The Gaming thread

From the pics I've seen from the series, I had a good indication of how great the graphics looked, but the clip seemed to show that the story was pretty interesting as well. I was expecting some boring flight missions where I destroy some other planes and buildings, but the clip showed what looked to be like very good character development. Basically it looks like a game with characters I could care for rather than some boring voice telling me what to do.

Nope. In fact, I think Microsoft was expecting to lose 1 billion on it anyways. The HDD and network adapter on the Xbox are probably some reasons why they lose a lot of money. Most consoles lose money, although I think at one time or another both the PS2 and GC made profits on the consoles, but I think they mostly lose money on each one sold. For the Xbox, I don't think they could ever really get close to making a profit on the console itself.

They also paid a lot of money for other companies to make the Xbox, suchas Nvidia, and I think they get money from Microsoft for each one sold. In comparison, since Sony made the PS2 themselves, they don't have to pay anyone else anything. I think Nintendo may have to pay ATI, but they also make a lot of money on their 1st party games. I'm sure once you add all this up along with marketing costs, Xbox Live, and whatnot, you get somewhere around the billions that they lost. In fact, I bet that any attempts to market the Xbox in Japan probably ended up as more losses for the Xbox since it didn't do any good.

 

I think it was supposed to come out on the 19th, but got delayed like a week, so that would place it around the 26th. Looking at EBGames, they have it shipping on the 25th which sounds right. They were pretty up to date when they changed the release date for ESPN NBA 2K5, so I guess expect to buy it in stores on the 26th, unless you "know" someone.

 

Now that you mention it, it does make a lot of sense. I just did a quick search and Microsoft invested like $1 billion to Comcast, so I'm sure they may have some influence.

And actually, that reminded me that the previous owner of TechTV was Paul Allen. That channel sure has a lot of links to Microsoft all of a sudden. Then again, I also found out that Sony was thinking about buying it from Allen...so..um...uh..yeah.

You're probably right about that "going out of business" comment. I think Nintendo along has roots from 100 years ago or something like that, and both Microsoft and Sony seem to own a little bit of everything. I think Sony pictures just got $1 billion worldwide this year, and for Microsoft...well, do I really need to go there? Of course, whether the gaming console branches for those two stays alive is a whole other question. And the Phantom sucks...don't ask why I said that. I guess I just had to since I was talking about console systems that would be going out of business.

Now back into my gaming news voice...

Halo 2 has gone gold. Great news for all those Halo..people. There should be an actual name for them, like Haloiens, or Haloites, Halorians or something. Well anways, it is done and I'm sure many people are happy to hear that. Maybe we can get some more awesome Red VS Blue clips.

More of a FYI than news, but I think I read somewhere that Tekken 5 is using Endorphin, that animation software thingy I showed a little while back. Looks like I know how to find a good animation tool. Or maybe I just know how to find people who know how to find them.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but someone from EA said that they expect the PS3 to launch around mid-2006. They basically said that they expect next-gen to start around late 2005 with the Xbox 2 and that Sony would not wait longer than 6 months to release the PS3 after that. Nintendo has also said that they are trying to release the Revolution around the same time as the "competition" and that they will be watching what Sony does, or what they believe they will do. They later said that they don't want to ignore the Xbox, but they think that they are making a big mistake trying to rush into this next generation.

Something I thought that was kind of interesting is a poll on IGN. Right now, they're asking what one handheld would you buy right now: Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and the Nokia thingy that I don't even feel like mentioning the real name of since it sucks and is only getting 2.1% of the vote. Anyways, it seems to be almost split down the middle for the PSP and DS, at least when I checked it it was. (50.4 for the DS, 47.4 for the PSP) I'm not sure how long the poll has gone on, but I think it has gone on at least for the weekend (in fact, when I originally voted, the PSP was winning by a narrow margin) Basically, the point I'm tryint to make is that it seems as though there seems to be a pretty good fan base for each. This is somewhat surprising to me since the few forums I've been to seem to have quite a large number DS fans and a small number of PSP fans, if any. (maybe I should stop going to Nintendo forums. ) I know that I really talk a lot about the PSP, but I kind of felt like a minority in this. The main features of the DS, such as the two screens and touchscreen, never really caught on to me, personally, but I know a lot of other people love it, and of course the price and games doesn't hurt. So of course, I thought Sony would have to work pretty hard on the price, games, and battery life just to have a chance in the handheld war.

