Shared posts

19 Nov 17:43

Next-generation Manifesto

by bestopensourcesoftware

No European Revolution until 2017?

According to games industry magazine MCV, Nintendo’s next home console, the Revolution, will not launch in Europe until spring 2007. According to the magazine, quoting a Nintendo “source, Nintendo are “currently looking at mirroring the DS strategy, so Revolution would release in the US first in November, closely followed by Japan. Then March for PAL territories.”

Videogames music concert tour hits US

Video Games Live describes itself as “game music concert, theatrical stage show and interactive video game all wrapped into one”. Frankly, the mind boggles. Essentially, this is a full orchestra and choir playing music from current titles like Zelda, Halo and Metal Gear Solid all the way back to Pong. With images from the games up on screen, audience members invited up to play games with musical accompaniment and laser light shows to boot. The tour kicks off in Los Angeles on July 6.

Xbox 360 for $300

Microsoft Xbox head honcho J Allard has told financial website TheStreet.com that the Xbox 360 will retail “in the neighbourhood” of $300 when it launches. Allard said the exact price was only a few months away from being revealed.

PS3 graphics chip unfinished – E3 demos under suspicion

Marv Burkett, nVidia’s Chief Financial Officer, has revealed that the RSX chip, due to power the PS3 is currently unfinished. The chip is not due to be available to anyone until September. Which means the stunning visuals shown at E3 could not have been created on one, casting doubt on the validity of Sony claims that the visuals were real PS3 in-game footage. Burkett has commented that the visuals had been created on current nVidia hardware of roughly the same power as the RSX. That still casts some doubts on the PS3’s barn-storming E3 presence, and particularly whether much of the footage (as it appeared to be) was done, at best, using the game engine to create cut-scenes, or whether it was really realtime, in-game footage.

Spore for Xbox 360?

Steve Ballmer seems to be hinting that Spore is going to come to the Xbox 360. The game, Will Wright of The Sim’s fame’s next title, due out in 2006, sees you nurturing a new species from amoeba all the way to galaxy-faring space race. The other creatures your species comes up against or interacts with are drawn from other player’s worlds. In an interview with Joystiq.com, Microsft CEO Ballmer said: “We’ve got to be there showing things which are more interesting, whether it’s a Spore or a Kameo.” Kameo is set to be one of the Xbox 360’s launch titles from Microsoft.

Nintendo DS rumours are rumbling

Nintendo was in fact the first manufacturer to pioneer the rumble feature with a free piece of hardware that came with Starfox for the Nintendo 64 so perhaps this will be a free upgrade available with Metroid Prime: Pinball. I’m not really sure how a rumble pak will add to handheld gaming experience, in fact I’m not even sure what it does for console gaming in general except make the Xbox controller sound a bit like an angry bee. But Nintendo has always focussed its efforts on using technology to make games more fun instead of simply showcasing and hopefully we’ll see something more solid soon.

A next-generation manifesto

Apointlesswasteoftime.com has come up with one of the funniest and most accurate pieces of journalism on videogaming in some time. Entitled “A Gamers’ Manifesto”, this is a list of the 20 things gamers are hoping for from the next wave of consoles. Highlights include: “AI that will actually outsmart us now and then”, “don’t play the same Madden commentary on every fifth play”, “seriously, get rid of the crates”and “no more jumping puzzles in first-person shooters”.

Ubisoft forming UK arm of all-female gaming clan

Games publisher is creating the UK arm of all-female gaming clan, the Frag Dolls. The US group has had success in gaining sponsorship deals and winning tournaments. Now Ubisoft in the UK is looking for “avid gamers” who already are broadband gamers with several systems and have a “presentable appearance”. Like the US lot, picture here, we suspect that means.

Nokia smartphones to be more powerful than N-Gage

Nokia’s press conference at E3 wasn’t very clear. So we sat down with the head honchos of Nokia after to find out what was going on. At the press conference, Nokia had announced that N-Gage gaming power would be transferred across to its range of smartphones in 2006. Then Nokia showed a video of gameplay that clearly couldn’t be done on any N-Gage currently. So what was going on?

The full story appears to be that Nokia’s next wave of smartphones, launching in 2006, will use the N-Gage’s library of 3D graphics and networking protocols. But due to their processing power, will be able to outperform the current N-Gage. Whether that means new N-Gage-branded handsets will form the top tier of these devices as a kind-of N-Gage 2, as would seem sensible, is another matter. And one currently unconfirmed by Nokia.

PSP gets nearly 30 games for launch

The European launch of Sony’s PSP handheld console will be accompanied by 29 games. Titles in the 29 for first day release include WipEout Pure, Ape Academy and Ridge Racer. 45 titles will be available by end 2005, including Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, Burnout: Revenge and FIFA Football.

Mobile games a $11 billion business

Analysts at Informa Telecoms And Media believe that the market for mobile games will hit $2.6 billion this year and go over $11 billion within five years. Most of the revenue will come from downloads for this period, with multi-player revenue streams only starting to make significant impact around 2010. 6.7 per cent of mobile owners globally will download a game this year. But by 2010, over 15 per cent will download a game in the year. Finally, the report says that memory card distribution will be increasingly important for large and feature-rich 3D games during the period.

Gizmondo launches in US this August

At a barn-storming E3, Tiger Telematics announced that its Gizmondo handheld console will launch in the US on August 11. They also announced that around 90 games would be out for the console by the end of 2005.

