Glad to see the PS3 go region free, lets hope Nintendo follows suit; it would follow their Indie strategy well.

Sweet! That looks pretty cool.

Gamespots GDC coverage: http://www.gamespot.com/events/gdc2006/index.html

New PS3 tech demos: The underwater fish demo looks amazing!
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3148958

Can Someone please post updates in this thread for those of us stuck at work and behind dumb site blockers?

Do you need a direct link for the video? I can host it, but I wouldn't say its something that is worth the effort to have it right now.

What is up with the Unreal demo? I thought the lighting in it sucked. Specifically, why is when a huge fireball crosses the room it doesn't light anything up? They spent considerable time showing the lighting on the barrel from above, but the guns had no effect in the environment. I'm guessing its an early demo.

Nah, I'm not looking for videos or screens.. just the news.

Revo renamed Go?



If this logo is to be believed, then the Nintendo Revolution may have just become the 'Nintendo GO.' The image was featured on a (reportedly) leaked presentation slide originating from Japan. Engadget has posted a larger segment of the slide, which contains some fragments of Japanese text, but lacks crucial information.

'Go' doesn't exactly resonate like 'Revolution,' but as several Engadget commenters have pointed out, this could actually be go as in the Japanese word for 'five.' Technically, this will be Nintendo's fifth console. 'Nintendo 5,' eh? What say you, Iwata-san?

__________________________________________________

PS3 region free for games and free online hub service

During a Q&A session with media over lunch after yesterday's GDC keynote, Sony's Phil Harrison confirmed that PS3 software will be region free and that multiplayer gaming will also be free.

While we'd heard rumblings of the region-free set-up for games back in early November, we hadn't heard any official confirmation outside of Australia until just the other day. Importers (as well as online gamers) should be quite pleased with the development, though this move likely won't follow for Blu-ray movie discs. It's good to see the region-free status of PSP games spread to the PS3's.

If online multiplayer is included as part of Sony's free basic service (known internally as the "PlayStation Network Platform"), then what would constitute Sony's premium service besides the typical content downloads for games? Subscriptions for movie and/or music services, perhaps? And going back to the region-encoding news, it's heartening for our friends on the Continent to hear Phil's following statement: "It's possible for developers to put all the TV formats - PAL, NTSC, HDTV, and so on - on the disc." Can Sony bring the world together with games?

_________________________________________

New Revo GDC pics.. looks thicker than before:







______________________________________________



Real time PS3 Getaway screen shots.. repeat.. REAL TIME

I don't like the way the Revolution slants. Barf.

Wow. That is real time

show us the sensors that need to be placed near the TV's for the Revolution.

New Zelda DS.
Retro GOODNESS!!!

New Zelda DS info! Cel shaded, 2d gameplay with 3d graphics (oldschool zelda!)

Also revealed that the Revolution Virtual Console will play over 1000 Sega Genesis titles and TurboGrafix titles too!

Holy crap, Sega Genesis games!

YES, I cannot wait to play Mutant League Football again!

for the Newbie in me, what does GDC mean?

Certainly it can't mean ALL Genesis games off the bat. Mutant League was EA, wasn't it? I imagine they'd want a pretty penny for their back catalog.

Game Developers Conference?

ADFwrioot ks do843 d,s!r

Somebody get Pixy a Phoenix Down! STAT!

Liveblog of the Nintendo conference from kotaku.com:

Update 3:

Once the book, Train Your Brain, hit the radar, Nintendo decided to look into translating into a game.

Iwata decided to meet with Dr. Ryuta Kawashima on the launch day of the DS in Japan.

The three-hour meeting enthused the doctor and he and Iwata started talking how to do it.

Kawashima slapped a device on a Nintendo team member’s head to see how playing games could “work out” different parts of the brain.

Iwata met with the development team and told them they should finish the first game in 90 days.

Initial orders for the game, Iwara said, weren’t very good. To get around their fears of the unknown, the Nintendo sales people got the buyers to play the game in their meetings.

Iwata just called up a localization team member for the Brain Age game to the stage.

It looks like a demo is on hand.

Update 4
The U.S. version, as we’ve reported, will include a fairly robust Sudoku program. (I’ve played the heck out of it and love it.)

