The PlayStation 3's final controller design and the console's line-up of launch software will be unveiled at E3, Sony Worldwide Studios head Phil Harrison said yesterday.

Speaking at a press luncheon, Harrison also said that Blu-ray disc "will be the primary distribution method for the triple-A games that you will see on the PS3," but that the "eventual shift" to digital distribution would be at a pace set by the consumer.

Sony wants to deliver episodic content - "whether it's game, music, television - or perhaps some combination of those" - through downloads for PS3, Harrison said, as part of a move to "push beyond the traditional gameplay we see in retail".

He also dismissed suggestions that the one-year gap between Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3's respective launches was a disadvantage, reminding those assembled that Sony has reached a market-leading position without ever being the first platform to market during a generation shift.

Having outlined Sony's plans for PlayStation 3 online and digital distribution, and demonstrated several real-time game demos before lunch, Harrison was meeting with the press to answer questions relating to the particulars of his presentation.

Asked if it would be fair to assume the games demonstrated during his keynote (see our previous coverage for more details) are launch titles, he said, "All of that will be answered at E3," but was reluctant to speculate further, other than to say, "I think it's fair to assume that the ones we showed you are going to be more advanced."

Another topic raised was the PlayStation 3's controller. The design of the prototype shown at last year's E3 has proven controversial, and Harrison reminded everyone of its prototype status in response to question about the impact of the Immersion lawsuit, which had "no impact" on the decision not to show the controller at GDC. "The controller will be revealed at E3," he stated - something later reaffirmed by Sony a spokesperson.

The Worldwide Studios boss would not be drawn on hardware issues, protesting, "I'm in charge of the software studios, not the manufacturing plant." Although he did say that Sony's production rate of one million units per month "is the fastest we've ever had."

Sections of the press have reacted with concern to Harrison's reluctance to comment directly on recent reports that the PlayStation 3 hard disk will be bundled with the console - following Sony boss Ken Kutaragi's revelation last week that it will be required. However Harrison has always chosen his words very carefully, and this reluctance is more likely out of a desire not to tread on his colleagues' toes than to create confusion or contradict previous statements. He did say, however, that, "Every single game will support a hard drive." ...

News from Lik Sang





According to Marc Nix on IGN PS3, Phil Harrison of Sony dropped the shocker of the week at the GDC, right after addressing the firm's keynote. The information has been corroborated by Billy Berghammer, from GameInformer, who reported that the discussion had actually taken place during an exclusive press Q&A luncheon organized by Sony themselves [Editor: I'm wondering what they ate]. Now what that information is? you may ask. No region-lock on PlayStation 3. Now do I have your attention? Or should I write in capital letters with tons of exclamation points at the end of my sentence?

After hearing about this, IGN's Marc Nix went ahead speculating to the best of his ability: "The move was not unexpected, as SCE had previously mentioned considering the possibility of opening up the region structure for PS3 games recently (the newly-released PSP system has but does not use a region code system for games, but that's more a standard for portable games than a new development for region-free gaming.) The system is, amongst other things, hoped to help combat piracy - many import fans "chip" their consoles with region-free mod chips to play import games, and while that desire has some legitimacy, it also opens the doors for pirates to release illegal copies of games. (Funnily enough, it's most often easier to run illegal games on a console than it is to run legit games from other countries due to the way most mod chips work, leading to a slippery slope for importers hoping to stay legit but finding the road difficult to maneuver.) Region-free gaming also allows game publishers to release games across the globe simultaneously, either through e-distribution or on disc. The capacity of Blu-Ray had previously been mentioned to allow for multiple languages of a game to be encoded onto the same massive-capacity disc.

The one caveat of this new region-free structure is that games made for specific regions' electrical and TV standards may have problems on your TV set. A PAL PS3 game, for instance, will have difficulty running on an NTSC TV, unless the developers have thought ahead and planned for that issue. It is currently unknown how the PS3 will cope with this problem (whether there will be a warning when you run an import about possible TV incompatibility, or if possibly there might be a no-play screen for incompatible games depending on your PS3's TV settings.) Luckily, modern HDTV standards go a long way towards making that problem moot. Also, games made in other countries will naturally only have the text and dialog it is programmed with, so don't put your pre-orders down so fast on all of those Japanese RPGs and Dragon Ball if you don't know a lick of kanji, because English will only be in if the developers have planned for it. (It's unknown if there will be any type of "patching" system for multi-language releases, although that might be possible on supported games post-release now that the PS3 is carrying its massive HDD and flash memory support.)"

