Next Generation News

Sony PlayStation 3

• PS3 selling well for price? Why February's NPD numbers don't condemn Sony's PS3.
• PS3 power shines a bit? The PS3 owns Folding@Home distributed processing.
• Sony wasn't trying to call Americans "cheap."
  

Nintendo Wii

• Wii has already passed 5 million mark in only 4 months - This puts the system at about half the install base of Microsoft's 360 in only 4 months.
• Wii bowls over retirees - My personal take is something different; note that throughout the article, only WiiSports is mentioned, yet the media carefully points out:
  

  While those rivals focused on cutting-edge graphics and high-tech bells and whistles, Nintendo focused on making game play easier, more intuitive and more appealing to a mass market.

  That bet paid off.

  Clearly, the Wii is the media's favorite child, not the XBOX 360 or PS3, which are machines they cannot understand.
  

Nintendo DS

• Heroes of Mana coming to the U.S. in Summer - it's a strategy game, not like Seiken Densetsu 3 or Secret of Mana (SD2) in the U.S.
• The one intelligent thing said in the Bright and Shiny Future of the PSP is about its competition: "DS may be missing a few voice-overs and some more expansive game concepts, but it has wooed away from consoles the epic Dragon Quest IX -- the shock that gamers expressed at that news showed that millions still didn't know that handheld gaming is no longer just Pokemon and Tetris."
  
  Everything else said is moronic, right down to "Sales have tipped in Nintendo's favor, but those numbers aside," uhh... what?

PC

• Guild Wars 2: Notable? This one has a persistent world, and still no monthly payments. Presumably they are trying to solve the "pure instancing outside of towns" problems that make it difficult to socialize, but ArenaNet folks don't give a clear answer of how the new system solves it, other than to make what you do in instances affect other areas and players.
• One item of interest is that the level cap will either be set at 100, or be removed altogether. I'd like to see the latter, at which point, I'd be interested to see how that works out.
• "Events will also offer a way for players of different levels to keep interacting in the persistent world - which is crucial, since right now, ArenaNet is planning a very high [100-plus], or possibly no level cap" Good idea; I hope they implement it well.
• My favorite might be "'Click to move' will be abandoned in favor of a more freedom-rich control scheme, including 'jumping, swimming, and sliding'."

There's a thread on this at Guild Wars Guru.