie tie-in Cars has raced into the top of the charts this week, knocking GTA: Liberty City Stories into second place to give THQ its first all-formats No. 1 of the year.
The film opened in European cinemas last Friday, and sales of the game were up by 88 per cent as a result. Fellow movie-tie in Over the Hedge remains at No. 10 in the chart, with Ubisoft's Pirates of the Caribbean titles, The Legend of Jack Sparrow and Dead Man's Chest, at No. 4 and No. 6 respectively.
New Super Mario Bros. is still in third place, while Dr Kawashima's Brain Training is at No. 5. The seventh spot goes to Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer Five, followed by a re-entry for The Sims 2 at eight as the hit PC title gets a platinum release.
Titles slipping out of the top ten include Take-Two's Prey, which falls from No. 7 to No. 17. Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II is down from 11 to 20.
There several new entries in the top 40 - such as PSP and PS2 title Formula One '06, in at No. 14, and expansion pack Civilization IV: Warlords, which has taken the top spot in the full-price PC chart but resides at No. 36 in the all-formats countdown.
PSP movie tie-in Miami Vice enters the chart at No. 25, and a series of retailer promotions have boosted EA's The Godfather into No. 34.
UK publishers clammed up today as the shock of E3's effective demise sinks in, with almost all of the biggest players refusing to offer comment without deferring to their US offices.
Major third party publishers such as THQ, Sega, Vivendi and Ubisoft are on lockdown, refusing to reveal anything about how the companies view ESA's move or whether or not they will be involved in E3's future.
Comments are expected before the end of the week - once the UK offices have talked to their US counterparts. Many publishers have said there is still much confusion over exactly how the new E3 will take shape, and how they plan to react accordingly.
Some of those GI.biz spoke to were prepared to comment, but only off the record - with one very senior executive observing that E3 is likely to be mourned more by retailers than publishers.
"As a retailer, it's the first chance you get to see everything," the source stated.
"As a publisher, all I really need to see are retailers and they're based around London. Our PR message ensures that the key people see our games anyway, whether it be via online or the press."
Another executive at a major third-party publisher told GI.biz: "I very much doubt we would ever pull out of E3."
However, the source applauded the move for change. "The show was reaching its pinnacle, and getting as big as it could get. It would be good to see it moved around," he said.
"Now Leipzig's coming along, and more and more people are going, everywhere you look. People are definitely taking Leipzig more seriously. But I think there's room for two," the source added.
As for the big three, Nintendo is the only platform holder to have confirmed an appearance at the new event so far, with both Microsoft and Sony remaining non-committal.
Last week i let you know of a handheld called One Station which lets has TV Out and comes at a rather cheap price of $28 (16Pounds), it has TV Out and also you can get Multi game 8 Bit (think Nes/Spectrum) and also 16bit (Megadrive) Game cartridges.
Well today ive found out more info about this console and possible Homebrew implications for the future, heres a screen detailing the future and present features:
The upcoming features look impressive, GPS, Wireless, Flash, MP3, Educational Games, Ebook, Picture Viewer and the SD Download which could possibly be used for Homebrew means this is a very interesting console.
Those interested can check the console out at SuccessHK, im going to get one for review as soon as possible to unearth more on this new console.
EA has said it expects to have four to five games out for PS3 between the console's launch and the end of the year, confirming at this stage three of the titles: Need for Speed Carbon; Madden NFL 07; and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07.
Discussing its launch games line-up for Sony's next-gen console - during a conference call held with media and analysts yesterday - the company also admitted, while fielding a question on Xbox 360 versus PS3 technical capabilities, that it's extremely unlikely that the initial wave of titles will do PS3's hardware justice.
"This Christmas, it's going to be difficult to harness the full power of the PS3 on first generation software versus what will be second generation 360 games, so they're going to be more alike than different, is our opinion at this time," an EA exec commented.
They continued: "As those machines develop over time [...] there's a lot of horsepower inside the PS3 that we'll be able to unlock over years two, three, and four that we're very excited about."
EA additionally took the opportunity to touch on Wii and DS during the conference call, revealing plans to boost focus on both machines. "We're definitely going after those platforms", the publisher revealed, "...we have ramped up [game] production for the Wii and DS Lite". It added: "In terms of relative investment on the Wii and the DS, we are moving resources against those platforms to increase SKU count."
The publisher went on to say, however, that it only expects to have a couple of titles out for Wii's launch period - Need for Speed Carbon and Madden NFL 07 - and a total of five released by the end of the company's fiscal year - March 2007. It's possible that EA's Wii games will retail at $49.99 in the US (apparently, Nintendo has indicated that first-party Wii games will not retail for more than this amount over the pond), but that remains to be confirmed.
Reportedly, EA didn't have an awful lot to say about Xbox 360 during the conference call, chairman and CEO Larry Probst simply stating, "We're pleased to be the leading publisher on the Xbox 360".
SNK Playmore could wait as long as four years before releasing a PlayStation 3 game, despite having already pledged titles to Nintendo Wii.
"My first impression is that it's expensive. The PlayStation 2 is good enough. It's small and cheap. For us, for manufacturers, we have to invest in a new system, and the PlayStation 3 is a risk," overseas marketing manager Yoshihito Koyama told gaming blog Kotaku.
"There won't be enough consoles at launch. Few consoles mean few software sales. We need to wait three or four years. Maybe 2009-2010 is a good time to release a game for the PS3."
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SNK Playmore, whose games are published in the UK by Ignition (and, under the terms of an agreement announced Monday, distributed by Atari), has previously said that it plans to support Nintendo Wii.
It's already planning a Metal Slug Anthology, based on the popular 2D shoot-'em-up, and president Ben Herman said the company wanted to use the Wii controller's "in a new and unique way that enhances the gameplay".
SNK's take on the other next-gen contenders, Sony and Microsoft, was previously unknown, although a recent deal with Ignition to publish future titles in the UK was worded to cover next-generation projects in addition to the likes of KoF: Maximum Impact 2 for PlayStation 2.
Chances are, anyone who has watched college basketball over the last four years has heard the phrase, "Redick for three!" The Redick in question is of course J.J., the Duke Blue Devils superstar who has won numerous awards, including multiple player of the year trophies.
Add one more honor to the long list of Redick's accolades--cover athlete for 2K Sports' College Hoops 2K7. Redick, who was drafted by the Orlando Magic in the off-season, will also serve as the game's spokesperson, temporarily putting to rest that his marketability was tarnished by a DUI charge in June.
A statement from 2K Sports today also revealed that the game, previously announced only for the Xbox 360, is headed to the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, and Xbox this fall. The fall release makes it a likely candidate for a launch title on the PS3, which hits US stores on November 17.
Redick, though one of the best players in college basketball history, was often the focus of hatred from fans as the best player for high-profile (and much maligned) Duke University. One of Redick's best friends and main competition last year for player of the year honors, former Gonzaga star Adam Morrison, remains his rival on the digital court, as he is now doing promotional work for Electronic Arts' NBA Live 07.
Associated Content explores Sony's pros and cons in how they've handled their PS3 campaign up until now. From the article: "The PS3 has caused quite a stirring over the past 2 years: from a general excitement to astonishment to disappointment. How did this happen? Let's look at what Sony did right, and what they did wrong, and every shades of gray in between."
The list is organized as follows:
PROS
The technical power of the Cell
Blu-ray: more space (52G) is only a good thing
PlayStation is still the leader in the gaming industry
PSX, PS2 backwards compatibility (huge library of games)
Strong 3rd-party support
Controller: motion-sensing addition only a good thing
Online play (though still lackluster)
Standard harddrives
1080p high definition gaming
Web browsing, just like the PSP
Connection to the PSP to enhance gameplay
CONS
Cost: we've said it a million times
Blue-Ray: too expensive storage medium
Size: the thing is big
High game prices
Architecture: Cell is too unique and could cause developer problems
No rumble
Even with redundancy, PS3 might have high defects at launch
Despite its strengths, the PS3 will only be marginally better than its competitors
Ken Kutaragi (will ruin the PS3?)
Speaking exclusively to SPOnG, Sims creator and quiet legend Will Wright has pointed towards Nintendo's Wii console as a likely host for his upcoming mega-game Spore, with the unique controller giving the famed developer an inspirational shot in the arm.
"We’re looking at all the platforms for Spore, because we’re thinking about Spore as a franchise, not as a PC game. We’re going to do the PC game first, but really, what we’re trying to launch is an entire franchise that will be all across platforms," Wright told us when we caught up with him in San Francisco recently.
"It will probably take very different forms depending on the platforms. We might even pull out parts of the game – so you might be playing part of the game on a handheld platform, you might be playing the entire game but maybe more avatar-based on a console. The consoles are getting kind of different now – I think there’s a really interesting distinction between the Wii and the Xbox 360 and PS3. Something like the Wii offers a lot of interesting creative opportunities for the editors, with the controller."
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Wright continues, "That’s been one of the ongoing problems with consoles: they don’t have a mouse. The mouse is a very good random-access device for putting on the screen; a console controller really makes you want the game avatar-based, so you move on character – that’s why RTS games suck on consoles. With Spore, about half the game is avatar-based already – the creature game and the space game – and it would be pretty easy for us to make the intermediate levels avatar-based, so from the beginning, we thought about how we could move Spore to platforms including consoles."
Stay tuned for our full, no-questions barred (except the one about the release date) interview with Wright in the coming days, only on SPOnG, where you'll learn about the possibility of Spore on handheld gaming platforms and a huge amount more on what is without question one of the most interesting and innovative videogames in development right now.
More recycled analysis brought to you by Bloomberg. A key point to keep in mind: Sony predicts a 5-year recoup for losses due to the PS3's manufacturing costs and price point. That's going to hurt, especially since the average console life is around five years (a few exceptions noted). Masafumi Oshiden, from Merrill-Lynch, said "PlayStation 3 will be a huge money loser in the beginning." Spoken adequately enough. It's true -- we all know it's going to be very hard for Sony. Estimates show that about 200 billion yen was invested into the development of the cell processor alone.
Another point to keep in mind is the notion that "Sony's PlayStation 3 introduction in November may be hampered by fewer and less-powerful games because the company hasn't given final technical details of the new console, according to video-game publishers." So, is delivering 10,000 dev kits not going to cut it? Will IBM be able to pull better yields for the cell processor in time for the PS3 launch? If not, Sony won't even have the chance to recoup in five years -- they may pull the plug sooner than that, unless we give them our support.
Famitsu is Japans best magazine for gaming and heres their top wanted games for all systems:
Square Enix, as usual, has a lot of hype going for their titles with over four games on Famitsu's Most Wanted list. Many of Nintendo's upcoming DS and Wii games are also listed, though Twilight Princess has sadly been dropping down the list during the past few months.
1. Final Fantasy III (Nintendo DS/Square Enix)
2. Final Fantasy XIII (Playstation 3/Square Enix)
3. Biohazard 5 (Playstation 3/Capcom)
4. Metal GEAR Solid 4 (Playstation 3/Konami)
5. Kamaitachi No Yoru 3 (Playstation 2/Sega)
6. Blue Dragon (Xbox 360/Microsoft)
7. Seiken Densetsu 4 (Playstation 2/Square Enix)
8. Sengoku Basara 2 (Playstation 2/Capcom)
9. Summon Night 4 (Playstation 2/Banpresto)
10. Gyakuten Saiban 4 (Nintendo DS/Capcom)
11. Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii/Nintendo)
12. Super Robot Wars OG (Playstation 2/Banpresto)
13. Pokemon Diamond & Pearl (Nintendo DS/Nintendo)
14. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii/Nintendo)
15. Bruise of Destiny (Playstation 2/Bandai Namco)
16. Final Fantasy Versus XIII (Playstation 3/Square Enix)
17. Dragon Quest Monsters Joker (Nintendo DS/Square Enix)
18. Utaware Rumono (Playstation 2/Aquaplus)
19. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS/Nintendo)
20. Fushigi No Dungeon (Nintendo DS/Sega)
21. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GameCube/Nintendo)
Speaking in an exclusive interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell has confirmed that the publisher has no plans to release any PS3 games before 2007.
Bonnell said Atari intends to support all three next-gen consoles "fairly equally", adding, "It's just that we're lacking information about the PS3 at this stage, because we have basically a rough release date and a high retail price point.
"As far as the Wii and the Xbox 360 go, we'll be there for this season; for PS3, we'll probably have to wait a little later in the year before we release some new titles." And, according to Bonnell, that means no Atari titles on PS3 until 2007.
The PS3 is slated for a global launch this November, priced at 499 Euro for the 20GB model and 599 Euro for the 60GB version. But Bonnell does not believe that the console's high point puts it at any risk of failure: "I think that by deciding to put the PS3 at this price, Sony has chosen to really differentiate itself from the other consoles.
"The fact that you have Blu-ray, and the fact that it's HD compatible - all this is driving me to think that Sony is picking up the high-end of the market, the hardcore, passionate fans. There will be a time they can reduce the price and access more people, but clearly that's a technical choice that Sony has made to be selective on the field at stage one," he added.
Read the full interview to find out why we're likely to see Atari titles arrive on Wii much sooner than they appear on PS3, what the future holds for the company following its recent financial difficulties, and what Bonnell thinks about the new format E3.
DCEmu Weeky is almost ready to begin production. However, we are looking for some members of DCEmu to help out with a new template for the mag. As DCEmu Weekly is a psp formatted mag, the dimensions will have to be 480x272. Please submit all entries in this thread (do not post blank templates or psds) and the winning template will be used in the very first issue of DCEmu Weekly!
Jez San, founder of the now-defunct Argonaut Software and now involved with PS3 slash 'em-up, Heavenly Sword has said that he thinks the PlayStation 3 will come out on top in the next-gen console war, "but only because its got Blu-ray."
Speaking to The Guardian, San said: "I think the combination of a next-generation games machine and a next-generation DVD player that plays full high-definition movies is very compelling, despite the huge price. Remember price is just a function of time and volume. It doesn't matter what the PS3 comes out at, it's what it gets down to, over time, that's important."
In the same article, market analyst Paul Jackson of Forrester Research agrees with San's comments, saying that Sony stands a good chance because, "Far more people will go for a PS3 than spend $1,000 on a Blu-ray player ...it's a question of how quickly [Sony] gets the price down."
Jackson goes on to echo San's own comments on the importance of price. "You can't get to the mass market until you get down to $300/£200 [mark]."
Jackson then asserts that it's going to be far from an easy ride for Sony, because of the amount of negative press that currently surrounds its next-gen console: "You can't over-estimate how much negativity there is around the PlayStation 3 in the web ...The stories just keep getting worse and worse. They've got a real fight on their hands."
There's only a few months left until the PS3 hits - and most-likely vanishes from - store shelves, and with likely stock shortages ensuring a Christmas sell-out for the console, it's going to be next year before we get the slightest inkling of who's really going to rule the next gen.
But as San points out, the unique appeal of both Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft's machines means it could very well end up being a three-way tie. Whichever way the next gen cookie crumbles, it's certainly going to be an interesting 12 months...
Word recently reached us that the PlayStation 3 has officially entered production, and in an interview with The Guardian, Sony's president of worldwide studios, Phil Harrison has shed some light on the on-going development work on the console.
According to Harrison, "It's all going well. We are in full swing, from a developer point of view, and over 10,000 developer kits have been shipped. Developers now have final [PS3] hardware in their hands, though there will be some upgrades to the operating system - there's nothing unusual about that. The new controller is now in developers' hands, so all the pieces of the puzzle are there."
Also in the interview, Harrison comments on the arrival of working Blu-ray drives in the PS3 dev kits, noting that many studios also have blu-ray burners in their PCs, "so they are now doing their first iterations of games running off discs," he says.
"Signs are good," adds Harrison, "right now there are more than 100 Blu-ray movies available today, in the US. More than 100 games are in development [for the PS3], and all the major third party publishers have pledged their strategic support for the platform."
Sony is gearing up for its next big push for the PS3, which will start at the Tokyo Games Show on September 22, where the father of PlayStation, Ken Kutruagi is scheduled to give the keynote speech. Hopefully with the appearance or some new game titles and a more solid-looking launch line-up, Sony will be able to make up for the mostly-negative reaction to its showing at this year's E3. Stay tuned.
For those Mac users who just can't wait to start filling up those $20+ Blu-ray writeables, the anticipation is just about over. Later this month, Japanese storage specialist Logitec will begin shipping what's touted as the "world's first Mac-compatible" Blu-ray disc burner. While Blu-ray burners for Windows-based machines have been popping up fairly frequently of late, OS X has been left out in the cold, (but considering the current price of Blu-ray media, we're assuming it hasn't been a total calamity). Nevertheless, the LBD-A2FU2/WM is an external 2x burner that will support DVD-RAM, DVD±R/RW, dual-layer DVD±R, CD-R / RW, and obviously BD-R / BD-RE discs. This FireWire / USB 2.0 combination drive supports PCs and Macs, and it's presumed that Roxio's Toast 7 Titanium software played a role in OS X getting its functionality groove on -- Roxio supposedly began offering Blu-ray drive makers a Mac-friendly version of the software, and sure enough, that's what you'll get with the Logitec. So for all you Mac fans who've felt a bit left behind, you can still get up to speed in just a couple weeks, but know it might cost you more than your MacBook (¥132,000 or $1,148), so you may want to think twice before cruising to Japan to pick one up.
Gamasutra's latest 'Analyze This' column has game industry analysts commenting on the rise of casual games, asking whether simpler games that take less time to play may be vital to game industry growth. David Cole of DFC Intelligence disagrees that any one genre or game type is vital, suggesting: 'A key for the industry is being able to diversify.... For the N64 and GameCube, Nintendo focused primarily on its big franchises and didn't have the same level of diversity. The platform that did was the Sony PS2. Which platform could work as a karaoke machine, allowed you to put yourself in the game, had all kinds of trivia products? The reason the PSOne and PS2 sold [so well] was diversity.' Is this the key to working out who wins in next-gen?"
With that in mind is Diversity the reason that the DS is selling so many worldwide and the reason why the Wii with its different controllers will revolutionize the console world. Got a comment then lets have it
A preliminary list of games that are confirmed for exhibition at this year's Tokyo Game Show was announced today by event coordinators Nikkei BP and the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association. The list covers the games and booths of 93 companies that registered by July 21 for the 2006 show, which runs from September 22-24. Currently, 140 companies are signed up, accounting for a grand total of 1,709 partition spaces.
While Sony and Microsoft's next-generation platforms are represented, there's no mention of Nintendo's Wii. However, this is only a preliminary list, and several big names--including Square Enix and Sony Computer Entertainment--have not revealed their software plans. Some heavyweights have given only vague outlines of what will be at their booths. For example, Konami promises that the "latest titles" in the Metal Gear Solid and Bemani series will be shown, but the company hasn't spilled any details.
CESA also updated the schedule for the TGS Forum, which will be held on September 22 during the show's Business Day. Capcom's Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi will headline the Characters Session, joined by Takashi Yamazaki, who directed the opening movie to Capcom's Onimusha 3 and the award-winning film Always Sanchome no Yuhi. Takeuchi and Yamazaki will share the stage with Hirofumi Inagaki, producer of Namco Bandai's Mobile Suit Gundam-themed PS3 shooter.
A list of the show's featured platforms, each platform's total number of games, and a selection of titles is below:
GameCube (1)
Battle Stadium D.O.N (Namco Bandai)
Nintendo DS (7)
Deep Labyrinth (Interactive Brains)
Gintama DS: Yorozuya Daisoudou (Namco Bandai)
Oto wo Tunagou! Gunpei Reverse (Namco Bandai)
Tales of the Tempest (Namco Bandai)
Cast your minds back to the days of the Super Nintendo and Megadrive and those days only the very hardcore imported games, but nowadays the world is much smaller thanks to the Internet and because of stores like LIK Sang and SuccessHK.
For people like me in the UK its great to be able to go out and buy the latest USA and Japanese games and at half the price they would cost me in my home country.
