CES 2012 is going strong, as Jonah and Jordan do tonight’s podcast without Paul, who is packing for a trip. This week’s Gaming Flashback is the notorious Custer’s Revenge, and a punch of intriguing news and rumors comprise this week’s topics:

• Fallout MMO rights belong to Bethesda as Interplay settles
• Pachter sez there’s “zero chance” of PS4 at E3 2012
• Rumor: Next Xbox tablet-based?
• Rumor: Kaz Hirai to return as president of Sony
• Diablo III release held due to South Korea (from GameFront)

Plenty of Reader Feedback this week, which is good because we forgot to include a Question of the Week this time.

The latest episode, which is on the short side after having a really long one two weeks ago, sees Paul returning from the flu with somewhat of a shady attitude this week. Meanwhile, the Gaming Flashback is the 1976 coin-op arcade game Blockade.

The news for this week includes:

• Gabe Newell teases something for E3 2012 with a “3” in it
• Richard Garriott working on Ultima successor
• Microsoft includes “do not class action sue us” clause for Xbox Live
• Bizarre circumstances surround GSC Game World

All that plus Reader Feedback and the Question of the Week, “What was your favorite handheld game?”

You might notice that I’ve been pretty silent on E3 2011 previews, despite hustling around the entire time. That is because I’ve been writing almost all of them for Strategy Informer.

So, those of you who are regulars at Gaming Podcast – and judging by hits, there are tons of you – here are excerpts of the previews I’ve written for Strategy Informer for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 titles, plus a link to the full article.

UbiSoft’s Pre-E3 Briefing:

At the briefing, they showed off the following games: Rayman Origins, Driver: San Francisco, Far Cry 3, Brothers In Arms: The Furious Four, The Adventures of Tintin, Ghost Recon: Future Warrior, Trackmania 2, Raving Rabbids: Alive & Kicking, Just Dance 3, Rocksmith, Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012 and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. (Read more…)

Dead Island (PC, PS3, 360):

Getting back to the mood of the game, missions are similarly realistic and grim. Nothing in the game seems artificially tacked on; the flow and the suspension of disbelief are extremely well done. During a mission, sometimes you’ll rescue another survivor and they will have a mission for you to do right there in the middle of your current quest. You can opt to help them, ignore them, or even screw them by driving them off in their vehicle. This is survival, and sometimes, jjust sometimes, you may give in to temptations to make choices that will make you normally wince. It’s a zombie dog eats zombie dog world and in the middle of an apocalypse, sometimes you have to fortify your own safety at the expense of another. (Read more…)

Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC):

The devs showed a scene in which a Jedi subdued a Sith Lord, and the Lord accepted his defeat and desired the Jedi kill him quickly. In one variation, the Jedi took the dark side choice, cursing the Lord and killing him. In the other, the Jedi took the light side choice and spared him, detecting his desire for death was guilt. He urged the Lord to seek out the Jedi Council and turn back to the light side. When the Lord questioned if the Jedi would accept him back, the Jedi replied there was only one way to find out. They shifted to later in the game when the Sith Lord had indeed had become a Jedi, and stripped himself of the title General, for it held no meaning for him anymore. This was a case in which the actions of the Jedi had changed the story of the game. (Read more…)

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PC, PS3, 360):

Dragons are a major adversary in the game, and they are viciously tough. They are also intelligent as well – they have no scripts. They follow a procedural AI that is completely unscripted. In one scene, a dragon swooped down unexpectedly to snatch a badly wounded giant from the player who was about to give the finishing blow, flew high into the air, and dropped the poor giant to his death. Why? Who knows, because the dragon then started fighting the player. It arced around the player, hurled fireballs, landed on the ground to attack with claws, then flew again. The player used one dragon shout to summon a storm that created a hard rain and lightning crashes. This wounded the dragon enough that it could no longer fly, and when a dragon crashes, it’s with an impressive thud. Dragons in Skyrim will be what Big Daddies were in BioShock on the expert difficulty – only there will be no resurrection chamber to save your buttocks when the dragon finishes you off. (Read more…)

