Late Night Consoling

Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison delivered a keynote address today at Game Developers Conference. While the Sony exec did not deliver a great deal of new information on the company's upcoming console, he did make it clear that Sony's next-gen plans are extremely ambitious.

For a bullet list breakdown of the remarks on PS3, check Shacknews' earlier coverage. Here are some additional clarifications based on questions asked in threads today:
- Warhawk, from SCE Incognito, will be playable at E3 in some form.
- The games that were showcased during the keynote (Warhack, Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, MotorStorm, Singstar) are not confirmed launch titles, but Harrison stated that they are obviously farther along than many games, so they may be candidates.
- PS3 will have wi-fi built in, and the controllers are also wireless. As previously stated, the machine supports seven wireless controllers simultaneously but eight total; to use all eight, one must be wired.
- Harrison's statements indicated that the machine itself has no provisions for games being region encoded. Every console worldwide will also support every display standard. If a particular publisher decides to ship a game without PAL support, for example, the game could not be played on a PAL television. However, a gamer in a PAL region could still play the game if the PS3 is hooked up to a non-PAL video display.
- No price was announced or suggested. I do not believe the words "price" or "cost" were even mentioned.
- The machine is slated for a worldwide simultaneous launch in early November. Previously, it was indicated that the machine would be shipping to "Australasia," but Harrison used the word "Australia." This may have been a casual mistake, it is hard to know for sure.
- Oddly, Harrison seemed unwilling to specifically confirm that each system will come packaged with a hard drive, even though SCEE representatives confirmed as such last week. However, he did reiterate that games will require a hard drive to run.

Here's some additional news regarding PS2 and PSP. Again, most of this is nothing new.
- PS1 has had a 12+ year life cycle, and Sony expects PS2 to continue to sell past 2010.
- Designer David Jaffe came to the stage to officially announce God of War 2 for PS2. Since Jaffe is currently working on his own project, the game is being helmed by God of War lead animator Cory Burlog, with supervision by Jaffe. The developer had a joking response to questions as to why the game is in development for PS2 rather than PS3. "PS3 is probably the most powerful game machine on the planet, but it has limitations, technical limitations," he explained. "It seems to be incapable of delivering three-way sex scenes in realtime."

A couple brief items about Nintendo have surfaced over the past few days. Some of them may very well be addressed at tomorrow's keynote, but don't hold your breath.

- Rumors have been flying that the company will reveal the final name of Revolution tomorrow. Since the console's initial unveiling, executives have stressed that "Revolution" is merely a codename, and not the system's final trademark. This is consistent with Nintendo's past behavior in console launches; Nintendo 64 was known as Ultra 64 for some time prior to launch, while GameCube was originally known as Dolphin.
- A few days ago, Pokemon Company founder and president Tsunekazu Ishihara suggested in a Famitsu interview that the Revolution has additional functionality that has not yet been unveiled. While this is by no means new information, Ishihara indicated that these functions are significant enough that he was unwilling to speak at all about his company's games in progress for the upcoming system. "There are still areas of the Revolution itself that have not been seen," he said, "so we'd like to coordinate with Nintendo's movements."

Namco has confirmed that there will be no further entries in the widely praised Katamari Damacy franchise. So far, the game has seen two PS2 entries and a recent PSP version. However, series creator Keita Takahashi, whose first video game design was the original Katamari Damacy (PS2), has been very vocal about his frustration that his creation was turned into a sequel-prone franchise.

Coming from a traditional art background, Takahashi has voiced general displeasure with the endlessly sequel-driven nature of the video games industry. Though he originally pledged not to work on any sequels to his game, Namco planned to develop a bare-bones sequel to the game with or without his involvement. Rather than let the property out of his hands, he agreed to design We Love Katamari (PS2). However, when Namco announced Me and My Katamari (PSP), Takahashi refused to have any involvement, and has been quite vocal regarding his disappointment with the game. Previously trained as a sculptor, he has also stated that he plans to leave the games industry in the near future in the hope of designing children's playgrounds.

It was likely that revelation that caused Namco to reconsider its position. Takahashi's total value to the company, including any future games he may design, may very well be greater to Namco than the ability to continually release sequels within one franchise, especially in the case of a game which relies so heavily on seeming fresh and novel.

Namco Bandai Games announced that it will be bringing the arcade classic Point Blank to Nintendo DS. The game will of course use the system's stylus to replace the original light gun. Point Blank DS will include stages from all three original games, and will ship this summer.

Now available at the Xbox Live Marketplace is a demo for Blazing Angels, allowing you to try out Ubisoft's new action flight sim which is also coming to Xbox and PC. The demo of the singleplayer kind. Also available is AstroPop, the latest Xbox Live Arcade puzzle game from PopCap.

IGN takes a look at the impact of DS and PSP with The Evolution of Design. GameSpot talks to Microsoft's Peter Moore, and they also have a video interview on Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting (Xbox 360).