Of course, I'm sure if Sony comes out tomorrow and says the PSP will cost $800 and run off the blood of virgin boys, then I bet the polls would be different, but they did seem to still go with the PSP despite the issues that Sony has yet to really address. I know, it is just a stupid poll at IGN, but I thought it was interesting, especially if the people who voted are in any way similar to the actual consumers that will buy these handhelds.

 

I think I played 1 and 2 of the Monkey Island series, although I was kind of young at the time. I can't remember too much, but I think it was pretty cool. That reminds me of all the adventure PC games I played as a kid. Good times, good times. I never did get to play Curse of Monkey Island, IIRC.

I don't really remember the Pirates game. I may have played it at one time or another and forgotten it though.

 

Hehe... who knows? It does look like the virgin boy demographic is taken by Nintendo though. They pretty much have it locked up:
http://img2.exs.cx/img2/2273/tendo5.jpg
http://dsmedia.ign.com/ds/image/article/554/554126/feel-the-magic-xyxx-20041005102344038.jpg
http://dsmedia.ign.com/ds/image/article/554/554126/feel-the-magic-xyxx-20041005102346101.jpg

Hmm...I think I'm starting to understand how awesome this touch screen can be.

 

The biggest news going around right now is that Halo 2, shortly after going gold, has been leaked. It is the French version, although it does have subtitles. It sounds like a lot of people are jumping on this to get a chance to play it. Of course, Microsoft doesn't like it and they'll try their hardest to make sure no one gets it. It was kind of funny because they talked about it on The Screen Savers yesterday. Everybody kind of liked the idea of it leaking and it sounded like Kevin Rose and I think Alex had already checked it out or were going to check it out. IIRC, Kevin said something like, "When I did (something, can't remember), something happened," which Alex then "corrected" him, saying that someone else did it. My dad and I wonder how long they'll remain on-air without a lawsuit with all the stuff they talk about. In fact, I think they accidently shows a pirated game's/application's folder the other day and even commented about it being pirated. What they do and say is pretty much what anyone says, but unfortunately, they're on TV.

There is a Splinter Cell clip out there. I'm still downloading it but I'm sure it looks cool. You can find a place to download it here:
http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/games/splintercell3/scct_clips.zip.html

This is really that much gaming related but I found it kind of interesting. The PSX, a PS2/DVD recorder hybrid device, as you may know hasn't done particulary well in Japan. However, after lowering the price of their models, Sony is finding some success with it. The low-end PSX model (160 GB version) took first place on the DVD recorder list. This just kind of surprised me since it sounded like the PSX was basically a horrible move by Sony. I'm sure they'll still think twice about doing something similar, but at least it sounds like they may be getting a little bit back from a costly mistake. Or maybe I'm wrong and it is too early to tell and the PSX will be in every home around the world in less than 6 months...but I doubt it.

Pretty much the rest of my post will be about the PSP since there was a little bit of info released recently from interviews of some Sony officials. First off, a release date ...sort of. It sounds like Sony will annouce the release date of the PSP for Japan a month before that date. So basically the soonest it could come out is a month from now and the latest it would be annouced would be a month before December 31st, since it sounds like they are pretty confident that it would be released this year. One day that seems somewhat likely is December 3rd, IIRC. I think this days is called "Playstation Day" in Japan and would be a pretty likely date, IMO, with an announcement coming in the 1st week of November.

The battery for the PSP will be removable. This was wondered by some since some other devices had their batteries screwed in I think. One of the officials said that the battery life would depend on how the PSP is used, which pretty much goes with everything we know. He did say, however, that it would definitly be able to play a movie and then some on a single charge. I would assume that this pretty much shoots down any claims of the PSP's battery life only being 1.5-2 hours long, unless the movies he watches are only 4 minutes long. The actual recharging of the battery would take "multiple hours" but it was not mentioned exactly how long. They said it would be fast, similar to cell phones, and you will be able to charge the battery while playing the PSP.

