Late Night Consoling

The crazed leader of Team Ninja and creator of the Dead or Alive series, Tomonobu Itagaki, talked at length about the hardware of the Xbox 360. A few of his big points were that the Xbox 360 was easy to develop for because of its infrastructure and middleware, but making full use of a multicore processor is still a big challenge. He's satisfied with 512MB of memory but the lack of a next-gen disc format was a big disappointment. He even took a moment to jab at Sony and their paper launches.

It was only a matter of time but now it's a reality. A little while back, hackers were able to create ISOs of PSP games; essentially whole copies of the game. However, they weren't able to do anything with them.. until now. A loader has been released that allows owners to download and play Lumines off their memory stick. A game still needs to be inserted and there is no sound, but it's a small step to massive piracy. No sound in Lumines? That is the true crime.

While the Nintendo DS is definitely a hot piece of hardware with some rather surprising sales numbers, it still can't compete with its bigger, but technically-challenged, brother the Game Boy Advance. While in May the DS sold 57,000 units, the GBA pushed over four times as much: 237,000 units. Expect sales to surge again when the Game Boy Micro is out.

SEGA's action-thriller that puts you in the role of a detective that must bludgeon as many hobos as possible has apparently been delayed. Condemned: Criminal Origins has been slated as an Xbox 360 launch title, but another update to its official page pegs it at Winter 2006. Bummer.

GameGossip has discovered that SEGA's massive RPG, Phantasy Star Universe, which is both a singleplayer game and an MMORPG, has been given a new release date. SEGA has updated its gamepage for the title, changing the date from Spring 2006 to Winter 2006.

Codemasters sent out an enthusiastic press release today announcing their new online gaming division. It's already been around for about eight months and they currently have a few MMORPGs in development along with a few casual games.

This sure doesn't happen everyday! 14-year-old David Robinson was playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (most likely killing hookers and training to become a killing machine) when suddenly lightning struck his home. The lightning traveled through the wiring, through the PS2 controller, and straight into his body, giving the kid quite a jolt. He's all right, but his controller is toast. A a special Saturday mass service is being held in the controller's honor.

Game Informer chats with the producer of Madden NFL 06. 1UP talks with PlayStation big-wig, Kaz Hirai.