by Billy Brown

Both 8 Days and The Getaway were much-anticipated titles that had been publicly demoed over two years ago.

Then Sony announced that both were cancelled earlier this month, causing a mix of heartbreak and bewilderment among gamers.

Sony's Shuhei Yoshida recently chatted with gamesindustry.biz and gave some more detail as to why we'll never be playing either title.

"As you might know, starting and cancelling projects is just a normal part of our business. What's unusual about this case is that we usually don't announce titles until we have a really good feel, until they're getting ready and we have an idea of launch day.

by M. Renton

The official numbers for May have been released by the NPD Group, and for the third straight month, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter's forecasts have missed the mark.

But that's very good news for Sony in their battle with Microsoft for second place in the next-gen race.

Pachter had predicted Xbox 360 to outsell PlayStation 3 for the month of May in North America, but Sony wound up selling 208,700 units while 186,600 Xbox 360 consoles were sold during the same period of time.

by Robert Gordon

Wii is still the number one console out there and there's no signs of it slowing up anytime soon.

However, at least one analyst believes that Sony will generate more revenue from software than Nintendo will in the long run.

During a panel session at last month's Nordic Game 2008 conference, DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole explained that Nintendo's lackluster history with third party titles does not bode well for the company.

"It's a huge issue that Nintendo dominates the platforms they own, as that's how they make all their money," he said. "We see the Wii having a higher installed base but the PS3 generating, by about 2010-11, more revenue in terms of software."

by M. Renton

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has had a tough time of it lately.

After PS3 topped Xbox 360 in North American sales in both January and February, the analyst predicted the same to happen in both March and April. But when the NPD results came out, it turned out he was wrong -- PlayStation 3 came in third those two months.

So it looks like this month he's hedging his bets.

Pachter has gone on the record with his May forecasts, and this time, he's got Sony selling 225,000 units with Microsoft unloading 25K more at 250,000 units. His forecast shows Wii with 750,000 consoles sold in May.

by Billy Brown

The PlayStation store has updated and its chock full of new stuff.

The most interesting being, of course, the new Qore Digital Magazine. Is it worth the $3 a pop? That's a decision that only you can make.

The word from Sony:

Qore: Presented by The PLAYSTATION Network is a monthly interactive video production covering the world of PlayStation. Qore provides its audience with exclusive behind-the-scenes access to developers and their games, from both the SCE Worldwide Studios and the third-party community, where the audience member can control and direct the content.

by Billy Brown

Ever since the incredible announcement that BioShock is indeed coming to PS3, everybody has been clamoring to find out more details about what's in store for the project.

On the official PlayStation blog, Sony described the three 2K studios that will be working on the title, while teasing that there's some secret components in the works that have yet to be announced.

"The Boston team is the largest chunk of the BioShock team at the moment; many of them hard at work on some of the as-yet-unannounced components of the PS3 version," wrote Alyssa Finley, Executive Producer from 2K Marin.

by Robert Gordon

While discussing Square-Enix's Drammatica, composer Yoko Shimomura of Kingdom Hearts fame talked about his expectations of composing for PS3 vs. PS2.

Working with PS2 was a challenge.

"With the PlayStation 2, sound production was mainly based on the internal sound chip, not streaming, so it was a constant battle with memory and limitations, such as the number of sound channels," he told the website Music 4 Games.

by M. Renton

Hideo Kojima, the daddy of the Metal Gear Solid series, is considered a genius by many people.

But Kojima himself is not one of them.

While explaining how Metal Gear Solid 4 wraps up the previous stories, he told Reuters the following:

"I'm not a genius like George Lucas, I didn't have this story planned out. I always tried to finish the story in each game. But by some miracle in MGS4 I was able to resolve the mysteries left behind in past titles and resolve the side stories from past games."

by Chris Naughton

Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer was recently interviewed at the D6 technology and media conference and was in a very good mood about Sony products.

Speaking about the troubles that PS3 had early on, Stringer admitted that "two years ago PlayStation was on life support." However, both sales and profits have both increased substantially since then, and having the cheapest Blu-ray player player in town built-in certainly helped as well.

by Billy Brown

When Capcom released Devil May Cry 4 on PS3 with a mandatory install that took about 20 minutes, many gamers were infuriated.

It looks like Bethesda has taken notice of the outcry, and like with Oblivion, there will be no mandatory install with Fallout 3.

Bethesda explained to The Game Reviews that "we do not do the ‘we need ten minutes of your time'...We will cache the same way on both (Xbox 360 and PS3) we basically just like everybody you know if you have a hard drive, it does this.”

by Robert Gordon

With GRID coming out next week, it's crunch time for Codemasters to get things right after the underwhelming demo.

According to executive producer Gavin Raeburn (aka Uncle Chewy), not only have there been major improvements made, but there's more tweaks on the way in patch form.

"Firstly, we v-sync every frame, but allow the game to overrun if needed, which is very rare and is much preferable to a complete frame drop," he wrote on the company's official forum.

by Chris Naughton

According to Sony Managing Director Michael Ephraim, PS3 outsold Xbox 360 by a whopping 45% during the first quarter of 2008 in Australia.

Not only that, but if one were to include the Bravia deal in the mix, PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 by a margin of two to one.

In an interview with PALGN, he explained that PlayStation 3 has not outsold the 360 altogether in Australia, but that it's only a matter of time.

"We think it's a matter of time before we surpass the install base, but I think with Xbox, they've had a few strong English speaking territories, US, UK and Australia being one of them," he said.

by Chris Naughton

We've heard the talk about there being official trophies in PS3 games for over a year now, but while individual games have individual rewards, a standard system has not been in place yet.

According to a new report by PSU, we may see some 2d trophies in June. If their sources are correct, it will happen next month when firmware version 2.4 hits.

However, these rudimentary rewards are expected to be located on the PS3's XMB. They will not be the full fledged three-dimension trophies that will hit with Home later this year.

by M. Renton

It looks like the 2008 scorecard for PS3 vs. Xbox 360 is an even two to two.

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan had predicted for second straight month that PlayStation 3 would top the 360, but it just wasn't meant to be.

NPD numbers for April have been released and there was a less than 1,000 unit difference between Sony and Microsoft. PS3 sold 187,100 units altogether, while Xbox 360 was slightly ahead with 188,000. Look for a dramatic tiebreaker in May.

by Billy Brown

PS3 outsold Xbox 360 in North America the first two months of the year, only to have Microsoft's console take the month of March.

Now that April is done, which next-gen console took the number two slot? It depends on who you ask.

According to Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan, Sony sold 290,000 units while the 360 sold 15K less at 275,000. However, Mr. Pachter predicted that Sony won in March, only to be proven wrong once the official NPD numbers came in. Whether he's nailed it this time remains to be seen.