Late Night Consoling

This July, EA announced that it would be bringing several of its existing franchises, such as Tiger Woods PGA Tour and The Godfather, to Wii. Today, the company officially announced the identity of the SSX game coming to Nintendo's current home console. Entitled SSX Blur, the game will be exclusively developed for Wii by EA Montreal and will make use of the system's motion-sensing controller. Few in-depth details were released, though the company did send over an announcement trailer showing a brief gameplay clip. "We wanted to take the soul of the franchise—the air, the speed, the tricks, the fun—and Wii-ify it," said producer Alex Hyder. "You're going to see that reflected in the On-the-Ground & In-the-Air controls, the characters, the user interface, and every other aspect of this game."

EA plans to release EA Montreal's SSX Blur for Wii in March 2007.

Last night, not long after being updated last week, PlayStation 3 received a new firmware patch, bringing the machine up to version 1.30. It is available via the console's system update function as well as for download through Sony's official site. The update includes additional options to format the hard drive, a tool to backup data from flash memory cards to the hard drive, and the ability to add the Blu-ray Disc remote as a Bluetooth device. Most notably, however, are changes to how the system selects its output resolution. Now, users can check off every resolution supported by their television, rather than simply selecting the highest supported resolution. When playing a game or movie, the PS3 will then choose the highest available resolution supported both by the game or movie and the user's television according to the checklist. Unfortunately, this does not fix the major issue of 720p-only games not displaying in HD on 1080i-only HDTVs; such games, including Insomniac's Resistance: Fall of Man, still downscale to 480p on displays that do not accept a 720p signal.

The patch also introduces a new inconvenience for owners of 720p HDTVs that also accept 1080i signals. One of the patch's changes is to prioritize 1080i over 720p if both signals are available. This means that content supporting both resolutions connected to a 720p-native but 1080i-supporting HDTV will choose to send the 1080i signal, resulting in a scaled image rather than one at native resolution. This applies to much PS3 content, including the cross media bar dashboard, web browser, and various games. There is an easy workaround for affected users, which is simply to uncheck 1080i support from the resolution menu. However, this introduces another problem as the PS3's Blu-ray Disc player does not output in 720p, meaning that 720p HDTV owners must manually enable 1080i output on the PS3 before playing a Blu-ray movie, or the movie will be downscaled to 480p.

Essentially, this recent patch has provided a needed convenience for a certain group of users--1080i HDTV users--while creating a new inconvenience for another group--720p users. Sony needs to instute standards among developers that, since the PS3 lacks its own internal upscaling hardware, both 720p and 1080i must be supported by every game. Blu-ray functionality should also support both resolutions, and the resolution output menu should allow users to set their own order of priority based on their TV's resolutions and their own preferences. Insomniac has stated that it is currently working on a patch addressing various multiplayer aspects of Resistance; hopefully, it also addresses the game's resolution issues.

Publisher Ubisoft today revealed its financial results for the fiscal half ending September 30, 2006. Though the company again posted operating losses, those losses shrunk year over year as revenue increased. Losses were down 20% to $47 million from $58.1 million in the same period of the prior year, which CEO Yves Guillemot attributed to "very good business performance and tight control of marketing expenditures." High R&D costs were a factor in keeping the company in the red. Sales were strong, however, with revenue up 13% year over year to $228.8 million.

Today's results have prompted Ubisoft to raise its projected minimum growth for the 2007 fiscal year from 8% to 10%. The company has strong expectations heading into its third quarter, with the latest iterations of the Tom Clancy's franchises Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six performing well at retail. The company also saw two of its Wii games in the top five seller list at launch, with Red Steel the #2 mover after The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Rayman Raving Rabbids also making it into the top five. As a result, Ubisoft plans to increase its support for the platform heading into the coming year.

Microsoft has repeatedly stated its intention to ship 10 million Xbox 360 units to retailers by the end of 2006. This week, VP Peter Moore indicated to Bloomberg that the company may exceed that target. "They key is we're in stock, we're available, we're delivering well to retail," said Moore. "Certainly the consumer is recognizing the fact that we have a great price point as well as 160 games available and that flies in the face of our competition."

Speaking to Reuters today, a Microsoft representative reiterated the expectation to "have sold in excess of 10 million units worldwide." She clarified that units sold refers not to consumer sell-through but to units delivered to retail