It's never too early to talk about the next-generation of console systems! The PS3 stuff is mega-techy-talk heavy and so will be the unveiling of the Cell in February. The time to get excited is in March when Sony makes their announcement in Japan and again in May for E3. Sadly, a very low chance of anything playable will be available then. The Xbox Next, however, may be a different story. The rumor is that Bill Gates will take his keynote speech opportunity at CES next month to do the Xbox Next announcement deed. If the holiday 2005 release is still the goal, you'd expect Microsoft would have something to tinker with at the expo. E3 2005 will also be when Nintendo makes their ultimate revelation about Revolution, the GameCube's successor. It's going to be an amazingly busy show.

	Katamari Damacy II Confirmed It's official: Katamari Damacy, a cult hit for the holiday season, will receive a sequel. Namco confirmed the sequel saying it'll be released in Japan during the next fiscal year, which is anywhere between April 1, 2005 and March 31, 2006. No other details were announced.
	Sony/IBM/Toshiba Talks Cell Processor For years now we've known that the Cell processor will be the heart of Sony's successor to the PlayStation 2. Today, Sony, along with the companies they are co-developing the chip with, IBM and Toshiba, spilled some (but not all) of the beans on the "revolutionary" piece of hardware. Mainly, the Cell is a "multicore chip comprising a 64-bit Power processor core and multiple synergistic processor cores capable of massive floating point processing." Check the link for plenty of tech-heavy details, but we should know just about all there is to learn about the chip this February as the companies unveil it at the International Solid State Circuits Conference.
	Nintendo Working on Animated Film Former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi was pushing hard the last few months for Nintendo to get into the realm of animated feature films and it appears he got his wish. According to Nikkei News, Nintendo is developing an animated film using one of its popular franchises. They're also working on a cross-promotion for the upcoming Pokemon flick and the Nintendo DS, something along the lines of downloadable content at the movie theater.
	New Speculation on Square Enix's Code Age When Japanese gamers picked up Dragon Quest VIII, they also received a trailer for Square Enix's "brand concept," Code Age. The trailer didn't reveal much, but it's under the direction of artist Yusuke Naora, best known for his character designer on Unlimited SaGa and Front Mission 4. The trailer showed cel-shaded images of some of the characters and a voice-over that focused on evolution (text here). Since Code Age is being called a "brand concept," it leaves us to speculate that it'll see many forms; such as a game, tv show, card game, etc.
	Misc. Q&As/Features Boomtown interviews the producer of Shadow of Rome, Yoshinori Ono. GameSpot talks with a developer on Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls.
	Misc. Media/Previews
	GameSpot has import impressions of Dragon Warrior VIII. A nice trailer of Kingdom Hearts II and images of Death by Degrees are at IGN.
	Some rather pur'dy shots of Jade Empire and new details of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords are at IGN.
	IGN hosts a two and a half minute trailer for Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
	Game Informer puts up new images of Virtua Quest (PS2, GCN). IGN takes a peek at TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (PS2, Xbox, GCN). Game footage of King Arthur (PS2, Xbox, GCN), official trailer of ESPN Major League Baseball 2K5 (PS2, Xbox), and a video tour of Mercenaries (PS2, Xbox) are at GameSpot. Another look at Darkwatch (PS2, Xbox) is at GamerFeed. More screens of NFL Street 2 (PS2, Xbox, GCN) are at TeamXbox.