Official TGS 2006 Thread

Following up the big Wii news from last week, several companies will be making major announcements or revealing important details during this week at TGS. For those that don’t know, TGS is the Tokyo Game Show (basically the Japanese equivalent of E3 I guess); it actually doesn’t start until Friday in Japan, but Microsoft will be having a pre-TGS conference tomorrow. I don’t know the time of the conference, but depending on when it is, we might get details from it as early as tonight (thanks to the crazy time zone differences).

Nintendo themselves most likely won’t have much of a presence at TGS, but third parties will probably show off their games for the Wii, as well as the DS I guess. I believe a trailer for the Resident Evil Wii game is supposed to be shown sometime during TGS.

Even though MS has had difficulties in the Japanese market, don’t think that they won’t show anything good at TGS. I believe games like Gears of War and Forza 2 will be at TGS, despite the fact that X06 is only a week later (X06 is Microsoft's own event where they make announcements and show off games). Additionally, the 2 Mistwalker RPGs for the 360, Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon, will most likely receive big pushes from MS during TGS (and rightfully so). Some of the other 360 Japanese developers will probably release some new info too (maybe Ninja Gaiden 2 from Team Ninja?).

SCEI President and CEO Ken Kutaragi will be giving a keynote on Friday (Thursday night here), and TGS itself will start on Friday as well, so we can expect some PS3 details then I guess. Devil May Cry 4 is supposed to be playable, as well as 20+ other PS3 games IIRC (Resistance, Sonic, Virtua Fighter 5, etc). We'll probably get a new amazing MGS4 trailer, although it probably won't be gameplay (be nice if it was). With this being the last major event for Sony before the PS3’s launch, Sony really needs to get a lot of positive news going for the PS3 (hopefully there is some left ).

Oh yeah, and there will be some stuff on the DS, PS2, PSP, etc. But no one pays attention to that stuff.

For 360 owners, it seems like MS will be doing something similar for TGS/X06 that they did for E3:
http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/09/18/Brinigng-it-Home-TGS-X06.aspx

Gamespot already has their TGS thread up, although I don’t think it really has much at the moment:
http://www.gamespot.com/events/tgs2006/index.html?tag=nav-top;tgs

 

OK, the MS conference will start in a little over an hour (12AM Central). I don't know if we'll get live (or close to it) updates online, but that's when the conference is supposed to be taking place in Japan. Here's the NeoGAF thread for the MS conference, followed by the general TGS thread:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120202
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120120

While we wait, I'd like to bring this to the attention to any DMC fans that may have missed the recent DMC4 blowout (or even if you didn't, you should check it out):
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120112
It is an awesome NeoGAF thread/post that has all the info and screens that came out recently.

 

Ugh...I think the conference might still be going on, but it should be almost over. I'm too tired to stay up any longer though.

Press Release:

Only semi-interesting thing is the 1080p comments regarding the 360, but given the wording and some of the conflicting info, I'm going to wait for clarification on what exactly the 360 can output in 1080p. No use in speculating at this point.

On another note, "Ninja Gaiden Sigma" will be released for the PS3. It seems to be a port of NGB though, maybe with some extras. Probably just in case Team Ninja makes a PS3 version of Ninja Gaiden 2 I guess (though the 360 version would probably be released first, or something like that). A couple of other PS3 games were revealed (this PS3 stuff is from Famitsu magazine BTW), but nothing major (a new Level 5 game is the only other thing of note IMO).

I don't know...I'll provide some more updates and links later today maybe...I might have missed something. I think there are some links to video downloads for some of the games MS showed off (Lost Planet, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, etc.) that are either up already, or will be up later on. That should be pretty awesome.

 

What’s up with the lack of replies?

Some scans and info from the Famitsu magazine I was referring to earlier have hit the net. So we basically got more info/images from Ninja Gaiden Sigma, GT:HD, MGS4 (didn’t mentioned earlier that this was also in the magazine), and a couple of other games. I’m on dialup right now, so it would take me WAY too long to get the correct links, as well as upload some of the scans to imageshack or whatever (in case the originals get attacked through other sites). So instead, I’m just going to go over a couple of things, and strongly recommend that you guys check out the TGS link (second link I gave in the 2nd post) for more info, images, and links to download trailers.