For anyone who was worried about possible skipping of games, it was mentioned that this should not be a problem. Actually, taking the game out would pretty much result in the same thing that happens with the PS2. Speaking of the PS2, it was mentioned that it would be possible to use the PSP as a controller for the PS2.

There was some info on the memory sticks as well. If you want, you could save game data on the stick and then copy that onto your PC for storage. Sony claims that just because you can do this, you will not be able to actually change the data. When connecting the PSP to a PC, you can access the memory stick but not the UMD's, which are off-limits. In fact, as you may have guessed, Sony really wants to push this standard. They said it was possible to release maybe some games or demos, along with other things, on the memory sticks, but they wanted to wait a while and release most of their stuff via the UMD's. So everyone needs to buy 50 UMD's each so that we can do that and possibly even get a UMD burner if they finally give in.

I pretty much took all this from IGN, although Gamespot pretty much has the same info. You can read the latest PSP article which makes up most of my PSP info here:
http://psp.ign.com/articles/557/557539p1.html

IGN mentioned that this latest influx of info for the PSP seems to give the impression that this is all leading up to an official announcement of the PSP price and the release date. IGN is expecting something within the next few weeks. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that we'd know more before the year ends.

BTW, I'm sure I'll be posting pretty soon about how much Pulse sucks. I don't know what they have lined up, but I'm sure I'll watch it for some strange reason and they'll say something that will seem stupid to me. So you have all been warned about a possible rant from me coming later on.

 

That sounds pretty sweet. I probably won't get the magazine for the demo, but I've heard good things about it. One thing I read a few days ago was how "customizeable" it is. I heard a while back about some type of X-ray device you'd use to dig out bullets, but I found out that it was confirmed, or at least it looked like it was confirmed with pictures of the bones and stuff. I don't know if this was in the demo, but I read that you could either try to heal your scars and take out bullets or leave them and see how hardcore you look. I also read how you'd have to throw up if you eat something poisonous by spinning him around. I never really realized how much you could actually do.

I got to see a little preview of it on X Play earlier in the week. It did look pretty interesting. I liked how they mentioned how fun it was to play as the evil side due to um...certain reasons.

Ok, time for my weekly Pulse rant. For this week, I'd like to disuss the news going around about the possible PSP delay. They mentioned how it might be delayed into "late 2005" and that a Sony rep confirmed that this may happen. I recall a Sony rep saying something about a possible delay, although I do not believe he meant a delay that would push the PSP into late 2005. IIRC, he was asked about the PSP's release date and he said that it was possible that it could be delayed if the software was not ready. IMO, this is basically like JVG saying the Rockets won't win more than 20 games this year if both Yao and T-Mac getting hurt, yet I would hope sportswriters across America would not make headlines such as "Rockets Head Coach says team may not win no more than 20 games this season." (especially since that would be an expensive headline to make) To me, that was more of a commen sense statement where he said that in a worse case scenario, the PSP could be delayed.

As far as I could tell, I think it is unlikely that there will not be enough games for launch. EA seems to be doing an excellent job of keeping this from happening just by themselves. I think they are confident in being able to lauch NFSU 2 and Tiger Woods Golf in Japan later this year and they will have at those plus NFL and NBA Street when it launches in the US. In addition to those, they recently announced that MVP Baseball and FIFA, which should probably be at or around launch. I also read that the Dynasty Warriors game for the PSP was just finished, so that would be at least 3 games for Japan and somewhere around 5-7 games for US just from these developers. IIRC, the DS has like 10-12 games or something like that with launch, so the PSP only needs a few more games to match somewhere in that area. When you also take into consideration that the PSP will be used for music and movies as well, Sony could afford to launch with slightly less games at launch that they would probably prefer. However, it appears that I may not be able to play the PSP until "late 2005-early 2006" because a Sony rep said so. Of course, I'm not counting out a delay; I just think it is unlikely. I just wish Pulse would think a little bit and not stretch the truth on certain issues.