Sony and Nintendo have already made their PSP and Nintendo DS/ GBA/GB Micro handhelds region free but on the console front we have never had a region free console.
The Xbox 360 has several games that are region free but the majority of the games are not and there really is no reason for it.
Lets Explore reasons why they may not want Region Free
Incompatible TV Display
Years ago when everyone had crappy TVs this would have been a real sticking point, i even remember buying an American Snes and having to use a Commodore 64 Monitor to display the games.
But nowadays with nearly everyone having TVs that can display both PAL and NTSC images and some lucky buggers having state of the art HD TV theres really no point in the Display issue, so thats one of the list.
Sales In Each Territory
The 3 main areas for game sales are Japan, USA and Europe and even though the heads of each area want to keep the sales for themselves in that area they must understand that only the hardcore and eager ever really import anyway so the majority of game sales will occur in the area its meant to be, one other beauty for Region Free is that if a game isnt to be released in a certain area but the import markets show that it would be successful then its a win win situation for the Game and console makers.
Different Power Supplys
Another area in which theres really no need not to have region free, the PSP with its power supply showed us we can use it to charge the console anywhere, so if they can do it for Sonys Handheld then why not for the others.
Conclusion
Come on Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, if you want us gamers to really enjoy the consoles your selling to us then let us have the choice, you can do it for the Handhelds, so whats stopping you for the Consoles.
Region free consoles will benefit the whole gaming industry, you know it makes sense.
Do you agree or not agree, if you agree give a reply and lets show the makers of consoles that we want REGION FREE
If there's a better way to wrap-up the week than with a load of rocket-launching car screenshots, then we'd like to hear it (beer drinking omitted, obviously). Either way, here's a selection of tooled-up motors for you to gawp at in the latest batch of Full Auto 2: Battlelines screenshots.
The PS3 sequel continues the shotgun-blasting, time-rewinding gameplay that debued on the Xbox 360, though it naturally adds a number of improvements including the obligatory car and weapon list update and even-more destructive, "stunning and strategic" racing environments.
At the moment Full Auto 2 is penned in for a winter 2006 arrival. We'll let you know if it turns out to be any good or not, but it's certainly nice to see it on its new platform.
Over 100 games are currently in development for the PS3, according to Sony's worldwide studios president Phil Harrison - who revealed that over 10,000 development kits have now been shipped.
Speaking to British newspaper The Guardian, Harrison was upbeat about the amount of software which will be available for the PS3 around launch - both in terms of game titles, and Blu-Ray movies.
"We have shown more playable games than ever before, so the signs are good," he commented, "and right now there are more than 100 Blu-ray movies available today in the US. More than 100 games are in development, and all the major third-party publishers have pledged their strategic support for the platform."
Harrison described work on the PS3 as being "in full swing, from a developer point of view," and pointed to the firm's success in delivering hardware to its partners long before the scheduled launch.
"Developers now have final hardware in their hands, though there will be some upgrades to the operating system - there's nothing unusual about that," he explained. "The new controller is now in developers' hands, so all the pieces of the puzzle are there."
Harrison noted that one crucial step - the shipping of Blu-Ray burners to developers so that they can actually test games running off real discs - has been accomplished, with studios "now doing their first iterations of games running off discs."
While Harrison is, of course, duty-bound to present a positive picture of the PS3 situation, his assertions are backed up by comments from outspoken Epic Games boss Mark Rein, whose platform-agnostic firm is working on the biggest title for the Xbox 360 this Christmas, Gears of War.
Speaking to Eurogamer TV recently, Rein said that Sony was "in a better place vis-Ã -vis Microsoft in relation to launch", pointing out that "developers were just getting final PS3 hardware [around E3], which is a long time before ship - developers did not have finished Xbox 360 hardware last year at E3."
"I think Sony's in a good spot with the PlayStation 3," he added. "I know we're getting some great results with it back at our house, so I would expect other developers will be as well."
The PlayStation 3 isn't out yet, but that doesn't stop Sony's Phil Harrison from making wild speculations about the capability of Playstation 4. According to him, the PS4 won't support physical discs. At all. He opines:
I'd be amazed if the PlayStation 4 has a physical disc drive.
So you mean in 5-10 years, our home's series of tubes/big trucks/broadband connections will be fat enough to download a 50GB game in a decent amount of time? We sure hope so.
But wait, Phil! You mean those precious Blu-ray discs that your company's humping so hard is going to be gone by the time PS4 is out? Oh wait, Kotaku's Ashcraft already beat me to that joke/conclusion. Damn you Ash! Damn you and your 16-hour head start.
SPOnG’s just noticed an interesting feature in today’s Technology Guardian, detailing the recent post-E3 PR turmoil surrounding Sony and its forthcoming next gen console/Super Computer, the PlayStation 3.
The piece is interesting for a number of reasons, mainly because it is perhaps the first national newspaper to offer a well-written, reasoned account of Sony’s recent (mis)fortunes.
The Guardian’s well-respected technology editor Jack Schofield poses and attempts to answer the straightforward question, on pretty much every games industry exec and developer’s mind right now: “Is Sony fighting a losing battle?”
Schofield strangely paints Sony’s showing at E3 as a successful high point, from which it’s been “...downhill from there...” This is perhaps the only point in the article SPOnG disagrees with, with it being pretty much universally agreed that, in PR-terms, Sony ‘lost’ E3, with Nintendo coming out of the show as clear winners with Wii, and Microsoft running a close second with a far more robust games line-up for its 360 over the coming Christmas holiday season.
The Guardian rounds up the various issues that have caused Sony setbacks in recent times, highlighting a number of salient points - the backlash against the Killzone demo (widely believed to be a fake); development issues with the Cell processor; the perceived value of Blu-ray to the mass market and, most clearly of all, the initial whopping great cost of the console.
Schofield offers a perceptive overview of the situation which, in his opinion is this: “Rather than dampening down the overheated online arguments about all these issues, Sony's staff have tended to feed the flames, appearing remote or even arrogant. For example, Kaz Hirai, president and chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, recently told PlayStation Magazine: "Every time we go down a path, we look behind and [Microsoft is] right there - we just can't shake these guys. I wish that they would come up with some strategies of their own, but they seem to be going down the path of everything we do."
He continues: “It's a remark that Hirai might have got away with in an earlier age, but it was instantly dismembered online. Microsoft was first to put a hard drive in a console, and pioneered with its Xbox Live community building (or both Microsoft and Sony are following the Sega Dreamcast). Microsoft was first to do a global console launch, which Sony is emulating. Microsoft offered two versions of its Xbox 360 console - which Sony said was a bad idea - but there will be two versions of the PS3, and so on.”
Aside from the GP2X which is a Handheld Homebrewers Dream but it isnt as yet a real Commercial Games playing machine, homebrew is frowned upon by the big 3 namely Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.
Out of all 3 Next Gen consoles the Wii could be the console that Nintendo if they were willing and smart enough to take a chance could be the system where Homebrew is made and amateurs get the jump from being bedroom coders to being employed by the big developers.
What can we as a community do to get the big companies to open a door on their consoles or even get them to release a homebrew dev kit of sorts and a way to play legally on their systems without modding etc.
Eurogamer is hosting a GamesIndustry.biz article, an editorial that wants readers to make sure not to write Sony off yet. From the article:
"Even if Sony is failing to endear itself to the media, to analysts or to gamers at the moment, that's no reason for the reality of the next generation console battle to be ignored. Judging from reports in the past fortnight, it would be easy for an outside observer to assume that it's all over already; the media paints a picture of Microsoft being victorious before the first shot is even fired, with Sony's overloaded battlecruiser set to sink before it even leaves port."
Microsoft has run into a pair of notable complaints with its Xbox 360 backward compatibility. First off, not all original Xbox games work on the next-gen system. And the ones that do typically need to be replayed from the beginning by the gamer, as there's no port on the 360 for the old system's memory cards.
With its upcoming PlayStation 3, Sony is promising to address those problems. It is aiming at making virtually every original PlayStation and PlayStation 2 game backward compatible on the PS3 from the get-go, and according to a FAQ on the official PS3 Web site, it has the memory card issue hammered out as well.
"To use saved data on a PlayStation 2 memory card, you must copy the data onto a virtual memory card within the hard disk," the site reads. "This requires a PS2/PSone memory card adaptor to copy the data to your PlayStation 3. A memory card adaptor is designed to edit, up/download game saves to and from EMS flash card or smart media card."
However, the FAQ doesn't mention if Sony will be releasing such an adapter itself. Currently it's possible to move original Xbox game saves to an Xbox 360 with the aid of third-party peripherals.
Today is a great day for DCEmu and the reason why is the launch of our new HQ or better known as the DCEmu Network Portal Site.
As you can see the logo has changed to incorporate our new Mascott, a mascott that pays homage to our Dreamcast heritage.
The new portal site has a fresh new look and i must say it looks the best of our sites yet. If you look around youll see a great new feature and thats the rotating feature areas which change upon everytime you reload the main page.
The Network site will be home to all our official DCEmu reviews (any offers of review material are always welcome.) Ive already moved my Treamcast and Maxevo Reviews and ill have a review of the Megadrive/32x Flash cart coming shortly.
The DCEmu Network is here to bring a fresh and legal side to the world of homebrew, homebrew is great for the fans but it also can be great for the coders who may get recognised by game companies if they are good enough. As new consoles come out we will expand to cover them.
I do have some thank you messages for Martin (our gracious host who keeps the show running, Soully (for the Web designs that showcase our network), DS69 (the forum admin and no 2 of the DCEmu Network), SevLila, Djizeuss & SiZiOUS (for the excellent mascott) and also to PSPDemon and Kaiser and all the other people who have helped to get the new portal up and running.
So youve seen the screengrab above, now check out the new portal here --> http://www.dcemu.co.uk
The emulation scene has many great sites and sadly a lot of them are not updated or have regular newsposts anymore but our new affiliate 1Emulation.com is a site that covers General Emulation with a great forum to match and staff and a webmaster that work hard to ensure they stay on top of the news.
Check out our friends at 1Emulation.com for all your General Emulation needs and a great forum.
With the release today of 'Training Day,' 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' and 'Rumor Has It...' on Blu-ray, Warner Home Video has become the the first studio to unleash the same movie titles on both formats, following their debut on HD DVD last month.
Finally, after months of apples-to-oranges comparisons between the two formats via different discs from differing studios, a direct head-to-head analysis can now be made using identical source material. As the first Warner Blu-ray titles hit stores, we at High Def Digest are proud to roll out the web's first in-depth comparisons of all three discs.
In each review, we take a comprehensive look at how each disc on both formats stacks up, in terms of video and audio quality, depth of supplemental content, and overall ease of use and menu navigation. In some cases, the results were surprising, and sure to generate continued debate.
More Info
Give the PlayStation 3 your PlayStation or PlayStation 2 games, your original gray PSX controller, or the first dual shock from back in the late '90s. But keep memory card to your damn self. Well, not really, but it does look like Sony will require an adapter on the PlayStation 3 to be able to read memory cards from previous PlayStation consoles, as specified by their site. Not, not really a big deal at all unless they act all, um, Sony on us and don't bundle the adapter with the console. But we'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt though, as we wouldn't want to unduly accuse them of preparing to gouge consumers on a yet-to-be-released console, right? Right, Sony? Ok, good, glad we've come to an understanding with one another.
Software publishers and Socialist Party members are among the groups unhappy with the new French copyright law that took effect today. French Internet surfers could now go to prison for downloading copyrighted music files without authorization, while companies such as Apple Computer, which make or use DRM (digital rights management) technology to protect music downloads, may have to provide details of their DRM system to their competitors in the interests of interoperability.
Though the law is intended to protect copyright material, it will, in effect, actually undermine copy-protection efforts, according to The Business Software Alliance (BSA), a group of software publishers. The BSA's main criticism is that the law requires makers of copy protection software to disclose information about their security technologies.
Now that the law is in effect, Internet users who download copyrighted music files using P-to-P (peer to peer) file-sharing software technically could face prison terms or fines of up to $640,000. However, the Minister of Culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, the law's sponsor, has made clear that was not his intention.
Activision has deployed several new screenshots from the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Call of Duty 3, the publisher's WWII FPS sequel that's preparing to leap into combat later this year. Unleash your bleary Monday morning peepers and eyeball the offerings that we've launched on this here page.
Call of Duty 3 focuses on the Normandy Breakout, one of WWII's most brutal campaigns. The campaign saw Allied soldiers advancing across French soil in an effort to free Paris from the clutches of the German Army, following the D-Day landings in June 1944. In the sequel, players slip into the combat boots of US, Canadian, Polish and British SAS troops and take the fight to the Nazi war machine. Enjoy, we'll be bring you more on CoD3 shortly.
Good news for Sony fans looking forward to the PS3. Eurogamer reports that the system will feature backwards compatibility with memory cards as well as games. From the article:
"An update to Sony's PlayStation 3 website has revealed that you will be able to use older PlayStation memory cards with PlayStation 3 - providing you buy an adapter. An entry in the official PS3 FAQ states: 'To use saved data on a PlayStation 2 memory card, you must copy the data onto a virtual memory card within the hard disk.'"
Microsoft could have really used something like that for the Xbox/360 switchover. Relatedly, Sony is looking ahead ... way ahead, even to their next console. Wired has a piece looking at the future of downloads in the games industry. From that article:
"Microsoft is releasing an HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. Both companies are even touting the ability of these new discs to play movies in even higher hi-def. That struggle, however, is ultimately meaningless. 'I'd be amazed if the PlayStation 4 has a physical disc drive,' [Sony's Phil] Harrison says."
THQ's animated movie tie-in is keeping well ahead of the pack for a second week on the run, overtaking the opposition on PS2, PSP, Xbox, GameCube and GBA - with PC and DS versions catching up fast.
The movie might be getting mixed reviews, but consumers are racing to the stores to buy Cars the game, sales of which are currently outstripping the competition across the board.
Rockstar has managed to steal another week in second place with GTA: Vice City Stories and the world's most popular plumbers are still bottom-bouncing their way around third place, despite a 5 per cent sales drop for New Super Mario Bros. on the DS.
The grey matter continues to be tested as Dr Kawashima's Brain Training enjoys a 3 per cent sales spike and climbs from fifth into fourth place, while Big Brain Academy enters the lecture hall late and just misses a top ten entry at number 12.
The goals keep coming at retail for Konami, with Pro Evolution Soccer 5 climbing two places to number five, followed by the return of an old favourite as retail promotions push the original version of The Sims into sixth position.
Disney and Ubisoft continue to plunder the lower depths of the chart with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow in seventh and ninth place respectively. EA's The Sims 2 is sandwiched between the two for another week in eighth place.
Sony roars into the bottom of the charts with Formula 1 '06, making roadkill of Activision's Over The Hedge - which slips out of the top ten and into eleventh place.
The bulk of the new entries in the top 40 chart this week relate to summer retail promotions, with several budget PC titles entering at 17-19, and Sony's SingStar Anthems hiding in the shadows at number 20.
Elsewhere in the charts, Finding Nemo swims back in at 26, The Incredibles slink back into their costumes at 33 and LucasArts continues its assault on outer space with Star Wars: Battlefront II charging in at 36.
F.E.A.R. took the PC by storm, is boldly slapping up the Xbox 360, offering further PC adventures with expansion pack Extraction Point and is now confirmed for Sony's next-gen console, the PS3, CVG can exclusively reveal today.
Following hot on the heels of the announcement of F.E.A.R. multiplayer for free, CVG's investigative reporters have learned that the mighty shooting franchise, which offers superb slow mo gun battles and pant-wetting Japanese-influenced horror, will be marching straight onto Sony's next-gen console.
No further details were forthcoming from our sources, but we'd have to hope the game would power onto the PS3 on or around the time of launch - and there's even the possibility that it might make use of the PS3's funky tilting controller for some of the game's crunching melee moves. Hopefully it'll make good use of the PS3's online capabilities too, offering PS3 owners a chance to indulge in splendid multiplayer shooting.
None of that's confirmed of course, as we're writing it wearing our hat of enormous speculation, but it swells the shooting credentials of Sony's next-gen console, joining other big hitters like Valve's Half-Life 2.
When we contacted Vivendi we were met with a firm "no comment" on F.E.A.R. PS3, still, it's exciting news indeed and we'll bring you more on the game as it shivers in.
Namco Bandai plans to release a pair of next-gen Gundam games before the end of the year, and also has a sizable handheld line-up and PS2 RPG onslaught planned this side of Christmas.
The company's 2006 schedule for the USA, released yesterday, puts both Mobile Suit Gundam (PS3) and Mobile Ops: The One Year War (X360) on store shelves this year, while the company's ambition to break into the PC will stand its first real test with the release of Warhammer: Mark of Chaos in October.
Hellgate: London - another big-hitting PC title from Bill Roper's Flagship Studios - is still listed as TBD. RPG fans would be better served looking to the PS2, it seems, where XenoSaga Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra is on for August 29th, with .hack/G.U. Vol.1: Rebirth and Tales of the Abyss both set for autumn.
Namco Bandai also plans to hit PSP harder than DS - the former will see Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception, Bounty Hounds and Gunpey this autumn, while the DS has just its own version of Gunpey and Mage Knight: Destiny's Soldier to look forward to.
Elsewhere the company has plenty of One Piece, Pac-Man spin-off and Peanuts-licensed titles, like Snoopy vs. The Red Baron, planned across PS2, PSP, PC and even Cube, but there's absolutely nothing on there about Xbox 1.
Electronic Arts has confirmed that the next instalment in the NBA Street series is coming exclusively to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
They've yet to reveal many details about the game, other than the fact that you'll be playing in "a hyper-real world", featuring famous venues alongside the hometown courts of NBA stars. These will all merge "into one seamless city of streetball moments", apparently.
You'll be tasked with earning respect and building up your reputation as you rise through the ranks to become a basketball legend. You can expect the same "easy to pick up and difficult to master" gameplay, plus "progressive visuals".
EA has yet to announce an official title for the game, but they have confirmed it'll be in the shops next spring.
It seems somewhat baffling that the media is making up problems for the PlayStation 3 when it has some very real, very worrying ones of its own. According to breaking news from Japan, two major RPG projects have been canned by From Software, both slated for the new Sony machine.
Unconfirmed reports state From has pulled the plug on two RPG projects for PlayStation 3, the tentatively-titled 'Dark RPG' and another unnamed project. From had committed the games to support Sony's early PlayStation 3 push on several occasions. We expect the latest issue of Famitsu to confirm the cannings.
The PlayStation 3 has suffered multiple losses as publishers back away from supporting the project in its infancy, concerns likely triggered by supply problems endured by the Xbox 360 dooming much of the launch window software and gouging gaping holes in R&D spend. It would seem that Webzen's Endless Saga was pulled for PlayStation 3 in recent days. WWE Smackdown 2007 also rattled the can and it can only be assumed that more will follow.
Atari recently raised the issue of PS3 ROI (return on investment) concern from publishers, bemoaning Sony's apparent secrecy on planned shipping figures during the initial phase of PlayStation 3 sales, with CEO Bruno Bonell stating, ""...we're lacking information about the PS3 at this stage, because we have basically a rough release date and a high retail price point."
Of course, we're a long way from an outright panic, though it has to be conceded that the Xbox 360 paved a difficult road for the PlayStation 3 to tread. We wonder if it did this on purpose. Surely not
You might have picked up on recent reports leading you to believe that Sony has conned you and everyone else with claims that the PlayStation 3 will be fully backwards compatible with earlier SCE platform software. You've probably read something about needing an adapter... It all sounds like a bit of a mess.
The amazing non-news doing the rounds right now details how the PlayStation 3 cannot accept PlayStation 1 and 2 memory cards, something we've known since E3 2005. Sony has taken the step of announcing that it will be making available an adapter to enable users to transfer save files from cards to the PS3's hard drive.
