In the same E3 interview by Gamasutra where Sony's Peter Dille talks about the Xbox 360 and announces the arrival of a movie download service soon for the PSP, he also speaks in defense of the decision to retain the PlayStation Portable's Universal Media Disc on the PSP Slim's design. Peter Dille is the senior vice president of marketing for the PlayStation.

Gamasutra addressed the concerns from users about loading speed and the lack of availability of movies in the new UMD format. Dille says that the new design of PSP Slim has fixed the loading time of the UMD "to a certain degree." As for his take on the movies, he says that there was a problem communicating the PSP's demographic with Hollywood.

Essentially, the PSP was aiming at males from 18 to 35 years old but the movies released in the UMD format didn't match that demographic. The lack of attention in the right areas invited in a lack of popularity. With the release of the new PSP Slim and its new video output feature, there may be hope yet for the UMD to make a comeback.

Dille's comments echo PSP Senior Marketing Manager John Koller recent comments about the UMD and how Sony will stick to it. To read the whole interview, follow the Read link after the jump.

With the NPD Group's June report arriving next Monday, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter, fresh out from frowning upon the recently concluded E3 Media & Business Summit, gathered relevant information and flexed a couple of neurons to predict last month's findings.

 

Top on his fortune telling list is that the Nintendo Wii's monthly sales will rise higher than a 4 to 1 ratio against the Sony PlayStation 3, even while Nintendo still cannot supply the overwhelming demand. Notably, however, Pachter is being optimistic about the PlayStation 3's 100,000 sales point for a second time, lowered estimates for the Xbox 360's sales, and forecasted June's numbers as:

• Wii - 435,000
• PS3 - 100,000
• 360 - 200,000
• PS2 - 235,000
• PSP - 250,000
• DS - 550,000
• GBA - 90,000

In comparison, Gamasutra reports that simExchange has also offered its own predictions for the NPD June reports. Predictions aggregated from several users of the service cried out a 433,000 unit sales for the Wii, 101,000 for the PlayStation 3, 191,000 for the Xbox 360, 273,000 for Sony's PlayStation Portable, and 510,000 for the Nintendo DS.

Activision, according to Pachter, will have seen the largest financial gain in June, garnering US$ 80 million worth in revenue, a year-on-year rise of 129%, while Take-Two Interactive may see an optimistic 6% increase from last year's revenue to US$ 40 million, despite the issues over Manhunt 2 and the company's restructuring efforts.

Although Pachter predicted 2007 as the Year of EA, Electronic Arts isn't doing better in his forecast as it may suffer a 11% drop - compared to last year - to US$ 65 million for the month of June.

 

In an E3 interview conducted by Gamasutra with Sony's senior VP of marketing, Peter Dille announced the imminent arrival of a movie download service for the PS3 and the PSP.

While the slim version of the PlayStation Portable was announced during the E3 showcase, Dille explains that the download service was left out of the program because its formal announcement would be a crucial moment for the PlayStation brand and that it's something Sony wants to get right or else they'll "get creamed." He continues:

So we want to make sure we get the consumer experience right, get the right content, and we’re working really hard on it. And I don’t think we’re talking about years, I think this is something we could get behind really soon.

Dille hopes that users who are still undecided on which console they should choose to buy would see this as the deciding factor. "I think what might convince [people who haven't picked up a PSP] would be the advent of a service that allows them to put content onto the PSP in an easier fashion."

Considering the new slim version of the PSP that has a new display function that can output video into external sets, the service might do just that.

As co-founder of Sniper Studios, Jeff Hasson has had a lot of experience in outsourcing game development resources and being outsourced for game development, despite the general outlook of the industry as a "dirty" word in the business.

 

The studio itself has already had a number of games under its belt - Halo, SOCOM and Star Wars Battlefront being those that stand out of the list. But after a team up with SEGA and its illustrious arcade franchise Crazy Taxi, Sniper Studios was able to take a step forward into next-gen development.

Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars for the PSP is currently under their skilled development hands and the game is slated to be set off as a blend between Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2 with multiplayer features. Although much of the ideas won't be coming from Kenji Kanno, SEGA of America has been on-hand to lead the project the way its supposed to.

PSP development hasn't been all that smooth however. According to an interview by Gamasutra with Hasson, certain technical issues such as UMD loading times and access times have been a difficult hurdle. Of course, they were impressed with the platform's power as a handheld PS2, and even more so with Sony's developers tools for the platform.

