Late Night Consoling

Masahiro Sakurai, designer of the Super Smash Bros. series (N64, GCN) and creator of the Kirby franchise, has announced via Famitsu that he will be serving as both director and designer on the upcoming Revolution version of Super Smash Bros. Sakurai was in charge of the games at his former studio, HAL Laboratories (also the former home of current Nintendo president Satoru Iwata), but left HAL in 2003 to found his own firm, Sora. Since then, Sakurai has already dabbled in design work for external companies, designing the well-received Meteos (DS) for Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment.

It was not specified whether production of the game would fall to HAL or an internal Nintendo studio, since Sakurai is no longer affiliated with either. Sakurai describes to Famitsu that when he left his former job, Iwata mentioned to him that Nintendo may seek him out to do consulting on future versions of Smash Bros. He was surprised when, at E3, Iwata personally invited him to take charge of the next game rather than merely consult. Nintendo has stated on a few occasions that Super Smash Bros. would be a launch title for Revolution, but depending on when development begun that may or may not hold true. Either way, news of Sakurai's involvement is surely nothing but positive news for fans of the series.

So, are you planning on picking up an Xbox 360? Maybe you're intruiged by the Revolution? Perhaps the PS3 is more up your alley? Well, what you should really be looking forward to is the PS4. According to Sony's outspoken Ken Kutaragi, the company plans to bring the PS3's successor to the world "within the next decade." Kutaragi, speaking to the BBC, did not reveal any new details about the PS4 (or the PS3 for that matter). The article mentions that PS3 is expected next spring, but Sony has repeatedly declined to comment on a particular release period.

Nintendo announced via a press release today that its upcoming Revolution console will feature a password-protected play control system which will allow parents to dictate what games their children can play on the console, categorized by ESRB rating. The news comes as little surprise given the flak the industry has taken lately. Nintendo's announcement follows the recent statements by both Microsoft and Sony that their Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles will feature parental control mechanisms.

Moves such as this are undoubtedly a great benefit. The more the industry shows it is perfectly willing to make it easy for parents to enforce what they feel their children should be playing, the more difficult it will become to use game companies as scapegoats for a lack of monitoring of children's habits. With all three major upcoming consoles making the process this straightforward, there is little excuse for children to be playing games their parents find inappropriate.

The press release was issued by Nintendo of America, so the system described deals with the North American ESRB, but it does specify that all Revolution consoles worldwide will contain the feature.. Assumedly, consoles intended for other territories will use those areas' respective ratings systems.

In a surprisingly late announcement considering the game ships next week, Ubisoft has announced that the principal cast from Academy Award winner Peter Jackson's upcoming King Kong adaptation will have their voice acting featured in the upcoming game adaptation of the adaptation, designed by Michel Ancel. Academy Award winner Adrian Brody, Acadamy Award nominee Naomi Watts, and Teen Choice Award winner Jack Black will be reprising their film roles in the game. The voice recording sessions were helmed by Academy Award winner Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote the film and the game.

If you're planning on picking up an Xbox 360 and you were disappointed that your favorite Xbox game wasn't on the compatibility list, well, just be glad you don't live in Japan. Today, Microsoft released the Japanese compatibility list for the 360, and it's pretty meager at best. The list contains no more than 12 games, and that's counting semi-redundancies such as Ninja Gaiden/Ninja Gaiden Black and Halo 2/Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack. As with the much fuller list Microsoft delivered last week, the company stated that more games will be added over time.

The 360's Japanese launch lineup took a bit of a hit today when developer/publisher From Software announced that its infuriatingly-named [eM] -eNCHANT arM- (X60) has been delayed from a launch release until next January. The delay leaves the 360 without a launch RPG (a situation mirrored by the delay of Bethesda's Oblivion in the Western world), which might prove damaging to the machine's early sales in the RPG-heavy Japanese market.

Microsoft plans to launch the Xbox 360 in Japan on December 10.

Joystiq points out that it's Shigeru Miyamoto's 53rd birthday today. So, Happy Birthday, Mr. Miyamoto.

Game Informer takes lots of video of the Xbox 360.