Kind of going back to the MGS theme, there's some pretty nice clips out there that I believe are from the demo. There is also a clip from the DMC demo. I've only checked out the big MGS clip thus far, which was pretty awesome, so I don't know what each one looks like. Here's a link to the website where you can download them from:
http://www.gamesmediamirror.com/index_en.html
There's also some other clips on the site from RE4 and Okami that I haven't checked out yet. Given the dates, I'm guessing I've probably seen enough clips from the games to get an idea, but I think this site offers some high quality clips.

I also found a spot with some pretty nice PSP game footage. I don't know if each clip is of new footage or not, but I think at least some of them are. (again, haven't download all of them) If nothing else, it is a site that has clips from several games that you could watch if you missed them from TGS. Here you go:
http://games.kikizo.com/news/200410/013.asp

For the DS, there is this pretty awesome looking demostration. You can see it from:
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/movie/syokai.swf
While I still don't care for the DS that much, the stylus and some of the games do look interesting.

Speaking of the DS, it seems pretty popular in Japan, with the DS preorders placing 3rd in console sales this past week. In 1st was GBA SP, 2nd was the PS2,4th was the preorders for the PStwo, and 5th was the GC. Actually, I was a little surprised to see that the PStwo preorders ranked that high. I was wondering how people would treat it. Of course, I believe Sony has caused shortages of the PS2 so that they could bring this redesigned one in, so I guess some of those numbers are just people trying to get a PS2 and not necessarily one with a new design. I saw a poll on IGN which seemed to show not many people wanting a PStwo even though they already had a PS2, so that would seem to support that theory. Either that, or the Japanese REALLY, REALLY like new designs that make things smaller.

There is sort of news of Bill Gates possible announcing Xbox 2/Xenon during CES in January of next year. I think he was just mentioned as a major speaker of the event or something like that, so many assume he will talk about it. Of course, I think a lot of people pretty much assumed that would be the case since the original Xbox, IIRC, was announced during the same event. The only other event I could think of between now and the possible release of Xbox 2/Xenon would be E3 or the TGS of next year, with both probably being a little too late for an announcement considering the expected release date for the console. At those events, I'd imagine some kind of tech demos or even the console itself being playable, along with possible goodies from Sony and Nintendo on their next-gen stuff.

Speaking of next-gen (I'm on a roll with these transitions. ) Toshiba, who has been working with both Sony and IBM on Cell, has said that the "...Cell processor will lead to a world of new Cell products." Basically, it sounds like they have some plans for Cell other than just letting Sony use it for the PS3.

I figured I'd add some more Blu-ray news here since there probably won't be much interest in it until it is closer to becoming a standard. They now have been able to put both CD layers and Blu-ray layers on a single disc. If I understood everything right, basically this means you could buy a movie and watch it in high-definition and then stick it in a CD player to listen the soundtrack from the movie. I don't know if the CD player would need any adjustments or not, but it sounds like the disc would have a CD layer for the player to read off of. I believe this also creates a step of doing the same but with a DVD layer. It is pretty amazing how much they seem to be able to do with Blu-ray and that is why Blu-ray has already won the war.

That's basically all I got for now.

 

I normally would bash Pulse around this time, but I don't really have anything to bask them on. They pretty much went through a whole show without really screwing up, although I did smile while they mentioned the news of the PSP's recent price/release announcement earlier this week. If there was anything to bash them on, it was that the show was boring, but it is normally kind of boring anyways.

On to the PSP. I won't get too much into the announcement mention earlier since we have a thread about that here. I did mention some news in that related to the PSP other than the pirce and release date if you missed it before.

I'm going to post a list of games made by fans for the PSP. Basically, if Rockstar said 7 months ago that they were working on a game or two for the PSP, it would probably be here. It is kind of long, but it is a nice list to check out if you're curious on what is being made for the PSP. Here you go:

If you want to read how these games were learned about, you can check out this thread on another forum. Just about all the games are linked to a report or something mentioning it being made. This list that I quoted above is accurate as of 10-29, but that post should be edited with each game announcement. Speedis, the poster who is doing this, already has a few games in the list that were just recently announced.

