Game on: Sony’'s new PlayStation is snapped up by black marketeers as it finally hits streets in Japan @ TimesOnline

BY THE time his moment of joy arrives, Taiga Ishikawa will have been roughing it for 28 hours, but no one could be better equipped for a night on the streets of Tokyo.

He has his red cotton slippers and bamboo sleeping mat. He has 30 comic books to read and a supply of cold coffee and cold noodle sandwiches. Mr Ishikawa is a 20-year-old computer game otaku — a Japanese nerd — and in just a few hours his vigil will be rewarded with a jewel beyond price.

At 7am today, the shutters of Asobit City game shop in the Akihabara district of Tokyo will open, and Mr Ishikawa will be at the front of the queue to become one of the first people to own the Sony PlayStation 3. The PS3 is the newest games console in the world, and an immeasurable amount of money and credibility rests on its launch.

For Sony, this is an opportunity for success after a dismal spell. For gamers like Mr Ishikawa it is the most powerful games system in the world, quite apart from its capabilities as a storage system for photographs, music and a player of new-generation Blu-ray DVDs.

Even before it went on sale, a thriving black market had sprung up around the PlayStation 3, on the internet and on the streets of Akihabara. The console for which Mr Ishikawa will pay 59,980 yen (£267) was last night attracting bids of up to $1,800 (£940) on online auction sites.

In Akihabara a dozen homeless men queued incongruously in front of a game shop to buy the console. Each was being hired by a middleman to circumvent the shop’s “one customer, one PlayStation rule” to ensure the biggest number of consoles for immediate resale.

Seven British students from Bournemouth University, who had paid £700 each for a week-long stay in Japan, were debating whether to buy the PS3 and keep it for themselves, or sell it at a handsome profit. “I played a display model in a branch of Starbucks on the other side of Tokyo last night,” Christopher Poole, 19, a student of television production, said. “It’s true that they’ve only got the first generation of games at the moment, but it was a bit disappointing.”

Microsoft bets on fast Xbox growth in Brazil @ Reuters

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) is going to start selling its Xbox 360 video game console in Brazil next month after years of planning, a company official said on Thursday.

Daniel Cervantes, director of Microsoft's Latin America games and entertainment division, predicted that Brazil's market could be Microsoft's biggest in Latin America for the Xbox 360 in the next five years. Microsoft started selling the console in Mexico, Chile and Colombia earlier this year.

Cervantes said 500,000 to 600,000 video game consoles are sold annually in Brazil, but they are brought there by third party vendors, not manufacturers. Analysts say there is a user base in Brazil for about 11 million game machines.

"We'll be the first major manufacturer to sell a game console in Brazil's market directly. We believe consumers will respond well to that," said Cervantes, adding that Brazil ranked 15 in the world in console sales.

The company will be selling the Xbox for 2,999 reais ($1,399) in stores and on Web sites, but product brought to Brazil unofficially by third parties can be found for between 1,600 reais and 1,900 reais.

Cervantes said Microsoft considers its price "very competitive" in view of the package it will sell, which includes the console, a 20-gigabyte hard disk, wireless controller, remote control and three games.

The Brazilian Xbox 360 will have software in Portuguese.

Microsoft hopes to sell 10 million Xbox 360s globally in 2006, about 10 percent of which will come from Latin America, said Cervantes. He did not say how many sales were expected in Brazil.

Microsoft will have 14 games for the Brazilian launch, among them the much anticipated "Gears of Wars," and "Perfect Dark Zero", at a cost of 159 reais each.

Cervantes said Microsoft would spend twice as much on publicity in Brazil as it did for its Mexico launch, but he declined to give specific figures. He said the company wanted to start selling in Brazil as soon as possible because 40 percent of its consoles sales for the year were in December.