For some reason, this has caused outrage in some circles. "PS3 Digs Itself a Deeper Grave, Requires Adapter for Backwards Compatibility" exclaims Gizmodo. The site continues, "In the biggest twist of the year, including last year, Sony has made another bad decision regarding the PlayStation 3. Claims have been running rampant that this console would be able to play both PS2 and PSOne games—it still will be able to, but require an additional adapter that will likely cost a kidney or two."
This spin seems to have been cast aloft as The Truth by many blind followers, a shame given from what SPOnG can see, Sony's only doing good things in the BC field.
A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said.
It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.
Police are searching premises after 21 people were arrested. Home Secretary John Reid said they believed the "main players" were accounted for.
High security is causing delays at all UK airports. The threat level to the UK has been raised by MI5 to critical after the arrests in London, High Wycombe and Birmingham.
Critical threat level - the highest - means "an attack is expected imminently and indicates an extremely high level of threat to the UK". Three US airlines are believed to have been targeted. Mr Reid said had the attack gone ahead it would have caused a loss of life of "unprecedented scale". He said they were "confident" the main players were in custody, but neither the police nor government are "in any way complacent". We are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction. Prime Minister Tony Blair, on holiday in the Caribbean, paid tribute to the the police and the security services. He said they had tracked the situation for a "long period of time" and had "been involved in an extraordinary amount of hard work."
"I thank them for the great job they are doing in protecting our country. "There has been an enormous amount of co-operation with the US authorities which has been of great value and underlines the threat we face and our determination to counter it," he said in a statement.
BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said the plot was thought to have involved a series of "waves" of simultaneous attacks, targeting three planes each time. He also said the plan "revolved around liquids of some kind". "Officials say the explosives would have been sophisticated and extremely effective," our correspondent said.
Airport 'crammed'
Meanwhile, at Heathrow Airport incoming short-haul flights have resumed, but long-haul services are seriously delayed. Several outbound services have been cancelled. The airport is crammed with thousands of passengers, while at Stansted more than 2,000 people are queuing to pass through customs.
Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson said the alleged plotters had intended "mass murder on an unimaginable scale".
"We are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and to commit, quite frankly, mass murder," he said.
"We believe that the terrorists' aim was to smuggle explosives on to aeroplanes in hand luggage and to detonate these in flight. We also believe that the intended targets were flights from the United Kingdom to the United States of America."
Police had spoken to a "good number of community leaders to make them aware that a major operation was under way," he added. Head of the Met's anti-terrorist branch Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said the investigation had had "global dimensions" and had seen an "unprecedented level" of surveillance. The decision to take action had been taken on Wednesday night, he added.
According to BBC sources the "principal characters" suspected of being involved in the plot were British-born. There are also understood to be links to Pakistan. BBC home affairs correspondent Andy Tighe said police sources had told him they had found "interesting items" which were being examined. In other major developments:
Houses in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, are evacuated by police. US air marshals are being sent to the UK to provide extra air security. The US Department of Homeland Security increased the threat level applied to US-bound commercial flights originating in the UK to "red" - the first time it has done this for flights coming in from another country
The Home Office confirmed there had been meetings overnight and on Thursday morning of the Cabinet's emergency committee, Cobra, chaired by Home Secretary John Reid, to discuss the terror alert. A spokesman for Number 10 said Tony Blair had briefed US President George Bush on the situation during the night
BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said despite the arrests the threat level had been raised "in case there is some other sub-plot, back-up plot around this that the police aren't aware of".
The Department for Transport set out the details of the security measures at UK airports. Passengers are not allowed to take any hand luggage on to any flights in the UK, the department said.
Only the barest essentials - including passports and wallets - will be allowed to be carried on board in transparent plastic bags.
"We hope that these measures, which are being kept under review by the government, will need to be in place for a limited period only," the statement said.
Another sad day for the world when innocent people are targeted in the name of terrorism.
Atari's forthcoming horror-fest Alone in the Dark has been delayed. Originally expected toward the end of this year, the publisher's revealed that it now won't be out until the company's 2008 fiscal year - so between April 2007 and March 2008.
Mentioning the new target period for the title in a recent conference call with analysts, Atari boss Bruno Bonnell explained "We are announcing effectively Alone in the Dark as one of our franchisees for the future". He also implied the publisher has big plans for the franchise: "We actually are extending Alone in the Dark to some other formats right now we have not even announced yet... I don't want to be forward, but it will be announced shortly."
According to a report on GameSpot, Brunnell went on to re-affirm the delayed Alone in the Dark is in development for Xbox 360 and PS3, but made no mention of the previously announced PC version. This has led to speculation that the PC version of the game has been binned, but Atari's UK arm has informed us this morning that the PC interation is "still confirmed".
Atari's Alone in the Dark game marks the return of the survival horror granddaddy, and this modern reinvention of the series will, hopefully, be scary, spooky, and make us fill our pants with big poopie. The present-day setting of New York's Central Park plays host to the title's grisly events.
It's not exactly Killzone 2, but Insomniac's PS3 shooter, Resistance: Fall of Man did more than enough to tickle our FPS fancy when we got our hands it earlier this year at E3.
Billed as a "blend of epic military action and unnerving horror," Resistance pits you against a bunch of invading aliens, in an alternate-reality 1950s England. Along with the usual single-player offerings, co-op and multiplayer modes are also touted, along with online campaigns that cater up to 32 players. As you can see from these screenshots, it's also very, very pretty. And that's all you need to know.
Fall of Man is expected on Sony's next-gen console somewhere around its November 17 launch window and with Half-Life 2 and F.E.A.R. also coming to PS3, it seems shooter fans will have plenty to get their teeth into. We'll bring you more from the Resistance front line as it arrives.
Just when you thought all hope may be lost for the PlayStation 3, there comes word that a new, original game from Midway's Surreal Software is indeed in the works for the system. Though we already knew that some sort of mysterious game from Surreal was coming, what we didn't know was that the title would be a new IP.
IGN follows the story by referencing this latest help wanted ad by the company: "This is new, exciting IP, on a new technology base, with a concept which will blow you away. This is your chance to be the keystone of a large and experienced development team."
Full development support and new, original IPs for our next-gen appetites is definitely something we would like to see more of.
Prime Sense (Herzeliya Pituach, Israel) has developed a sensor plus digital processor to provide a real-time 3-D mapping of objects in space, according to the company's Website. In essence it appears to be an image sensor and processor combination which perceives the world in 3D and derives an understanding of the world based on sight, in the same way that humans do.
For the Eye Toy application it is expected that the Prime Sense sensor will be used to view the user so that his or her position and movements can be abstracted and then applied to the through-character in a computer game.
The device includes a sensor, which sees a user (including their complete surroundings), and a digital component, or brain which learns and understands user movement within those surroundings, according to the Prime Sense Website. Prime Senses interactive device can see, track and react to user movements outside the computer, all without change of environment or wearable equipment for the end user.
The latest software figures from Japan are in and for the first time in a long while a PSP Game is at no 1, heres the details:
SD Gundam G Generation Portable - PSP - 155,634 (155,634)
New Super Mario Bros. - DS - 98,038 (2,614,228)
Jissen Pachislot Hisshouhou! Hokuto no Ken SE - PS2 - 82,556 (82,556)
Tamagotchi Connexion Corner Shop 2 - DS - 75,853 (268,311)
Mario Hoops: 3-on-3 - DS - 48,564 (159,273)
More DS Brain Training - DS - 48,206 (2,925,847)
Nintendo DS Talking Cooking Navi - DS - 45,846 (233,703)
Devil Kings 2 - PS2 - 40,094 (175,943)
Rythm Tengoku - GBA - 37,473 (37,473)
Growlancer V Generations - PS2 - 37,467 (37,467)
Can Sony fight back against the all conquering DS in Japan ?
Here's another chance to deal out some massive damage in the mech world on our PS3's. In a recent issue of Famitsu, Armored Core 4 has been set for a November release date in Japan, meaning we'll probably get it at about the same time. There will be network support for up to eight people... and the 360 version is still boasting a TBA release date. But what about the game itself?
Unlike the other Armored Core titles, this one takes place in a different world... sort of. Think of it as a pre-post-apocalyptic earth, where overpopulation has led to food shortages and lack of resources. You take over your giant robot of destruction and fight other giants of destruction (despite the natural resource dearth... but that's besides the point) as the war which will lead to a post-apocalyptic world starts. The creators say the battles will be the fastest ever seen in a mech game (faster than Zone of Enders? Cool). There will be tons of customization, a staple of the series, but there will be a simplified option for beginners. Same goes for mech control. Complicated, but can be automated for beginners. In all, sounds good. Armored Core 2 was a lot of fun, pick that one up if you want to gauge what to expect (it's cheap if you can find it). Until the Tokyo Game Show, we can only imagine how the mechs handle.
The upcoming release of the Sega Genesis Collection for the PSP/PS2 got me thinking about all the Game releases for systems over the years that have used emulators to bring new games to those systems.
Looking back at the Dreamcast we had the Smash Pack which featured a Genesis emulator (Which was later ripped and stuck on a Dreamcast Site) but how many more Classic games releases have featured emulators to bring those classics to new systems.
Anyone know or suspect a Commercial release that features an emulator for any system, answer via the Comments
EA has released a short movie clip from FIFA 07, the forthcoming latest instalment in its long-running football videogame series. View it by hitting the movie player top-right of this page.
A minute in length, the clip focuses on new skill moves that are being introduced in the new iteration. So, ah, check out an array of snazzy ball skills being pulled off and then marvel at some celebratory crotch thrusting near the end of the trailer.
We recently ran an extensive preview of EA's latest FIFA game, which you can find by dribbling the ball this way. Currently confirmed for GBA, mobile phone, Nintendo DS, GameCube, PC, PSP, PS2 and Xbox, FIFA 07 is due out at the end of September. We're still waiting for news on next-gen console versions, but as ever Leipzig probably holds the answers.
Somewhat plausible rumours are circulating that, in Japan, Capcom's eagerly anticipated Resident Evil 5 will get a PlayStation 3-only release.
Which would make sense, given the spectacularly poor sales of the Xbox 360 in Japan -- despite the fact that Capcom has announced that it is working on both Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the zombie-crunching game.
Whatever happens, we lucky European types should get both versions of the game, as well as a Wii version, which is likely to be substantially different to its next-gen peers.
If you're a flash Japanese-speaking git, you can check out ECGeo, the source of the rumours. Alas, it looks as though we'll have to wait ages for Ressie 5 which, after the sheer awesomeness of RE4, is set to be one of the most anticipated games ever.
Gamers will have forgotten all about the lack of rumble in console pads by next year, reckons Matt Southern, producer of PlayStation 3 racer MotorStorm.
"By 2007 we'll say 'no rumble? What of it?'" Southern told Official PlayStation 2 Magazine. He believes "the many positives of PS3 far outweigh the lack of rumble".
Sony took the decision to remove the rumble feature, which was included with previous PlayStation controllers, as it said the vibration would interfere with the pad's new tilt-sensing technology.
Southern's game MotorStorm, is an off-road racer in which the different terrain has an affect on the vehicles' handling and so is the type of game that might have made heavy use of a rumble function. But Southern is still certain that gamers won't miss it: "We're sure that with the huge amount of particles we can throw around on PS3 you'll know exactly what surface type you are on."
The current battle—war, if you will—between Blu-ray and HD-DVD will end in an inglorious stalemate according to research conducted by Screen Digest, a business-related media research and analysis firm. Moreover, the research firm also predicts that the war will do more harm than good and actually harm the high definition disc market, which kind of goes against the whole "competition will set you free" thesis, at least in this case.
Just under one-fourth of DVD sales by 2010 will be high definition discs the research also concluded. Interestingly enough, Amazon higher-ups told a group yesterday, myself included, that they don't necessarily care who wins the high definition DVD wars and neither do its customers; the more affluent, technologically savvy Amazon buyers will plop down money for their favorite right now, and should their horse lose the rase, they'll simply switch allegiances. I take it not many of you share the same sentiments.
Total U.S. console software sales for July were $386 million, according to NPD stats released this morning, up 22% compared to last year and much higher than even the most optimistic estimates.
Current generation software sales declined $45.5 million. Next generation software sales increased by $116 million. High points included DS software sales which have held up well in the aftermath of DS Lite's introduction.
Overall unit sales were up 22%, while ASPs, bouyed by Xbox 360 games, remained steady.
Year-to-date software sales are up 2% compared to last year, way up on most expectations which anticipated the market down. Wedbush Morgan Securities posted, "We intend to reassess our full year forecast with a bias for upward revision."
The analyst added, "We think that there will be a positive market reaction to the robust July sales growth. We are pleasantly surprised that software sales through the summer months have been so strong, and now believe that the decline in current generation software will be largely offset by next generation software sales for the next several months. Once the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii are launched, we expect next generation software sales to surpass current generation software sales."
Hardware sales and games sales stats for the month of July have been released by NPD, with Xbox 360 releases faring well and NCAA Football selling a million copies.
On the hardware side, DS sold 377,000 units for the month followed by PS2 with 240,000. Xbox 360 sold just over 200,000 units. PSP sold 160,000.
The top selling games, by dollars, was dominated by Electronic Arts' NCAA Football, taking the top spot (PS2) as well as numbers two and four for Xbox 360 and Xbox.
Chromehounds from Sega, Prey from Take 2 and EA's LOTR game did well on Xbox 360, all making the top ten. Eight games in the top 20 were Xbox 360.
Across all formats NCAA managed just shy of 1 million units while Cars came in at 420,000 copies. Prey on Xbox 360 sold just over 130,000 copies.
1. NCAA Football 07 (PS2)
2. NCAA Football 07 (Xbox 360)
3. New Super Mario Bros. (DS)
4. NCAA Football 07 (Xbox)
5. Chromehounds (Xbox 360)
6. Battle for Middle Earth II (Xbox 360)
7. Prey (Xbox 360)
8. Guitar Hero bundle (PS2)
9. Cars - (PS2)
10. Naruto: Ultimate Ninja (PS2)
11. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PS2)
12. Cars (GBA)
13. 2006 FIFA World Cup (PS2)
14. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360)
15. 2006 FIFA World Cup (Xbox 360)
16. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (Xbox 360)
17. Cars (GameCube)
18. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day (DS)
19. NFL Head Coach (PS2)
20. Fight Night Round 3 (Xbox 360)
The DS Lite again makes a ton of money for Nintendo
Created by Sony as an accurately proportioned replica, the PS3 model may be made entirely from wood, but it takes more than a cursory glance to realise that it's not the genuine article and gave us a good impression of what the Sony powerhouse will look like nestling next to our TV.
The unit is certainly big, although not drastically bigger than an Xbox 360. Positioned vertically side-by-side, the PS3 stands about an inch taller than its rival, while laying the two down horizontally shows that - at its highest point - PS3's convex curve makes PS3 about an inch fatter.
It's not the most beautiful looking beast, either. The underside is 'stacked' with a couple of different sized layers and the overhanging midriff gives the unit a slightly awkward, uncomfortable look. But, hey, PS2 was never going to win any beauty contests either.
So, it's no stunner, but that's never been an issue with consoles in the past. Hopefully, when PS3 finally arrives in November we'll be so blown away with killer games that we won't be concerned with the machines curves, lines and overall aesthetic merit.
Remember that creepy PC game, Alice? It was by American McGee, a pretty good game designer. The guy's expanding his playground in Shanghai, opening up an entire new development studio and looking for people to help create the next game for next-gen systems. The game will be episodic, set in "a dark, fairy tale universe." So he's not branching out too far from what he's good at, which is fine.
Want to take a shot at getting to work on the game? Post your qualifications as a comment on his site and cross your fingers. Will it be for the PS3? Who knows. There's only one piece of early concept art. What type of game would you like to see from this guy? Or... judging from the piece of concept art, what sort of game do you imagine forming?
Atari was dealt some pretty bad numbers the past year -- losses were at their highest in a while overall. This is partially why the next-gen iteration of Alone in the Dark has been pushed back to mid-2007, maybe into 2008. Atari does anticipate the title to be their big game for next year and let's hope they are right. Atari has even announced that the game will come to other formats not yet mentioned (and still haven't been named specifically) and that may help out. Not sure how a DS rendition of the game would do, but it's a cute idea.
CEO Bruno Bonnell also talked about the likelihood of more console-specific titles and exclusives overall. He claims that "ports are going to be a little more difficult because the machines are becoming more and more specific." Ouch. That sounds like a shot at the cell processor for the PS3, but every machine is being built in very different ways (the Wii's gimmick innovative control style comes to mind). Also mentioned were game prices for the next generation. Surprisingly, Bonnell offered his thoughts that games won't cost much more other than a "massive title with crazy costs." If only he were right, but the 360 has already raised the bar by ten dollars and that will probably continue for a little while.
And we've been griping about Blu-ray delays in the good ol' USofA. Looks like the folks Down Under have it way worse, since Sony has just released their BWU-100A internal PC drive for reading and writing Blu-ray discs in Australia, 'cept supposedly the thing can't actually manage to play back is Blu-ray movies. Apparently they're blaming the lack of HDCP-compliant graphics cards, and the fact that there isn't any retail software that can play Blu-ray movies, just the OEM version of Intervideo WinDVD BD that ships with Sony's VAIO AR laptop -- assuming of course, that your Blu-ray content requires HDCP to begin with. That would make us wonder why Sony can't just bundle that same software with the BWU-100A, but we're clearly thinking with the addled mind of a consumer. If we were smarter, we'd realise the logic behind releasing products so saddled with rights management that they can't even play back the media they were built for. Luckily, Sony says they're optimistic about resolving both issues soon, and that for now the device is still 100% functional for storage (hooray), and can play back your own home-burnt movies as well (as well as Blu-ray flicks that are HDCP-free). All this can be yours, you lucky Australian you, for a mere AU$1,399, or about $1,075 US.
Each year, the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association releases a report of the past fiscal year on the state of the Japanese console gaming industry. The association's numbers indicate that the Japanese game industry hit bottom with a pretty dismal 2004, but bounced back in 2005, according to the Japanese-language Weekly Famitsu.
In 2005, combined hardware and software sales rose 13.9 percent from 2004's 436.1 billion to 496.5 billion yen ($4.3 billion). Software sales accounted for 314.1 billion ($2.70 billion), while hardware took in 182.4 billion ($1.57 billion)--a jump of 51.9 percent, largely due to the sales of two handheld systems. In 2005, Japanese gamers scooped up 4.25 million Nintendo DS and DS Lite units and 2.61 million Sony PlayStation Portables.
Over the past two years, handhelds have grown to control a 63.2 percent share of the Japanese game market. The inverse of the handheld revolution has been a corresponding decline in the Japanese home-console share. It decreased from 68.3 percent in 2003 to 36.8 percent in 2005--a loss of 159.8 billion yen ($1.37 billion) in sales.
Japanese game manufacturers made out quite well in terms of worldwide sales. Global shipments of Japanese products came to over 1.36 trillion yen ($11.7 billion), of which 487.1 billion yen ($4.18 billion) was in software and 872.7 billion yen ($7.5 billion) in hardware. This is a massive increase over 2004's totals, and handheld sales again provided the large hikes. Worldwide, Nintendo exported 7.34 million DS systems and 6.24 million Game Boy Advance SP units. Sony exported 11.36 million PSPs.
One of the more interesting statistics from the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association is the average cost Japanese developers spent making a software title for each game platform. The figures, based on questionnaires sent to developers, don't include budget-price games.
The association found that the most expensive system to develop for is Sony's PlayStation 2, at 139 million yen ($1.2 million) a game. That's more than double the cost of a typical title on Sony's PSP handheld, at 63 million yen ($541,000) a game. On the other end of the spectrum, developing a Nintendo DS game costs a relatively modest 39.8 million yen ($342,000).
