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They'll be using Macs, just like the XBox 2 Developers.

The New Xbox 2 (or Xbox 360?) is using the PowerPC , if fact Microsoft is currently using Apple G5 as the development platform. So they will have experiance on the Power architecture. I seem to remeber them doing some work in with NT on PCC in 98? but it was killed.

That's a little steeper than first anticipated, but mainly because of the bundled memory stick I would guess. Anyway, $250 for a portable game machine may be steep, but as others have mentioned, it does more than games. In particular, I'm considering it as a PDA replacement. If Sony follows through and releases a productivity pack of applications like a web browser, address book, etc., then $250 for a wi-fi enabled PDA that also plays music, movies, and (ahem) games, is not too bad. There was a story today reporting that PDA sales are down again. I think the PSP is a definite threat to that market, along with cell phones. Besides games, all I want is a decent calendar, address book, and a web browser that'll let me surf using my living room access point. The PSP might just do that cheaper than any of the PDAs out there right now.

The NBA was wise not to sign EA's initial offer for exclusivity, but I hear a sweeter deal is in the works...

In my opinion, Sega's 2K basketball series is deeper and more intelligent than EA's Live franchise and it's rather sad if no more future versions of it won't ever get released.

The deal between NVIDIA and SCEI is described as a "broad, multi-year, royalty-bearing agreement," which will "encompass future Sony digital consumer electronics products," and also includes "a variety of graphics development tools and middleware" according to Sony boss Ken Kutaragi.

Early PS2 games sucked because nobody knew how to program it.

I am of course speculating but NVIDIA could also be developing an OpenGL library / driver for the PS3.

"Xbox-exclusive...R..P....G...."

zzzzz.

PS2: GTA:SA - out now :-)

In other news: Microsoft ot aquire bioware, and they have delays already!

pesky.

New sports coup for EA as ESPN signs 15 year licensing deal

Take-Two seeking "longer term commitments" from sports leagues - Eibeler

EA wipes out rival NFL titles with new five-year exclusive deal

Michael Sims, Domain Hijacking and Moral Equivalancy

New sports coup for EA as ESPN signs 15 year licensing deal

Take-Two seeking "longer term commitments" from sports leagues - Eibeler

EA wipes out rival NFL titles with new five-year exclusive deal

Michael Sims, Domain Hijacking and Moral Equivalancy

New sports coup for EA as ESPN signs 15 year licensing deal

Take-Two seeking "longer term commitments" from sports leagues - Eibeler

EA wipes out rival NFL titles with new five-year exclusive deal

Michael Sims, Domain Hijacking and Moral Equivalancy

EA already bought Criterion, last year. The reason being, Criterion make a bit of software called RenderWare, that is used by a whole host of games developers as a base library for building their products. EA bought them in order to bring RenderWare into their operation, although RenderWare is still licensed to non-EA-published developers. So far as I'm aware, there's been no layoffs, and the staff are happy with their EA compensation packages.

Nokia has been lying about their sales the whole time. As of Feb '04 they claimed to have shipped 600,000 units, even though after its first two weeks on the market they claimed 400,000 units, and claimed two weeks later to have doubled that. It seems a year later, a quarter of that sold inventory evaporated.

Of course, you should check the date on that article at The Register - it's Feb 24, '04. In fact, just three weeks earlier they had lied and claimed to pass the million unit mark.

Nobody in the industry was fooled. Unfortunately I can't link you to the speculation which I really want to give you, but the rumor is that Nokia never actually shipped half a million units, and that less than five percent of them have been sold, whereas an unheard of ninety percent have been returned by retailers. To give you a sense of scale, that famously bad Atari 2600 E.T. game which many people claim as the worst game in history not only outshipped and outsold the N-Gage in its entirety, but also had a lower return rate.

Listen harder. There are more hits for the phrase "n-gage sucks" than there were confirmed walmart sales of the device the world over in two years of carrying the monstrosity.

Sony is already supporting Blu-Ray. EA and Vivendi just announced they're on the Blu-Ray bandwagon as well. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid= 6196

GT4 did not sell a million copies in two days, that's merely the number of copies shipped to retailers. The actual sales figures are around 635.000 copies in the first week, which is still very impressive, and about 15.000 copies more than GT3 sold in its first week.

