Look, it's not that Microsoft's Xbox VP, David Gosen, dislikes the Wii and its parade of people-friendly peripherals. "What Nintendo have done with the Wii is truly fantastic – there is no question about it." No question at all -- but there is a but. "But I think sometimes there is a thin line between gimmick and great gameplay." And there's no question that said but refers to that thing that lets you play games with your butt.

Speaking at a Gamefest UK keynote and later to the folks at Develop, Gosen admitted that while different interfaces, whether they be video cameras or plastic guitars, are important in bringing new players into the market, they need to serve a "truly game changing experience." Gosen went on to cite research which found Wii Fit players abandoned their "digital bathroom scales" quite quickly. "They are not good if they are gimmicks. There is a challenge for us to make sure that all new user interfaces are deep and are rewarding to the end user."

And how do you do that, exactly? Gosen offers, "So we have to get the balance right, because what we are doing is bringing new consumers into the market for the first time in their lives sometimes – and we have to treat them with respect." Get the balance of game design right, huh? Sounds like the perfect Wii Fit game, no?

As if those billions upon billions of sold copies weren't reward enough, Rockstar has now had its efforts in Grand Theft Auto IV recognized by the Develop Industry Excellence Awards, the UK's annual ceremony which doles out awards for ... excellence. In the industry.

Rockstar's excellence was acknowledged with four awards -- Rockstar North received gongs for "Visual Arts," "Audio Accomplishment" and "Best In-House Developer", while Rockstar Games walked away with the special Grand Prix prize, "not only the commercial and creative powerhouse Grand Theft Auto IV, but also Rockstar's much-envied studio network which regularly pushes the creative boundaries of gaming."

Award recipients which didn't bully said boundaries include Lost Winds for "Best Sedative New IP," LEGO Indiana Jones for "Best Use of a License" (to make money!) and Nintendo for "Publishing Hero." Check out the complete list of winners after the break, and the complete list of whiners in the comments.

Ninja Theory's Heavenly Sword has some beautiful music -- anyone with the demo can testify to that. An interview with lead audio Tom Colvin has quantified the developer's focus on aural satisfaction: 10 GB of sound data is included in the game, according to Develop.

That sizable number includes approximately three and a half hours of music, sound effects and 4,500 lines of dialog. "There's an hour and a half's worth of cut scenes in eleven languages," said SCEE's Garry Taylor.

A dual layer DVD disc has an 8.5 GB capacity; will Sony be touting that its competition couldn't even fit the audio onto their discs? We'd be surprised if they showed restraint.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Last December, Sony's Phil Harrison said they'd "bring LocoRoco back in a couple of new ways with some new friends in the future." Then, at the PlayStation Premier event in Tokyo this month, they showed off Buu Buu Cocoreccho! by LocoRoco, a sequel that is "LocoRoco, but it's not ... a peculiar extra chapter." So that takes care of PS3, and we have our suspicions about a mobile version, but what about the most obvious platform of all, the PSP? We had a chance to speak with Loco Roco's director Tsutomu Kouno at the Develop conference and, when asked if there will be a Loco Roco 2 for the PSP, he responded, "Yes, there will. I'm thinking about a sequel for the PSP right now. I got a lot of feedback from players that they bought a PSP just to play Loco Roco so I feel like I have to make a sequel for them.

Though we don't have any fancy video footage of the PSP-bound sequel, there is some footage of the PS3 release from Develop, tucked away after the break. And check back later in the week for our full interview with Kouno-san.

Sony Europe won the Grand Prix award at the UK-focused Develop Industry Excellence Awards held in Brighton, England for "capping 12 months which have seen the firm deliver a new hardware format that has inspired developers around the world to make cutting-edge next generation games." Sega won for being the industry's "Publishing Hero" and Motorstorm won "New Console IP accolades." And apparently, although we can't quite confirm this, the event was neither a roast, nor was the Hasty Pudding theatre company anywhere to be found.

A little less confusing is that Traveler's Tales won "Independent Developer" for their work with Lego Star Wars and Realtime Worlds won the "Innovation Award" for the "thrillingly original" Crackdown. (While we love us some Crackdown, nobody who isn't on their third glass of Cabernet is going to call it "thrillingly original.") But we shouldn't be so mean, the Develop Awards – judged by 100 "industry experts" – are focused on UK and Euro companies so the pool is intentionally narrowed. Check out the full list of those winners by following that Read link.

