Soul CaliburIV is set to be developed for PS3 and XBox 360 platforms. I cannot contain my happiness because Soul Caliber is the best fighting game ever!

After the announcement of Soul Calibur Legends coming to the Wii, some Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 fighting game fans might have felt a little left out. Namco Bandai today confirmed that it too will be able to rejoin the weapons-based fighting franchise’s fray, as Soul Calibur IV is in development for the latest systems from Sony and Microsoft.

The next game is being developed by Project Soul, the studio behind previous entries in the series and will include new modes, characters, and a new battle system. Namco Bandai is saying the game will “propel the fighting genre into the next-gen era” and is also promising realistic, interactive environments and better artificial intelligence.

Soul Calibur IV is set for release in 2008.

For more details on the title, check out GameSpot’s new preview of the game

Or here:

Harry Potter fans, you can watch the OFFICIAL trailer of The Order of Phoenix game on your PS3s now. BTW, the graphics looks very real, thanks to PS3’s awesome innards. :D

I am an OK fan of Harry Potters movie as I thought initially in the first and second installment of the movie, the acting was rather bad and woodlike. I guess it’s because Daniel Radcliff was young and inexperience. Anyway, i grew to like him after a few installments. One have to appreciate the books and the storyline to actually understand and like the movie. Otherwise, in the words of my partner, Harry Potter is AWFUL. And unfortunately, he may not be the only one who thinks so too.

But now, i think the Harry Potter installments are more mature and would appeal to the old crowd since Mr. Radcliffe has snagged himself a pretty fine following who thinks he’s awfully gorgeous. Who over here thinks Daniel is hot?

You can view the trailer from Gamespot.

or here

Ken Kutaragi is retiring from Sony at the age of 56. Ah i’d like to thank him for creating PS series for our enjoyment. I’m a fan of PS, there is no doubt about it.

Kutaragi commented, “I am happy to graduate from Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. after introducing four platforms to the PlayStation family. It has been an exciting experience to change the world of computer entertainment by marrying cutting-edge technologies with creative minds from all over the world. I’m looking forward to building on this vision in my next endeavours.

Aww Ken, can’t wait :D

Source: Gamespot

To fullfil the sorely lacking games that involves ninja, Tecmo’s Ryu Hayabusa is slashing his way to the PS3 in Ninja Gaiden Sigma, a new take on the Xbox installments in the series, Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black. I have not played this game yet but it looks pretty interesting. If it’s anything like Shinobi, i’m in! Some people think that Ninja Gaiden Sigma is made just for PS3 but truth is, you can also play it on Xbox 360.

Check out the trailer here:

It looks very, very playable. Maybe after I am done with Shinobi, I’ll try this out. Hmm.

Source: Gamespot

With software emulation, more than 1000 PS2 games can now be played in PS3. Good. I never could understand why can’t Sony just create a newer console that can play games from its predecessors. It’ll make life so much easier. I know, I know… the software is different, the laser reader is to, la la la la but a girl can bit*h, can’t she? :)

Sony Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison has now given out numbers–he told semiofficial blog Three Speech that more than 1,000 PS2 games will be playable on the new models at launch, with further updates over time adding more to the list.

What is a semi official blog anyway? Does that mean he can write about his personal life as well as his work life too? *shrugs* Anyway, according to Phil, Sony will be concentrating on making the “big” games from PS2 work on PS3. But he refuses to draw which ones are and not - i guess it will be up to us to play the russian roulette; pop it in and see if it works.

To read the entire article, go to Gamespot.com

Fighter games will never overrated, let me just put it that way. No matter how many generation of Tekkens or Virtua Fighters come out in the next 10 years, it will always be meaner, better and stronger in all sense of the word. PS3’s Virtua Fighter 5, (yes 5!) is out and has great reviews as well as ratings. My favorite game site, Gamespot, rated it to be 8.1. Hey, this site is rarely that generous with their ratings so with an 8.1, it’s definitely worth the play.

Virtua Fighter 5’s fighting is virtually top notch. And that is what fighting games are suppose to do best - fight. With great graphics and 14 year storyline, it’s hard to resist. I am quite tempted to poke fun at how plain and amateurish the first Virtua Fighter looked but I won’t. But do look at this :P

Virtua Fighter 5 is a great-looking game from top to bottom. The characters look great and animate well, with the lone exception of their mouths, and teeth, which just look a little off when characters speak at the end of a fight. There are plenty of different backgrounds in the game, and they all look great while also figuring into the fights. Some of them are walled off, giving you a surface to juggle fighters up against, while others are open, letting you win by pushing your opponent out of the ring if you can. The game runs at 720p on the PlayStation 3, which gives you a nice, high definition to work with, though some of the characters and stages can look a little pixelated in spots.

Overall, I think the game looks pretty good. I am a sucker for great graphics with corny melo-dramatic storylines in these games.

Well, I’ve you a trailer of Virtua Fighter 5 to see:

Source: Gamespot; Wikipedia

OMG can I finally afford PS3!?!?!

