Late Night Consoling

Recently, rumors surfaced that Epic's upcoming Gears of War (X360) might see release on October 2, 2006, based on changes made to the official Xbox website. Now, today's official announcement of the second GIGANTOUR music tour suggests that early October may indeed be a feasible launch period for the anticipated game. GIGANTOUR, which features metal acts such as Megadeth, Lamb of God, Opeth, and others, is being sponsored by Gears of War.

Speaking on the partnership, Xbox marketing exec Craig Davidson said, "We're totally jazzed about the partnership between Gigantour 2006 and our forthcoming Xbox 360 blockbuster, Gears of War ! Partnering a music extravaganza like GIGANTOUR with the launch of a mega-hit game like Gears of War captures the excitement around two awesome happenings for fans of music and video games!" Davidson's comment regarding Gears of War's launch in the context of GIGANTOUR suggests that the game may well be out some time during the tour, which runs from September 7 to October 8. The press release later refers to the game being out this "holiday," though with the previous website slip up, one does wonder.

Perhaps not coincidentally, outspoken Epic VP Mark Rein mentioned today on Epic's Gears of War forums that next week a "BIG announcement" will be delivered.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Sony Computer Entertainment UK executive David Wilson stated that Sony may well only release one of the two announced PlayStation 3 models in the UK on launch day. According to Wilson, the company is currently in "open consultation with retail and consumers to decide on the best way to approach the impending launches of both [SKUs]." Though both the 20GB hard drive- and 60GB hard drive-equipped models are likely to show up in the UK at some point, there are certain issues to be faced in launcing them simultaneously. For example, Sony must provide choice without consumer confusion, while satisfying retailers, explained Wilson.

These reports come soon after prior statements by SCE UK execs that there may be only one version available for the console at launch in the UK. At the time, the 60GB model, which also includes features such as a flash card reader and an HDMI port, was cited as the product that would see release. During Sony's pre-E3 conference this year, the price for that product was pegged at 425 GBP (US$787.57).

Rockstar Games today released the official cover shot of Rockstar Leeds' upcoming Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (PSP). The company also confirmed that the game will be shipping October 17, 2006 in North America and October 20, 2006 in Europe. and will retail for $49.99. Though the box shot indicates that the ESRB rating is still pending, the game will in all likelihood be rated "M for Mature."

Rockstar Leeds' previous entry in the series, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PS2, PSP) has been the most successful game on the PSP system, and the company recently released a budget-priced port of the game for PlayStation 2, on which it once again saw strong sales.

This weekend, the official Guitar Hero II MySpace page was updated with a short blurb about some kind of upcoming product or program, accompanied by a teaser image featuring a skull and crossed guitars subtitled with the acronym "G.H.O.U.L." The blog appears to be run by Guitar Hero publisher RedOctane, now owned by Activision, rather than developer Harmonix.

"Many of us have been in the laboratory here hard at work on something that I will officially announce within the next couple weeks," says the entry. "Stay tuned, more to follow..." Some gamers have optimistically taken the inclusion of a letter "O" in the acronym to possibly stand for "online," a tasty proposition indeed if it means long distance shredding duels. As for any kind of official explanation or confirmation, it looks like we'll just have to wait.

Nintendo today announced that it has sold over 21 million units of its Nintendo DS worldwide, combined in its original and Lite varieties, since its launch in November 2004. This came alongside the company's most recent earnings announcement, which showed a staggering 85% first quarter revenue growth year over year to 130.9B yen ($1.1B). The company also saw first quarter profits rise 10.2% year over year, coming in at 15.6B yen ($133.6M). In line with the results, the company has raised its earnings estimates for the coming year 6.67%, from 600B yen ($5.14B) to 640B yen ($5.48B). Profit estimates saw a 28% increase from 65B yen ($557M) to 83B yen ($843.4M).

To spur this growth, Nintendo plans on selling 17 million DS units, up from the previous estimate of 16 million, between its fiscal year spanning from April 2006 to March 2007. DS' cousin Game Boy Advance is expected to hit a worldwide install base of 77.6 million, up from the current 75.8 million, by that time. Nintendo also forecasted Wii hardware and game sales, expecting to sell 6 million consoles and 17 million games by the end of its fiscal year.

The official patch notes for today's update to Square Enix's Final Fantasy XI (PS2, X360, PC) indicate that an achievement system has now been added to the Xbox 360 version of the game. A list of achievements was not given, though a check on a Gamertag containing FFXI indicates that they number 32.

Apparently, achievements have something to do with players changing titles. The notes state:

After fulfilling certain requirements, players will be able to speak with title-changing NPCs to unlock Xbox 360 “achievements.”
In the case where players have no titles available to change, they will be unable to unlock any achievements.

In other Final Fantasy XI 360 news, the game now supports a resolution of 1024x768.

IGN has a translated interview with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, printed in a recent issue of Japanese publication Nintendo Dream. Miyamoto speaks about the R&D principles behind Wii, the genesis of the controller speaker, with which games he is currently most involved, and more.

1UP is starting a week's worth of content about Tetsuya Mizuguchi's studio Q Entertainment, covering Mizuguchi and Q's past work as well as what's coming in the future.