During the previous months of this year, the PS3 finally appeared to be picking up that much-needed steam Sony promised. However the early results from the NPD seem to be showing quite the opposite. Sales in the US of the PS3 are down by 19% compared to last year, compared to Wii sales having doubled, and the 360’s sales rising by 8%. Analysts are in agreement with these figures stating they expect PS3 sales to be equal to or lower than last years and Sony might not meet it’s target of 10 million PS3’s being sold by March 2009.

Que fanboys pleading claims such as Market Saturation.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Yeah, you read right. The Xbox 360 relied upon the Sony and IBM lovechild, the Cell processor. The Race for a New Game Machine, written by David Shippy and Mickie Phipps tells the story of how Microsoft managed to use the IBM & Sony partnership against them, even going as far as to use Sony’s R&D money against them by having the engineers use techniques they may have only discovered hours beforehand. All culminating in Microsoft’s ability (with a touch of foresight) to be able to release their console a full year ahead of Sony.

The Wall Street Journal has a more complete synopsis of the book, but naturally, if you want to learn the drama fueled tales of IBM’s treachery, then you’ll have to buy the book yourself. Now if only Microsoft had stolen the PS3’s heatsink designs, we wouldn’t have that ongoing RROD debacle over our heads now would we..

Until the latter part of 2008, one of the biggest gripes with the PS3, aside from its price, was the fact that its game library pailed in comparison to that of the Wii or Xbox 360. With 2008 nearing a close and the fatigued masses finally emerging from beneath a pile of games both exclusive and multiplatform, it is time to look into the future and examine some of the heavy hitting games likely to grace the PS3 in 2009. While this list is by no means all encompassing, it does seek to point out the PS3 exclusives in 2009 that will undoubtedly have you begging for more. It also serves to show the breadth of genre across exclusives.

Heavy Rain – Adventure/Mystery
While the adventure games of old like Carmen Sandiego have seemingly passed into obscurity, The creators of Fahrenheit are looking to bring back the adventure/detective genre into its once fine form. Among this game’s impressive qualities are 60 10-20 minute scenes of dialogue, the ability for the main character to die and keep progressing in the main story line, as well as the pain-staking detail that has gone into creating the game, whether it be in faithful real world creations of city terminals or using random french people as mo-capped facial extra’s in the game. Maybe if we are lucky, Quantic will add a sex scene that isn’t painful to look at either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBlWTd3puAk&feature=related – The Casting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwZ9eCRm1SM&feature=related – Gameplay Footage
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Ah, the Fallout series. An iconic post-apocalyptic RPG set after a nuclear war that forces humanity to live in underground Vaults for years as radiation dies down. The series was originally developed by Black Isle, before Bethesda took the reigns for the game. Bethesda, as you may know, developed the popular Elder Scrolls series of games, the latest of which being Oblivion.

Although Oblivion is a great game, as are the other Elder Scrolls games, their gameplay mechanics are completely different compared to Fallout 1 and 2’s, so this aroused much concern from fans as to whether Bethesda could faithfully reconstruct the much loved series or if they would just make Oblivion with guns. Well, judging on face value alone, it’s easy to say they went with the “Oblivion with guns” option, but how true is this? Read the review to find out.

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Geralt’s back, and this time he looks sharper than ever in this debut trailer of the upcoming PS3/Xbox 360 title The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf. Announced as a console port of the 2007 PC sleeper hit, The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf aims to immerse the console player in the dark and mysterious world of the original, and at the same time offer a new experience via a new engine and a new action-based combat system. (continue reading…)

Square Enix released a trailer for the mysterious Final Fantasy XIII Versus. And to be honest? It looks amazing.

Final Fantasy XIII Versus

The grahics are breathtaking: It’s like you’re watching a live-action movie. The shadows, the reflections, it’s amazing. But really, Square-Enix, can’t you tell us something about the actual game?

This trailer is similar to your average action-movie trailer. There’s a lot of flashing pictures, a hint at romance, the main character looking cool, and a lot of spectacular special effects. But you still don’t know anything about the movie. You have no idea whether it’s good or not. You have a slight idea what the plot is about, but nothing more than that. And you have no idea whether the movie is good or not.

What did we learn from this extended trailer? Well, the cutscenes look amazing. And we have four guys very much in touch with their feminine side. And a car. Oh, and some random girl shows up.

But we still don’t know anything about the actual gameplay. And that is what a game is about, not how pretty the graphics are. The fighting scene is obviously not how the actual gameplay works,  so we’re still absolutely clueless.

Will there be party members? Will there be spells, or mechanics similar to them, like in the regular Final Fantasy series? Will the gameplay be button mashing?

Please, Square Enix. Don’t just throw some pretty graphics at us. Tell us about the actual game. The thing that will keep most players busy, not the pretty graphics.

You can download the trailer here

Floating amidst a sea of triple-A titles comes the small ship ”Valkryia Chronicles”. Sega’s ambitious JSRPG has been ultimately overlooked during the flood of games that saw games like Resistance 2, Prince of Persia, LittleBigPlanet and Mirror’s Edge make big splashes in the gaming market. That being said, you would be remiss to pass this game up, regardless of whether or not your proclivities steer you towards more dark and gritty shooters. With a mix of wonderfully crafted visuals, intuitive game mechanics and tumultous combat, Valkyria Chronicles is the perfect fix for those looking for a defining JRPG on the playstation 3, or any other console for that matter.