Following the news on the PSP earlier in the week, there has been some nice info since then that you can find on the internet (I checked out IGN if it matters). They mostly talk about new game announcements, updates for the games, and some clarification on some of the things about the PSP such as the possibility of a hard drive. In one article, it mentions a little bit on how Sony is able to release the PSP at $185. I've learned that Sony has an advantage of the other companies due to them having their own factories to make their own hardware, but even I didn't really think they could go that low for a price. This article talks a little bit about that. Not only did I not think they would release at that low of a price, I certainly didn't think they'd be able to start making a profit of the PSP itself relatively soon, as mentioned in the article. The numbers they're making does seem to be a little on the low side though.

On a rather interesting note, they mentioned how the PSP was actually going to be sold even cheaper, but some changes to the RAM lead to a two chip design, instead of one, which they had already been preparing for already, costing them a little bit of money. Also mentioned was how the battery life could change for the better. As mentioned before, developers have could affect the battery life and anything that they can improve on would improve the battery life for the PSP. Additionally, it seems like Sony may prepare on making small changes to the PSP which would allow it to use less power. One example of this would be going from the 90nm approach to a 65nm approach for the chip size. They said that they eventually wanted to get it so that you could continously use the PSP on a flight from New York to Narita. I have no idea where Narita is, but I'm guessing it is pretty far from New York. In a way, this kind of makes me wonder if I should hold off a bit until they make those advances, but I don't know if I could wait that long until they make changes. If it seems like it wouldn't be until late next year or so, I'd probably cave in and get one before then. If worse comes to worse, I could just spend ~$40-45 on an extra battery.

As for the DS, here's their latest marketing attempts:

Not a bad ad.

While the ad seems nice, I'm wondering what has been up with Nintendo and their comments during the beginnings of this handheld war. A while back, we had those comments of the PSP only having 2 hours of battery life and now we have another. There was this exchange of worse from the execs from each company. On the PSP's latest new, Nintendo said something about it not being a game machine, that it was at the TGS without any fundamental game software, and that you could tell that is was not yet complete. Sony's exec came back, saying that people who wanted to play Pikachu could get the DS while those who want to play GT4 Mobile can get the PSP. Besides these comments, there was also an analyst who said the price announcement raises the chances of it fully expanding in the market and that game publishers now want to make games for the PSP due to the price. It didn't really take an analyst to figure that out, but he does have the certification I guess.

The first officially announced game for the PS3 has been..um..announced. It is by Koei and is tentatively called Oni. (sound familar?) I believe they're making a movie as well to go along with it and the game is scheduled for 2006, IIRC, which seems to go with the timetables for the PS3. The budget for the game is supposed to be $28 million, although I think I read that part of it could be part of the movie budget as well. I can't give an accurate comparison to what a game's budget is today, but I thought I read at one time or another that $5-10 milllion is probably where most budget's for games stick to, if not lower. It would be interesting to see how much the next-gen games will cost to make.

Killzone has gotten a review from IGN and it doesn't seem like it quite lived up to the hype since it got a 7.5. From the sounds of the review, I'm slightly baffled at the problems. I've read that the developers were focusing on the AI and that the the AI would do something different every time, yet both this review and reviews of the demo mentioned how the AI sucked. It certainly isn't good to have bugs/glitches either. I'm somewhat disappointed by these things, although like IGN said, it certainly isn't a bad game and most people should at least give it a try. It just didn't beat Halo, let alone Halo 2. I guess I could wait until other reviews though. There was another review for the game that got a 9/10, but that was from a PS2 magazine IIRC. Nevertheless, the problems mentioned sounded familar and they shouldn't have been there, IMO. Of course, I guess I could go the conspiracy route and say that IGN is biased for Halo and just reviewed the demo version that has bugs and stuff that were fixed in the final version, but I doubt that. Guess I should just wait to rule out that small, small chance.

This is a strange story, but an Xbox owner is suing Mircrosoft over defective disc drives, on behalf on all Xbox owners. As much as I'd like Microsoft to lose even more money, I see this as somewhat stupid. If he actually won, all three companies would be getting sued like crazy, or I would think so.

So, um...I'm playing GTA:SA now. Anyone else got it? I heard it was good.
(yes, that was pretty much a sarcastic end to a very lengthy post, thanks to the game list.)