First up, Famitsu had new images of MGS4, some/all of which showed gameplay. As expected, the graphics seem to match the real-time trailers Konami has shown previously, although I admit that it is hard to tell that from some crappy scans (even if the graphics were matched, we still wouldn't know how something like the animation looked). I’m just excited that they showed gameplay screens; that seems to suggest that the new trailer that they’ll show in a couple of days will also include gameplay. Sweet.

As I said earlier, Ninja Gaiden Sigma appears to be a port of NG for the Xbox (“Ninja Gaiden: The Complete Experience” or something like that). They’re improving the graphics, adding weapons, adding moves, making Rachel playable, and doing some other things. I believe they said that they were going to replace the CGI in NG with real-time cutscenes, which is interesting considering how impressive the CGI in NG was in the first place. I’d like to see how that turns out. Here’s an IGN link for more info:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/733/733714p1.html

It appears as though GTHD (Gran Turismo HD) is in fact not just a demo, but a game…or 2 of them to be exact. According to a translation, it appears as though we’ll be getting a “GTHD: Premium” and a “GTHD: Classic.” If I understand things correctly, the premium version will be like GT4 Prologue, giving PS3 owners a taste of what GT5 will be like when it comes out (around 2008 IIRC). There are a limited amount of cars and tracks of course (30 cars and 2 tracks IIRC), but it takes full advantage of the PS3 apparently (plus online play). That’s all fine and dandy. The other version, if I understand correctly, will basically be a port of GT4 with some minor improvements (HD, online play with new modes, etc.). The catch is that you buy the cars and tracks you want separately (for like $.80 and $4.30 each IIRC). There are 750 cars and 50 tracks, meaning that it seems that you would have to pay more for all that than you would for the PS3, assuming you have to purchase them all separately (and possibly on top of the price of the game itself…though if there’s no content, that's not much of a game now is there?). Seems like a bad idea, but something they want to experiment with I guess. Unless things turn out to be better than initially reported, I sure as hell won’t support this type of system, especially since I’m not a big GT fan anyway…nor do I really care for a HD port of a PS2 game either. Now if they do this with GT5…

I think the NeoGAF thread has info and links to this, but here’s a link to IGN as well:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/733/733760p1.html

There’s also some scans for the Level 5 PS3 game (kind of like Shadow of the Colossus or something, if I understood things right), as well as scans for 2 DS games from SE (the FFXII game and a Front Mission title). I believe SE is also going to re-release KH2 in Japan (like they did with KH1...called "KH: Final Mix" IIRC), and that will include a 3D recreation of the GBA KH game IIRC.

I believe that is more or less it for Famitsu. As I said earlier, some of the trailers and gameplay shown at Microsoft’s conference earlier are now available online. Along with the links in the NeoGAF thread, I’d recommend checking out this site for high-quality movies from the presentation:
http://www.xboxyde.com/index_en.html
I’ve only been able to watch about a 2 minute real-time trailer for Blue Dragon, which looked impressive. I’m working on getting the Lost Odyssey gameplay video downloaded.

There’s also been some new Resistance movies (including an intro movie, or so it appears), but I’m too lazy to get the direct links at the moment. The new gameplay videos are at Gamespot and IGN, while I think the intro vid is on their webpage…I think. I used a direct link to the FLV file and downloaded that; I believe this is that link:
http://www.us.playstation.com/Content/Sites/163/Info/video/143/HDFLV/rfomintro.flv
You need something that can play FLV files.

 

Unless I missed something, all the big Wii news happened last week:
http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=117702
Launch price, launch date, info on launch titles, etc.

As I mentioned earlier, Nintendo doesn't attend TGS, so any news at TGS regarding the Wii will have to come from 3rd parties (given the source of the info, this would relate more to Wii software than the Wii itself, like the soon-to-be-released trailer for the RE Wii game).

