Well we know for sure that won't be on a weekday!

Oooh, that looks great. Very cute! :D

I have no idea what to play with it.

Guilty Gear XX Ancient Core is coming out on the Wii, isn't it? There ya go.. I'm getting the PS2 version myself :)

I would so get the pink one.

I forgot to comment on the new Smash Bros shots, Zelda looks beautiful. Why do we need realism again? :O

Good graphics aren't limited to realism.. but then again.. good art isn't limited to high polygon scenes :P

Gamer created content could damage the perceived value of existing DLC. MS is probably a little concerned about what it might do to the rest of the live platform. I hope Sony and Nintendo let the flood gates open.. competition could fix that right up.

I think MS should be concerned with quality, inspired software. The guys in charge of deciding what goes on XBLA must either not have a lot of good stuff to choose from or they're just not very good at spotting games that deserve a shot. At best, original XBLA games are totally bland, choppy derivations of something we've already played before.

PSN is already kicking its ass all over the place with titles like flOw, Calling All Cars and Tekken 5: DR, and even though Nintendo's offerings don't feature bolted on, icky HD menus, there's more value on the VC than on both PSN and XBLA combined if you look to sheer quality of the games on there.

XBLA was meant to be a place for classic coin ups first and foremost.. and it's doing a good job of beaming things you wouldn't even play in the arcade to our HD sets. The second promise was to bring forth original, indie ideas, and instead we get "the uninspired indie take on Smash Brothers!". If there aren't better games out there then maybe indie devs aren't worth bothering with after all. Perhaps smaller games by experienced studios is really where it's at, and then PSN is certainly barking up the right tree.

Hopefully WiiWare will be a better environment for indie devs where production costs won't weigh on them so heavily that they have to create another dual stick shooter. I've heard from a developer friend of mine that calling XBLA dev costs "indie" is absolutely laughable.

Define new. :O

It hasn't come out yet, but it was announced a while ago.

Well, is Mass Effect a "new" game? The term is a bit ambiguous these days.

Sorry I need to take issue with that. All three platforms have plenty of room for improvement. Bland and derivative are not terms I think are fair to attach to games like Eet's Chowdown, Band of Bugs or Outpost Kaloki X. XBLA isn't without it's duds or problems but there is a good selection of games worth picking up there.

As you mention the cost of entry for XBLA development is fairly high even for Indie's, but it's nowhere in the league of the millions required for traditional retail development. The idea that developing for the Wii is going to be any cheaper is a complete misnomer.

For a start, Nintendo development hardware isn't cheap. Developer support and tools absolutely pales in comparison compared to Microsoft. You really wouldn't believe the rigmorole and bits of kit required just to update the firmware on a dev Wii. They're a lot better these days Nintendo but there's a long way to go still.

Secondly, indie's are required to get their own ratings sorted and this can run into thousands of dollars in itself. Furthermore, the ESRB can fine you $1m if there is any content "hidden" in your game, ala hot coffee that is found after the rating. Be assured Nintendo will not be paying the insurance premium on covering that. In reality, the cost of developing for the Wii is likely to be comparable to that of XBLA and PSN, if not more.

Microsoft do offer a variety of publishing/revenue sharing deals which help to mitigate the above. Not to mention the XNA ecosystem they're trying to establish. It'll take a couple of years, but Live will be a healthy place for indie's in time.

As good as the content on Virtual Console is, it's a glorified ROM download service at present. I'm not going out of my way to be derogatory, I like it for what it is! But it's basically a money printing machine for Nintendo as the overheads for running such a service are virtually non-existant.

Whilst I agree PSN has some nice stuff and MS should invest a little more in creating it's own games for XBLA to show others what's possible...I wouldn't quite bracket it with kicking XBLA's ass. They've already made 2 GeoWars knock-offs!

