Late Night Consoling

Possibly adding weight to statements by Hideo Kojima that he would be taking leave of the Metal Gear Solid series after its fourth iteration (of course, he said that about the third as well), the legendary designer is apparently already working on a brand new game for Nintendo's next-gen Revolution console. This news was revealed in the recently-released November issue of gaming magazine Game Informer, which included a Kojima interview as part of its Revolution coverage from Tokyo Game Show. The work in progress is almost certainly not part of the Metal Gear Solid franchise.

The news would go to explain why Kojima featured fairly prominently in one of the videos shown by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata during the TGS unveiling of the Revolution's long awaited controller design. In the video, the designer said, "This was totally unexpected. Even though it was a surprise to me at first, I quickly understood how it should be used."

In other Hideo Kojima news, his blog (helpfully entitled Hideoblog) is now in English, so those of you willing to personally read up on his crazy musings and streams of consciousness can indulge. It seems to be taking a little while to translate, however; only four entries have been Englishized so far.

Though the news is not yet ironclad, it seems likely that two titles in development by Chinese developer Origo Gaming Entertainment will be released for Xbox 360 and PS3. The titles are The Embrace of Time Chapter 1: Resurrectio Oculus and Data-Fly. The Embrace of Time Chapter 1: Resurrectio Oculus is the first part of a planned trilogy quadrilogy. Not much is known about the games, but The Embrace of Time Chapter 1: Resurrectio Oculus has a male character with blue hair and a large sword, while Data-Fly has a female character with green eyes and metal clothes. Data-Fly will have large environments and plenty of stealth gameplay, with the ability to scan and replicate items and control mechanical enemies. There are currently no details regarding the gameplay of The Embrace of Time Chapter 1: Resurrectio Oculus. One more time, the title of the two games currently in development by Origo Gaming Entertainment are Data-Fly and The Embrace of Time Chapter 1: Resurrectio Oculus.

The latest issue of Nintendo Dream has interviews with ten well-known Japanese game designers, asking for their thoughts on the upcoming Revolution. Nine of the ten respondents were from third party studios; one was from Nintendo-owned studio Game Freak, responsible for the Pokemon franchise.

Kouichi Suda of Grass Hopper Interactive, the studio behind Killer 7 (GCN), was enthusiastic, stating that "I've already finalized a plan [for a game]. Now, all that remains is to make it." Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, now head of his own studio Mistwalker, said, "When I first saw it, I thought 'It's great!' and 'It's just like Nintendo!'...When shown such a new concept, software makers are, even as just normal people, left excited." Square Enix's Kouichi Ishii, producer behind the World of Mana project, said, "I believe creators will enjoy making games [with the controller]. However, you'll have to change game design methods from the core." Sega's Toshihiro Nagoshi, producer on Super Monkey Ball and F-Zero GX, said, "I was surprised when I saw it, I was surprised when I touched it, and when I played the sample games, I was even more surprised! I doubt that there's a creator who doesn't get tickled after getting their hands on this. It combines all the elements required to let you enjoy games while feeling that you've become the character."

The responses are encouraging given that few third-party games have yet been announced for the next-gen console.

Capcom has finally confirmed that Resident Evil: Dead Silence (DS), a remake of Resident Evil (PS), will be coming to North America. A spate of new screenshots was also released, as was news of two multiplayer modes. The game will feature four player vs. combat as well as a cooperative mode. Cooperative mode has been popping up in more games than usual lately, and I think most us would agree that's a pretty good thing. It is not clear how many players can participate in the co-op mode, but one would assume two.

Sony announced today that its PSP console has achieved the "fastest penetration speed" (Sony's words) for a member of the PlayStation family, having shipped 10 million units worldwide to retailers. The company did not provide numbers showing sales to consumers. Remarkably, UMD movie shipments are almost on par with game shipments, at 15 million and 19.6 million respectively.

Seriously.

1UP has all sorts of wacky video coverage on a couple Xbox 360 titles, namely Condemned and Call of Duty 2, with the promise of more to come.