Read the rest of the Massive article at Lik Sang ...

Source Eurogamer

This year's Winning Eleven is coming out a bit earlier than usual, Konami's announced, so that everyone will have it in time for the World Cup.

Reports based on a Famitsu preview and an unveiling event earlier today also identify some of the changes fans of the series - known as Pro Evolution Soccer in the west - can expect from the game, which is being released on PS2 in Japan on 27th April.

Player animation is a big deal, as ever, we're told - with shooting animations in particular coming in for close scrutiny by the development team.

According to reports on the Famitsu piece, producer Seabass and his team are also introducing a Simple Setting, which automates things like formations and substitutions - which should be enormously useful for those without the time or patience to learn the subtleties of Winning Eleven's hugely complex and versatile stat system. There's also talk of simplifying passing, shooting and through balls.

Apparently the refs have been reined in a bit too, and won't give so many free-kicks - something that annoyed people when initially adapting to last year's versions, which made it much harder to gain possession just by pressing forcefully.

Most of the other changes mentioned are to do with game modes - Master League, for example, will now allow you to select whether you want players to age or not. There will also be a new International Challenge mode, where you get to take part in regional qualifying for a World Cup of sorts.

Speaking of which, the amount of licensing has gone up - apparently the English, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and Argentinean national teams are now licensed.

On top of that there'll be a Random Selection Match, allowing you play as teams comprised entirely of randomly selected players - which is good news for those of you who play random teams during lunchtime or after the pub, anyway.

Finally, there's talk of a quick start feature that lets you skip through all the pre-match hoo-hah by pressing L1 and R1 together when prompted.

Expect much of this information to be clarified by Konami when it inevitably unveils Pro Evolution Soccer 6, which should also be released on a much wider range of formats than Winning Eleven usually is; expect PES6 to appear on PS2, PC, Xbox 360, PSP and perhaps others sometime later this year. ...

The PlayStation 3's final controller design and the console's line-up of launch software will be unveiled at E3, Sony Worldwide Studios head Phil Harrison said yesterday.

Speaking at a press luncheon, Harrison also said that Blu-ray disc "will be the primary distribution method for the triple-A games that you will see on the PS3," but that the "eventual shift" to digital distribution would be at a pace set by the consumer.

Sony wants to deliver episodic content - "whether it's game, music, television - or perhaps some combination of those" - through downloads for PS3, Harrison said, as part of a move to "push beyond the traditional gameplay we see in retail".

He also dismissed suggestions that the one-year gap between Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3's respective launches was a disadvantage, reminding those assembled that Sony has reached a market-leading position without ever being the first platform to market during a generation shift.

Having outlined Sony's plans for PlayStation 3 online and digital distribution, and demonstrated several real-time game demos before lunch, Harrison was meeting with the press to answer questions relating to the particulars of his presentation.

Asked if it would be fair to assume the games demonstrated during his keynote (see our previous coverage for more details) are launch titles, he said, "All of that will be answered at E3," but was reluctant to speculate further, other than to say, "I think it's fair to assume that the ones we showed you are going to be more advanced."

Another topic raised was the PlayStation 3's controller. The design of the prototype shown at last year's E3 has proven controversial, and Harrison reminded everyone of its prototype status in response to question about the impact of the Immersion lawsuit, which had "no impact" on the decision not to show the controller at GDC. "The controller will be revealed at E3," he stated - something later reaffirmed by Sony a spokesperson.

The Worldwide Studios boss would not be drawn on hardware issues, protesting, "I'm in charge of the software studios, not the manufacturing plant." Although he did say that Sony's production rate of one million units per month "is the fastest we've ever had."

Sections of the press have reacted with concern to Harrison's reluctance to comment directly on recent reports that the PlayStation 3 hard disk will be bundled with the console - following Sony boss Ken Kutaragi's revelation last week that it will be required. However Harrison has always chosen his words very carefully, and this reluctance is more likely out of a desire not to tread on his colleagues' toes than to create confusion or contradict previous statements. He did say, however, that, "Every single game will support a hard drive." ...

