Late Night Consoling

The lineup of playable games at Capcom's Tokyo Game Show booth contains no particular revelations, consisting of Resident Evil 4, the gorgeous Okami, Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, and Monster Hunter 2. However, the publisher claims that these four are only a small part of what they will be showcasing, so there will surely be more to come.

For example, Joystiq is speculating that the long-awaited Street Fighter 4 may be Capcom's ace in the sleeve. It does seem like a long shot, however. 1UP seems to think that it might be Virtua Fighter 5 instead.

Developers have come out on both sides of the debate regarding the Xbox 360's two-tier model structure. One more to add to the list of those against the plan is Valve's Gabe Newell. He's not thrilled about not being able to rely on having a hard drive when making games. Newell's complaint is as follows, given after expressing his ambivalence towards Windows Vista:

"I had the same conversation with the Xbox 360 guys. It's like, Xbox 360 doesn't make my life any better, and in fact, it makes it a lot worse, as you're telling me I can't count on having a hard drive."

IGN is reporting on an interview done with Yoshihiro Maruyama, general manager of Xbox Japan, in which Maruyama speaks on some of the obstacles and plans Microsoft is facing in terms of a successful launch in Japan. The main failing of Xbox and aim of 360 in that country is software support, which he claims has been a renewed priority of Microsoft for some time now. He declines to lay down specific sales figures that the company would consider a success, but apparently the goal (a rather lofty goal, one might say) is to be the Japanese market leader in 2007.

Fighting game specialist SNK/Playmore has announced its games lineup for Tokyo Game Show. Nine games were listed, including The King of Fighters: Orochi Story (PS2, date unannounced), which collects The King of Fighters from 1995-1997 with updated sprites.

Samurai Champloo, an anime series by Shinichiro Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame, will be adapted to a PS2 video game by Bandai. Apparently, like its source material, the game will contain "hip-hop samurai action." I don't know anything about the series, but I do know it has a funny name. Samurai Champloo. Samurai Champloo!

A new game development studio has been birthed: Deep Fried Entertainment. The dev house was formed by ex-EA members Phil Weeks, Russell Rice, Steve Tolin, Ryan Bedard, and Brian Tolinc, as well as industry newcomer Brenda Bailey. The company plans to develop for handheld systems such as DS and PSP. Deep Fried Entertainment is based in Vancouver, Canada.

Disney Interactive's Toontown Online will be ported to unspecified consoles by Platform Publishing, a Sony Online label. The game has been available on PCs since the summer of 2003, though only through the internet. The deal will see the game available on store shelves as well.

1UP believes Bungie's Halo 2 (Xbox) to be broken in the multiplayer department. As such, they bring us "Broken Halo: Five ways Bungie can fix Halo 2."

GameSpot has Designer Diary #2 for Surreal Software's The Suffering: Ties that Bind (PS2, Xbox, PC).