It's unsurprising Sony would devise a motion controller, after the gazillions of dollars Nintendo made with its Wii platform. However, as impressive as Sony's E3 demonstration was, many fear the motion controller may signal a paradigm shift for the company. Will hardcore gamers lose out in Sony's (and Microsoft's) newfound reach at the motion-craving casual audience? Tretton doesn't think so. Speaking to CNBC, the president of SCEA promised that the PS3 motion controller (and its games library) will be far more flexible and diverse than what one would find on Nintendo's machine. "Personally, it's very difficult for me to perceive God of War 3 being played with the Wii controller," he said. "It's a different experience that doesn't lend itself to certain types of games. [But] I think our [motion] controller can be used with every game that's on the system now - and every game we're working on."

In fact, Tretton goes so far as to say compatibility with current PS3 games is "absolutely conceivable." Without being able to go hands-on with the device, it's hard to judge. Are there sufficient buttons and sticks to make a 1:1 translation between DualShock and the motion controllers? While it's certainly possible, we can't see many gamers throwing out their DualShock controllers any time soon

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/12/tr...xisting-games/ ...

Toymaker Mezco Toyz was planning to release LittleBigPlanet licensed action figures this year, in sizes ranging from 2" to 18", along with sundry other Sackboy and Sackgirl themed things. Not anymore, as the product line has been scrapped.

According to customer notifications from retailers like BigBadToyStore, Mezco Toyz has nixed plans for a LittleBigPlanet action figure assault. Retailers have canceled pre-orders and Mezco has removed previous listings for LittleBigPlanet toys and accessories from its official web site.

When we contacted Mezco, reps confirmed that anything and everything planned for LittleBigPlanet from the company had been canceled. When asked why, reps told Kotaku, "We can't comment on that." A quick look at the company's web site shows that almost nothing LBP-related remains.

Mezco had planned for plenty of LittleBigPlanet content, including retailer-exclusive figures, zipper pulls, and even blank Sackboys that consumers could customize themselves. We're not sure why the product line was canceled (yet), but have to wonder if the quality of the initial offerings, which didn't look so spectacular, had something to do with it.

http://kotaku.com/5288608/littlebigp...ve-been-sacked ...

Despite some signs of trouble earlier this year, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told Kotaku why third-parties have a bright future on Wii and DS.

The company that's been riding high on its own Wii and DS successes has recently had some trouble convincing people that marquee games from publishers other than Nintendo can do well on Nintendo's machines.

Sega's hardcore-hyped MadWorld launched on the Wii with 66,000 copies sold in the U.S. in March, according to the NPD group.

Take Two's Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars — the best-reviewed game on the DS — launched that same month with fewer than 90,000 copies sold in the U.S.

"There is no magic number that says x = profitability," Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told Kotaku during our E3 interview last week, further clarifying earlier comments on the matter.

Two non-Nintendo games he expects to perform well are Sega's The Conduit and EA's Dead Space Extraction, both first-person games with a darker tone that Nintendo's standard. "I am really optimistic about The Conduit," he said. "I think it looks great, plays great. I think Dead Space Extraction is going to be fabulous given the early builds that I've seen. So, I do think that we will continue to see not only great titles, but great sales, on higher-rated M and T type of titles on our platforms."

Fils-Aime addressed the seeming struggles of some of those M-rated games on Wii and DS from earlier this year.

As other Nintendo reps have said before him, Fils-Aime thinks Chinatown Wars may have been counted out too soon by people focusing on its launch numbers. "In the handheld space, with Nintendo platforms specifically — whether it's Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS — the fact is that first month sales really don't matter," he said. "You have a title like Mario Kart, in its first month, a holiday month that did just over 200,000 copies. New Super Mario Brothers, which launched in the summer, did over 150,000 in its first month. Those are not huge numbers, yet both of those have gone on to sell more than four million units apiece and to be in the top 10 total industry titles for the last two years running. So, first month doesn't matter in the handheld space as long as it's a high-quality game, which Chinatown Wars is, has some continuous level of marketing support — whether its retail marketing, consumer marketing, online — as long as you keep the buzz going it will continue to sell millions and millions. And that's my expectation for Chinatown Wars. As long as the team at Take Two and Rockstar give it a long life, it will do very well."

