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If it's really a "Megaton"-type announcement, then it's something for the North American market this time. Sega of America is the one that revealed the upcoming announcement.

I can't wait until I get my Nike chain mail boots.

Designers wanted to know: how did ICO become great? Perhaps there was a secret method or ingredient they could tap, to transform their rough creations into timeless masterpieces.

To the frustration of many, however, it seems that ICO was always great; from the beginning of its development process, to the end.

This is not the impression I got from 1up's coverage of the same lecture. The impression I got was that, from an aesthetic standpoint at least, Ico was a disaster narrowly averted.

For one, Ico used to be a PS1 game. Can you imagine Ico on the PS1, with its nasty 1994-era affine polygon rasterizer, and without the gorgeous lighting system that the PS2 enabled? Admittedly, "don't make PS1 games" isn't very helpful advice for today's designers, but considering the importance of aesthetics on Ico's impact, I would not have considered a PS1 version of Ico "great."

Also, consider the following elements, which 1up describes as having been part of Ico at some point in the past: Yorda with horns, pigtails, in a purple dress, and speaking a language you understand. Ico battling human soldiers, with a health-meter. Cut-scenes involving attack robots. (!?) Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido clearly made the right decision in removing these from the mix.

There's another article about the ICO conference at 1up.

ICO is one of the most amazing games I've played, and much of that is due to the attention to details. The first time I held Yorda's hand and I felt the tug through the Dual Shock I was sold on the game. A pity it didn't do better in the market, though - it really deserved to do better.

The only gaming magazine I've found that's worth a damn is Polygon. All the others look like-- and more importantly are, in my experience-- juvenile crap. Their substance of badly written, uninteresting articles is all but drowned out by the flashy crapfest that Kyle partially describes.

So, my question is: What gaming magazines out there are actually good? Which ones are well-written enough, or at least well-designed enough, that they would be at least a little bit interesting to someone who hasn't been 15 in a good long time, or who doesn't have a completely unbalanced interest in games? I've read that 1UP is good-- are there any other worthwhile gaming zines?

I think this has gone a little bit too far. HardOCP posted an article that was quite misleading. I don't think they they maliciously *lied*, but definitely misled it's readers.

I read through the letter that Infinium sent HardOCP, and a lot of it was "he said-she said" where essentially Infinium seems to be complaining that they weren't given a chance to rebut points made in the article before it went to virtual "press" -- points like the existance or non-existance of facilities, buildings, and demos.

There were also other issues that I thought was clearly nit-picking. For example, point 3 complains that because Roberts quit as CEO of BIG 6 months before it went bankrupt, he clearly shouldn't be blamed for the bankruptcy. Is Infinium implying that BIG was doing great until Roberts quit, and suddenly collapsed 6 months after he left? If anything, I think that interpretation of the facts is much more misleading than HardOCP's.

I do think that the HardOCP piece was not favorable towards Infinium, especially in light of more recent coverage that seems to suggest they've actually got working models now. However, as far as I can tell, the HardOCP article was factual in content and it's certainly its perogative to publish a negative piece on hardware that it doesn't like. As long as HardOCP is accurate in its use of research material cited in the case, I think this whole case is less about whether HardOCP likes the Phantom or not, and more about the right of news sites to call things as they see them -- whether you do or don't agree with their opinions. You're free to post a rebuttal if you disagree, but not to sue to shut them up in the first place.

I think this has gone a little bit too far. HardOCP posted an article that was quite misleading. I don't think they they maliciously *lied*, but definitely misled it's readers.

I read through the letter that Infinium sent HardOCP, and a lot of it was "he said-she said" where essentially Infinium seems to be complaining that they weren't given a chance to rebut points made in the article before it went to virtual "press" -- points like the existance or non-existance of facilities, buildings, and demos.

There were also other issues that I thought was clearly nit-picking. For example, point 3 complains that because Roberts quit as CEO of BIG 6 months before it went bankrupt, he clearly shouldn't be blamed for the bankruptcy. Is Infinium implying that BIG was doing great until Roberts quit, and suddenly collapsed 6 months after he left? If anything, I think that interpretation of the facts is much more misleading than HardOCP's.

