Late Night Consoling (Updated)

During a speech given at Sony's San Francisco launch event for SCE Santa Monica's God of War II (PS2), game director Cory Barlog let slip that rumble functionality will indeed be added to PlayStation 3 and its Sixaxis controller. Initially, the developer mentioned rumble in passing as a feature that would be implemented in a hypothetical God of War III for PS3. "Rumble coming back to PS3, eh?!" cried Barlog after the slip, inciting the crowd of journalists and developers to cheer.

The semi-announcement comes as little surprise in the wake of the announcement that Sony and force feedback developer Immersion have settled their legal feud, with Sony planning to license Immersion technology for unspecified platforms.

In regards to a still unannounced PS3 version of God of War, Barlog implied that such a game would be presented in 1080p resolution and would be the conclusion of the God of War trilogy. "If we were to do a God of War III on Wii--I mean PS3," said Barlog, "then it would finish this massive story. We've always imagined God of War as a trilogy, but the PSP game very much ties into it."

No further details regarding PS3 rumble functionality or God of War on PSP or PS3 were revealed.

One of the worst kept secrets in recent video game industry times, IGN confirmed once again that Ready at Dawn will be bringing God of War to the PSP later this year thanks to an advertisement on the back of the God of War II (PS2) instruction manual. In actuality, snapshots of the ad first surfaced last week, and prior to that, Ready at Dawn's use of the God of War font on their site provided a strong backing for rumors of the time. Ready at Dawn's previous PSP game, Daxter, drew much acclaim for its technical achievements.

Updated: Speaking at a Sony-conducted God of War II launch event in San Francisco tonight, game director Cory Barlog confirmed that God of War is indeed heading to the PSP. Though Ready at Dawn will be handling development, Barlog will have a supervisory role on the game as the steward of the God of War franchise.

Recently, rumors have begun circulating that EA's upcoming Harry Potter game on the Wii will use the rumored microphone attachment. While EA has indeed announced a Harry Potter game for the Wii, Shacknews can confirm that these rumors are purely speculation and are almost certainly more the result of internet miscommunication than an actual information leak.

Digital Eclipse's rendition of Konami's 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game will hit Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday, March 14, Microsoft announced today. As discussed last week, the game contains two to four player co-op play over Xbox Live and will sell for 400 Microsoft Points ($5).

Nintendo added three more to its Virtual Console lineup today. Tecmo's Tecmo Bowl (NES, 1-2 players) represents the first football game on the service, going for a meager 500 Wii Points ($5). Sega's Sonic Spinball (Sega Genesis, 1-4 players), which combines platforming and pinball, can be had for 800 Wii Points ($8). Wrapping up this week's offering is Hudson's Double Dungeons (TurboGrafx16, 1-2 players), a role-playing adventure based around dungeon exploration, priced at 600 Wii Points ($6).

Speaking on the trials and tribulations of developing voice and handwriting recognition software for use in Nintendo's Brain Age (DS), Nintendo SDK and middleware head Takeshi Shimada also discussed several updates to the NintendoWare development tool, which allows artists to "view an accurate representation of their special effects [on a PC] without loading their code onto a Wii development kit." Among the upcoming additions, Shimada and his group are working on "easy-to-incorporate fur-shading middleware," tools for predicting a user's input based off past actions, and a potential text-to-speech utility.

Over at Gamasutra, three industry analysts (Ed Barton of Screen Digest, Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies and Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities) mull over the future of exclusive games.

GameJew chronicles his ultimately successful mission to serenade Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto at this year's GDC.