Late Night Consoling

Sony's PlayStation 3 won't be out for three more days, and Nintendo's Wii for five, but games for both systems are starting to hit retail shelves. Numerous publishers sent out shipping announcements for their PS3 and Wii launch lineups yesterday and today, so while you'll have to wait a bit longer to actually play Zelda or Resistance, you can at least impatiently paw at their cover art in the comfort of your own home.

Many Wii preorder holders have also reported receiving email notifications that their Wii accessories have been shipping early, so expect to see extra controllers as well as potentially things like Virtual Console point cards and different video cables show up before Sunday as well.

In September, Sony announced its intention to launch PlayStation 3 in North America with 400,000 units. The company has reiterated that figure several times since the initial announcement. Today, Lazard Capital Markets released a report by analyst Colin Sebastian estimating the system's launch numbers at more along the lines of 150,000-200,000 units.

While Sony's number refers to North America and Sebastion's specifically to the United States, the US will be receiving the bulk of the shipment and, if correct, the report would indicate a significant reduction in shipped units from what was previously expected. Sebastian expects the company to follow up with a year end total of 750,000 units shipped to the US; Sony announced an expectation of about 1.2 million units in North America by the end of 2006. By comparison, predecessor PlayStation 2 sold 1.1 million units in the US by the end of its 2000 launch year, while current competitor Xbox 360 sold only 600,000 Xbox 360 units during its 2005 launch year.

Various online reports tracking back to German site Cynamite.de claim that two Activision-published titles, Treyarch's Call of Duty 3 and Neversoft's Tony Hawk's Project 8, are not being rendered on Xbox 360 at the 720p (1280x720) resolution ostensibly required by Microsoft for all games on the system. According to Cynamite.de, Call of Duty 3 is rendered at a pixel resolution of 1040x624, while Tony Hawk's Project 8 is rendered at 1040x584, with both games scaling up in a proportionally appropriate fashion. Presumably, the reason for a developer using such a technique would be to lessen the load on the system to boost performance, but the site claims that Project 8 still suffers from framerate issues.

Similar reports arose last year in regards to Bizarre Creations' Project Gotham Racing 3, which appears to be interally rendered at 1024x600 and upscaled to 720p for performance reasons.

Activision had not responded to Shacknews' requests for comment at the time of publication.

Independent developer Foundation 9--whose studios include Backbone Entertainment, The Collective, Shiny, Digital Eclipse, and others--today announced that it plans to absorb developer Amaze Entertainment into its ranks. According to Foundation 9, this would result in the company becoming the world's largest independent video game developer.

Amaze is mainly known as a veteran handheld developer, though it has developed on all current generation handheld and home consoles. Recently, the company was responsible for the portable versions of the Eragon game adaptation, and is currently working on numerous titles including the Call of Duty: Roads to Victory (PSP) for Activision. It is comprised of subsidiary studios KnowWonder, Griptonite, Monsoon, and Fizz Factor.

Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to be completed in the Q4 2006, were not disclosed.

With the PlayStation 3 launch imminent, Sony Computer Entertainment America has revamped its official PlayStation site for the Americas, consisting of news and information regarding PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PSP.

Physics middleware provider Havok announced today that Neversoft's Tony Hawk's Project 8 uses both Havok Physics as well as the less frequently mentioned Havok Animation solution. The two Havok systems work in conjunction to blend physics interactions with dynamic animation. already released for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Xbox 360, and heading to PlayStation 3 and PSP,

Sony Online Entertainment sends word that its Smash TV-esque PSP shooter Cash Money Chaos has been renamed Cash Guns Chaos. The game is still on track for release in Q1 2007. - Screenshots.