Tera (PC):

A Vanarch can choose to be a kind monarch through such actions as lowering taxes and so forth, or can be a merciless tyrant who raises taxes, throws people in jail and institutes that the region is now a PvP anything goes area. Of course, the Vanarch must also be careful not to alienate citizens in his region, or risk being voted out of office. The Political system is a daring social experiment at the least, to see what kind of rulers guild leaders will be over a region populated by other players. (Read more…)

Awesomenauts (PS3, 360):

The game plays like your typical Metal Slug clone, with action-platforming, but bursts of jetpacks can allow them to hover in midair for a while, too. Players battle each other with each characters unique weaponry, while trying to bring down the barriers. Barriers are protected by laser turrets. Turrets also spew little minions who basically serve as cannon fodder – staying behind them to absorb damage while you fire over them. Of course, enemy minions are spewed by the turrets, too. (Read more…)

Star Trek (PC, PS3, 360):

The differences in play styles between Kirk and Spock are as you might expect: Kirk tends toward brute force, while Spock gravitates towards finesse and stealth. The differences are even reflected in the more subtle ways. At the beginning of the demo, Kirk and Spock are using the jets in their exosuits to navigate a minefield while trying to reach a hijacked U.S.S. Enterprise. While Kirk clumsily crashes into the ship, Spock makes a perfect two point landing. (Read more…)

The War of the Worlds (360):

The game features a washed out, nearly black and white look in alien controlled areas, which become more colorful when retaken by humanity. The developers state the game is a puzzle-platformer in the mold of Flashback, Out of This World and Prince of Persia, but fans will also see a resemblance to Limbo as well. The game will feature eleven massive levels and dozens of different areas filled with hostile aliens and fleeing humans, but unlike Limbo, the game will telegraph potential deadly traps, making the game more about near death experiences, rather than trial and error. (Read more…)

Defiance (PC, PS3, 360):

This Earth isn’t too familiar, however. Taking place in the near future, it represents a time when aliens have arrived and have begun to terraform the planet to their liking, so expect a bizarre melding of indigenous Earth plants and animals interacting with strange alien flora and fauna. Humans are trying to stop the aliens from changing the Earth, so many missions come from, say, preventing terraforming equipment from arriving in one piece. (Read more…)

Prototype 2 (PC, PS3, 360):

Prototype 2 takes place a while after. New York City has been cordoned off into three sections: Red, Yellow and Green. The Red section is where the virus is still running rampant, and horrific mutations roam. The Yellow section is a quarantine for those who escaped the Red section, but must remain due to suspicion of infection. Finally, the Green section is the healthy part of New York – but it’s not so healthy in that a militia has been stationed there to protect the citizens from incursion by infected – but rule with a violent iron fist. An example of this is when a curious blob of infection has found itself in a lot, the militia deal with onlookers by giving them a few seconds to disperse then opening fire on the crowd with live ammo and killing them. (Read more…)

Star Trek: Infinite Space (PC):

As captain, you can outfit your ship in a myriad of ways, and there are tons of modules that can be purchased (and will be visually reflected on your ship). You can purchase anything from extra ship’s phaser power to buying a cloaking device. Each station in the game varies in the wares it sells. For example, purchasing from a Federation shop will get you the standard stuff, but of very high quality, while you’ll find lesser quality items from the Ferengi, but they’ll also be selling hard-to-find black market items, too. Being a free-to-play MMO, you can buy items with real money microtransactions. (Read more…)

Payday: The Heist (PC, PS3):

One of the biggest thrills is that unlike Left 4 Dead and other like-minded games, you don’t have to jump into the action right away, and you don’t even have to play with guns ablazing. In the bank heist we tried at E3, you entered the banks with weapons hidden to case the joint, looking for the bank manager, who owns the security pass card to the vault. You have to be careful, though – wander too close to a guard and they’ll see your hidden weaponry and react with force. (Read more…)

My previews aren’t done – I’ll update this page as I add previews.

