Late Night Consoling

...assuming you work for Bungie, anyway. The Microsoft-owned developer has revealed in its most recent Weekly Update that the studio's next project is already in playable form and is currently undergoing prototyping and even some testing.

But ironically, the way we're prototyping aspects of this next game mean that even some gameplay tests, demos and experiments, are surprisingly polished and playable. We're all in the giddy position of being "forced" to play moments and elements from the next project.

The obvious next Bungie game would be Halo 3, but reports over the past year or so have suggested that the team might be getting just a bit burned out on the mega-blockbuster shooter franchise. Last October, studio manager Pete Parsons said, "After Halo 2 we are planning to do something different. We will do something else and we have a few ideas." Rumor had it that the game in progress may be some kind of fantasy-themed title. Bungie's Joe Staten, writer of Halo and Halo 2, also mentioned around the same time last year that Bungie was considering reviving its dormant project Phoenix, a "non-sci-fi" game which had about two years of work done on it before the studio put its efforts into Halo 2 full time.

Of course, Bungie is still owned by Microsoft, and the Halo franchise is an undeniable cash cow, one only matched in modern gaming by the likes of Grand Theft Auto, so the developer may not necessarily have too much say in the matter.

Almost a year ago, researchers detailed a repressor protein linked to cancer. They called it Pokemon, for POK Erythroid Myeloid ONtogenic, which didn't go over so well with Pokemon USA, owned by Nintendo. The researchers were threatened with legal action for using the trademark following headlines such as "Pokemon causes cancer." Now, the most recent issue of scientific journal Nature reports that they have abandoned use of the name. It will apparently now be referred to in the context of Zbtb7, the gene which encodes that repressor.

Sony has indicated its intention to have doubled the number of PSPs sold in North America in the last two months of this year. This means that Sony plans to have the number of consoles sold in November and December equal to the number sold between its March launch and the beginning of November. Sony claims that this will result in total sales of 6 million units, with 3 million sold until November, but NPD sales data indicates that the November cumulative figure is closer to 2.5 million. It seems like a pretty steep order for Sony's target audience to fill, but the PSP may be benefitting from the low Xbox 360 launch quantities, with some consumers possibly opting for alternative consoles such as the PSP instead.

Penny Arcade has announced that its third annual Child's Play Charity has broken $420,000 worth of toys and donations. The program delivers video games, toys, books, music, and movies to hospitals around the world for use by recovering children confined to their beds or rooms. Despite how successful it has already been, Penny Arcade hopes to break the half million mark this year, so if you've got some spare dollars and want to bring some fun to some sick kids, head on over and either purchase some games from an Amazon wishlist or toss in a few bucks via PayPal.

IGN has coverage of the 2005 Jump Festival, which mainly consists of a bunch of Japanese RPGs. GameSpot has some impressions as well.

The New York Times has an extensive analysis of a possibly piracy-encouraging line of dialogue from Nintendo's Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS). It's complete with rather suspect marketing lines from Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan as well as possibly a lack of awareness that Nintendo games are translated by a bunch of guys in Seattle, and the line in question probably didn't even exist in the original Japanese. Interesting read though!