By now, I’m sure Xbox 360 fans have heard some buzz about a big Summer event where Microsoft Japan will spill the beans about its plans for the 360 in the Japanese market. Today, I received final details on the event.

Mark your calendars for July 25. Starting at 1:30 PM on that day, Microsoft Japan will hold the Xbox Summit 2005 in Tokyo. Over the course of one and a half hours, the company promises to unveil the new Xbox 360 Japanese lineup and share final details on the system’s Asian launch.

This is the very event that Microsoft Japan chief Xboxer Yoshihiro Maruyama promised would be a “product unveiling on the scale of E3.” This is the very event that got IGN so excited that it moved its Japanese office to the Maruyama region of Tokyo’s Shibuya ward (seriously… they’re right between Hotel Best 1 and Hotel Aine Resort).

Microsoft has hinted that you’ll get to see new Japanese titles, aside from the Mistwalker games that debuted prior to E3. I have even heard rumors that there will be a few big surprises. Want to know more? You’ll have to wait until 7/25 just like the rest of us.

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The Xbox hasn’t made as big an impact in Japan as Microsoft had hoped, but it’s betting that one man can help change that.

According to a May 2005 article in Gamespot.com, the console has yet to sell two million units there. Microsoft is hoping its next generation console, the Xbox 360, will change its fortunes in the land where Sony’s PlayStation is king. To this end, Microsoft has recruited quite a formidable soldier to help in the latest round of the console wars –Hironobu Sakaguchi.

“I think people buy [a console] because of the software they want to play,” said Mr. Sakaguchi, commenting on what he believes is necessary to win over Japanese gamers. “The console has to provide the software the Japanese gamers want to play.”

Few people are more qualified to talk about what Japanese gamers — or gamers in general — want to play than Mr. Sakaguchi. He is the “Father” of the insanely popular Final Fantasy series, which has sold more than 60 million units, according to developer Square-Enix. Many analysts point to Final Fantasy VII’s debut on the PlayStation One as the beginning of the end of Nintendo’s video game market dominance, and the start of PlayStation’s rise to the top.

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Starting today, The CoG has added the Sony PSP to the list of gaming consoles being covered in the blog. Seeing as how I have been completely addicted to my PSP since I first got my hands on it the day it launched I figured I should be covering this amazing handheld on a regular basis.

I have avoided covering it because there are so many other sites/blogs out there dedicated to Sony’s powerful handheld that do a great job of covering the system. I will not be posting every single news item related to the PSP but I will be posting more than my share of PSP-related topics.

I’ll also be covering the homebrew aspect of the system. There have been a ton of advances in what the PSP is capable of doing thanks to some talented people in the homebrew scene. I have just recently begun messing around with it myself and I’ll be sure to post my thoughts and experiences on the subject.

What I wont be doing is promoting downloading roms or where to get them. Anyone who is that interested in running homebrew programs on their PSP are more than able to find them on their own. Don’t ask for links to the games I mention. I will not be posting any.

If you’re also the proud owner of a PSP feel free to share your thoughts about anything you read in the blog. Also, if you have anything to contribute then be sure and check out this page for information on how you can become a regular writer for The CoG. For those of you who are wondering where the latest installment of Essential Classics is, it will be posted tonight at the latest.

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As previously mentioned on this site, Microsoft will be holding a press conference in Japan (sometime this month) to release tons of new info on the console’s impending release.

IGN is now reporting:

Speaking with Famitsu Xbox, Xbox General Manager Yoshihiro Maruyama states that the press conference will reveal launch titles for the system as well as the games to follow. “We expect it to be a product unveiling on the scale of E3,” he offers. Microsoft’s partners will show titles that have already been announced along with some brand new ones. We can also expect some big surprises.

I have my fingers crossed that we get a more firm release date, pricing info, and more details on which titles will launch with the system. I wonder what kind of “big suprises” Microsoft could have in store? Perhaps some Halo 3 info? Okay, I’m starting to get a little ahead of myself now. I suppose we’ll have to wait until the time comes to see just what Microsoft has planned. When that time does come you can be sure I’ll be posting everything there is to know right here in the CoG blog.

Technorati Tag: Xbox 360 Xbox Live Xbox Gaming

In an interview published in the latest issue of Famitsu Xbox Magazine, Tecmo producer and Team Ninja head honcho Tomonobu Itagaki talked more about his impressions of the Xbox 360. When asked about the console’s triple-core IBM PowerPC processor design, Itagaki called it a “buffed-up Sega Saturn,” as the old console was also multiprocessor, coming with two 32-bit CPUs. He said that a single-CPU machine is easier for programming, but multicore structures have become the recent trend.

“The Xbox 360 is said to be a machine that’s easy to develop for, but that’s because it has a good lineup of middleware and infrastructure. So it should be easy to create something that’s up to a certain level [of quality]. But if you try to take advantage of the Xbox 360’s full hardware specs, you’ll find out about the difficulty in programming for a multicore machine,” said Itagaki.