The TD Gaming Podcast and Videogame Roundtable merge, as Jonah Falcon introduces VGRT regular Jordan Lund to his new listeners, as the VGRT Gaming Podcast is born.

The podcast is a little rushed, however, as E3 approaches, giving the duo only some time to discuss the eventful past week, which includes the following news:

• The NGP to be called the PlayStation Vita
• PS4 in development .. oops, no it’s not
• DC Comics 1st day distribution
• Dungeon Empires out of beta
• Dead or Alive 3DS = child porn?
• Gears of War: Exile and Halo HD leaked
• Bungie showing new game on 7/7
• Gamestop honoring Duke Nukem Forever preorders
• Sales of Trials HD hit 2M
• Call of Duty: Elite announced

For this podcast, this Question of the Week is, “What game do you want to learn about the most at E3″ Of course, by the time the next podcast is launched, that question will probably be satisfied. As for Reader Feedback, we didn’t have time to answer it, but we will respond to it next week!

Some leaked documents are showing that the Wii 2 controller will not only have screens on them, but front facing cameras, too.

According to Escapist Magazine:

According to a source that Develop calls “close to the matter,” the controller for Nintendo’s next console will have a front-facing camera, which will be used for creating in-game images.

This comes after weeks of speculation about the new console and its controller, and the source also claims to be able to confirm some of those rumors. Supposedly, the controller will indeed have a large, 6 inch touchscreen (stylus perhaps included) and a standard button layout, as was first rumored about a month ago.

With a touchscreen and camera, the new controller sounds suspiciously like a Nintendo DS or 3DS, and the source believes (but does not know for sure) that the handheld may be able to be used as a controller for the console. “The functions are the same,” he says. “It is a standard wireless controller added with a front-facing camera and touch screen. That sounds far too much like a 3DS to me. But I can’t confirm this, Nintendo is being very cautious about the details.”

Let us know if you believe this rumor.

We’re recapping on the E3 news releases and giving our personal touch on how it’s all going down. We won’t cover everything from E3 as so many others have done it, we’ll touch on things we find important and how they make our inner child really feel.

This weeks gaming news includes:

• New 360 Slim has evil red eye
• The vitality Sensor is still happening
• Onlive Gaming Prices Revealed
• Portal 2 won’t rehash Portal jokes

This weeks gaming question, we’re wondering what product you think will be the most successful and which may fail. Your options are Nintendo 3DS, Sony Move, Sony 3D TV and Microsoft Kinect.

This week’s gaming podcast covers a bit of the Microsoft Press E3 news, a tiny portion of our own opinions on Kinect and a slight bit of a gaming flashback on Beat ‘em and Eat ‘em, an Atari 2600 “game.” A game by any other name would have to be a porn… and that’s as close as we get to one. This weeks news includes:

• DreamCast games coming to PSN and Xbox Live
• Sony trying to bribe people to buy a PSP Go
• Activision‘s Indie Game Competition is Sneaky
• Microsoft partnering with Disney and Star Wars
• Microsoft releasing an Xbox 360 Slim
• Next Assassin’s Creed due out in November
• E3 Microsoft Media Conference

Question of the week: Does Kinect sound more desirable with all the new information and rumored pricing make you consider the purchase?

This week we’re finishing our E3 reactions along with our reaction to the recent iPhone/iPod Touch news and their new gaming initiative. Our gaming flashback flies back to After Burner and our game history is all about Yu Suzuki a huge SEGA developer. The news this week includes:

• Some of the big announcements from Sony’s E3 Press Conference
• Some of the big announcements from Nintendo’s E3 Conference
• Microsoft envisions 10 year lifespan for Xbox 360
• Activision Disappointed by no price cuts at E3
• Michael Pachter thinks the motion control from Sony and Microsoft won’t topple the Wii
• iPhone/iPod Touch 3.0 Firmware enhances gaming features

Don’s question of the week, what is your favorite controller and what game controller do you hate the most? Thanks for the GREAT responses to last weeks question, so many creative answers.