Valkyria Chronicles takes place within a reimagining of World War 2 called The Second Europan war. The small prinicipality of Gallia is caught within the crossfire between The prototypical Empire and the Atlantic Federation. Due to high amounts of a miracle resource known as Ragnite, Gallia gets invaded. Of course, this inevitably pulls the story’s protagonist, Welkin Gunther, into the fray. With his father’s tank and a bit of blind courage, he quickly rises up the rank’s in squad 7. While the plot and its devices may not be awe-inspiring in and of themselves, the superb writing and timing easily make up for any short comings. The care that went into creating such  likeable characters truly becomes appreciable in the tear-jerking scenes which I dare not spoil here.

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If you’ve got a Sony Playstation 3, then chances are you’ve snapped up Naughty Dog’s platformer-slash-cover shooter, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. While it didn’t exactly wow over critics with its gameplay mechanics that had obviously been inspired from quite a number of other IPs, it definitely made waves with its stellar presentation, poloygon-crunching graphics and superb voice acting ( which made Nate and his associates quite the memorable crew). Now, we get wind of its sequel, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, via the cover of GameInformer’s upcoming issue.

In their website, GameInformer teases the reveal-all article by letting slip a few details about the sequel: the game will revolve around the exploits of Marco Polo this time around. The game will also feature a new free-climbing mechanic to set itself apart from its predecessor, as well as stealth sections that will probably have Drake sneaking around to avoid enemy encounters.

Stealth gameplay? Free CLIMBING? I’m sorry, Naughty Dog, but since when was blatant imitation and thoughtless copying part of the deal? And in this day and age of dry humor, witty one-liners and shooters that utilize cover effectively? You had a market with Crash Bandicoot, hell, you had a HUGE following, and that series of PlayStation One games have gone on to have legendary gameplay that rivals that of Mario and Sonic. The videogame world considered HIM as a viable rival for those two icons. You’ve got a market for people who want something different, and yet you churn out more of the same. Not just more of the same, but literally regurgitated and recycled material. We don’t blame you for trying something new, but if you just thought for a second about how Free Climbing was done already effectively by Assassin’s Creed and stealth gameplay is but one of gaming’s most tired (and most annoying) cliches, then you’d have thought twice about putting them in as key draws for your game. Your game of mishmash gameplay mechanics from other games that do them better and had done them BEFORE.

I’ve played the first Uncharted and I had fun with it, but even with graphics whore glasses on I still couldn’t shake the feeling that I’ve done it all before. Sure, you’ll say that other games do mimic other games’ key features but at the very least they tried damn well to be original.

Bring back Crash, you immensely unoriginal pollocks.

Phil Harrison’s a PR celebrity. Most notably, he worked for Sony during the unveiling and launch of the PS3, which, as we know, wasn’t a very pleasant time for Sony’s image. The electronics giant made several great errors and people swarmed to them like flies to steamy piles of ejectamenta. Phil Harrison–the PR mogul that he is–took it like a man. He did some interviews, spun some words, and kept it halfway honest.

Now he’s working for Atari and spinning some more word magic that’s actually touching on some of my ideals.

There’s no doubt that second hand games sales has a macro-economic impact on the industry and a lot of people get miserable about it.

But it’s no coincidence that the most valuable games, the one’s that have the most lifetime as a game experience, are the one’s that don’t get resold, that don’t get traded.

The games that have the embedded community, the embedded commerce, the extended, expandable experiences, are the one’s that you would never want to trade, the one’s you want to keep hold of. And that’s perfectly in line with our future strategy so we’re not that concerned about it.

It strums a chord in the cockles of my heart. Hopefully, he’s speaking the truth, but with his track record, it’s hard to tell. Adding more feculence to the pile, he is, above all else, a PR Guy.

Chances are low, but hey, Assault on Dark Athena looks like it’s gonna’ be pretty rad. So, yeah.

We all know about the deal with Media Molecule and Sony being a little heavy-handed on the user-created content of their latest big hit, LittleBigPlanet for the Sony PlayStation 3. Many a creative soul has had their brainchild wiped out from the face of PlayStation Network (and even from their own consoles!) for allegedly infringing on previously copyrighted material. The response to this rather harsh level of moderation has caused such a furor that Sony has decided to intervene and take action before things got a little too ugly. What are they going to do? Here’s their statement regarding level moderation, verbatim:

The level moderation process is something we’re continually improving. The small percentage of levels moderated have been done so after the community has reported them using the Good Grief tool. We never moderate levels that have not been reported in this way.

The vast majority of moderated levels were due to offensive material, however we are evolving the way moderation happens to ensure that creators are made aware of why their level was blocked. More to come shortly.

While we can certainly approve of the effort to block obviously tasteless levels, we can’t help but think that this won’t improve the level of moderation very much. Sure, we might be able to KNOW why this or that level got blocked, but knowing that the creation you spent days or even weeks getting right was deleted because a background element in your level looks kinda sorta like a zombie version of Pac-man isn’t going to help any.

What Sony should do is at least ALERT those who seem to have copyrighted elements in their levels. Notify them with a simple PM to their PSN IDs, and give them enough time to change or take out the offending element so that the hard work won’t be lost. If the deadline passes before the offending level is changed, then block it. There. That’s a bit better than just going on a blocking rampage, isn’t it?