In fact, he mentioned that for a game that originated in a 4:3 aspect format, shifting to a small screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio was "straightforward." Added to that, they've developed the multiplayer code from scratch while the engine for the PSP were ported from the original engines from Japan.

Not bad for a studio taking baby steps into PSP development. Big news is that they've also been tagged by Microsoft as an officially licensed Xbox 360 developer, but they are hoping to enter the Wii and PlayStation 3 also. Hasson said:

Sniper has experience developing across all major platforms and the team looks forward to making announcements about new development projects in the future. Every platform is of significant interest to Sniper. This includes potential projects on PS3 or the Wii.

Paul Steed, former artist for id Software's first in the Quake franchise, is now Chief Creative Officer at Exigent, an Indian game outsourcing firm. No longer drawing gorgeous pixels for your VGA screen, Steed is now educating Indians and encouraging them to make games for the western market.

We know you're probably asking, "What in the world is he doing there?" In an interview with "The Art of Gaming" haven Gamasutra, he revealed his revelation of the business of outsourcing and how he got interested in it.

After leaving Atari last September, he moved on to Exigent, and hoped to tap into the productivity potential in the Asians' love for games.

But more importantly, he sees that the future of the game industry rests on the mobile game and the PC. He said that there are more computers and cellphones in the world than consoles and "[that will] never change." In fact, he believes once his company goes from outsourcing only to part developer studio "Exigent Interactive," they will be only focused on games for the PC. He defended his position, saying, ""That’s what’s most accessible for audiences."

Steed also spoke about Sony and the PSP. And guess what, PSP folks: he says that "Sony just lost focus" on the PSP. In the defense of his opinion, he added, "They tried to do too much with it. And God, the price. You look at the PSP and you’re like, 'Hey, do you even realize your portable costs as much as Nintendo’s next-gen home system?'"

Piracy is commonly frowned upon by most members of the game industry - but not by Paul Steed. We'll let him explain his two cents worth on the (overrated?) issue of piracy:

My take on piracy is kind of weird. I know I can’t stop it, so I don’t try to stop it. I just try to create a whole fanbase. If you can buy it, buy it. I was in China and I saw a copy of my book ... my first book, translated in Chinese and it had my name on it, and I was like, 'Well, at least they put my name on it!' I don’t think people mean to steal when they pirate your stuff. I just don’t think they realize that it only increases the price.

He also said something about casual gaming, although it's a bit "nit-picky" on the fairer gender of gamers. We'll leave it to you, oh curious web surfers, to hop right to the interview and read it for yourself, via the "Read" link below.

 

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the organizers of SIGGRAPH, has announced that they will gain hose the two-day Sandbox videogame symposium on August 4-5, alongside SIGGRAPH 2007 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego California.

Gamasutra informs that the symposium will consist of keynotes, panels, and papers. A "Hot Games" session is also set to be run and in it unreleased titles from major game companies and independent developers will be previewed.

The goal of the event is pose these questions to attendees and participating organizers: What are the creative, technological and commercial challenges facing this medium in the future? How do we relate great stories that leverage advances in technology? What is the continuing impact of this medium on individuals and society?

For more information on Sandbox: An ACM Videogame Symposium and other events scheduled to take place alongside SIGGRAPH 2007, feel free to check out the official website via our "read" link below.

So what's recently at the top of GameFly's most requested Games charts? well, you'd be a bit surprised. Gamasutra reports that on GameFly's chart for most requested games (for yet to be released and already released games) for the week ending March 23, mutated turtles reign supreme. Ubisoft's multiplatform movie adaptation of TMNT is the top title across all platforms.

The turtles are followed by Nintendo's upcoming Super Paper Mario, and the mecha game for mecha otaku, Armored Core 4 for sits comfortably on third.

As for the console specific stuff, TMNT is on top for Microsoft's Xbox 360, Motorstorm is once again top request for Sony's PlayStation 3, and Super Paper Mario is ranked top request for Nintendo's Wii.

On the handheld side, 300: March to Glory still tops the PSP charts, and Pokemon Diamond is ranked first for the DS.

And yes, you guessed it, God of War II is still the most wanted game for the PlayStation 2.

Despite his many issues with what he perceives to be the flaws of the PlayStation Portable, Didier Malenfant is one of the staunchest supporters of the Sony's handheld platform. He's stated multiple times before that the PSP is a great platform.