This week we’re tackling a very small bit of E3 news because our recording occurs on Monday night. We did, however, get a bit of Microsoft E3 news and do not worry, we found lots of other great topics to discuss this week. We also tackle some great user write-ins and other crazy stuff.

• Another PSP Coming: PSP Go
• Atari Says Good bye to Infogrames
• Set Top Boxes another avenue for games
• StarCraft 2 Coming This Year
• Microsoft experimenting with Digital Downloads
• Some Big Announcements from the Microsoft E3 Presentation

This weeks history: The Bard’s Tale and we’re taking a look at what Satoru Iwata has done for Nintendo and the shoes he had to replace. The question of the week is crazy this time around, if you played the Video Gamer class in an RPG, what attributes and abilities would you have?

As not to be shown up by other conferences, E3 is bringing back the booth babes, the glitz, the glamor and the publishers and developers. All but NCSoft is reported to be making it to E3 this year and they’re opening up registration again, without having an invite only exclusive club.

Is it really that easy to breath life back into E3? It makes me question why they changed it to begin with as developers and publlishers were the ones reported to not want to spend the millions of dollars in cost to obtain a few extra eyeballs on their products. We all contemplated mini-conferences with each major developer to take the place of the big E3 where each confierence would focus on just a few small brands.

Now, we’re heading back to the way it always was… isn’t this what the big boys were trying to avoid? Apparently not, because they’re all signed up and ready to return and hype their product. Perhaps these same developers saw some falling trends and realized E3 is needed to push their new games?

Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and all their friends are back again to battle, this is like a long awaited Street Fighter sequel. The new Super Smash Bros Brawl of press events with the hot chicks in tow hoping to flash the lights upon their awesome next greatest game development.

Will this really reinvigorate the conference? Will it cause other conferences like TGS and GDC to lose attendance this year? We know many mainstream press folks are sighing as they realize they’re going to all have to show up and really work the show, for them this is business and ratings. While a few of us are impressed by the anime clad chicks, most of the folks there are actually working for a living.

It’s official, E3 would be a lively show if they packed a few fanboys into the press events to cheer on their favorite brands. As Microsoft’s Peter Moore said it, “let’s invite the community. With the right planning, involving our biggest fans in E3 would bring back some of the raw passion the event has lost.” (kotaku)

The offhand comment may not go as unnoticed as those the rest of the blogging community have been making. It seems most “normal gamers” are telling the industry E3 needs more fans to liven the show, but it’s going to take “top executive” like Peter Moore and others to make it a reality.

Imagine going to a rock concern where all the fans are critics waiting to see your performance, stoned faced and unexcited. Obviously your show is going to be a little limp in comparison than a stage full of crazy fans excited to hear anything at all from you.

We’re not saying to bring in 100,000 ravaging fans, we’re just asking for a few rows of excited fanboys to help cheer everyone on. The show would be less flat if you knew you were going on stage to present information you’re fans have been waiting to hear.

E3 doesn’t have to be another Woodstock nor does it have to be an staged audition with critics waiting for you to screw up.

Miyamoto said Nintendo used E3 as a platform for spreading the word to a broad audience based on the media present at the event, they’re not speaking to the core audience. So, if you’re a core audience gamer and you were confused on why Nintendo didn’t build their presentation to be all glitz and glamor, it’s because they weren’t talking to you.

Based on the fact that E3 is a “press event” and their looking to get out the word to the general audience, press is needed as a staging point. The audience sitting in the seat was a bit more intense in nature and have high expectations for each presentation.

