Late Night Consoling

Square Enix has revealed that a new Final Fantasy game is in development for PSP via its official site, which links to a sparse splash page with the name "Dissidia: Final Fantasy." "Fantasy is endless," reads the Flash introduction. "Fantasy has no limited form. Information revealed at Square Enix Party 2007." No details regarding the game's setting or genre were given, though the site does state that character design is being handled by frequent series illustrator Tetsuya Nomura.

Dissidia will join Square Enix's growing lineup of upcoming portable Final Fantasy games. Already known to be coming to PSP are Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, remakes of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II, and a remake of Final Fantasy Tactics. En route to Nintendo DS are Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates, and Final Fantasy Tactics A2.

Square Enix Party 2007 will be held May 12-13 in Chiba prefecture, Japan. Multiple new games are expected to be announced alongside demonstration of previously announced titles.

Publisher Electronic Arts announced today that Harmonix Music Systems' upcoming peripheral-driven rhythm game Rock Band will feature accessories licensed by legendary luthier Fender. Rock Band's standard guitar controller will be based on the design of the Fender Stratocaster, the iconic axe used by musicians such as Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Dick Dale, David Gilmour, Buddy Holly, and Pete Townshend. Fender-branded guitars, bass guitars, and amplifiers will be featured within the game.

Joining Fender in Rock Band will be music electronics manufacturers Roland and BOSS, whose equipment will also be featured.

"Like the Fender Stratocaster, BOSS effects pedals have a long distinguished history," said BOSS U.S. president Paul Youngblood. "We've worked with Fender on many projects in the past and we're honored to be sharing this experience with them. Having the Strat in Rock Band is going to take the virtual world by storm and when it does, weÂ’ll be proud to have the BOSS name and pedals right there with it."

Guitar Hero (PS2) and Guitar Hero II (PS2, X360), Harmonix's previous two games, have featured guitars licensed by another guitar giant, Gibson. Wired guitar peripherals for those games were fashioned after Gibson's distinctive SG model.

EA plans to release Harmonix's Rock Band for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this fall.

Tomorrow, Microsoft will launch its Xbox 360 sprng dashboard update, first announced last month. As previously reported, the update will feature support for Windows Live Messenger (aka MSN Messenger), improved Xbox Live Marketplace navigation, tweaked Achievement notifications, and various new download-related capabilities.

Microsoft has announced that this week's Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays release will be Empire Interactive's port of Technos' arcade brawler Double Dragon. Like past arcade ports, the game will feature enhanced visuals and music as well as an option to play the game with its original presentation. It will also include the Live Arcade-standard online leaderboards and Achievements.

Double Dragon will be released to the Xbox Live Marketplace on Wednesday, May 9 for 400 Microsoft Points ($5).

J Allard, Microsoft's formerly outspoken face of Xbox and currently more secluded Zune head, has finally honored his bet made with Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, who asserted that PSP would reach 10 million units sold worldwide within its first 12 months on the market. Sony's portable machine did in fact achieve Croal's benchmark, outselling its older sibling the PlayStation 2 for its initial year.

To live up to his end of the wager, Allard was to wear a dreadlock wig all throughout May 2006, including during Microsoft's pre-E3 press conference. Our favorite extreme engineer never fulfilled his end of the bargain, to Croal's dismay, but Allard has finally met Croal halfway and replaced his executive bio on the official Microsoft site with an explanation of the bet and a photograph of himself with a long dreadlock wig and a PSP proclaiming, "N'Gai had it right."

Croal has followed up on Allard's gesture with a blog post reflecting on the storied history of Allard's dreadlock bet. Though Croal admits that PSP has not seen the lifetime-to-date success he initially projected, its first year performance was all he needed to get Allard into the dreads.