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As a side note, I may not be as confident as Nintendo, but I certainly am a lot more interested in the DS than the PSP, despite the fact that the PSP technology is undoubtedly sexy and desirable.

Early reports are that the PSP has 5 hours of battery--and that's with a non-intensive (puzzle) game with no backlight or speaker or wireless connectivity-- and also slow loading times. 2-3 hours of battery life sounds more reasonable for the games everyone is interested in (3D heavy Ridge Racer, etc...), which is just not enough time. Couple this with launch titles that are almost totally sequels or so generic as to be indistinguishable from sequels, and even the still-somewhat-gimmicky DS just seems a lot more fun with a lot less headache.

As a side note, I may not be as confident as Nintendo, but I certainly am a lot more interested in the DS than the PSP, despite the fact that the PSP technology is undoubtedly sexy and desirable.

Early reports are that the PSP has 5 hours of battery--and that's with a non-intensive (puzzle) game with no backlight or speaker or wireless connectivity-- and also slow loading times. 2-3 hours of battery life sounds more reasonable for the games everyone is interested in (3D heavy Ridge Racer, etc...), which is just not enough time. Couple this with launch titles that are almost totally sequels or so generic as to be indistinguishable from sequels, and even the still-somewhat-gimmicky DS just seems a lot more fun with a lot less headache.

Except that's GT4 Mobile for the PSP. So, it's a perfect comparison.

Like Mario Kart DS?

A lawyer representing the plaintiffs addresses a proposed class-action lawsuit seeking unpaid overtime from the world's biggest third-party publisher.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/11/11/news_61129 98.html

See also Analyst calls ESPN pricing 'brilliant'. So I guess the lower price really worked out for them.

See also Analyst calls ESPN pricing 'brilliant'. So I guess the lower price really worked out for them.

Actually it is slightly heavier, at least w/battery and memory stick.

Gamespot said:

According to our calculations, the unit weighs in at 282 grams (around 10 ounces), with its battery and Memory Stick Duo. By comparison, the Nintendo DS weighs 276 grams (9.7 ounces).

I don't think 6 grams will break anyone, but the PSP is heavier.

There is this myth that PoP:SoT didn't sell well. It's true that it was slow to sell at first, but it really picked up on word-of-mouth.

From: Ubisoft posts solid year-end numbers

"The company credited 3 million-plus-selling multiplatform titles as the primary boosters of the year's bottom line: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (1.7 million copies), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2.4 million), and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 (2.2 million)."

Since when is 2.4 million copies sold not good sales??? Why would they make a sequel to a game that sold poorly?

This is what has confounded me. They had a successful game but decided to radically change the sequel because...why?

not to pick nits, but the 3do was 32bit... link, link for a more comprehensive list of 'bit-ness'...

I love the story of how the Playstation came to be. It was going to be a peripheral for the Super NES, but... if you keep reading the story, Nintendo gave up on it due to to costs, Sony wanted to revenge, and now it has most of the market share.

And about the PSP, it's too much like a console to be portable. Why watch FMV clips on a handheld? I want a simple game and this is too fancy. The DSs capabilities are just right IMO, though I'm not keen to two screens (and that ryhmes).

Battery life is 4-6 hours for games... not good.

I love the story of how the Playstation came to be. It was going to be a peripheral for the Super NES, but... if you keep reading the story, Nintendo gave up on it due to to costs, Sony wanted to revenge, and now it has most of the market share.

And about the PSP, it's too much like a console to be portable. Why watch FMV clips on a handheld? I want a simple game and this is too fancy. The DSs capabilities are just right IMO, though I'm not keen to two screens (and that ryhmes).

Battery life is 4-6 hours for games... not good.

At least we are getting a new Mario platformer for the DS (not Mario 64.) I can't wait, it's been far too long.

I knew about that Two days ago. Cool to see it on Slashdot though :)

Indeed, it would be interesting if the movies were about (and I quote) "Japanese Poetry" instead of games.

There are two obstacles I see with porting this game to console: (1) action activation is macro based and (2) the chat engine is free text.

