This racer has always gotten a lot of positive buzz.

I’ve never played this, although the trailer looks great. Any Wipeout fans here to comment?

As we know, Phil Harrison, the former head of Sony’s worldwide studios, left Sony and is now president of Infogrames.

The big question is why? That’s a big drop from heading the worldwide studios of Sony to running a small shop like Infogrames. I don’t know, but here are a few theories:

• He’s Trading Scope for Control: At Sony, Mr. Harrison clearly had influence over a vast range of studios, but how much influence did he have? Was there a lot of red tape and conflicting politics getting in his way? Maybe Infogrames has some investment capital ready, is planning a big expansion effort, and was able to offer Mr. Harrison more control over molding the software teams and vision that he wanted to see happen?
• Other: Were others at Sony unhappy with him? Did he greenlight too many bad projects? Personal issues? Who knows?

What impact will this have? I don’t think anyone outside Sony Management knows. Who knows what his specific contributions were? Regardless, many of my favorite titles are from Sony studios and I hope to see that type of innovation continue.

Does anyone think we will see big things from Infogrames in the next few years?

Codemasters is working on a new shooter called Damnation for the PS3 (and PC and 360). They’re doing something different this time around by making the game, well, different. Just looking at the screenshots (follow the link below), you can see how this game isn’t just a cookie-cutter version of all the other shooters out there.

Eurogamer says:

You play as Rourke but appear to be followed around by a female companion who we expect will be co-op controllable, although specific multiplayer options are yet to be detailed.

The Gears of War similarities are immediately apparent from the environments in the first batch of screenshots, as well as the third-person shooter mechanics.

The Prince of Persia similarities come from the ability to explore levels on a vertical axis; hopping around the place or doing stunts to cross impenetrable chasms. Incidentally there will also be over-the-top vehicles like motorbikes that can leap gaps like Morpheus and Tanks that can take bullets like 50 Cent.

I’ll be keeping my eye on this one. While I like a good shooter, I’m getting tired of the same old sci-fi or present-day military themes being used over and over again.

Codemasters unveils Damnation News

MTV Multiplayer had a chance to talk to Insomniac’s Ted Price about several things, in three parts. The third part, I feel, was the only interesting one. Here’s a snippet:

Multiplayer: How does it compare to “Halo 3″ in the amount of content that it has? Because it seems like this is an attempt to one-up the insane amount of content in “Halo 3.”

Price: Not necessarily. We were not looking at “Halo 3” or looking to one-up anybody at all, other than we wanted to push multiplayer content. With multiplayer we saw an opportunity to up the game to 60 players with not a whole lot of pain on our end. The challenge for us is not technical at this point. It’s design. We’ve got to make sure that when you’re in a 60-player game it doesn’t feel like unmitigated chaos.

So we’ve been spending a lot of time analyzing and trying out different techniques to make sure you know what you’re doing, even though you’re in this massive battle, and it’s working. And it’s fun.

For the rest:

Ted Price Pt 3: Justifying 60-Player ‘Resistance,’ Competing With ‘Killzone 2′

I tried out the Echochrome demo a little this morning on the PSP. Not sure if I’ll buy it yet, but it’s fun to play. North America may get Rocketman: Axis of Evil today. Which can be played via remote play I believe.

Games/Demos:
Rocketmen: Axis of Evil $9.99 and Free Demo

DLC:
Guitar Hero III: Modern Metal Track Pack ($6.25)
*Almost Easy as performed by Avenged Sevenfold
*The Arsonist as performed by Thrice
*Hole in the earth as performed by Deftones

Rock Band
* “Casey Jones” -Grateful Dead ($1.99)
* “Sugar Magnolia” -Grateful Dead ($1.99)
* “Truckin’” - Grateful Dead ($1.99)
* “Franklin’s Tower” - Grateful Dead ($1.99)
* “I Need A Miracle” - Grateful Dead ($1.99)
* “China Cat Sunflower” - Grateful Dead ($1.99)
* Grateful Dead Pack 1 ($9.99)

Trailers:
NBA Ballers: The Chosen One Trailer
Live the Game. Play the Life.
Hancock Theatrical Trailer
21 Theatrical Trailer

Other:
Lost Planet Theme (free)
(3) Condemned 2: Bloodshot wallpaper

Downloadable Games

*flOw ($7.99)
*Ape Escape: On the Loose ($14.99)

Game Videos (free)

* God of War Chains of Olympus Trailer
* Ape Escape On the Loose behind the scenes #1
* Ape Escape On the Loose behind the scenes #2

PSP Wallpaper (free)

* Ape Escape On the Loose wallpaper
* Warriors Orochi Wallpaper (x6)

