It seems as if this is the third time, but SCEE has announced a new PSP design with eight different bundles being offered. This fall we should see the PSP-3000, which sounds much like a fake Acme cartoon toy, but it’s for reals.
This version will have a built-in microphone, a redesigned (brighter) LCD screen with out-of-the-box Skype abilities. The Swiss Army knife of hand-helds will keep the current outward design with inner tweaks and each bundle will cause 199 Euro.
Is the market really looking for a re-design with these features or is this Sony’s way of competing with “color DS lite” designs. Nintendo re-releases the same product with brighter colors a few years after its release while Sony seems to push a few new hardware features or enhancements.
The end result, DS still beats all expectations in unit sales month after month.
(Thanks, Kotaku)
Most folks in the game industry are already writing off E3 as an actual event to be attending. Even Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter is calling it “virtually useless” for both retail and investors. The writing is on the wall and the reasons are obvious.
Formerly Green Monster Games, 38 Studios is growing a large pool of talented folks for their MMO endeavor. First, we heard R.A. Salvatore (writer of the Dark Elf series) was heading over to work on a story, art direction by Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn) and now Irena Pereira from Blizzard and a sound designer, Aubrey Hodges.
Now that Activision has merged up with Blizzard all under Vivendi it’s time to consider what to do with all the additional overhead, management, internal studios and sheer amount of people working on projects within their organization. In other words, it’s time to trim the fat and get leaned out for the long haul.