I do think that the HardOCP piece was not favorable towards Infinium, especially in light of more recent coverage that seems to suggest they've actually got working models now. However, as far as I can tell, the HardOCP article was factual in content and it's certainly its perogative to publish a negative piece on hardware that it doesn't like. As long as HardOCP is accurate in its use of research material cited in the case, I think this whole case is less about whether HardOCP likes the Phantom or not, and more about the right of news sites to call things as they see them -- whether you do or don't agree with their opinions. You're free to post a rebuttal if you disagree, but not to sue to shut them up in the first place.

I don't usually feed trolls, much less AC-branded ones, but after several tough coding hours I need some stress relief. Oh yes, I'll bite =)

Bullshit. Xbox TRC says you're not allowed to touch the metal. (Plus MS owns a lot of patents that they swiped from SGI. I wouldn't be suprised if any of them cover shaders.) You have to use XAPI and DirectX for everything. Clever emulation software will intercept these API calls and run them in native code. Easier said than done, but it is possible. Perhaps the only snag to the problem might be the games released with the LTG(?) libs, which is where the linker does funky stuff with inlining the libraries or something. (Can give a fair speed boost!)

Bullshit? Tell that to Nvidia's CEO, for him being the single most important person in that company to talk about this topic, he's not quite sure it's doable, RTFA, not even ATI or MS are really sure about it.

<sarcasm>You should go tell this incredible secret of yours to MS, ATI or even Nvidia, you could get some serious $$$ and stop selling penis enlargement pills!!!1</sarcasm>

Seriously, I conceded MS _can_ solve this and any other issues, but it's more of what's wrong with the Xbox, they can't keep throwing money into an increasingly dead-end architecture. Of course, compatibility has never been out of the question, I merely stated the pros/cons and I don't think it's a wise decision to keep it.

As I stated earlier, why should you care about expensive compatibility, when you could get "improved" versions of your games in the next console, without any old-generation drawbacks or requirements? Admit it, you'll just fall for it =) HDD? Long download waits? wrappers? High-level emulators? Heh, how soon you'd forget all about that...

I'm an annoying punter but wouldn't it be smarter for Infinium to actually demo one of these consoles...

The Phantom console is real. It was demoed at CES. Penny Arcade, HardOCP, and other so-called "news sites" are slandering the company. I don't need to tell you how poor of an "editor" Michael Sims is for publishing such a biased article on Slashdot.

Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Game Industry Maven

It's amusing to note the couples based solely upon the imaginations of the players (and fanfic writers.)

It's amusing to note the couples based solely upon the imaginations of the players (and fanfic writers.)

The following few sentences on the NFL Gameday 2004 page are making my brain hurt:

At the end of the second half, the score is 7 - 6. The Panthers are not content to go into the locker room with the score so close. With less than 3 minutes left, they pull out some play calling that is so pass-friendly you'd think the Colts were on the field.

The end of the second half is the end of the game, and if it really means the end of the second quarter/first half, then why is there all of a sudden three minutes left and both teams score again to make it 14-9? For once I'm sure this isn't a product of my being half asleep, this actually MAKES NO SENSE. ARGH! For the love of god, 1up needs an editor.

Your game is coming. Your wish is granted.

I can't wait to see this fly. When I worked at EB, we had problems with customers mixing up the power cable with the A/V cable. They thought the memory card fit into the controller slot. We had one guy who came in to buy a Dreamcast jump pack (generic tremor pack) because he couldn't jump high enough to get a certain part of the game. Did you see the back of the Phantom? Dear God, this'll be great. Obviously, they're going for a more mainstream audience than the PC niche crowd, since those people already have PCs AND broadband AND the patience to install hardware and software and patches. So the question is literally: who's dumb enough to buy this?

Oh yeah. We "people" may have enough consoles and a powerful PC, but whenver a new console comes out, we always buy it. I forgot.

Heh, I remember when this news first broke last night.

One true industry insider said it was a step towards Nintendo taking over Bandai. But...we had to wait for fenegi-. Fenegi-, of course, is the owner of Video-Fenky. Also great is the fact that the same fenegi- goodness seen in Video-Fenky is dripping over to 1up.com like juice off of a rotissered ham. So visit both, guys, and support good gaming journalism.

Okay, fenegi-, I want my ten dollars now.