Late Night Consoling

Sony, IBM, and Toshiba officially unveiled their Cell processor today, talking hard numbers and even showing a few pictures of it. The Cell is a multicore processor capable of handling many large tasks at once, with Sony saying it shows similarities to current supercomputers. Based on 64-bit architecture, the Cell houses eight "Synergistic Processing Units", although it can use more or less, depending on what's needed. Engineers have clocked it above 4GHz and processing 256 billion floating-point operations per second. If you want to get into the hard tech specs, check out IGN's report here.

Sony Computer Entertainment America confirmed to GameSpot that a separate event will be held to lift the curtain on the PS3. Up until now, SCEA has said E3 would be the time and place, but they apparently have changed their minds. No further details were offered except that it will not use the upcoming GDC to make the announcement.

Activision revealed in their earnings call that Call of Duty: Finest Hour will receive a sequel for all home consoles. No specific machines were identified, but it will be release during fiscal year 2006, meaning the game will be on store shelves prior to April 1, 2006.

With a slew of baseball games on the horizon, a possible pricing war may break out. So far, the only game to officially state a price is Sony, whose MLB 2006 will sell for $39.99. That leaves the prices of 2k Games' MLB 2K5, EA's MVP Baseball 2005, and Nintendo's Pennant Chase Baseball up in the air. EBgames.com is listing MLB 2K5 at $19.99, just like the previous sports releases from Take-Two. Rumors are suggesting that EA will give MVP Baseball 2005 a $29.99 tag. Nintendo may be the only company selling their game for $49.99 as none of the other three games will release for the GameCube.

In an Activision earnings report, the company revealed that the DOOM 3 Xbox port won't see release this March. Instead, April is the new hope. Activision CEO Ronald Doornink said, "On the Doom SKU question, our confidence level is very high that those SKUs will be released in April."

Nintendo announced today that the company's president, Satoru Iwata, will give a keynote speech at the upcoming Game Developers Conference, which begins March 7. His keynote is titled "The Heart of the Gamer", which will cover the state of the industry today, how it will develop in the future, and Nintendo's role in it. The only other scheduled keynote will be given by Microsoft's corporate vice president, J Allard.

The official U.S. PlayStation site added a new listing today and it's for a title that hasn't been announced. According to this listing, a sequel to Winback is in the works. Winback was an action/espionage game for the Nintendo 64 that saw moderate success. Currently titled Winback 2nd Operation. Koei is publishing the title and the listing surprisingly states it'll see release this month. Hopefully Koei will shed more light on this in the near future.

A Dutch gaming site is claiming that Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 will find a home on the Nintendo DS. EA Pacific is supervising the development of the game, which will make heavy use of the stylus. A Red Alert AND Age of Empires on the Nintendo DS? RTS fans rejoice!

Two games received solid release dates today. First, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition will make its way onto store shelves on April 12 for the PS2 and Xbox. Super Monkey Ball Deluxe will also release on those two consoles on March 15.

Okay, I would consider importing this one. Nintendo revealed that they will sell a limited edition Pikachu GBA SP at its Pokemon Center stores. The case is yellow with the top lid sporting Pikachu's face. It will sell for $93 USD on March 5.

GameSpot talks with David Jaffe, developer on God of War, and Marc Ecko about his game. 3DAvenue talks with Destroy All Humans! producer Derek Proud. Jussi Laakkonen talks with Computer Games Online about FlatOut.