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Late Night Consoling

by jason bergman, Apr 11, 2003 8:00pm PDT
Related Topics – Atari, Sony, Konami, Games: Console

Nintendo announced a couple of initiatives to better compete with Sony and Microsoft this week. The first is that they've cut their royalty rates for third party GameCube developers. That's A Good Thing, although it remains to be seen if this will woo more developers to create original games for the system, and not just make the GameCube the "third platform" for their big-name titles. The other news, which is really exciting in the short term, is that The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker will become one of the four games you can select for free when purchasing a new GameCube beginning May 4th. And for those who already own a system, a playable demo disc will be available late next month, which is long overdue, and should have been released last Christmas instead of the dull movie disc we got instead. This is all good news, and hopefully it'll help, but what Nintendo really needs, are more great games, and it's not known if we'll be seeing any of those at E3. Pretty much I'm expecting to see F-Zero and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles for GameCube at E3, and not a whole lot else that will interest me. But we'll see. Nintendo may have a trick or two up their sleeves yet (or...maybe not).

PS2 PS2 Price Drop Soon? Investment firm Goldman Sachs is apparently convinced that a PS2 price drop is going to happen soon. Or, it will in Japan, anyway. They cite a report by the Japanese magazine Famitsu, which says that PS2 inventories are dwindling. With E3 just around the corner, guessing that there's going to be a PS2 price drop is a 50/50 thing. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. You never know.
Xbox Xbox Price Drop in Europe Microsoft has announced that they've dropped the price of the Xbox in Europe to 199 Euros, or £129 in the UK. That puts it right around the same $199 we pay here, and should be nice for European gamers who are used to paying way too much for these things.
Xbox Xbox Keyboard Adapter for Free! Why couldn't Nintendo do this? Despite the fact that every Phantasy Star Online player on the Xbox already has the Xbox Communicator for voice chat, Xbox.IGN is reporting that starting April 15th, you can go to this page on Xbox.com (it's dead at the moment) to pay a $6.95 shipping charge and receive an official PSO Keyboard Adapter. With this, any USB keyboard can be used with the system.
PS2 Inside SquareEnix A new section of SquareEnix's official Japanese web site offers a glimpse at the game design process. Specifically you can check out some cool artwork from Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X-2. The text is all in Japanese, but it's still worth a look if you're into the company's recent games.
GameCube PS2 Xbox Blitz/Hitz Interview GameSpot has conducted an interview with Jon Dean, the producer at Midway on their upcoming sports titles NHL Hitz Pro and NFL Blitz Pro. Alongside the interview are the first screenshots from the games.
GameCube PS2 Xbox GameBoy Advance Baseball Roundup In other sports gaming news, GameSpot has also posted a complete roundup of every Baseball game for every major platform. If you're into baseball games for any system, this is worth a read.
GameCube PS2 Xbox GameBoy Advance Konami at E3 Konami confirmed today that their new Castlevania game (which is due for release on PS2 in November) and their new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game (October) will both be shown at E3 next month, along with the very strange GBA game Boktai and Silent Hill 3, along with unspecified other titles.
Xbox Tork Not Dead Developer Tiwak has confirmed to GameSpot that despite being dropped by Microsoft, their upcoming Xbox action game Tork is still in development, and they intend to shop it around for a new publisher.
Xbox NHL Rivals 2004 Announced Microsoft has announced NHL Rivals 2004, their first hockey game for Xbox, which will be released later this year. The game will sport support for Xbox Live, including head-to-head play and downloadable roster updates.
PS2 New R-Type Final Details New details from R-Type Final, the upcoming return of this legendary (if only for its difficulty) shooter series, are up at Gamers.com tonight, including info on the insane pre-order promotion that's going on in Japan. Also, roushimsx posted links to a promo movie and the intro movie from the game in separate comments posts.
GameCube PS2 Xbox GameBoy Advance Misc. Media GameSpot has impressions of Sphinx for PS2, along with a first look at Dragonball Z: The Legacy of Goku II for GBA, and screenshots from Tim Schaefer's Psychonauts and shots from Vultures, both for Xbox. IGN has shots from Ghost Vibration for PS2, the first screenshots from Stuntman, and shots from Wario Ware, both for GBA. Computer and Video Games continues to plumb the depths of their copy of Soul Calibur 2, and they also have a movie from Viewtiful Joe for GameCube and shots from Advance Wars 2, which is of course a GBA title like its predecessor. And finally, new shots from Silent Hill 3 are up at Gamers.com.
Console Game of the Evening: Aliens vs Predator for the Atari Jaguar. "The original AVP was the first 1st-Person Perspective game that had almost movie quality visuals and sounds. It was the first game that really showed why the Jaguar was truly a superior system. Too bad the Jaguar didn't have too many other good games" (submitted by natoma).


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Comments

25 Threads | 95 Comments
  • #95
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    By: Porkasaurus x
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    Most people probably don't realize this but just the development stations (until recently) alone must have deterred 3rd parties(read:couldn't have helped) from working with Nintendo. Previous to a few months ago dev kits were $10,000 EACH from Nintendo compared to a $1000 for the Xbox counterpart. Suppose you were starting a company to develop for the GC. You can't possibly get up and running with less than 4 of these things. That's $40,000. Develop for the Xbox instead and you can hire an another non-programmer.

    To an EA type publisher, they of course dish out the bucks regardless of the dev kit prices. But smaller developers? It's certainly not a welcome invitation to develop for them.

    Xbox dev kits can run standard DVD's you can buy at BestBuy for a few bucks. You have to order optical disc's from Nintendo directly, which are so overpriced you can't help but think they just don't want you making games for the GC. The last time we got disc's from them it was around $1000 for a spindle.

    Just something to think about.
    Apr 12, 2003 3:03pm PDT