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The rear of the system has a third USB 2.0 port, an Ethernet port, and a slot for a small, gum-packet-sized Wi-Fi adapter. At this time, the wireless adapter will be sold separately."

No really cool games, unless you count dumbed-down disney-quality children's games

/sarcasm

Yes, Resident Evil 4 is a crappy kids game:

it's not enough to call Resident Evil 4 one of the high points of the series, because this is probably the single greatest horror-themed action game ever created. Resident Evil 4 is an amazing achievement in a variety of ways, especially in how its inspired, state-of-the-art cinematic presentation works so well with its relentlessly exciting, white-knuckle action, all of which is wrapped up in a decidedly lengthy adventure chock-full of hidden secrets and bonus extras. It obviously isn't for the squeamish or for those otherwise not qualified to play this gory, mature-rated GameCube game, which is too bad for them, because it's hard to imagine anyone else not being consistently thrilled and impressed by what Resident Evil 4 has to offer. (Greg Kasavin, Gamespot, Editor-in-chief)

And yes, let's totally forget about Metroid Prime 1 & 2 -- the Gamecube is an Easy Bake Oven, after all...

/sarcasm

They did. "Advance Guardian Heroes" came out last fall for the GBA, but was met with mediocre reviews. It's now pretty cheap; I actually got it a week ago and my experience thus far is that while the game has potential, it's held back by its bad translation and a b0rked save system, both of which magnify the issues it already has with a messed-up learning curve and sub-standard in-game training/tutorials.

Advance Guardian Heroes release last fall was over-shadowed by the similarly-timed North American release of another Treasure GBA brawler, Astro Boy: Omega Factor, which is frankly a far better game (that is to say, it is a very good game, and close enough in overall style and gameplay to act somewhat as a substitute). Knowledge of Astro Boy's various stories in animation and comics over the years may improve your appreciation of the game, but I can tell you from experience that it is not needed to enjoy it; the game stands on its own. (Although, for those who are curious about how the game's story relates to existing material, the game actually includes something of a small, gradually-unlocked encyclopedia on Astro Boy and related works also by the late Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka.)

Wow...this is similar to other screenshots of the XBOX 360 that have been floating around the internet (side view, 3-4th view, etc). Those screenshots can now be found at gamespot's website here.

I have to say that it will fit in nicer with other electronic equipment that sits on our entertainment center but this seriously lacks a cool factor. Its colors are too passive, and the curves are all way too smooth...replacing the silver finish with a jet-black polished finish alone would make it look ten times better. Oh well. BTW does anyone else think the name XBOX 360 sounds lame?

Just for a distilled textual version of the documentary, you might want to check out Gamespot's Best of E3 2004 feature.

I personally thought that the documentary was rather long, but perhaps it's only to be expected, given that "GameSpot's coverage of E3 2004 included about 1000 previews, 12,000 screenshots, and more than 1,300 movies of more than 600 games"

However, I don't care for Metroid at all. It's nice enough, but it's a pretty boring game

Of course it gets boring: it's a tiny demo of a game that won't be out until August. What's packed in with the DS, the "First Hunt" demo, only has about 10 minutes of gameplay in it.

A European release for the sequel has been mentioned here and there. No details, but some scant info here and here. Also, Namco sent Katamari 2 press packs to the Euro press, which would be pointless if there were no Euro release planned. Failing that, there is a Nintendo DS version coming out.

Fingers crossed, eh?

Jeez...making me have to look up sources to cite...lol The interview I was refferring to came out via Bloomberg in early 2001. Here's a gamespot article about it: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2001/01/29/news_26798 92.html

Face the facts, we all know which kind of movies you'll be watching on your PlayStation Portable. (Oh, and even which kind of pictures, too.) Though the Nintendo DS will certainly attempt to have its fair share of the cake as well. And at the price of $48, it does seem like a much cheaper alternative for all the perverts out there. ("Masturbators of the World unite!")

"The categories are shooters, puzzles and mazes, adventure games, sports games, and simulations."

For computer games is worse: 99% of new games are FPS, RTS or simulation. The "adventure" category is as good as dead, the last decent computer adventure was Runaway. There were a few RPGs with some story, but they are all go-there-and-kill-the-guy, like Vampire Bloodlines. At least in the console, there are good RPGs or action games like God of War for PS2. I'm honestly thinking of quit buying computer games altogether. Why isn't there anymore Day of Tentacles or Monkey Islands?. And please, Larry Magna Cum Laude and Warcraft III are not adventures, although I love Warcraft

"The categories are shooters, puzzles and mazes, adventure games, sports games, and simulations."