With sites like gamespot streaming the event live on the Internet it’s not too hard to imagine some casual gamers and non-core-gamers may have been listening. Or, perhaps their hoping to get old school media in the form of magazines and journalists to write about their upcoming product launches.

Or, perhaps they just showed up because they’re expected to?

(Thanks, Joystiq)

E3 was supposed to be the staging point for the next Bungie bombshell but Microsoft was said to cut it to save time. Bungie had big plans to reveal some stuff they were working on and really take best in show for E3. Was it really cut because of time?

This sounds fabricated, cutting a huge announcement because of time constraints makes absolutely no sense. Imagine a firework show where you cut the grand finale because it would push the show over by a few minutes. Just dropping a title name or a 30 second teaser video would have taken a minute at most, we’re not looking for long winded explanations, just the facts.

Perhaps the real reason was Microsoft had it in their back pocket if people found the Netflix and Final Fantasy XIII news hum drum compared to anything Sony or Nintendo were to show off. Reacting dynamically to the news, perhaps they realized Sony didn’t have any epic announcements and Nintendo just showed up to hint at their future accessories. Microsoft’s haymaker of an announcement wasn’t needed to win the show this year.

Or, maybe the low turn out to the event just wouldn’t build enough hype for Microsoft’s big announcement. They could find a better outlet to turn on the hype and get people jazzed for the next Bungie product. Three years ago there is no doubt Microsoft would have come out fighting with all their weapons; this year Final Fantasy XIII was enough to show consumers that Sony’s lost their exclusives.

After the noise of E3 fades we’re sure to hear more from Bungie. We feel bad for the employees of Bungie who were ready to make the announcements on their work in progress. Sometimes, saving it for later is the best thing you can do; think of the anticipation that will build!

(Thanks, 1up)

At E3 Reggie Fils-Aime let the world know he wasn’t satisfied with the sales progress of the Wii or DS in 2007 and hopes Nintendo can do better this year. Perhaps Nintendo is playing the humble card? No doubt they bragged about their 10 million sales of the Wii and 20 million sales of the DS but quickly followed it by saying they’re not satisfied.

Or, is this a threat?

Nintendo has built some steep competition while both Sony and Microsoft scoff at their product and tell everyone its a novelty and it doesn’t really “count” in this next-generation console battle. It doesn’t count… really?

Perhaps Microsoft and Sony are right; maybe every Wii owner that wanted a PlayStation 3 and/or an Xbox 360 purchased their console too. There may be some truth to that as hardcore gamers may purchase a Wii for many reasons:

• They want every console so they have the widest array of game purchases
• They’re hardcore nature forces them to spend money on all products
• They want to get their kids in on gaming early, to grow them up in their image
• Mob mentality, if everyone has a Wii you must as well!
• The technology is cool and you want to be there for its inception

It seems they don’t feel a threat because Wii is a non-gamer console and thus attracts a different crowd… yet they’re both mimicking some of the motion sensing in their own controllers and playing nice towards “casual games” and non-gamers of late. Maybe their not threatened, but impressed?

Fils-Aime isn’t impressed with their sales figures, perhaps because he expected a higher degree of Wii sales by now, but the fact that people cannot purchase them two years into production has hurt sales figures. Although 10 million units sold is an impressive figure, knowing you had such higher potential if the product was actually on the shelves has to hurt a bit of your pride.

The DS sales were impressive considering the product has been in the market for awhile and is easier to find (minus the holiday rush). We’re not sure why he’s not satisfied with the figures, but inspiring a higher degree of DS sales will require some work. Perhaps this is why they’ve gone with the GTA Chinatown approach; using the GTA name to grow their DS sales figures?

It will be interesting to see how Wii does through the next few quarters and if sales slow down now that we’re a few years into the product. What was the last home console Nintendo owned to get this high of a demand?

Perhaps none.

We’re all used to Sony falling on their face at E3 in the last few years, but, this year, things were different. They’re information was delivered well, they had a great presentation medium using Little Big Planet‘s game engine as a presentation platform over the standard PowerPoint slides and everything went smoothly.

