In the midst of GDC comes word from Japan that this year's Tokyo Game Show has been dated. Get ready for October 9 to 12 at the usual home of Makuhari Messe in Chiba City.

Organizers have already announced this year's theme: "Ready for GAME Time!" (sic). As opposed to every other year when they were just practicing for game time. Seriously, we're having a hard time grasping at this one. Previous themes include "Link up, Reach out, To the World" (2007) and "New Excitement. New Sensations. A New Generation" (2006).

Square Enix has finally nailed down a firm US release date for its upcoming, dare we say original action-RPG for the DS, The World Ends With You. While Nintendo listed the game among its spring releases last month, the calender jockeys at Final Fantasy proper have announced that the game will make it to North American retail outlets on April 22.

Developed at the hands of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories developer Jupiter, the game has certainly been on the minds of those of us partial to Nintendo's touchable handheld, as as well as those with a thing for big feet and Japanese culture. The World Ends With You is set within Tokyo's "trendiest youth culture center," Shibuya, and takes "major influences" from the area's cultural bearings, from food and music to fashion and design. It all sounds great, but honestly you had us at original.

As much as we have grown tired of having games developed for this generation of consoles referred to as "next-gen entertainment," that ire is evidently not shared by all. Ignition Entertainment, publisher of Mercury Meltdown and the adolescent undead romp Teenage Zombies, today announced the opening of not one, but two new studios committed to so-called next-gen game development.

The new studios will operate out of both Tokyo and Florida, and according to Ignition will focus on creating "new IP specifically for the next generation formats," but which formats exactly remain a mystery. In fact, no details about upcoming projects from either Ignition Tokyo or Florida have been announced, though in looking at the company's subsidiary Digi-Guys, which has been working on WarDevil since well before the launch of the Xbox 360, it's clear that these studios are not in a hurry.

We found this picture of a themed crane game from Namco's pre-TGS outing care of 1UP Chief Paleontologist Karen Chu. Having a ghost in our collection would be oh-so very nice. Check out the highlights for today:

Tokyo Game Show
TGS hands-on: Metal Gear Solid 4
TGS hands-on: Every Extend Extra Extreme
TGS hands-on: Ikaruga (XBLA)
TGS07 hands-on: Metal Gear Online
TGS hands-on: Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword

Joystiquery
Joystiq Podcast TGS 07 Special (Part 2)
Joyswag: 10 invites to the Call of Duty 4 Beta (Day 5)
Today's most flowery video: 'fl0wer' trailer

News
Guitar Hero III soundtrack to unlock bonus tracks, Sonic Youth added
Yakuza 2, Dinosaur King, Mystery Dungeon coming to U.S. from Sega
Your 360 has been updated and you won't care
Call of Duty 4 beta ending Sept. 30, cap being raised
Pirates leak Halo 3 onto internet
New Afrika trailer is not very helpful
New Metal Gear Online trailer is airborne
Sega expects Olympic sales from Mario & Sonic
GT5 Prologue priced: ¥4,980 on Blu-ray and ¥4,500 download
It is a last gen feature; DualShock 3 same tech as DualShock 2
Red Octane confirms GH III Xbox wireless guitar same price as PS3 version
Microsoft says Sony 'underestimated' Home challenges
Eye of Judgment priced $69.99, includes PlayStation Eye
Bomberman Land to detonate on Wii, DS, PSP
McFarlane Halo toy details and price
Burnout Paradise events, online focus confirmed

Culture & Community
Halo 3's final days of marketing assault

Having also been in situations where we've missed flights due to lost essentials (e.g. plane tickets, photo ID), we can only express deep sympathy for Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb, who is not going to Tokyo Game Show this year due to a missing passport. Unfortunately, the Major didn't find out until he was in the terminal. Ouch. If you find his passport, be sure to let him know. Otherwise, check out the highlights for the weekend:

Joystiquery
Joyswag: 10 invites to the Call of Duty 4 Beta
Podcast Rodeo for Sept. 16: Yes, ear
Reminder: win the ultimate Halo 3 setup from X3F
Today's cuddliest video: LocoRoco Cocoreccho trailer
Today's seriously 32-player Wii FPS: Medal of Honor Heroes 2
Weekly Webcomic Wrapup: DIY Omegathon edition

News
Breaking news: Racer Colin McRae dies in helicopter crash
Itagaki shows off Ninja Gaiden II aqua city level
New games this week: Eternal Sonata edition
Yoshi Story, Super Thunder Blade, World Class Baseball on Virtual Console
Future Weapons to feature Halo 3 tonight
Intel picks up Havok for $21M
TurboGrafx-CD games coming to Virtual Consoles worldwide
Sony unveils Karraker replacement Scott Steinberg
Grade-grubbing GameStop manager gets suspended
Chinese online gamer dies after three day stint
Dave Perry: PSP Lite a 'head in the sand' move for Sony
WoW character sells for nearly $10,000
Xfire shows off their latest Xstatics
Nintendo shuts down official forums "indefinitely"
Oklahoma violent game law overturned