Well, I'm not saying XBLA doesn't have stuff worth picking up. I have about.. 10 games I think on there.. But I still think that PSN and VC both simply offer better and more memorable games at this point. That is in about 6 months from either's launch, with the 360 huffing and puffing well into its second year.

Also I'm not sure the glorified ROM download service is entirely fair. That's a bit like saying all consoles are glorified pay-for-isos-at-store services. Just because "stealing" the games instead is easy doesn't really make a difference per se.

Maybe I expect too much from it, though. I think memorable games with character are more desirable than sortoflikethatothergame, and I just reckon MS have had a looong time to get truly inspired, clever games on there made more attractive by their low price, bringing forward new, fresh developer minds. Perhaps flOw was something I hoped would come from it all along and it just never did. Instead it seems like a stream of Popcap's mobile phone derived puzzle games are the absolute priority.

But then I have to invalidate my opinion a bit by confessing I'm also the kind of guy that buys snickers and stuff instead of pick-and-mix, so I'm prolly just a sucker for neatly packaged things with a radiant personality. (Man, did I just imply Snickers has a radiant personality!?) As opposed to interested in stuff that seems like a shadow of a shadow of a shadow. Which - to be honest - those old mushy milk duds are.

Well I don't mean to be degenerate to the Virtual Console when I say it's a ROM download service and imply it should be cheaper because you can pirate it. You can never compare it to something that is "free" and I wouldn't advocate ROM piracy anyway.

But essentially it is a ROM download service because that's what it does. It downloads a ROM from a server and emulates it on the console. There is very little work done on the game to touch it up and the cost to Nintendo of this service is very minimal. Developing an emulator (for which there are tens of open source ones already to get started!) , make a basic store front, a bit of QA and tada. A very nice little download service which prints money!

To be fair, there are some XBLA titles that employ the same approach. Take a look at most of Midway's titles for example. They simply built an arcade emulator and ported to 360 that ran a lot of their arcade titles. (Something they already had for things like Midway Arcade Treasures) and tada were able to roll out a handful of Arcade games. Now, to be fair they have added things like Achievements, Leaderboards and online MP in some cases so it's not exactly the same, but the principle applies.

Now I'll be the first to say such titles should be the lowest possible price point, and on XBLA they usually are. However for Nintendo, there is a big difference between an NES game and a SNES or N64 game, but the amount of work they do is pretty much the same. Rip ROM, test it to make sure it plays nice and upload.

So where I really struggle with it, is seeing why I have to pay so much more in that case. I guess I just hate to see it being held up as the holy grail of download services when really it is very basic and could be so much more.

Now, I do agree that MS should have done a better job on getting more games on XBLA. I think there are a couple of mitigating factors though. From a production standpoint (not the game itself here) the quality bar is quite high and there's a lot of things for your Indie dev to do. (Certification, support standard Live features, localisation, mandatory trial version etc). Those coming from the PC space might find that a little bit of a shock as in that area they can ship what they're happy with.

It's down to MS to help out as much as they can with that however.

As for PSN and VC. I think the VC is moot at this point because there is virtually no development put into it and Nintendo has a vast array of AAA content to whack on there at practically zero cost. It's hardly the fairest comparison. As for PSN. Are there even 10 games yet? With due respect to Flow, which I would definitely buy. There isn't a lot else (EDIT: Calling all Cars a notable exception!) . You do of course point to the console being only out 7-8 months but Sony had a whole year of watching XBLA take off. They're as guilty as MS are at not putting effort in and IMO they're nowhere near XBLA yet anyways in terms of depth of content and/or ease of use of the system.

I'd say it also remains to be seen where MS go with this XNA stuff. If ultimately they see that as the priority, you could almost excuse the lack of first party resources chucked at it...it's very limited as of now yes, but it won't be by the end of the year.



Anyway, this as veered a bit OT. I see More Brain Training was out last week so will probably pick that up, and I still can't stop playing Mario Strikers....Princess Peach and her infuriating little sidekick that spins around WILL BE the death of me.