Takashi Tezuka is a high profile video game designer for Nintendo, who's work goes as far back as the original Super Mario Bros. of which he took the role of main director to Shigeru Miyamoto. He is still an integral part of Nintendo and took some time out to chat about the progression of the company. Tezuka believes that Nintendo's style has not deviated from its original roots, the way of expression has changed but their inner core values remain intact. He specifically refers to the Wii and how Nintendo inspires other game creators to generate new entertainment which is not just evolving the standard line of games with even more beautiful graphics.

Do you feel that Nintendo is returning to its gaming roots with Wii and DS?

Actually, I don't feel that Nintendo has ever deviated from its gaming roots. The style of expression has changed, but I feel the substance of entertainment that we try to provide has not changed significantly.

Of course, interests vary depending on which country, territory or time people live in. We always try to create some pleasant surprises, but how we can surprise people changes too, accordingly. We're always trying to pay close attention to the flux of time, but what doesn't change is that we're always trying to create brand new entertainment that can give pleasant surprises to people.

The hardware of Wii and DS have been designed so that they can encourage and inspire game creators to create brand new entertainment that does not necessarily exist as a linear extension of the past stream of videogame evolutions. As a result, though some of the games may make you feel that they have returned to their origins, in reality we have been able to create brand new genres of videogames. Wii, for example, has so far been able to generate a new wave by enabling more physical experiences instead of just aiming at the increasingly gorgeously looking graphics and beautiful sounds, I think.

IBM has launched the world's fastest commercial supercomputer which is three times more potent than the current fastest machine. The latest high powered machine is able to work at petaflop speeds and approximately 100,000 times more powerful than a PC, with the first machine being bought by the US government. The CPU of choice in the machine is the CELL as used in the PS3.

By comparison the standard one petaflop Blue Gene/P comes with 294,912-processors connected by a high-speed, optical network.

However, it can be expanded to pack 884,736 processors, a configuration that would allow the machine to compute 3,000 trillion calculations per second (three petaflops).

"Blue Gene/P marks the evolution of the most powerful supercomputing platform the world has ever known," said Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing, IBM.

A spokesperson for Sony Japan has announced that the electronics giant has now resolved all problems regarding the manufacturing of the PS3 and production is now at its fullest capacity. Sony also expressed confidence that the PS3 would go on to be as successful as the PS2 due to its broader lifestyle aim, however they acknowledge the deciding factor will be the content available for the machine.

"Production problems have now ceased, we're in full production as far as Playstation 3 is concerned and there's a steady chain of supply in North America, Japan and Europe,” said a spokesperson for the Computer Entertainment division of the Japanese corporation.

In its annual report, Sony said it sold 5.5 million Playstation 3 units in the fiscal year ended March 31 2007, despite having faced production yield problems for its blue semiconductor lasers that feature inside each machine.

Sony is convinced that the Playstation 3 will eventually match the wild success of the PS2, discounting competition from other console makers as a factor.

"We're aiming towards a much broader lifestyle for home entertainment enthusiasts, that's one of the reasons the Playstation 2 went on to sell over 115 million units worldwide," said a spokesperson.

In its annual report Sony says it expects to establish the same successful business model with the PS3 that it achieved with the PS2.

"Ultimately it will come down to content," explained the company’s spokesman.

"What it offers for its price is exceptional value for money – a quarter of the cost of a PC of similar capability and about the same as a commercial Blu-ray player."

A Playstation specific website is reporting that the community director of Bioware has confirmed that his team will be at E3, and as well as showing off Mass Effect and Sonic RPG, it is speculated that they will be revealing a PS3 exclusive title.

However PSU would like to add to the hype by speculating that Bioware will announce their PS3 exclusive they've been working on at E3. We first heard about the exclusive when we met with Richard Vogel, Director of Operations at Bioware back at this years Game Developers Conference. He mentioned that a game was in the works and that it would be for the PS3, but other than that he reluctant to reveal any details.

After confirming the Xbox 360 versions of Madden NLF 08, All Pro Football 2K8 and NCAA Football 08 will run at 60 frams per second in comparison to a mere 30fps on the PS3, 1UP seeked a response from both Sony, EA and 2K sports. One response from a Sony exec yieleded a we can do it, so others should be able to response and EA pushed that the best experience for the PS3 was 30fps but both versions of the game are equally as good. Unfortunately 2K Sports refused to comment on the matter.

