Eurogamer.net have an excellent piece pointing out the full litany of bizarre marketing speak, over-inflated claims and suchlike from Microsoft’s Xbox 360 press conference. Highlights include Peter Moore stating “In the HD era we’re going to deliver the Zen of gaming” and J Allard saying “It’s a platform that no other company in this industry can even try to match”.
Revolution arrives
Nintendo showed off a prototype of its next home console, the “Revolution”. Looking much like one of those new Macs, only in shiny black, Nintendo promised that the end unit would be even smaller – the size of three DVD boxes stuck together, in fact. The only details Nintendo confirmed about the Revolution were: that the controller and interface with the screen would be “revolutionary”, without revealing in what way; that it would play 12cm optical discs, old GameCube discs and DVDs with an internal add-on fitted; it would have 512MB on-board memory and an SD card slot; in-built Wi-Fi; most intriguingly that it would be able to play downloaded versions of Nintendo’s entire 20 year library of games. That’s right, Nintendo plans to offer a download service of all (or nearly all) its games spanning from the NES to the N64. Nostalgia-grabbing brilliance of backwards-looking niche-ism? Time will tell.
N-Gage games now on Nokia smartphones too?
Nokia has announced a scant few details about its future plans for N-Gage at its E3 press conference says the team at our sister blog Games Digest. N-Gage gaming will be extended to Nokia’s raft of “mobile smartphones” in mid-2006.
Whether this means most of Nokia’s high-end phones will now come with an N-Gage card slot, or whether it simply means they’ll be able to play games as good as an N-Gage (ie take the 3D graphics processing and networking capabilities, but not actually emulate an N-Gage) remains to be seen. As does what this means for handset design – will all smartphones be laid out for gaming, or just some? What it doesn’t appear to mean is a folding of N-Gage into smartphones.
Games out Friday May 13
Forza Motorsport (Xbox) Designed, like its rival Gran Turismo, from the ground up to deliver a realistic racing experience. Your response to that will be entirely based on how much engine tuning, sticking to race lines and learning proper race techniques excites you. Us? Not much post-Burnout. But to many this will be the best racer on the Xbox yet. With superb online options, a high level of realism and even some damage that affects performance. IGN.com says: “A force to be reckoned with, out-maneuvering Gran Turismo 4 in several respects, and beating out everything else in the sim department on Xbox, straight out. A must-have game.” 9.5/10
And the rest…
Kessen III (PS2) Koei seem to make nothing but these kind of strategy/action fighting adventures. All feature riding on horseback across a battlefield, then hitting things. Fun, but perhaps the formula needs some updating? Gamespot.com says: “Both accessible and enjoyable.” 7.4/10
Singstar Popworld (PS2) The pedigree’s excellent. Singstar, the Sony karaoke game, is a great piece of fun. And Popworld is just about the best thing on TV currently, with two brilliant presenters making every other music show look dull in comparison. So why are there no reviews online yet? Why haven’t we seen any code yet? Ominous, very ominous…
Xbox 360: it’s official
Following on from the MTV broadcast Xbox 360 launch (aired tonight in the UK, 8pm), here are the concrete details about the system: Launch 2005 for US, Japan and Europe; Wireless controllers; Clip-on front fascias (like mobile phones); 20GB detachable hard drive; two memory card slots; two USB ports; all games to support High Definition and Xbox Live; Two levels of Live service, with one being free to download updates and extra content.
Microsoft to unveil universal game controller at E3
The big news will undoubtedly be the Xbox 2 launch. But in the PC section of Microsoft’s stand, the corporation has announced it will be showing an early version of a games controller that works “across Microsoft’s gaming platforms“. In other words one controller to rule both Xbox 2 and PC gaming.
Blu-Ray, HD-DVD format war gets truce
The format wars between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, the disc format set to be used in the PS3, look set to be over before they’ve begun. A new format, according to Nihon Keizai Shimbun, will be announced shortly that will feature Blu-Ray’s manufacturing processes, but HD-DVD’s software encoding tricks. Presumably the new format will be used instead of Blu-Ray in the PS3. Microsoft’s next console is set to use plain old DVDs apparently.
Xbox 2 specs leaked?
Treat as rumour, but the latest leak from Microsoft’s camp appears to be the specifications for both the Xbox 2 and its associated, revamped Live service. And it makes for interesting reading…
Two varieties of Xbox Live are proposed, Gold and Silver, with Gold requiring a subscription.
Features for Gold service include (as well as all the stuff Silver Live users get): Matchmaking using player “Reputation”, gameplay “style profile” and always on Xbox Live. Silver service users only get access to “Free Xbox Live weekends” as well as massively multi-player games if they pay their specific subscription fee. Both Gold and Silver users get a host of online and offline benefits on top though, including: game, movie and music downloads, micro transactions (for player-crafted items or new levels) and custom playlists for every game.