The format for displaying their facts, figures and sales numbers was well played. Nobody wants to sit in front of a chart and listen to an executive blab on about what they did and where they’re going. But, when you add some Little Big Planet flair, such as having the graphs built within their game engine and Sack Boy hopping around on the statistics things smooth over well.

I was confused on why they chose to display the Little Big Planet graphic engine followed by Resistance 2 and then taper into talk about the PlayStation 2 with game previews. It seems more appropriate to bring in the PlayStation 2 product line first, then blow the crowd away with the current generation graphics. Instead, we were awed by the epic Resistance 2 graphics and then presented with old generation stale game engines… silly.

They went on to show off the wide array of PSP games arriving and a little trailer for Resistance Retribution for the PSP. The game system is definitely more mature than their DS competitor but seems to have a bit less sales momentum.

Overall, Sony did one right by talking about their three tiered solution to gaming instead of focusing too much on a single system. PlayStation 3 numbers are good but not mind boggling (like Wii) and their PSP product is doing much better than it used to and the PlayStation 2 numbers are high but falling compared to last year (as would be expected).

By focusing on the full suite of products they’ve put their eggs into many baskets rather than rely on their bleeding edge flagship product which still needs time to grow.

Well done Sony.

So there you have it, the PlayStation 3‘s 80GB console is now the price of the PlayStation 3′s 40GB console, running in at $399.99. This is, in effect, a price drop to compete well with the Xbox 360 which is now going to be $349.99.

The new price of the PlayStation 3 with the talk of their new Resistance 2 game, their hopes for Sony Home, Little Big Planet and the rest of their game lineup (including Greatest Hits game lineup) and the hype for God of War 3 it’s almost a done deal.  Perhaps the PlayStation 3 has a chance this holiday season after all!

Would you invest $399.99 for an 80GB model with the potential for great future games?

E3′s PlayStation 3 press release really started with Resistance 2. They show off a good deal of battle footage against a 300 foot leviathan in the middle of a crumbling city. The game definitely cries “scale” in terms of epic battles, monsters and emotional feel.

The trailer they presented after the game play demonstration was real footage of the game and shows off just how much Resistance looks like War of the Worlds. The trailer even included a radio commentator which reminds you of the War of the Worlds attack and has the same gritty battles, huge alien robots and flying ships floating over the massive city.

The trailer shows the scale and emotional feel of Resistance 2. This game may be a console seller if the trailer and game footage reflects the game and its core feeling. It makes Gears of War look tiny by comparison.

In the end, this exclusive PlayStation 3 title would keep the PlayStation 3 fans highly interested and attached to their beloved console along with bringing new folks to the PS3 domain. This game is definitely out to fight a battle with Gears of War 2.

Talk about a name dropping, E3 is all about hyping upcoming titles to get people stoked and talking about the games.  Nintendo had very little to say but to let the name slip Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades with a few minor tidbits about what we can expect.

First, we can expect massive carpel tunnel syndrome. Second, you can expect something similar to what we’ve seen in Guiter Hero On Tour with a few minor tweaks:

“They did reveal that the game will feature song sharing between Nintendo DS handelds, which would mean one copy of the game has the potential to have a song the other doesn’t? Could there be DS downloadable tracks in the near future?” (kotaku)

It seems a bit quick to be pushing towards yet another release, although no dates have been set besides “coming soon.” Had it been Sony, we could expect soon to be a few years, but Nintendo is usually pretty prompt when it comes to release schedules. Of course, they’ll wait for the On Tour sales to die down before we see the Decades release.

Unfortunately no songs have been talked about yet, it was really more of a name dropping than a detailed announcement. Perhaps they didn’t have a large enough E3 press release time slot, or they were much more jazzed to talk about the Wii Motion Plus product and Wii Sports Resort.

