In some territories, PlayStation 3 was launched only in its more expensive 60GB hard drive variety, with plans to follow up with the release of the 20GB hard drive at a later date. In the United States, where the two models launched for $599.99 and $499.99 respectivel, internet denizens recently noticed that the 20GB model is no longer available through Sony's online Sony Style Store. These developments have painted a picture of a clear worldwide focus on the 60GB model, and today Sony Computer Entertainment America issued a statement confirming that the 20GB console is being phased out entirely.

"At launch, we offered two separate models of PlayStation 3 to meet the diverse needs and interests of our PlayStation fan base. Initial retail demand in North America was upwards of ninety percent in favor of the 60GB sku, so we manufactured and shipped-in accordingly. Due to the overwhelming demand for the 60GB model from both retailers and consumers, we have ceased offering the 20GB model here in North America," explained SCEA corporate communications VP Dave Karraker. "In addition to the larger internal hard drive, the 60GB PlayStation 3 features added storage media slots and built-in Wi-Fi not found in the 20GB system. Based on retailer and consumer feedback, we have decided to focus our current efforts on the more popular 60GB model."

Today's news is sure to dismay some prospective cost-conscious future buyers of the PlayStation 3, as the cheaper 20GB model of the machine does not have any tangible disadvantages to its slightly more fully-featured cousin in terms of actual game playing ability, and thus represents a genuinely feasible alternative to the 60GB model.

Following the promise of downloadable content to be made available for the Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero II, Activision today announced the game's first round of music packs. Each pack will be sold for 500 Microsoft Points ($6.25) and will include three playable tracks. Track Pack 1 will feature Ozzy Osbourne's Bark at the Moon, The Exies' Hey You, and Motorhead's Ace of Spades. Track Pack 2 will feature Queen's Killer Queen, The Donnas' Take it Off, and The Edger Winter Group's Frankenstein. Finally, Track Pack 3 will include the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Higher Ground, Bad Religion's Infected, and Incubus' Stellar.

All of the songs being sold have been drawn from the track list of Harmonix's original Guitar Hero (PS2). Each one will feature have support Guitar Hero II's cooperative play function, including the three instrument choices supported by Guitar Hero II--lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and bass guitar. It has been observed that, were all of the songs drawn from Guitar Hero's main track list to be made available for Guitar Hero II in the current format, they would fetch a total asking price of 5000 Microsoft Points ($62.50), more than the $49.99 suggested retail price for Guitar Hero itself when sold without its guitar controller.

"We're excited to offer downloadable content through Xbox Live Marketplace and have been working closely with the top record labels, music publishers and bands to provide the hottest tracks available to our fans," said Activision music exec Tim Riley. "We're constantly trying to find innovative ways to align our games with the best music possible, and for the first time ever, a game publisher will be offering fans the chance to download music and play it in a game." Riley's statement apparently does not take into account the remix download feature of Harmonix's own pre-Guitar Hero rhythm game, Amplitude (PS2).

The executive went on, "In addition to driving a new revenue stream for artists, we believe that this type of content will drive increased music sales and allow us to break new artists simultaneously with the record labels, while offering our dedicated fans the opportunity to experience the thrill of being a rockstar."

According to Activision, rounds of content will be made available on approximately a monthly basis. The first round is available now through the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Ignition Entertainment today sent word that Ignition Banbury's tilt-based Wii puzzler Mercury Meltdown Revolution has been pushed back from its original May 1 release date, and is now expected to hit North American retail shelves on June 12. The game, a followup to the studio's PSP games Archer Maclean's Mercury and Mercury Meltdown, has players navigate a ball of mercury through a variety of maze-like levels using the Wii remote's motion sensing control capabilities.

Activision noted today that a demo of Shaba Games' Xbox 360 version of Shrek the Third has been added to Xbox Live Marketplace. The playable demo is currently available for free download. Shrek the Third is set for release next month.

Xbox 360 owners can come a little closer to being able to toss their original Xboxes, as today a new backwards compatibility patch was released, adding Xbox 360 support for oft-requested games such as Double Fine's Psychonauts, Rare's Conker: Live and Reloaded, Team NINJA's Dead or Alive Ultimate, Pandemic's Destroy All Humans!, Quantic Dream's Indigo Prophecy, Sega AM2's Shenmue II, and others. All in all, over three dozen titles were added or updated, with some applying to only North America or Japan. For the rest, check out the full list. Upon hearing the news, Double Fine founder Tim Schafer published a celebratory news post, in which he commented, "Are the reports true? I DON'T KNOW! Why are you asking me? I am just a lowly game developer! Why should I get official, advanced notice about anything?" Now get to work on Panzer Dragoon Orta, Microsoft.