One of the editors of the official playstation mag cant justify buying a PS3:
Contrary to popular belief, editors of the Official PlayStation Magazine don't get free hardware for their own personal use. So I've been having an ongoing debate with myself about the PS3 since E3. After Kaz announced that the price would be $600, I found my enthusiasm sagging.
So ultimately, I can't justify it. $600 is a lot of money, especially when I can get what--for me at least--will be a very similar experience for $400. I would like to own a PS3, and I hope that the price drops soon so I can consider it. But until then, this Official PlayStation Magazine editor will have to join the dark side.
Looks bad for Sony if editors of the official mag cant justify a PS3
Every time we see pictures of this game, we can't help but be in awe. And, with this latest batch of screenshots to come about, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed for the PlayStation 3 is looking sweeter and sweeter.
Let's just hope the final gameplay turns out to be as solid as these pictures appear when the game finally ships next year. Check after the break for more of these beauties.
DCEmu wouldnt be the great network it is if it wasnt for the support of the hundreds of coders in various scenes who have posted their releases on this network.
Coders we know have access to post their releases in any of our news forums the news then shows up on the respective site, a really easy and simple way to get your releases noticed, once we know your a coder you have access to upload all your releases and post news.
Posting a release or news of a release should be done in our Submit News forum if your a normal member or an unknown coder, if the release you make is uploaded to a horrid freeserver we will upload onto the forums and then you can see yourself how many downloads happen and you get feedback.
When a release is posted the site where the release shows up will then link to the release thread so your getting feedback all the time and the credits go to the coders who make the great releases (sadly a lot of sites dont provide any link to coders homepages at all but mirror the releases).
We have earmarked several people who we would like to see as newsposters but to all coders from any scenes if you contact us we will add you so that in your own words you can let others know of your great work.
There's no movement in the top three this week, as THQ's multi-format cartoon racer continues its winning streak - while GTA: Liberty City Stories and New Super Mario Bros stall in second and third.
Marking its third week at the top, Cars continues to cling to the racing line and stay ahead of the pack, despite a 17 per cent drop in sales. Outside of the top three however, some old favourites are making a valiant and, in some cases, meteoric rise back up to the top of the charts.
The Sims (Original) is making the most of its retail promotions, climbing from sixth to fourth place, pushing poor old Dr Kawashima's Brain Training down one place into fifth position.
Sixth place goes to sibling The Sims 2, whilst other iterations of the popular people management game are creeping back into the charts further down. The Sims: Unleashed re-enters the chart at number 30, and The Sims: Superstar climbs six places to 31, leaving The Sims: On Holiday and The Sims: Makin' Magic to re-emerge at number 37 and 38 respectively.
Back in the higher end of the charts, Konami keeps up training for the new football season with Pro Evolution Soccer 5 in seventh place - followed by a top ten re-entry for EA's Need for Speed: Most Wanted, which climbs from 14 to this week's number 8.
Disney gets swallowed by the currents with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at number 9, and Activision continues to dodge traffic at number 10 with film franchise Over The Hedge.
THQ's Monster House marks the only noticeable new entry this week, coming in at number 18 ahead of the movie's weekend release, which should help push the title further up the charts next week - potentially overtaking Cars for the all-formats lead.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, industry veteran Ian Livingstone has said that although Sony has been the clear victor in past console battles, the race will be much harder to win this time around.
In an exclusive interview, Livingstone said: "It's going to be a much closer race and significantly, I think Nintendo, with the Wii console, is going to be right back up in the thick of it.
"Sony has had a recent history of being the clear winner, and I don't think anybody believes that's going to be the case this time... It's going to be a much closer race."
According to Livingstone, Sony will have to allocate a hefty marketing budget to communicate the value of the PlayStation 3, and "let consumers know that the PS3 is not just a games machine but a complete home entertainment system with Blu-ray.
"To get the consumers to understand exactly what that means, and how that justifies the cost of the hardware - that's going to be the challenge for them."
Livingstone, who is currently product acquisition director at Eidos, confirmed that the publisher will be supporting all three next-gen consoles, stating: "It's much more of an open race and it's a very exciting time for independent publishers like ourselves, to be able to successfully leverage our IP over more formats than before."
What Do our DCEMU Members think of the Next Gen Race, Who do you predict will win it ?
Paramount Pictures will set a milestone on October 30, simultaneously releasing Mission: Impossible III on HD DVD, Blu-ray and DVD. The HD DVD and Blu-ray versions will be in 1080p resolution with 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. Analysts are saying we should expect to see the other studios following suit, launching new titles in every imaginable format. Of course, Universal will be missing out on all the fun, at least for now, since it's the only studio that's not shipping Blu-ray titles.
The big news will be when one disc player will be able to play all three releases, or when there is a DVD-compliant copy of the movie on one side of a disc, and an HD DVD or Blu-ray version on the other side. Meanwhile, the release of Blu-ray and HD DVD players and content figuratively mosey out onto the world stage to the sound of one hand clapping.
Well, they missed their June launch plans by a couple of months, but Sony has finally managed to ship their 50GB Blu-ray discs to a doting public. Just as expected, the discs are going for that $48 slap-in-the-face of a pricetag, and you'll still be better off buying a pair of 25 giggers, or a few DVDs if you're looking for price-per-gigabyte. But if you've gotsa have the latest and greatest, or just would like to find something nifty to do with that new Blu-ray drive of yours, it doesn't get much hotter than 2x 50GB discs with AccuCORE protection. Sony is still promising rewriteables for later in the year -- these discs are just write-once -- and we're guessing prices won't stay so lethal forever.
It's not often that a game announced for a console just three months before the system first hits the market is confirmed as a launch title, but that's exactly what happened today out of Ubisoft. The publisher is bringing its combat flight sim Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII to the PlayStation 3 as a launch title.
The game has already been released on the Xbox 360, Xbox, and the PC, and was also announced as a launch title for the Nintendo Wii. Like the Wii version, Blazing Angels on the PS3 will take advantage of the console's motion-sensing controller, letting gamers pilot their plane by moving the controller. The PS3 edition will also feature new missions, as well as support for up to 16 players online.
Currently in development by Ubisoft's Romanian studio, Blazing Angels puts gamers in the cockpit of a World War II fighter plane. Players will fly through re-creations of some of the war's most famous battles, including the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Britian.
Ubisoft's announced that its WWII flight combat game, Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII, is winging its way to PS3 - and will be a launch title for Sony's next-gen console.
According to the publisher, the PS3 version features brand new missions, takes advantage of the machine's "unique and powerful capabilities" and additionally includes "innovative use of the PlayStation 3 controller". Oh, and there's a "heart-pounding 16-player multiplayer mode", too.
In Blazing Angels, players take to the WWII skies over Western Europe and the Pacific and dogfight it out in numerous famous air battles from the conflict. Hopefully we'll have screenshots from the PS3 version soon.
PS3 will eventually triumph, with Xbox 360 second and Wii a distant third - eh?
Analysts lead a pretty rarified life, lobbing predictions about the future of the gaming industry from their ivory towers, while scantily clad lovelies presumably serve them tall drinks before they make their next pronouncement on how things will turn out.
Okay we exaggerate a little for effect, but the latest predictions to float across the ether this morning come from Boston-based research Yankee Group, who have cast the runes to tell us that the PS3 will eventually triumph in North America, followed by a close running Xbox 360 - with Nintendo's Wii trailing way behind the big two - although it'll take until 2011 for it all to shake out.
Yankee say the PS3 will capture 44 percent of the US market by 2011 boasting sales of some 30 million units, with 360 snapping close at its heels with 27 million, while the Wii gallops up the rear with a little over 11 million units dispatched to happy homes over in the land of Uncle Sam.
Overall, Yankee reckons there'll be fewer consoles sold than in the current gen and also predicts that digital distribution will become increasingly important. But a little closer to our own time zone, it also says MS will be in a good position for major price cuts on the 360 next spring. Nice.
Make of all that what you will, but we think it's seriously underestimating the appeal of Nintendo's next-gen. Now we're off to sacrifice a chicken and read its entrails to let you know how sales will go for the PS4, Xbox 720 and Nintendo Mii go in Europe by the year 2025.
Throwing cold water on Sony's talk of 1080p output for its PlayStation 3 console, Microsoft's Andre Vrignaud has warned consumers that the company's claims are nothing but hype.
In a post on his blog, Vrignaud - who is director of technical strategy for Xbox Live - argues that developers looking to create a game for the next generation consoles will be aiming for 720p in order to maximise compatibility between Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, as well as ensuring compatibility with the majority of HD television sets.
"The PS3 has roughly the same pixel-pushing capabilities as the Xbox 360. You don't need to take my word for it, it'll be obvious soon enough over the next year," Vrignaud stated.
"In fact, I'll stick my neck out and predict that that you won't see any 1080"x" games for the PS3 this year."
The MS exec further argues that modern HD equipment will display movie content - either on HD DVD or Blu-ray - progressively even if the input is interlaced, which makes the much touted 1080p resolution functionality of the PlayStation 3 largely irrelevant on current consumer equipment.
"99% of PS3 titles will natively render at 720p; the few that come out with 1080"x" support are either going to be simple classic arcade ports that don't need to render complex scenes... Or will give up a lot of in-game visual effects and simply won't look very good (hence the poor showing of Gran Turismo "HD" at this past E3)," he continued.
"Don't get sucked into all the 1080p hype. Just make sure you have a recent HDTV that de-interlaces 1080i signals correctly and you'll be just fine."
Sony UK has insisted it is still at least a month away from finalising PS3 roll-out plans, as official UK distributor CentreSoft confirms it has been testing the water on controversial pre-release initiatives with the retail community in preparation for the November 17th launch.
GamesIndustry.biz has learned that CentreSoft called a meeting two weeks ago for leading indie games retailers in order to gauge their views on a number of hypothetical launch scenarios. The distributor plans to utilise the feedback in order to best represent indies' interests when Sony confirms it launch plans for the UK.
CentreSoft managing director David Neal confirmed to GI.biz that the scenarios discussed included what might happen in the even that Sony implements its controversial GBP150 pre-order scheme, and how the system could work to ensure parity and fairness of allocation across the board.
“This was a CentreSoft meeting and doesn't represent Sony official position in any way,” Neal said. “We wanted to canvass the opinion of indies on a number of 'what if?' scenarios - but we're as much in the dark as everyone else on Sony's plans”.
One retailer present at the meeting, speaking under condition of anonymity, explained how the discussion on the pre-order scheme sought to explain how it could work to guarantee day one stock for vendors.
“The brief was: guaranteed day one stock - if I take 400 orders I get 400 on day one, not the launch window. But to ensure that we'd have to give up the whole deposit to Sony,” the retailer said.
Speaking to GI.biz, a Sony spokesperson confirmed that the meeting was an independent CentreSoft initiative, while revealing that formal plans would not be confirmed until next month.
“We and Centresoft are trying to work as closely with our trade partners as we can to ensure a smooth launch. We have not announced our launch plans and probably won't be doing so until mid-September,” the spokesperson said.
“This is in large part because there are many unknowns we need to resolve before we complete our plans. One of these unknowns is production and production quantities.”
During a visit with Sega to get the latest on Full Auto 2, 1Up captured a video of the final PlayStation 3 dev kit and what the dashboard of the PS3 is lookin' like right about now.
... we were given a chance to play around with a final PS3 development kit and captured it all on film. Particularly worthy of attention were the controller (which didn't have the tilt functionality in it yet, unfortunately) and the menu system, which, while still very early, shows the obvious design cues from the PSP's dashboard.
If you're interested in what Full Auto 2 looks like, you can watch the video here. We played the game last month and were impressed by the makeover for the PS3. The cars handled better and most importantly, didn't fly like paper airplanes every time you hit a bump in the road.
Once again there are indications that the UK games magazine sector is in a continuing decline, as the latest ABC figures reveal that it's now the turn of the official mags to face a hefty drop in readership.
Back in Februrary, when the last ABC results were released, it appeared that the official magazines were holding steady as sales dropped off for other titles.
But the new figures show that Official PS2 Magazine's readership has fallen from around 132,000 to just over 100,000 - while Official Xbox takes another tumble from 64,400 to 40,500. Perhaps due to the success of the Nintendo DS, however, Official Nintendo has lost just 2000 readers, with monthly sales figures now standing at just over 35,500.
When it comes to the unofficial mags, some have faired better than others. Sales of PSW fell from around 43,700 to just under 34,500, while Games Master lost around 2000 readers, and is now selling just over 53,300 copies a month. PC Gamer's readership also fell from around 48,700 to 45,300, and PSM2 saw a drop of around 4500, with a circulation of 36,000. PC Zone lost more than 3000 readers, just topping 30,000.
However, sales of Edge magazine remained steady, hovering around the 33,600 mark, while Xbox World - now X360 World - saw its readership rise from 19,000 to more than 23,000. The first figures released so far for the Official Xbox 360 magazine show monthly sales of 42,680.
While Future continues to dominate the games magazine market, rival publisher Imagine has seen a rise in readership for some of the titles it picked up from Highbury. Sales of Play rose from 46,500 to 53,100, and Games TM readership was also up from 20,100 to nearly 21,700. The first figures for Imagine's Xbox 360 magazines show that 360 sold just under 13,100 copies, with X360 at 21,900. Uncooked Media's 360 Gamer has a circulation of around 9,100. .
With the internet getting more and more powerful and sites like DCEMU providing the most uptodate news daily its not hard to see why Magazine sales worldwide are down.
The desert may not seem like the ideal place to make a major game announcement, but Sierra Entertainment did anyway. Entertaining journalists from various gaming media outlets, the Vivendi Games subsidiary held an event at the Parker Hotel in the triple-digit heat of the Palm Springs desert, and used the occasion to announce its first PlayStation 3 game.
F.E.A.R., the popular shooter from Monolith Productions (Condemned: Criminal Originals), is currently in development for Sony's next-gen console. This will be the third platform the series has spread to, following a previously announced Xbox 360 version, due in November, and the PC version, which was named Best Shooter of 2005 by GameSpot.
The game is being ported to the PS3 by Day 1 Studios, which is also working on the Xbox 360 version. What's more, would-be PS3 owners won't have to wait for F.E.A.R.--the game will be one of the system's launch titles when it debuts in the US on November 17.
In addition to the single- and multiplayer portions of the game, F.E.A.R. for the PS3 will also include exclusive content--though Sierra reps were not divulging any details.
The timing of the announcement may seem a bit unusual for fans of the series, as earlier this year the now Warner Bros. Interactive-owned-Monolith announced that a sequel to F.E.A.R. is already in the works for "multiple next-gen consoles," which almost certainly includes the PS3. The sequel will not be named F.E.A.R., however, since Vivendi owns the rights to the name.
Regardless of what the sequel is named, there will still be plenty of F.E.A.R. to go around this year. In addition to the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game, Sierra is releasing a PC expansion pack, F.E.A.R. Extraction Point. Today it also released F.E.A.R. Combat, the multiplayer portion of the PC game, for free download.
F.E.A.R. for the PS3 has not yet been rated or priced, but the Xbox 360 version will be $59.99 and is rated M for Mature.
A launch line-up of 29 games is planned for the PlayStation 3 release this November including Resident Evil 5, Vision Gran Turismo and Assassin's Creed, according to US online retailer Best Buy.
The 29 games are due to come out around the Sony console's 17 November launch date and would make for a fantastic line-up. The full list is as follows.
Army of Two (EA)
Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft)
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (Ubisoft)
Call of Duty 3 (Activision)
Devil May Cry 4 (Capcom)
Fight Night: Round 3 (EA)
Final Fantasy versus XIII (Square Enix)
Full Auto 2: Battlelines (Sega)
Heavenly Sword (Sony)
Hot Shots Golf 5 (Sony)
Indiana Jones (LucasArts)
Killzone 2 (Sony)
Madden NFL 07 (EA)
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (Activision)
Medal of Honor: Airborne (EA)
Monster Kingdom (Sony)
Motorstorm (Sony)
Rainbow Six Vegas (Ubisoft)
Resident Evil 5 (Capcom)
Scarface: The World is Yours (Vivendi)
Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega)
Splinter Cell Double Agent (Ubisoft)
Stranglehold (Midway)
Tekken 6 (Sony)
Tony Hawk's Project 8 (Activision)
Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom (Sony)
Virtua Fighter 5 (Sega)
Vision Gran Turismo (Sony)
Warhawk (Sony)
Now before anyone gets carried away, there are some glaring errors in Best Buy's list such as a 2006 release for Resident Evil 5, Tekken 6, Stranglehold, Indiana Jones and Killzone 2, as well as some that might have later releases such as Army of Two. But what we can say is that the launch line-up is in there, somewhere. Probably
Buried deep in a GameSpot preview of the upcoming PlayStation 3 title Full Auto 2 is information that Sony's new online network, the PlayStation network platform, is already functional. This is what GameSpot had to say:
It's also worth noting that we played Full Auto 2's multiplayer on the actual PlayStation network platform, so apparently Sony already has its online gaming infrastructure up and running well ahead of the new system's release.
With final dev kits surfacing and other details starting to be fleshed out, it's nice to see the PS3 seems to finally be ready for launch come November.
Those words, creepily emulated by a Commodore 64 running the game Impossible Mission, are a nostalgic touchstone for many a gamer. And the goosebumps those words might create are almost as readily replicated by the name of that game's publisher: Epyx. Those goosebumps might become a recurring problem soon, as System 3 (the development house that changed its name to Studio 3 and then back to System 3) is bringing back the Epyx name, as well as the Epyx games.
System 3 founder Mark Kale told GameSpot today that the company has secured the rights to the Epyx Games library, and is looking to revamp it for today's systems. The first two projects on the company's slate are Impossible Mission and California Games.
This coming January, System 3 will release Impossible Mission for the PSP and Nintendo DS, with California Games arriving on both those systems in May. While the games will be remakes of the original titles, Kale promises that they won't be 3D.
"You gotta keep the gameplay mechanics the same or else it ceases to be the original game and you're only using the game brand to sell games," Kale said. "It ceases to be Impossible Mission or California Games or what have you. …What we're doing is we're incorporating the original gameplay and mechanics and bringing the gameplay up to date."
Epyx games aren't the only retro titles under development at System 3. The company is also prepping a remake/compilation of its Last Ninja trilogy of Commodore 64 games for release on the PSP and DS in April of next year. Kale said he will preserve the isometric viewpoint of the games, but add more screens.
Kale described the games as "ideally suited" for handhelds, but that doesn't mean TV-tethered gamers are out of luck. Roughly three weeks after the DS and PSP editions of California Games and Impossible Mission hit shelves, Kale said the games will also become available on the Wii.
"The way the controllers work and the whole idea of it actually works a lot better than if it's on the PS3 or 360," Kale said, noting that System 3 will be big supporters of Nintendo's upcoming system.
More details about the games are expected to be released by the end of the Leipzig Games Conference, but Kale did drop a few tidbits about the titles. It seems California Games will actually be a combo game, as Kale said it will have unlockable features including fellow Epyx titles Winter Games and Summer Games.
As for Impossible Mission, Kale did confirm that the infamous computerized invitation to "Stay forever!" is already included in the game, and System 3 is even using the original animation for the main character. However, players will be traversing updated backgrounds, and will be able to choose from newly created main characters as well, including a female agent and an android.
While emulated versions of the original Impossible Mission and California Games aren't currently planned to be included in either remake, Kale said the team would examine the possibility, "time permitting."
As for how System 3 will make use of the Epyx brand beyond its initial wave of titles, don't expect a cheaply emulated compilation of games anytime soon. Kale said he doesn't think that's the right approach to take with old games, so the studio will likely continue to single out the publisher's highlights and give them remakes that preserve the gameplay.
A group of companies from the UK's competitive gaming community have set up a new project designed to promote professional videogaming.
The UK Electronic Gaming Initiative hopes to promote the idea that "competitive videogaming is not only a lifestyle but also a career choice", according to an official statement, "and one that should be welcomed and accepted".
The UKEGI is collecting evidence to support an application to Britain's Sports Council and Department of Culture in a bid to have videogaming recognised as a sporting activity.