He's even gone as far as to say that Sony's success in gaming, handheld or otherwise, depends largely on their own actions and not Microsoft's or Nintendo's. He noted that because of Sony's negative publicity, Microsoft's been able to hide a few things. He said: "[The Xbox 360] didn't really have any good games until Gears of War came out." (Support the platform, criticize the company. I like that.)

With the background on Didier Malenfant done and over with, on with the news. Gamasutra was able to sit down with mister Malenfant and the developer revealed several interesting bits about something a lot of you have been waiting for: Ready at Dawn's God of War for the PSP.

Something to keep in mind while you wait for God of War PSP: It's not a port. This is because they're one game company and he says that they tend to be obsessive with the current game they're working on.

As for the game engine used for God of War, he says that the engine they're using was "never designed as a PSP engine (it actually also runs on Windows for development purposes) and there’s a lot of features that would absolutely shine on a next-gen platform." The developer noted that their biggest frustration at the moment with the PSP is such:

The biggest frustration right now, in a way, is the limitation on the clock speed. We’d love to run our games at 333Mhz (we do internally just for kicks) because it does make a big difference in how much stuff you can push on the platform.

He adds that it's basically like developing for the PS2, only the bottlenecks are in different places. But what is it about the PSP that he likes the most? He says: "I think the greatest thing about the PSP is that 'sleep' mode which allows you to resume where you left off. Thanks to this, anything is bite-sized automatically, which is very cool."

The biggest requests their getting at the moment? Well it's not God of War-related, but Malenfant's reaction to the request is noteworthy. Apparently, a Daxter port from the PSP to the PlayStation 2 is the number one request their getting. His reaction? He says: "I think everyone here would love to do it, and it actually wouldn’t be that hard because Daxter was never designed as a handheld game, we could even add a few things for the PS2 version."

The big problem? The decision to do that is up to Sony.

1UP's James Mielke was ranting three weeks ago regarding the blatant use of the words "Call of", "Rise of", "Empire," "Nations," and "Ops" in game titles. (He was talking about Call of Juarez.) Well, we've lived through this type of stereotyping, but it doesn't mean we can't make fun of it right? Makes us wonder, do devs consult some sort of list when thinking of a title?

Anyway, the guys at GameSetWatch set out to come up with the "most stereotypical video game name... evah". The turnout was pretty crazy: Simon Carless (Game Developer/Gamasutra EIC) "Quaternion: The Beige-ning", Jill Duffy (Game Developer managing editor) came up with "Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Call Of Duty: Revenge Of Duty", and Brandon Sheffield (Game Developer features editor) gave the hilarious "Pauly Shore's XTREME Nude Wakeboarding II: The Awakening". The winner was Frank Cifaldi (Gamasutra features editor) with "WWII: World War II".

My fellow QJ staffers gave a few bits of their own. Victor B. came up with two - "Space Shooter: The Star Galaxy Trek Wars of Gradius" and "Final Generic Fantasy RPG Quest XX" - while our researcher R gave me this - "Death Ride Alliance: Blade War XIII". We're sure you have your own game title cliche and we'd love to hear about it. The more trite, the better.

Ready, set, go!

Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters is a new PSP game, and Lesley Mathieson is the game's design director. Gamasutra took a look at the game designer's media and art diets. Let's check how much books that she reads, the movies she watches and the other games she plays influenced Ratchet and Clank's design.

Lesley listens to a wide variety of music, including 70’s rock: Blue Oyster Cult, Kiss, early Aerosmith, The Strokes, the Goo Goo Dolls, and Matchbox 20. She also thinks that there's a huge amount of room for using music as a hint to players as to when they should interact with objects, or to guide them towards different kinds of gameplay.

Being a former film major in college, Lesley's been exposed to a lot of films, and she particularly loves monster films. Her favorite movie is The Creature From The Black Lagoon. Lesley also reads a lot, and her favorite authors include T.H. White, Iain M. Banks, Gerald Durrell, and Jack Vance.

As for games, Lesley enjoys playing Beyond Good and Evil, Kingdom Hearts, Pikmin, The Sims, Pokemon, the Ultima series, and Morrowind. Lesley says that she's just as comfortable picking up Half-Life 2 as picking up Pokemon. Spoken like a true gamer, we think.