As usual, Xbox 360 owners without a broadband connection can visit Microsoft's backwards compatibility site for alternative means of installing the update.

Like many successful developers, Bungie has a tendency to spawn new independent studios founded by former employees. The latest such example of this is Certain Affinity, founded by ten-year Bungie veteran Max Hoberman. Hoberman most recently served as the company's multiplayer team lead for Halo 2 and the upcoming Halo 3. In addition to Hoberman, Certain Affinity is made up of other former employees of Bungie, as well as developers hailing from Origin Systems, Digital Anvil, and elsewhere, with credits on games from series such as Ultima, Wing Commander, Asheron's Call, Ghost Recon, and of course Bungie titles such as Myth and Halo.

The Austin, Texas-based studio is currently working on a new Xbox 360 game, though it has not yet given any details as to its content. In more immediate news, the company is partnering with Halo developer Bungie and publisher Microsoft to develop new multiplayer maps for Halo 2. No details were released as far as pricing or gameplay content of the upcoming maps.

"We're not setting out to change the industry," says Hoberman. "We're creating games by choosing strong leaders, talented and experienced developers, and solid partners. This partnership with Bungie and Microsoft Game Studios is a piece of that puzzle and we hope it's the start of a long and fruitful relationship."

As one of the old guard PC developers, Epic Games is accustomed to providing free content to its consumers after games have been released, and it looks like the company plans to continue that tradition even on microtransaction-laden consoles. Speaking to SpikeTV following its recent 2006 Video Game Awards, Epic Games president Mike Capps indicated that the company has had free downloads in the works for some time. Epic designer CliffyB seemed to want to keep the cards closer to the chest. "We're Epic and we're known for supporting our games," he hinted. "That's all we're saying right now."

Capps soon came clean with a clearer picture of the situation. "We started long before the game ever came out," he said. "We always take care of our customers, we always give them stuff for free, and we're going to keep doing that forever. That's how we do it, man. This is Epic."

Neither Capps nor Cliffy gave any indication of what specific content is coming or when it will come, but the news is certain to be well received by Xbox 360 owners.

Prior to the release of PSP launch puzzle/platformer Archer Maclean's Mercury, developer Awesome Studios (now Ignition Banbury) promised support for a future USB motion-sensing peripheral. That never quite materialized, even with the release of the sequel Mercury Meltdown. Now, it looks like the team will finally get its chance to release the game with motion control, as publisher Ignition Entertainment today announced that the game is joining fellow sphere-based platformer Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz and coming to Wii as Mercury Meltdown Revolution. Mercury Games put the player in control of, fittingly, a blob of liquid mercury, which must be guided around complex environments and past various obstacles. It will feature over 150 levels as well as hidden unlockable content and features, and promises "full interaction using the Wii Remote tilt sensor. "The Wii Remote is a true compliment to the Mercury series as the original game design was intended for a tilt controller," said Ignition Entertainment president Paul Robinson. "Now gamers can fully interact with the Mercury blob, navigating through the labs with precision and unprecedented speed."

Mercury Meltdown Revolution is being developed by Ignition Banbury, and is slated to ship for Wii to North America in spring 2007.

According to the ESRB's website, Capcom's Street Fighter II: The World Warrior has been content rated for Wii (in case you were wondering, it got a "T for Teen" for violence), suggesting that the game is coming to the system's Virtual Console service. The entry almost certainly refers to the SNES edition of the game rather than the arcade release, given Virtual Console's purpose and existing library. Notably, it also marks the first time there has been any indication of Capcom bringing content to Virtual Console, an encouraging development as the publisher contributed many of the most well-loved games to 8-bit and 16-bit consoles.

Capcom has not officially commented on the listing, which did not give any indication as to the game's potential release period.

According to a post made today by an Ubisoft employee over on the official Ubisoft forums, the Xbox 360 version of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas now has an auto-update available through Xbox Live. It fixes a couple single-player bugs, but mainly addresses a wide range of multiplayer issues. The patch corrects many crash-causing bugs, one related to incorrect score management, one dealing with an achievement, several related to cooperative mode, and others. It also improves search menus, removes proximity voice chat in team games, and more. Head over to the Ubi post for a complete list.