 

Yeah, I realize there isn't much to be excited about so far based on what has been announced/revealed (prior to my last update anyway...I think the MGS4 images and the GTHD "experiment" are pretty big). I figured there would still be more posts based on the little bit shown so far, or even just based on this being TGS ("Sony/Microsoft better do ___ at TGS," or "I hope ___ shows ___ at TGS," or whatever). I admit that the MS conference was a dud as far as announcements go (despite the hype of some MS employees prior to the event), but there was some nice new info and screens/movies for several new 360 games. Especially Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon, which should both be pretty big...I don't know...maybe they're aren't a lot of JRPG fans on the BBS...especially if the game doesn't start with "Final Fantasy ___."

Plus, there was all the DMC4 info and screens I posted, as well as the Ninja Gaiden PS3 news (even if it is a port, it is interesting IMO).

I don't know what is expected of Sony, but I would expect much more than what MS showed. Basically a bunch more info on their online plan, the Linux stuff, launch titles (as well as newly announced titles), accessory prices, PSP-PS3 stuff, some of the OS stuff, etc. Basically the things that Nintendo revealed last week outside of the price and launch date details (which Sony has already revealed). This will probably be their last chance to announce that stuff, so they probably need to announce it soon...or else we won't know what a controller will cost until we see it on store shelves, right next to the PS3 boxes...which would be empty since all the PS3s would have sold out by then.

I do agree about the current-gen offerings being better than the next-gen previews, especially since most/all of the current-gen stuff will be out before the next-gen stuff that I care about will be out. I would like to get in on the next-gen experience ASAP, but I have no problem waiting, as long as I can play games like Okami, FFXII, God of War 2, Zelda:TP (if that counts), etc.

Yeah, I guess there's that side to things too. Actually, I kind of figured/hoped at least some people were reading this (and hopefully happy to get these updates). However, even though I've started doing it more and more, I hate posting several times in a row, even when they're more like updates separated by several hours or so. I was worried that I might have the first 10 or so posts in this thread. I thought maybe I could avoid that by making that comment, and I guess it worked.

In any case, IGN has the first video of Bioshock (from developers of System Shock FWIW):
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/733/733807p1.html

Plus some details on Level 5's PS3 game:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/733/733845p1.html

Also, in case I forget to mention it later, Sony's conference starts tomorrow night at around 8PM IIRC. I have an exam during that time, but I hope to be back at around 8:30PM-9:00PM. Assuming Sony's conference isn't a dud too, I'll try to post some updates to it as soon as I can; if not, you guys know where to look.

 

Some (crappy) videos of Devil May Cry 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4 (gameplay for both):
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4376575&postcount=1
Bunch of links and mirrors in that post. There's also a video of the PS3 Retail Box.

Regarding this 360 1080p stuff, I think it has been confirmed that it CANNOT play HD-DVD movies in 1080p (or upscale DVDs) through component. However, I believe that it can do both with VGA (not sure...I don't know much about VGA, but they said it was possible...at least with HD-DVD playback). I'm assuming this is also true of the PS3 $500 SKU (no 1080p movie playback through component, but 1080p with VGA is supported). This would only be for HD-DVD and BR movies; I think it is still possible to play a video off the HDD at 1080p or play a home movie off of a blank disc (or something like that) through component (assuming your TV supports it). Basically, anything that doesn't use the same copy-protection as commercial movies I guess. Of course, if MS came out with a 360 SKU with HDMI or you had the PS3 SKU with HDMI, everything should play fine through that.

I think games are still good to go at 1080p through component, but I'm not sure that was ever in question. I always thought it was possible, but just something that not a lot of developers focused on (especially since the 360 architecture works better with 720p/1080i). I read something about the 360 being able to upscale games to 1080p, but again, I thought that was already known...or possible I should say. In any case, despite all this info, I don't think it will really be a big deal for most people.

BTW, I strongly recommend watching the Bioshock video I posted in my previous post. I had not watched it when I posted it, but I did watch it today. I could only get the crappy low-res version, but it looks amazing. The water effects are simply stunning from what I could tell, and the concept for the game is really interesting. Looks like another AAA game coming out in 2007....next year is going to be crazy.