Nintendo just got Will Wright to get on stage to play Brain Age. Awesome. There’s also a G4 guy and the director of GDC up there. They’re about to have a brain off.

The Nintendo guy won hands down, but Wright did amazingly well for having never seen the game. He actually dropped his age sizably (a good thing) by the second game. (I’ll br posting up a video of the brain off later).

Update 5

Iwata says the first Brain Age had initial orders of 70,000. The second game had initially orders of 850,000 and that wasn’t enough, he says.

The three Brain Age games have sold more than five million copies to date.

The moral is to follow two rules in game development: listen to your board of directors and listen to your chief financial officer.

Iwata calls Brain Age a treadmill for the mind. At Nintendo, he says, they have people take the game home and show it to friends. The end result is a whole new market segment.

Iwata is going to give out copies of Brain Age to all the members of the audience. Sweet.

As we leave, we get a copy. It may not be an HDTV, but the crowd goes wild.

Update 6

Iwata’s talking about the game network now. He said they knew they wanted Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing Wild World to be online. They also wanted their connection to be seamless.

Initially, they thought WiFi should be set up as a social network, almost a sort of MySpace for the DS, Iwata says.

Iwata says NiWiFi is doing great and way better than Xbox Live. Of course it’s free.

Oh, now he’s talking Metroid Prime Hunters.

Another fun demo coming up.

Looks like a Metroid Prime Hunters play-off. This time it features some of the development team.

Man, this is going to be a pwning.

(I’ll have another video of this in a bit.)


Update 7

Iwata’s back. Now he’s talking about Tetris DS (Joel totally owned me in this the other night.)

Now he’s talking New Super Mario Bros.

Iwata just announced the Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass designed exclusively for the DS and will launch later this year. (I’ll have a short shaky cam up in bit.)

Ah, finally. Revolution stuff.

He’s talking about the Revolution controller.

“Our first controller meeting was in 2004 and we had several requirements. It needed to be wireless and the look of the controller had to be simple, non-threatening but had to be sophisticated enough to server the needs of complicated games.”

Two people spent six months sketching proto-types, Iwata said. Dozens of prototype designed were created.

“Many ideas were floating around, but nothing felt revolutionary.”

He’s talking about the struggles the new controller went through to gain internal acceptance.

By adding a second attachable device, they decided they had their controller.

“Some people decided to invest on the screen, we decided to spend ours on the gaming experience. It’s an investment in actual market disruption. We believe a truly new type of gaming entertainment can not be realized unless there is a new way to connect a player to the game they are playing.”

Wow, amazing Revolution announcement.

“Games specifically developed for the Sega Genesis will be available on the Revolution.”

Iwata is talking about the cost of games now.


Update 8

“With Nintendo Revolution we offer a combination of opportunities which cannot be matched.”

“I consider our Virtual Console concept the gamer version of Apple’s iPod download service.”

Iwata says that while others will have a download game service, it won’t be the same because this process is a part of Nintendo’s “DNA.”

“At Nintendo we do not run from risk, we run to it. We are taking the risk to run beyond current boundaries.”

Video games are meant to be one thing: Fun.

And that’s it’s over. No price and little news, but still very fun.

Would EA really still care about a license that hasn't made them money for like over a Decade? If anything I would think putting their games out on a fresh new format like this would only give them more exposure. I for one would be super pumped about playing Mutant League Football again.

Certainly I think if a system emulates a system that is no longer commercially available, ANY company would be a fool not to take advantage of it. I think it is a bit premature to say that EA has announced anything like that with regards to the Virtual Console.

I, for one, look forward to both the ML games (I liked Hockey more) as well as General Chaos. Those were some bad ass party games. If only the Virtual Console would support WiFi for bridging old-school multiplayer games.

Thanks.

So, nothing on the name yet?

I'm down for Brain Training.. it's been 10 years since I've been in school.

Cel Shaded Zelda = LOVE.

Wi-Fi Online 3 Player Secret of Mana.

Exactly. The people I used to game with in the Gen/SNES era live in Texas, Alabama, and Oklahoma. I'd love to get back on those games, Mana, and Rock & Roll Racing (Blizzard) to name a few.