Late Night Consoling From CES

After releasing its most recent financial results, Take-Two announced two new upcoming games based on its most popular franchise. Given that Rockstar Leeds' Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP) was the publisher's highest-selling title of the last quarter, it comes as little surprise that the company will be leveraging not only the GTA franchise in general but Liberty City Stories in particular in its upcoming titles. GTA fans who don't own a PSP will be glad to hear that the game will be making the transition to PS2. The game should ship before the end of Take-Two's second fiscal quarter, ending April 30, 2006.

The company also confirmed that Rockstar is developing another GTA game for PSP, though details regarding the game's setting were not divulged. The release of that game will bring the number of distinct GTA games on current consoles (not counting ports) to five.

There were some other assorted comments from Take-Two. Games such as Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (X360, PC), Human Head's Prey (X360, PC), and The Collective's The Da Vinci Code will ship by the end of the company's fourth fiscal quarter, which ends October 31, 2006. Oblivion and The Da Vinci Code have both had recent announcements indicating they will be shipping significantly before then, so hopefully this isn't a quiet announcement of a later-than-expected release of Prey (or another Oblivion delay).

Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto has refuted recent rumors suggesting that the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GCN) will utilize the unique functions of the Revolution controller when played with the backwards compatibility of Nintendo's upcoming next-gen machine. Speaking to Eurogamer, the Zelda creator said only, "The article in the January edition of NGC Magazine is pure speculation," then mentioned rather obviously that the game is still in development and will ship for GameCube. If the game by some chance does have such functionality, Nintendo isn't talking. Given Miyamoto and company president Satoru Iwata's general attitudes of keeping things in secrecy and neither confirming nor denying rumors, this unusually direct comment pretty much sounds like a "No."

There hasn't been much solid console news here at CES, but in case you missed the few tidbits that were released, here's a recap:

Sony gave a keynote address at which the company notoriously revealed no new PS3 information. The main focus was on PS2 and PSP, and the main new piece of news will be that Sony's Connect media distribution service will be revamped and expanded with PSP compatibility.

At the Microsoft keynote, Peter Moore announced that Xbox 360 will be getting an external HD-DVD drive later in 2006. The device will be for media playback only, not gaming.

Microsoft also announced an Xbox Live Arcade version of Capcom's Street Fighter II. Entitled Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting (X360), the game will of course be playable over Xbox Live and will have its own set of Achievements to add to your Live profile.

Various announcements were made regarding Blu-ray and HD-DVD, with an initial movie lineup for Blu-ray and the announcement of Toshiba's first HD-DVD players. Toshiba's DVD backwards-compatible players will go on sale in March for $499 and $799. Blu-ray has not yet announced a price point for its players, but they are expected to launch at about $1000. So far, Blu-ray has gained more movie studio support.

Publisher Take-Two Interactive announced its financial results for the company's fiscal fourth quarter and, like most of the rest of the industry in recent months, sales are on the decline. Sales fell 30% from the same preiod the previous year, with revenue down to $308M from $438M. Profit per share came in below expectations at $0.27/share compared to $0.91/share last year; analysts expected $0.30/share.

Unsurprisingly, the Grand Theft Auto series continues to be Take-Two's main workhorse, with Rockstar Leeds' Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP) bringing in 12% of the company's revenue. Rockstar Toronto's movie adaptation The Warriors (PS2, Xbox) also brought in 12%, followed by Firaxis' acclaimed Civilization IV (PC) with 7%.

Take-Two executives also weighed in on launch estimates for the remaining two next-gen consoles, though they were a little more vague than Ubisoft president Yves Guillemot in his recent speculation. Take-Two believes PS3 will ship near the end of the company's fiscal year, which ends October 31, and expects to see Nintendo's Revolution "sometime in 2006."

Following up on its recent DS sales figures, Nintendo sent out a press release filling in the missing European numbers. The manufacturer notes that almost 3.5 million units of the console have been sold in Europe, bringing the overall worldwide sales to 13 million. The press release is sure to note that those are actual sell-through numbers to consumers rather than units shipped to retailers. Rob Fahey at trade publication GamesIndustry.biz has a look back at the machine's first year.

The DS is selling best in Japan, where in December alone it sold 1.5 million units out of a total 5 million in Nintendo's home country. As a result, it's completely sold out over there. The situation has both parallels and striking differences to the Xbox 360 shortage in North America and Europe; both Microsoft and Nintendo are have seen demand exceed supply for their latest consoles, but the language used in the shortage announcement is rather different. Wired's Chris Kohler translated part of Nintendo's public apology. Some excerpts: "We heartily thank those who bestow their patronage on our humble company," "[Nintendo DS] has gone out of stock, which we know has caused a great deal of trouble to our honored customers and retailers. For this we apologize from our hearts," and "Supplies will not be fully replenished until the end of January, we humbly supplicate ourselves before you and beg your favor." (The original Japanese statement is here.)

Horror film site Bloody Disgusting was at the premier of Uwe Boll's BloodRayne adaptation, and reporter Hunter Daniels conducted an impromptu interview with the good doctor. When somebody came by and mentioned Half-Life to Boll, he redirected the conversation to another legendary series: "Now people are coming to me with Metal Gear Solid." He indicates that there is already a script commissioned by Konami, and said that he'd "absolutely" like to head up the project. For some reason, he compares its prospects to last year's Doom adaptation, saying that he could improve on that film substantially. He then said "its one of the top five of all time" and it's unclear whether he means Metal Gear Solid is one of the top five games of all time, or Doom is one of the best game to film adaptations of all time.

Anyway, don't treat this as anything other than a rumor. Boll's name is so ubiquitous in game-based movies that it's not hard to believe that he was at least approached with the idea, but that doesn't suggest he's actually a leading candidate for the role.

A 26-year-old man was recently arrested for allegedly physically molesting a 14-year-old boy he met over Xbox Live. The man instigated an online relationship with the younger gamer by way of the service's voice chat capability, and later sent him revealing videos over the internet. The teen agreed to meet him in person in Santa Rosa, California, where he was then abused by the man. The alleged perpetrator was caught when the teen, who had the man's home address, told his mother about the relationship.

See, this is why I no longer voice chat with people not on my friends list...

Next Generation looks at gaming in the land of the rising sun with This Week in Japan, which halfway ends up being This Week in Famitsu but is still an interesting read. It includes Miyamoto praising designer Yoot Saito and his upcoming pinball/strategy/hamburger game Odama (GCN). Miyamoto also notes that his favorite game of all time is, of all things, Pac-Man.

Rob Fahey at GamesIndustry.biz considers the common accusations that the Xbox 360 shortage is responsible for the industry's declining performance this holiday season, and concludes that it's not all Microsoft's fault.