The blokes over at Bloomberg have a good story about M$ swallowing the bitter pill of defeat in Japan. And hoping to do better with Xeon.

"A lot of what we're doing today is to position ourselves. We're looking at the future generations where we'd like to be successful.'' said a M$ spokesperson.

Japanese consumers bought about 60,000 Xboxes last fiscal year, compared with 2.9 million Sony PlayStation 2 consoles, according to Tokyo-based market researcher Enterbrain Inc. The Xbox ranked third by sales behind PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Co.'s GameCube, according to Tokyo-based market researcher Enterbrain Inc. The companies don't report console sales by country.

Well it's Friday and before I get off of work and head home I would like to introduce what we hope is to become a tradition. Every couple of Friday's or so we would like to feature "Wacky Console Friday" where we bring you the reader some wacky console's to comment on. This weeks comes from our friend's over at Portagaming.

It's called the Woodcube. Take a SNES, Nintendo 64, and a Playstation and shove them in wood casing and you have the Woodcube. It may not be the most beautiful mod on the market, but it's one hell of a first attempt.

The thing actually works pretty well according to the author and you can see more pics and read more about what works and what doesn't on this page

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You know, reading all this stuff about Xbox 2 really bugs me - it's like a big movie. One says one thing, then the other says another. It's a big "He said, She said" soap opera.

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This site has the complete document leaked by M$ developers regarding X2 or Xeon as it's code named. Looks like the Xbox 2 is going to have some cool stuff powering it. Make sure you read the part about the USB 2.0 ports and the HD

SPOnG.com

The spec claims to be by Pete Isensee, Development Lead, Xbox Advanced Technology Group. If it's true looks like Pete is going to be in some hot water. What do you think? Comment below

According to the lads over at TeamXbox M$ has denied that the Xbox 2 will not support Xbox games. Microsoft's statement says there's no point talking about Xbox 2 because it's too early. We can infer from that that the company hasn't made it's mind up yet, and may take a while to do so. And until it does, MS says, anything anyone writes about the matter is pure speculation.

But if that's the case, why is Microsoft is sufficiently concerned about all this "irresponsible... media conjecture", as it calls such speculation, to issue such a statement? If there's not smoke there's not fire? Right M$??

Today a ton of news outlets are reporting on what most of us already knew. The Xbox 2 will not be backwards compatible with the current Xbox - and indeed, that senior executives at the company don't believe backwards compatibility to be an important feature for consoles.

For a while it was believed that M$ had retained a team of hardware emulation experts to work on the problem - although concerns over the viability of such an endeavour were voiced by some experts, especially regarding the company's ability to emulate the functions of the graphics unit in the Xbox without violating NVIDIA's intellectual property rights.

That's right all you Xbox owners, in the future when you want to play Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden 2 you better have both of your 15 pound consoles hooked up to the TV and ready to go. Another stupid mistake by Bill. And if you don't believe us take a look at this report from Wall Street Analysts.

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Arstechnica offers up some unique commentary in their latest Game.ars column (it's the June 17th, 2004 edition if you need to look in their archives). Our friends at Engadget and Joystiq pointed out some interesting remarks in the last Game.ars column about the Sony PSP and the possibility that it might have been announced too early. The column suggests Sony shot themselves in the foot and should have taken on a product marketing approach similar to Apple, where the company doesn't begin to mention the new product until it's almost ready to ship. With a poor battery life, they question how many months it will take Sony to pass the all-time-low N-Gage unit sales mark. Overall, Game.ars sees a bleek future for the Sony PSP.

A little off topic, but what do you want? It's Monday! Check out this article from Free Play. It's a good read and begs the question, how much do Video Games and Console Makers affect our Politics? Here is an excerpt

"Theoretician Scott McCloud has asked if gaming can "rewire us in some way," and journalist Steven Poole has concluded that games are "rewiring our minds." If so, they just might be pushing us toward individualism, encouraging us to resist both authors and authoritarians. Stories do fulfill a distinct need, and computer games are unlikely to break completely from them. For those so inclined, it will always be possible to glue a dramatic collectivist veneer over a rigged simulation. But like Stallabras chrome, this facade warrants little worry. It may take some ingenuity, but free minds eventually break through fake dungeon walls to explore their potential and live their own stories."

David Gosen, head of Nintendo Europe, has admitted at the recent ELSPA conference that the next Game Boy console is already in development.

The new GBA2 will go head to head with the PSP D2 (dual display hand held). No release date has been set yet, however.

Traveller's Tales, makers of A Bug's Life and Finding Nemo games to name just a couple of thei titles, has announced they will begin development on the upcoming videogame adaptations of Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

The titles, expected to appear on GC, PS 2 and Xbox sometime next year, follow the classic C.S. Lewis fantasy story.

This is cool to me - I remember reading this entire series as I was growing up and was very taken by the stories. I only hope they can do justice to the books.

I've seen many titles that made the transition from print to game and flopped badly, conversely there's been many adaptatations which did very well.

I also heard they were developing a movie based on the series. I have the same concerns...

