An analysis report on the current console war leading up to 2010 cites PS3 and Xbox 360 will dominate over Wii in all major territories.

The report by Screen Digest's Ed Barton, forecasts that the leading console will differ for each territory, predicting the PS3 to overtake Xbox 360 in Japan and Europe, but come in a close second to Microsoft's offering in America.

The analysis puts Wii in a significantly distant third in all three territories.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Ed Barton explained: "The one thing I would admit is that Nintendo's strategy with the Wii is, at the moment, the great unknown," later saying: "The numbers that we're seeing now for the Nintendo Wii, they've come out of the blocks fantastically strongly - no one would deny that.

"However it's incredibly early in the hardware cycle. There's still another five or six years to play out on this one, and the first big battleground will be Christmas of 2007."

Barton cites exclusive third-party support as a crucial issue for Wii in the next gen war: "We've already seen things like Dragon Quest going exclusive on the DS, but if we see those kind of tipping points on the Wii, we'll have to amend our view, clearly. But at the moment, this is the view we're taking."

Barton points out Wii's cheaper development costs to be a huge advantage but, considering the console's limited technical ability, Barton speculates, "As to whether more cheaply developed games can continue to drive Wii sales momentum, when you put it against the kind of game pipelines we're seeing for the Xbox 360 and PS3, I would argue that the jury's still out."

via cvg ...

An analysis report on the current console war leading up to 2010 cites PS3 and Xbox 360 will dominate over Wii in all major territories.

The report by Screen Digest's Ed Barton, forecasts that the leading console will differ for each territory, predicting the PS3 to overtake Xbox 360 in Japan and Europe, but come in a close second to Microsoft's offering in America.

The analysis puts Wii in a significantly distant third in all three territories.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Ed Barton explained: "The one thing I would admit is that Nintendo's strategy with the Wii is, at the moment, the great unknown," later saying: "The numbers that we're seeing now for the Nintendo Wii, they've come out of the blocks fantastically strongly - no one would deny that.

"However it's incredibly early in the hardware cycle. There's still another five or six years to play out on this one, and the first big battleground will be Christmas of 2007."

Barton cites exclusive third-party support as a crucial issue for Wii in the next gen war: "We've already seen things like Dragon Quest going exclusive on the DS, but if we see those kind of tipping points on the Wii, we'll have to amend our view, clearly. But at the moment, this is the view we're taking."

Barton points out Wii's cheaper development costs to be a huge advantage but, considering the console's limited technical ability, Barton speculates, "As to whether more cheaply developed games can continue to drive Wii sales momentum, when you put it against the kind of game pipelines we're seeing for the Xbox 360 and PS3, I would argue that the jury's still out."

via cvg ...

An analysis report on the current console war leading up to 2010 cites PS3 and Xbox 360 will dominate over Wii in all major territories.

The report by Screen Digest's Ed Barton, forecasts that the leading console will differ for each territory, predicting the PS3 to overtake Xbox 360 in Japan and Europe, but come in a close second to Microsoft's offering in America.

The analysis puts Wii in a significantly distant third in all three territories.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Ed Barton explained: "The one thing I would admit is that Nintendo's strategy with the Wii is, at the moment, the great unknown," later saying: "The numbers that we're seeing now for the Nintendo Wii, they've come out of the blocks fantastically strongly - no one would deny that.

"However it's incredibly early in the hardware cycle. There's still another five or six years to play out on this one, and the first big battleground will be Christmas of 2007."

Barton cites exclusive third-party support as a crucial issue for Wii in the next gen war: "We've already seen things like Dragon Quest going exclusive on the DS, but if we see those kind of tipping points on the Wii, we'll have to amend our view, clearly. But at the moment, this is the view we're taking."

Barton points out Wii's cheaper development costs to be a huge advantage but, considering the console's limited technical ability, Barton speculates, "As to whether more cheaply developed games can continue to drive Wii sales momentum, when you put it against the kind of game pipelines we're seeing for the Xbox 360 and PS3, I would argue that the jury's still out."

via cvg ...

Heres the charts and for the PS2 it makes good reading:

Final Fantasy XII
Crackdown
FIFA 07
Pro Evolution Soccer 6
Need For Speed: Carbon
The Sims 2: Pets
New Super Mario Bros.
Supreme Commander
Avatar: The Legend of Aang
Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy

Last Gen beating Next Gen ...

Over at The Pensive Gamer I've put the final article up that discusses the coming of mass market homebrew. It looks at the past by discussing the barriers and looks to the future by looking at where each console might be going. Full article below:

SPREAD THIS NEWS



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Over the past few weeks I've explored the mass market homebrew options on the Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360. Today I finalize the 'Here Comes Homebrew' series by looking at what was preventing mass market homebrew and, for everyone's amusement, sticking my neck out with a few predications; appropriate on the eve of GDC.

What were the Barriers?
Four inter-related things: complexity, support, distribution and publishers.

Complexity
Console development is typically a complex undertaking. While Nintendo is historically credited with providing better tools than Sony, Microsoft and the Web changed things. Microsoft was built on the idea of providing tools to ease development and XNA lowers console development complexity to a new level.

As for the Web, its success was driven by the notion that anyone could bring their ideas to the world. Web development is more complex than envisioned in the early web days, but it is much less complex and more broadly reaching than traditional console development.