Speaking at the Develop Conference, game designer Richard "Lord British" Garriott (Ultima series) called for innovation in the field of MMO games.

"Game design has not changed over 10 years. Fundamentally the gameplay is unchanged," he said, referring to his 1997 Ultima Online title that arguably laid the framework for modern-day MMOs. He later added, "We owe it to consumers to provide new kinds of gameplay."

Garriott lamented on the prevalence of level grinding in current titles and emphasized the importance of artificial intelligence as the genre moves forward. We can think of at least nine million people who enjoy the current state of MMOs. Garriott has laid down the gauntlet; time will tell if his latest project, the oft-delayed Tabula Rasa, will advance the genre.

Crackdown developer Realtime Worlds have been nominated for seven Develop Industry Excellence Awards, part of the Europe-centric Develop Conference. The studio was a finalist for best new console/PC IP, best use of online and innovation, among others.

Rare (Viva Pinata), Evolution (MotorStorm) and SCEE Studio Liverpool (Formula One Championship Edition) all earned three nominations apiece, as well as indie darlings Introversion (Defcon).

The awards ceremony takes place July 25 at the Hilton Metropole in Brighton. Registration for the Develop Conference is currently open.

Develop Conference organizers Tandem Events have announced new information regarding the 2007 edition, which is taking place July 24 to 26 in Brighton, England. The conference, which is the British equivalent to US-based Game Developers Conference, will purportedly include 45 sessions and over 70 speakers. Currently known speakers include Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, movie special effects expert Peter Chiang and LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule, according to Gamasutra.

The sessions are spread over seven tracks: design, production, coding, business, art, audio, and newcomer world vision. The latter category is intended to provide European developers an international perspective and give them the chance to learn from their global peers.

Running alongside the conference is the Develop Expo, which will serve as a venue for hands-on demoing of the latest developer tools, technology and very likely a few games.

The first day of Develop is being set aside for Develop Mobile, focusing on mobile development, and GAMES:EDU, focusing on serious and educational games.

Registration is now open. Develop Mobile and GAMES:EDU is will take place Tuesday, July 24, and the Develop Conference and Expo will be July 25 and 26. Currently, there is no schedule of events set and the keynotes have not been announced.

[Via Gamasutra]

Empowering the development community, Sony has unveiled the PlayStation Edge: advanced graphics tools and technologies for PlayStation 3 development. A meeting on the tools is taking place later today. From the lecture announcement:

"Three first party technology teams within Sony -- the WWS Europe Advanced Technology Group, WWS America ICE team, and WWS America Tools and Technology group -- have combined to create PlayStation Edge, a set of cutting edge technologies for imminent release to all PlayStation 3 developers. Rather than overarching engine, these teams have chosen to create specialized systems that demonstrate best practices of SPU and RSX utilization. A unique tool for RSX performance analysis, extensively used in the turning of first party titles, will also be presented."

Those without technological backgrounds should find Wikipedia helpful. A video of Killzone 2 was shown last night to showcase the Edge technology. We'll be at the Edge presentation, hosted by Vince Diesi, Jon Olick and Mark Cerny, later today.

Wanna see a hype fest? Do you? You do?! Well just head over to Eurogamer, where the site decided to give Peter Molyneux a free license to hype up his unannounced projects.

In an "interview" that in fifty years will be regarded by scholars as the definitive example of hype creation, Eurogamer asked Molyneux "what's your next game, and when are we going to find out about that?" The rest of the interview consists of Molyneux spouting hyped, fluffy nonsense about how he can't tell us what the game is about, but that it'll definitely be awesome+1 to the max!

I just can't blame Molyneux for this mess -- if you give one of the game industry's most savvy game developers/marketers an open microphone, it's practically a law that he will use it to hype his product. Since Molyneux didn't actually say anything about his next game that might not be included in the game (like what happened with Fable) Molyneux is totally covered. The real blame lies with Eurogamer. This goes way beyond them failing to rein him in; they've gone out of their way to construct hype out of the interview. The accompanying article is dedicated to encouraging readers to guess the word that defines Molyneux's next project. Do they think that the average Eurogamer reader is five years old?!

