Yesterday, we reported that Konami's announced a new Castlevania title for the PS3 and Xbox 360. They did so by showing a 10-second teaser trailer. Here's a video of that teaser.

Sony Computer Entertainment president Kaz Hirai was recently interviewed and was asked what he thinks of the console war right now. Hirai admitted that the PlayStation 3 may still be behind its rivals, but after 10 years, he says they'll be the ones laughing. More details after the jump.

There was a time when developing games in your own garage would have made you rich beyond your wildest dreams. That dream is getting farther and farther out of reach as the video game industry is becoming larger and more complex. EA CEO John Riccitiello remarked in his DICE keynote speech that by 2010, the garage studio dream will no longer be possible. More in the full article.

Instead of high production values and dramatic commercials, Free Radical has always focused more on a key element in their first-person shooters: fun. Same goes for Haze, the widely anticipated Sony PlayStation 3 exclusive that promises nectar-induced action. Haze screenwriter and developer Rob Yescombe sat down with PSU to tell us more on what the upcoming video game has to offer.

According to Yescombe, it won't be intentional if their latest title ends up being a Halo-killer. "We’re not really in direct competition... we’re under no illusions about the fact that Halo is a juggernaut that will roll over most things," he said. In fact, he stated that folks from the development team enjoy rounds of Spartan combat.

Following the spirit of the classic N64 title GoldenEye 007 (made by Rare Ltd., where some Free Radical members used to work for) and FPS crowd favorite TimeSplitters series on the PS2, Haze is offering a lot of innovations. "We’ve got our unique asymmetric combat system, with different weapons sets and skill sets for each faction," said Yescombe.

Unlike the Halo trilogy's larger-than-life story, Haze is aiming for a more personal experience as he puts it. Free Radical mentioned before how the narrative will be packed with characters going through their own human journey.

Yescombe wasn't willing to reveal anything about the game's secrets, available vehicles, or any TimeSplitters details, but we're glad to hear that TimeSplitters 4 is the next big thing in the pipeline. He said:

What we have [for TimeSplitters 4] is an absolutely enormous list of ideas that needs to be whittled down to a point where they could actually fit into one game. So right now, we’re whittling to the max.

It's been a while since we last heard from Turok, and we can't blame you guys if some have no idea what this is about (no thanks to a gazillion of other FPSes out there). That said, we could use a recap for the sorry mortals who missed this bad ass series.

Dating back to the days of N64, there was this game in which players could arm themselves with futuristic weapons as they explore a jungle in fear of getting eaten alive - by dinosaurs. This ain't your generic Jurassic Park fanfare; Turok was received well enough to establish a name of its own.

After several games the series spawned, Turok is finally going next-gen (PS3, Xbox 360) thanks to Disney Interactive Games and developer Propaganda Games. So far, we know that the hero is ex-black ops specialist Joseph Turok set in an entirely new planet to track down his former mentor.

To get an idea of what to expect, here's game director Joel Manners in an interview with IGN as he talks about the massive scope of the game, the living, breathing jungle, cinematic close combat, and a huge variety of explosive weapons at the player's disposal.

We hate to make you wait, so here's the video. Enjoy!

 

Now what exactly are the images above all about? To a highly trained eye and someone with a good knack at guessing, the answer is obvious. But for those who don't have a clue, these are actually screenshots of Windows2000 Pro running on the PlayStation 3, both of which have been posted by WickedWanda, over at the official Playstation forums. We're quite a bit baffled ourselves as to how this one was done, so we'll just quote the poster. According to him:

Got Qemu built, installed, and running in YDL and installed Windows 2000 Pro into a virtual machine then installed Wizardry Gold in Windows 2000 Pro. Complete with Soundblaster 16 sound. Used the Gimp in YDL to grab the screens. At any rate another milestone for the PS3!

WickedWanda then went on to explain that this success can be attributed to the intelligence of the PS3 and Microsoft's bloatware. According to him, it all began when he wanted to get access to a full featured web browser in high definition, but one without any of the limitations we currently have (i.e. no Flash support in PPC linux, the inability to play windows media stuff, etc.).

