Sonic the Hedgehog and Full Auto 2: Battlelines will be PlayStation 3 launch titles, according to SEGA of America's Scott Steinberg.

Steinberg, SoA's veepee of marketing, also revealed that Virtua Fighter 5 would ship in March 2007.

Speaking in an interview with US website GameDaily, he said SEGA's Wii titles would adopt a similar strategy. Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz will be there at launch, while Sonic Wild Fire (working title) is due next March.

There's also a suggestion that Full Auto 2's PS3 exclusivity will expire shortly after launch, which would make sense given that the first title appeared only on Xbox 360. When Steinberg had it put to him that way, he laughed.

Similarly, the Xbox 360 version of Sonic the Hedgehog will ship shortly after the PS3 version launches with the Sony console.

Asked about the relative costs of developing for next-gen consoles, Steinberg said the Wii was the most affordable, but added that you didn't have to spend oodles on the other formats. "Next-gen games don't automatically cost $20 million dollars," he pointed out - which is just as well.

Steinberg believes SEGA is in pole position as a Wii third party - and often refers to the console's "family" approach. While others struggle to grasp the new controls, he says, "SEGA is already thinking about its second generation software." ...

You may remember us passing along a rumor last month from Cubed3 which claimed that Nintendo would be launching the Wii on November 6th; as usual, we took the info with no small amount of skepticism, but now that date actually seems to have been confirmed, and in the most unlikely of places: this month's issue of Sports Illustrated for Kids (Disclaimer: Engadget and SI for Kids are part of the same loving corporate family). Generally not known for getting the inside scoop on the video game industry, the magazine nonetheless seems confident enough in its sources to have published the supposed release date as fact without even the hint of a disclaimer, which combined with the Cubed3 info, makes us think that they might be onto something here. Obviously any deets related to the launch and pricing of this console are up in the air until the official word comes down from Japan, but with Xbox 360 already firmly entrenched and the PS3 scheduled to roll out a little later in the month, it certainly makes sense that Nintendo would be looking to leverage even the tiniest advantage. ...

Sony is counting on the PlayStation 3 to revive the company's overall fortunes later this year, but the console's been hit by a analyst double whammy today as the US folk who forecast get their teeth into the prospects for Sony's next-gen console.

And it's not good news for the Japanese giant, with two analysts double teaming Sony's prospects in conversation with our colleagues on Next-Gen.biz.

First up is DFC Intelligence's David Cole, who told Sony to beware the Ides of November while making the shocking prediction that the PS3 could come third in the race between the next-gen consoles. Cole said, "It now appears clear that this new generation of console systems is going to result in a big shake-up in the game industry power structure. While it has always been clear that Sony's dominant market share was destined to decline, there now appears to be the distinct possibility the PlayStation 3 could end up third in market share behind both the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii."

Advertisement:Cole does go on to admit, "We should emphasize a third place finish for Sony is only one of several possible scenarios," before hedging his bets a bit further by adding, "We have no way of knowing exactly what sales will be and which platform will be the market leader." Hmm, surely that's what analysts are paid to do?

However, Cole added, "We say the PlayStation 3 could end up in third place that is a worst case scenario for Sony. Furthermore, much will depend on variables such as Sony's execution and most importantly how rapidly they can bring down the PS3 price." It seems clear even at this stage that analysts believe the PS3 price is way too high, and must come down if Sony seriously wants to compete against both Microsoft and to a lesser extent Nintendo in 2007.

While Cole's dire prognostications won't exactly be news to Sony, the ubiquitous PJ McNealy also felt compelled to chuck in his tuppence ha'penny last week, opining that the console's complexity could be a real issue in the early stages and that that could hit Sony's profits.

McNealy said, "We've learned the Sony Playstation 3 is not just a game console. It's a movie platform. It's also a super-computer. This is now the most complex box that's ever been built in this industry. It's going to have a Cell processor, it's going to have a Blu-ray drive. The number of pieces that are going into this box are even more astounding [than the Xbox 360]."

However, McNealy added that he thought Sony would smooth things out in the manufacturing process in 2007 when it aims to produce up to the one million PS3s a month to meet expected demand. But McNealy once again identified that oh-so-large price tag as a crucial component. Then, said McNealy, "The wild-card becomes, [whether] people still want to spend six-hundred bucks on the box."

But are the analysts right? Pretty much everyone agrees the PS3's price tag is on the swollen side, but is it conceivable that the follow-up to current-gen's best seller might fall to third in the console battle? Your thoughts are welcome in the comments field below.

Via CVG ...

Ruka has released a new beta of his Nes Emulator for the PSP,

improvements are:

Support Wifi Network Play(Adhoc)
GPU processing improvements.(about 20% speed up!)
Sound timing Fixed.(But still not fixed in Network play)

Ruka wishes that the beta not be uploaded anywhere so download direct from him at his site here --> http://rukapsp.hp.infoseek.co.jp/PSP...re/NesterJ.htm ...

Geoffrey Tien has released the first version of his project for the GP2X:

A 2D scrolling shooter in the "manic bullet curtain" style. Please see the readme file included in the game download for more details, or grab the (incomplete) readme here.
The game is written in C++ and uses a special SDL library for GP2X.

This is currently a work-in-progress, estimated at approximately 30% completion as of July 1, 2006. Screenshots of an early build can be found below.

More info --> http://members.shaw.ca/gctien/gp2xdev/gp2xdev.html ...

SSF the Sega Saturn Emulator for windows has been updated to beta 5, cant tell you whats new but Download Via Comments ...

The Downgrader for v2.5 and v2.6 PSP Consoles by Dark_Alex, Mathieulh, and Yoshihiro has been updated to a Final working version. Remember that unless you know and are confident of what you are doing then do not use this downgrader,

Heres whats new in this release:heres a guide that Freeplay wrote:Make sure you dont have a PSP version TA-082 which can easily be spotted by opening the UMD Drive and looking in the top-right corner for the text "IC1003" If you see those digits you cannot downgrade or even use the PSP Modchip.

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments

Please check out our Original Release Thread and read throughly before trying to Downgrade.

As always my adivce is do not use if your not 100% sure and confident ...

This is my third release of my famous flash snake game.

I will not be releasing another version of flash snake because im moving onto another flash coding project but dont worry expect to see another version of flash snake in a couple of months.

So here it is flash snake version 2.0 enjoy! ...

edit : see new thread

http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=28029 ...