As Winston Smith says in 1984, "if there is hope, it lies in the proles gamers", so it's encouraging to see commentators calling Eurogamer out on this trash. Stoatboy says "Oh ffs - that was a terrible interview. Love him or loathe him - that interview said NOTHING above any beyond "it'll be GREAT", which is the very least anyone would say about any game they happened to be working on."

See also: Joystiq's interview with Peter Molyneux

The concept: During the 'Game Design Room 101' session at Develop, several developers brought out props to represent their pet peeves from games. If you've read the novel 1984 by George Orwell, you'll know where the concept comes from. In the UK, Room 101 is a weekly game/talk show presented by Paul Merton, who invites a guest to come on the show who then attempt to convince him that a certain annoyance in their lives should go in the bin, and never be seen again. This seminar (and series of posts) takes a look at certain elements of games that were nominated by the panel to go in the games designer's bin. Conrad and I are going to take opposite positions in the debate.

The point: Jonathan Smith of TT Games brought out a pair of scales to represent his nomination -- balance. Balance, according to Smith, is where a developer expressly sets out to tell the player "you can have this much fun", rationing the pleasure out piece by piece.

My stance: Balance should go.

Conrad's stance: Balance should stay.

You decide.

For the Develop Conference in Brighton, Sony (who was the primary sponsor of the conference) set up a booth equipped with multiple PSP "pods" and a couple of large widescreen LCDs showing PS3 tech demos. One of the demonstrations was a large shoal of different types of fish swimming around a large space, and the other was a 3D water simulation with semi-realistic waves.

I spent a few seconds playing with the surprisingly light Dual Shake controller -- my first time, I didn't attend E3 -- and pressed select. For whatever reason, and this is why development kits are generally never shown to the public, the demo slowed to a halt, with the nice blue picture jerking away at 3fps continuously in the frame. In a technical sense this isn't a blue screen of death, but it did die displaying a blue screen, so therefore I proudly claim the title of "world's first non-developer to cause a PlayStation 3 to display a blue screen of death". It's certainly the most pretty pseudo-BSOD that I've ever seen.

In our second interview from the Develop Conference in Brighton this week, Jen and I sat down with Rob Kay of Harmonix. Rob was project lead on the cult classic Guitar Hero, a game which is part of a new wave of hyper accessible games that is all about catching the mindset of the mainstream, as well as addicting millions of hardcore gamers. We talked with Rob about song licensing, Konami's recent "Guitar Revolution" trademark and the possibility of a Trombone Hero.

You talked about clones of Guitar Hero in your seminar. Specifically you talked about how other companies are being inspired by the premise of games like Guitar Hero. I don't know if you heard about Konami trademarking a Guitar Revolution game?

Yeah, I read that on the internet. To give Konami props, they started this whole instrument simulation in games thing when they did games like GuitarFreaks which they released in Japan. We worked with Konami on Karaoke Revolution and Karaoke Stage as well. So, I think it's great actually. I'm kind of the opinion that whoever is making these games with us then we're exploring this new ground together. I've got friends who have played Karaoke Revolution, and they wanted more songs so they've gone out and bought SingStar. So I think great, more people are out there playing these types of games.

Yesterday at the Develop Conference in Brighton, Jennie and I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with the founder of Lionhead Studios, Peter Molyneux. We chatted about the issue of hype, frustrations surrounding PC gaming and Peter's early days in the industry, amongst other topics.

Fable was pretty much portrayed as one of the most open games of all time, but in terms of hype, it failed to meet the high expectations that you gave the game. There was even a forum post where you apologized about this: why did it get to that level?

Well, it started with this fatal line that I made and that was that I wanted to make Fable the greatest role playing game of all time. I kinda still defend that because I honestly don't see the point in making a game that you don't honestly believe has a chance of being the greatest game of all time. I meet the press quite a lot, every 6-8 weeks there's some sort of press interview. The way I work then is to get a system in, play around with it, polish it, make it better. Sometimes I leave it as it is and sometimes I throw it away.

Thomas Bidaux of NCsoft Europe didn't pull any punches with his presentation at the UK's Develop conference. Instead, the MMO giant's director of product development outlined four major ways in which the MMO world will be turned on its head. Or, rather, the 'online' world -- rather than limit himself to MMOs, Thomas talked about online games as a whole.