Late Night Consoling

This morning, Microsoft mistakenly sent out an announcement revealing "The Summer of Xbox Live Arcade," a month-long event that will see one new Xbox Live Arcade games released for Xbox 360 each Wednesday from July 19 to August 9. The schedule is as follows:

- July 11: Konami and Digital Eclipse's Frogger
- July 19: NinjaBee's Cloning Clyde
- July 26: Namco's Galaga
- August 2: Capcom and Sensory Sweep's Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting
- August 9: Namco's Pac-Man

In a video interview published on Eurogamer today, Midway president and CEO David Zucker spoke on his company's change in focus and upcoming plans. Zucker also had some words in defense of Sony and its PS3, which has received harsh words from some quarters in recent months due to the upcoming console's high price as well as various statements from company executives. "There's a lot in that PlayStation 3," he said. "Think about the fact that you get Blu-ray...the next-generational leap in DVD. You get a Blu-ray DVD player in the machine." Zucker also cited PS3's built in hard drive as a value factor, calling the price "reasonable" and also suggesting that the price will eventually lower.

In regards to the importance of the upcoming Blu-ray format to PS3, Zucker believes that the success of the console and its media format are closely intertwined. "I think it's an important part of the puzzle," he said. "If the PlayStation 3 is huge, that's going to have a huge impact on driving Blu-ray DVD technology."

Sony today issued a statement apologizing for the controversial PSP ads on display in the Netherlands. "We recognise that the subject matter of one specific image may have caused concern in some countries not directly affected by the advertising. As a result, we have now withdrawn the campaign," read the statement. The billboard advertisements contained a variety of scenes involving a white-clad Caucasian woman and a black-clad black woman.

The ad that generated the most criticism, likely due to a high-resolution photograph of that particular ad posted to a blog, depicted the Caucasian woman aggressively gripping the black woman's chin with her white-gloved hand. The caption read "PlayStation Portable White is coming" which, due to the positioning of the text, some interpreted as the separate phrases "PlayStation Portable" and "White is coming," which some believed took on a threatening quality when juxtaposed against the image in question.

Speaking of Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting (X360), Capcom this week announced that it will be holding two Street Fighter tournaments during this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego, California. On Saturday, July 22 from 12:00pm-5:00pm will be the Hyper Fighting tournament, and on Sunday, July 23 from 12:30pm-4:00pm will be a Street Fighter Alpha 3 tournament, making use of the recently released Street Fighter Alpha Anthology (PS2).

For complete tournament rules and registration, head over to the official site.

GameStop and EB Games have added to their online stores a product page for a PSP game called Godfather: Mob Wars, presumably the PSP port of EA Redwood Shores' The Godfather, released for PS2, Xbox, and PC this March. The game was originally announced for those platforms as well as PSP, and later Xbox 360; earlier this year, EA announced that the PSP and Xbox 360 versions would not be seeing a simultaneous release with their multiplatform brethren, but would hit stores later in 2006. Today's news is the first new information regarding the PSP game, which GameStop/EB list as shipping September 12 of this year. It is unclear what will differ in the PSP version of the game; since the product description refers to "both analog sticks," is is likely the description has been copied from the other console versions.

People Can Fly's long delayed Xbox port of its well received PC shooter Painkiller has finally wrapped up development and reached gold status, according to publisher DreamCatcher Interactive. The game is now set for a July 25 release date in North America.