Joystiq

We know you're all dying to find out Engadget and Joystiq's annual joint-live coverage schedule for the Big Three keynotes, so here's what you need to know. It all starts later this morning with Microsoft's Xbox 360 press conference -- but you'll be waiting until Tuesday for the big N and Sony to kick off. Links and approximate times we'll get started are listed below, we'll see you back shortly live from E3!

P.S. -Don't forget your press conference bingo cards.

Monday, July 14th
~10:30AM PT / 1:30PM ET - Live from Microsoft's E3 2008 keynote

Tuesday, July 15th
~9:00AM PT / 11:30AM ET - Live from Nintendo's E3 2008 keynote
~11:30AM PT / 2:30PM ET - Live from Sony's E3 2008 keynote

Kaz Hirai has come to the Tokyo Game Show bearing good news indeed: Sony's finally putting out a SIXAXIS with rumble, the DualShock 3. The controller will look exactly like the SIXAXIS, and is going to be hitting Japan this November, and North America and Europe in spring 2008. A few games in development have the function already, including Metal Gear Solid 4, and existing games can be updated with rumble over the PlayStation Network. Of course, the beans were spilled by EA earlier today, and Kaz says Sony let developers know about the controller as soon as it was decided upon, which would explain all the other leaks over the year. What Sony has constantly described as a technical difficulty stemming from the motion sensitivity of the controller has apparently been overcome, but it's still hard not to pin it all on that Immersion lawsuit no matter how much spin Sony puts on things. There's no word on price for the DualShock 3.

Continued →

We got another opportunity to catch up with our pal Peter Moore, the man at the top of the heap over at Microsof'ts Xbox division. We chatted it up about the usual stuff: games, Microsoft's E3 presence, the 360 warranty debacle, and what's up with all the special edition stuff Microsoft keeps pumping out.

So, any new tattoos this year?

None. Out of limbs. You were there the other night...

What, no chest piece? You've got legs, too.

No, my PR handlers would -- well, I'm game for a lot of stuff, and then they go, "No, I don't think so."

You could do full sleeves, the back...

I think the next thing would be what's (horribly) called a tramp stamp... [laughter]

So no tramp stamp for Peter Moore, unfortunately. So last time when we spoke with you last year, your competition hadn't launched yet. So you guys were kind of in a unique position to be the first next gen company out of the gate. Your system, you know you have a lot of second wave titles showing up. Even though the Wii was certainly a phenomenon at last year's E3, there was a lot of excitement about the Xbox. So now here we are, a little over a year later obviously and your competition has launched, in your own press conference your materials show that the Wii is -- not by much -- outselling the 360.

Numbers don't lie!

So where do you think the 360 stands in terms of your competition? You have the Wii that's actually outselling the 360 and you have the PlayStation 3 which obviously isn't although, sales have increased after the price drop. So where...

Apparently they have. I haven't seen any independent data that supports that.

Continued →

We got a rare chance to sit down and talk shop with recently-named Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. President Kaz Hirai, and his US successor, Jack Tretton. These two had a lot to say, and we were more than happy to let them talk about where the PS3's going in terms of hardware, software, and services, why Sony's E3 presence this year is so radically different than last year, even a little bit about how things have been at PlayStation HQ post-Kutaragi -- check it out!

So out of all the three press conferences we've been writing up, we're giving each one a grade based on a new highly scientific Mega Man ranking system. Sony is our last one, but chronologically so we haven't gotten there yet. But this press conference had a much different tone then let's say last year's E3 press conference. How much did you guys look at last year's, how should we say, performance, and decide that you needed to do something different? What kind of decision making process was that?

Jack: Well obviously I was not as intimately involved in planning last year's press conference as I was in this one, but it's funny now that you look at that perspective and you see some of the other press conferences and how people are conducting themselves. I think companies are very proud of their success and they want to tell everybody how successful you are. But what you realize is that everybody already knows that and no one really cares. They want to know how you are going to be successful going forward. And so we've certainly taken our fair share of heat about, you know, the performance of PlayStation 3 in the first six to eight months, and I guess we wanted to focus our message on really telling you why PlayStation 3 is going to be successful going forward.

