Kaz Hirai’s keynote at TGS ‘07 will be at 10:30am local time, September 20th. This is the keynote where we expect to hear word of rumble and/or a new, cheaper PS3 for the holiday season.

For those of us in North America, the keynote will be in the evening, tonight, local time:

9:30PM Eastern
7:30PM Mountain
6:30PM Pacific

I’m guessing that Joystiq will have realtime updates from the keynote. Unfortunately, I’ll be busy tonight (games night) so I won’t be able to check out any news until a couple hours after the event. Hopefully somebody from PS3Blog.net will talk about the keynote before that. (Hint hint!)

Time Zone Converter

[Edit: Eurogamer says that they’ll have the keynote live.]

In the biggest non-surprise of the show, IGN reports that EA’s Burnout is playable at TGS with a rumbling variant of the standard SIXAXIS game pad. Sony was widely expected to unveil such a controller after resolving rumble-related legal issues, however the specifics of this new controller are still unknown.

This isn’t the first rumbling controller on the PS3. Third party Logitech steering wheel controllers have supported force feedback and rumble effects since day one on the PS3. These wheels have been supported on earlier versions of Burnout and most PS3 racing games, and I hope that this support continues.

Anyone surprised? Anyone excited about picking up one of these?

IGN On Rumble at TGS

This rumor came from Jeux-France and this is what they said would be shown by Square Enix at the Tokyo Game Show this week.

* Endless Crisis: Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation 3)
* Final Fantasy XIII (PlayStation 3)
* Final Fantasy Versus XIII (PlayStation 3)
* Kingdom Hearts (temporary title) (PlayStation 3)
* Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories 2 (Nintendo DS)
* Kingdom Hearts 0 (PSP)

If you haven’t heard at the end of Final Fantasy Crisis Core is says to be continued in FF7, well of course it is, it’s a prequel. But this time FF7 may be coming to the mighty PLAYSTATION 3. We’ll see if there is any truth to this rumor soon. Man I hope its true, I’d buy it in a instant! But it may be another FF7 spinoff as well.

SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT! - THE FOLLOWING VIDEO IS SHOWN AT THE END OF FINAL FANTASY CRISIS CORE FOR PSP

Rumours Public garden Enix [Rumour]

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that Sony will not be offering a 40GB PS3 this fall. While it’s probably true that they’re working on another SKU to pair with the 80GB PS3, I’m thinking that it won’t be a 40GB model, but rather a 120GB or 160GB model. Why? Well, out of curiosity, I checked a couple online vendors (NCIX, TigerDirect, and CompuSmart) for the prices on some 40GB SATA hard drives. Guess what? I couldn’t find any. There were several 80GB models, and just one 60GB model, which cost more than the 80GB models (probably because it was a notebook drive).

I’m not saying that Sony can’t get their hands on 40GB HDD’s if they wanted to. But 40GB HDD’s are going the way of the dodo, and will only get more expensive as time passes. With HDD’s out there at 1TB, what’s the use of a 40GB machine? The low-end PS3 was never an also-ran, gimped machine. But this Christmas time will have moved on and a new machine with a 40GB HDD will definitely become the gimped machine nobody will want. That Microsoft continues to sell a machine with a 20GB HDD is beyond belief, IMHO. In order to compete with the Xbox 360 Elite, Sony will want a machine out there with more disk space than the competition, not less.

So, what say you? Will Sony release a 40GB machine? Or will the surprise us with a higher capacity machine? (Though it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore after reading this, now would it?)

Well how many times have we heard this so far? Anyway, in the latest episode of the 1UP Yours podcast it mentions a few things. The rumbling controllers, and the long awaited 2.0 firmware. I hope the rumble controllers have the PS home button light up too If this is true we will find out soon enough, the Tokyo Game Show is the 20th - 23rd of September.

But one question I have is can developers simply enable rumble in past PS3 titles? Or will developers even bother with it in past titles?

1UP’s Shane: DualShock 3 is “confirmed”

[Update]

TGS 2007: Rumble Confirmed

September 19, 2007 - Big shocker at today’s Electronic Arts pre Tokyo Game Show press event. While playing a demo of Burnout Paradise, we felt something that we never thought we’d feel from a PS3 controller — shake!

That’s right, Burnout Paradise is the first rumble-equipped PS3 game we’ve ever played. Which made us think at the time, if the game is making the controller shake, the controller must be a new version of the Sixaxis!

In fact, the controller we were using to play the demo looked exactly like a standard Sixaxis, except that it had a sticker on the bottom that said “RUMBLE.” It also felt notably heavier than the standard Sixaxis.

We presume this is a prototype of the PlayStation 3’s new rumble controller, whatever it’s going to be called.

The rumble itself felt around the level of PlayStation 2 rumble. We’re not sure just yet if Sony is using any of that next generation technology Immersion has been talking about for the past few months.

A formal announcement is expected tomorrow at Kaz Hirai’s keynote address.

As for the rest of the EA event, as well as details from today’s Sony and Konami events, check back at IGNPS3 through the night.