For computer games is worse: 99% of new games are FPS, RTS or simulation. The "adventure" category is as good as dead, the last decent computer adventure was Runaway. There were a few RPGs with some story, but they are all go-there-and-kill-the-guy, like Vampire Bloodlines. At least in the console, there are good RPGs or action games like God of War for PS2. I'm honestly thinking of quit buying computer games altogether. Why isn't there anymore Day of Tentacles or Monkey Islands?. And please, Larry Magna Cum Laude and Warcraft III are not adventures, although I love Warcraft

"The categories are shooters, puzzles and mazes, adventure games, sports games, and simulations."

For computer games is worse: 99% of new games are FPS, RTS or simulation. The "adventure" category is as good as dead, the last decent computer adventure was Runaway. There were a few RPGs with some story, but they are all go-there-and-kill-the-guy, like Vampire Bloodlines. At least in the console, there are good RPGs or action games like God of War for PS2. I'm honestly thinking of quit buying computer games altogether. Why isn't there anymore Day of Tentacles or Monkey Islands?. And please, Larry Magna Cum Laude and Warcraft III are not adventures, although I love Warcraft

Most of the points in this article has been made at one time or another in various industry articles or editorials on Gamespot. However, they really *original* point that this article makes is it's final note on the importance of 'dynamic adjustments' to the difficulty of games:

A good example of this is the first time I played Quake 3. I had never played it before and decided to set up a quick death match game with just one AI-bot against me. I chose the intermediate level of difficulty, and the rules where that the first one with twenty frags would win. The game started and the AI-bot started killing me over and over again. I tried to find better weapons and figure out new tactics, but it didn't do much to help me. After a few minutes, the score was 17-0 to the AI-bot, but at that point I was beginning to see some improvements in my skills. A few seconds later I became completely ecstatic as I got my first frag. It was payback time! After that the frags just kept rolling in - I was killing him over and over again, and I felt like the hero of a movie that rose against the evil dictator in the last act. Soon the score had turned to 19-19 and it was very exciting. I finally got the last kill and won the game, which was an incredible climax. It was astonishing how I was able to improve my skills so fast, and turn the tide so that I managed to beat him in the end. What an accomplishment on my behalf!

But as you may have guessed by now, all was not what it seemed. I decided to test the AI system to see if there was any built in functionality to modify their behavior after the player. I let the AI-bot kill me 17 times in a row without fighting back, and that's when I realized that the more times I was killed, the less accurate their firing became. After 19 kills, my once worthy opponent was merely a half-wit that mostly seemed to enjoy standing still and staring into walls. It had not been my skills that had improved in my first game, but instead the AI-bot's skills that had deteriorated. I had just been too caught up in the moment to realize it. However, this experience made me realize what an extremely powerful tool this was. The game would never have been as fun for me without it, and I'm sure that many games would be more fun with it included.

Many, many games hit all the points mentioned in Hejdenberg's article (i.e. imitation, game width, etc.), but fail to be 'fun' solely because of the lack of dynamic adjustments to difficulty.

Perfect case in point: Devil May Cry 3

Nintendo itself has stated that what it plans to use on Revolution isn't all that unique, only that it has never been applied to videogames. Taking that into account, plus recent patents filed by Nintendo, and it doesn't sound all that far fetched, argues Burgess.

The "argues" implies speculation. Furthermore, I say it is bogus because even if Nintendo doesn't want to remember Virtual Boy, certainly they remember 3-D World Runner for the NES.
http://www.gamespot.com/nes/action/3dbattlesofworl drunnerthe/index.html?q=runner

I think it came with glasses. And although the 3-D mode wasn't top notch, it was 3-D. You could also turn the 3-D mode off. Have fun by running around a planet in four directions (NSEW) fighting impressive sprite dragons (although they didn't look like real dragons they did look quasi 3D).

The Madden commercial doesnt show any real game footage. It's prerendered footage of what the madden game "should" look like. I was very disappointed when I read that. Check out this link http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/04/25/news_61228 61.html/

Piccy from GuildWars: click

If that's modest, I wanna know what's not ;)

Don't forget Psychonauts yo.

And that is why it isn't selling as much as the PSP. Oh wait

This is for Japan - I can't find any US figures. But over there, the PSP is outselling the DS. Sure, there's a higher number of DS units sold, but it's been in the market longer so that's to be expected. But month on month sales are going to PSP.

Gamespot article

For all of those that expect EA to simply rest on its laurels and not innovate, here's proof that they are trying new ideas: Gamespot article

It seems like they are trying to revamp the passing game and make it more life-like by forcing the QB to "look" at the receiver.