According to the UKEGI, several other countries around the world have already taken this step, and other European countries are planning to follow suit.
Companies signed up to support the initiative include play-games-for-cash firm Prize Fight, and LAN event organiser Multiplay.
"What is the definition of 'sport'? What is the definition of competitive videogaming?" said Prize Fight CEO Paul Sulyok.
"I see negligible difference there. The skills possessed by those able to compete at a professional level define such competitors as athletes - and thus their pastime as a sport. The UKEGI are simply working toward mainstream recognition of this fact."
Philip Wride, manager of gaming clan 4Kings, added: "The UKEGI has been setup to champion the cause that not only is videogaming good, but that it also meets the requirements to be classified as a sport.
"Videogaming is the largest sector of the entertainment industry and continues to grow, and as such those that choose to make playing videogames their career should be congratulated and supported, rather than frowned upon."
The gameplay may have reportedly taken a back-to-basics leap to speedy platforming action, but next-gen Sonic the Hedgehog has certainly given up nothing when it comes to visuals. Staring at these latest screens for too long is like being whacked in the face by a rampaging box of Crayola crayons...
Sonic the Hedgehog is due to hit the PS3 and Xbox 360 around Christmas time, and promises to be a super-fast, sweetly-cool, retro-inspired platforming jaunt. It's all about speed, action, battling and jaw-dropping, dream-like environments.
Peppering up the gameplay, though, is the introduction of Silver The Hedgehog, who drops in from the future with a range of cool powers, such as being able to bend scenery, control enemies with his mind, and stop bullets mid-air. It almost sounds like Sonic meets Psi-Ops or the Sonic Matrix. But isn't, really.
Should certainly be good, though. Look out for Sonic to roll in by the end of the year.
Call us smug so and so's and all that, but as we exclusively reported recently, F.E.A.R. will indeed be releasing for PS3, and here's the proof that you were all craving - the first five dank, spooky, firestarter-y screenshots from that very version.
The (expectedly tinkered?) port of the acclaimed PC shooter is being developed by Day 1 Studios in conjunction with Monolith Productions, and will be joining the Xbox 360 version around November time, this year. Publisher Vivendi has not yet said how the PS3 version will build upon its PC predecessor, but it did give a sweetly poetic description of the game to whet your appetites:
F.E.A.R is a paranormal action thriller presented entirely in first person. An unprecedented adrenaline rush of close quarters combat seamlessly melded with the spine-tingling, shocking intensity of the paranormal unknown.
Gaming site Playsyde has done all gamers a great service and uploaded an ample amount of trailers shown by Sony during May's E3. The good part is that these aren't YouTube or degraded video quality viewings -- they're in 720p. The site notes that "some of the trailers are edited from the E3 versions, with sometimes more footage or some scenes removed."
Here are the trailers:
Singstar
Everybody's Golf
Lair
Genji 2
F1 2006
Warhawk
Heavenly Sword
Monster Kingdom
Eye of Judgement
SPOnG caught up earlier this week with the good people of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe for a quick chat about all things PlayStation and we are pleased to let you know that the frustrating post-E3 wait for proper information on our PlayStation future is just about to end, with the first in a series of major announcements being made this coming Monday from Leibzig.
We can assure you that this first unveiling will, shall we say, be something you are very unlikely to have foreseen, coming from way out of leftfield. Suffice to say it brought a smile to our face as we think it will do yours. Check in here first thing on Monday when we’ll be able to disclose the full details of this announcement, as well as picking up the first tasty news droppings from all the other publishers at Leibzig.
It would also seem that Sony has seriously taken on board the many criticisms targeted at the company following a poorly received E3 PlayStation 3 showing and done what it does best – gone into lockdown mode whilst its development and marketing teams get on with the serious, hard work of ensuring that both the PS3’s technical offering and the marketing message are both spot on for the looming 17th November launch.
Be here to first to get the latest news on all things PlayStation – including the ways in which SCEE is planning to communicate the PS3’s (much-maligned) pricing strategy and the advantages of Blu-ray to the masses of still-to-be-won-over consumers.
Plus, and most importantly, the games. SPOnG will have all the news and latest opinion from our guys on the ground regarding the PS3’s all-important launch line-up of games.
Oh, and what about the PS3’s online offering? Last we heard there was some bizarre idea to call it PooS (P-infinity-S). We're still not entirely sure if this wasn’t just a little joke Sony cooked up as a dig at Nintendo’s daftly named Wii console. Again, watch this space for full, detailed news on the future of PS3 online gaming as we get it.
There hasn't been a lot of information released about the PS3 development kits, controllers or even the menu system for the new console, but soon that could possibly change. At yesterday's SEGA PS3 day, we were treated to a demo of Full Auto 2: Battlelines on the latest development kit, which had recently been sent to Pseudo Interactive and other designers. Initially, we were concerned that the kits would still run extremely hot and be very loud (in fact, some people have likened the whine of the dev kit fans to that of a jet turbine), but we were pleasantly surprised to note the distinct lack of noise and heat coming from the system.
We were also told that the dev kit seemed to be extremely adaptive and easy to program for. In fact, Pseudo talked about how they hadn't put in their planned tilt sensitivity, but had literally dropped in the wireless support for the controllers on Tuesday. The controllers, which feel much lighter thanks to the removal of the rumble feature, nevertheless were solid and extremely responsive. While those weren't the finalized controllers for the PS3 itself, they felt much better than the ones that were at E3 (and were extremely easy to toggle between wired and wireless play). By unplugging the cable and pressing the PlayStation button on the controller for a second or two, we were able to engage the wireless feature. In fact, we also discovered during our multiplayer session that each controller was "smart" enough to recognize which system and what player it was initially connected to, regardless of the number of other controllers or systems in the room. This bodes well for massive LAN party play or co-op play with multiple controllers on the same system.
Speaking of LAN play, all eight dev kits were connected over the PlayStation Network in real time, which exhibited no lag whatsoever. Part of that could've been due to the massive storage capacity of each system streaming game information in tandem: each dev kit held 80 gigabytes of storage, so the multiplayer match had approximately almost a terabyte of storage synched up over the Network to stream the alpha build and accurately model the multiplayer destruction of Full Auto 2. As for the PS3 menu, it was easy to pull up in-game by quickly pressing the PlayStation button, which popped up an overlaid menu on top of the screen. The PS3 menu seems to have taken a lot of its cues from the PSP, with user features, settings, friends and game menu items. The menu appears to be a lot cleaner and sharper than the PSP but has fewer icons on it. Granted, that could also be because it was still relatively early, but it doesn't mean that, like the PSP, other features could be added to it at a later point.
We contacted Sony for additional details about the dev kits, but as of press time, representatives were unavailable for comment.
Chris Kohler, over at Wired's Game|Life, had the chance to see an in-production PS3 game in action. He said that, for the most part everything looked great. The one thing that concerned him was the motion-sensing controller that Sony is pushing on developers. From the article:
"The developers told us that although we'd be using real PS3 controllers, they didn't yet have the motion-sensing functionality built in. And not only that, although they referred to the build as 'feature-complete,' they did admit that the one feature that was not yet included was (wait for it) motion-sensing, although they did 'have some cool ideas.' There was plenty of speculation after Sony's E3 conference that the motion-sensing functionality was jammed into the controller at the last minute as a reaction to Nintendo's strategy. This was backed up by the Warhawk developers' offhand remarks that they'd implemented motion sensing 'in just a couple weeks'."
This week, yet another game-industry analyst issued yet another report predicting yet another winner in the next-gen console race. However, unlike a July note which warned that Sony's "techno-elite" strategy could be its downfall, this week's report from the Yankee Group forecast the PlayStation 3 as emerging victorious from the fracas to succeed the current crop of game platforms.
"By the time third-generation consoles reach market maturity in 2011, the PlayStation 3 will once again be the market leader," said Yankee Group in its report. The Boston-based industry-research firm went on to predict that over the next five years, Sony would sell 30 million PS3s in North America, attaining a 44 percent market share.
However, with the PlayStation 2, Sony currently enjoys around a 60 percent market share. The Yankee Group's prediction had Microsoft selling 27 million Xbox 360s to increase its slice of the gaming pie to 40 percent--meaning Sony would cede roughly 16 percent of its North American customers to its archrival. (The report has Nintendo retaining its current approximate 16 percent market share, selling just 11 million Wiis over five years.)
The Yankee Group report generated a surge of interest and sparked numerous verbal skirmishes between console enthusiasts. But how did Sony feel about it? Was the company happy to receive a reprieve from the ongoing consumer backlash about the PS3's dual $499 and $599 pricing? Or was it concerned about the fundamental market shift the report augured?
Kaz talks PS3 production.
To get some answers, GameSpot spoke with Sony Computer Entertainment American president Kaz Hirai about the Yankee Group report and his company's ongoing preparations for the PS3's November launches in Japan, North America, and Europe. The executive also addressed the controversy surrounding Sony's first handheld, the PSP: Will there be a price drop? Will there be a redesign? And is the PSP's UMD format going the way of Betamax and MiniDisc? And what about those rumors fingering Sony as one of the architects of the drastic downsizing of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3)? GameSpot put those questions--and others--to Hirai earlier this week.
After a short-lived shakeup in Japanese software sales that saw two shocking changes--the Nintendo DS dethroned from the top slot and the exit of Brain Age from the top 10--this week brings a return to the status quo.
SD Gundam G Generation Portable, last week's top game, tumbled hard to number eight, while New Super Mario Bros. is back in the top slot, according to the latest data from Media Create. Proving it still has some fight left in it, Brain Age clawed its way to seventh after dipping off the charts last week. Animal Crossing: Wild World also charmed its way back onto the top 10 after a brief hiatus, appearing at number six.
As for the week's brand-new games, arguably the biggest news this week is Ecole Software's 2D fighting game Melty Blood: Act Cadenza, which debuted at number three. Melty Blood is notable in that it is a creation of Japan's "doujin circles"--which are groups of enthusiasts who collaborate to create products that often end up rivaling the quality of professional products. Melty Blood began life as a doujin title on the PC but was later ported to the NAOMI arcade board. The PlayStation 2 version has sold 64,980 copies in its first week, more than 92 percent of its existing supply, according to Media Create.
As for games that missed the top 10, Mario Hoops 3 on 3 quietly dropped to number 11, while Rhythm Tengoku, the Game Boy Advance collection of rhythm minigames from the maker of WarioWare, dropped to 14th. Star Fox Command also slipped a few places, ending up at number 17.
1 New Super Mario Bros.
2 Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 2
3 Melty Blood: Act Cadenza
4 Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu: Motto Nou o Kitaeru Otona DS Training
5 Shaberu! DS Oryouri Navi
6 Animal Crossing: Wild World
7 Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day
8 SD Gundam G Generation Portable
9 Jissen Pachi-Slot Hisshouhou! Hokuto no Ken SE
10 Kirarin * Revolution: Kira Kira Idol Audition
- DS Lite: 196,719
- PSP: 41,289
- PS2: 26,547
- GBA SP: 3,051
- Game Boy Micro: 2,031
- Xbox 360: 1,204
- Gamecube: 940
- DS Phat: 934
- GBA: 23
- Xbox: 6
Amazing to see how much the DS Lite is winning the console war in Japan at the moment, if they make the Wii and DS a system that feeds off each other and download games to your DS via Wii then we could see the next gen winner. PSP taking 2nd place is a good sign for Sonys handheld.
A news article from Joystiq that i actually agree with 100%:
What's the deal with watermarking game-related images (spoken in my best Seinfeld impersonation)? Especially when the image in question isn't even proprietary? Case in point: When the final unveiling of the PS3 took place on May 8, 2006 during Sony's E3 press briefing, Joystiq bloggers scrambled to get the newly and publicly released media image up on the site. Two images were submitted (pictured above) to our Editor-in-Chief, and after long debates, arguments, and thrown chairs, option B was selected. I think we made the right choice.
We're obviously exaggerating here, but even those pesky watermarks placed at the bottom right of press release images by online publishers annoy any aesthetic purists. Non-proprietary image watermarks have got to go. End rant.
We at DCEmu fully agree with Joystiq and the many other sites who dislike these practices, what we are seeing now is sites watermarking images that arent legally theres to watermark, the real owner of an image is the person who takes the photo or sells it, surely not some site who wants to make them feel important.
DCEmu is proud to announce our new affiliate, The Neoflash Team. Neoflash for those who dont know sponsor what is at the moment the premier Coding Competitions for the PSP. Nintendo DS and GBA homebrew scenes ( and any site that genuinely supports homebrew is good in our books).
They also make a range of flashcarts that make you cry for joy, top of my wanted list are the excellent Megadrive, Snes and without a doubt the N64 Flash cart.
Sony US boss Kaz Hirai has been speaking to GameSpot about the launch of the PS3 and he's dropped a fair few details and indeed issued some stark warnings about just how easy it will be to get your hands on the console, come this year's November launch period.
Quizzed on launch plans for the console, Hirai began by re-stating Sony's position that there would be two million units worldwide within a calendar year of launch, but on the more thorny issue of allocations per major territory he added, "Since we're going with three territories, we haven't really come up with an allocation just yet. But even if you do the simple math you're talking about less than 700,000 units per territory, per major territory, between launch and the end of the year. So even if there was some fluctuation - you give Japan more, you give the US more, what have you - you're going to end up with some shortages."
Hirai then added, "Unfortunately, I think it's going to be very much of a challenge to be able to meet every single unit demand that's out there in the market. That's just a logistical impossibility. Unless we suddenly say, "Well we want to wait until June of next year to launch because we want to stockpile product," I don't think that's the approach we want to take."
So not much prospect of waking up with a PS3 delivered fresh from Santa's bulging sack this Christmas morning then, but Hirai then went to admit that Sony hasn't begun making the units themselves yet, although production is apparently, just about to kick off. "We haven't started manufacturing yet. Some of our ops guys were actually just in China, and also in Japan just reviewing the [production] lines and everything else. But they are, again, preparing as we speak to get the manufacturing going. We've not announced and we haven't set really a specific date to say, "As of this day we're going to start manufacturing.".
Despite acknowledging that shortages are inevitable, Hirai however did remain optimistic on the console's longer-term prospects saying in the light of the recent Yankee analysts report, Sony would retain its overall market share as the market plays out over the next few years. "My plan basically is to make sure that we keep at least as much market share as we have had with the PS1 and the PS2. We don't plan on ceding any of the market share to our competitors, especially after the cycle has gone deep".
We've known this Blu-ray-equipped media center PC was on the horizon, and now AMEX Digital is finally dropping the pimped-out M505-BDR in Europe with even crazier specs than we originally thought. Aside from sporting that swank single-layer Blu-ray burner -- which not only plays Blu-ray titles, but also upscales normal 'ole DVDs to "stunning 1080p" resolution -- the M505 apparently houses an unidentified Intel Core 2 Duo processor on the Intel 945P Express chipset, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, 1.5TB of SATA disk space, and a UK-friendly dual hybrid analog / digital DVB-T TV tuner. This beast also rocks Gigabit LAN, 802.11b/g WiFi, a FireWire connector, 8.1 channel HD audio, and, of course, an HDMI port that doesn't bother to tout its HDCP compliancy (or lack thereof). This Windows Media Center 2005-powered machine delivers that crystal clear HD video via the ATI X1600 graphics card, and AMEX even throws in a "multi-function" remote to control the action from your oh-so-comfy loveseat. The drool-worthy device is set to be released to European markets on August 28th at a cost of near $2,000 -- but considering the lofty prices for standalone Blu-ray burners and players alike, we'd say this looks like a bargain; and don't forget the free Blu-ray title (apparently of your choice) that comes with the purchase, perhaps sending fence-sitters squarely into the "buyers" camp.
Fans of Midway's rather enjoyable console shooter Area 51 will be pleased to hear that some job-ad indiscretions suggest a sequel is in the works.
Not only do the ads - listed on GameDev.net - make reference to "Area 52", but they're also seeking talent specifically for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, suggesting that Midway is quite happy making the jump.
Unreal Engine experience is listed as a "bonus" for applicants, along with experience of working on first-person shooters, making it pretty clear what they're on about.
The listings also make reference to a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 title called Criminal, with mentions of Unreal Engine 3 there - Midway, of course, is already a confirmed licensee - and talk of high-level, photo-realistic visuals.
Although Midway has yet to officially announce these games, the company is known to be well into development on next-gen titles including John Woo's Stranglehold, which caught attention on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 during E3.
It's also set to publish the PC version of Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 2007.
Finally, a non-shaky cam/YouTube video of what the PlayStation 3 user interface will look like once you plug in the console. As you'll see, it's basically a ramped up PSP interface. We won't say much, but just let the IGN video speak for itself instead. Check it out here.
Silconera has posted a nice side by side comparison of some newly released images by Sony of the 20GB and 60GB PlayStation 3. We all know the spec differences, but it's nice to also see what each looks like in their differing configurations.
Anyone else think the 20GB just looks drastically cheaper in quality? As if there weren't enough incentive to go with the higher-priced PS3, it looks as though from a purely aesthetic perspective, most gamers would want to go for the 60GB as well.
Check out the screens Via Comments and give us your opinion.
Although the first PlayStation3 dev kits were nothing short of gigantic (similar to those PSP dev kits), it looks like Sony has released a "final" version -- one which doesn't exhale winds kin to a tropical storm and whine like a jet engine -- that's been tracked down and posterized. As expected, the juicy details here are few and far between, but at first glance it does seem to sport the obligatory optical Blu-ray drive, and on-hand reports stated that an alpha build of Full Auto 2 was among the data housed on the 80GB hard drive. Initial reactions were relatively positive, garnering praise for its sleek menus and "lag-free" play while connected to the PlayStation Network. The lucky few who wound up handling the not-yet-finalized controller dug the lightweight feel (thanks to the omission of a rumble feature), and noted that switching from wired to wireless modes was much snappier than the versions at (the final) E3. Unfortunately, no new information was leaked about titles in development, and no substantial secrets were unearthed, but hopefully that'll change pretty soon once these start making the rounds.
Metal Gear Solid 4 is a key title for the PlayStation 3's launch period and one of the first games guaranteed to give Sony's next-gen console some must have appeal.
Well as you'll know from E3, where we managed to catch a word with legendary creator Hideo Kojima on the next and possibly final incarnation of Solid Snake's adventures (though we hope Kojima will at least keep the door ajar for future offerings), MGS4 already has us more excited than a bag of puppies.
Well, more should be known at Leipzig tomorrow about this 'Most Wanted' of all PS3 titles with a brand new movie debuting, which should give further clues to the all-consuming beast which is MGS4. From what we hear on the wind it's going to be an absolute corker too, with attendees (including us) treated to the first in-game action from the title, which will feature actual PS3 gameplay visuals, as well as the usual carefully crafted and absorbing cut-scenes which are such a feature of the series.
We hope it won't be too long before Konami unleashes the trailer on an entirely suspecting world too, but if not, we'll be there to bring you footage direct from the show floor with our usual wobbly cam antics. Are we excited? Most definitely!
The chart-dominating EA Sports series is to incorporate broadcast quality TV and radio, with regional variations of programming, commentary, interviews and podcasts set to be accessible directly via the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
While demonstrating NBA Live 2007 at the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, VP and COO of EA's worldwide studios, David Gardner, confirmed: "We're going to do intergration around FIFA titles with local broadcasters."
More details are expected to be revealed this week at the Leipzig Games Convention, but Gardner discussed the plans as part of the publishers desire to retain multitasking consumers as they become increasingly distracted by multiple media outlets.
"This is a little taste of how we intend to keep gamers connected to the game but still feed the need to multitask at the same time," Gardner said during a question and answer session.
And when asked whether multitasking in-game would distract from the pure gaming experience he stated,"Users are doing it anyway. It is happening whether they have multiple windows open or the iPod is playing. We're trying to bring that experience in a more organised way to people."
