Consoul's Blog Consoul Games: March 2006

Thursday, March 23, 2006

XBox360 Australian Launch

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The official Australian launch event for Microsoft's XBox360 was staged last night in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall, and the heavens opened to rain on their parade. Between the 9pm kickoff and the eventual midnight sales launch, the patchy rain varied between light mist and torrential downpour, but the event went ahead quite successfully regardless. Microsoft laid on free pizza and drinks, plus a wide range of entertainment, including brazilian drummers and capoeiristas, breakdancers, and several performances from the ever-popular cheerleaders. Nova 96.9 broadcast live from the event and Channel V had a couple of crews doing coverage.

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The south end of the mall was filled with demo kiosks and several larger plasma and projection set-ups, ensuring that everyone who wanted to get hands-on with a 360 didn't have to wait too long. Unfortunately all the retail kiosks only had the same Project Gotham Racing 3 and Kameo demos that have been in stores for weeks now. Only three of the bigger display units had Amped 3, Dead Or Alive 4 and Fight Night Round 3 available to play, and they were in pretty high demand. Fight Night Round 3 was far and away the most impressive game visually. It was the only game that was really obviously a generation ahead of anything we've seen before. On the big NEC hi-def plasma, its stunningly lifelike graphics were an absolute knock-out, though the gameplay itself left me cold. As did the rain.

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Much to their credit, the promoters were handing out plastic emergency ponchos to anyone who wanted one. Most people braved the rain without them...until it really started pissing down and then many were happy to forego fashion for dryness. Much of the crowd dispersed at this point. A three man crew kept the remaining crowd entertained with some beat boxing and old school poppin' and lockin'. After winning the crowd's respect, they soon lost it again when they launched into their audience participation promo rap. "When I say X, you say Box, When I say 3, you say 60" - the crowd sympathetically played along to begin with, but when it came to "Everybody say Microsoooft!" the silence was punctuated only by laughter.

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Meanwhile the loyal fans who had actually turned up to collect their pre-orders couldn't see any of the hoopla, as they were all lined up around the corner waiting to get into EB so they could complete any outstanding transactions and receive a ticket that they could trade for their XBox360 at midnight. Still, it's not like they were missing anything... Well, not unless you count a bunch of perky cheerleaders in skimpy white outfits gyrating in the rain as something. The crowd that dispersed earlier miraculously re-appeared when the cheergirls did their raindance.

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Nova's live broadcast may have been good for spreading the word, but they sure lowered the tone of the live event. Their broadcast was blaring out of the on-site PA and while their music was suitably commercial and upbeat, their high rotation advertisements for local brothels and erectile disfunction nasal sprays seemed somehow inappropriate for the family friendly event. The fact that the two idiots hosting Nova's broadcast constantly referred to all the people assembled as "giant nerds" really won over the crowd too.

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As midnight approached, the ticket holders were herded into a taped-off enclosure in front of the main stage area. A promo girl came along offering the guys at the front free XBox360 caps which they accepted and put on. One guy declined, but the cap was thrust back toward him. "Just take the hat," the girl said, "it's for the money shot." Suitably reassured that the cap would provide him with some protection from the impending money shot, he donned the cap as instructed. With only minutes to go there was a quick jolt of the emerging dance craze krumping and clowning, followed by a final cheerleading routine to the 80's strains of "Living On a Prayer". With seconds to go there was a quick countdown before the screen dropped, the tape was released and a fun-run style rush for XBox360's ensued. (Download and watch the video here.) A few gamers actually tripped over the screen that had dropped and thanks to wet shoes a bit of a pile-up occurred, though unfortunately I didn't catch that in the video.

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So the happy pre-order folk were finally able to pick up their 360's and go home, the media got a nice shot of the crowd stampeding in, and Microsoft pulled off a pretty impressive launch event despite the weather. Perhaps the other winner of the night was the homeless and sanity-challenged man who spent the night wandering about muttering to himself and scarfing pizza and Coke Zero. He came away with a full belly, a new hat and several emergency ponchos. Everybody wins.

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Playstation Business Briefing 2006

Sony have unleashed a wave of new information at their Playstation Business Briefing in Tokyo today. It's about time too, as confidence in Sony (as reflected in their share price) was beginning to drop. Up until yesterday, Sony had stuck by their story that they were aiming for a (northern hemisphere) Spring launch for their next-generation console. Given that retailers still had no firm dates, developers had no final development kits, and the PS3 motherboards hadn't even started rolling off the factory floor, no-one in the industry believed them anymore.

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So they've come clean: PS3 has officially been delayed. As had been widely speculated, the delay was put down to "Blu-ray spec finalization". Playstation3 is now due for launch in November. Ken Kutaragi pleasantly surprised everyone by explicitly stating that PS3 would launch worldwide before Thanksgiving (which is November 23rd this year). After a "simultaneous worldwide launch" was promised for XBox360 (Australia is still waiting Microsoft!), many people may be inclined to take Sony's announcement with a grain of salt. Promisingly however, David Reeves, head of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has since echoed Kutaragi's assurance, saying "We are absolutely delighted that we will be able to bring PS3 to gamers in Europe and Australia before Christmas". Unlike Microsoft, who weren't able to produce enough consoles to supply all territories at once, Sony plan to produce a million consoles a month in the lead-up to the launch and beyond, ensuring that supply channels remain filled. Their goal is to have six million PS3's shipped by the end of March next year.

Kutaragi confirmed that PS3 will feature an upgradable 60GB hard drive with Linux OS onboard to act as a home server for various kinds of media. PS3's "Playstation Network Platform" will be an online service not dissimilar to XBox Live, with lobbies, player matching, voice chat, and commerce features including bootable downloads. The online service will be available from day one, and will apparently be free. While no specific games were discussed, it was revealed that all PS3 games will be released on BD-ROM (Blu-ray discs) as an anti-piracy measure. 100% backwards compatibility was reconfirmed - the PS3 will display all games, including PSone and PS2 titles, in high-definition via HDMI output. Final devkits and contollers will be distributed in May, allowing developers ample time to tweak and polish games currently in development.

There was quite a bit of news on the PSP front too. Utilizing PSP's wireless capabilities and a digital camera add-on, PSP will exploit Video Over IP technology so that it can be used as a videophone. PSP software will also become available through an e-Distribution system and memory stick booting will be supported. PSone games will be available to download and play from PSP's memory stick via an official emulator. Of course, the PSP is still short two shoulder buttons and one analog stick, so the controls could prove problematic. These features are expected to be available by the time the PS3 launches. In the meantime, support for the popular Macromedia Flash 6.0 format will be included in the next firmware update.

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The white PSP and cheaper PSP pack (sans accessories) that were previously only available in Japan are coming to the western markets too. Forthcoming GPS and EyeToy add-ons for PSP were also discussed. Interestingly, Sony's own research shows that people most often play the portable system at home.

In typical fashion, Kutaragi made some vague marketing-speak comments about PS3 being "4D" and going beyond the space seen in PSone/PS2 games to become truly "live". He didn't miss the opportunity to congratulate himself on just how successful Playstation2 has been either. With more than 100 million PS2s and over a billion games shipped worldwide, there's no denying that PS2 has been a phenomenal success.

As informative as the meeting was, several questions over PS3 remain, with pricing, games and region-coding topping the list. Expect more details (and hopefully some playable PS3 games) at E3 in May.