Gold Live benefits
Seamless transition to Xbox Live account from Xbox to Xbox 360
Multiplayer online gameplay
Enhanced matchmaking using Reputation
Skill level matchmaking
Gameplay style profile (casual, competitive, etc.)
Silver Live benefits
Free Xbox Live weekends
Access to massively multi-player online games (additional fees may apply)
Online achievements
Communication with voice, video or text
Free and premium download game content
Free and premium downloadable movies, music, tv
Reputation
Micro transactions
Access to other players’ Gamer cards via Live
Recent players list
Downloadable demos/trailers
Benefits available offline
Avatar for gamer profile
Motto for gamer profile
Personalized look for Xbox System Guide
Offline achievements
Cumulative gamer score
Location/language profile
Custom playlist in every game
Play music from portable devices
View images from digital camera
Stream media from Windows XP
Interactive screen savers
Track info for CDs
General hardware specification
Support for DVD-video, DVD-Rom, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-Rom, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG photo CD
All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
Customizable face plates to change appearance
3 USB 2.0 ports
Support for 4 wireless controllers
Detachable 20GB drive
Wi-Fi ready
The processor
Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each
2 hardware threads per core
1 VMX-128 vector unit per core
1 MB L2 cache
CPU Game Math Performance: 9 billion dots per second
The graphics chip
Custom ATI Graphics Processor
500 MHz
10 MB embedded DRAM
48-way parallel floating-point shader pipelines
unified shader architecture
Memory
512 MB GDDR3 RAM
700 MHz DDR
Memory Bandwidth
22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
21.6 GB/s frontside bus
Audio
Mulitchannel surround sound output
Supports 48khz 16-bit audio
320 independent decompression channels
32 bit processing
256+ audio channels
Revolution and DS will connect wirelessly
Nintendo president, Saturo Iwata, has revealed that the next Nintendo console, codenamed “Revolution”, and Nintendo’s new handheld console, the DS, will be able to connect to each other via Wi-Fi. This confirms previous rumours that Wi-Fi wireless Internet connectivity will be built into the Revolution.
Rumour: PS3 three times more powerful than Xbox 2
Gadget magazine T3 have a news story up on their site claiming that a developer with access to “development kits” for both says the PS3 is three times more powerful than the Xbox 2. We say: rumour, rhubarb, rhubarb.
Zodiac taps out
It’s a shame, but you could see it coming. With all having been exceptionally quiet on the games front recently from combined Palm PDA/gaming device the Tapwave Zodiac, and with prices for the units dropping dramatically at retail, it should be no surprise. According to Tapwave’s Senior VP of Marketing, Byron Connell (via Tapland.com), Tapwave are moving “from offering Tapwave branded retail products to developing new co-branded products for OEM partners (i.e., other leading consumer electronic companies).” In other words, goodbye Tapwave Zodiac gaming PDAs, hello Tapwave software-powered PDAs. What does this mean for Tapwave games? “Some partner companies are interested in delivering a next generation gaming experience, but most (with the arrival of Sony PSP) are focused on working with us to create other mobile solutions – rich multimedia, navigation and communication.”
PSP UMD discs cracked
Complete versions of several PSP games have surfaced on the web. These “ISO” format files are essentially the contents of the entire UMD disc that the game came on. As this no easy way of creating UMD discs unless you’re a games publisher, then that doesn’t mean that pirate UMD discs will be available soon. But it will encourage the emulator scene to try and create a PC emulator to play PSP games on your PC.
Gizmondo to show new technologies at E3
Gizmondo, the dark horse of the handheld console race, is set to show “incredible” new technology at the world’s largest videogames trade show, E3, in Los Angeles later this month. Colors, Gizmondo’s own gang-warfare game has already been revealed to use GPS location data as part of the gaming mechanic. The new announcements focus on Agaju: The Sacred Path, which is set to feature “Augmented Reality” and “Gyroscopic Camera” technologies. Quite what these buzzwords mean is down to the self-facilitating media nodes amongst you to work out. Also set to feature is a game using GPRS mobile signal data.
ABC News puts shows on PSP
The ABC News Network in the US has begun putting short information shows onto Sony’s psp.connect.com website for download to PSP. The two shows available so far are both brief and feature technology heavily (one is on cyber-security, the other hybrid cars). ABC joins other content providers already posting wildlife documentaries, film trailers and cartoons to the site.
PS3 to beat Xbox 2 says analyst
Analysts Wedbush Morgan have called it first: the PS3 will grab 55 per cent of the next generation console sales by 2010, Microsoft’s next Xbox will get 35 per cent and Nintendo’s “Revolution” will get 10 per cent (each plus or minus five per cent). This is according to their report which states their belief that the launch of the next Xbox this year will not significantly kick-start the next console war, with that only happening after PS3 and Revolution’s arrival in 2007.