In a short demonstration film, Brent Nielsen, senior producer of NBA Live 2007 revealed the inclusion of broadcast content as the next logical step to features already present in some EA Sports games - such as real-world scores running at the bottom of the screen and short radio updates throughout the game.
"If you're listening to a two minute update and you wanted to dive deeper and get more information, it's like having ESPN.com right at your finger tips but on a console in the form of ESPN News," he said.
"But the feature we're most excited about is bringing television broadcasting right into the home console in the form of ESPN Motion. If there's an analysis from one of your favourite personalities, you can watch interviews, listen to their opinions or see programming that is again, right at your fingertips," continued Nielsen.
He added, "Another feature that will be making its debut this year is the radio podcast, which is like having ESPN radio playing directly through your console - so you never have to leave the videogame experience."
The road block has turned into a pile up this week, as Cars keeps the lead and prevents any movement in the top end of the all-formats sales chart for a fourth consecutive week.
Take Two's GTA: Liberty City Stories sits patiently in second, followed by the first of three top ten DS exclusives for Nintendo with New Super Mario Bros. in third place again.
The Sims 2 swaps places with its older sibling, jumping two places from sixth to fourth, just ahead of Pro Evolution Soccer 5, which also climbs two places from seventh into fifth.
Dr Kawashima's Brain Training drops one place into sixth, EA's Need for Speed: Most Wanted racing back up the charts to secure seventh place thanks to a budget price and retail promotion.
The lower end of the charts are taken up by The Sims in eighth, Animal Crossing: Wild World in ninth - having jumped from sixteenth place thanks to continued television advertising - and FIFA 06 coming in for extra time in tenth.
New releases are once again thin on the ground this week, as the industry holds off for the summer and prepares for the Christmas season onslaught towards the later end of the year. All of Which means, of course that the congestion at the top end of the chart could continue for another week, leaving everyone else to scrabble for a better position on the back of retail promotions and budget price points.
Sony has issued a statement correcting the information regarding its projected retail allocation for the PlayStation 3, confirming plans to have 2 million units available by launch day.
The previous reports, which had originated from an interview with consumer website GameSpot, suggested that Sony may fall short on launch day allocations for the next-gen console.
A spokesperson for Sony Computer Entertainment America contacted GamesIndustry.biz, issuing the following statement in relation to the story:
"Unfortunately Kaz Hirai's comments in the recent GameSpot interview regarding PlayStation 3 production were misunderstood. We are still on schedule to ship 2 million units for our mid-November 2006 launch and additional 2 million units by the end of the year for a total of 4 million units."
Whilst the news is certainly encouraging, there has been no correction on Kaz Hirai's admittance that full scale production of the console has not yet begun, leaving Sony with an immense logistical challenge if it is going to avoid the hardware shortages which plagued last year's Xbox 360 launch for Microsoft.
Insomniac Games, the guys behind the Ratchet and Clank series, were in the Big Apple showing off the latest build of their upcoming PS3 launch title, Resistance: Fall of Man. Kotaku had a Gawker cameraman on the scene to grab some video, and MTV News' Stephen Totilo managed the impossible. He extracted some positive press about the PS3 (Sony must be furious at Insomniac, this goes against their entire pre-launch strategy).
Turns out that Blu-ray drive that every armchair analyst is convinced is a giant wooden equine built to penetrate our consumer-weary walls and then attack with an army of HD movies may actually be useful for gaming afterall. The game currently takes up 22GB! That's seven whole gee-bees more than a single layer HD-DVD disc that the Xbox 360 won't (?) be using for gaming.
The Dual Shake functionality that was supposedly tacked on at the last minute ... well, it looks like it was still tacked on; nevertheless, it holds some serious promise. Ninety days before this thing has to be on store shelves the developers have still not activated the functionality on the controller, but they have added in some clever gameplay currently triggered with a button press. Shake off a melee attack by shaking the controller, or introduce the end of your rifle to their face with a quick jab of your right hand. Sure, you won't feel the vibration when that blow connects, but it's something.
But there's also multiplayer. How will Sony's secretive service compare to the superlative Xbox Live? R: FoM will feature: "40-player online matches at launch; 60 levels of player progression while playing online; two-player offline co-op." 60 levels of player progression ... sounds like another popular online game. According to MTV News, Insomniac even promised "better, deeper support than any Xbox Live title."
Has the PS3 buzz finally begun? We've been increasingly anxious that someone at Sony didn't get the memo that their latest and greatest was launching in a few scant months.
The Inquirer reported earlier today on ‘NVidian insider sources’ who have seen PS3 demos being developed in the last few weeks, presumably some of which will be unveiled at Leipzig later this week, and no doubt all of which will finally be revealed at next month’s Tokyo Game Show.
Inquirer.net's sources at NVidia said that the demos looked astonishing, which - surprisingly enough - is what the PR fellas at SCEE told SPOnG when we went to see them last week.
The Inquirer goes on to report: “Nvidia is using existing G71 renamed to RSX as the graphic core of choice for Playstation 3 and even it [sic] can not technologically match ATI's Xenos it still offers a lot of potential if used wisely…. We can confirm that Nvidia doesn’t have any troubles producing as many RSX chips as it wants. It's not that hard to make this chip running at 550MHz, developed on the proven 90 nanometre marchitecture.”
SPOnG’s crack Leipzig squad is preparing itself for battle right now, and they aim to land and scope the theatre of war (the convention centre) later this afternoon. Watch this space, as we will be bringing you a full, detailed update of all the breaking news as we get it direct from the team on the ground.
EA’s chief operating officer for EA's worldwide studios, David Gardner, claimed that the videogame industry is continuing to fail women, at a speech given in Edinburgh yesterday.
Gardner told the assembled audience up in Scotland: "We have all been talking about this for a long, long time… We are only reaching a small proportion - not only geographically but also genetically.”
He stressed that the industry needs to "create some mega hits in the girl space."
Interestingly enough, what with yesterday's news that Sony is soon to be introducing a new pink PS2 and PSP, Gardner claimed that women don’t just want ‘pink’ games, noting that: "They are not trying to play girly games where Paris Hilton and Britney Spears go shopping and put make-up on. Those kind of things have not been that successful."
Instead, as an example of the type of game that women do want he held up the example of EA’s 40 million selling mega-buster The Sims, with over 70% of Sims players being women under 25.
"The Sims is really a game about relationships - and that's what girls want - they want relationships, they want to be able to chat." Gardner went on to outline his vision for developing these “mega hits in the girl space” he has in mind, which is simply for more companies to invest in better creative teams run by women.
“Four of our 11 studios around the world are run by women. That's an important start,” he declared.
So what’s driving Gardner’s concern with making better games to appeal to women? A feminist concern for equality? Not likely. No, it’s purely that old bottom-line. He claims that if EA were to solve this problem then they could add a billion dollars to sales.
Of course, Gardner isn't the first human to realise selling games to people with ovaries is a good idea, and there was a certain amount of awkward muttering of Nintendo's recent triumphs in the oestrogen arena, a factor the EA exec seemingly overlooked.
Indeed, Nintendo's recent financial positionings, aimed squarely at spiking investor confidence following a lengthy R&D phase and preceding a costly production and marketing drive, have been thickly applying the assertion that Nintendo has already cracked selling videogames to women.
Although most analysts find Nintendo's claims sit somewhere in between the over-egged and the slightly disingenuous, the fact stands that Nintendogs, Brain Training, Animal Crossing and Tetris have all found a welcome home in the handbags of women, especially in Japan.
In SPOnG's opinion, a good marketing push in women's consumer/lifesytle magazines from Just 17 through to Vogue in the US and Europe in the coming months could well successfully position a DS Lite equipped with Opera browsing software as the must have handbag gizmo this winter season, transcending most traditional age and income-bracket barriers.
This wouldnt normally get network status but its so funny that i thought everyone should read, heres the article from Gamespy:
18-year-old Kyle Ramer and 21-year-old Sam Hess probably weren't the brightest kids in school. These two young men from Berryville, Arkansas, have been charged with theft by the Berryville Police Department. They allegedly stole $1,200 worth of video games from the local Wal-Mart and then tried to sell the hot loot to a GameStop next door.
According to an article in the Carroll County News, Ramer and Hess were caught on Wal-Mart security cameras stuffing video games down their pants. A Wal-Mart employee was able to match the store's missing inventory to a large amount of games that were recently traded in by the two men to the nearby GameStop store. Not only were these guys apparently dumb enough to commit this crime in front of a camera, but they were also too lazy to drive to a GameStop in another area to reap their unjust rewards.
Thanks to Hawq for the Tip, Now how funny is that
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comments - Last Comment By sko, TheLogicalGamer
hiya guys,
As you already know. For some time now we at dcemu have been hosting the first ever dcemu awards!!
were all really excited about it. But you know how politics go. the nomination period cant last forever.
So im here to announce that in one week from today. all nomination threads will be closed and the respective four finalists for each category will be decided.
then of course there will be the voting polls for all categories they will/should open the same day as the nominations threads close.
So I cant stress this enough guys, Its really time to buckle down and start nominating, cause in one week the nominations will be tallied and all finalists will be decided
So with only one week to go how will the awards turn out??! only you can decide that! So its time to go make some nominations
A Gameworld Network opinion piece explores the implications of console wars which Wikipedia defines as "periods of intense competition for market share between video game console manufacturers." The author blames the obvious, competition, as the downfall for such beloved consoles like the Dreamcast, least he forgets the failures of the competitor (Sega in this case).
Excerpt here: "Does good competition offset the loss of great companies? Did videogames become better when the Dreamcast surrendered?... The console war brings with it great competition, which has created some of the best consoles around. But the console war has also had its share of casualties - some of which were some of the best consoles around. And that is why I think the console war, despite all of its good intentions, is not good for gaming."
Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, NEWS, Research) said on Wednesday it would offer 27 playable games for its PlayStation 3 at the Tokyo Game Show next month, a sign of progress in critical software development ahead of the November launch of the latest version of its blockbuster game console.
Sony, which competes with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Nintendo Co. Ltd (7974.OS: Quote, NEWS, Research) in the global video game market, offered 13 playable PS3 software titles at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show in Los Angeles in May.
Having a wide range of popular software at the time of the launch is considered crucial for success in the game console market.
Any indication of how the upcoming console could fare is closely watched, as the success or failure of the game machine would exert a far-reaching impact on Sony's group-wide performance.
At stake is not just pole position in the nearly $30 billion global video game industry, but dominance in next-generation DVDs and the commercial viability of Sony's Cell microchips, co-developed by Toshiba Corp. (6502.T: Quote, NEWS, Research) and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research).
"It doesn't necessarily mean everything is running according to plan, but it's good to hear some positive development concerning the PlayStation 3," KBC Securities analyst Hiroshi Kamide said.
Playable games at the Tokyo Game Show, which will run from Sept. 22 to Sept. 24, will include such titles as Ridge Racer 7 from Namco Bandai Holdings Inc. (7832.T: Quote, NEWS, Research) and Capcom Co. Ltd.'s (9697.T: Quote, NEWS, Research) Devil May Cry 4.
There's no denying it, even though the PlayStation 3 may be the most late, most expensive, and most, um, well ventilated of this this generation's consoles, Sony's also going out of their way to make the device appear as versatile as possible. So hell, if your machine is going to burn energy when not in use, best to put that power suck toward a good cause, right? Stanford and Sony have announced that PlayStation 3s will be able to participate in Cure@PS3, making gamers' consoles massively parallelized computing nodes for the Folding@Home project.Right up top is a taste of the eye candy that awaits those who dedicate their Cell processor to stamping out cancer with the Stanford crew, but the veneer doesn't stop there: click on for a slew of sexy new PS3 pics that just surfaced.
One of the major disappointments at Tokyo Game Show 2005 was the lack of playable games for the PlayStation 3. In fact, there weren't any playable PlayStation 3 games on the show floor last year--only on-stage demos of such titles as Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
That won't be the case this year. Sony Computer Entertainment revealed that 27 PlayStation 3 titles will be playable at the Tokyo Game Show. This year's Electronic Entertainment Expo featured significantly fewer playable titles.
TGS, which will be open to the general public for part of its September 22 to 24 run, will let gamers sample a variety of next-generation titles, including high-profile E3 no-shows like Devil May Cry 4. A number of PlayStation Portable games, including several that support the system's upcoming global-positioning system add-on, will also be shown in playable form. Also, the Sony booth will feature a theater at which new video footage of an additional 35 titles will be shown. A preliminary list of titles to be shown follows below.
PlayStation 3 playable titles:
Armored Core 4 (From Software)
Blade Storm Hyakunen Sensou (Koei)
Coded Arms Assault (Konami)
Devil May Cry 4 (Capcom)
The Eye of Judgment (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Fatal Inertia (Koei)
Formula One World Championship (working title) (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Genji (working title) (Sony Computer Entertainment)
"Gran Turismo" Series (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Heavenly Sword (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Lair (working title) (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Mahjong Taikai IV (Koei)
Minna no Golf 5 (working title) (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Target in Sight (Namco Bandai Games)
MotorStorm (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Railfan (Ongakukan)
Resistance: Fall of Man (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Ridge Racer 7 (Namco Bandai Games)
Warhawk (Sony Computer Entertainment)
PSP playable titles:
Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception (Namco Bandai Games)
Boxers Road 2: The Real (Ertain)
Gundam Battle Royale (Namco Bandai Games)
Homestar Portable (supports GPS) (Sega)
Jan-Sangokumusou (Koei)
Jeanne D'Arc (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Metal Gear Solid: Bande Dessinee [released in the US as Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel] (Konami)
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (supports GPS) (Konami)
Minna no Golf-jou (supports GPS) (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Monster Hunter Portable 2nd (Capcom)
Navigation Software (working title, supports GPS) (Edia)
Ratchet and Clank Portable (working title) (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Sarugettchu Piposaru Racer (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Tales of the World Radiant Mythology (Namco Bandai Games)
Tenchi no Mon 2: Busouden (Sony Computer Entertainment)
Who needs an excuse to gawp when you've got brand new Metal Gear Solid 4 screens, eh? Solid Snake's personal war is quite literally you versus the world, with the planet's conflicts now waged by private military companies that make money from massacres. Hit the images tab for more shots of what is sure to be PlayStation 3's most impressive title.
So what's the story this time around? A life-long rival of Snake's is manipulating the mass of private armies to prepare a nuclear attack on the rest of the world - can our favourite chain-smoking, bandana-wearing hero beat the odds and save the world before his own DNA kills him? Of course he can, and to help you complete your final mission you'll have the benefit of new cloaking technology and Otacon's assistance as you go.
That's about all that's new, as Kojima and his team are busily working away in a secret bunker hidden from prying journalists as they aim to complete the Metal Gear saga for launch next year. But we'll have all the info as soon as it breaks, so don't go anywhere else.
This amazing new trailer for Rainbow Six Vegas gives you an unprecedented view of the casino-bothering terrorist takedown, showing an entire mission from beginning to end, complete with developer voiceover explaining how the game works. Hit the movies tab quick and get watching the next-gen footage - it'll convince you that Rainbow Six has finally returned to form.
After this teasing mix of window-bursting, bad guy-blasting, order-giving action, we can't wait to go fully hands on with Rainbow Six Vegas. Set to launch in the autumn for 360 and PS3, we'll be tracking down new info for team Rainbow's next-gen operation just as soon as we've snuck off to watch this brill trailer again. And maybe once more after that.
Trailer Here
Japanese brokerage Mitsubishi UJF Securities has lowered its rating on Sony, predicting a 50 per cent shortfall in the company's launch estimates for the PS3 which sent the share price down 3 per cent.
According to a report on Reuters, the analyst believes that component shortages - such as those which plagued Microsoft's Xbox 360 launch last year - will mean that Sony is unable to manufacture anything like the number of consoles planned in the short term.
"In the medium term this would mean that it would take longer for Sony to recover its huge investment in PS3 and thus we are downgrading the stock," stated Masahiko Ishino, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities analyst.
Shares in the company fell by 3.2 per cent on the announcement, investors wary of Sony's ability to deliver on its shipment forecast for the PlayStation 3.
The news comes just days after the platform holder clarified its November launch plans, forecasting 2 million units for the launch, with a further 2 million by the end of the calendar year.
Full scale production of the console - which is based on the advanced Cell Processor and Blu-ray DVD technology - has yet to begin, casting further doubt on the company's ability to deliver on its ambitious launch promises.
Valve Software has revealed it's now aiming for a Q1 2007 release for Half-Life 2: Episode Two, so sadly it will miss the originally expected late 2006 launch. Sniffle.
According to a report on EuroGamer, the developer's Doug Lombardi has said that February 2007 is most likely for Episode Two's debut. "You know, our thing is always that we're trying to make really good experiences and so we're going to manage to that rather than the schedule", Lombardi explained when speaking about the delay at the on-going Games Convention in Leipzig.
Half-Life 2: Episode Two will release with Team Fortress 2 and Valve's mind-bending puzzle venture Portal. PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Half-Life 2 - which include Episode One, Two and TF2 and Portal - are expected to materialise at the same time as Episode Two on PC.
Speaking of Portal, Lombardi hinted at the possibility of it being included in some shape or form in Half-Life 2: Episode Three.
"We'll be able to get a lot of feedback [on Portal] and say, okay, how are we going to use this in Episode Three or in future versions of Half-Life single-player or multiplayer? We'll be able to make more educated decisions about how to progress that sort of technology, which we think really can open the gameplay as much or perhaps more so than the gravity gun and the physics did", he revealed.
One of E3's surprise announcements was that Coded Arms - Konami's good idea, not-so-good execution PSP shooter set in a virtual world - would be continuing on PS3 in 2007. Sony's super-machine seemingly let Coded Arms Assault play to its concept's strengths, with whole Tokyo city blocks shimmering into existence among hails of sparkling pixels and gunfire.
We've just received the latest round of shots, showing that the game is still covering the screen in as many real explosions and virtual Matrix-style code effects as it can manage. Sadly, some of the more striking enemies shown in the E3 trailer, such as eerie stilt-walking attack robots and helicopter gunships dropping off assembly lines of troops, aren't present.
We hope it doesn't become too much of a corridor-and-box-room shooter - something the original on PSP was guilty of - but it seems Konami is keeping many of the game's secrets away from prying hackers' eyes. At least those showers of sparks and glittering special effects can enliven even the grimmest of warehouses, as players of PC gunfest FEAR will attest.
Industrious first-person shooter developer Free Radical is apparently going all-out on next-gen development - as well as its E3-announced next-gen shooter, Haze, it's just been revealed that it's also working on a game for Star Wars bods, LucasArts.
No details have yet been released, although we noticed that, compared to LucasArts' announcement earlier in the month that it would be publishing a "new intellectual property" from MechAssault developer Day 1 Studios, the Free Radical project isn't referred to as a new title.
Speculation ahoy, then - is it a fourth 'Splitters, by now having jumped publishers almost as many times as it has time periods? Or could it be a Star Wars title, with LucasArts seizing on Free Radical's experience with fast-paced blasting sessions to bring Jedi Knight back to life?
Microsoft is really pulling out the big guns, but it won't change sale predictions for the PS3 due to the hearts and minds that Sony had already won over," commented Don McCabe, MD of retail franchise Chips.
"PlayStation 3 should still easily sell-through on the back of anticipated demand, which remains substantial, andon the general strength and appeal of its brand," offered Lee Botham, games buyer for entertainment specialist HMV.
Other retailers also believe that the Sony name is enough to guarantee sales for its first year, regardless of content. "PS3 could sell all it's entire allocation - whatever that might be - three times over without a single killer game over the next twelve months," agreed Steve O'Brien of respected independent stores Action Replay and Gameshop.
Peter Sleeman, MD of leading distributor Pinnacle Software, also doubts it's a deal that will affect Sony in the long run. "Sony will come up with something to retaliate," he said. "No one format is dependent on one style or genre of game."