Reggie said he would have liked to have seen higher sales for MadWorld but doesn't think its launch counts out other M-rated Wii games. "The challenge with home console is that for a 'gamer game' you need to have the buzz and the expectation early and you need to support the title for a number of months to drive the sales. On both of those fronts, I'm not sure MadWorld was able to do that."
It's not an M-rated Wii game, but EA Sports Active just had a blockbuster debut of supposedly more than 600,000 copies sold in its first two weeks, according to EA.

Those are the arguments. Don't count Wii and DS third-party games out for 2009 yet, Nintendo says. There will plenty of high profile games to test that.

The Conduit is out this month. Dead Space Extraction ships in September.

http://kotaku.com/5288217/nintendo-e...s-to-sell-well ...

Despite some signs of trouble earlier this year, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told Kotaku why third-parties have a bright future on Wii and DS.

The company that's been riding high on its own Wii and DS successes has recently had some trouble convincing people that marquee games from publishers other than Nintendo can do well on Nintendo's machines.

Sega's hardcore-hyped MadWorld launched on the Wii with 66,000 copies sold in the U.S. in March, according to the NPD group.

Take Two's Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars — the best-reviewed game on the DS — launched that same month with fewer than 90,000 copies sold in the U.S.

"There is no magic number that says x = profitability," Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told Kotaku during our E3 interview last week, further clarifying earlier comments on the matter.

Two non-Nintendo games he expects to perform well are Sega's The Conduit and EA's Dead Space Extraction, both first-person games with a darker tone that Nintendo's standard. "I am really optimistic about The Conduit," he said. "I think it looks great, plays great. I think Dead Space Extraction is going to be fabulous given the early builds that I've seen. So, I do think that we will continue to see not only great titles, but great sales, on higher-rated M and T type of titles on our platforms."

Fils-Aime addressed the seeming struggles of some of those M-rated games on Wii and DS from earlier this year.

As other Nintendo reps have said before him, Fils-Aime thinks Chinatown Wars may have been counted out too soon by people focusing on its launch numbers. "In the handheld space, with Nintendo platforms specifically — whether it's Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS — the fact is that first month sales really don't matter," he said. "You have a title like Mario Kart, in its first month, a holiday month that did just over 200,000 copies. New Super Mario Brothers, which launched in the summer, did over 150,000 in its first month. Those are not huge numbers, yet both of those have gone on to sell more than four million units apiece and to be in the top 10 total industry titles for the last two years running. So, first month doesn't matter in the handheld space as long as it's a high-quality game, which Chinatown Wars is, has some continuous level of marketing support — whether its retail marketing, consumer marketing, online — as long as you keep the buzz going it will continue to sell millions and millions. And that's my expectation for Chinatown Wars. As long as the team at Take Two and Rockstar give it a long life, it will do very well."

Reggie said he would have liked to have seen higher sales for MadWorld but doesn't think its launch counts out other M-rated Wii games. "The challenge with home console is that for a 'gamer game' you need to have the buzz and the expectation early and you need to support the title for a number of months to drive the sales. On both of those fronts, I'm not sure MadWorld was able to do that."
It's not an M-rated Wii game, but EA Sports Active just had a blockbuster debut of supposedly more than 600,000 copies sold in its first two weeks, according to EA.

Those are the arguments. Don't count Wii and DS third-party games out for 2009 yet, Nintendo says. There will plenty of high profile games to test that.

The Conduit is out this month. Dead Space Extraction ships in September.

http://kotaku.com/5288217/nintendo-e...s-to-sell-well ...