 

My exam took a little longer than I thought, and it looks like I missed all of Sony's keynote. Doesn't look like much was mentioned for some reason, although at/near the end of the QA session, Ken noted that the cheaper SKU in Japan would have HDMI and would also be cheaper than the previously announce price (like a 10K yen drop to ~$430). I think this is only for Japan though. Not sure if we'll get HDMI and/or a price cut too.

Seems like a ton of new trailers are hitting the net, but I probably won't get to watch them until tomorrow or this weekend. Check out some of the threads at NeoGAF for links to them.

edit: Sounds like they dropped the price in Japan because retailers there were unhappy about the price. On the other hand, retailers in the US (and Europe I think) liked the price, so I'm guessing they won't match the drop here. Hopefully we get HDMI though, just to make things easier.

I'm probably done for the night. I might be able to get some more updates tomorrow evening.

 

OK, I finally got a chance to watch most/all the notable games at TGS. Here are some of my thoughts:

360 JRPGs (Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Trusty Bell):
These look like some very promising games for the 360. Each look very good graphically. I thought that LO and BD looked a little boring at times during the gameplay videos I checked out, but that's probably due to the fact that most RPGs are boring to watch. From what I could tell, Trusty Bell's gameplay looked pretty interesting. I think I probably liked it the best of the 3 (LO looks better IMO, but the gameplay looks really simple...to be fair, I think that's because they stripped out the interesting parts to keep them secret).

DMC4 and Ninja Gaiden Sigma:
Both games look nice, although DMC4 does look better of course (really like the environments). Not really a big fan of these types of games, so can't really comment on how they compare to previous DMC/NG games.

PS3 Racing Games (MotorStorm and F1):
Both games look VERY good...either almost as good as their target renders from E32K5, or even better. The rain effect in F1 looks awesome, as do the dirt effects in MotorStorm. The physics and destruction in both games look great.

Didn't really pay much attention to GTHD or RR7, even though they fit into this category. I'm not really interested in either title though (maybe when they're available for cheap though...and in the case of GTHD: Classic, that would probably be "never" I guess).

Warhawk and Lair (games using the PS3 controller for flight):
I only got to see the trailer for Warhawk that mostly showed off the ground combat. I think the flight-combat parts look much better (graphically), but I guess the ground combat stuff adds a lot more to the game (tanks, bunch of infantry troops, destructible buildings, etc). It does make the game more attractive to me at least since I don't really care for flight-combat games.

Lair looks really good, which is to be expected since it is coming from Factor 5 (water looks amazing). The gameplay could use some work I think (looks boring at times), but some things look pretty cool (fighting other dragons in mid-air, and then jumping to and from different dragons...all through the motion sensors in the controller too I think). Some impressions said it was really fun, so I guess I shouldn't judge it too harshly (especially since it has a long ways to go). Just not sure if F5 will put as much effort into making the gameplay as good as the graphics.

The Sega "Virtua" Games (Virtua Fighter 5 and Virtua Tennis 3):
Same old, same old for both games, at least for me. Both look great (though VT3 does look weird at times), and will probably be a lot of fun if the previous games in both franchises are any indication. I did like the snow level in VF5 (throwing bodies onto the ground, pushing the snow away).

Metal Gear Solid 4:
Glad to see some gameplay. As I said earlier, it does appear as though the gameplay graphics are as good as the real-time graphics (as I expected…though there are some rough areas, especially if you just look at screens), but I don't really like some of the animations (mostly of the enemy soldiers). Probably placeholder animations since the game still probably has like a year of development left, but I was kind of hoping to see great animation and great graphics. The gameplay elements did look interesting (using the MKII robot, using the suit to hide from enemies, rolling in barrels, etc.). It looks like the game might make good use of the controller too (for the barrel stuff, crawling on the ground, and possibly with aiming). I also liked the music in the trailer if that means anything.

Also...the last scene of the trailer....