The exact same Permadeath debate which the article was about? I am sure all these arguments have been throught and expressed by countless people since the first person suggested it as a viable game option. Let the game developers do their jobs, and enjoy the games for what they are (well so long as they're not like Big Rigs (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/bigrigsotrr/re view.html))

$0.02

Russian software developers are brilliant indeed

...then how do you explain this game?

http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/all/best of2004/day3w_12.html

"Concocted by a mysterious developer called Stellar Stone--which, on its perhaps purposely vague Web site, explains that it is actually a conglomerate that farms out game-development projects to Russian programmers who will work on the cheap--Big Rigs is the most broken racing game ever put on store shelves."

A couple months ago Trond Aas, the CEO at Funcom, said "we know that most gamers want in-game advertisement to heighten the sense of realism."

I understand if they need to use advertisement to support the free version of the game, but do not insult our intelligence by telling us that we want it.

Ads for Sprite and Motley Crue albums in a game set 30,000 years in the future do not highten the realism. The Alienware ads, however, weren't that bad. They fit right into the style of the game.

For Matrix Online to start including ads. Take a look at this screenshot.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/matrixonline/screen s_6121636.html?page=7

Its ad for the recent film The Jacket, which unsuprisingly was released by a company owned by Time Warner.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/25/news_61210 92.html Sony will fix them if you send them.

Imagine a more spread out game were you cannot reach every corner in a few minutes. Perhaps it even takes hours if not days to go into the deep. ... ... Add a third group, the money grabbers and they might get their fun out of buying low and selling high. Travelling the lands in search if items to buy.

Here's the article.

The streaming trailer is dying on my puny shared DSL connection. I know you can download the full trailer for free somewhere, but from the few frames that load up, it looks like the same one up Gamespot and elsewhere. Everything else says "coming soon."

"Arrgh... practically every point in the above post is misleading or wrong, and it get's modded to +5"

Ok, the two dies on one chip was true, or believed to be true when they first demoed:

Source: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/200409151 34740.html

I'll concede that point to you - that Intel is now putting 2 cores on a die... however they were never engineered to work that way initially. They only have an 800 MHZ FSB, not 1066 like the newer P4's, so they have even less bandwidth to share. Want a source?? Here:

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2252

As far as my other points go, let's go over them, shall we???

"the new dual core P4s won't be compatible with a majority of Intel boards on the market"

Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21793

"The two cores use hyper transport to communicate with various system devices"

Source: http://www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_11787,00.html

It actually uses a cross-bar to handle the switching as well.

"Now for the best part - anybody with an existing Socket 939 AMD based motherboard will be able to use one. Worst case, you'll have to download a bios update to enable it, but it will work."

Source: http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-x-1583-x-x-x

"AMD designed the K8 core to be dual ready out of the box, so this whole thing about them having an extra year isn't exactly true - they've had much longer than that."

Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13344

Still think almost my whole post was wrong? About what you said:

"Re: sharing I/O bandwidth. Intel has to do this because they don't have a built-in MCH. It has *nothing* to do with "selling chips with 2 normal P4 dies on them"."

It has EVERYTHING to do with having 2 P4 cores in a single package - look at that anand article I posted above, here is a quote from it:

"The major issue with Intel's approach to dual core designs is that the dual cores must contest with one another for bandwidth across Intel's 64-bit NetBurst FSB. To make matters worse, the x-series line of dual core CPUs are currently only slated for use with an 800MHz FSB, instead of Intel's soon to be announced 1066MHz FSB. The reduction in bandwidth will hurt performance scalability and we continue to wonder why Intel is reluctant to transition more of their CPUs to the 1066MHz FSB, especially the dual core chips that definitely need it.

With only a 64-bit FSB running at 800MHz, a single x40 processor will only have 6.4GB/s of bandwidth to the rest of the system. Now that 6.4GB/s is fine for a single CPU, but an x40 with two cores the bandwidth requirements go up significantly."

"I might sound crazy, but a decade ago, a game that would take up more than a single 600mb CD seemed absurd."

Look at the edges of the unit in this picture. Most of them are blurred, and the degree of blurriness is not consistant. Fake, fake, fake. *puts on tinfoil hat* Or made to look fake on purpose.

Also of interest,
Rumor Control: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/25/news_61211 12.html
Same story from Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/29/news_61212 64.html
More Rumors and speculation from IGN: http://cube.ign.com/articles/522/522559p1.html?fro mint=1

The latter has some interesting theories and "leaks", as well as some drawings of interest.