And its all about content, its about games, and I think going through that experience, you know, the light bulb goes off, and you go oh, wait a minute, its really all about the content and what we're going to do going forward to keep our platforms relevant. Its not about what we did 10 years ago, its not about how many units we've sold here or there. So clearly I think for points of reference and perspective we wanted to point some things out that we really wanted that press conference geared towards why people are going to want to buy games and buy our platforms and that was kind of the theme and the central message. I give Dave [Karraker, Senior Director, Corporate Communications, SCEA] a lot of credit for building off of that theme and coordinating tremendous amounts of presentations and content through the whole thing. But hopefully we've stayed on message and we've gotten the point across.

So why no word about rumble?

Jack: Well, I guess at this point the SIXAXIS controller is something that we're comfortable with and we've certainly settled our differences with Immersion. Is it something that can happen down the road? Absolutely. But the bottom line is we haven't made that decision and we didn't have anything to announce or introduce. Will we down the road? Possibly, but it's unbeknownst to me if we have a rumble controller coming out.

Oh I think you'd know before anyone!

[laughter] Well, you'd be surprised! It's a big company...

Continued →

On the last day of E3 we got to sit down with Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of America's Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Affairs. We still had a lot of questions for her to field after interviewing Miyamoto-san the day before, specifically regarding the naming of the Wii (yeah, we had to ask), what Nintendo's online strategy actually is, what they're doing with launching first party titles like Smash Bros. on the Wii, why the GameCube was suspiciously absent this year, and exactly where homebrew gaming fits into the final equation.

So I guess we should get started. Thank you very much for meeting us. Everybody here has this badge that says "what's your brain age?" so I'm curious to know what your brain age is.

Oh my gosh, I haven't played in a good couple of weeks. I guess down to 30 or so.

Really?

Yeah, I need to work on it. Our President [Satoru Iwata] is very proud that his is 20.

Today is the last day, everything is pretty much behind us. How do you guys think you fared?

Even better than we thought. I think we were all really excited coming in, with pretty much trying to say to people, "It's not about what you see, you have to try it," which is why our theme is "playing equals believing." I think you really have to try and take the products for a ride yourself. And that people are embracing that and lining up at record lengths and number of hours and really enjoying it -- saying it was worth the wait is fantastic.

One of the things I've been hearing from a lot of people in the industry is they felt that Sony really fell flat this year, and I was curious to know what you think they could have done better.

That's a hard one. I have my own personal rule: I don't hold a media briefing that's over 60 minutes. I think it's really hard to have a captive audience be engaged that long. Even in school, I could have had the most stimulating presentation from a teacher and an hour starts to get a long time. That's probably one thing I would do differently. But their product line is what their product line is and their approach is their approach, so what I would do differently is really hard for me to say because we're over here doing something really different and it feels really great. I think being innovative, at least for us, is exciting.

Continued →

When we found out Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to give us a second round to ask him about the latest in the world of Nintendo here at E3, I found that same inner-child fanboy Peter reminisced about when we last interviewed him start to emerge. Suddenly I wanted to play all those games I grew up on again, but we had to know how he thinks the Wii is going to change the future of gaming. Vlad Cole and I somehow managed to pull ourselves together long enough to ask him about whether the sedentary gaming world is ready for full-body frenetic gameplay, how he's influencing the next generation of Nintendo games and game designers, the media agendas of the 360 and PlayStation 3, and even a little on HD gaming.

So, thank you very much for meeting with us, I really appreciate it. The Wii represents a major step forward for Nintendo in terms of functionality and capabilities. One of the things we're really curious to know is what Wii is going to enable you as a game maker to create that you've never been able to create before.

Well, I think the greatest strength of the Wii is that it allows you to create games that are very intuitive and very easy to pick up and play, such that people who've never played a video game before can easily pick up the controller and start playing. And that's kind of the concept behind the games like Tennis and Golf and Baseball and the Wii Sports Series, and these are really kind of the very basic games that we're looking at doing.

