Late Night Consoling

Yesterday, Eurogamer reported that Sony chairman and CEO Howard Stringer confirmed in a German interview that Sony's PS3 will be launching next Spring in Japan. Stringer was echoing predictions made by Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi. It was also revealed that North American and European launches for the console are expected either in late 2006 or early 2007.

Today, a Sony representative followed up on Stringer's comments, reminding readers that "we have not yet announced detailed launch dates for each region." The representative cited how long it took Microsoft to reveal its specific launch date for Xbox 360, indicating that it is currently far too early to expect Sony to have anything set it stone.

GamesIndustry.biz believes, as was indicated in the Eurogamer citation of Stringer's interview, that Sony will have a much wider launch period than Xbox 360's fairly simultaneous launch. Traditionally, there is a large period of time between the release of Sony's consoles in Japan and their worldwide availability. Both the PS2 and the PSP took nine months from their Japanese introduction to eventually be available in both North America and Europe.

File this one under Extremely Unconfirmed. It's just a rumor, but it's a slow news day, and I'm telling you flat out it's a rumor.

Ars Technica reported today on possible leaked specs for Nintendo's next-gen Revolution console. They were apparently revealed by an alleged employee of Factor 5 (the studio behind the GameCube-exclusive Rogue Squadron games) who also leaked the Xbox 360 specs before they were announced. The details summarized by Ars are as follows:

The brains of the console are rumored to be a single dual-threaded IBM custom PowerPC 2.5 GHz CPU, with 256 KB L1 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache (L3 cache is rumored). The system will also sport a Physical Processing Chip (PPU) with 32MB of dedicated RAM, while the CPU itself will saddled up next to 512MB of system RAM. The custom ATI GPU solution is rumored to consist of a RN520 600MHz core, backed with 256MB of RAM and 32 parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines.

Ars Technica's Jon Stokes followed up with an analysis filled with all sorts of hardware mullings that I am probably not qualified to competently summarize for you. So if this is the sort of thing that gets your rocks off, better to head over and read it yourself. One Ars observation, if the specs are indeed real, is that with a single-core system and a rather powerful GPU Nintendo is probably attempting to maximize ease of development on the system, in contrast to its competitor's more unfamiliar multicore solutions.

All in all, who knows? The main piece of credibility for the specs is that they come from an alleged developer who also correctly revealed those of the Xbox 360. It is still, however, merely a rumor and should be treated as such.

Square Enix, itself a product of a merger between two of Japan's largest publishers, is finishing up the friendly acquisition of Japanese publishing and manufacturing company Taito. Square Enix's original buy offer to Taito shareholders stated that if Square Enix could not acquire at least 67% of Taito's stock, it would look for other takeover methods. However, by paying a premium significantly over the market value, Square Enix was able to obtain 93.7%, or 346,689 shares, of the latter company. Due to the historical significance attached to the Taito name--Taito is the home of the original 1978 Space Invaders game--Square Enix has vowed to keep the company's name in use rather than assimilate or merge it.

Currently, Taito's primary areas of business are arcade ownership and manufacturing, and karaeoke manufacturing. However, the company still owns the rights to and publishes in Japan classic arcade and console franchises such as Puzzle Bobble. Taito's revenue for the last fiscal year was $760M, while Square Enix's was $663M; when combined, this puts the companies in a high position among Japanese companies in the gaming market. However, it still leaves them behind games market leaders Nintendo and Sega Sammy Holdings, which was also the result of a recent merger.

Bizarre Creations, the developer behind Project Gotham Racing, recently announced a new next-gen title to be published by Sega, but no details were given on the project. The company has now supposedly clarified the situation, noting that the game will not be from an existing franchise. So, as Bizarre notes, "NOT Outrun 3, Crazy Taxi 4, Fur Fighters or whatever else you care to guess." The company also tells the public to "expect the usual Bizarre quality you know and love, with people on the team focussed specifically on making the most of each platform's special features." So there you have it: Bizarre's next game!

Official PlayStation Magazine by way of 1UP has a feature and interview on SCEI's Shadow of the Colossus (PS2). James Mielke and Joe Rybicki discuss the game's relationship to and lineage of Ico, and have an interview with Fumito Ueda, director and lead artist of Ico (PS2) and Shadow of the Colossus. Ueda talks about his general design principles and how they relate to Ico and Shadow. It's a good read, with Ueda touching on what he and his team learned from Ico and what elements still work. Somewhat startlingly, Shadow is only Ueda's second directorial role after Ico, though he did some visual design work for Enemy Zero (Saturn).

Confirming yesterday's not-quite-confirmed news, Rockstar today confirmed the existence of GTA: San Andreas Special Edition for PS2 and The Trilogy for Xbox. However, unlike yesterday's not-quite-confirmed news, today's announcement cites an October 8 release date rather than October 18.

Various editors from 1UP and its sister print publications have a video roundtable discussion about the Nintendo Revolution controller.

Microsoft has an official intervew with Rare's Perfect Dark Zero (X360) team about the upcoming sequel.

Game Informer has an interview with Team Ninja's always-photogenic and slightly Romero-esque Tomonobu Itagaki.

IGN sits down with Microsoft's Robbie Bach to discuss the future of Xbox.