Nintendo has been talking about the difficulties of creating the next generation Wii console for several months now, with one of the creators of the device – and indeed designer of some of the company’s finest games – Shigeru Miyamoto saying, “I think that in the next generation of (Wii) hardware, the challenge is how unique and different a product Nintendo is able to make.”

However, it now appears that the Wii will only see mild evolution rather than all round revolution in 2011 though, as rumours grow of a HD Wii 2 coming out next year. Continue Reading

Dr Richard Marks – who many will know as being the creator of Sony‘s PlayStation Move technology – has got in a nice dig at motion control rival Kinect, saying that Microsoft’s decision to have no controller at all on the product could actually end up being quite “limiting”.

The Kinect doesn’t look too limited here anyway.

Speaking T3, Marks claimed that Sony had considered doing away with the controller in the same way that Kinect does, but that ultimately it did not allow enough freedom for the gamer. “I think it depends if you believe that controller-less is necessarily better which I don’t believe,” said Marks. Continue Reading

Released here in the middle of this month, the newly slim Xbox 360 is apparently a huge hit in the US already, with Microsoft excitedly releasing a statement talking about how the Xbox 360 250GB (as it’s been quite boringly dubbed) is “experiencing unprecedented demand” from retailers.

"Sleeker, smaller, and whisper-quiet."

Following on from a major launch at E3 last month – which came hot on the heels of the shiny, happy MTV unveiling of the motion-based Kinect – Micrsoft said, “Consumers are eager to experience this new console, completely redesigned for the future of entertainment: sleeker, smaller, and whisper-quiet.”

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Sony has just confirmed that it will be releasing PS3 firmware update 3.40 in this part of the world “soon” adding, above all, functionality for the PlayStation Plus premium subscription service.

PS Plus is launching today in Ireland.

While ‘soon’ can mean anything from 10 minutes to a year when it comes to Sony, this time around it’s most likely means in the  it must mean ‘any moment now’ considering PS Plus is launching today in Ireland and the UK.

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Having seen a slim version released just last year Sony’s PlayStation 3 might be the console that’s been touched on the least over the course of this year’s E3, but it seems that there are big changes in store for the device over the coming months, not least of which a fee-based version of Sony’s PlayStation Network service and more activity from Valve.

Strange to see Valve reverse direction on the PS3 so dramatically

Word of the move to a fee-based version of PSN will hardly come as a surprise to anyone who’s been keeping an eye on Sony over the last few months. Sony had been pushing surveys to ask its users just what they’d expect from the service if money were changing hands, and unsurprisingly the answer seems to have been “free games.” As a result, Sony is gearing up to launch a fee-based version of PSN that would see users charged a flat rate per year, which would entitle users to one PSN Game, two minis and one PSOne game per month.

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Some more E3 news now as it looks like the rumoured price cut for the PS3 won’t in fact be materialising at the event. TechWatch reports that the company’s UK sales director Mark Howsen said there has been no discussion within the company regarding making the PS3 cheaper.

Sony will definitely be showing off its Move motion controller for the PS3 at E3 tomorrow though and reports also suggest that the company will possibly introduce two new console bundles, featuring Move and a 500GB and 250GB hard drive respectively. Continue Reading

The past few weeks have seen plenty of hype regarding the availability 3D games for the PS3, but Sony has assuaged fears for those out there who have zero interest in gaming in three dimensions; saying it won’t “desert people with 2D televisions”.

Sony has plenty of plans for 3D so while they still want to entice 2D users for now, expect heavy promotional campaigning for gaming and watching TV in three dimensions soon enough.

Although every PS3 is now 3D-capable, the expense of a 3D television will obviously serve as a major hurdle to uptake of 3D games. Despite their enthusiasm for the new technology, Sony insists that people without a new television needn’t worry.

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It seems that Sony is just as well aware as the rest of the world that the PSP Go isn’t performing quite as well as it could be, and is calling the device an experiment.

The little hardware that couldn't...

The folks from MCVUK had a chance to sit down with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president and CEO, Andrew House, who said that the device was introduced as something of an experiment. Indeed, House contests that the device hasn’t actually gone quite as poorly as many have indicated, saying of the PSP Go that,

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The word retrofitting will make many people’s blood boil at the minute. They would mainly be the people that spent a some hard earned cash going to see the absolutely farcical 3D retrofitting job that was done on April’s ‘Clash of the Titans’.

Retrofitting games has been a big topic in recent weeks too and Sony has given some frank details about its experience in retro-fitting its back catalogue of PS3 games and admits that it is hard work. Continue Reading

Nintendo’s dual-screened handheld is set to become the best selling games console of all time by the end of this year, according to industry analysts.

Word of the prediction from the analysts at NPD comes via 1UP, which reports that, in the US at least, sales of the DS are such that the install base of the Nintendo handheld will pass out those of Sony’s PlayStation 2, which remains the most popular console of all time. Indeed, given the near ubiquity of the DS, it’s almost surprising that it hasn’t already managed to grab the title, but that much has been accounted for in the past by the fact that the DS had something of a slow start.

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As the conference approaches, Sony is fast becoming a company to keep a close eye on over the course of this year’s E3, with word coming out now that the company could be gearing up to announce a “premium” version of its PlayStation Network.

Word of the upgraded, fee-based service comes from VG247, which cites a ‘highly-placed source’ has having given them a quick run down of what the service will offer to users and just how much we can expect it to set us back. It’s an interesting affair, and given the fact that Sony has long been rumoured to be gearing up for it, we’re not too surprised to hear that the for-pay version is in the works. Still, there’s a chance that Sony could end up alienating a percentage of its users; one of the biggest reasons to pick up a PlayStation 3 until now has been the fact that, unlike Microsoft’s Xbox Live, PSN remains free.

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Rumour has it that Sony could be gearing up to show off a next-generation version of its PlayStation Portable handheld at this year’s E3.

If it were a war off the mockups I'd still be lost

For the moment, there’s very little word of a new version of the PSP, but CVG is reporting that unnamed sources within two publishers have reason to believe that there’ll be something big related to a handheld coming from Sony at this year’s E3. This would be a timely announcement if Sony does manage to pull something out of the bag, especially considering the fact that Nintendo is currently said to be lining up a fill-scale unveiling of its much talked about successor to the DS, the aptly named 3DS.

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