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Are you sure about that?

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"Numerous companies have jumped ship because of that single fact."
-One company jumped ship. They had never done a 3d title before. Their reason is also dubious as this Penny Arcade comic so nicely points out.

Companies have been all over debunking the 'hard to develop for' FUD such as in this article.

Some more quotes:
Hideo Kojima - "It will take three years for games to make complete use of the total potential of the PS2. What's key is where to use those capabilities and what to make stand out. After some trial and error, titles with new ways of expressing things will appear. However, this is not going to happen right away."

John Riccitiello (President of EA) - "It's drop dead sexy."

George Lucas - "It's mind-boggling. What they've accomplished is just beyond comprehension, if you know anything about computers."

Trip Hawkins (President of 3D0) - "It's historic, a mass market appliance that fundamentally changes society in the same way the printing press did."

Jeronimo Barrera (Rockster Video Games) - "What usually happens with new hardware is, the people who are having a lot of trouble are the ones who are talking a lot of sh-t."

Most developer house already have created their own toolsets, some are even licensing them out to other developers, the 'hard' to program issue is a dead-issue and has been for several months now.

Vermifax

• Gamers.com - Not too much info nowadays (they got bit too)
  
• The GIA - Fairly good coverage of major events. Very review and gameplay heavy, rather than industry news.
  
• Gamasutra - Industry news in a simple format, though more finance and 3rd party tools related
  
• FGN Online - Pretty good coverage. It's now an IGN affiliate.
  
• SegaDojo - Fairly good SEGA related coverage
  
• MS Xbox - For the people who can get past the fact that Microsoft might just have a kick ass gaming machine
  
• Final Fantasy Online - For any Final Fantasy freak. The site's down at the moment, though
  
• IGN Games - Coverage of anything and everything in gaming
  
• GameSpot - Okay, so it's GameSpot. At least they publish all their media in downloadable MPEGs
  
• Core Magazine - All the random things that other people don't cover, including interviews and stuff straight from Japan.
  
• US Famitsu - Currently down, with no plans of coming back up, but it's the US branch of the standard gaming press in Japan - Famitsu
  
• Stomped - Lots of coverage of gaming in general, with some focus on FPS.
  
• Blue's News - Blue keeps going, and it's always focused on FPS for the most part.
  
• OMM - And of course, Old Man Murray.
  

And you don't think the mere fact issue of the XBOX specs won't have at least something to do with the XBOX's success? Or perhaps the fact that Sega is now porting games to the XBox? Jet Set Radio Future is reason enough. Here is a site that contains previews for some upcoming XBOX titles. However, I'll save you some time and suggest just looking at a 9meg MPEG of Double Steal. With graphics like this, Microsoft should just save their money on marketing and just worry about getting enough XBOXes out to the stores in time.

It's too bad about the Indrema. My impression is that that they never really intended to make another video game console, but a sort of hybrid TIVO/WebTV/DVD with gaming as secondary. Unfortunately, the gaming aspects are what drove the hype. Maybe if they dropped the specs to the point where they could sell these at profit for 300-400$, they'd be doing okay right now... i know many people including myself who would easily pay $300 just to have a networkable, python-programmable TiVO...

If Indrema was really intent on competing with the likes of Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, I'm sure that they would have picked a more catchy name and appealing box design, maybe even hire the same guy who designed the Xtrem. d:^)

Pablo

And you don't think the mere fact issue of the XBOX specs won't have at least something to do with the XBOX's success? Or perhaps the fact that Sega is now porting games to the XBox? Jet Set Radio Future is reason enough. Here is a site that contains previews for some upcoming XBOX titles. However, I'll save you some time and suggest just looking at a 9meg MPEG of Double Steal. With graphics like this, Microsoft should just save their money on marketing and just worry about getting enough XBOXes out to the stores in time.

It's too bad about the Indrema. My impression is that that they never really intended to make another video game console, but a sort of hybrid TIVO/WebTV/DVD with gaming as secondary. Unfortunately, the gaming aspects are what drove the hype. Maybe if they dropped the specs to the point where they could sell these at profit for 300-400$, they'd be doing okay right now... i know many people including myself who would easily pay $300 just to have a networkable, python-programmable TiVO...

If Indrema was really intent on competing with the likes of Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, I'm sure that they would have picked a more catchy name and appealing box design, maybe even hire the same guy who designed the Xtrem. d:^)

Pablo

Go take a look at the picture on the bottom of this page.

The page is showing the differences between the "TOOL" PS2 prototypes that were given to developers for testing and the production units.

It looks like there are 3 PCI slots on the TOOL unit. There are also some mysterious connectors (one to the right of the power cable, one on the bottom of the panel to the left of the cable) which look a bit like USB ports. Could be wrong on this one, as the PSX has similar connectors.

There's also what looks like an analog VGA output on the aforementioned panel.

I'm going to be very interested to see exactly what these really are.

I noticed a couple of less-than-entirely-accurate responses to this one, so here are the genuine facts.