The game engine interface is a function driven API where actions are tied to screen buttons -- there's a complex scripting interface under the buttons and frames (such as inventory, character sheet, etc) that can be bound to keystrokes, or tapped from a button on the interface. The default interface has 12 user buttons on the screen + 8 character related buttons + 5 inventory buttons for bags. The 8 character buttons each lead to other frames with buttons that can be dragged to the original 12.

One of the first User Interface modfications recognized that 12 customizable buttons werent enough given that you can receive hundreds of powers, and added 4 more 12 button-bars to the screen... But for just the original 12, I think you could do it.... Last I checked, the standard playstation 2 controller has 15 buttons (12 normally used) + 2 sticks. You might be able to get by if you used some of the buttons in combos (hold two buttons to act like Alt-#) but forget about custom combos that make classes like Warrior easier to play.

As far as chatting with other players goes, maybe you can just ignore everyone else anyone says, but I can't see this going forward without some way for the player to communicate... sure there's a menu driven emote system, but it's nowhere near compehensive enough, and it takes a while to hunt and peck for your response. Maybe an on-screen keyboard for you to pick letters with the joystick one at a time, but that just sounds painful.

Unless you got some sort of weird mod, in my opinion there just aren't enough ways to quickly control your character with a console interface...

Here's another review from GameSpot

Expensive in my opinion.

(I moderated in here, hence the AC.)

the backstory can be found here. Valve was suing Sierra because they were distributing HL to cyber-cafes, seemingly w/o Valve's authorization. sounds like cyber-cafes weren't in Sierra's distribution pervue, and Valve was annoyed that their games were given away (?) to cafes.

Not sure what this means, except Valve has control over their games in cyber-cafes now. Given their community friendly stance, I don't see this as a bad thing (although if Sierra was just giving the game away previously, I don't see that as bad for the community either.)

Gamespot had a comprehensive article in which they did thorough bottlneck benchmark testing to determine what you should replace to get the most bang-for-your-buck for HL2 out of a hardware upgrade. They cover everything, from different DirectX modes, to onboard sound vs. sound card, and of course processors, RAM, and video cards. It's a great way to figure out how to best spend a hundred bucks to make HL2 a much better game for you.

There are many reports of a PS2 shortage and Xbox is eating the PS2's lunch as a result.

Maybe the poster should do some homework before making unsupported financial analysis.

Perhaps it's because of the broken link in the submission, but it looks like the new Zelda game ditches the cel shaded look and delivers what we were promised in the original GC zelda: realism. See here

Here is the real link: Upcoming Gamecube games

It supports both a proprietary Nintendo wireless protocol, which is used for the DS to DS multiplayer. But it also supports IEEE802.11 WiFi which is there to access the internet though hotspots. Take a look at this gamespot article if you don't believe me.

The second link should be "upcoming GameCube games". The A-tag has two double-quotes by accident, causing browsers to read it as A HREF=""....

Seriously... why?

From what I saw, they did raise a few interesting points -- the AO rating, for example... Based on some of the clips they showed from the M rated games, even I began to wonder what it took to bump a game from M to AO. I guess only the makers and purchasers of "Singles" know for sure. I figure that ESRB M is sort of like MPAA R (just like NC-17, apparently few retailers will carry AO), and I'm thinking that if they were from movies, some of those clips would would have pushed the MPAA to NC-17, especially if you consider Team America had a tough time getting an R, and it's all puppets. The speaker essentially said why have an AO rating, if there isn't anything that can bump you into AO teritory?

On the other hand, you could easily argue that these rating systems make parents feel they don't need to pay attention to what their children are playing, and that's probably bad.

Here's the press release in question with the list at the bottom. Not only does the ICCR not play any of the games, they can't even spell them correctly! Look at GameSpot's treatment of this press release for some simple corrections.

I can't wait to play some of the Top 9 games that they recommend as "non-violent" at the very bottom. Either "Antigrav" (which as of this morning was spelled "Antigrave") or "EyeToy: Antigrav" (which was simply called "Eye Toy" earlier today) should be good. They're listed separately, by the way.

Sony was quoted as saying this is due to the fact that they recently built production facilities for 90 nanometer (very small) processors for use in other projects, such as the PS2, PS3 and the VAIO line. With these facilities already built, Sony did not need to build new ones for the PSP.

Also, more than 50% of the PSPs components are manufactured internally. This means Sony is not buying from as many companies who each mark up the price

Is Sony selling it at a huge loss though?

