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Sony hasannouncedwhat games will be available on the PS3's PlayStation Store on the system's November 11 Japan launch, and it's a little better than we expected... and a little worse. What do we mean? Well, the good stuff is downloadable, original games, including Blast Factor (pictured above), flOw and Lemmings, which we expect in the US. There are also two puzzle games: Kazuo (which looks like Sudoku to our untrained eye) and the imaginatively titled Puzzle, which needs (and might get) a name change.
Together Everyday is the latest in a series that has never been released in the US, while the offerings will be rounded out with a Ridge Racer 7 demo. The Game Archive section will offer PSone games for download, but what sucks is that you won't be able to play them on the PS3 - just transfer them to your PSP and play them there. Japanese gamers get Resident Evil: Director's Cut, Arc the Lad, Jumping Flash! 2, Hot Shots Golf 2, Tekken 2, Mister Driller and the criminally unknown but totally excellent Silent Bomber, alongside a couple of others.
Can't play the PSone games on your PS3? That's not so good. But an update to the system (at an unspecified time) will fix that. Our advice? Stay off the PSone games till the kinks are worked out... and we doubt they will be by six days later, when the PS3 launches in the US.
Score!
Next Generation hasan amusing articletoday. Using the previous performance of console launch games, Next Gen predicts which will do better: PlayStation 3 or Wii. We're talking review scores here, not sales. With data stretching back to the original PlayStation's 1995 launch, the article uses statistics to predict what we already know in our guts: a couple of the games will be excellent, most will be pretty good and a few will totally suck. Still, rainbow-colored graphs lend the whole thing a convincing sheen, and the method seems sound enough. Take a look.
The 50 greatest games of all time!?
Next Generation is back withanother list- but this time, it's culled from a new coffee table book. Game On! From Pong to Oblivion: The 50 Greatest Games of All Time waxes poetic about the best games ever played... but who needs to read the book when you can argue over thelist, which Next Generation has helpfully coughed up? Some of the choices seem, well, surprising: F-Zero GX? EyeToy: Play? Bangai-O? We have no doubt that you're already firing off an angry email. Why not hash it out inour forumsinstead?
Ups and downs
Next generation has reports on the big three's financials, and while we're not that interested number-crunching, it does paint a picture about how the companies are doing. Thanks to the DS,Nintendo's rocking triple profits compared to last year. The pre-launch expenses of the PlayStation 3 have causedSony, on the other hand, to suffer a $366 million loss in its game division. Youch.Microsoft's slightly rosier; the Home Entertainment division - read: Xbox 360 - lost a mere $96 million thanks to better-than-expected sales of games for the system. Yikes. Good luck, guys... Nintendo, apparently, is the only one that doesn't need it.
New screens
DEF JAM: ICON (PS3,360)
Digimon World DS (DS)
FIFA Soccer 07 (DS,PSP)
Thrillville (PS2,Xbox)
Call of Duty: Roads to Victory (PSP)
Family Guy (PS2,PSP,Xbox)
New video
Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)
Hot Shots Golf 5 (PS3)
NBA Live 07 (PS3)
Superman Returns (PS2,Xbox,360)
ProStroke Golf World Tour 2007 (PC,PSP,PS2,Xbox)
Silverfall (PC)
Guild Wars: Nightfall (PC)
SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2 (PSP)
SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs Combined Assault (PS2)
October 26, 2006