Sony will update its PSX personal video recorder/Playstation 2 combo device family following the company's move to suspend production of the original models earlier this year.

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THere's going to be a ton of activity on Xbox live this summer, from new features to a ton of new games coming out in the coming months.

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A recent filing by Atari shows that the company has severed its ties to Oddworld Inhabitants, publishers of Munch's Oddysee. The filing revealed that Atari handed over its 50 per cent share in Oddworld Inhabitants over to Microsoft in exchange for a bunch of publishing royalties

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Yesterday Nokia announced that Nokia's N-Gage update, the N-Gage QD, will not ship in the US this month, as planned. Instead, the phone maker has rescheduled the launch to 27 July.

Separately, the company said it has cut the number of N-Gage titles it expects to see shipped by the end of the year by up to 60%.That's right we said 60%.

So let's get this straight, not only did people hate the first N-Gage but you intend to piss people off even more by delaying your new products launch date AND shipping 60% less games? Wow that's some stellar marketing Nokia.

Sony today announced that sales of the PS 2 have more than doubled in North America since the price of the console was cut from $179 to $149 last month.

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As we all get ready for the Xbox2, PSP, Nintendo DS and Revolution and the PS3, console makers are constantly hyping up which platform will have the better graphics and who will whip who's ass when it comes to making in game characters (traditional the hardest thing to code) look the best.

Well did they ever think maybe we don't want that? Check out this article from M$ own puppets over at Slate. The author argues that

"It's part of the malaise that currently affects game design, in which too many designers assume that crisper 3-D graphics will make a game better. That may be true when it comes to scenery, explosions, or fog. But with human faces and bodies, we're harder to fool. Neuroscientists argue that our brains have evolved specific mechanisms for face recognition, because being able to recognize something "wrong" in someone else's face has long been crucial to survival."

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I just read an article which summarized a rant which Nintendo Europe's boss, David Gosen, gave during the ELSPA Games Summit in London. He poses some interesting viewpoints regarding game and console development.

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Thanks to the folks over at Wired we saw this story about the big N announcing it's new Console called Revolution. (God we hope that's not the final name) Nintendo's president said Wednesday that the Japanese video-game company will debut the new console next year and that "it will take a different tack than its competitors"

The new console will be shown as a prototype next year and in final form at the annual E3 game conference in 2006, said Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president. 2006 huh Iwata, I hope it's worth the wait. Only time will tell.....

Okay so not your traditional Console but it is a bit of porta-gaming goodness. Looks like the Big N's pokemon-mini was hacked recently. Check this page out for all the cool non-approved games you can now run on this little thing. Reminds me a lot of the Dreamcast VMU. Anyone remember the cool mini-games on those?

Could this really be the next gen Xbox? You decide.

Microsoft has been busily cancelling game titles for the Xbox for 2004 and some for 2005. They have even cancelled a much anticipated online title. What does all this mean?

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Nintendo has recently submitted a couple of trademarks that have created speculation.
So did Nintendo register "Peach Hime", which means Prinsess Peach, as a trademark. This possibly means that Nintendo will launch a spin-off title with her as the main character.

Nintendo has also requested the phrases Manebito/Camera and Ningen-Copy/Manebito to be trademarked. The word Manebito can be translated as imitator, and Nigen means person. So this possibly means that Nintendo has plans to release a camera that imitates a person. This makes you think of Sony's Eyetoy.

However, an exact copy of the Eyetoy is unlikely. Nintento has the desire to be an innovator, and that would damage their image. So the use of the camera will be different as the Eyetoy. It is likely that the camera will enhance gamers to interact with a game on a new level. We should really look out for this one.

Well as we celebrate our 3rd year in existance and our first whole month as a Blog I just wanted to point out we have had a major site re-design. Thanks to AliaX for the awesome new Banner and for NtHaXor for the DB work. Make sure you check out our new RSS/ATOM/XML feeds and our new way to sumbit news. Anyway we hope you like our new layout! Please leave comments on it below.

Wow just as everyone in the gaming industry sits around kissing M$ butt about the Xbox 2, our pals over at PC Magazine are predicting it's death. Check out what Lance has to say "I would not be surprised to see Xbox suffer the same fate. You're thinking this seems unlikely, right? But I think there are already signs. Microsoft spends precious little resources on promoting the game console, and while there are plans for a next-generation system (complete with a new IBM GPU and possibly no hard drive), it won't arrive any time this year. And look at the company's track record with Windows. How long does Microsoft think gamers will wait?

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It may seem like we realllly hate M$ but we don't dislike them that much. Sure we don't like how they are trying to rule the electronic world, but they do do some good.

So when I see news like "Microsoft granted a patent on the double click" I get somewhat annoyed. In fact I get very annoyed.

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Saw this awhile back over at ActiveWin. According to some inside sources over at Business Week
M$ is planning to launch the Xbox 2 right on the heals of when Sony launches their PS3. According to the article Sony's PlayStation 2 had a 20-month jump on Microsoft's Xbox, which launched in November, 2001, and rode that lead to a 69% market share. M$ is not about to let that happen again.