Late Night Consoling

So as that story posted earlier today reported, Sony's made it official: the PS2 is $199, the PSOne $49 and Dual Shock 2 controllers have dropped in price by $10, all effective immediately. But that wasn't the only price drop today...Nintendo announced that they have lowered the cost of their GameCube controllers by $10 to $24.95. They also bumped up the release date of their wireless WaveBird controller, and lowered its price slightly to $34.95. After all of this, all eyes are on Microsoft, as we wait to see what their price drop will be. It's looking like Microsoft's hands are tied here, and they'll have to lower it to $199 to stay competitive...but that can't be an easy decision for them...there hasn't been any kind of production streamlining (like there was with the PS2) and that recent tiff with NVIDIA shows that the contributing companies have no desire to lower their asking price for their components. If MS does indeed lower the price by $100, it's going to hurt them on the corporate side pretty badly.

• The other big topic this week is online gaming, or specifically, Nintendo's reluctance to embrace it. GameSpot caught up with Nintendo's Beth Llewelyn for a Q&A and she talks about their online plans (or lack thereof) and confirms among other things that Nintendo will not be requiring third party developers to support both broadband and dialup connections, and that all servers for Phantasy Star Online will be run by Sega with zero intervention by Nintendo. A second Q&A (covering the same ground) is up at Cube.IGN.
• THQ has unveiled Alter Echo, an upcoming third person action title from Outrage Games that will be showcased at E3 next week. The first details and screenshots are up at GameSpot.
• New previews of Turok: Evolution can be found at XenGamers and Cube.IGN tonight, the latter of which contains a new gameplay movie.
• Japanese reviews of Final Fantasy XI are coming in...and remarkably, they're positive. Uberzine Weekly Famitsu's cadre of reviewers gave the game 10, 10, 9, 9 which is high praise indeed. By comparison, that's the same score they gave FFIX, and they gave FFX 10, 10, 10, 9.
• Simon & Schuster Interactive will be showing off their Xbox title The Last Ninja at E3 next week, and Team Xbox has posted some details and shots.
• PS2.IGN has posted a first look preview of Red Faction II, Volition's sequel to their PC and PS2 FPS.
• TDK Mediactive has announced that they have struck a deal with Mattel to make games based on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The games will be developed for PC, GameCube, PS2 and Xbox. I can't wait to see a 3D Orko (although I guess I saw that already in Final Fantasy IX with the mage characters).