DLC
-fl0w Expansion pack - £1.99
-Guitar Hero 3: No Doubt - Track Pack DLC - £3.99

Trailers:
-Elderscrolls 4: Oblivion - Shivering Isles
-Uncharted - “DJ Shadow”
-Wipeout HD

Other:
-Graffiti theme

Games/Demos:
-Echochrome demo

Trailers:
-Dragonball Z Burst

PSN Content 03/06/08

• Metal Gear Solid 4 Online Preview
• Grand Theft Auto 4 Ships (multi-platform)
• Gran Turismo Prologue Ships
• DualShock 3 Controller Launches in North America (both SIXAXIS and rumble functionality)
• PSN UI redesign
• Public Trial of PlayStation Home. (Not official, but there is a variety of evidence suggesting this)

The PS3 had a really strong November in 2007, but I think April will probably edge that out as the best month so far for the PS3. These are six huge bombshells all in one month. I can’t wait!

Footnote: PS2 JRPG fans get Persona 3 FES and Baroque in April as well.
EDIT: A few additions

Gamasutra did a massive interview with John Hight, SCEA’s director of product development.

First, the rumored PSN UI upgrade is directly confirmed:

I think you will see a pretty big change in the PlayStation Network in the early part of April, where we roll out some new interface stuff largely based on customer feedback.

Here’s another noteworthy quote:

Here’s a loaded question: What are you going to do to beat Microsoft in this space? And Nintendo as well, as they get into it.

JH: In terms of our objectives, we’ve already beat them, and I think we are vindicated in our strategy, because [snip]

Anyone agree with this? I don’t. I don’t mean to be too picky, that’s obviously optimistic spokesperson talk, but there are two areas that PSN needs to improve:

Quantity + Range of Titles

PSN is awesome, it has a great selection of titles, and it smokes the online content that Xbox was delivering in the not so distant past, but today XBL is delivering a steady flow of a wider variety of titles. Sony’s official line is, to paraphrase: “quality over quantity”, but that’s a lame excuse. PSN is doing great, but they still have a ways to go.

Specficially, I’d like to see a larger range of titles; right now almost all PSN titles are twitch action or puzzle titles. How about some narrative driven adventure games and strategy titles as well.

Hobbyist Development

For real hobbyist developer support, the PS3 needs publically available hobbyist tools. Xbox has Live Creator’s Club, and the PS3 has nothing comparable.

Ultimately, the real king of hobbyist development isn’t anything from Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo; it’s Flash and other PC centric dev tools like OGRE and Torque. But it’s still important for Sony to have a competitive offering in this area.

There is rumor going around that the PS Store will be redesigned in April, and have the same look and feel as the Singstar store. Check out the video below for the Singstar store.

I really love the look of that store, the sooner the PS Store losses the web interface and switches to the PS3 OS the better. The current PS Store is honestly boring to look at and browse. But at least it has some great content from time to time. Also rumored is the long awaited video downloads. This will just be for North America for now. No concrete details from Sony on any of this yet though.

Rumored PSN Store redesign to include video downloads?

You’ve heard it blitzing across the net now for a couple of days, so I thought I’d get your opinion on the whole in-game messaging for the PS3 thing. In case you haven’t heard, SCE UK boss Ray Maguire had this to say about hitting the 1m sold mark in the UK:

Achieving one million PS3 sales faster than both PSOne and PlayStation 2 is even more gratifying considering PS3 is a premium product introduced at a premium price. Our momentum will continue with the introduction of in-game communication in the summer, firmware update 2.4 and the strongest line-up of games through our third party partners and our own studios. I’d personally like to thank our trade and business partners for helping us on the start of the PS3 journey. [Emphasis added.]

So what do you think? First of all, do you think that Mr. Maguire actually said this? Do you think that he was well informed enough to pass this information along, or was he simply mistaken? If he spoke the truth as he knew it, will circumstances change?

But the real question is: do you care? I know lots of people are making a big deal about this, and I think it’s quite important. But just because I do, that doesn’t mean you do. So what do you think of in-game messaging? Vote in the sidebar as always.

Note: in the poll I made a distinction between in-game voice and text communication. Text is obvious - you can go see any text messages you have received and reply to them. Voice might not be so obvious. What I mean is that you’d have the ability to talk to a friend via your headset, while in a game, no matter what game you or your friend are in. So if he’s playing MotorStorm and you’re playing CoD4, you can still chat. Personally, I think this is very important.

Sony hails retail as PS3 hits 1m

Previous poll results:

When will Home be released?

* 1Q 2008: 25% (48)
* 2Q 2008: 45% (85)
* 3Q 2008: 19% (35)
* 4Q 2008: 11% (21)

Total Votes : 189