"The market for PS3 is going to be relatively immature for its first year, so EA will be able to release FIFA in 2008 into a more mature market with higher penetration".
"FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer are still going to be on PS2 this Christmas and that's where the money is going to be for publishers in December, not on PS3," added Sleeman.
This is a network question to users of all our sites, we all love emulation so this fits network wide, the question to you all is
Whats the Greatest Mario Game Ever?
With so many games featuring Mario its gonna be really hard to choose a clear cut game, will it be Mario 3 on Nes, Mario Kart on Snes, Mario64 on N64, Mario World on Snes.
So everyone whats the favourite Mario game amongst the DCEmu members
Reply Via Comments
Mario Kart on Snes gets my vote as fave Mario game ever, whats yours
We've hit the halls of the Leipzig Games Convention and here's what we pointed our camera at...
PS3 and Wii might be safely hidden from regular, unwashed show-goers, but there's still been plenty to see in the bustling halls of the Leipzig Games Convention.
In the short time that we weren't sprinting from apointment to apointment or nursing our shoulders battered from two days of carrying the world's beefiest laptop, we pointed our video camera at some of the big titles the show has to offer.
See on this page a selection of our greatest shaky-cam footage, showing off Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Medieval II: Total War, NFS: Carbon and Mario Strikers Charged. Enjoy.
Official Sony distributor CentreSoft is to hold training days for UK retail in early September to present the features and capabilities of PlayStation 3 ahead of launch, GamesIndustry.biz has learned.
Two events are planned, the first booked for September 5th at the Odeon West End in London's Leicester Square, with the second on September 6th at the Odeon Birmingham.
UK retailers confirmed to GI.biz that invitations were received in the post earlier this week, which described the events as an opportunity for the sector to familiarise itself with the many facets of the next-generation system before its proposed European launch date of November 17th.
Sources added that CentreSoft made it clear that no official pre-order or marketing information would be released in the sessions.
CentreSoft recently held a meeting specifically for independents to gauge views on a number of hypothetical launch scenarios as the trade awaits formal word from SCE UK on its PS3 roll-out strategy. CentreSoft was unavailable for comment at the time of writing
GI.biz revealed last week that SCE UK does not intend to finalise launch plans in the UK until September at the earliest. Among the initiatives known to be on the table is a controversial GBP150 pre-order scheme, thought to be an attempt to combat rogue eBay trading in the event of expected hardware shortages.
The developer of Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway has revealed that it is currently experimenting with ways to utilise the tilt function of the PS3 controller.
After demoing the impressive third game in the Brothers in Arms series, we asked Gearbox Software's president, Randy Pitchford, whether the game would make use of PS3's tilting powers.
"There's a recon team that has a jeep and we're thinking about steering the jeep or playing with that... There's a couple of other things, with aiming mortars and stuff."
However, Pitchford was quick to point out that he "didn't want to make any specific promises about what goes into the final game because we're just now experimenting with this technology."
We also asked Pitchford whether creating one game with rumble (Xbox 360) and one without (PS3) was causing trouble in terms of development. "We're not having trouble, but we're missing it - we like feedback." Don't we all, Randy, don't we all.
Unreal Tournament 2007 developer Epic Games wants to find out more about Sony's online system for PS3, and already has some ideas for Unreal's online ranking system on the next-gen system, according to producer Jeff Morris.
"We're really interested in learning more about Sony's network infrastructure for PS3 because on PlayStation 2 it was like the Wild West - you just plugged in and you were on the internet." Morris, who we spoke to at the Leipzig Game Convention, was happy to reveal some of the plans Epic has regarding Unreal Tournament 2007's online player stats.
After expressing his dismay of achieving a miserable ranking in Battlefield Modern Combat on Xbox Live (he thought he was "doing great"), Morris told us: "Stats should try to motivate you to make you play more. What we're going to do is have server-based stats where you're ranking on a server that you frequently play on and is reflected in, like, a one through 50 score, so you feel that you can actually get measurable position changes in it."
However, until Sony tells Epic - and presumably other developers - exactly how its Xbox Live rival is going to work, Morris and the Unreal development team can't begin implementing its ideas: "If Sony ends up having a very closed system, it may be more difficult to do that."
While on the subject of Sony's next-gen machine, Morris also informed us that Epic was currently playtesting UT 2007 at least once a week on PlayStation 3 and that, while it wasn't currently making use of the controller's tilt abilities, he did think that "it may compliment some of the vehicles - it might make sense for the air vehicles..."
We'll have more from our enjoyable encounter with Epic's Jeff Morris for you soon, including an extensive look at some of UT 2007's utterly fantastic vehicles.
An update to our earlier post, it turns out the 32-bit version of Windows Vista can play next-gen protected high definition content. Microsoft reps said Senior Program Manager Steve Riley was mistaken when he told a group of Australian developers that Vista couldn't handle the high definition movies.
But the Microsoft representatives said the support will come from third party HD DVD/Blu-ray movie playback software developers like CyberLink who already make DVD playback software. It's up to these developers to determine whether the environment they have set up will meet the environment criteria the "content owners" impose on manufacturers. So that probably no next-gen playback for Vista out of the box.
To date, Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, has made some of the juicier comments on the emerging PlayStation 3 to come from the financial sector, claiming that in real-terms, the PlayStation 3 shares much of its commercial DNA with the Xbox 360.
"PS3 will sell out at $499. It may sound like a lot of money but is certainly not significantly more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the PS1 at $300 in 1995. The "cheap" PS3 and the "expensive" 360 are identical in all respects, save for the Blu-ray drive. Both have similar processors, 20GB hard drives, and DVI cable interfaces that will support 720p high definition," Pacter told Gamespot.
Indeed, Pacter believes the only difference lies in the pricing options for the consoles' high-definition movie platforms. "The difference in price is $100, so if you like Sony more and want a relatively inexpensive option to buy into high-definition movies, the cost is probably justified. In other words, consumers will compare the $499 PS3 to the $399 Xbox 360 and will likely decide based upon the potential selection of software (Japanese, US, and European for Sony, US and European for Microsoft), plus their assessment of the likely winner in the format war. If Blu-ray is the standard, the price differential will hold."
Nintendo has tightened its grip on the Japanese video game sales charts even further this week, with seven of the top ten titles being on the Nintendo DS and an eighth on the Game Boy Advance – all but one published by Nintendo themselves.
Some of the titles crowding the top spots include new cooking simulator Shaberu! DS Oryouri Navi, the latest version of Tamagotchi Connection, and the ever-present Animal Crossing: Wild World. In fact, nineteen of the top thirty placed titles are also Nintendo DS games.
Overall though, sales have slipped slightly again this week, with a paucity of new releases in advance of the release of Final Fantasy III next week. The only new title in the top ten is the latest in Daito Giken’s long running series of Pachi-Slot simulators, which follows the success of Sega’s Fist of the North Star license in previous weeks.
Of greatest interest this week are the hardware figures, which have seen sales for the Nintendo DS slip by over 122,000 to just 75,207 units. Although stock of the console did appear to be improving last week, DS shortages have again become severe, leading to the drop.
Sales for other formats remained static, with the PSP at 41,535 units and the PlayStation 2 on 26,833. The Game Boy Advance family of consoles sold 6,109 units, the Xbox 360 a still flaccid 1,493, and the GameCube 922.
Namco Bandai is tweaking its PlayStation 3 Gundam-themed game, but gamers shouldn't worry--there will still be plenty of lumbering robots turning each other into scrap metal.
The game formerly known as Mobile Suit Gundam (working title) and Mobile Suit Gundam: Target in Sight will now be known as Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire. Crossfire is due on the PS3 "later this year."
The name may show Namco's recommitment to the Gundam brand. Unlike recent games based on the popular anime and toy franchise, Crossfire will carry the Gundam name--the upcoming Xbox 360 title Mobile Ops: The One Year War and recent PlayStation 2 game MS Saga: A New Dawn do not.
The new name will reflect the "between a rock and a hard place" position players will be thrust into, as they start the game in the middle of a war between the Earth Federation and the Zeon forces. Gamers will have the option of taking either side to help decide the future of Earth.
A federal judge in Louisiana has issued a preliminary injunction blocking a statewide ban on violent video games. The judge's holding that 'depictions of violence are entitled to full constitutional protection' flies in the face of Louisiana's assertion that video games interactive nature make them inherently more likely to incite people to violence, and therefore requires reduced First Amendment protection. In rejecting the state's argument, the judge compared video games to literature. 'It is the interactive aspect of literature that makes it successful — 'draw[ing] the reader into the story, mak[ing] him identify with the characters, invit[ing] him to judge them and quarrel with them, to experience their joys and sufferings as the reader's own.
Polyphony Digital head Kazunori Yamauchi spoke about the next Gran Turismo title in the latest issue of Weekly Famitsu. There were two points of interest in the article. First, the parenthetical "working title" has been dropped from the name, implying that Gran Turismo HD is indeed the final title. Second, while Yamauchi lavished praise on the game's high-definition graphics, he stated that the game was not the true next-gen heir to the popular racing series' crown.
In the article, Yamauchi called Gran Turismo HD a "port" of the data from Gran Turismo 4, upgraded to take advantage of the PlayStation 3's graphical capabilities. He also said it is "a step in the process of developing a next-generation GT game."
Yamauchi also implied that development on that next-gen game is already under way, albeit at an early stage. "We are working on a version of GT that supports the full PS3 specification," Yamauchi said, adding, "but in this transitional version, I think you'll get a taste of the potential that next generation games hold."
Yamauchi said the idea for the game actually came from an unlikely source, the Photo Mode in GT4, which allowed players to take high-resolution stills. "I thought it would be incredible to see these stills animated in real time," he said. Running at 60 frames per second in 1920x1080p resolution, Gran Turismo HD supports the very highest resolutions available to Japan's newest HD televisions, according to Famitsu.
An interesting article has appeared on BBC News. Apparently, the PS3 is so powerful, it will be used for medical studies!
The spare processing power of Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) will be harnessed by scientists trying to understand the cause of diseases like Alzheimer's.
Sony has teamed up with US biologists who already run the distributed computing project, folding@home (FAH).
The project harnesses the capacity of thousands of PCs to examine how the shape of proteins, critical to most biological functions, affect disease.
FAH say a network of PS3's will allow performance similar to supercomputers.
With 10,000 machines joined together the researchers calculate they should be able to do a thousand trillion calculations per second.
If that was achieved it would be nearly four times as fast as the world's most powerful supercomputer, IBM's BlueGene/L System, capable of 280.6 trillion calculations per second.
The PS3 cell specs are as follows:
256 billion calculations per second
2.5MB of on-chip memory
Able to shuttle data to and from off-chip memory at speeds up to 100 gigabytes per second,
Hey all was away from 9am yesterday till now at 2pm, so thats why we maybe a little behind on news, have no threat though within a few hours we will be fully back on top
I need something to take away a near 10 hour drinking session
GamersReports.com has posted an alleged internal GameStop memo, which documents 36 PlayStation 3 titles scheduled for release between launch (November 17) and May 1*, all listed at $59.99. While hardly official, these details will likely alleviate some of our fears that PS3 games will retail for more than $60.
According to the GameStop memo, the PlayStation launch lineup could include these 19 titles (exclusives in bold):
Bladestorm: Hundred Years War
Call of Duty 3
Fatal Inertia
Full Auto 2
Genji 2
Lair
Madden NFL 2007
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
MotorStorm
NBA Live 2007
NBA 07
Need for Speed: Carbon
Rainbow Six: Vegas
Resistance: Fall of Man
Sonic the Hedgehog
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007
Tony Hawk's Project 8
Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom
Warhawk
*The memo suggests that some games could be released before the PS3 console.
The good and knowledgeable SuicideNinja upped a very clever post and has given us the opportunity to write about it. Basically, the boomerang concept controller may have been a smarter angle to go for the PS3 than everyone gave it credit for. At the time of its unveiling, we weren't aware of the motion-sensor going into it and thought the rumble feature would still be intact. Things change with time. Now, waving the boomerang controller around would definitely make a more comfortable tilt-motion feature than the Dual Shock 2 design. As SuicideNinja says, for steering cars in the appropriate games, it would be a pretty good fit.
Sadly, this revelation can't save the dropped design now. Or can it? Petitioning for it to be released as a separate accessory may be within the realm of possibility. Aside from racing or driving games, would the boomerang design be worthwhile? The "steering wheel" likeness doesn't really make a big splash against any other type of game. It's most appropriate for racing games and quite possibly flight sims. Still, that was a fantastic epiphany on SuicideNinja's part and now, what do you all think? Did we bury the boomerang prematurely or did we save ourselves from a junky controller?
Seems the PR for Microsoft misstepped in their elucidation of the 12-month exclusivity deal struck with EA Sports and Konami for FIFA and Pro-Evolution Soccer, respectively. PES (also known as Winning Eleven) producer Shingo Takatsuka called Microsoft out, saying their "presentation was misleading... We never said exclusive for one year on the next-gen platforms. We said this year. We were agreed that it was this year." We all know repeating your point means you're either firm in your resolve or very angry about an agreement being misconstrued.
Microsoft's wicked claims have caused trouble for Konami and even Sony (confusion about the announcement, most likely). Takatsuka clarified that the 360 version of Winning Eleven is exclusive until the end of 2006 (a PS3 version is in the works for an estimated spring of 2007 release). FIFA may be in the same boat, although EA hasn't released any official announcements. Well Microsoft, you caused quite a ruckus, but your attempts to confuse and mislead consumers and developers were in vain! Although it was most certainly not intentional, it's still a pretty lame move. A tip of the hat, you do not get.
The Sony PS3's GPU, previously running at 550MHz Core/700MHz memory, has been downgraded to 500MHz Core/650MHz memory. We don't mean to crap on Sony's cake all the time, but when their most powerful machine EVAR keeps losing its power, people start to notice.
In any case, if decreasing the specs will help get more units out by Christmas and avoid yet another Xbox 360-like shortage story, we're all for it.
German publication Hartwire claims that Sony has only confirmed black PS3s at launch this fall, at least in Europe. This comes from last week's German Games Convention. The site also states that both white and silver editions will be available in the future, though Sony didn't specify when or if the same will be true for the console's November 17 US launch. It should be noted, however, that only black models are currently displayed at PS3's official North American site.
Virtua Fighter 5 looks set to be one of the PS3's premier beat'em-ups, with the perennially popular arcade fighter making a smooth and pretty lethal looking transition onto Sony's next-gen console.
Promising to unleash up to 17 fighters in a fists of fury extravaganza, VF 5 will allow you to customise your chosen bruiser to the ultimate degree with costumes and attachable items giving you an individual flavour you've never seen before in the series - plus two newcomers in El Blaze and Eileen also making their debut.
However, what concerns us today is a brand new movie from the game, with the first half of this slick if slighty camp showing reminiscent of Wrestlemania shenanigans of yore. The second half sees a very fetching Japanese lass (which we suspect might be Eileen) practising some solo moves (steady).
Throughout you'll be able to admire the amazing character models and slick animation which are very much the order of the day, but of course the proof will be in the brawling and VF5 looks like it'll be serving that up aplenty.
Fans of big stompy robots rejoice - Namco Bandai has confirmed that its new Mobile Suit Gundam game on the PlayStation 3 will be appearing before Christmas in the United States and Japan.
Using the increasingly vague "launch period" definition, that probably means that the game can probably claim to be a PS3 launch title - and it's even got an official subtitle now. Originally shown off at E3 under the simple working title of Mobile Suit Gundam, it's now called Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire.
Based on the incredibly long-running Gundam franchise - which sits firmly at the more "realistic" and military-focused end of the often utterly insane Japanese giant robot spectrum - the game harks back to the original Gundam continuity, and allows the player to choose between campaigns for the Federation and Zeon sides, piloting famous mobile suits from the various different Gundam series along the way.
Aside from that, details are thin on the ground - notably, there's no mention of any kind of online functionality or multiplayer - and the E3 demo didn't really tell us much either. We walked around a barren desert landscape for a bit in a Federation Gundam and shot a lot of enemy mobile suits in the face, but the most we can say based on that is that you can shoot off individual limbs from enemy mechs, and that all the metal is very shiny.
And, of course, there's no word on whether we'll see the game in Europe on the same timescale, or indeed at all - but previous console launches have shown that Sony likes publishers to roll as much of their portfolio as possible out in every territory around launch, to bolster the range of titles available, so there's every chance that we could see this in the PS3 launch period on this side of the world too.
Electronic Arts, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Bizarre Creations are just some of the companies confirmed for Nottingham’s GameCity event, GamesIndustry.biz can exclusively reveal.
With the dust barely settled on both the Leipzig Games Convention and the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, Europe will once again be the focus of the games industry when the GameCity event takes place from October 25th - 31st.
Individuals already confirmed for the show include Lorne Lanning, president of Oddworld Inhabitants; Jonathan Smith, development director at TT Games; Jamie Fristrom, technical director of Torpex Games; and musician Richard Jacques and Jim Purbrick of Linden Labs, the studio behind Second Life.
The healthy list of developers confirmed for GameCity includes Blitz, Bizarre Creations, Freestyle Games, Monumental Games, Rare, Introversion and Climax, with more to follow.
Publishers already committed to the festival include THQ, Electronic Arts, SCEE and Take 2, with more names to be announced in the coming weeks.
GameCity’s organisers describe the event as "a street-level cultural celebration of videogames and interactive entertainment, and an opportunity for the games industry an public to meet and explore economic, social and educational opportunities within interactive entertainment".
More details are set to be revealed shortly, including finalised dates and times for conference sessions, workshops, screenings and the premier of a new film, plus news of what the organisers describe as a "big name" who will open the festival.
Great news for me, i can actually walk into the City Centre and bring reports from this event
Print ads? Campaigns don't begin until I see stuff on television. Until then, they are all talk! Regardless, Sony's staring to warm the oven for its PLAYSTATION 3 juggernaut with a PS3 page, announcing titles appearing at this year's Tokyo Game Show. Japanese game mags are featuring PS3 ads as well. Expect things to obviously kick into high gear starting in September. The PLAYSTATION 3 launch is just around the corner, folks.
Apparently someone over at The Inquirer got word that Nvidia & Sony have downgraded the PS3's GPU from 550MHz to 500MHz. Whether this is true or not, I guess will yet to be seen. Expect Sony to comment on this rumor quickly as it will most surely spread like wildfire through the internet.
C'mon? Could they really have downgraded the specs again this late in the game? On their way for 2 million units shipped by the year end? Launch 2 months away and yet to produce a single working unit, let alone cement the specs of the machine? This is just bad news. If you remember when PS2 launched, alot of systems had to be returned as defective units.. this could only spell more disaster..
Most new technologies have some teething problems as the early kinks are worked out, but it seems like the Blu-ray camp is experiencing more than its fair share of growing pains -- first the delays, then news that the supposed format-savior PS3 might price itself right out of the market, and finally the revelation that first-gen BD-P1000's were shipping with a picture-degrading chip. Well now it appears that there's even more bad news for Sony's pride and joy, as The Digital Bits' Bill Hunt is confirming what many people already suspected after reading their P1000 manuals: the $1,000 player, as currently configured, will be unable to support movies on upcoming 50GB discs. Hunt cites multiple anonymous industry sources in reporting that Samsung is still having problems getting 50GB discs to work on its machines -- production titles weren't even available to test before the players launched -- and that both Sony and Pioneer are experiencing the same issues with their upcoming products. Luckily for current P1000 owners, it seems that this incompatibility is of the type that will eventually be solved by a firmware upgrade, but until that time, movie studios have been forced to delay longer titles like Lawrence of Arabia and Black Hawk Down -- no doubt frustrating some consumers. With so much on the line here, it's clear that this issue will be resolved sooner or later; however, with the HD DVD camp already offering cheaper (and more) hardware, a larger media selection, and garnering better initial reviews than Blu-ray, it's not clear how much time is left before the so-called format war begins leaning decidedly in HD DVD's favor.
