Late Night Consoling

Gadget blog Engadget had a chat with Bill Gates after his keynote address, and while the Microsoft chairman had a lot of things to say about various Microsoft-related technologies, we're more concerned with what he said about the Xbox 360. On the general games front, he says there will be 50 games available for the machine by the midpoint of 2006, by which point he expects hardware supply to have caught up with demand. Oddly enough, the one game he deigns to comment on is a poker game, which will be coming out in the first half of the year. He also mentions a few other upcoming features, such as a camera for Xbox 360 and text messaging between PC and 360.

In regards to the company's chances against Sony this generation, Gates feels the 360 is off to a strong start, noting that "it's very based on software expertise" this time around, obviously an area where Microsoft has the advantage over its main competitor. At one point last year, Gates claimed that when PS3 launched it would do so in the face of Halo 3. Now, fortunately, he's noting that "even we don't know when that will come out," instead saying that "it's up to the team" (presumably Bungie) to take enough time to make a great game.

Gates, obviously a supporter of HD-DVD over Blu-ray, still hopes for a unified next-gen optical disc standard and believes such a compromise is possible. He doesn't quite know how the "format war" will end up, but he comes off more confident than Microsoft's Peter Moore, who says we may see...

In an interview published today by Japanese site ITmedia, Microsoft's Xbox marketing man Peter Moore admitted that there is a possibility of seeing a Blu-ray drive on the 360"Since we're using external drives, we can change as the market changes," he said in Gamasutra's translated report. Since Sony's support of Blu-ray is integral to its machine, he notes that "Sony can't do that. If Blu-Ray wins, that's a big chance for Sony. But if Blu-Ray fails, it will be a considerable blow for them." While it would be possible for Sony to release an external drive with HD-DVD compatibility if that's the way the pendulum swings, it seems very unlikely given Sony's protectiveness of formats it supports, proprietary or not.

When Team NINJA's highly anticipated Dead or Alive 4 (X360) was repeatedly delayed over the course of several weeks, some speculated that the game wasn't meeting Microsoft certification. GameSpot reports on a bug which fuels that particular fire. It seems that certain users have lost all saved progress with the game, including unlocked characters, costumes, achievements, rankings, and so on. Publisher Tecmo confirmed the problem and provided a temporary potential workaround while they discuss it with Microsoft.

Tecmo recommends that to prevent the problem, owners should follow these steps: turn the 360 off with the game disc inside; press the disc eject button to power on the machine and open the tray; wait until all your game accomplishments and achievements are loaded into your Gamer Card; close the tray with the game. If you still experience problems, contact Tecmo at (310) 944-5005 or help@tecmoinc.com.

The Japanese launch lineup for Xbox 360 didn't have much on the launch lineup in the Western world, but it did have Tetris: The Grand Master Ace (X360), an Xbox Live-enabled version of Alexey Pajitnov's all time classic puzzle game. Well, now us non-Japanese folk can get our hands on an online version of the game that sucked my life away in Calculus class. Nintendo has announced the creatively named Tetris DS (at least it's not Tetris: Double Stupendous or something), which will feature connectivity to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection online service. The press release describes a bunch of wacky modes containing various Nintendo characters, but all I really care about is being able to play classic Tetris multiplayer against people on a portable console. It supports up to 10 players with a local wi-fi connection while sharing one cartridge. Tetris DS will go online with up to four players, and has some kind of point-based ranking system.

The game will hit shelves March 20.

So, you have a 360 and you've heard the hype about Bizarre Creations' Project Gotham Racing 3 (X360) but you're still not convinced? Well, now you can decide if the game is for you with the help of a handy (and huge) 1.23GB demo on Xbox Live. Get to it.

Game Informer has a long interview with Microsoft's Peter Moore, mainly about the situation since the 360 launch. While linking the interview, Kotaku comments on Microsoft's decision to shut down its Japanese Xbox 360 lounge not much more than a month after opening it.

GameSpot has a video interview on the PSP version of EA's From Russia With Love (PSP, also PS2, Xbox, GCN).