Late Night Consoling

To add onto the stuff already covered in this news post, J Allard had a few other things to say. He opened by saying over 1,000 engineers has been part of the three-year development of the next Xbox. He confirmed that games are to be made with the 16x9 format and 5.1DD sound in mind to guarantee a high definition experience. Live awareness will be mandatory. Finally, the event closed with 1,000 attendees getting a free Samsung HDTV (lucky!). Also, here are some shots of the "Next Generation Xbox Guide."

With the acquisition of The Creative Assembly, SEGA immediately issued a press release announcing that it's publishing Spartan: Total Warrior, a console-only title based on the popular PC strategy series, Total War. "Spartan: Total Warrior was conceived, designed and implemented right from the beginning as a console only product," says Ian Roxburgh, Studio Marketing Manager at The Creative Assembly. It's based in the Roman Empire era where your character is leading a fight against the Romans. The environments, armies, and battles are to be fought on a massive scale. "...CA has developed a title that offers both dynamic, real-time combat sequences and epic-sized battles; a combination that has never been technically accomplished on this generation of hardware," said Scott A. Steinberg, VP of marketing for SEGA of America.

They weren't as open about their new system as Microsoft, but Sony did talk about a few important things for the development crowd. For instance, Cell will rely on standard OpenGL libraries and support Cg, a language developed by nVidia. Finally, they wrapped it up by saying it's up to the developers on how they want make to use of the nine processing units. "You, the developers, are the composers," said Dominic Mallinson, research director for SCEA. "It's up to you to assign tasks to get the best possible performance."

During a video played at GDC showing reactions from different people involved with Xbox Next development, film director James Cameron revealed he's working on a game. "In my next film, I can only tell you what we're planning on doing which is simultaneous developing a major motion picture and hopefully a major game title that co-exists in the same world, that share characters." He continued, "Going into that world will actually inform those watching the film and vice-versa. I don't want to say anything more than that because I don't want to give away some of the cool stuff that we're working on." However, it's already known that his next project is a film adaptation of the anime Battle Angel Alita.

Japanese gaming magazine published the first details on the third entry in the Shadow Hearts series, Shadow Hearts: From the New World. Details are scant since the article is in Japanese, but the two characters are aged 21 and 16 and the United States appears to be the central location.

Epic Games announced that they have licensed their Unreal Engine 3 to Microsoft Game Studios to use in future titles. "We only work with the best partners and utilize the best technologies, and Epic and the Unreal Engine 3 hit the mark on both those fronts," said General Manager Shane Kim.

Kotaku interviews Cameron Ferroni, general manager of the Xbox.