Although that article you linked to claimed that it was running games, another site says that the console was never plugged in during CES. Link to Article here

The article does mention that the Phantom was part of a display for Windows Embedded Devices, which I guess means someone at Microsoft has seen this thing running, but it still seems a little suspicious to me.

...and with the continued sucess...

I guess it depends on what you mean by "success". If success means losing tons of money all the time, then yeah, the X-Box is a success. This type of financial spending is what Japanese companies in the 80s were doing, taking huge losses on products in order to get a stranglehold on the market.

MS didn't buy anything.

Yea, they were at CES last year. But they never turned the freakin' piece of crap on! LOL *GamesIndustry.biz http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?sect ion_name=new&aid=2786 "Infinium Labs' proposed console, the Phantom, has made a showing at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as announced by the company earlier this week, but only in the form of a box which was not switched on." -

A quick google for "XboX G5 dev" would provide countless reports, however here's one just for you: Gamesindustry.biz

EA lost 20+ people in the creative group that gave us MOHAA. They left to form Infinity Ward and delivered Call of Duty, then were bought by Activision. Any industry consolidation will likely kill redundant/competing titles, but it may also cause more frustrated creatives to jump ship to create their own studios or join competitors.

They are already working on it:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?sect ion_name=dev&aid=3851

Unfortunately, you won't know until January.

This completely debunks the myth that is this Slashdot article.

However, a senior source close to Sony Computer Entertainment told gi.biz that it was a "ridiculous suggestion" that Sony would look elsewhere for a designer and manufacturer for the graphics processor (GPU) for the future console. "Sony has its own chip design teams and manufacturing facilities with massive experience in this sort of thing," he commented. "Lashing NVIDIA's technology onto the PS3 architecture would simply make no sense either technologically or commercially."

Sony is noted for taking a homegrown approach with the components in its console; the PS3 is expected to feature the Cell microprocessor, which Sony created in partnership with IBM and Toshiba, while the PS2 and PSP both feature custom graphics chipsets designed by Sony's labs.

"I'd expect that Sony talk to a lot of people," he commented. "In a business like that you always explore all the options, but it would take a hell of a pitch to change minds at Sony about internally developing the GPU, and NVIDIA just don't have that pitch.

Here is Sony Computer Entertainment's Ken Kutaragi has to say about this "4-6 hours."

So if you don't want to play graphically intensive games or play wirelessly or set set the volume and brightness too high, you are almost sure to get the promised 4-6 hours.

When has Sony lied about a product's features before?

The problem I have is that Valve can pretty much decide arbitrarily who they want to whack. Maybe someone didn't like what you had to say in a forum and you were "accidentally" added to the hit list of license violators. You will have no recourse.

I think Valve has made a big mistake trying to shift this much power to themselves. But that's me. I, for one, will not continue to be their customer.

Considering, Nintendo is "only" expecting to sell 4 million units by next march, and will "only" have 2 million units available at launch time (see this article), I think fulfilling 5 million pre-orders before the PSP launches will be a bit difficult. Wouldn't you agree?

However, I do agree that Nintendo will seriously outsell the PSP. I also think that the PSP will put a moderate dent into Nintendo's sales.

By the way, GTA:SA has 'broken box office records' in the UK - in it's opening weekend it sold 26million pounds worth of units - beating Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (the film) into second place.

[...]Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has smashed yet more UK sales records, selling over a million units in just nine days - making it into the fastest selling game, the fastest to hit a million units, and the fourth biggest selling PS2 title ever. [...]

That gamesindustry.biz article was nice. But one of the ones it links to is even better!

Nintendo DS to launch with up to 10 titles, $29.99 software price point.

Jez San hasn't bought Argonaut at all. He bought back 2 of the subsidiaries (Just add Monsters and Morpheme) and the Edgware site (the original Argonaut site) has been closed, with all the employees laid off.

Jez San hasn't bought Argonaut at all. He bought back 2 of the subsidiaries (Just add Monsters and Morpheme) and the Edgware site (the original Argonaut site) has been closed, with all the employees laid off.

A modchip is not acting as a replacement part. It does not 'unlock' or permit operation of the console. The purpose of a modchip is to bypass the signing mechanism used to prevent you from playing pirated games.

