The PS3 and Xbox 360 will definitely support HDTV, exactly what I was hoping for. This HDTV support will be pushed by Sony and Microsoft as features of the new systems, and will probably cause an increase in HDTV sales as well, which is a good thing. But at a cost:

But the higher capabilities of the new consoles will increase development costs, putting added pressure on midsize game publishers to create hit titles that will allow them to remain financially viable.

And that has proved difficult for many. While the E3 show attracts hundreds of companies looking to stake a claim in the business, 35 percent of last year’s exhibitors will be no-shows this year–replaced by a comparable number of newcomers.

Link: News.Com - HDTV Creates New Reality for Game Developers

The Nintendo Revolution has been confirmed for a 2006 street date. Not only that, it will be backwards compatible with the GameCube. (Sony has announced backwards compatibility for the PS3, so that leaves us wondering about the Xbox 360.) The Revolution will also have wireless capabilities, play horizontally or vertically, and will be wireless internet ready out of the box.

Link: Nintendo - Nintendo Reveals Early Details About Revolution

[Update: I forgot to mention! 1080p support, on two displays at the same time! Sony better upgrade their Qualias to accept this]

In a previous post, I was quite enthusiastic about the Xbox 360. Now, as a diehard PS2 owner, this was a hard thing for me to do. Loyalty and all that. But when the facts are staring me in the face, I admit them. And admit them I did. The Xbox 360 is shaping up to be quite a console. At the end of the post I told Sony that now it was their turn: impress me. Read the rest of this entry »

Sony has finally unveiled the PS3. Unfortunately, though we’ve gotten a glimpse of the console’s hardware specs, there is little about the software side of things. Read the rest of this entry »

I own an PS2. Todd owns an Xbox and Steve has a GameCube. Every Thursday we have a games night and we rotate whose place we play at (Joshua doesn’t have a system so we play board games there). The most fun I ever have playing video games is playing games with friends. The only time my PS2 ever gets used is when my friends come over. But I’ve always been rather proud of the PS2. A couple of the very favourite games we play are on my PS2. (Frequency, F1, and Champions of Norrath, in case you’re interested).

I’ve always assumed that once the new consoles come out, Todd would get the new Microsoft offering and Steve would buy Nintendo’s. Of course I would get the PS3. But I’m having second thoughts… Read the rest of this entry »

Now this is a story to take with a BIG grain of salt. But there are people postulating the the Xbox 360 isn’t powerful to do full HDTV resolution (1920×1080i or 1280×720p) games that are effectively anti-aliased. Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s E3 show portends to be one of the most fascinating in recent years. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo will all be revealing details about their next generation gaming consoles, though Microsoft has already shown most of its hand on MTV. The Xbox 360, PS3, and Revolution will all have state of the art processors provided by IBM, and advanced graphics by ATI (Xbox 360 and Revolution) and nVIDIA (PS3). They will all support HDTV.

But what’s all this hardware without software? It’s all about the games, after all. And software developers are starting to announce their next-gen titles. Read the rest of this entry »

Release dates are very important factors when it comes to a console’s success. Microsoft thinks that the release of the Xbox, one year behind that of the PS2, was one of the major contributing factors to its number two status. Part of their bid for the number one spot is moving up the release date to this fall, ahead of the competition by half a year or more. Read the rest of this entry »

The memory supplier for the Nintendo GameCube, MoSys, has said that we should expect Nintendo’s next gaming console, code-named ‘Revolution’, to ship in mid-2006. This is about the same time that the PlayStation 3 is widely rumoured to ship, though no official statements have been made. It is also rumoured that the Nintendo Revolution will be a small device, no taller than three DVD cases. Chinese website Unika.com has quoted the hardware of the console to be:

… four 2.5Ghz IBM G5 Custom cores, with 128KB of level 1 cache and a 512KB shared level 2 cache, while the graphics will be powered by a dual core ATI RN520 chipset, with 1MB of on-board eDRAM for the frame buffer.

Link: gameindustry.biz - Nintendo’s Revolution to emerge in mid-2006, says key supplier
Link: GIZMODO - Nintendo Revolution No Taller Than Three DVD Cases
Link: GIZMODO - Nintendo Revolution - Mid 2006 Release

So last night three of my friends and I were playing Empire Builder, a roadway building game that uses crayons to lay down tracks. Low-tech, I know, but it was my first time playing the game and I had fun. At around 9:30 we paused to check out MTV for the unveiling of the Xbox 360. But… it wasn’t on! Doh! We had MTV Canada, which didn’t have the Xbox 360 show. Grrrr…. So anyway, we continue playing Empire Builder and by 12pm or so we were getting a little tired, especially Todd. Todd will often start to doze on our games nights when it gets late, and when playing Champions on the PS2 or Heros on the Xbox he’ll often stop moving his character so we have to poke him to wake him up. Anyway, we quit the game at midnight and tallied up our accomplishments. While none of us met the winning conditions, I was closest, so I won! Yay. Anyway, when I got home at 12:30am I switched on my HDTV to watch the Xbox 360 thing, which started late and had way too many commercials. (In Canada the Xbox show was carried by CTV at 12:39am (it was supposed to be 12:35am)). Read the rest of this entry »

News.com has an article about the increasing costs of developing games for the next-generation of consoles. With the first public viewing of the Xbox 360 on MTV tonight, all eyes are on the console space today. How much will it cost to develop a game for the Xbox 360 versus the Xbox? Will it be significantly more or not? My personal opinion is that it will be an incremental change. Warren Spector of Ion Storm postulates that spending per game could go up to $40 million, and that smaller studios won’t be able to keep up.

Link: News.com - Developers uneasy about new game consoles

Tech-On! has released more of their interview with Sony’s Ken Kutaragi.

When asked about setting the operating frequency at 4GHz:

This is just as initially targeted. The reason for setting this target was quite simple. I extrapolated the operating frequency for 2005 from logarithmic graphs, and it turned out be 4GHz.

And when asked if he has a prospect of launching a Cell-mounted game console in the near future, he says:

We wouldn’t have submitted the paper to the academic society unless we had had some degree of prospect for commercialization. It would have been disrespectful to the society. Let me put it this way. It is because we have a substantial level of confidence, I’m here for this interview.

Link: Tech-On! - We All Clenched Our Teeth

[Update 11may05: Here’s another article that says the same thing. It says “Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is widely expected to use the HD-DVD format” which is news to me, because it’s actually widely expected to use DVD. But we’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?]

All the industry sources so far have predicted that the Xbox 360 will include a DVD drive but will use advanced codecs (VC-1) so that HD content can be used.

But Video Business Online is hinting that the Xbox 360 may have an HD-DVD drive… Read the rest of this entry »

[Update 11may05: Wired has one too]

With the unveiling of the Xbox 360 just around the corner rumours and speculation are flying everywhere: 360 this, PS3 that, Nintendo is doing what? Exactly! Some people are trying to pull all that information together, which I mentioned here.

Well, they’re not the only ones. Ars Technica and Gamespot are getting into the act as well.

Link: Ars Technica - Next-gen console rumor round-up
Link: GAMESPOT - Next-Gen Consoles: Facts and Speculation

[Update: some hardware specs have been floating at engadget]

At the risk of becoming a rumour site, here’s a link to a forum article with pics of the Xbox 360 from the MTV show to air May 12th but that was just taped. Is this even legal? (I’d really like to know.)

Link: AVS Forum - Leaked pictures of XBOX 360