Late Night Consoling

What an exciting day; hard information on the two big hardware releases of this year. I must say; I'm extremely pleased that the DS will sell for $150 and not the $200 that so many sites were claiming. Plenty of you commented that $150 is the sweet-spot and I'd agree. I also think PictoChat definitely had to be a standard; playing with the program at E3, it definitely was nifty and I see it easily becoming the rage in schools across the country. Now we just need some details on the software so we know if we should buy it or not. As for the PStwo, which is not its official name yet, the size reduction is remarkable. Look at the picture in this article, the PStwo is smaller than most books on my bookshelf. What I would like to know is how they plan to address the hard drive issue; will they release an external adapter or is that it for the HD? I would assume Square Enix can't be too happy that all new customers can't pick up their MMORPG.

	Nintendo DS Price, Release Date Announced The first concrete details regarding the Nintendo DS are here. The portable will launch in North America first on November 21 and retail for $149.99; the price point we were all hoping for and just in time to capitalize on post-Thanksgiving sales. PictoChat, the program that allows users to chat and doodle wirelessly, will be hardcoded into the system. Nintendo revealed that your DS will come out of sleep mode if detects other users nearby, allowing for random chat encounters. A multiplayer demo of Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt will ship with every unit as well. NOA reaffirmed that it will be backwards compatible with the GBA but will not support multiplayer gaming for GBA games. The Nintendo DS will launch in the US first, then Japan a week or so later, then it'll make its way to Europe and Australia.
	PStwo Revealed! At a business briefing in Tokyo, Sony officially pulled back the curtains on its redesigned PlayStation 2, and to put it simply, the thing is slim! Internal volume has been slashed by 75%, the weight halved, and it's about 60% slimmer than its big brother; a few sites compare it to the size of a hardcover book. This time around, the network card is built-in, supporting both dial-up and broadband users. Interestingly, the PStwo currently does not accomodate a hard drive and Sony says some software is incompatible with the system; are those only the HD games or are there others?
	Kutaragi Talks PS3 The entire briefing wasn't about the PStwo. Ken Kutaragi, CEO and father of the PlayStation, made a few remarks about the PlayStation 3. First, Blu Ray is the definite format of the console. Blu Ray is similar to DVD but holds up to 54GB of data. Even though Blu Ray is the standard, the PS3 will still read DVDs and CDs. Nothing else was specified about the console.
	PSP News There was also PSP news at the Sony press conference today, as the company announced 46 more titles are in development bringing the total to a whopping 105. Companies like Atlus (Persona RPG), Namco and SNK (3D fighting game based on the King of Fighters series) are among the companies working on games for the handheld device. A price point wasn't announced though, and neither was a release date. However, the hardware is done and Sony is just looking for enough games to launch with. IGN offers some hands-on impressions of the device as well, and they have two pics of Japanese game packing here.
	Deadlight Unveiled The website of Stolen developer Blue52 now sports this game page, unveiling the development of the multi-platform action game Deadlight. You play Dan McCormick, an oilrig worker who happens to come across the ocean liner SS Hyperion which has been lost for twenty years. It's up to you to find out the truth about what happened to the passengers. Screenshots from the PS2 version can be found here.
	Misc. Q&As/Features The guys at Computer & Video Games chat with Kevin Hendrickson of Climax about Tron 2.0: Killer App. Team Xbox talks Iron Phoenix multiplayer and Live 3.0 features with Sammy Studios' Tim Hess.
	Misc. Media/Previews
	IGN has a few details and a hi-res screen of Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, and they have some screenshots from Tekken 5 as well. GameSpot has a few movies from Monster Hunter and Game Informer checks out EyeToy: AntiGrav.
	IGN has new movies from Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2, screenshots and movies from Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors and movies from Dead or Alive Ultimate.
	And again we head to IGN, where you can find a few new movies from Baten Kaitos.
	On FileShack we have the latest Call of Duty: Finest Hour movie (Xbox, PS2). 1UP goes hands-on with The Urbz: Sims in the City (Xbox, PS2, GCN). IGN has a few snaps from Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (Xbox, PS2, GCN) and two basketball court shots from NBA Street Vol 3 (Xbox, PS2, GCN).