Okay, time for a list of modchip uses:

- Playing unofficial/unlicensed software (ex: Game Enhancer, which was almost definately first developed with the help of a modchip, since absolutely ZERO Sony code or patents were used to complete the software)
- Using unofficial devices (ex: New max memory devices made by Datel)
- Cheating devices (ex: Game genie by Galoob)
- Playing backups
- Bypassing region protection

These are all locks placed on the device by the manufacturer in an attempt to stop the usage of third party items, such as:

1 - Third party discs not authorized by the console manufacturer
2 - Third party software not authorized by the console manufacturer
3 - Third party hardware not authorized by the console manufacturer
4 - Authorized software from the manufacturer that was not intended to be used in your country

As far as I know, in all three situations, doing those things is legal. It is legal for me to put Maxell media in an HP burner (item 1), it's legal for me to install Windows XP to a Mac (item 2), it's legal for me to use a non sony DV tape in my Sony DV camcorder (item 3), and it's legal for me to watch a PAL videotape in the USA (item 4).

Now, for some reason, the person who built the device decided for me they didn't like items 1 - 4. So they built the device not to allow this. Now this law says such locks are illegal. And since the actions were legal to start with, where's your beef?

That someone might do items 1 - 4 with an illegal intent? Yeah, they could. In fact, you could install a pirated Windows XP on a Mac using an emulator. Does that make the emulator illegal? You could copy a copyrighted gameboy game into a blank flash memory cartridge and play it on your gameboy. Does that make computer memory illegal?

This is no different than banning box cutters on airlines because you think a terrorist is going to slash your throat with one. You're using an (extremely poor) band-aid to cover up what is a societal problem that already has PLENTY of legal recourse against the act, and you are inconveniencing and embarassing people as you do it. It's nasty and wrong, and, quite honestly, it makes me, as an outsider, afraid to enter your country. It's no different than trying to ban chewing gum just because someone might stick it under a desk.

Another factor that probably figures into low xbox sales is that there have been reports saying that xbox2 is coming out in 2005. Nobody wants to buy a console that may be obsolete in a year or less. Especially since xbox2 is not expected to be backwards compatable.

PS2 isn't going to have the same problem because they have a good track record there.

Let me give you a link:

9/2/2004: Gamespot article

Quote: "The highlight of the presentation was the unveiling of the PSP hardware developing tool"

Also Sony didn't tell developers that they would be responsible for the PSP's battery life until recently. Which means they are still changing specifications this late.

By the way, we're expecting to see a price point on the PSP in the first week of October. Nintendo kinda caught Sony on the hop with the pre-TGS announcement; everyone expected them to hold off on saying anything about DS until their conference on October 7th.

Looks like the 33,000 Yen price is on the money though, which will make the PSP twice the price of the DS. I think it's interesting how at E3 this year everyone was incredibly psyched about PSP and didn't give a shit whether it'd be more expensive than DS or not; indeed, everyone figured that PSP was Nintendo's death knell.

In the space of six months, public opinion (or at least, industry opinion) has about-faced and PSP now has a hell of a lot to prove, while DS looks better by the minute.

Personally, I think it's great that this is actually looking like a two-horse race now. Nintendo suddenly got fire in their bellies when it looked like the Game Boy's dominance of the handheld market was going to be broken. If they bring that same fire, and aggressive stance, into the next home console generation as well, things are going to get very interesting indeed.

Basically, Infinium sues HardOCP for defamation (GS gi). Then HardOCP sues Infinium in order to "clear the air" after all the demands, allegations and threats made towards them (GS gi). Infinium counter-sues HardOCP again for defamation (GS gi).

Basically, Infinium sues HardOCP for defamation (GS gi). Then HardOCP sues Infinium in order to "clear the air" after all the demands, allegations and threats made towards them (GS gi). Infinium counter-sues HardOCP again for defamation (GS gi).

Basically, Infinium sues HardOCP for defamation (GS gi). Then HardOCP sues Infinium in order to "clear the air" after all the demands, allegations and threats made towards them (GS gi). Infinium counter-sues HardOCP again for defamation (GS gi).

Gametrak

All I could find was this.

Gamesindustry.biz has a long write up.