Nintendo plans to capitalize on the monumental success of Wii Sports by doing what they do best, building a hot game with an accessory backing its success. The new Wii Sports Resort will be a mini-game set like Wii Sports and Wii Play but with a beach setting and games like frisbee.

Frisbee? How can the Wii motion controller handle a Frisbee toss? Wii Motion Plus of course! We believe they’ll be packing the game in with the Wii Motion Plus to add more value to the purchase. Honestly, this adds more value to the accessory as a driving force to make sales and increase margins. Game accessories are a great way for Nintendo to profit, consider the pack in game marketing material.

As Wii Play has shown us, historically, gamers want the accessory and the bundled game is just icing on the proverbial cake. Wii Play, as a game, was lacking in many ways and would be, as a stand alone product, a definite must-not-have title. But, considering the amount of Wii controllers sold, this allows Wii Play to show up high on best games sold month over month.

Wii Sports Resort takes this to a new level by using the term “Wii Sports” in the game, allowing the masses to flock to the store to get anything that can reproduce the fun of the original title. Nobody knows, yet, if it will reproduce the same fun factor but the accessory is neat.

(Thanks, joystiq)

Imagine that, the kids hand held grows up and is getting a Grand Theft Auto title. The game will, of course, be a sandbox-style title true to the franchise history and will feature new characters and a new game engine.

No real details came out of the announcement, just a little leak to the press so everyone can speculate on what is to come. First thing that will arrive will be nay-sayer parents telling the ESRB the game isn’t rated correctly, defines violence in today’s culture and is bad for the United States and the youth of America.

Just a guess.

The new game engine will probably be designed for compact hand helds and allow for a very touch-sensitive approach to the game. Imagine car jacking an innocent driver with the touch of a finger or beating an old lady with a bat with a swat of the stylus. Sound fun? Sounds disturbing.

The Grand Theft Auto series needs a DS game. Finally a product that shouldn’t require a billion dollar effort to produce and market yet should yield fantastic sales figures based on the DS install base.

Nintendo’s press coverage is on the move, currently they’ve demonstrated Wii Speak which will allow voice chat on your Nintendo Wii console. Although the Xbox 360 has had voice chat since its day one release, Nintendo is bringing it in a new unique way: community chat.

Basically, the device which will go on top of the Wii sensor bar will allow everyone in the room to talk to everyone in the room on another Wii. Where you need a headset on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this will give the entire room a chance to chat along.

Having a speaker phone style behavior is neat, but what about when everyone is asleep and you want to play a network game with a buddy? Will the device pickup a whisper across the room? Perhaps a speaker attachment will be announced later, but for now… you’re going to be conference calling with everyone in the game room.

(Thanks, Kotaku)

It seems we’ve seen a lot of great concepts from Sony for their PlayStation 3 product line but very little has managed to hit the software virtual shelves. We’ve heard of Sony’s Afrika for the PS3 back at E3 in 2006 and we’re looking at it for 2008′s holiday lineup.

We’ve heard about Sony Home for years as well, but that’s now in some type of beta. It was supposed to be an open beta but that didn’t seem to work out and now it’s closed beta only. Recently they pushed out a firmware update that bricked PlayStation 3 consoles or at least screwed up many of them in varying levels.

Are they just really bad at software development and road map predictions? As a hardware development company they’ve put out some hardcore products, stone cold stable in terms of design and efficiency from the Walk Man to the PS3. Their products are practical in design, for the most part, fairly pretty, stable and function as designed. Yet they come up short on software time and time again.

One of the contributors at 2old2play had some things to say about Sony’s development efforts:

“Having worked at Sony as a Creative Designer two years ago, it doesn’t surprise me that they have still yet to release Home. While there, I was working on their Station Launcher application which was supposed to be released in late 2006. However, the Launcher app is still only in Beta to this day.” (2old2play.com)

In many ways their the anti-Microsoft in their approach and commitments. While Microsoft ships hardware that has what must be a 60% failure rate Sony ships hardware which works fairly well. On the flip side, Microsoft publishes a large quantity of software for all their products and has done very well in the business. Nobody can say it’s 100% perfect but it tends to get better with age or, at least, grow on you.

