The halls of the Internet, packed floor to ceiling like some barbaric bazaar, are humming with confirmations, speculations, and pissing contests regarding the Xbox 360 Elite. owever, that’s not at all interesting since that sort of stuff should have been flushed from your system last week. So, what’s left? This junk:
The Xbox Live Video Marketplace is set to drown beneath a new wave of content. I’ve enjoyed the convenience of having HD rentals and downloads right in my little hidey-hole, and, though I have to play a sort of data Tetris to manage all the downloads, I’m pretty fond of the service. It delivers what iTunes can’t or won’t. Anyway, new networks and studios are throwing their support behind the service, which results in all these announcements. The highlights for me include titles from ADV’s catalog, and Warner Bros’ decision to time releases of HD content on the marketplace so they correspond to direct-to-DVD shipments.
From the bureau of the burden of proof, Next Generation is reporting that GameStop’s COO Dan DeMatteo think that Wii shortages are intentional. That’s a bold opinion to state, since it implies that Nintendo is engaging in some shady manipulation of supply and demand. DeMatteo doesn’t see a conspiracy, though; he just thinks that once Nintendo made their target shipments, they slowed production to give themselves time to catch up. Either that or their supply of angelic tears of joy — a vital component in assembly of the Wii hardware — ran out.
What do videogames represent if not unity, I ask you? In the true spirit of our beloved hobby, Sega and Nintendo have announced Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, which looks as if it will be released on Wii and DS this Christmas to coincide with the winter games in Beijing. Once bitter rivals, the plumber and the blue hedgehog will find themselves chained together, forced to cooperate in order to save their very lives. It helps, of course, that Sega and Nintendo are no longer direct hardware competitors. I’m mostly being facetious, but I’m interested to see what approach the designers take with combining these two icons into one massive, spiky-haired, mustachio’d monstrosity.
PSP owners are sitting on a stack of pre-order tickets for upcoming games that promise to at least gently tug their socks off, from Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core to the Dracula X Chronicles to FF: Tactics. You can add another franchise beauty to that list with the announcement of WipEout Pulse. Its predecessor, WipEout Pure, was a PSP launch title and still spins in my own unit from time to time, thanks to the great downloadable tracks and bonuses that Sony offered. Pulse is set for a release in September, with few changes made to the classic, high-speed racing formula. In the meantime, buy Puzzle Quest.