Support
Support needs cannot be understated. Not only are good tools needed, but so is good documentation and strong developer communities. This has been a strength of Microsoft's, from their developer website, MSDN, to Microsoft developer blogs, to communities built around Microsoft technology. The web is no different. Numerous companies provide free and commercial tools and there are plenty of communities built around Flash, JavaScript and HTML development.

Distribution
Until Xbox Live Arcade publishers owned the primary game distribution channel, retailers. With all consoles equipped with Internet connections and download services, along with two providing web browsers, getting homebrew to the console directly is no longer an issue.

Publishers
This one is not yet solved. It is easy to argue homebrew development isn’t competition for publishers but the consumer's time at the controller is likely a publisher concern. Particularly if homebrew games are free and publishers having rising development costs.

Microsoft Xbox 360
First off let's be clear, the $99 US annual fee for the XNA Creators Club isn't about Microsoft making money from the subscription. The number of people paying won't cover the engineering cost that has gone into creating and supporting XNA any time soon.

Requiring a fee and needing to provide source is about not drawing the ire of publishers and acting as a form of minimal quality control; only those serious enough to spend money will tend to create something. Microsoft is testing the waters while they complete full development and finalize their strategy.

So my predictions for Microsoft? I expect expanded APIs for Live support, including multiplayer, lobbies, etc. I do think they will eventually add VB.NET as a language choice, but they might wait to see some success first.

Microsoft will expand the Dashboard UI in a coming update. This will allow people to browse, play and rank homebrew games. Some form of both automatic and manual filtering mechanism will be put in place to minimize garbage, malicious and inappropriate homebrew applications.

While I don't believe they will remove the paid subscription for developing 360 homebrew apps, playing them will be free or require a Gold subscription. Publishers shouldn't view this as competition but as a way to find rough gems to turn into full titles. As a case in point, Sony took the free Flash game flOw and released it last week as a downloadable game.

Nintendo Wii
With the only current legitimate homebrew avenue being web, the question becomes what can Nintendo do to enhance it? They have already provided a strong browser. Providing some level of web API doesn't make sense when there really isn't the notion of a single sign-in/user focused central service nor the same kind of game completion tracking/achievements as on the 360.

They could offer extended support in JavaScript or Flash for mapping all aspects of the controller input, or offer application and game style guides including simple JavaScript/HTML/CSS templates. I don't believe this is high on their list and ultimately I don't think it matters. I really see the Wii community, not Nintendo, as the ones to carry Wii web homebrew along.

As for attracting native developers to the platform, a dev kit costs just ...

A rumour coming straight out of the Official Xbox Magazine suggests that gamers will be able to download and rock out to the Halo Mjolnir Theme Song, which greets you when you fire up Halo 2.

The opening guitar in the theme was recorded by seven-string guitar virtuoso Steve Vai. We've put in a few calls to the right people but they couldn't help us either way.

But seeing as though a Spartan featured as an unlockable character in Dead or Alive 4, we reckon there's every chance of this happening. We officially want Guitar Hero II on Xbox 360 even more than ever.

via cvg ...

Sony has revealed the first information on its plans to release additional content online to expand the PS3 launch day shooter, Resistance: Fall Of Man.

"We're going to release additional content for Resistance. I don't think we've gone into detail on the schedule, but we have some really, really cool things that will be extending the story, extending the locations, some brand new content, starting in April," Harrison said in a recent interview.

And there's every chance that a sequel could already ben on the design board: "So if that works well and is well-received by the audience, then that will keep the engagement with game going between now and should there be a sequel at some point in the future."

Resistance: Fall Of Man will launch alongside PS3 on March 23.

via cvg ...

THQ today announced that MotoGP ’07, is expected to ship for the Xbox 360 and the PC in fall 2007. The newest installment in the critically acclaimed series features the complete 2007 MotoGP season and an improved “race day” experience that captures the excitement and spectacle of a live MotoGP event. MotoGP ’07 will also add all-new bikes, tracks, and enhanced customization options building on the popular “Extreme” mode that allows players to race on city streets around the world.

“THQ’s MotoGP titles have shipped in excess of 1.5 million units and are critically acclaimed for pushing the limits of realism and console technology,” said Bob Aniello, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, THQ. “With MotoGP ‘07, THQ raises the bar yet again for both core gamers and racing enthusiasts” ...

Hi All,

Here is a new version of PSP7800 the Atari 7800 console emulator !

For those who haven't seen previous versions, ProSystem is the best
emulator of Atari 7800 game console, running on Windows system.
It has been written by Greg Stanton, see Greg's site for details.

What's new in version 1.0.5 :

- New graphical functions with new smoother render modes.
It uses the PSP GPU for rendering, it does not run faster,
but it's a lot smoother.
- Add a new fullscreen option (render mode max)
- Rom selector support now .rom and .bin as valid file extention
- Save state dates are displayed in the emulator window
(it's now easier to identify and to load the right save state slot)
- Multiple keyboard mapping feature (Thanks to Pou-chan) :
You can now toggle between three differents keyboard mapping using
LTrigger and RTrigger keys
- Bug fix in Rom file requester


How to use it ? Everything is in the README.txt file.

Sources are included, and this package is under the GNU public license,
read COPYING.txt file for more information about it.

Enjoy, :thumbup:

Zx ...