Also of interest,
Rumor Control: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/25/news_61211 12.html
Same story from Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/29/news_61212 64.html
More Rumors and speculation from IGN: http://cube.ign.com/articles/522/522559p1.html?fro mint=1

The latter has some interesting theories and "leaks", as well as some drawings of interest.

If they're not actually behind schedule the only other reason i can think of is that they're worried if they reveal too much now then the PS3 will be old hat compared to the X-Box 2 and Nintendo Revolution when E3 comes around.

Tin-foil hat conspiracy theory:

The "leaked" images of the PS3 were real. Sony is now redesigning the system so that competitors don't have time to "steal their ideas" or otherwise capitalize on them. Either that, or they simply do not want to risk further leaks.

Honestly, I can usually spot a fake pretty easily, but the images at the link above would be pretty difficult to fake. I've seen the images that some people think were the originals (before alteration into the PS3 image), one of which is actually at the bottom right of that brochure page, and the angle of the shot is different, the textures are all different, there are no chrome reflections, no reflective plastic finish, I mean these are hard things to alter/add to an image. If this is a fake, it was done by a real pro.

Just because there are a lot of fake mockups floating around the net doesn't mean that all of them are. My bet since I first saw that image is that it's real, and that it was a real leak. The timing of this announcement, putting off the PS3 unveiling, now seems incredibly suspicious to me, coming just a week or so after this photo hit. There are two things you can do after a major leak - make your public announcement immediately (to minimize the current damage) or lock everything down (to minimize future damage, and discredit the current leaked info as fake). It seems possible Sony has chosen to do the latter.

A console is made popular by its games, and so far all the PSP games are just watered-down ports of PS2 games.

A console is made popular by its games, and so far all the PSP games are just watered-down ports of PS2 games.

If you were to upgrade the battery, you would first need to know some specs.

I haven't seen any upgrades on it, but you might be able to hack something togeather that would work.

Maybe next, they'll get screwed for running their facilities like hard-labor prisons.

On Monday, a California judge ordered Sony to pay Immersion a licensing fee of 1.37 percent per quarter based on the sales of PlayStation units, Dual Shock controllers, and a selection of PlayStation 2 games that use Immersion's technology.

Sadly, Sony doesn't allow non-indie developers to burn UMDs. They have to burn their games to DVD and send them to Sony for printing.

Just after the launch, many fans here expected it to get a 10 or a 9.5 from GameSpot. When they gave it a 9.2, I wasn't surprised. It still had some quirks, and that damn StutterBug was hardly acceptable (though I was running it on a proc just 0.1 GHz below minimum). If anything, I'm glad it got the 9.2--it seemed awesome, but a bit too creaky to me. Steam's memory-hogging (since it uses .NET I believe but IANA Steam expert) didn't help either.

Obviously you have not seen the Snake on Acid?/p

Parent fails to include release dates of the game. This relevant because I was reading Blue's News and Aspyr announced TODAY that Doom 3 had been released.

It was out on pc when? Last august? Same for the other games, they are older and were released on mac a few months (at the very least) after the pc version. Take a look at the top 10 upcoming games for pc at gamespot , and tell how many of those will be available for macs. 2 out of 10? 3 out of 10? Even 5 out of 10 wouldn't be enough.

Not good enough for even a mild cored gamer. And for the record, I wish 10/10 of these games were playable on linux, so I wouldn't have to send one cent to either MS or apple to play the games I want.

This is really cool from a UI perspective, but not entirely new. A couple years ago people were doing interesting things with tilt sensors for Palm devices. Also see: Nintendo's new WarioWare game for GameBoy advance, which has a rotational sensor built-in to the cartridge. Also, Sony has done research in this area as well.

~jeff

Sorry to interject - just in case it adds to the discussion I recorded and covered the rant session for Gamespot. The Wonderland transcript is great, just incomplete. If you want to see the whole thing, you can find the full transcript here.

This is arguably the most pirated game.

I just hope that a mod-chip type device will be able to save the day bypassing region coding in both games and movies.

Sony already stated that games will not be region-locked (last paragraph). They rarely are on handheld consoles anyway.

But I agree you still have a problem with movies...

The link in the summary is wrong. Here's the real link.

PSP Delayed

Sigh...my HTML is getting rusty.

Here's the direct link to the video stream on Gamespot.

And here is the page where you can find the link to the stream if the other link doesnt work.

Sigh...my HTML is getting rusty.

Here's the direct link to the video stream on Gamespot.

And here is the page where you can find the link to the stream if the other link doesnt work.