Tomorrow, on Friday, Gran Turismo Prologue gets Gran Turismo TV. This is a series of auto enthusiast video programming that can be purchased for $1-$2/episode.

I know we have some real auto enthusiasts on this site, so I’m curious: Is anyone excited about this? Personally, I don’t see the draw. Most GT fans that I know are excited about many other things, most specifically, having a full version of GT5 with a full selection of cars, tracks, and non-linear game progression modes.

However, Gran Turismo’s fan base has always been split between auto enthusiasts and technology fans and it’s possible that this is intended to appeal more to the former category. It’s also very possible that this is just a nice extra going in on parallel to main development efforts.

Sony released their financial statements for Q2 2008 (fiscal Q1, calendar Q2, April through June), and it’s good to see that the PlayStation business back in the black. Sony’s gaming division made profits of ¥5.4 billion yen on revenue of ¥229.6 billion yen.

As you can see, both hardware unit sales and software unit sales are up. The report says, “Hardware sales increased while software sales decreased”. Since software unit sales were up, I assume this means that software dollar sales were down, which means that the average software selling price has dropped as they are selling more budget priced titles.

Full Sony financial statements can be found here.

Plenty to pick from this week. Anything for you?

* Dark City: Director’s Cut
* Stargate: Continuum
* The Hunt for Red October
* Top Gun
* Doomsday
* The Lost Boys
* Shine a Light
* Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo
* Bay: Special Edition
* Clear and Present Danger
* Patriot Games
* Beowulf: Director’s Cut
* The Sum of All Fears
* Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle: Extreme Unrated Edition
* Lost Boys: The Tribe
* Human Body: Pushing the Limits
* StarGaze HD: Universal Beauty
* Vengeance
* The Tiger Blade
* Salvage

Blu-ray.com

Here they are! Tallied up from the votes last week:

Best Exclusive PS3 Game

LittleBigPlanet (6)
Resisistance 2 (5)
Killzone 2 (3)

Best Multiplatform PS3 Game

Resident Evil 5 (6)
FFXIII (4)
Fallout 3 (3)

Best PSN Game

Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty (8)
Fat Princess (5)
Pixel Junk Eden (2)

Best Surprise (Game)

MAG (4)
DC Online (3)
Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty (2)

Best Surprise (Non-Game)

Video Downloads (6)
FFXIII (3)

Best Conference

Sony (10)
Microsoft (5)

Biggest Disappointment

No PS3 RPGs (4)
Nintendo’s Showing (4)
No Support for Europe or Canada in Initial PS3 Online Movie Store (3)

Best of Show. Game, event, anything.

Killzone 2 (4)
LittleBigPlanet in Sony Conference (4)

Three big titles are expected to hit PSN tonight!

PixelJunk Eden Demo

This title has gotten some really positive buzz. The previous game in the PixelJunk series, Monsters, was a big hit, and this one is rumored to be even better.

Siren Full Game

A quality, survival horror game. The demo was fun, can’t wait for the full version tonight!

1942 Full Game + Demo

A polished, accessible, remake of a classic top-down shooter.

And the next issue of the online magazine, Qore, will include access to the beta for Resistance 2. Supposedly, you can also get into the Resistance 2 beta by pre-ordering the game.

From IGN’s preview:

All the enemies that are assaulting your base will be trying to get in and get their fair lady out. Now, you can kill these guys if you like, but your best defense is to go outside of your stronghold and find pieces of cake and other dessert items. You’ll then bring these snacks to the opponent’s princess, force her to eat them, and watch her get fatter. Big gals are heavy and that means your opponents are going to have in groups to carry her fat ass back home.

The fat thing is a little weird, but aside from that, the game sounds really fun and has generated a lot of excitement. However, the fat thing has caused others to get quite offended:

—but the only thing I can’t figure out is why anyone would want to rescue a fat princess in the first place, since everyone knows that fat girls are unlovable human garbage at whom any sensible bloke would sooner hurl invective than cast a longing glance.

