New PS3 and Revolution Info at GDC

GameDailyBiz has a talk with Jamil Molena, the Director of the Game Developer's conference, about the upcoming event. Some interesting stuff about what to expect out of the event, as well as some happy news about the Sony and Nintendo keynotes. From the article: "BIZ: What can you tell us about Phil Harrison's keynote? Will we finally get some new information on the PlayStation 3? JM: The answer is yes. In general, platform providers have a unique opportunity at the GDC to share knowledge with and inspire the people who will make or break their consoles, namely the game developers themselves. With that in mind, this GDC keynote, along with the Nintendo keynote by Satoru Iwata, have both been in development for several months, and contain significant editorial value and developer takeaway."

Comments

Two Keynote Speeches but he knows nothing

[WillAffleckUW]

Basically, what he was saying is that it's likely that both Sony and Nintendo will reveal information on the PS3 and NR at their two keynote speeches, but that he personally knew zip nada zilch about what they were going to say.

Or if they would even talk about the PS3 or the NR.

Basically, it's spin signifying "Here's a time when maybe, just maybe, they are likely to say something, and I want you to send tons of reporters just in case."

Re:The race begins

[Anonymous Coward]

like the xbox360 only 8 months later and 100 dollars cheaper / 200 dollars more expensive

Re:Um

[Anonymous Coward]

Well here's the official topic summary of Harrison's speech from the GDC website, which must have been provided to them by Sony:

Phil Harrison
President, Worldwide Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment
"PlayStation 3: Beyond the Box "
Wednesday, March 22
10:30 - 11:30am

Focusing on the new creative, technical, and business opportunities provided by the arrival of PlayStation 3, the keynote will share Sony Computer Entertainment's innovative plans for the format and will provide a look at how new technology and new business models will help fuel the growth of the computer entertainment industry by attracting new consumers.

SCE is recognized as the global leader of the video game business with over 200 million hardware units and billions of software units sold across the three PlayStation formats. The recent global success of PlayStation Portable has shown the company's commitment to continued innovation--developing the market beyond the traditional definitions of the game consumer.

This keynote will look at the tremendous opportunities presented to game developers worldwide as the industry goes "beyond the box."

I mean... that seems like a pretty big hint as to what he's going to talk about.

Re:The race begins

[MBGMorden]

Dreamcast was a 3rd gen system (or rather 4th gen. NES/SMS I'd consider 1st, SNES/Genesis/TG16 2nd, PSX/Saturn/N64 3rd); it might have been the weakest of the lot, but it's performance was clearly in the same category (I've got both, as well as GC and Xbox, and hold no loyalty to a particular system). It's only major limitation were the 1gb disks, which made developers limit game content a bit more than one would like. Still, there were a number of great titles for the system (Sould Calibur, Grandia 2, Skies of Arcadia), and in the same respect Nintendo has did good with it's 1.5gb Gamecube discs.

I'd say that the main reason Dreamcast failed was illegal copying. For better or for worse, you could/can literally download an image of a Dreamcast game, burn it to a regular CDR, and pop it right in and play. In the age of broadband, a lot of people were downloading those games. No protection is fool proof, but if you at least make the user crack out a soldering iron you mitigate the risk a lot.

Re:Revo & DS

[rohlfinator]

I think your idea is probably more likely than you think.

Instead of simply using the same screens as the GBA and GBASP, Nintendo upped the resolution slightly on the DS's screens, to 256x192 (from 240x160 on the GBA). The DS's screens use the same horizontal resolution as the NES and SNES, so emulation could be more accurate. The NES Classics series for the GBA had to scale the images down slightly to fit on the GBA's screen, but that would be mostly unnecessary for the DS.

Also, the DS's Download Play feature would work quite well for emulated classics. Only one downloaded title can be stored in RAM at a time, so Nintendo wouldn't have to worry about piracy.