“The Xbox 360 has enough power without all the cores going into use. Even if just a single core is used for a game, it will still be several more times powerful than machines up until now. But we aren’t satisfied at that kind of a level. Our programmers are having fun playing around with the machine. They’re swinging around all the cores and making a game that shows the powers of the Xbox 360.”

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You know how the Cell processor has 8 SPEs, but only uses 7? Well aparently there is good reason for the measure. From Gamespot, quoting Kutaragi :

The number of SPEs we equip to the Cell and how many we will actually use are two different things. I wanted to adopt the idea of ‘redundancy’ to the development of semiconductors. Logic LSIs, excluding memory chips, are considered defective and unshippable if just one transistor or line doesn’t work. If the Cell’s final chip dimension is about 200 square millimeters, making one without any defects is extremely difficult. We can’t reach our anticipated production yield with that. Of course, we’ll take various measures to lower the defect density, but that won’t be enough. But by considering one or two SPEs as a redundancy from the very beginning, we can still use a Cell chip even if it’s partially defective,” Kutaragi said, who also revealed that a similar scheme would also be used for the PlayStation 3’s RSX graphics processor.

Referring to an expensive piece of hardware you just bought as “partially defective” just sounds wrong, even if it is still built to spec. Ken makes it sound like a good number of the Cell processors will have 1 or 2 defective SPEs, but don’t worry, all PS3s will have at least 7 of its 8 SPEs functional. Ken suggests they may use Cells with 2 defective SPEs in dual cpu home servers.

Props to Mr. Kutaragi for refraining from the Xbox bashing this time around.

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Cliffy B. and the rest of the boys over at Epic have released some new screenshots of in-game footage for Gears of War. There are only 3 new screens but damn if they aren’t pretty!

Click on images to view full size

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I wanted to take this time to mention some things that have been going on around here. Both, behind-the-scenes and obvious changes have been taking place.

First of all, I’ve cleaned up a lot of the code that produces the site so it will hopefully load even faster now. If you’re experiencing any problems while viewing the site please let me know.

You’ll also notice that I’ve added what will now be a regular feature of the site. As you can probably guess, I’m talking about the poll which was just added. The poll’s question will change on a regular basis. Most of the poll questions will be up for about 1 week. Sometime’s I’ll leave a poll up for slightly longer. If you have any suggestions for poll questions feel free to submit them by sending me an email.

The Links section has had even more great gaming-related sites added… Included in the new additions is a website for those of you who are tired of the usual b/s you run into while playing on Xbox Live. The League of Amateur Gamers, or LAG, is for mature gamers who are more concerned with having fun on Live than anything else. Definitely check out their excellent community. Your’s truly is actually one of the newest members you’ll find on the site.

In closing, this week’s entry in the Essential Classics series will be posted after the holiday. No, I can’t reveal which game will be featured this week but I can tell you that many of you will probably be surprised by my choice.

Bizarre Creations has hit back at critics who claimed that a screenshot from Project Gotham 3 that was released last week couldn’t possibly be the real deal. You can see the pic in question here.

According to an update on Bizarre’s website, “This is what what people can genuinely expect from the next generation of video games… We’re not messing with you.” And in a bid to prove it, they’ve posted a wire frame version of the same scene, along with a screenshot of a different NYC building.

“Yes, it is possible to get all areas of the game that need it up to this level of detail,” says Bizarre. “That’s what you get for two years’ work with up to 35 artists here at Bizarre, plus additional help from outsourcing companies!

“Some areas (ie. those with simple buildings in real life) won’t be as detailed, but where buildings are that complex, the game will be that complex too.”

You can read the full update here.

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Microsoft may be preparing to announce a new batch of Japanese-developed titles for the Xbox 360 in the coming weeks, with media reports in the Far East suggesting that new third-party deals will be revealed during July.

According to a report in the latest issue of Famitsu, partially translated by GameSpot, Microsoft will be revealing new titles targeted at Japan - and “there could be some major surprises” among the unveilings.

The company has already garnered support from independent developers Mist Walker, Game Republic and Q Entertainment, headed up by well-known game creators Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yoshiki Okamoto and Tetsuya Mizuguchi respectively.

Japanese publisher Square Enix is also committed to launching massively multiplayer title Final Fantasy XI on Xbox 360, but has yet to announce any original titles for the system, while other publishers such as Konami have confirmed that they’re working on Xbox 360 product but have announced no details.

Earlier this month, Xbox Japan boss Yoshihiro Maruyama announced that the Xbox 360 will launch with around seven or eight locally developed titles in the region, and confirmed that talks were ongoing with Square Enix about bringing more games to the platform.

He also said that pricing details of the Xbox 360 will emerge before the end of the summer, but it seems likely that price and launch date information will emerge from the firm’s headquarters in North America first, rather than from the Japanese division.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

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