Woah!

UPDATE: Removed semi-offensive picture

So are fat people taking this cartoon action game a little too seriously? Or maybe the game should have toned down the force feeding fat girls cake gameplay?

GT5 in 2009 or 2010

Ouch! On the good side, we one or two substantial GT5:P updates this year.

Vote in the comments. These will be manually tallied

• Best Exclusive PS3 Game
• Best Multiplatform PS3 Game
• Best PSN Game
• Best Surprise (Game)
• Best Surprise (Non-Game)
• Best Conference
• Biggest Disappointment
• Best of Show. Game, event, anything.

Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Microsoft all have Internet based movie download stores, now Sony finally launches their video service for the PS3. The concept is the same, but what’s really important is the quality of the implementation.

Selection

I don’t have an exact count, but I would ballpark their selection at about 100-150 movies in addition to TV shows. The movies are mostly recent, fairly mainstream movie picks. The selection is currently a weak point, but for launch day, this is understandable. We will see how quickly they can grow their selection.

I found it kind of odd that the selection of even Sony Pictures movies was slim. Of course, that is a completely separate division within Sony, but I still would have expected a tighter integration.

Pricing + Rights

The pricing structure varies quite a bit. I bought a single TV episode for $2 an and an HD movie rental for $4.50. This seems a little high, but not outrageous.

You can start watching the movie almost instantly, but there was a big problem. Even after letting the movie download for twenty minutes before starting it, I could only watch about ten minutes of movie before the movie stopped to buffer. I gave the download another five minutes to download, but I only got another minute or so of movie watching before it started to buffer again, so I left my PS3 to download and read a book for the night. By the morning the movie was fully downloaded, but my 24 hour viewing period expires this evening and I probably won’t even get to see my movie. The 24 hour viewing window begins as soon as you hit play, so it might be wise to wait until the movie is mostly downloaded before doing so.

Quality + Features

I only have an SDTV, but the two videos I bought looked as good as anything else I’ve seen on my TV. The audio was less impressive. It was stereo only (even on an HD rental), there were no language options, no optional subtitles, and there are no special features that you normally get with a DVD/blu-ray rental.

Convenience + Interface

The main browsing interface is very quick and snappy and most movies offered convenient preview clips. However, the interface lacking several important features such as a movie rating and recommendation system, community features such as user reviews or “movie friends”, and a queue or save to watch later type of system.

Bottom Line

This is a great feature to offer console owners, the movie download stores are clearly going to grow in quality and popularity. Currently, the service clearly has many limitations, but clearly the service just launched, and will take some time to mature.

Namco

So, what was the secret PS3 title that Namco hinted at? Was it a Tales of … title to complement the 360’s Tales of Vesperia and the Wii’s Tales of Symphonia? No, it’s just the PS3 port of Eternal Sonata. Apparently, this has enhancements and more content beyond last year’s 360 version, but I thought that this port was already official. On the bright side, there’s a good chance that Tales of Vesperia will get released on the PS3 after a 360 exclusivity window.

So far, no word on Tekken 6, which is still supposedly a PS3 exclusive and scheduled to ship after the Cell-powered arcade version.

Nippon Ichi Software

Brighter news from NIS, the developers behind the Disgeaa series (as well as many others). While not at E3, they had this to say:

[NIS America Rep] also mentioned that NIS’ home branch in Japan was interested in using the Wii’s motion capabilities in RPGs in the near future, but mentioned that the Sony family of platforms was still NIS’ main focus.

They also mentioned that they have shifted from PS2 towards PS3 development. They have two titles that they plan to announce in July and October.

Rat Race, the comedy adventure title, has been canceled. This sounded like a great concept and a nice diversion from all the other action shooter-centric games on the market today. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.

Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios said:

We really liked the concept; it’s like The Office TV series. It was kind of funny but we were not quite happy with how the game was turning out and there was some difficulty in development.”

