Late Night Consoling

Microsoft has announced that Bungie's ridiculously highly anticipated shooter sequel Halo 3 will be released for Xbox 360 in North America on September 25, 2007. The game will follow in Europe on September 26. Today's announcement comes just hours before the official launch of the Halo 3 nearly-public Xbox Live beta test, which will be available tomorrow at 5:00am Pacific time.

The Prince of Persia's original adventure, released some 14 years before his triumphant return in 2003's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (PS2, Xbox, GCN, PC), is being remade in high definition for Xbox Live Arcade, publisher Ubisoft announced today. Featuring the same gameplay and level design as designer Jordan Mechner's 1989 classic, the game will feature new environments and character models based on the visuals of Sands of Time. Prince of Persia classic is being developed for Ubisoft by French developer Gameloft, best known for its many mobile phone games.

Upon its release, the original Prince of Persia was widely lauded for its smooth and fluid rotoscoped animation, a significant step above much of what had been seen in games at the time. Mechner later used the rotoscoping technique to very different effect in the heavily stylized 1997 historical fiction adventure game The Last Express.

Ubisoft plans to release Gameloft's Prince of Persia classic for Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade early this summer. The publisher sent over several Prince of Persia screenshots and a gameplay trailer along with the announcement.

Eidos has announced that Crystal Dynamics will be bringing its upcoming Tomb Raider: Anniversary, a reimagining of Core Design's original 1996 game Tomb Raider (SAT, PS1, PC), to Wii. Already announced for PlayStation 2, PSP, and PC, the game reprises its source material's story and general level layouts, but revamps its environments, adds new puzzles, and expands the abilities of its heroine Lara Croft.

It was not specified how Tomb Raider: Anniversary will make use of the Wii controller. The publisher plans to ship the game for PlayStation 2 and PS2 in June, with the PSP version to be released soon after. No ship date for the Wii version has yet been announced.

A survey of Japanese industry analysts by financial publication Bloomberg suggests that Sony may post its biggest loss in four years when it releases its figures for the fiscal quarter ending March 31, 2007, despite increased sales. The median estimate from the 11 surveyed analysts pegs the expected net loss at 75.8 billion yen (US$630 million) on revenues, up 14% year over year, on revenue of 2.02 trillion yen (US$17 billion), up 9.5% year over year. This would give the company an overall fiscal year operating loss of 245 billion yen (US$2 billion), versus last year's operating profit of 80 billion yen (US$665 million).

PlayStation 3 was cited as the primary factor in the expected shortfall. Analysts do not expect strong performance from the company's electronics and movie divisions, which have seen strong profits from Bravia televisions and the recent film Spider-Man 3, to offset the lower-than-expected performance of the console. The company's current situation is a reversal of its dynamic in recent years, which saw many of the corporation's divisions struggling while being carried by the PlayStation unit.

Analysts note that PlayStation 3's current sales put the company in a tough spot. Though Sony could institute a price drop to stimulate sales, this would bring the manufacturer farther away from reaching positive company-wide profit margins; PlayStation 3 is already being sold significantly under cost. "The 5 percent margin target is reachable if there is no price cut in the PS3," said Merrill Lynch Japan analyst Hitoshi Kuriyama. "But I'm expecting a 20 percent price cut this fiscal year, and if that happens, the margin will not reach 5 percent."

Everybody loves a countdown on a website--or, at least, game publishers think everybody does. Nintendo is the latest to join the trend, launching a daily countdown on its official Super Smash Bros. Brawl website, suggesting that new information on the upcoming Wii fighter is due in about six days. The site comes weeks after Rockstar Games broadcast countdowns on national television leading up to the release of Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, X360) trailer, and in the midst of Blizzard's countdown to a new product announcement.

Microsoft released an important update this morning for its Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on, bolstering it with 1080p support and applying a much-needed patch to its audio capabilities.

Key to this update is the addition of the "Dynamic Range Control" setting. The add-on had previously been crippled in certain audio ranges due to compression, leading to a sound field that was noticeably flat in comparison to other DVD players. Audiophiles will want to leave this option set to "off" in order to disable the compression.

Also of note is full-fledged DTS support. Until now the player had simply converted DTS audio into Dolby Digital.

Bothersome audio-synch issues have also been greatly improved, according to Microsoft developer Andy Pennell. "My workmate Raj spent an inordinate amount of time on audio/video sync issues, the most famous being the hammer scene in Batman Begins.," he wrote. "(Raj never wants to watch Batman Begins ever again.)"

Xbox 360 owners with an Xbox 360 HD-DVD player, will be prompted for an auto update the next time an HD DVD movie is watched while signed into Xbox Live.

(Thanks to new guy Nick Breckon for contributing this report!)

EA sends word that it has launched its official site for Skate, EA Black Box's upcoming challenger to Neversoft's longtime king of the skating hill, Tony Hawk. The game is set for release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 later this year.