Microsoft hopes to have 15 more Xbox Live Arcade titles available through Xbox 360 by the summer, according to IGN.

Speaking at this year's Games Developers Conference in San Jose, Microsoft reps also talked about what will happen as the service grows.

For instance, what happens when it gets crowded? Well, apparently the plan is that under-performing titles can be pulled if they're no longer exciting people - with provisions made so that people who bought them can always re-download them if they need to.

In development terms, games should not exceed 50MB - so that they can fit on a memory card, not just the hard disk. Apparently the goal is to get things down to 25MB so that you can stick two on the same card, although Microsoft expects sizes will increase too - particularly as more complex game engines like Unreal become available to Live Arcade developers.

Expect more stuff to pop up on Live Arcade for many months to come, then - including the much-heralded addition of Street Fighter II, which shouldn't be too far off now. ...

PSMonkey has posted some more WIP news about his Nintendo 64 Emulator for the PSP at his Site:

Bugs go down, compatibility goes up!

Ok so I made some dumb mistakes in the cop1 emulation.

1) I did not check for cop1 unstability.

2) I was storing a 2nd set of cop1 registers into the general cop1 registers (general reg stores float values, 2nd set is 32bit int that hold cop1 status).

Anyways with this fixed I lost a bit in the framerate department on some stuff. Yet I now have more games running as a result. Doom64 runs to the title screen and posibly beyond but cant tell since i get a white screen when i start a new game. Bust a move 2 also runs now but looks to crash in game on a bus error (still hunting this one out).

So that is about it. Sadly no calls for 3d instructions so I guess I am screwed. I will be starting up hle this week so we can start seeing some 3d (but I might spend more time on fixing texture stuff in the rdp).

Enjoy the title screen from doom.

Check out the news and screenshot via his site here --> http://nemo.dcemu.co.uk/ ...

Source IGN :

March 22, 2006 - In his platform keynote address at GDC 2006 this morning, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President Phil Harrison gave a number of details on new and upcoming developments for the PlayStation Portable system. Many had already been confirmed at the PlayStation Biz conference earlier this month.

In his address, Harrison announced that PSP games will finally be available via download over the internet to Memory Stick. That includes PS one games (running on a new emulator for the platform) and other titles available by e-distribution, both large and small. He also mentioned two new products for the system, a USB camera / EyeToy (in September) and a GPS device (in October), and both promise gameplay opportunities as well as general use functions. The PSP's front end will be receiving an upgrade for its RSS features and will do Flash while browsing the internet. It was also mentioned that video and still camera features will be implemented (assumedly with the same EyeToy camera), and that VOIP (character ) will be a big component of the system in the future. In general, "communication-based" gaming is one direction the PSP will explore in future titles.

The price has officially dropped for the system with the introduction of a more compact core system package, and was mentioned again as part of the system's discussion. A reported five thousand development units are now out in the game creation community for making games on the system. As for specific titles for the platform, however, only one was really given a spotlight, but it was a goodie: LocoRoco, the goofy, blobby game from SCE's Japanese studios -- this is the first confirmation of the game's plans for release in America (it was previously planned for Europe and Japan, with the doors open for US but not locked down.) Look for more on that title and all of those new PSP features soon.

Thanks to SoQb0nc5r for the news ...

xwh1225 has updated his Ace Dictionary with a new release, heres some info about this release:

Here are some features of Ace Dictionary:

1.A new dictionary library adopted.(The American Heritage dictionary of the English language)
2.Explanations don't mix up any more.
3.Bookmarks supported.
4. Customized wallpapers.
5. Pronunciations properly displayed.
6. smooth pronunciation font
7. ...

Download Via Comments ...

New release by HaxxBlaster, heres the info:

Fire Pong
The game idea of Fire Pong is to get more points than your opponent. You should basicly try to goal your opponent and keep away from the burning ball,
once you are hit by the ball you get one minus point. This homebrew included two games, Pong Orginal and Fire Pong. Fire Pong is a game i created out of the orginal game idea of pong. Everything inside the homebrew is created by HaxxBlaster, except the basic game idea of pong.

Download & Screenshot via Comments
via haxxblaster ...