News

Perhaps hoping to spur holiday sales of its handheld system, Sony will be making available a new PSP package this month. The $299 "PSP Giga Pack" will bundle the PSP system with several extras, including an upgraded memory stick, a USB cable, and the new PSP stand, in addition to the peripherals already included in the $249 "PSP Value Pack." Sony also confirmed that the Value Pack will continue to be made available, and that the new 1 GB memory stick will be sold separately later this year.

With this winter being the PSP's first holiday season, a package containing everything a PSP owner needs to get started (except for games and movies, of course) is expected, by some, to sell well. But will a lack of variety and underabundance of games hinder Christmas sales? Die-hard fans of the system may already own one, rendering this new package already obsolete for them, while many interested gamers may be waiting on games instead of peripheral upgrades.

More information about the PSP and its accessories' hardware capabilities can be found at Gaming Age.

By now most gamers in the US are familiar with the recent bill passed in California intended to further restrict the sales of graphically violent video games to minors. This has seemingly acted as a cue for other states to follow its lead, beginning with Florida senator Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who introduced a similar bill this week.

Diaz de la Portilla's bill, more specifically, is nearly identical to the bill approved by California governer Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both provide corresponding examples of what constitutes a violent video game, and the limit on fines for breaking this law as well as the required 2-inch-by-2-inch label reading "18" on the covers of adult-themed games are virtually the same. Apparently the only difference between the two bills is that, under Diaz de la Portilla's legislation, anyone under the age of 18 will be forbidden to access violent games within arcades in addition to stores.

Video game legislation is becoming quite a hot topic among state leaders. Tighter laws regarding violent games have garnered heavy support on both sides of the political spectrum in recent years, and further debates aren't expected to cause a division along party lines.

Source: GameSpot

Following an agreement made with Wayport, a wireless Internet provider, Nintendo announced yesterday their plan for allowing easy and free access to wireless online play on their DS handheld: 6,000 McDonald's restuarants across the US will soon become Wi-Fi Connection hosts, permitting gamers to play Internet-enabled DS games against people all around the Net while in the comfortable vicinity of fast food.

Yes, you read that correctly.

As stated by Nintendo, players need only start up an online compatible DS game at one of the participating McDonald's to play, sans any fees or extra hardware - it's guaranteed to be simple and cost-free. The timing of this announcement comes as little surprise given the upcoming releases of the first two online games for the Nintendo DS, Mario Kart DS and Tony Hawk's American Sk8land, both due to ship to North American stores on November 14th. Other future titles, including Metroid Prime Hunters and Animal Crossing: Wild World will also make ample use of Wi-Fi Connection.

McDonald's is only the most recent corporation to catch the DS fever. Other businesses, such as Starbucks and a growing league of game shops, will also participate in hosting wireless Internet for public gaming.

Source: GameSpot

As stated at The Register (much thanks to Iceman for linking us to the article), Sony and Microsoft will be presenting their new consoles, respectively the PS3 and XBox2, on May 16th.

Sure fact? Well, not exactly, as none of the companies said why they would want to make a press conference, but the fact that the E3 starts the very next day hints towards that direction. The real deal is probably when the two consoles will be available for sales: Christmas, early 2006...? Nonetheless, the E3 will probably emphasizes a lot on the two new consoles, which would make it an interesting event.

The Washington state legislature announced on 1 March that they will seek a bill this term to hold video game companies responsible for any violent acts perpetrated "in any part due to playing video games," according to Seattle's KOMO (with secondary reporting by Games Are Fun). We've seen similar rumblings before over the years, of course, so this is merely presumptive at this point. However, the bill is currently in committee in the Washington State House of Representatives; upon approval - which is not at all unlikely - from its committee, it will be brought to the floor of the full House for a vote. (For more, locate a torrent of that one episode of "Conjunction Junction" that everyone's heard of.)

The implications of this Washington bill are potentially far-reaching. After all, two of the big three console manufacturers/first-party developers, Microsoft and Nintendo, find their American headquarters in Redmond. Whether the presence of these juggernauts is a contributing factor to the emergence of the bill is currently and will likely be forever unknown - however, if the developers can be held responsible for the actions of the gamers who play their games, it stands to reason that those who sell the platforms on which the games are played could be next.

Video game censorship and regulation has been an issue ever since games truly broke into the forefront of the American culture, over twenty years ago. So while it's easy to say that this bill is an offshoot of the swing toward conservatism in the last election, it's hard to make that case when the bill arose in the perennially blue state of Washington. Without a easy target for the issue, then, what potential reasons are there to introduce this legislation?

As predicted in our November 5th news update, Nintendo DS sales have been phenomenal, with over 500,000 units sold during the console's first week on the American market.

To help keep up with this tremendous demand, Nintendo expects to recruit an additional assembly firm (making a total of three) to manufacture the consoles. Nintendo has also revised its initial DS sales target, now aiming to have 5 million units sold by the end of March 2005.

The Nintendo DS became available in stores on November 21 in the US, at a retail price of $149.99.

Sales began in Japan on December 2, at a similar price of 15,000 yen.

European sales are scheduled to begin next March.

Information about features of the Nintendo DS may be found at Nintendo's Official Website; additional information about the sales and release of the Nintendo DS, along with hardware specifications, is available from UK-based news website The Register.