Now, you'd think Sony would be doing everything in its power to make sure these system sellers are par with -- or better -- than Microsoft's version. That's not the case, as Sony seems to have a "hey, we can do it -- why can't you?" attitude. "We have already proven that sports titles can run on the PlayStation 3 at true HD with 1080p output with NBA 07," says Dave Karraker, Sony CEA's senior director of corporate communications. "If you have questions about specific third-party games, you should speak to those publishers."

OK, we will. After seeing Sony's response, Todd Sitrin, EA's vice president of marketing sports branding, replied:

"We want to make sure that we give the best experience we can on each platform. In designing a game, there are all sorts of tradeoffs that include frame rate, visuals, features, AI, etc. Football is an extremely challenging sport to replicate because of the number of people on the field, their interaction, and the scope of the environments. As you can see, every company making a football game this year made a decision that the best experience for the Xbox 360 included 60fps whereas the best experience for the PS3 was 30fps. We certainly believe that both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are our football products are outstanding experiences and recommend that each gamer look at the entire experience, not just one aspect. We think they'll be very happy no matter which version of the game they play."

The Xbox Live Marketplace previously had some downloadable content available for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas for purchase but then the content suddenly went walkabout. However, Ubisoft has announced it is coming back and it's coming back FREE. All players who payed to the content will be refunded within 8-10 weeks.

With the release of the Apple iPhone on Friday, many are heralding the launch of the mobile device as the most hyped product launch in digital electronics history. But Cnet may well disagree, they have put up a list of ten other products which had high profile launches including the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and the Playstation 2.

01. Segway
02. Original 1984 Macintosh
03. Xbox 360
04. PlayStation 3
05. Nintendo Wii
06. Windows 95
07. Motorola Razr
08. Gizmondo
09. PlayStation 2
10. World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade

News Source: news.com

DFC intelligence has investigated whether Sony's slow and steady approach taken with the PS3 be enough to fight off strong increased competition from both MS and Nintendo. While they fail to come up with a conclusion at this moment in time, they are certain that no system will dominate the state of play as much as the first two Playstation systems did in the past. The omens is now on publishers learning how to properly leverage content across a variety of platforms as consumers are increasingly willing to purchase more than just one system.

The one thing we do continue to argue is that no system is likely to have the market share dominance of the first two PlayStation systems. The video game market is simply becoming diversified in multiple respects. Consumers are increasingly willing to buy multiple systems for multiple purposes. This means arguing who will be first or second is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Publishers and developers need to learn how to properly leverage content across multiple platforms. Unfortunately, this is something most video game companies have not historically excelled at.

News Source - Next-Gen.biz

The official Playstation blog has an interview with one of the lead developers behind the promising Heavenly Word for the PS3. Sony has if there was anything the PS3 allowed the developers to do that would not be possible on another platform, to which they got a reply concerning the power of the PS3. The developer stated they're looking to draw in gamers with some huge environments that allow you to smash up everything complete with natural physics.

News Source - Playstation.com

Ever since news of Noobz universal firmware exploit for the PSP, the sale of Lumines for the PSP has simply rocketed to new heights. It is now the SECOND most popular gaming item on Amazon, beating DS lite's, Mario Party 8 and a whole string of other newly released titles. However, the Wii remains in top position, but the list is updated hourly, so we will see if a Sony product can finally outsell a popular Nintendo platform.
Buy Lumines PSP game at $42.95

The Rockstar team have been sending out an e-mail of thanks to all those gamers who offered support to them over the controversial Manhunt 2 games title. The e-mail states that the team hopes to have more information on the status of the game soon but overall thanks the gaming community for messages of support.

Rockstar's email to Manhunt 2 supporters.

We wanted to thank everyone who has taken the time to contact us about Manhunt 2, which we had been planning to release on PlayStation 2, PSP and Nintendo Wii. As you know, Manhunt 2 was effectively banned around much of the world, after it was refused certification in the United Kingdom, prohibited in Ireland, and denied an M rating in the United States.

We are very proud of Manhunt 2 and believe it builds on what the team accomplished with the first title in the series. The game was developed as a horror experience, and to be an M rated title, aligning it with similar horror content created in other forms of media. Unlike many other people, we do not think video games should be singled out for special treatment from the authorities. We hope to have more information for you soon, but in the meantime, we wanted you to know how much we value all of your messages of support.