Despite Sony yesterday calling its online vocabulary "too funky fresh," admitting to being "Busted. Nailed. Snagged.," and promising to continue to update its all i want for xmas is a psp marketing campaign, the site now appears to be taken down entirely. There's no word on whether it's just some unexpected downtime, or whether the whole thing may have just been creating more ill will than positive buzz, but the latter seems like a safer bet.

According to Gamerscore Blog, run by Microsoft PR employees, the June Xbox 360 backwards compatibility patch to which Peter Moore recently referred is now live. It adds 21 games to the existing list of approximately 200. Included in this patch are:

- 4x4 EVO 2
- Amped 2
- Bad Boys 2
- Big Mutha Truckers
- DOOM 3
- Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
- Fatal Frame
- FlatOut
- Grabbed by the Ghoulies
- Intellivision Lives
- LEGO Star Wars
- Minority Report
- MLB SlugFest 20-04
- The Punisher
- RalliSport Challenge
- Silent Hill 4: The Room
- Spawn Armageddon
- Spider-Man
- Star Wars Battlefront
- State of Emergency
- Zapper

GameDaily BIZ published an E3 interview today with Shane Kim, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios. As is par for the course with game publisher executives these days, Kim commented on Sony's pricing and strategy with PS3, Nintendo's controller for Wii, and more. He also stated the importance of strong first party development for the success of Xbox 360.

"They've been making a lot of promises for a long time," said Kim regarding Sony's PS3 plans, "so I'm sure they were under a lot of pressure from customers and retailers and from third parties who wanted them to finally disclose what their plans really were, and as you can see a lot of those plans are very different from what they've been promising." On Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD, he said, "[Microsoft's HD-DVD plans are] very different from what Sony's doing with Blu-ray, which is basically saying, 'Pay us extra because we want to put a Blu-ray drive in every single PlayStation 3.' I understand why Blu-ray's good for Sony; I just don't understand why it's good for gamers."

When asked about securing properties not previously released on the Xbox platform, Kim responded that most publishers will need to support Xbox 360. "We've taken away one of the major exclusives that drove Sony's PlayStation 2's success, and I think from a third-party perspective you have to support Xbox 360 because we are the leader in this generation." Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV will be released on Xbox 360 and PS3 simultaneously. "And with the rising cost of development," Kim added, "not supporting Xbox 360 is just too extreme." This leaves Microsoft with the role of providing strong exclusive titles for the system, as the industry moves more and more towards multiplatform development.

On Sony's decision to remove rumble and add motion sensing to its PS3 controller, Kim commented, "I think it's terrible for the industry, personally. ...[Rumble is] utilized in almost every game. To add motion-sensing technology seems like an attempt to copy what Nintendo is doing with the Wii controller." He does not appear to be too confident in either company's motion sensing technology, given Microsoft's history with similar hardware. "We had that motion technology inside a Freestyle Pro controller about 8 years ago and we found that as a general purpose controller it wasn't that great," he said.

In an ongoing interview with Japanese outlet Impress Watch, Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi revealed that PlayStation 3's Cell will be switching to a more efficient manufacturing process at some point in 2007. The chip will switch from its current 90nm process to a 65nm process. The change should soften the per-unit financial hit taken as a result of the system's high manufacturing costs.

This April, Chartered Semiconductor announced a similar plan to produce Xbox 360 CPUs with a 65nm process next year.

Ignition Entertainment today announced that it will be publishing Awesome Studios' Mercury Meltdown for PSP. The game is a followup to the PSP near-launch title Archer Maclean's Mercury, from the same developer. According to Ignition, Meltdown "features a fresh, vibrant graphical style with a zany cartoon quality." It also adds "state-of-the-art blob physics including normal mercury, solid, cold and hot forms," and features 160 levels along with minigames. The game looks to have some sort of downloadable content through the Sony Computer Entertainment Europe site. The press release is also sure to note "super-fast load times" as a feature.

Awesome Studios' Mercury Meltdown is set to ship August 22. - Screenshots.

For months, DS owners have been anticipating a reprint of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (NDS), which publisher Capcom initially distributed in fairly limited numbers. In March, limited quantities were reprinted, but as of tomorrow, a new reprint should make the game more available from online retailers. It is unclear if it will also be widely stocked in brick and mortar stores.

Eidos has announced the ship date for the PSP version of Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider: Legend (PSP, also PS2, Xbox, GCN, X360, DS, GBA, PC). The game will be available in North America on June 21. Tomb Raider; Legend for PSP is a port of the PS2 version of the game, featuring various local wireless multiplayer modes.