After that, WickedWanda shared that he has been playing Wizadry Gold as well as the DOS-based game Eye of the Beholder in HD.  He needed to play within dosbox with the latter one, though. Lastly, WickedWanda added that he is now attempting to run an N64 emulator on the PS3 by next week.

We're doing this for the fun of it. We're going to troll YouTube for Christmas/PS3 related vids. Why? Why not? Everyone else is taking the holiday off... we're not. We might as well enjoy ourselves right?

First up. The music video for someone's "failed" song entitled, PS3 for Christmas. Now we say failed in quotation marks because the video itself got a dismal YouTube rating of 1. We don't need to tell you that that's not very high. We have no idea how well the song did.

The instructional video on how to steal a Wii or a PS3, and the N64 kid wannabe clip await after the jump!

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Pachter's a pretty stand-up guy. He's the type who knows that he's in a position where he can say things and people will listen to him - and boy does he say things. Pachter's got cred - analyst, money-wise, business-y cred. N'gai Croal on the other hand, has a nice mix of journalistic and gamer credibility. So when the two meet, you just know that something blog-worthy is bound to come up.

The N'gai – Pachter interview covers everything from N64 and the DS all the way to the PS3 and the Xbox 360. It's a bit long so we'll show some of the more amusing from the interview. Let's start with something about the PS3:

Because of the phenomenal success of PlayStation and PlayStation 2, it's safe to assume that Playstation 3 has started at a higher point on the demand curve than Xbox 360. But it's also started at a lower point on the supply curve than the 360, and it's $200 more expensive than its main rival. Are you predicting the PS3's sales growth to be faster, slower or identical to the Xbox 360's?
I think PS3 sales will be similar to the 360 (around 200,000 a month in summer), primarily due to the price point and light lineup. Also, the PS3 has two other competing consoles, so it is unlikely that it will be far ahead.

And here's a little something about Pachter's high (a bit too high) expectations for the 360:

You recently told Gamasutra, "I'm pretty disappointed in the Xbox 360. I think Microsoft is doing everything right: Games are good; Xbox Live is amazing, and the console is not prohibitively expensive. Yet people are just not buying. The console is lagging behind my initial expectations by at least 200,000 units per month in the U.S., and I don't know why." Why did you have such high expectations for the consumer demand for the Xbox 360?
I thought that there were enough hard-core gamers indifferent to pricing to support much higher 360 sales at holiday. I truly thought "Gears of War" would be a driver, thought high-definition monitor sales would be a driver, and thought light PlayStation 3 supply (and high price) would work in the 360's favor.

For the rest of the interview, you can use the URL in our read-link below.

With Linux already making great strides on the PS3, it was only a matter of time before some retro gamer decided to check out how some of the emulators fared on the PS3. And well, we didn't have to wait for a long time, because one such gamer has already tried and shown that you can emulate NES on the PS3. Here's proof of that (courtesy of PowerOfJurai):

And no, it isn't fake. You can see him booting the PS3's OS after playing a bit of Mario inside the emulator. While this bit of news is pretty exciting, you have to remember that the NES is a pretty old platform, and as such, will be easy to emulate. Until Sony or nVIDIA release proper graphics cards drivers for Linux, it wouldn't be wise to raise your hopes of flawless N64 emulation or other similar platforms. Even then, I think we should all be thanking Sony for making the PS3 such an open platform and allowing homebrew since Day 1.

Expect a few guides by me in the coming days!

  

LucasArts and Free Radical announced that they are working together to create a game for the next-gen consoles. What that game is or which console it is for has not been revealed. We'll know soon enough though.

LucasArts is most known for its Star Wars games. Free Radical is best known for its first-person shooter series TimeSplitters. The members of Free Radical worked on GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark for the N64 before splitting from Rare.

"Free Radical has always been about titles with great gameplay and innovative design," said Peter Hirschmann, VP of Product Development at LucasArts. "In the battle for videogame quality, these guys are at the front of the line. This team's pedigree is one of the best in the business."

A Star Wars FPS perhaps? Lots of possibilities when it comes to games.