Resistance 2

Infamous

Bioshock PS3

In general, Microsoft events are best left to other sites (here is a good one), but two of Microsoft’s announcements were quite a surprise and worth discussing here.

Final Finatasy XIII

FFXIII is no longer PS3 exclusive and will be simultaneously released on both PS3 and 360. This title was long rumored as one of the PS3’s last huge third party exclusives along with MGS4 (which so far, has remained exclusive). On the bright side, it still ships for PS3. Also, while discussing Star Ocean and Last Remnant, Microsoft and Square avoided saying that they would be exclusive which is a strong sign that a PS3 version may be a possibility. Also, Level 5’s White Knight Story is being published by Sony so there is little chance of losing that exclusive. Hopefully, there will be more good news tomorrow.

UPDATE: Square Enix says that FFXIII will initially be developed and released for PS3 only in Japan only. Then they will do the westernized version and 360 version. This suggests that the 360 version may be western-only and may not come out in Japan, although that isn’t completely clear from the wording that is used.

Netflix

Netflix has long had a Internet movie streaming service for Windows PCs. Now, you will be able to use a 360 as well, which is nicer since 360s tend to be setup in living rooms where people generally watch movies. Netflix has a formidable movie selection, so this is a useful service. Some sites are reporting the Netflix/360 deal is “exclusive”, which would mean that Netflix would not be coming to the PS3 (of course, this isn’t fully exclusive since the PC already does this and they intend to support Macs as well). Sony is launching their movie service soon as well. We shall see how these different services compare.

First, a Look Back at Sony’s Surprises from E3, 2007

• Redesigned PSP hardware
• Surprise price drop on North America PS3 hardware
• New Game Unveilings: Echochrome, Infamous
• First Looks at WipeoutHD and Socom and Killzone 2
• Exclusivity Announcements for Metal Gear Solid 4, Haze, and UT3
• ncSoft partnership and future PS3 exclusive MMOs
• More footage and more details about all other upcoming titles.

In hindsight, it was a fairly surprise packed show. MGS4 was a huge hit, but other titles were disappointing (Haze), and several still haven’t been released. The delays of the MMO type titles, such as Home and the ncSoft titles, are somewhat understandable since longer than usual delays and dev cycles are the norm for that type of game.

What to Expect from Sony at E3, 2008

New Games

Judging by past events, most new games that will be announced will likely still be in early development and won’t be ready to ship until late 2009 or so. However, I would expect a few 2008 surprises similar to how Sony revealed Folklore only a five months before it hit shelves in May 2007. Prime Sony Studio candidates for new game unveilings are: Team ICO, Naughty Dog, SCEA Santa Monica, Zipper, SCEE London. More games for the PlayStation Eye? More PSN titles? First look at flOwer?

Third Party Deals

Last year, they announced several surprising third party deals. Since we haven’t heard much since then, hopefully that means that there are some new developments that will be made public at the show. Namco has hinted at one PS3 exclusive that we will hear about (probably a Tales title that parallels the 360/Wii Tales titles). Will there be anything new with Square? Maybe we will hear more about that Rockstar PS3 exclusive that Sony execs hinted at?

Services

We are sure to hear about their movie-on-demand service. Will we hear about their planned music-on-demand service as well?

Hardware

Sony has been very tight-lipped about hardware in the past. Almost no one saw the price and hardware changes that were announced at least year’s E3 (although the redesigned PSP was widely rumored before hand). I’m not expecting anything, but I’m hoping to be surprised. Specifically, I’m hoping for lighter, slimmer PS3 hardware. They’ve already shrunk the CPU technology to smaller, cooler 65nm technology and they plan to make the same change to GPU hardware as well. Additionally, manufacturers are making blu-ray drives that are much slimmer than what current PS3’s use. Routine logic board optimizations and simplifications are also expected. A slimmer PS3 is inevitable, it’s just a question of when.

Surprises

It wouldn’t be a big show, without the surprises.

Anyone have any other E3 predictions or wish lists?