MORE virtual console games revealed on ESRB website

A short while ago reports emerged of some new virtual console games turning up on the ESRB website, similar to the Sega virtual console titles that were discovered on the site a few weeks ago. These new titles were:

• Duck Hunt (E for Everyone)
• Hogan's Alley (E for Everyone)
• Kid Icarus (E for Everyone)
• Kirby's Adventure (E for Everyone)
• Pilot Wings (E for Everyone)
• Pro Wrestling (E for Everyone)
• Punch-Out (E for Everyone)
• Wild Gunman (E for Everyone

Well, it seems as if even more classic games have shown up under the Wii section of the ESRB's website! The following 13(!) games have been listed:

• Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (E)
• Kirby's Super Star (E)
• Mario Kart 64 (E)
• Star Fox 64 (E)
• Super Metroid (E)
• Kirby's Dream Land 3 (E)
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (E)
• Excitebike (E)
• Ice Climber (E)
• Dr. Mario (E)
• Mario Brothers (E)
• Ice Hockey (E)
• Soccer (E)

Some of these aren't new, but they are new to the ESRB's list. More importantly, most of the ARE new! While the release dates of these titles are still up in the air, we can assume they will be available within the first few waves of releases, which would mean we would have access too all of these downloads by February or March 2007.

Microsoft sez "all done" on Vista

It's been a long hard road for Vista, beginning in 2001 -- before Windows XP was even released -- as the bright-eyed bushy-tailed "Longhorn," and finally getting out the door more than 5 years later looking a little bit worse for wear, but still lumbering on. Today Microsoft announced that Vista has been released to begin manufacturing copies of the OS, putting it right on track for its November 30th release to big businesses customers, and the January 30th release to consumers. Of course, the job of an OS developer is never finished, and we're sure Microsoft is already gearing up to patch day one vulnerabilities, but we suppose the developers can have a few hours in between to crack open a cold one, plop down for a bit of Gears of War, and celebrate this monumental achievement -- at around 50 million lines of code, they sure seem to have earned it.

Sony firm on U.S. pricing for PlayStation 3 @ Msn

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Sony Corp. has no plans to cut the price of its upcoming PlayStation 3 video game console in the United States, despite a recent cut announced for Japan, the chief of the company's U.S. electronic entertainment division said Wednesday.

Kaz Hirai, president and chief executive of Sony ComputerEntertainment America, told Reuters the company would stick with its planned price tags of $499 and $599 when the new PlayStation 3 consoles hit retailers' shelves in the United States on Nov. 17.

"We are very comfortable with the pricing we have announced and have gotten tremendous support from retailers for that price point," Hirai said on the sidelines of the Dow Jones VentureWire Consumer Technology Conference. "So it is full steam ahead with the pricing of $499 and $599."

Major Nelson: Fix on the way for Xbox 360 1080p problems @ EngadgeTHD

Microsoft just rolled out the much awaited update to the Xbox 360 dashboard including -- among other things -- support for 1080p over VGA and component but for some gamers and error screen was all they got. The company still hasn't said exactly what it believe is causing the issue, although some have said it may be due to either frequency supported by the VGA cable or the way it syncs with monitors, but Major Nelson confirmed on his podcast this morning that engineers are aware of the issue and are working on a fix. The TVs that suffer the problem appear to be some Sony (most notably LCD XBRs) and Samsung models that should be able to accept the 1080p input but as of yet, don't. Affected owners should hopefully have their mere 720p experience rectified soon, but will it be in time for the HD DVD player launch?

We Step on Puppies [PuP] @ GuildWars

Forged out of the remains of another guild during a time of trouble, the members of We Step On Puppies founded PuP as a place for them to hone their skills as players and to grow in a supportive gaming environment. The spirit of PuP is to do well while enjoying the game and maintaining a friendly atmosphere. The guild aims to achieve a status in Guild Wars where players are scared to fight against them, but happy to socialize.

PuP often has players who request to join the guild because they like the playing style, the friendly members, and the positive atmosphere. PuP isn't taking any new members, but they'll consider enthusiastic applicants on a case-by-case basis.

PuP has never has been very large, and they try to keep it that way. As a result, everyone knows how to work with their guild mates during a match. Even with a consistently small size, the guild has changed dramatically since its formation. For example, they've increased the complexity of their PvP strategies significantly. PuP started out doing Ranger spike 24/7, but now has played a huge variety of builds. At one time, the guild ran a build that featured two Fire Elementalists, which was then an uncommon tactic in GvG play.

Even more uncommon, yet in the spirit of merriment, is the guild's motto: We Stand Tall Because We Step on Puppies.

Read more.... ?