Late Night Consoling
There's some thought-provoking stuff coming out of GDC this week...you can find links to tons of interesting stuff by going to any of the GDC coverage pages linked below, but I did want to highlight one in particular, that being this write up of Sony's talk at the show. Sony reiterated at the show that they believe that in the future, voice interaction and visual input like the EyeToy will become standard in future generations, but I just don't buy it. I'm going to go out on a limb here, and this may come back to haunt me some day, but I'll just say it right now: in ten years, we'll still primarily be playing games with a gamepad, or mouse and keyboard. Other input mechanisms certainly have their place, but the suggestion that most, or even half of games will utilize any sort of "emotion recognition" from a digital camera, or gesture or voice recognition as their primary input device is pure delusion. Now obviously games like DDR and the EyeToy and their kin are all fine and good, and I don't doubt that they'll get more popular and utilize more advanced technology, but they will never take over standard input devices. Now, maybe I'll be some doddering old fool complaining about the good old days when games used gamepads exclusively...but I doubt it.
| Xbox Price "About to Drop" Yep, according to one analyst, Microsoft will drop the price of the Xbox down to $149 on Tuesday, March 30th. While this has been rumored for some time now (and for exactly this time frame, too) that's unusually specific, so maybe the guy really does have some sort of solid tip on this. |
| GDC Coverage The last few days have seen a flurry of coverage online from the Game Developer's Conference. Fortunately all the major sites have made nice index pages, so here are links to the GDC coverage at IGN, GameSpot, GameSpy and 1UP. Each site has lots of impressions of the various games on display, including games like Fable for Xbox and Siren for PS2, along with a ton of media from the various games. |
| PSP News from GDC The latest edition of the Game Over column over at CNN/Money reports on some of Sony's non-gaming plans for the PSP, which come directly from Sony at GDC. There's really not a whole lot here we didn't already know, and there are quotes here about Sony's desire to add GPS and PDA functionality, playback movies and so on. On a related note, Havok announced at GDC plans to add PSP support to their physics engine (which is being used in Half-Life 2 among others), Samsung and Sharp have announced that they will provide the LCDs for the device, and the first official PSP game, known as Death Jr. was demonstrated at the show. Head over to 1UP for a preview of that based on what they saw, along with video of the game in action. |
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| Classic NES Series Announced Nintendo has finally announced their plans for the games known collectively as the Famicom Mini series in Japan...here they'll be known as the Classic NES Series, and will consist of eight flashback games: Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, Ice Climber, Xevious, and Bomberman. Like their Japanese counterparts, these will all be released as one game per cartridge, although they'll sell for a little less than they did in Japan: 19.99 a pop. This will be accompanied by limited-edition NES-styled GBA SP, which looks a bit like someone slapped a decal on the existing platinum model (at least it's not as hideously ugly as the Famicom one). |
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| New Crash Bandicoot Announced Incredible as it may seem, there really hasn't been a real Crash Bandicoot title since 2001's mediocre Wrath of Cortex. Instead we've seen lame knockoffs like Crash Cart Racing, but that's finally going to change later this year with the release of Crash Twinsanity for PS2 and Xbox. The first details and screenshots are up at IGN tonight, and this game will have a free-roaming 3D world, sort of like Super Mario 64. |
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| Possible GTA: San Andreas, MGS3 Details The snooping eyes at GameSpot have dug up what might be plot details from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. They got their hands on a call for voiceover actors, which includes descriptions of several key characters. While it's tough to get too much out of this, it does sound like the game will be set on the West Coast in the 90's. On a similar note, Eurogamer dug up a casting call sheet for Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which lists several well-known characters that will be in the game. This is a potential spoiler, so don't click if you don't want to know. |
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| Resident Evil Outbreak Offline in Europe There was a slight glimmer of hope yesterday when Eurogamer was told by a Capcom representative that they hadn't ruled out online support for Resident Evil Outbreak in Europe. Sadly, these hopes were dashed later in the day, when they were told once and for all that the game will definitely be offline in that territory. |
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| PSX Updated 1UP is reporting that Sony has rolled out a new update for their PSX uberconsole in Japan. This latest update contains several initially promised features, including support for the GIF, MPEG and MP3 formats for playback and DVD+RW for burning. These features will presumably be in the shipping version of the device when it's released outside of Japan later this year. |
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| On ICO Development Also at 1UP tonight is a write up of a talk from GDC that may be of particular interest to many of you...Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido gave a talk at the show about the creation and evolution of ICO, the game some people love, and others hate (I'm in with the first group). Sadly, no hints at all were dropped about the status of a sequel, which has been rumored for ages now (but never officially confirmed) and is believed to be called NICO. |
| More DS Mockups Yep, Gizmodo, the site that's offered a cash bounty for the first real picture of Nintendo's DS handheld system, has posted three more mockup designs of the thing. None of these are even remotely believed to be real, but they're still interesting to look at. Especially that last one, which is built like a tank and looks like a handheld N64. |
| Dragon Quest V Breaks a Million in Two Days In case there was any doubt, Japanese gamers really, really, really love their Dragon Quest games. Dragon Quest V, the PS2 remake of the SNES original, has sold 1.3 million copies in just two days. What may have been a big factor in this is the fact that the game contained the first footage from Dragon Quest VIII, and if you want a peek, you can check out over four minutes of gameplay footage at IGN. |
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| In-Game Ace Combat 5 Shots Namco has updated their official Ace Combat 5 site with the first in-game screenshots. While some details made their way online a few days ago, this is the first actual glimpse at the game, and it shore is purty. |
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| GameCube Gets Another Online Title The chances of this being released in North America are pretty slim, but GameScience is reporting that Chunsoft has announced that their upcoming RPG Homeland will come with two discs: one containing the single player game, and another containing an online multiplayer game. It's not a massively multiplayer game in the conventional sense, but rather a peer-to-peer game in which the server host plays god for the other players on the server. By my tally this brings the total number of online GameCube titles to four, following the two Phantasy Star Online games and a third-party Baseball title that was never released outside of Japan. Thanks Planet GameCube for the tip. |
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| Red Dead Revolver Q&A GameSpot has posted a Q&A with Jamie King, the Vice President of Development at Rockstar Games, talking with him about their upcoming wild west action title Red Dead Revolver. This is quite brief, and deals pretty much with the reasons for Rockstar deciding to make a western game when they're so well known for more urban titles. |
| Misc. Media/Previews | |
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| Some appropriately crazy screenshots from Unity can be found at IGN tonight along with a look at WWE Day of Reckoning and GameSpy is the latest site to post a preview of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. |
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| GameInformer has a metric ton of new media from Onimusha 3: Demon Siege and 1UP has details and an image of the limited edition version of Xenosaga Episode II that's being released in Japan. |
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| IGN has posted new shots from Mario Golf: Advance Tour and Mario vs. Donkey Kong and has a first look at Pyuu to Fuku! Jaguar: Byo to Deru! Megane Kun, a Japanese (well no kidding) title from Konami that uses stereoscopic 3D glasses. |
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| GameSpot has a new preview of Terminator 3: Redemption (PS2, Xbox), Planet GameCube has new shots from Serious Sam: Next Encounter (GC, PS2) and GameInformer goes hands-on with the very odd Ribbit King (GC, PS2). |