1. Entirely false. If you head over to Core Magazine you'll find a couple of pages of shots of the innards of PS2 (1, 2). From what I've heard, the screws are covered up, but a little bit of effort and you can get at them. Expect this to void your warranty. :)
2. Entirely false. Every report I've seen of the DVD playback has suggested that if anything it's superior to other DVD players in the price range. And the playback software is upgradeable (stored on the memory card) - future versions of the software will be enhanced. Progressive video is said to be available with the next version. For more information, see IGN's story on PS2's DVD capabilities.
3. Partly false. It is backward compatible with most PSX games - of the games tested, about 15 don't work so far, and these are mostly obscure Japanese titles (Wing Commander III being the one exception). There may be a few more in the Western lineup, but not that many. Compatibility is considerably better than Bleem, since this is hardware emulation, not software. There's a real PSX chip in there doing the work (doubling as the I/O controller). You can optionally configure the system to enhance PSX games with faster load times and bilinear filtering of textures. This reduces compatibility, resulting in some big-name games failing to work, and bilinear filtering makes the textures look less crisp (but smoother) rather than more so.
4. It is backwards compatible with the old controllers, but the new version of the Dual Shock controller has enhanced features that you won't get if you're using the old ones, including analogue buttons all round and a slightly better made analogue stick. The expectation is that old controllers/memory cards will mainly be used for PSX games, whereas PS2 games will tend to require the new kit (you can't use a PSX memory card to save PS2 games, for example). At the moment none of the games out there really make use of the analogue buttons, but expect this to change fairly soon.
5. True, provided your definition of a supercomputer is woefully outdated. This has been rumoured to cause problems with export, but it's mainly marketing hype - the only potential real problem with exporting the system is likely to be the strong encryption on the memory cards.

I noticed a couple of less-than-entirely-accurate responses to this one, so here are the genuine facts.

1. Entirely false. If you head over to Core Magazine you'll find a couple of pages of shots of the innards of PS2 (1, 2). From what I've heard, the screws are covered up, but a little bit of effort and you can get at them. Expect this to void your warranty. :)
2. Entirely false. Every report I've seen of the DVD playback has suggested that if anything it's superior to other DVD players in the price range. And the playback software is upgradeable (stored on the memory card) - future versions of the software will be enhanced. Progressive video is said to be available with the next version. For more information, see IGN's story on PS2's DVD capabilities.
3. Partly false. It is backward compatible with most PSX games - of the games tested, about 15 don't work so far, and these are mostly obscure Japanese titles (Wing Commander III being the one exception). There may be a few more in the Western lineup, but not that many. Compatibility is considerably better than Bleem, since this is hardware emulation, not software. There's a real PSX chip in there doing the work (doubling as the I/O controller). You can optionally configure the system to enhance PSX games with faster load times and bilinear filtering of textures. This reduces compatibility, resulting in some big-name games failing to work, and bilinear filtering makes the textures look less crisp (but smoother) rather than more so.
4. It is backwards compatible with the old controllers, but the new version of the Dual Shock controller has enhanced features that you won't get if you're using the old ones, including analogue buttons all round and a slightly better made analogue stick. The expectation is that old controllers/memory cards will mainly be used for PSX games, whereas PS2 games will tend to require the new kit (you can't use a PSX memory card to save PS2 games, for example). At the moment none of the games out there really make use of the analogue buttons, but expect this to change fairly soon.
5. True, provided your definition of a supercomputer is woefully outdated. This has been rumoured to cause problems with export, but it's mainly marketing hype - the only potential real problem with exporting the system is likely to be the strong encryption on the memory cards.

I noticed a couple of less-than-entirely-accurate responses to this one, so here are the genuine facts.

1. Entirely false. If you head over to Core Magazine you'll find a couple of pages of shots of the innards of PS2 (1, 2). From what I've heard, the screws are covered up, but a little bit of effort and you can get at them. Expect this to void your warranty. :)
2. Entirely false. Every report I've seen of the DVD playback has suggested that if anything it's superior to other DVD players in the price range. And the playback software is upgradeable (stored on the memory card) - future versions of the software will be enhanced. Progressive video is said to be available with the next version. For more information, see IGN's story on PS2's DVD capabilities.
3. Partly false. It is backward compatible with most PSX games - of the games tested, about 15 don't work so far, and these are mostly obscure Japanese titles (Wing Commander III being the one exception). There may be a few more in the Western lineup, but not that many. Compatibility is considerably better than Bleem, since this is hardware emulation, not software. There's a real PSX chip in there doing the work (doubling as the I/O controller). You can optionally configure the system to enhance PSX games with faster load times and bilinear filtering of textures. This reduces compatibility, resulting in some big-name games failing to work, and bilinear filtering makes the textures look less crisp (but smoother) rather than more so.
4. It is backwards compatible with the old controllers, but the new version of the Dual Shock controller has enhanced features that you won't get if you're using the old ones, including analogue buttons all round and a slightly better made analogue stick. The expectation is that old controllers/memory cards will mainly be used for PSX games, whereas PS2 games will tend to require the new kit (you can't use a PSX memory card to save PS2 games, for example). At the moment none of the games out there really make use of the analogue buttons, but expect this to change fairly soon.
5. True, provided your definition of a supercomputer is woefully outdated. This has been rumoured to cause problems with export, but it's mainly marketing hype - the only potential real problem with exporting the system is likely to be the strong encryption on the memory cards.

Not a big deal, to some, but this sort of thing _really_ bothers me (when people take credit for stuff that they very obviously didn't do). Compare the pictures at http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/pc/docs/article/200 00304/ps2_e1.htm

with the ones in the article (handily linkified here)http://www.coremagazine.com/news/1844.ph p3

Sure, they give credit to Furukawa-san & Soba-san for the pictures but they had to slap their own watermark on the pics which have been up on the Japanese site for a day or two already. Just thought i'd point that out.