Nintendo DS phones home

Nintendo demonstrated “voice over IP” technology between two DS handheld consoles at E3 last week. The prototype system linked two DS units and their users across the E3 show floor, with virtual avatars appearing on screen lip synching to the voice. The system relies on the DS’s WiFi connectivity to transmit voice via the Internet.

E3 breaks 70,000 attendees

With Xbox 360, PS3 and Nintendo’s Revolution all showing for the first time to the games industry, it’s no big surprise. E3 has announced that over 70,000 games industry professionals from 79 countries attended the LA games-fest last week. Over 5,000 games were on show, with over 1,000 of those for the first time.

Logitech hints at G-Series

Logitech recently launched the MX518 Gaming-Grade Optical Mouse, a beautiful piece of hardware designed specifically for extreme gamers. Following E3 2005 Logitech has revealed plans to continue this line of product development and release a whole range of premium dedicated gaming products called the G-Series.

Unfortunately it neglected to mention what any of these goodies were to be but Logitech´s director of product marketing for interactive entertainment, Ruben Mookerjee reassures that “The G-series products will perform expertly in the hyper-intense PC gaming environment, making gamers a millisecond faster, a half-pixel more precise, and ultimately more successful.”

Frankly anything that continues the quality of the MX518 sounds good to me and details of exactly what is being made will follow at some point over the summer. Here’s hoping Logitech come up with an Xbox Controller that doesn’t give you hand cramp in 4 hours of play.

Prices for PS3 and Xbox 360

Analysts and games websites are openly speculating on the launch prices for the PS3 and Xbox 360 after Sony officials told Mainichi Shimbum newspaper in Japan that its console would retail for “less than 50,000 Yen”. The upshot? General belief is Xbox 360 will come in at $400, PS3 at $450. Simon M

Xbox 360 backwards compatibility a mystery

According to GamesIndustry.biz, because of differing chipsets both on the Xbox 360 motherboard and graphics card, Xbox backwards compatibility will be a matter of “recompiling” individual Xbox games for Xbox 360. So say Microsoft. Worms… Can of… Open? Does this mean you’ll need to buy new versions of your old games for Xbox 360? Or will Microsoft provide them free? Or is everyone grasping the wrong end of the backwards compatible stick here? First up either way are the two Halo games.

E3: Swing your mobile phone

Scottish start-up, 3motion, was showing a revolutionary techno widget at E3. A motion-sensing software and hardware solution so small and lightweight it could be mounted into almost anything. Potential uses 3motion envisages range from kids lightsabres that register movement, all the way to you swinging your mobile as if it’s a golf club while waiting for the train.

E3: Spore wows E3

Sims creator Will Wright has been showing his next game, Spore, off behind closed doors at E3. The most exciting game of the show sees a Sim-style approach to the development of an entire species and world from single-celled organisms all the way up to galaxy-exploring space farers. With you designing your own creatures, and their habitats. Coolest of all, while the game is entirely single player, the world your creature inhabits will be populated by cultures, species and items crafted by other players, and downloaded automatically.

E3: Gizmondo back from the brink

Gizmondo’s had a great E3 for three reasons. Firstly, it’s finally shown off games that actually use its unique features. The GPS-enabled gang war game Colors sees you playing a single-player Grand Theft Auto lookey likey, but that links into a multi-player game based on where you live in reality being your home turf. You can then challenge other gangs as you go through their turf, or just leave them a graffiti message. Agaju: The Sacred Path looks slightly more dubious – a tomb raiding game that involves you using the Gizmondo’s camera so the game sees when you turn around and matches your movement in-game.

Symbols in the box with the game can also be held up in front of the camera to trigger events in the game. More excitingly than its own games getting good, Gizmondo has announced Electronic Arts will be supporting the handheld console with titles including FIFA Football and SSX. Finally, Gizmondo’s stand was packed to the rafters through the show. Though this may be because it was built to be a maze of little alleys and had more “booth babes” per square foot of stand than any other.

Nintendo unveils Game Boy Micro

Fundamental Tech law: when any gadget comes out, wait a coupla years and they’ll find a way of re-releasing it even smaller. In accordance with this law, Nintendo has announced the Game Boy Micro at e3. This games player is only 4 inches wide, 2 inches tall and a piffling .7 inches deep, weighing a feather light 2.8 ounces. It will play all Game Boy Advance games and feature customisable face plates. Cute little thing, innit?

New Metal Gear

Konami’s E3 press conference saw them announcing three new Metal Gear titles. Metal Gear Acid 2 is the sequel to the first PSP Metal Gear game, doing very well where it’s out already in the US and Japan. The turn-based strategic play of the original remains, but a new acid-bright colour scheme will make the game more “pop culture”. Metal Gear Solid 4, the next MGS for the PS3, was teased – no gameplay footage was shown, but a bizarre dreamlike trailer showing Solid Snake playing a bloody game of musical chairs confirmed Solid Snake would be the main character and the game would follow the events of Metal Gear Solid 2.

Game director Hideo Kojima stated that there were hints about the game in the movie, but we’re not smart enough to decode them. Once the fanboys work it out we’ll be posting here. Most exciting was Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. A reworking of MGS3, like Substance was for MGS2, this will add third-person view with controllable camera, and most excitingly, online multi-player. The first ever multi-player Metal Gear will see team-versus-team play as well as a single player playing Snake versus an entire team of soldiers.