No. Thanks to their cost cutting methods listed above, Sony is actually selling it at a profit. And will pay off their initial investment after selling their initial launch shipment of 3 million PSPs. This does not include or take into account for game sales (attachment rate)

In this interview, Kuturagi was quoted as saying "the company, for the next fiscal year, will ship 1 million units each to North America, Europe, and Japan. That, says Kutaragi, will be the break-even point for Sony's PSP to start making a profit.

Now since they will have paid off their initial investment after 3 million PSPs. They are selling it at profit.

3 million negative numbers dont add up to a positive number. hence, profit

If you don't want to log in, the article at http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/11/22/news_61137 56.html works great.

Vivendi Universal Games lost a lot of money last year, and the year before, and so on. See http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/09/14/news_61073 51.html.

They really need some "wow" to boost the bottom line this year. I'm sure that there was pressure on Blizzard to get this door for the holiday buying season.

Sony is marketing this new PS2 as portable... their engineers should be ashamed!

As well, Sony does have a true portable PS2 coming out next year (I heard mid 2005... it keeps getting pushed back). Here are some pictures.

From the article: "In an interview conducted by Bloomberg Japan, Nintendo confirmed that the Nintendo DS, its newly announced portable dual-screen gaming system, is not being created to take over the Game Boy Advance's market. The company also confirmed that a separate machine is being developed as a next-generation successor for the GBA. According to Nintendo's public relations chief Yasuhiro Minagawa, "The development of succeeding machines for the GBA and Game Cube are in the works, separately from the Nintendo DS."

fair enough. here is info in English.

RUMOR #5: Ridley Scott will direct the film version of Halo, in which Ed Harris and Samuel L. Jackson will star.

Source: German site Sci-Fi News and Ain't It Cool News, the most loathed and loved movie-info site on the Web.

The official story: "Microsoft does not comment on rumors or speculation"--Microsoft spokesman. Warner Bros. said "No comment."

What we heard: In a bit of a coup, Sci-Fi News scored the first pictures of the storyboards for the Halo movie, of which there are several on the site. It also claimed that the same source said that the project will be announced shortly in Variety, with full cast and crew details. According to the site, Ed Harris will play Captain Keyes, the Pillar of Autumn's doomed captain, and Samuel L. Jackson will play Sergeant Johnson, the hard-boiled UNSC space marine who assisted the Master Chief's Covenant-killing crusade. Sitting in the director's chair will be none other than Ridley Scott, director of sci-fi classics Alien and Blade Runner and arguably the most intense war film ever made, Black Hawk Down.

The mere thought of such talent bringing Halo to the screen is enough to give any geek heart palpitations. However, on the other side of the planet, Ain't It Cool News (AICN) was telling a much different tale. AICN received a tip from an informant claiming to work at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. According to said informant, two designers from WBIE-owned Monolith were in a meeting with Warner Bros. executives about the game adaptation of the 2006 sci-fi movie 2176, about "a futuristic retelling of the Revolutionary War." During the discussion, the subject of the Halo movie came up. According to the "WB informant," Warner Bros. approached Bungie at this year's E3 about acquiring the Halo film rights. Their response? "Unless you got the writer and director of the original Alien, everyone can go fish." And, according to AICN, Scott had already passed on the project, based on the script. However, since Halo 2 sold 2.5 million copies the first day, Warner Bros. has asked Scott to reconsider--and AICN says there's been no answer yet.

Although the quality of its writing lowered the bar for online film journalism to ant-height levels, AICN has been a steady source of Hollywood rumors for nearly a decade. Many are false. But many are spot-on, and the one posted today rings truer than its German counterpart.

Bogus or not bogus?: Bogus, although we'd love to be wrong on this one.

The only time Firefox 1.0 has crashed on me was today, right after I tabbed away from this page. It seems to be at least somewhat repeatable here. Anyone else getting the same thing?

yes the Japanese games are different but there is a good reason. Firstly the system is not capable of running a full blown title as per PS2. So the designers are really forced to rethink their game style (and do they think) to fit the limitations of the hardware format. Take for instance konami with MG. They release MG but not *solid*, but Acid. Same franchise, different game style (with a card twist).