Following a statement from Konami and comments by Pro Evo creator Shingo 'Seabass' Takatsuka, confusion has arisen over Microsoft's claim that PES 6 will be exclusive to the Xbox 360.
Microsoft made the announcement at last week's Leipzig Games Convention, declaring that both FIFA 2007 and Pro Evolution 6 would be Xbox 360 exclusives for at least 12 months.
But according to a statement on Konami's website: "It has been falsely reported on some websites that Konami will release its Pro Evolution Soccer 6 exclusively for Microsoft's Xbox 360. These reports are not true.
"Konami is currently proceeding with the production of a multi-platform release of Pro Evolution Soccer 6 so that as many people as possible can enjoy the game."
It's possible that the statement is referring to current-gen versions of PES 6 - it's long been confirmed that the game will also appear on PC, PS2, PSP and Nintendo DS.
However, speaking to 1up, series creator Takatsuka said that a PS3 version is already in development. He went on to reveal that the game could be released as early as spring - adding that the only certainty is that it will not go on sale before January 1st, 2007.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is sticking to its original line, with a spokesperson telling our sister site, GamesIndustry.biz: "I can confirm that PES 6 and FIFA 07 are indeed next-gen exclusive to Xbox 360 in Europe for the next 12 months, as announced."
This could be seen to suggest that PES 6 will appear on PS3s outside of Europe within the next year, which would make sense - the series is hugely popular in Japan, unlike the poor old Xbox 360. Microsoft has yet to respond to requests for clarification, while Konami is expected to issue an official statement shortly.
The 1up article went on to suggest that Microsoft's deal with Electronic Arts to make FIFA an exclusive may also be in doubt - but an EA spokesperson told GI.biz"FIFA '07 is exclusive to the X360 for the next 12 months," adding, "This would be a global agreement."
The top 10 bestselling games from last week looked eerily like a football score: Madden 7, others 3. The 07 edition of Electronic Arts' annual football game nabbed the top seven slots in its first week in release. The platforms represented were, from first to seventh, the PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, Xbox, PS2 (Hall of Fame Edition), Xbox 360 (Hall of Fame Edition), PSP, and GameCube. The only console versions of Madden NFL 07 not to make the top 10 were the DS and Game Boy Advance versions.
When gamers weren't tackling runningbacks last week, they were killing zombies. Capcom's Dead Rising landed in eighth place, down three spots from the previous week. But even hordes of undead and 350-pound linemen couldn't stop the DS duo of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day and New Super Mario Bros. The two titles remained on the top 10 list in ninth and tenth, respectively.
1 Madden NFL 07
Platform: PS2
2 Madden NFL 07
Platform: X360
3 Madden NFL 07
Platform: XBOX
4 Madden NFL 07: Hall of Fame Edition
Platform: PS2
5 Madden NFL 07: Hall of Fame Edition
Platform: X360
6 Madden NFL 07
Platform: PSP
7 Madden NFL 07
Platform: GC
8 Dead Rising
Platform: X360
9 Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day
Platform: DS
10 New Super Mario Bros.
Platform: DS
This holiday season, few consumer electronics categories are being watched more closely than that of video game consoles.
Both Sony and Nintendo plan to release their next- generation consoles, the PlayStation 3 and Wii, respectively. Yet, with prices as high as $600, the PS3 is clearly aiming for the high end, while the Wii is targeting more casual gamers with prices expected to be well below $300.
Meanwhile, both companies must contend with Microsoft and its Xbox 360, which has a yearlong head start and therefore a commanding lead in the next-generation race. Still, Sony has always maintained that its console cycles are 10 years, rather than the five considered the industry standard. That's why, even as the market readies for the PS3 launch, the PlayStation 2 is still selling like gangbusters. And it should continue to do so for some time, as Sony has committed to the PS2 for at least another four years.
In a few weeks, much of the video game industry will descend upon Tokyo for the annual Tokyo Game Show. But for the time being, the focus is on Germany, where the Leipzig Game Convention is being held. So, for companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, and publishers like Electronic Arts and Activision, there is no break in sight. Sony Computer Entertainment of America president Kaz Hirai talked with CNET News.com about the forthcoming PS3 launch (parts of this article refer to comments Hirai made earlier this month in an interview with GameSpot).
CNET: Can you provide an update on the PlayStation 3?
Hirai: The PlayStation 3 will launch in the North American market on November 17. Things are pretty much moving according to plan.
CNET: How does a scaled-down Electronic Entertainment Expo affect a company like yours? Was it a good thing to institute some changes in the format, or were you happy with the way it had been?
Hirai: E3 has about a 10-year, 11-year history, if I'm not mistaken. I think it's grown to a point where it became just such a massive show that we needed to take a look at what we were trying to accomplish with the show. We needed to see how effectively we can accomplish those goals. I think it was pretty much across the board in agreement that we should revise or relook at how E3 is structured.
CNET: Beyond the pricing and availability of the PlayStation 3, one of the big pieces of news from this year's E3 was more information about Nintendo's new console, the Wii. There were rumors that the Wii would be priced for less than $250. How did that affect the PlayStation 3?
Hirai: The pricing that we announced for the PlayStation 3 is a price that ultimately offers fantastic value to the consumers. I think that we are offering a very good value for the consumers. We look at our products having a 10-year life cycle, which we've proven with the PlayStation. Therefore, the PlayStation 3 is going to be a console that's going to be with you again for 10 years. We're not going to ask the consumers to suddenly buy another PlayStation console in five years' time and basically have their investment go by the wayside. So for all those reasons, I think at $599 we're offering a very good value to the consumers.
CNET: Are you saying that there won't be a PlayStation 4 within five years?
Hirai: Well, I think that if you look at the history of the way we've managed our console business, we always try to hit a 10-year life cycle. I can't speculate on when we might come out with a new console after PlayStation 3. But my message is that once you become a family in the PlayStation family of products, you become a family member. We make sure that we take care of you.
CNET: Going back to the question of the Nintendo console, it seems like its pricing is significantly lower than what the PlayStation 3, or the Xbox 360, will cost. Any concern that Nintendo's Wii pricing will undercut the market as people decide which console they want to buy?
Hirai: Some consumers will compare features or software offerings and decide that they may want to go with a different console. You also have to realize that we have a very strong, market-leading console called the PlayStation 2, which is at a very affordable price right now. Consumers will also understand that if you buy a PlayStation 2 right now, and you make some software investments, when you feel it's right to move onto PlayStation 3, those software titles aren't going to go by the wayside. Consumers will take that into consideration. I don't think price is the only determining factor when consumers make a choice in looking at their console purchase decisions.
CNET: Is there a danger that some consumers will buy PlayStation 3 just for the Blu-ray player and not the games?
Hirai: Consumers are going to look at the totality of what we offer in the PlayStation 3. Even if there was a consumer who decided to buy the PlayStation 3 perhaps as a Blu-ray player, I think that they will quickly realize the potential and the entertainment value of the fantastic content in true [high definition]. Any consumer would be hard pressed really not to try that functionality out.
CNET: Given the differences in pricing, which is fairly significant between Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, are there any chances of a PlayStation 3 down the line that doesn't have Blu-ray built in?
Hirai: The PlayStation 3 uses the Blu-ray as its storage medium for both games and for movies as well. We wanted to take advantage of the storage capacity that Blu-ray offers in terms of motion pictures and other content, but most importantly, for games as well. Our decision to include the Blu-ray player from day one in all of our PlayStation 3s was the right decision and, quite honestly, the only decision we can make.
CNET: Look at the massive amounts of data that's required to provide a truly immersive gaming experience in true HD. If you only have a DVD ROM drive, which can only go up to about 9GB or so, you're going to end up with a game that's going to have two or possibly even three discs. And then you're going to have to ask consumers to swap discs out or cache all the game onto the hard drive, which I think is an inconvenience--not to mention the fact that you're going to fill up a 20GB hard drive very quickly with some of these games. So trying to go without a Blu-ray drive in the PlayStation 3 really is a nonstarter.
CNET: There's been talk recently about production of the PlayStation 3--why hasn't production begun already?
Hirai: We haven't officially announced production on the PlayStation 3 just yet. But we are on track to deliver 2 million units for the launch period on a worldwide basis that we announced at E3. We are going to make sure that those units get out into the market.
CNET: It looks like there could be some shortages, particularly for the holiday season, even with the 2 million by the launch date and 4 million by the end of the year. So what do you say to consumers who are not going to be able to get ahold of one if they do want one?
Hirai: We are going to make every effort possible to make sure that we get as many units out into the market in the major territories as well as some of the smaller territories that we're launching in.
CNET: Have there been any sort of business lessons about filling customer demands and production issues from the things that Microsoft has dealt with regarding the Xbox 360?
Hirai: We don't really look at what our competition did or didn't do. We've had shortages in the past, and there is no guarantee that we will never have a shortage again in the future. But I think that we've learned many lessons over the years that allow us to look at production schedules, look at parts procurement, look at ways of shortening the lead time from the point of manufacture to ultimately getting the product into the retailers' shelves and into the hands of consumers. We're doing everything we can to make sure that we have the most efficient way of getting the product into the market.
CNET: By the time the holiday season moves around, Microsoft will have a yearlong head start. Not only does it have the head start in the console race, but it also has a year's advantage on coming out with new accessories really bolstering its online offerings. What is Sony's take? How can Sony keep up with that?
Hirai: If you look back in history, I think everybody realizes that we've never been first to bring a console to the market. PlayStation was not first and PlayStation 2 was not first to market. As a matter of fact, PlayStation Portable was not first to market in the portable space and PlayStation 3, as you mentioned, is not the first to market either.
It comes down to several things. One is the kind of software experience that the consumers will expect out of a next-generation console. I think we're going to be delivering that, both in terms of the lineup of PlayStation 3s as well as the fact that we're offering true HD gaming. We're also launching a console that doesn't require upgrades as you go along. Right out of the box it will play Blu-ray movies in true HD as well as old games. As far as accessories go, that's really a function of what kind of accessories you need to play or enjoy a particular game.
CNET: How many titles will you have by launch and how many by year's end?
Hirai: That's hard to try to pin down at this point. Everybody is looking at their entire portfolio of software offerings, and I think that the lineup of titles really is something that won't be locked down most likely until three to four weeks before launch.
The next Japanese PS3 game you'll likely be hearing about is Ridge Racer 7. The first PS3 entry in Namco Bandai's hit arcade racing series will be seeing an information rush later this week, according to the game's official Japanese website.
Ridge Racer 7 was officially announced in the build up to E3, but all Namco Bandai managed to bring to the show was a trailer showing conceptual footage. The timing of this announcement suggests that we may get some hands-on time at the Tokyo Game Show, which kicks off on September 22.
Check back later this week for more details on what's expected to be one of the PS3's biggest first generation titles.
It’s probably a fair comment to say that World Of Warcraft is a fairly big game. In fact, it’s huge. It’s probably also fair to say that it has a large following. Again, it’s huge. And it would probably be a fair comment to say that a next gen console version of World Of Warcraft would be appearing. Probably. Well, in a recent interview with Eurogamer, Paul Sams, Chief Operating Officer at Blizzard didn’t dismiss the idea.
When questioned about whether or not a console WoW would ever appear, Sams said:
"We've met with Microsoft, we've met with Sony, and we are exploring these things, but the list of challenges is long. One really big challenge is that one of the key features of a massively multiplayer game, especially WOW, is consistent and regular content updates. They require hard drive space, and there's a finite amount of that on each of those platforms."
Seeing as though all next-gen systems will include (and already include in the case of the 360), this is one less barrier that was previously a major factor knocked down. And with all three systems set to include some kind of Marketplace too, a la Xbox 360, regular updates and consistent ones would also be a reality.
So will we see WoW any time soon on consoles?
"It isn't as simple as flipping a switch... It would require a couple of years of development, realistically, to make it playable on those platforms." Sams commented.
The world of online gaming in the US is set to be worth a staggering 4.4 billion by 2010
Analysts: we sometimes treat their prognostications with not so much a pinch, but more like a truckload of salt. Still, it's always fascinating to take a peer through their crystal balls to see what the future of gaming might hold. Especially when we broadly agree with what they're saying.
So it's an interesting and welcome report comes our way this morning form US research and analysis firm Parks Associates, which predicts that the North American online game market will quadruple by the year 2010 - reaching $4.4 billion, up from the $1.1 billion it was worth last year in 2005.
Holy expanding online Batman, but it's scarcely a surprise when you consider the success of titles like World of Warcraft which have opened up a whole new audience to the joys of playing together on the interweb. Add in the growth of handheld online capabilities in the DS and the PSP, Microsoft's thrust with Live Anywhere, the added attractions of the PS3's PlayStation Network Platform and the massive surge in the uptake of broadband, and you've got a whole bunch reasons to start gaming online.
That's not even mentioning the financial incentives for games companies (but we will), with monthly subscriptions in the MMO market and in-game advertising ready sources of revenue which mean they have a vested interest in making online succeed. It's a rare combination which is good for the game companies as well as the players.
Although the major markets vary a touch according to local conditions, we can probably expect similar levels of growth in Europe and, as we already know, Asian gamers in markets like Korea and China are gong online crazy, so we can probably expect even more rapid growth in them there parts.
More interesting stats thrown up by the report? Well it seems PC players are still leading the way ahead of their console cousins. Parks' report found that PC gamers spend around 18.5 hours a week playing games, console users around 13.6 hours and handheld owners a mere 8.9 hours, but over 70 percent of PC gamers play online multiplayer games.
So gaming's future's bright and it certainly seems the whole world will be enjoying it online.
DigiTimes is reporting that a serious shortage of blue laser diodes is forcing many manufacturers to cut back on production of next-generation drives, which means the expected pre-Holiday flood of HD-DVD and Blu-ray players may not materialize as expected. They're also claiming that Sony, which is one of a handful of companies making the diodes right now, just suspended shipments to other companies so they'll have enough Blu-ray drives for the PlayStation 3. It's not entirely clear how this is going to affect the balance of power in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray deathmatch -- each format relies on 405 nm blue-violet laser diodes, so each may be equally affected -- but it looks like the battle royale between the two may have to be postponed until next year.
The Chart Track all-formats chart is suffering from the traditional summer lull this week, as only one new entry breaks the top ten - while there’s no change for the top six titles.
THQ’s movie tie-in, Cars, has suffered a 15 per cent drop in sales, but it’s still comfortable in the top spot ahead of Grand Theft Auto:
Liberty City Stories, New Super Mario Bros, The Sims 2 and Pro Evolution Soccer 5.
Heavy television advertising helps Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training hold onto the number six spot, while crawling up two places to number seven is Animal Crossing: Wild World.
Xbox 360 exclusive Ninety-Nine Nights is the only new entry at number eight, followed by two chart stalwarts – Star Wars: Battlefront II and Need for Speed: Most Wanted at nine and ten respectively.
Elsewhere in the charts, despite Eidos having had to recall the Xbox version of the game, Reservoir Dogs takes the number 14 position hostage as the only other new entry in the top forty.
This Friday sees the release of a number of high profile titles that look set to shake the charts up. THQ’s Saint’s Row for Xbox 360 is sure to break the top ten, while SCEE’s The Getaway spin-off, Gangs of London, and EA’s brawler Def Jam Fight for NY: The Take Over will be jostling for position as the highest chart entry on the PSP.
Today Sony gave out more details regarding its strategy and content lineup for Blu-ray, one of the next-generation optical formats fighting to succeed the DVD. Famitsu says there will be about 75 titles from 12 companies available on Blu-ray by November 8 in Japan, including films by 20th Century Fox Japan and Buena Vista. Also, Blu-ray videos will be priced in the vicinity of JPY 5,000 (about $42.80)--on par with special edition DVDs in Japan.
Although no games were shown, a PlayStation 3 was used to show off Blu-ray discs containing film and music clips, alongside Blu-ray players manufactured by Matsushita, Pioneer, and others. One perk of the format, BD JAVA, enables the browsing of information such as actor data and profiles during playback and was also demonstrated. Another feature, called BD Live, lets the viewer participate in interactive events over the Internet.
Blu-ray trends will bear watching, considering that in Japan during the early days of the PlayStation 2, the console's ability to play DVDs helped to drive sales of both the system and DVD movies. Sony is relying heavily on Blu-ray to be a success, as the company's decision to include PlayStation 3s with Blu-ray drives as standard has driven the console's cost up. The Blu-ray technology is currently competing with the Toshiba-backed HD-DVD format to be the next-generation format standard. Microsoft has announced that it is working on an external HD-DVD attachment for the Xbox 360.
Catalogue superstore Freemans has begun listing PS3 bundles for the console's rapidly-nearing 17 November launch - clocking in at a heftier price than Sony UK's previous estimate of around £425.
Freemans' bundles start at £549 for a PS3 console and Sonic the Hedgehog, then jump up to £609 for a console with Sony-published title MotorStorm - a leap of £60 over Sonic. We contacted the store to ask after the first-party title clocking in at twice the price of Sonic, and were told it was due to MotorStorm being a brand-new PS3 exclusive title, as opposed to the multiplatform Sega game. And yet all Freemans' stand-alone PS3 titles - including MotorStorm - are listed at £60.
Freemans' final bundle clocks in at £669 for a PS3 with both Resistance: Fall of Man (which we assume is again responsible for the £120 title cost) and the multiplatform Rainbow Six Vegas.
On a more positive note, Freemans' policy is to offer a 10% discount on first orders, which would clip around £50 off a PS3 order - but until the confusion over first-party pricing is cleared up, we'd recommend buying the titles separately.
Today, Sony Japan launched its official PLAYSTATION 3 website. There's a rundown of hardware and software. Sony's also got a PLAYSTATION 3 Concept Site. The website features pics of the PS3 (two so far) and interviews (one so far). First up, Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi talks the game's upcoming network connection, high def and what the PLAYSTATION 3 means to him. These should keep diehards happy with a steady trickle of next-gen PR.
Former PlayStation exec Shuji Utsumi tells Wired that Kutaragi, years before the Xbox was introduced, believed his competitor was Microsoft. "I thought, what is he talking about?" Utsumi says. "Is he nuts? But even before PlayStation was born, he was predicting a big war for the living room." But how different are the next-gen Microsoft and Sony platforms? Epic's Tim Sweeney says double the effort is needed to max out the PLAYSTATION 3. Until then, there's no discernible differences between the two machines. He adds:
The Cell has more theoretical computing power, but it might be years before we see that reflected in actual performance. So it's a fundamental question whether the long-term direction in computing is with architectures like the Cell.
A big part of the PLAYSTATION 3's selling points is not just performance, but promised performance, it seems. And can that, Wired asks, save Sony?
Last week we reported that opaque Sony plans are making Japanese brokers nervous. There are more rumours this morning suggesting that PS3 production is going less than smoothly. Sony has set itself the target of rolling out four million PS3s this year, planning to make two million a month in November and December. Kaz Hirai recently asserted that Sony was still on course to meet the targets.
Production of the home supercomputer has yet to begin however, and those at the ready with soldering irons and screwdrivers in China and Japan are murmuring about shortages of laser diodes for the Blu-Ray drives. The vaunted Cell processors are also in short supply, it seems. It is said that these logistical problems have the potential to halve production.
Using such 'fresh-out-the-box' technology was always going to cause problems, but it's not only the hardware people suggesting Sony have been rushing things a bit. Frustrated sources in third-party development are grumbling too. While they have dev kits for the PS3, the operating system for the machine has yet to be finalised; something of a stumbling block when trying to build front end and menu systems for games. Technical requirements guidelines, which run to pages and pages for PS2 and both Xboxes, are non-existent. Tools, or any guidance at all, for programming online protocol and the recently added controller motion sensors have yet to be supplied too.
Sony will still have to push very hard to meet their hardware deadlines. But the mad rush is leaving big question marks over the functionality and quality of release titles too. Will it be alright on the night? Or is Sony going to reap a whirlwind? Feel free to post your musings in the forum.
