Buy three
According to industry siteGamesIndustry.biz, Electronic Arts believes that Nintendo will release the Wii for $170 - much cheaper than the $250 price bandied around by internet pundits. Executive VP and COO of EA's worldwide studios, David Gardner says, "I've heard in Japan that the price is about $170, but I don't know if the price has been set in Europe yet." That's pretty unbelievably cheap - it's only $40 more than a DS Lite, little more than half the price of a crappy hard-drive free 360, and, yes, you could buy three of them for only ten bucks more than the price of the cheap PS3.
The revenge of Violet Beauregarde
Though no plans to release them in the US have yet been hatched, Sony is shipping sickening bubblegum-pink PS2s and PSPs in Europe this fall. In November, the pink PS2 goes on sale packaged with the karaoke game SingStar Pop. The pink PSP, on the other hand, is the result of a tie-up with pop star P!nk, whom mostly only people who might want a pink PSP can stand listening to - but who could quite possibly kick our asses, all the same. It's all intensely girly, of course, and nobody here can buy either item easily (you wouldn't want a UK PS2 anyway - they look all weird on a US TV) but it's amusing to glance at. So just spend a second soaking in the powerfully pink bombshell and get on with your day.
Get a wristband
IGNreportsthat in an interview with the Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream, Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Wii will require you to swing the sword with the wand controller. At E3 in May, Nintendo said that it would be too annoying and tiring to do it over the course of the entire game; apparently, things have changed. Personally, we were more convinced by that E3 stance than by this new one, but we'll find out this fall. Miyamoto also confirms his opinion that the game will be the best Zelda ever - which is good, because if it's not, the Nintendo fanbase is probably going to explode.
Final Fantasy times III
It's hitting Japan this week, but Final Fantasy III won't ship for the US Nintendo DS until November 14. Originally slated to arrive in September, this from-the-ground up remake is but one of three FF games coming out this fall: the series' PS2 swansong, Final Fantasy XII is due on Halloween, and Final Fantasy V Advance is supposedly hitting the GBA around that time, too. We're not sure what Square Enix is thinking, here - all three look like must-buy games, and they're all, well, incredibly long and deep RPGs. Good luck with that!
The man behind the space marines
Our industry-centric sister site Next Generation boiled down the details of id Software's uber-programmer-turned-rocket-scientist John Carmack's QuakeCon keynote today. Carmack laid out a roadmap for id's future that will delve deep into console territory, a clear departure for the normally PC-facing company. We have a sneaking suspicion its hand has been forced - by the fact that competitor Epic Games' Unreal Engine is getting massive traction, particularly for PS3 development. Carmack explained that id was busily tooling up technology that will perform equally well on the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. He went on to hint about an unannounced sure-to-be blockbuster action title containing "things that people have never seen before" - which inspired us to so many punchlines, we literally couldn't decide which one to use. For more details, be sure to hit the Next Genstory.
Oh no, more retro
Now that you've got that PSP, you're just dying to play really, really old games from the dawn of time on it, right? Activision hopes so, because it's putting out another retro compilation (to compete with the ones from Midway, Capcom, EA, and everybody else trying to avoid having to make original PSP games.) Activision Hits Remixed will pack over 40 of the company's big Atari 2600 hits, complete with local multiplayer modes via PSP's Game Sharing. Let's hope they get the packaging right this time - the PS2 version of the compilation looked like an Atari cartridge, not an Activision one. That's just bizarre. It's the details, guys. The details.
August 21, 2006
