EA is the big boy, the main man, the big pig, of the gaming world. It’s strange to be writing those words today, because I just got an e-mail from EA asking me to contact them about employment opportunities in Vancouver. I’d love to create PS3 or 360 games, but I wouldn’t love the Vancouver rain so much. Or the overtime. I prefer to put in a good day of work and then go home, spend time with my family, and then play games or write or whatever. As a matter of fact, tonight is games night at my place and I rented Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. I hope it’s good. Hmm, what a coincidence. The game is by Ubisoft. Isn’t EA trying to buy them out or something?

EA is doing something right, however, even without me. And they plan to be number one for quite some time. Warren Jenson, CFO of EA, said that EA’s number one priority right now is to deliver great entertainment. The second priority is to be ready for the next generation. Being a leader when a new round of consoles hits is very important. Mr. Jenson said: “If you look at our shares the last go-round in transition, our segment shares improved very dramatically by really being the leader.”

Of course, this means EA will have some games ready for the launches of the 360 and PS3, and maybe even the Revolution as well. We’ll get to see how many and of what quality, and how they fare against competitors. Will their lineups solidy their position as king, or will it weaken it?

Link: TheStreet.com - Electronic Arts’ CFO Grows Up Again

A coworker of mine took the new Audi A3 for a test drive and he was quite impressed. The power and handling in the rain was fantastic. He’s also smitten with how good the car looks. Personally, I’m not a big fan of hatchbacks, but it’s still a great car. I don’t think I’ll be able to afford a ride like this anytime soon, so the closest I get is a game like Need for Speed.

I took a look at the Need for Speed: Most Wanted trailer today and it looks mighty fine. I’m a big fan of racing games, especially four-player ones. So I’m really looking forward to seeing what this one can do, and it better be four-player. Todd, you listening? I hope you buy this one. Although the trailer showed lots of flying and not so much driving, it did get to show off some great environments this way. The movement of the cars near the end of the trailer looked a little off, but hopefully they’ll fix that for the final release. EA is releasing this game in the fall for the Xbox 360, and I can only hope it’ll make its way to the PS3 as well. Given EA’s track record, this is quite likely.

Link: Spong - Need For Speed: Most Wanted Blazing Next-gen Footage!
Link: CVG - Next-Gen Need for Speed Movie Sparks Our Plug

Project Gotham Racing 2 is my favourite racing game, and it’s on the Xbox. Bizarre Creations is hard at work on PGR3 for the 360, and has a couple amazing screenshots to show off.

Link: Xbox 360 IGN - New Project Gotham 3 Screens Cause a Stir
Link: team XBOX - Project Gotham Racing 3: New York Screenshots

I just had to laugh when I saw this one. It’s a picture of someone holding the new (and yes, silly looking) PS3 controller. Except that the controller looks really really small. So small it’s unusable. The hand holding the controller is gloved, so I think there’s some trickery going on here, because only really small children could comfortably hold the controller.

Thanks anyways guys, that was a good one.

Link: PS3 Updates - Picture of PS3 Controler - Actually Very Small!

Showing that the PS3’s brain is good for something other than games, IBM has signed Mercury Computer Systems to build computers based on the Cell. Mercury Computer Systems traditionally builds systems for image and signal processing applications.

Under the terms of an agreement, Mercury and IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) will codevelop products with powerful graphics-processing needs, for which the Cell processor chips were specifically designed. IBM has said it has no plans to sell the chip on the merchant market directly, but instead will custom-design versions of the chip aimed at specific applications. Neither IBM nor Mercury described exactly what they will develop, but they say the chips could be used in computers aimed at several types of customers, including Mercury’s traditional defense and medical-imaging precuts, plus telecommunications and seismic research.

Link: Forbes - IBM Snags New Customer For Cell Chip
Link: iTnews - IBM Cell chip moves beyond gaming

If you’re a Firefox user you might have noticed something new in the sidebar - a theme switcher. I have decided that the new theme I’ve been working on is ready for prime time. Just click on the word “GreyTheme” and you’ll see it. If you don’t like it, you can click on “BasicTheme” to go back, but I have a feeling you won’t be doing that. Unfortunately, being a relative novice when it comes to HTML and PHP (though I’m learning) my new theme looks terrible in IE. So only Firefox users have the option of seeing the new theme. I’m working on getting the IE version working, but it may be a while since I’m on vacation next week.

I’d love to hear any comments, negative or positive or constructive, about my new theme. I’d especially like to hear comments and suggestions about my choices of font colours. I’m still a little unsure about them.

Merrill Lynch Japan has a crystal ball. A crystal ball that works quite well, it appears, and gives answers with authority. Recently they’ve had to polish it a bit because it’s been steaming up with all those Merrill Lynch people gazing at it too closely. But it gave forth some of its knowledge, and it goes like this:

1. The cost of manufacturing a PS3 will be $494.
2. Sony will sell the PS3 for $399.
3. Therefore Sony will lose $95 on every PS3 sold.
4. Sony will lose $1.18 billion during the first year of the PS3’s release.

My question is, what will the Merrill Lynch people due when they discover that the crystal ball has been giving less than crystalline answers? You don’t think it’s right, do you? For surely, it is highly unlikely that predictions as precise as these will actually end up being accurate. So what will Merrill Lynch due with a useless crystal ball? Maybe they can lend it to Microsoft, since I don’t think they forsaw that they’d still be in the red on the Xbox today.

Link: Gamespot - Report: PS3 to sell for $399, cost $494 to make

I know, I know. The PS3 is, like, a year away. And so much can happen in a year that we shouldn’t be thinking about this now. But what if you want to buy an HDTV today that will work with the PS3 when released? Almost any HDTV will do, except if you want to use the PS3’s 1080p output capability. Then things start to get a little bit harder to sort out.

In one of my very first articles about the PS3 I hoped that Sony would fix the Qualia’s inability to accept 1080p, and it seems like they will. See the AVS Forum thread below. The thread attempts to list all 1080p displays for use with the PS3. How handy!

Now that TI has a 1080p DLP chip (using wobulation), manufacturers are starting to use it. Mitsubishi is one them. So you might also want to look that way.

Link: AVS Forum - List of all 1080P display devices for PS3
Link: HDBlog.net - Mitsubishi Ships 1080p DLPs

[Update 01jul05: and even more developers]

Xbox Japan boss Yoshihiro Maruyama says that up to eight locally developed titles will greet the 360’s launch in Japan. We all know that the Xbox sold poorly in Japan. Very poorly. So this time around, in their bid to conquer everything, Microsoft is counting on some local talent to woo the Japanese.

In an interview published in the current issue of Famitsu, Maruyama said he expects that Japan will see a “good lineup” of titles at launch–somewhere in the double-digit range. He added that seven or eight will be Japanese-developed games.

Maruyama also confirmed that a few of the launch games will be first-party games produced by Microsoft Japan. He declined to specify if games from noted Japanese game developers Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Hironobu Sakaguchi, or Yoshiki Okamoto–designers already committed to delivering 360 titles–will be among the launch games.

Link: Gamespot - M’Soft Japan promises slate of Xbox 360 launch games

[Update 01jul05: EuroGamer has a commentary about this article and also found a source for the original, if you still want to read it.]
[Update 30jun05: it looks like AnandTech has pulled the article, sorry. But Slashdot has a big discussion on the issue. So does Beyond3D, basically pointing out its lack of fidelity.]
AnandTech has quite […]