Lost Planet:
Looks amazing as usual. The explosions, and environments look very good. Capcom is awesome (Lost Planet, Dead Rising, DMC4).

White Knight Story:
WOW! This game is just amazing for a RPG (assuming what I saw was a gameplay video). The graphics are incredible, especially the environments (another game with excellent water). The models could probably use a little more work, but they're not too bad (especially given the art style). The best part is definitely the animation in the game, especially in the battle scene. The transitions between each separate animation were so seamless, and the battle looked so dynamic. I was already interested in this game since it is by Level 5, but now I'm going to have to pay even more attention to it. I can't wait to see some of the things in the concept art come to life, especially the giant turtle carrying a city on its back.

Afrika:
One of the best-looking next-gen games in terms of graphics and animation IMO. It was crazy watching some of the scenes in the game, especially the Cheetah going after its prey. Too bad the game will probably just be some boring safari-sim, but it is very nice to look at.

Resistance:
I just get more excited for this game with every time I see something new for it. The newer trailers start showing off some more of the Chimera and how their architecture starts being built on top of some of the WW2-esque environments (even though WW2 never happens) we saw previously, so they are more alien-like. The combat just looks crazy with all the things happening at once (bullets flying everywhere, explosions sending bodies flying, ships exploding, giant mechs being blown to pieces, etc). The scale of things is really nice too (seeing Chimeran ships flying in the air). Some of the new guns they're showing off look like a lot of fun too. The AI seems really smart too, but that is kind of hard to tell for sure from the videos (especially since 90% of the time, the player is invincible).

DOAX2:
Only saw the CG trailer...that ain't right. It should help out a lot in Japan though.

I've seen a couple of other games (Coded Arms, Genji, NBA 07, Monster Hunter Unknown Realms, etc), but nothing really worth mentioning about them. I haven’t really had a chance to check out anything not for the 360 or PS3 yet though.

If anyone wants links to those games, I can post them (don't really have them all handy at the moment...especially since some have been taken down I believe). For now, I'd recommend watching the latest 1UP Show, which does a good job of showing several games and summing up TGS thus far:
High Quality WMV: http://zdmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/1UP/1upshow_tgs06_640x360.zip
High Quality Quicktime: http://zdmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/1UP/1upshow_tgs06_quick.zip
Low Quality Quicktime: http://zdmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/1UP/1upshow_tgs06_320x180.zip

I will say that I am little disappointed at how TGS ended up (at least so far...guess something big could still happen). Sony's keynote was just a big waste of time, with the only notable news coming in the QA session. They didn't address any of the questions most people have about the PS3 (online service, Linux, peripherals and their prices, etc), and the system will be out in less than 2 months. I think I read that there is supposed to be an October conference where I guess/hope they'll reveal those details...but I don't really know why they'd wait so long (maybe they're having problems?).

The games that were at TGS were impressive, but I wanted to see some more surprise announcements (Silent Hill 5, Final Fantasy 7: E____ C____, Ninja Gaiden 2, etc.). Plus, games like Final fantasy XIII (as well as Versus), Resident Evil 5 (or RE Wii...thus far), and Heavenly Sword (in video form) were either no-shows, or just recycling old demos/trailers (I think SE did show a new FFXIII trailer, but it doesn't look like they want it released online).

BTW, I believe SCEA confirmed that the inclusion of HDMI in all PS3s will be a worldwide thing. They also confirmed that the price drop was just for Japan.

Also, I don't think this is really a TGS story, but it is pretty much confirmed that the PS3's power supply is internal, and apparently it is really quiet and doesn't get too hot (based on some impressions from a Sega event a week ago I believe). Not really a big deal, but that is good to hear I guess (although if the games were running of the HDD, it might be misleading). I know some people were wondering about those things, so I brought that up.

I don't think I've checked out the trailer, but I saw some gameplay from Portal a couple of weeks ago on the 1UP Show. Seemed like an interesting concept, although I don't know how the game will pay out. Team Fortress 2 looked really cool as well; I really liked the graphics and art style.