Late Night Consoling

San Jose Mercury News journalist Dean Takahashi recently took a visit to Microsoft. After speaking to various Xbox-related employees such as designer Greg Gibson, Rare studio manager Ken Lobb, marketer David Reid, and spokeswoman Molly O'Donnell, Takahashi learned that the company is "disappointed that it can't get more units of the Xbox 360 into the market." This month, additional units have reached stores, but they have sold briskly and demand remains far from satisfied. Takahashi reports that the supply problem is less a matter of chip yields and more to do with actual systems problems. This is consistent with certain information I have received indicating that Microsoft had been working on eliminating software issues right up until launch.

That said, Gibson claims that Microsoft is happy to have beaten Sony to market in three major territories, and predicts that in the long term these supply problems won't matter. Takahashi expects supply to start meeting demand some time in January.

Hideo Kojima has confirmed the existence of a new Metal Gear game for PSP. It's not related to the upcoming Metal Gear Ac!d 2, but it is being directed by Shinta Nojiri, who directed that game as well. This new titled is called Metal Gear B.D., and 1UP's Japanese gaming news correspondant believes it's some kind of digital comic with gameplay elements. That exact sort of game was rumored recently for PSP, and "B.D." is the French abbreviation for comics ("Bande Dessinee"), so it's looking pretty likely. Kojima himself had some rather schizophrenic things to say about the game. "It's totally new," he said, then 'It's just a normal game. Only with one little thing radically different about it." He also said, "It might be too new for people. I don't even know if they're going to sell this thing. I mean, I find it interesting myself, though who knows what people will think of it." Well, that clears things up.

Also heading to PSP is a Taito puzzle/action game called Exit. The game features stylish hand drawn artwork and what appears to be fairly old-school 2D sidescrolling gameplay. It's not a shooter though, it seems more in the line of something like Lode Runner. Taito plans to have additional downloadable levels for the game as well.

Exit comes by way of a deal between Ubisoft and Taito that has Ubi publishing three of Taitio's games in North America and Europe. There's no word on details or platforms for the other two.

Various sources are reporting that Nintendo PR man Reggie Fils-Aime revealed at a recent Nintendo event that Sega is "intrigued" by the backwards compatibility functionality of Nintendo's upcoming Revolution, suggesting that Nintendo's once-rival might be interested in working some of its classic titles into the Revolution's download service. This would actually come as little surprise. Sega executives such as Sega of America president Simon Jeffrey have strongly hinted at such possibilities this past year. Jeffrey has called Nintendo platforms Sonic's spiritual home now that Sega is out of the hardware business, and also said that the company is "very excited about the prospects of Revolution."

William Rogers at Next Generation takes a look at what he considers the year's Ten Best Games in Japan, only a few of which made it to English-speaking territories. He's got five for PS2, four for DS, and an arcade game. Rogers' justifications for the significance of the games he chose makes for interesting reading.