This patent was about the 64DD add-on device..

US patent 6,769,989, which was granted on the 3rd of August, refers to a console add-on device which would modify an existing system to include "additional communication and storage capability via a modem and hard disk drive."

blah blah blah

However, despite only being granted this month, the original patent was actually filed back in 1999, and the picture attached to the patent clearly displays a 64DD unit attached to an N64. The ill-fated peripheral offered many of the functions described by the patent, but was unpopular with consumers and was rapidly discontinued by Nintendo.

blah blah blah

This isn't to say that some of that functionality won't make it into Revolution, although in general Nintendo has aimed for pure game devices rather than trying to compete with Sony's vision for building a home media empire based on the PlayStation brand.

Sure they got the patent, it doesn't fit with their plans. And since the patent is for a CONSOLE ADD ON DEVICE, it doesn't apply to XBox or PCs, which have hard drives and ethernet integrated. Like the article said, it really doesn't fit with Nintendo's plans whatsoever.

Did you know Konami has more video game patents than anyone else? Makes sense, with all their specialty arcade hardware. Followed by Sega, then Ninteno.. MSFT is wayyyyy down near the bottom of the list, lower than folks like Tiger Electronics (game.com roxorz!) Just something interesting I stumbled over while googling for that link. Pretty much irrelevant and offtopic, though.

Although I went to college intent on being a game programmer, I still got my BS in CS. After graduating, I gave up the game development dream and found a job writing business logic and database apps. It's so much easier!

Here's an interesting article on the working conditions of the industry.

Yes, but the important word there is "can." They apparently don't do so by default. If you take a look at the FAQ it says...

2.4 Will Blu-ray support playback of DVDs?

Yes, several leading drive manufacturers have already demonstrated drives for consumer products such as video recorders that can read and write DVD and Blu-ray Discs, so you don't have to worry about your existing DVD collection becoming obsolete. Although there is no requirement for Blu-ray recorders to be backwards compatible with DVD, the format is far too popular to not be supported. With the vast amount of Blu-ray recorders that will be coming out, this will be an important feature for consumers.

So it would be pretty damn stupid for Sony to not make it backwards compatible, especially given their history as the first company to make their console backwards compatible. However they didn't specificaly say they were going to take those steps. Perhaps they assumed it was a no-brainer?

Sony, or at least the SCE boss, have claimed that the PS3 will play PS2 games and it would be just a bit disingenuous to make it capable of running the old code but not reading the old disks. However until they say something officially we won't know for sure.

Wow. Your 'facts' regarding the nextgen Xbox are stunning. Rumors have been spreading about the lack of a harddrive in the Xbox2, but these rumors have about as much basis as the tech documents floating around that detail the Xbox2's hardware. Considering MS's tight-lipped stance on the Xbox2, making assumptions about hardware at this point are just that: assumptions. Even if a harddrive isn't included, I'd be surprised if MS didn't offer an aftermarket harddrive for it, meaning it would be entirely possible for the end user to supply their own drive.

A lack of backwards compatibility would be terribly unfortunate, and Microsoft is not dumb. If it is offered on the Xbox2, all of the old Xbox games will be marketable, and the Xbox2 will come onto the market with an existing library of games. Considering the PC-like hardware and software on the Xbox (P3 processor, standard DVD and hard drives, Windows 2000 kernel), it'd be fair to assume the Xbox2 would follow a similar design (some reports say multiple PowerPC G5 cores and an ATI graphics chipset). This would be very good news for compatibility issues, because it would allow the Xbox2 to run Xbox games without an additional processor (like the PlayStation2 and GameBoy Advance do).

Though rumors point to a lack of harddrive and backwards compatibility, one article reporting this provided some insight:

"Bear in mind that at this point in the lifespan of the original Xbox, almost none of the specifications as announced made it into the final product unchanged."

I'd just be careful when attributing speculation about the nextgen systems to absolute fact, especially given the amount of time before they actually come out.

La

No matter if Sega's ESPN games are of better quality than Madden, they don't have EA's hype and marketing machine [and tradition].

That may be true, but Sega has really built up a solid reputation in the past 2-3 years with their 2kX sports games (especially their baseball game - EA scrapped their baseball franchise and all of its history and reputation to start all over after World Series Baseball slapped it around for several years).

