Late Night Consoling

For some time it has been known that Square's World of Mana project would encompass at least two games. Recently, one of those games, Children of Mana, was confirmed as heading for the Nintendo DS. Now, it seems that the platform for the other game is the PlayStation 2 (IGN oddly reports that the news "would have been a surprise had it not been totally expected from the start"). Currently without a subtitle, Seiken Densetsu 4 (PS2) still has few confirmed details and no screenshots save some colorful and very Mana-esque concept art.

There is not yet a projected release date for the game. Children of Mana (DS) is expected to ship in Japan next spring.

Merrill Lynch has broken down the manufacturing costs of Xbox 360 and PS3 based on their hardware components, as well as predicting where the costs will fall three years after launch. The firm puts the launch manufacturing cost of a PS3 at approximately $495, with the Xbox 360 (including the hard drive) at $340. The biggest contributors to the discrepancy are Sony's Blu-ray drive, at $100 to $25 for 360's DVD drive, and Sony's Cell processor, at $160 to $100 for 360's PowerPC processor. PS3 also includes features such as Bluetooth ($10) which are not present in Xbox 360.

The report states that PS3's cost disadvantage indicates that "the Xbox 360 could be selling at half the price of PS3 in the latter half of 2006." In addition to lesser initial costs, most of the components Microsoft is using in its console are fairly common in the industry, whereas many PS3 components are either proprietary or less widely used. For example, the GDDR3 RAM used in the Xbox 360 is more openly available on the market than the XDR RAM used by the PS3 (the PS3 splits its 512MB of RAM between GDDR3 and XDR).

Of course, the report also assumes that Sony will be aiming to avoid taking a financial hit on each console it sells, either at launch or soon after. If Sony is willing to take a loss, it of course would be able to price the PS3 more competitively. However, Sony--the worldwide parent company, that is--has been floundering financially, and with the PlayStation family currently being one of its few divisions operating on profit, it seems unlikely that management would choose that route. In reality, it probably depends largely on Microsoft's success with Xbox 360. If Sony feels that Microsoft's head start is not enough to significantly impact Sony's market share, it will likely price above cost; if Microsoft's new console performs better than Sony anticipates, it might need to take a more aggressive stance.

Though a final-final super-approved official Microsoft launch list for Xbox 360 has still yet to surface, gamers planning on picking up the upcoming console can now rest assured that they will have at least one game to play, barring any bizarre manufacturing or shipping mishaps. Sega has announced that Monolith's Condemned: Criminal Origins (X360, PC) has gone gold, and will be shipping alongside the 360 on November 22. Monolith most recently shipped the critically-acclaimed shooter F.E.A.R. (PC).

Adding weight to widely-accepted reports that non-budget third-party Xbox 360 games will retail for $59.99, the first widespread major price point increase for standard video games (ie., not special editions or limited runs) in decades, Condemned will in fact retail for $59.99.

Stephen Stair has claimed the first part of a public bounty to crack the wi-fi implementation of the Nintendo DS for use by the homebrew community. The first half of the bounty, currently $1484.22 of $2968.45 but still open to further donations, was awarded to him for being "the first person to document the DS WiFi registers." The remaining half of the bounty is further split in half for achieving each of two more goals: the first implementation of working connect and transfer code, and the first TCP or UDP stack. Stephen has already demonstrated that his code will connect to a wireless router, and states he is currently 90% done writing his own TCP stack (plans to use an open-sourced stack failed due to various complications). The development is good news for the DS homebrew community, which has software such as an IRC client and an RSS reader largely ready to be finished once the code is complete.

Apparently not content with this development, Stair has also begun work on a wi-fi tunneling project for DS, which will allow multiplayer non-online DS games to be played over the internet. The page is accessible only by way of a simple riddle of which I have decided to deprive you. Announced publically only today, Stair expects the project to hit a private beta phase in a week or earlier. I'm sure I can speak for other owners of Advance Wars: Dual Strike (DS) when I say my head is currently in the process of exploding.

EA has announced its acquisition of the rights to develop and published games based on long-running animated television show The Simpsons. Previously, the rights were held by Vivendi Universal, which published Radical Entertainment's extremely commercially successful (and somewhat critically successful) The Simpsons: Hit & Run (PS2, Xbox, GCN, PC).

EA Redwood Shores Studio vice president and general manager Nick Earl stated, "This is something EA's been interested in for years and now game development and technology is at a place where The Simpsons characters and world will really come alive in these games." The Simpsons executive producer James L. Brooks stated, "I think this is a great opportunity for us, primarily because it brings with it the possibility of free EA games." He did not specify whether, in other circumstances, he would pay for EA games.

The first EA-published title under the agreement will be developed for next-generation consoles. No release date was given.

The video game sales charts for September have come in, and it was apparently quite a good month for sports--and, by extension, for Electronic Arts. Of the top 20 bestselling console games, half were published by EA, and eight were EA Sports titles. The other two sports titles to make the list were Namco's Mario Superstar Baseball (GCN) at #3, published by Nintendo, and Yuke's' WWE Day of Reckoning 2 (GCN) at #8, published by THQ. Not surprisingly, EA's Madden 06 (PS2) came in at #1 again, with various other platform versions of the game also appearing on the list. All three versions of Nintendo's Nintendogs (DS) stayed present, at #9, #13, and #16, though it is not clear what their combined ranking would be; all three titles contain the same content. The debut of Criterion's Burnout Revenge's (PS2, Xbox), published by EA, saw the Xbox version outselling the PS2 version considerably, hitting #10 for the former and #18 for the latter. Finally, Game Freak's Pokemon Emereld (GBA), published by Nintendo and on the charts since April, seems to be finally slowing down, as it moved from #6 to #19.

Business Week online has a chat with Nintendo design head Shigeru Miyamoto. Despite some bizarrely erroneous information by Business Week in the opening paragraph, Miyamoto's remarks on his design process are great reading. His comments on the genesis of Pikmin (GCN) and Super Mario Bros. (NES) are particularly fascinating.

GameSpot has a second designer diary for Traveller's Tales The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (PS2, Xbox, GCN, DS, PSP, GBA, PC).

We here at FileShack have a video interview on Need For Speed: Most Wanted (PS2, Xbox, GCN, X360, DS, PSP, GBA, PC).