The difference? As long as our Xbox 360′s stay running we’ve got plenty of great firmware features, Xbox Live community options, online gaming that rarely goes offline and an exciting lineup of games. Now, Microsoft pokes fun at them by providing a fall update feature list which splits the features of Sony’s Home and Nintendo’s Mii system.

Interestingly, one fo the things Microsoft proves strong at is prioritization of their feature “todo” list. While some feel the PlayStation 3 console has some nice features that are 80% finished, the Xbox 360 has less features that are 100% at completion. They’re now going to have the ability to install to the hard disk, a feature PS3 has had since its inception we believe, but what’s more important? Installing to a hard disk or inviting friends to play your game while in game and send them requests to play.

Microsoft puts community features first with a slight handful of optimizations and then back fills their feature list with further optimizations and “nice to have” features around a strong core set. And, for the most part, the features function as designed and rarely require ugly patches on the patches. They’re also set to allow Netflix movies to be downloaded on their product, another great to have secondary feature after their stable core has been established.

Perhaps Sony simply announces product lines too quickly when they still require a great deal of baking or perhaps they’re just a really good hardware company with flaws in software release and roadmaps. This could be a great difference when looking at the future of the potential console war victor.

Electronic Arts has announced SimAnimals, a game where you play the godlike hand and control the lifestyle of over 60 animals. In the game you’ll play the role of a disembodied hand which moves around and life animals, pick flowers and interact with the environment much like a past Lionhead Studios game: Black and White.

EA’s not exactly being the most creative with this Wii and DS game based on the sounds of it so far, as it clones a lot of the features in Black and White, including how “animals react” when you treat them a specific way. However, we’ve not had this style of game on the Wii or DS, both very “touchy” in methodology.

Black and White had the touch sensitive control scheme using tactile feedback with the mouse implemented with Immersion technology. This brings the style of gameplay to a new level, but nothing we’ve heard thus far makes us think originality. Cute and cool, perhaps but it’s nothing new. Of course, who said it had to be new?

We know old gaming concepts sell well at this point!

Major Nelson outlined some of the new features coming to Dashboard and the Xbox 360. Besides the avatar feature, which is cute, we’re going to have the ability to install games directly to the hard drive and play them.

This feature explains the recent press release about the 60GB Xbox 360 and the price drop on the old 20GB box. Once we can install on our hard disk we’re going to be able to watch our disk space fade away just like we can do, today, on our PC.

You’re going to need to keep the disk in the drive, however, to play the Xbox 360 games you’ve purchased. This will continue to be Microsoft’s solution to Digital Rights Management (DRM) with their console. The end goal, however, is a faster load and a much quieter gaming experience as the 360 DVD player is tremendously loud.

Pretty soon this system is going to be no better than a PC if it keeps getting features like this!

If you’re a Netflix subscriber and own an Xbox 360 you’ll be able to watch the entire library of Netflix programming on your console. This deal, recently announced at E3, puts Microsoft in a great way in terms of being the console to buy for multi-media entertainment against its Rival Sony.

While the Wii can’t even play a DVD, Sony holds a lot of power of its Music (having its own labels helps) and its ability to play Blu-Ray movies. Microsoft’s HD-DVD player DVD player doesn’t handle high definition movies, although most new consoles have HDMI and all the high definition goodies ready to go.

Again, this won’t cost current Netflix subscribers any additional cost, “and movies and TV shows can be shared with the avatar-based community called Live Party, just announced earlier this morning.” (Kotaku)

This may not inspire you to run out and purchase an Xbox 360 console but it may be a deciding factor when pitting it up against the PlayStation 3 when shopping for a current-generation system.