Sony Execs are telling AP that they are evaluating the price of the PS3 with a possible price reduction in the future! And the reason why for the price cut? Well, they seem to think that it’s because their sales haven’t met their expectations - so the solution? Sell it cheaper so more of the mass can afford it. Duh! Why didn’t they think of it earlier?? I would have gotten it.

This week, Sony announced that profits had fallen some 5.3 percent over last year in the company as a whole, with the games division suffering third-quarter losses of 54.2 billion yen (approx $455 million). Some had predicted that the company would suffer even greater losses. In a survey conducted by Bloomberg of five industry analysts, the median estimate was that the company would report a 50 percent loss.

Apparently, Sony has already cut the price of PS3 in Japan; from taking the 20GB version to 49,980 yen ($429), 10,000 yen ($85) less than previously slated. The move, however, backfired as some analyst slammed the price cut. I don’t know what’s there to bitch about…some poeple are so hard to please. Anyway, the company’s share took a little stumble after in Japan. Ouch.

OK, now this is even weirder. In my last post, I said that 46% of people surveyed by Famitsu were not happy with the upcoming release of Dragon Quest IX. But the same magazine published a survey of what people thought would be the top 10 hit gaming products in 2007 and that very game made #2.

What a fickle bunch, those Japanese gamers.

The rest of the list:

#1 Wii — 412 votes
#2 Dragon Quest IX: Defenders of the Starry Sky — 122 votes
#3 Nintendo DS — 107 votes
#4 PLAYSTATION 3 — 56 votes
#5 Impossible To Tell — 50 votes
#6 Xbox 360 — 28 votes
#7 Final Fantasy XIII — 28 votes
#8 Metal Gear Solid 4 — 22 votes
#9 Blue Dragon — 16 votes
#10 Monster Hunter Portable 2nd — 15 votes

Looks like Nintendo is going to be coining money this year.

Link:
Kotaku

A week ago Muken and I went to the Tokyo Game Show 2006. Games are sometimes somewhat interesting but don’t usually look too nice in photos, and the only interesting stuff in my humble non-hardcore-gamer-otaku opinion was the Sony pavillion, but they put signs everywhere to forbid pictures to be shot.

So, I went with the crowd, and shot the booth girls instead…

See all 70 girls in this photoset.

(More after the jump…)

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not exactly Japan-only, but since Sony is a Japanese company and gaming’s home is here in Japan, I thought I’d better post this.

At E306 in Anaheim, Sony announced the launch details of their next generation gaming console, Playstation 3. It will have a nearly synchronous worldwide release in November and will come in two flavours: one with an inbuilt 20GB hard disk and another with an inbuilt 60GB hard disk.The 20GB release will retail for US$499 - a half-price Blu-Ray player, it seems. The 60GB variant will retail at US$699. Steep. Quite steep. Especially since I think in Australian conversaion-and-markup rates which means my PS3 will cost me AUD$849.95…for that money I could buy an awesome video card for my PC.

The controller for the PS3 has also been changed. Last year’s banana/boomerang design was scrapped and the new controller looks exactly like the old one, but now the cable connecting it is USB and it also has functions similar to Nintendo Wii’s remote shaped controller - that it, tilt motion detection. On the downside is the fact that the vibrate function available in old DualShock controllers will not be available in this new “DualShake”.
Other features of the console include Bluetooth, the Blu-Ray optical drive, a Compact Flash/SD/Memory Stick slot (in the premium model), 802.11g wireless (in the premium model) and HDMI output (in the premium model). There’s a lot of extras for forking out about $100 more.

The launch details have sparked criticism of Sony stealing Nintendo’s ideas but I’m not entirely convinced those allegations are fair. The idea of having motion sensors in controller devices has been around for a while. And apparently Microsoft and Logitech came up with a similar device a few years ago, in which case, Nintendo is the thief.

But theiving or not…the patents system has been put in place for problems like that and I don’t think Sony has breached Nintendo’s patents as the systems are a only similar, not exact. Then again, Sony has been to court before over patent breaches so I might have to eat those words one day.

What I’m trying to say is that Sony may not have had the innovation to come up with a concept like a motion-detecting controller, but they were at least smart enough to realise that the idea could make their product even better. So adopting it, even in the seemingly under-developed fashion that they have, has added some value to their console.

And while it is disappointing that Sony could not keep the vibrate function from the DualShock controller (while the Wiimote will have it), I’m not going to miss those vibrations too much. That was the gimmick, if you ask me. “But while you were driving your car in Gran Turismo, you could feel the controller vibrate!” you say? So? It wasn’t very realistic. For something like a car racing game, I’d like a very low, smooth rumble, growing and fading as the engine does, not just going in bursts like the controller did. I get better vibration control out of my sex toys.

Anyway, basically, I am looking forward to PS3 even if only for the HD onset that it will bring. All of the major gaming sites are writing about this more in-depth than I am - go check them out.

Links:
Kotaku
Engadget