Speaking in a recent interview, Sony's Phil Harrison brushed off concerns regarding the PS3's loss of exclusive titles by stating that Sony has a larger platform dedicated to development than their competitors combined. This results in all the best games complete with the best technology becoming exclusive to Sony platforms.

One area in which Sony has succeeded in the past is platform exclusives. But recently, many traditional Playstation exclusives have gone to Xbox 360 as well - Virtua Fighter, Grand Theft Auto, and Devil May Cry, for example. Is there anything you can do to combat this trend, or is the era of exclusives coming to an end?

Well, from a third-party exclusive point of view, that doesn’t fall under my remit, because I’m looking after Worldwide Studios and our first-party output. But, obviously, I’m looking at the platform as an entire portfolio. And yes, I’m always concerned to make sure that consumers can buy the best games and get the best game experiences to validate their system purchase. [But] as long as the games they get are great, [consumers] don’t care if they are third-party or first-party…What I do believe is that the investments we have made in Worldwide Studios globablly - U.S., Europe, and Japan - will yield the best quality software and the highest quality experiences that are clearly going to be exclusive to the platform…We have a larger platform-dedicated development resource than our competitors combined. So all of that goes towards the fact that the best games with the best technology are coming exclusively to [Sony] platforms.

News Source - Gamers-creed.com

Ted Price, the CEO of Insomniac Games believes the gaming media has been far too critical of the PS3. He believes that the PS3 and Sony have become something of a 'whipping boy' for the press but has the utmost belief that the powerful machine will have a great Christmas period. Price also says as Resistance was synonymous with the PS3, any criticism directed towards Sony and the Playstation also affected Insomniac.

News Source - Gamedaily.com

SCEE has spent out a list of confirmed games that will be heading to the PS3 and PSP during this year in Spain. As far as PS3 is concerned, some of the big name titles include GT5: Prologue and Ratchet & Clank.

PS3 Titles

Singstar Next Gen: August 22
Warhawk: August 29
Heavenly Sword: September 12
Lair: September 26
Folklore: October 10
Eye of Judgment: October 24
Ratchet & Clank: November 7
Time Crisis 4 & GunCon 3: November 18
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue: November 21
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: November 28

PSP Titles

SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 2: July 4
PaRappa the Rapper: July 11
WipEout Pulse: September 10
ATV Offroad Fury Pro: September 19
Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice: September 19
Patapon: October 19
Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow: October 24
SOCOM Tactical Strike: November 7
Everybody's Golf Course: November 7
Loco Roco 2: December 7

Microsoft has kicked off a legal blitz aimed at fighting software pirates located in California and Florida who are deemed to be selling counterfeit software. The latest filings bring the total number of legal actions issued by Microsoft up to 125 during the past year. MS claims they are conducting these huge assaults on software pirates to protect honest resellers who are finding it difficult to compete against companies selling pirated software.

News Source - Vnunet.com

In order to be released in Germany without fear of a criminal offence, the developers of The Darkness on the Xbox 360 have gone back to the drawing board to change a few elements of the game. The most major change is the the removal of Nazi symbolism as well as the removal of the four Darkling kill methods and the ripping out of the heart animation being relaced with sucking out souls via a green mist. It may be possible for German gamers to source the 'uncut' version from the rest of Europe but this in itself could carry a maximum jail sentence of three years.
Buy this game for just $56.95

After several debates on why people should pay for the Live and not the Sony Network, the Xbox community team and also the PR manager has looked to justify the pricing of Xbox Live. Some of the reasons given are that there are huge bandwith costs, there is voice cummnication, text comunication, cross platform functionality and a regularly updated market place. Michael Wolf, an MS PR manager tried to push the value you get as a Live customer by stating that he pays $100 a month for cable but uses his $50 live subscription a lot more, so therefore it presents great value.

News Source - gamepro.com

Coming off the back of one of its best selling PSP months, Sony seem in rather buyouant mood regarding the future of the PSP. Senior Marketing manager John Koller believes the PSP has the ability to drive some big revenues for Sony as things finally start to come together for the portable handheld. Koller also defended PSP developers and the high propensity of PS2 to PSP ports, he said they were not being lazy but were just thinking that because they have a great brand with one game, it should transfer over well to a portable machine too.

New Source - http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/interview/?id=16632&page=2