The music industry likes to insist that filesharing — aka illegal downloading — is killing the industry; that every one of the millions of music files downloaded each day counts as a 'lost' sale, which if only it could somehow have been prevented would put stunning amounts of money into impoverished artists' hands. ... If you even think about it, it can't be true. People — even downloaders — only have a finite amount of money. In times gone by, sure, they would have been buying vinyl albums. But if you stopped them downloading, would they troop out to the shops and buy those songs? I don't think so. I suspect they're doing something different. I think they're spending the money on something else. What else, I mused, might they be buying? The first clue of where all those downloaders are really spending their money came in searching for games statistics: year after year ELSPA had hailed 'a record year.' In fact ... games spending has risen dramatically — from £1.18bn in 1999 to £4.03bn in 2008. Meanwhile music spending has gone from £1.94bn to £1.31bn.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/0...Than-Downloads ...

News via PSPita

The coder Jack Dark releases an unofficial version of Custom Firmware 5.03GEN for HEN-A, which were introduced and some additional functions have been fixed some bugs present.
More to follow.

Changelog - Installation:

Quote:

- Fixato a bug related to deletion of files ISO / CSO
- Support for modified versions of the ChickHEN
- Unable to Flash files in flash0 (measure anti-brick)

Installation:
Note: Installation requires the presence of firwmare official 5.03 and the ChickHEN 5:03

• If you already have the CF 5.03GEN-A
- Replace the files in the folder with GEN except those present in the folder files
- Copy the files in the root folder of the main memory stick
- Start the installer
• If you do not have the CF 5.03GEN-A
- Create the folder in the path GEN ms0: / PSP / GAME and copy the files in the folder except files
- Copy the files in the root folder of the main memory stick
- Start the installer

We thank you for reporting Zack_Fair999.

Download and Give feedback Via Comments ...

News via PSPita

The coder Xfacter issue Battlegrounds III homebrew game with full 3D graphics. The goal of the game is to remove the tanks on your way. The developer has also announced that in the next release is going to implement a multiplayer mode to 16 players using the Ad-Hoc PSP.

Download and Give feedback Via Comments ...

News/release from the Codetactics team:

Courtesy of a 5 day bug fix period for all entrants to the Dashhacks Homebrew Idol 2 comp, we have made some code optimisations and re-released.

We're pleased to say though, that this is the fastest/smoothest the game has ever run. Sure, when the action gets insance, the FPS suffers a little, but it is definitely an improvement over prior releases.

Changelist for Apollonia 0.04a

Code Optimisations
Explosions from tank shells hitting buildings are visible more often
Thinner air strike targeting circle
New known issue is when everything except the hud turns white. I've had this happen once on "Instant Action" but nowhere else.

Apollonia (this game's working title) means "Destroyer", the feminine version of the Greek name Apollo. It seemed an appropriate name for an AH-64 helicopter and it also seemed like an original name until we found out that Apollonia Vitelli-Corleone was a character in the famous Godfather movie.

This game is essentially a tribute to the old Desert/Jungle Strike games for the Sega Mega Drive and PC (see wikipedia). Apollonia was made specifically for the PSP, as it seems a worthy platform to give these games justice. (I could never get Jungle Strike running under emulation on PSP, so we made our own).

At the moment, other platforms are straight ports of the PSP version (and thus use the 480x272 screen size), but more native functions will come in future releases.

Download and Give feedback Via Comments ...

News via PSPita

The coder Dark_Chiri an interesting issue for our homebrew PSP. This is Trick Update, which lets you emulate a version of system software installed other than the PSP, obviously keeping the Custom Firmware on the console.
More to follow.

Quote:

- Compatible with FAT and PSP SLIM & LITE with Custom Firmware: 5.00 M33-3 / 5.00 M33-4 / 5.00 M33-5 / 5.00M33-6 / 5.02 GEN-A
- Not compatible with Custom Firmware and Custom Firmware Enabler GEN-A for HEN
- To use the program, you must have enabled the option in Recovery "Use Version.txt". When they are disabled, the program is uninstalled in practice.

Download and Give feedback Via Comments ...