And with their new publishing deal with Take Two, you've got to think that there will be more advertising and marketing than before.

I was ecstatic when I saw the new price point. I immediately pre-ordered the game. In the past, I've always just played the "year behind game" where I'd buy the previous year's iteration in the bargain bin after the new one came out. Download the last roster update (Xbox Live) and then manually tweak them to reflect the new years starting rosters. Ta-da. It's a new game to me and I didn't shell out full price for a glorified sports game expansion pack.

Right, because the gamecube outselling the PS2 == total obscurity

As more people figure it out, hacking seems to be helping.

Notice, I said 'hacking' not 'piracy.'

You dolt. Read this and get a clue.

> I guess he based that on the fact that the transition from Half-Life to Unreal Tournament was a transition from OpenGL to D3D.

Yes, but did that transition occur because D3D was better, in terms of technology and economics?

Or was there, perhaps, an outside influence tipping the economic scale...

Microsoft eyeing Vivendi unit?

Has Microsoft bought Vivendi Games?

Microsoft / Vivendi rumours gather steam

I don't know if the purchase actually took place, but they were talking, and Vivendi was deeply in debt, and Microsoft had lots of monopoly-generated cash. I think it's safe to assume that some sort of payoff occurred.

It is also widely believed that when Microsoft joined the OpenGL committee, it was for the purpose of sabotaging, and slowing down the technology.

That last bit is easy to believe, because it's the normal way that Microsoft operates. For example, consider these tidbits from the DOJ case Findings of Fact:

Microsoft's Jim Allchin, in a note to Gates:

> "I am positive that we must do a direct attack on Sun (and probably Oracle).... Between ourselves and our partners, we can certainly hurt their (certainly Sun's) revenue base.... We need to get Intel to help us."

Microsoft's Eric Engstrom describes Microsoft's goal as:

> "Intel to stop helping Sun create Java Multimedia APIs, especially ones that run well (ie native implementations) on Windows."

And Engstrom's proposed agreement with Intel:

> Microsoft would incorporate into the Windows API set any multimedia interfaces that Intel agreed to NOT help Sun incorporate into the Java class libraries. [emphasis/caps added]

So there you have a clear example of Microsoft using threats to sabotage open multimedia support.

If we want the PC to remain open (let alone the Internet), then we have to support technologies that don't come from Microsoft. In this case, it means supporting OpenGL, which is not hard to do, because it's a great technology.

> I guess he based that on the fact that the transition from Half-Life to Unreal Tournament was a transition from OpenGL to D3D.

Yes, but did that transition occur because D3D was better, in terms of technology and economics?

Or was there, perhaps, an outside influence tipping the economic scale...

Microsoft eyeing Vivendi unit?

Has Microsoft bought Vivendi Games?

Microsoft / Vivendi rumours gather steam

I don't know if the purchase actually took place, but they were talking, and Vivendi was deeply in debt, and Microsoft had lots of monopoly-generated cash. I think it's safe to assume that some sort of payoff occurred.

It is also widely believed that when Microsoft joined the OpenGL committee, it was for the purpose of sabotaging, and slowing down the technology.

That last bit is easy to believe, because it's the normal way that Microsoft operates. For example, consider these tidbits from the DOJ case Findings of Fact:

Microsoft's Jim Allchin, in a note to Gates:

> "I am positive that we must do a direct attack on Sun (and probably Oracle).... Between ourselves and our partners, we can certainly hurt their (certainly Sun's) revenue base.... We need to get Intel to help us."

Microsoft's Eric Engstrom describes Microsoft's goal as:

> "Intel to stop helping Sun create Java Multimedia APIs, especially ones that run well (ie native implementations) on Windows."

And Engstrom's proposed agreement with Intel:

> Microsoft would incorporate into the Windows API set any multimedia interfaces that Intel agreed to NOT help Sun incorporate into the Java class libraries. [emphasis/caps added]

So there you have a clear example of Microsoft using threats to sabotage open multimedia support.

If we want the PC to remain open (let alone the Internet), then we have to support technologies that don't come from Microsoft. In this case, it means supporting OpenGL, which is not hard to do, because it's a great technology.