Lots of big news coming down the pike. That’s a phrase which I recently learned doesn’t refer to the species of fish taking a dump.
First up comes Sony listening to its fans, or possibly to the numbers associated with the sales of DS Lites. A PSP redesign has been confirmed, and the prevalent rumor is that it will ship later this year. Kotaku has one clone of the story. They list some of the rumored improvements, including a "gorgeous" screen, faster load times, internal 8GB flash storage, and improved buttons. There’s also the rumor of a touch screen, which would be fucking stupid and entirely probable given Sony’s penchant for copping successful technologies. I hope Sony realizes that it’s not the technology that makes the DS such a hot seller.
Nintendo represents a few rumors of its own, with a few new tidbits of Wii news. Company representative Takeshi Shimada has announced a text-to-speech plugin for the console, which could read news and weather headlines, as well as other notices, to people who sit too far from their TVs. Shimada also announced a possible predictive motion enhancement, which could learn individual player styles and provide shortcuts. This info is kind of vague, so expect some clarification shortly. And last among Nintendo’s software updates comes a brand new Wii channel, which will fill the role of Am I Hot Or Not, but comparing Miis instead of insecure teenagers. Japan launch for this channel is in April; no official announcement for other regions has been made.
God of War 2 has already shipped a million units, according to director Cory Barlog, a man whose surname I can never read without thinking, "Fly, you fools!" That number is for units shipped to stores, not sold to customers, though it’s not hard to imagine that the game will break platinum based on the reputation of the first and the excellent scores rolling in. In related Kratos news, Barlog also announced that the upcoming PSP God of War game, made by Daxter wunder-developers Ready at Dawn, would not be a port, but feature an original story and all new levels. And, furthering the multimedia bliz, the script for a God of War movie has been recently completed, and God of War 3 on the PS3 is official. Violence is awesome.
That’s too much positive news for Sony in one day; let’s shift to a story from Gamespot (via Evil Avatar) that provides Sony with a free 10 step business plan to improve sales of the PS3. It seems like the sort of article that had its birth in snark, but has grown up into something more condescending than funny. Benefit of the doubt says Gamespot is just trying to turn the popular opinion into something coherent.
Slashdot links to a NY Times article about the ten most important games. It’s an opinion piece, but it functions as a well-reasoned hall of fame. There’s nothing too surprising, but subjective lists are always fun to argue over. For example, I consider the purty mouths on display in Super Mario Bros. 2 much more potent contributions to our current gaming age than the simple gameplay masterpiece of SMB 3.
I did have on emore item here, but I’ve got quite a bit to say about it, so it’s going up as its own MCP article. Stay tuned.