Konami already make a slew of GBA games so they pretty well unersand their market. Its a different market to PS/XB.

Remember Digimon , small animals, monsters fighting, computers and CARDS ... it's a bit like a digital D&D for those old enough /young enough to remember. All appeal to a very specific market.

After attending a ACMI game time symposium in Melbourne this year I had the chance to hear/see Tetsuya Mizuguchi [gamespot interview] ). He talked for about an hour about game design and a bit about some upcoming titles for PSP. I now understand a bit more about *Japanese* game style and take my hat off to true innovators. No cheesy ports of your [insert your top 10 title here] PS2, PC games here. All *new* original ideas.

For the first releases the games are squarely aimed at *kids* and certainly those with a sense for Japanse style (manga, pokemon, digimon, cards, et.-al.) and good taste (read the paul graham article, taste to understand what I mean).I already have a 6 year old drooling over my shoulder wondering how to get one of these.

As any good description should have included, here's some reviews
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/metalgearsolid3 /review.html

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/566/566279p1.html?from int=1

http://ps2.gamespy.com/playstation-2/metal-gear-so lid-3-snake-eater/566899p1.html

I submitted this yesterday...fascinating article on the behind the scenes stuff, goes into previously non-public detail (including the hilarious story behind how they caught the hacker) and how the source code theft devastated the team morale. A must-read for everyone.

The Final Hours of Half-Life 2

Finally some realistic humans

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=10

I'll say. That one looks exactly like my boss! Oh, wait, I can scroll this picture over a bit...

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=46
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=17
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=10
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=7

water doesn't look so bad neither::

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=4
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=12

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=46
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=17
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=10
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=7

water doesn't look so bad neither::

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=4
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=12

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=46
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=17
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=10
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=7

water doesn't look so bad neither::

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=4
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=12

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=46
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=17
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=10
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=7

water doesn't look so bad neither::

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=4
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=12

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=46
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=17
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=10
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=7

water doesn't look so bad neither::

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=4
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=12

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=46
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=17
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=10
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=7

water doesn't look so bad neither::

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=4
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=12

Side scrollers aren't completely dead.
R-Type Final is an amazingly good (and faithful to the original) side-scroller for the Playstation 2. It combines the 3D engine with the side-scrolling genre to produce some amazing effects.

Also note in the gamespot review for Metroid Prime 2 that there are certain side-scrolling elements in it as well. The example they gave is a boss that you fight in ball-mode from a fixed, 2D perspective.

That strikes me as a cool hack. I don't see why games should pin themselves to fully 3D or fully 2D but freely mix it up both presentations in one game. I seem to remember an oldschool version of Sonic the Hedgehog that did a good job of this.

I'll admit that I've only heard Valves side of the story(Gamespots Article on the History of Half-Life(Both 1 and 2 are very useful for an inside story on game development).
I've also been following HL2's development very very closely since it was announced last may, so most of what I wrote is based on that.

I'll admit that I've only heard Valves side of the story(Gamespots Article on the History of Half-Life(Both 1 and 2 are very useful for an inside story on game development).
I've also been following HL2's development very very closely since it was announced last may, so most of what I wrote is based on that.

"Retail distribution costs are VERY HIGH; manufacturing, distribution, advertisement, retail promotion, shelf-space agreements, and other overhead add up to a significant portion of a game's budget"

Which is why I would prefer to use a content distributer like Steam to get this game. If I'm paying for a game, I would much rather have a significant portion of that money go directly to the developers, the ones who actually spent years making the game, than towards paying for the distribution itself. It's like paying for shipping when what you want is the product. More money to the developers and perhaps they might charge less(yeah right). But at least this would help ease the burnout and suffering the devs went through to get this game to us. (Check out the GameSpot article. 24 pages long but a very interesting read.)

I'm not saying Steam is perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. Authentication for copies bought through conventional retail means however, ...

Moderators: you ought to look at Gabe Newell yourself and take the joke before you start modding people down.

Try to remember what the offtopic mod is designed to do; it dissuades users from posting things like GNAA, "x is dead. Truly an American icon," etc.

A couple degrees of separation from the root topic is acceptable. Therefore, the parent post, and even this one for that matter, is acceptable material. Stop abusing Slashdot.