And then of course thinking about the types of games that the gamers have come to know and play over the years, the unique features of the Wii controller, such as the direct pointing device on the Wii Remote will allow gamers to now more directly interact with the types of game screens that they've seen, where they're pointing directly at a place on screen to interact with it.

Is there a type of game that even now you still can't or for whatever reason create?

I can't think of any off the top of my head. I don't really have any ideas that stew in my brain for long periods of time. I really just focus on what I'm working on at the moment.

The one thing that I have been thinking about for a long time is this problem we've had with 3D games, where as we've been making 3D games, 3D worlds and the control schemes have becomes so complicated. People who don't play games can't easily jump into those interactive worlds and experience them. And I think we've been able to overcome some of that difficulty with the functionality of the Wii controller. So now as we go forward and create software I have to continue to think of ideas of how to take advantage of that to overcome that barrier.

Continued →

12:15 am - We're all seated and situated. The theater is huge with three mezzanines and 3,400 seat capacity.

12:17 am - We're sitting in the Kodak theater waiting for the press corps, VIPs, and assorted industry folk to file in, ever so slowly. Pictochat sessions are starting to fill up as people take their seats and whip out their portables.  The announcer just told us to turn off all wireless and bluetooth devices before the presentation begins -- could that be so that our bluetooth doesn't interfere with the Wii's wireless capabilities? Sounds like a hint to us.

Continued →

Still waiting in line. We are still making our way over, stay tuned ...

4:36 - The line is moving. According to EuroGamer, Hideo Kojima is "stuck in the queue." Should have something for ya soon ...

4:42 - We are sitting down, getting ready to go.

4:49 - Everyone's still filing into Stage 15 on the Sony backlot. Everyone's expectant and the mood is generally upbeat. The house lights are on full, so it'll still be a few minutes before anything official starts. In the background, Sony's been playing some hardcore gangsta rap: we note this because Nintendo would never, ever play that music.  The rap song (which we failed to identify) was followed by Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean." The music is eclectic, we're hoping the games line up is similarly so.

Continued →

Alright everybody, we're here live at Sony Pictures in Culver City for their big PlayStation 3 E3 event which will get underway in just another 45 minutes. Mainly it's just people kicking it outside right now having a stiff drink before they enter the theater to get the latest updates on the PS3's delays launch plans. They were handing out MemorySticks at the door with PSP updates (we haven't applied ours yet -- ever hear of a thing called homebrews, Sony?), and we were told we should bring ours along to check out its integration with their new console. Stay tuned!

Continued →

While no one was looking last week at Xbox HQ we snuck into J's office to rummage through his trash for information on the 3rd generation Xbox — instead we wound up swiping his personal 360. The best part was when we ganked it from his desk to take some pictures of the thing his assistant said in a very loving, motherly voice, "Oh, I see J's been working on it some more." Yeah, you could say that.

Continued →

So if you hadn't noticed, Peter and I were in Seattle last week — one of the things we were treated to for driving out to Redmond was an all-access tour of the Xbox facilities, courtesy of our main man, Major Nelson. See if you can notice which color plays a central role in the interior design theme of the facilities. Interesting side note: Xbox HQ is off-site from Microsoft's main campus in Redmond — apparently they wanted Xbox to function as its own independent creative unit apart from regular Microsoft operations. Click on for the full tour!

Continued →

Sega's not flapping their yapper so far as we can tell, but German gaming site Gamefront.de is claiming they're going to be re-releasing the frickin' Dreamcast bundled with Radilgy and some limited edition telephone card or something. But our wish come true from the Ghost of Hackable Consoles Past will probably be Japan-only though, distributed through Sega Direct for ¥10,000 (about $83 US) — still, could this be the triumphant return of Sega hardware, even if only just nostalgia-gear? Apparently we'll find out February 16th (or sooner).

It's nice to look and see how far we've come, but c'mon, sometimes we get a little nostalgic for the good old days too.

[Via Engadget Japanese]

In its latest port to, um, RC, real PacMan does lack a certain immediacy of its console predecessors. But damned if the Man doesn't actually eat those power pellets, and damned if our wish list this year doesn't just keep getting longer and longer.

[Thanks, Mr. BENDER]

Continued →