Rumors & Speculation
Reuters: Sony in talks to sell chip manufacturing to Toshiba
Rumor: Rumbling Sixaxis to debut at TGS
Rumor: Halo 3 ending leaked onto net

Culture & Community
Don't move, just listen: Automatic Mario goes anime music
Sealed game collectors hoarding all the cool toys
Book critic plays BioShock, says it's not quite "art"
Cliffy B: BioShock is my game of the year
Pimp your Wii with Talismoon's new cases
MTV drops new Multiplayer blog (plus BioShock Vs. Mode)

Like everyone else, we're pretty sick of all the Second Life coverage; it seems like buying real estate in the massively multiplayer non-game is the modern, big-business equivalent of setting up a website for your dad's repair shop. Still, it's one thing when Mercedes sets up a virtual dealership, and a very different matter when Lumines and Rez's Tetsuya Mizuguchi decides to build a re-imagined Tokyo for the denizens of Linden Labs' mammoth world.

What makes Mizuguchi's Tokyo different than other architectural projects in Second Life is his intent in building the city. 1UP reports that rather than building an exact replica of the Japanese city, Mizuguchi wants to fashion his facsimile based on the perceptions of both locals and visitors. Speaking to 1UP, he states his hope that the project, which is a collaboration between himself and advertising firm Dentsu, can become a "museum of Japanese pop culture." We might need to dust off our Second Life avatars just to check it out when it launches.

IGN has some of the details for the upcoming Square Enix party in Japan, which could result in overload for Final Fantasy fanboys and fangirls in attendance. The tip of the iceberg includes:

• Dragon Quest Monster Joker (DS, playable)
• Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wing (DS, playable)
• Final Fantasy Tactics (PSP, playable)
• Itadaki Street DS (DS, playable)
• Dragon Quest Swords (Wii, playable)
• It's a Wonderful World (DS, playable)
• Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII (PSP, playable)
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (DS, playable)
• Final Fantasy XI (PS2, X360, Windows, playable)
• Final Fantasy (PSP, video)
• Final Fantasy II (PSP, video)
• Dragon Quest Monster Battle Road (Arcade, video)
• Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete (Blu-Ray, video)
• Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, Mobile, video)

Partygoers will also be able to play a slew of mobile game demos, and will be going home with exclusive Square Enix goodies, some of which can be seen here. Give us the slime from Dragon Quest, and we might be able to pretend like we experienced all this first-hand.

Has it really been a decade since Konami made the rhythm-action genre a cultural phenomenon? Apparently so. And to celebrate BeMani's 10th anniversary, Konami is holding a 'Pop'N Music Culture Festival' next month at Tokyo's Laforet Museum. Fans should make arrangements to be in Harajuku, Tokyo on February 24/25. Limited edition BeMani-related goods will be on sale at the event, while Konami plans to keep the party dancing with a string of live performances from dance troupes and DJs.

The best mementos of this anniversary, though, are the Pop'N Music t-shirts being made by Graniph (a Japanese t-shirt designer that's more Benetton than Bape) to commemorate everything that's been funky about BeMani over the past decade. Only 500 of these shirts are being made, so residents of Japan should make their orders "pronto".

This is what happens when the composer of soundtracks for Godzilla vs. Biollante (great flick, by the way) and Enix' Dragon Quest series gets his own way. Dragon Quest fans in Japan are advised to form an orderly queue right about now, for Koichi Sugiyama and his band are coming to a town near you*! The composer, who bears an eerie resemblance to a cheerier clone of former NCL dictator Hiroshi Yamauchi, is conducting a five-date tour in venues across Japan. It all kicks off (we predict a riot) in Tokyo on February 26. Tickets are on sale now, starting at ¥3,000 ($25 in real money).

*Assuming, that is, you're somewhere near Tokyo/Nagoya/Sapporo. And if you are, check out Sugimania.

We were in Osaka this morning to see the delivery of Nintendo's Wii to the world's greatest DS fans. Stores across Japan received a total of 400,000 Wii consoles. In Osaka, Japan's second city, 2,800 units were allocated to the Umeda branch of Yodobashi Camera alone, while Bic Camera in Nipponbashi received 650 systems. Both locations were sold out within an hour of opening.

Compared with last month's farcical PS3 launch, there were notably fewer auctioneers-in-the-making at today's Wii debut. Most people we met were genuinely looking forward to playing games with their new purchase. (There are Wii lots on Yahoo! Auctions, but the going rate is only marginally higher than the retail price: typically Y30,000 (US$260) via auction, compared with Y25,000 (US$217) in stores.)

The Wii's software tie-in ratio, too, seems to be more encouraging than that of the PlayStation3. Most customers in line at Yodobashi Umeda bought Zelda, while significant numbers also went for Wii Sports and Hajimete no Wii.

Numerous methods of retail were used to launch the Wii, and these varied from store to store. Yodobashi kept its customers camped overnight in a parking lot, distributing numbered tickets to determine the order of entrance, before opening its doors at 7am. Bic Camera also opened at 7am, although most of the 650 people in line there didn't arrive until the first trains of the morning began to run at around 5am.

