Late Night Consoling

Namco has laid out their release plans from August 2005 through the end of the year, with a bit of bleeding over into 2006. Notable releases include We Love Katamari (PS2) in September, the PS2-only Soul Calibur III (PS2) on October 25, and Hellgate: London (PC) still with a TBA. Ridge Racer 6 (X360) is also listed as a "Fall" release, which suggests that the game may in fact be a launch title for Xbox 360. Previous release estimates for the game were towards the end of the year, or simply TBA.

Though it was assumed in the past that PS3 would launch with a 1x (54Mbit/s) Blu-Ray drive, improvements in speed may allow the console to be equipped with a 2x (108Mbit/s) or 4x (figure it out) drive. Technology being what it is, 2x drives will already make it to the market this fall, and there's plenty of time left until PS3's general "spring 2006" release for even faster drives to become available. Of course, there is always the issue of cost. And, more importantly to consumers, price.

In a community-generated interview over at Nintendo's Metroid site Luminoth Temple, Retro Studios has answered some questions regarding Metroid Prime 3, set for release on Revolution. As one might expect, many of the answers are general and non-revealing, but there are a few particularly interesting responses in there. For example: "We plan on taking advantage of a number of new features in the Revolution, including the controller", "The player can expect to explore different, quite varied environments in Prime 3", "Kenji Yamamoto...will return as the composer for Prime 3. We hope to take the music into some new directions for this title, and there's no doubt Mr. Yamamoto is going to relish the challenge." (Note: to access the interview, first create an account with a screenname at Nintendo.com then go to the Luminoth forums.)

Despite widespread speculation that the merger of pachinko giant Sammy and software legend Sega would drive the latter into the ground, the resulting partnership of Sega Sammy Holdings seems to be doing pretty well. The company has shown $95.5M in income on $986.6M in sales, and apparently the influence of Sammy (the financially stronger of the two) has not had a detrimental effect on the corporate freedom of Sega. Sammy continued to be profitible in the somewhat surprisingly popular pachinko market, while Sega enjoyed strong sales of titles such as The King of Beetle MushiKing: Road to Greatest Champion (GBA), which was the top-selling game in Japan at launch.

Those of you without a GameCube only have a few more months until Resident Evil 4 on PS2. Today Capcom confirmed that the game would ship in North America on October 25.

And it's silver this time. It's not coming to North America, though. Shucks.

Wade Tinney at Gamasutra brings us coverage of the first Casual Games Conference.