Famitsu reports that the Tokyo Ikebukuro branch of Bic Camera sold out if its allocation of 1,200 units, while the Tokyo Yuuraku-cho arm of Bic Camera declared the console "sold out" at 5.41am when the 1,500th person arrived in the queue there.

Sales figures from around the country are still coming in, but we'll keep you informed of the final stats just as soon as we get them. In the meantime, enjoy our snaps of the Osaka Wii launch experience after the jump.

This is the scene of Yodobashi Akiba in Electric Town Akihabra. What is the crowd of people waiting on? Why, the PlayStation 3, of course. The guy on the loudspeaker is calling out lottery numbers for the lucky few in the crowd to claim their new console. By now, all the PS3s in Japan are long gone, at home by some gamer's television set.

Only 80,000 PS3 units were ready by launch in Japan, which means a good number of those seen in the video went home with yen in their wallet and tears in their eye.

Following our showing of the slightly macabre Viva Piñata, we were shown the far more sedate racing-sim, Forza Motorspot II. The sequel promises more of what made Forza a success, with some notable additions. Chris Lee, the Group Product Manager at Microsoft, walked us through an early build of the game, making sure to point out that it's in an early stage and may exhibit some characteristic wonkiness. Of course, that's why it's being shown behind closed doors instead of being trotted out on the show floor (see: Coded Arms Assault).

While I didn't see any glitches or other anomolies that would have revealed the game's incomplete state, I did note a general lack of grittiness in the cars and environments. Lee said the art design for the series is intentionally clean and crisp but, somehow, it makes the vehicles look plasticine .... at least as long as the car is all in one piece. As in the first game, your car can and will take damage when you hit a wall or another car. In the example he showed us, the bumper fell off and remained on the track, interacting with the world and other cars, exhibiting its own physics.

On our way to the Makuhari convention center this morning we decided to take a quick census to better describe the difference between TGS and E3 (and between gaming in America and gaming in Japan).

To gather this data, we stood at a chokepoint on the way to the convention center and counted the number of men, women and small children to walk by.

As the table below shows, women comprise approximately 25% of the attendees at TGS. The actual number of women here is somewhat higher because we conducted our census at 10 AM, after most of the booth ladies were required to be in costume and posted at their show-floor stations.

We lack similar data for E3, but our gut feeling is that there are at least triple or quadruple the number of women at this show, many of them arriving with significant others and children in tow.

Update 1: Reader Eric responds, "of course comparing the number of women at TGS and E3 is pretty irrelevent seeing as TGS is open to the public today and tomorrow, while E3 is not."

Great point. However, let's not kid ourselves. E3's "industry only" policy and age-restrictions were habitually ignored. That's part of the reason why exhibitors pulled the plug on E3: it was full of hardcore gamer nerds who had no business reason to be there. TGS at least doesn't even pretend to be "industry only." In the end, the people that showed up to E3 and the people that show up to TGS are the hardest of the hardcore. We think it's interesting that "hardcore" in Japan tends to include many, many more women.

At Microsoft's pre-TGS press briefing today, they announced the Japanese release date and price for the HD-DVD add-on. The movie-playback peripheral will be released concurrently with the North American release of the PlayStation 3 on November 22nd, will have an estimated retail price of ¥19,800 (about $170), and will come with the Xbox 360 Universal Media Remote. Coupled with a ¥29,800 (about $250) Japanese Core system, which also comes with a copy of Blue Dragon, Microsoft is hoping to seriously undercut the PlayStation 3, coming in well under its lowest priced model.

They did not discuss release dates or prices for other markets, instead choosing to isolate their focus on Japan. With X06 just a couple days after Tokyo, it seems likely we'll hear more about worldwide plans for this product there.

Speaking about the release of the external drive, Microsoft Game Studios' Shane Kim told us, in no uncertain terms, that they have "no plans to incorporate an HD-DVD drive inside the Xbox 360." This, of course, despite incessant rumors to the contrary.

Microsoft's TGS press briefing:
Xbox 360 to add 1080p support, PS3 to lose bullet point
Blue Dragon hits Japan this holiday

[Update: Corrected release date from November 17th to 22nd.]

New York Times reporter Virginia Heffernan writes about her experience in a Shinjuku "media immersion pod," where an unlimited, nine-hour supply of comics, television programming, porn, movies, and (of course) video games are available for just $10.

We were typing really fast, so we'll run that by you again, more slowly: ALL YOU CAN EAT MEDIA BUFFET: $10! Wow. And to think we paid $100 per night during our TGS visit for a hotel that had none of those amenities. (The pods actually look like office cubicles, not futuristic techno-wombs like the photo at right, just to be clear.)

Too bad an establishment like this would never survive in NYC. Within a week of opening, nutjobs, drug addicts, drunkards, and thieves would completely wreck the place. We're looking forward to experiencing some of this media bliss at this year's Tokyo Games Show, where readers can expect blog posts to be filed from such a pod, if they'll admit Gaijin.

[Image credit: www.technovelgy.com]

[Update 1: made it clear that the photograph that accompanies this post is not a picture of the pods the NYT writes about.]