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Eurogamer: Sony development bigwig George Bain has said the PlayStation 2 is “effectively an open platform” in Europe.

“You no longer have to submit a game for content approval,” Bain told a throng of Euro developers, according to GameDaily.

The idea behind the move is to encourage regional developers to be able to make “low-development cost titles and release them in their market”, he said, using India and Russia as examples.

And while development kits can be costly, Sony has often been known to loan them for the duration of a project.

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PC World: Dissecting sales figures can be a little like making sense of a gyrating Rubik’s Cube. Case in point: Nintendo ‘s just claimed it beat Sony’s 18 month sales record after tipping past 50 million games sold on or around May 19, 2008. By comparison, claims Nintendo, Sony only sold around 42 million its first 18 month at bat.

While that may be true, it misleadingly suggests the Wii’s winning the software war, which it isn’t. In fact, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 continues to outsell the Wii in year over year totals. That’s the case even if you count the 11.2 million “sales” of the system’s bundled Wii Sports game, which Nintendo keeps claiming as part of the deal.

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Eurogamer: Electronic Arts believes up to four times more PS3s than Xbox 360 consoles will be sold in Europe this year, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

In a new report, the publisher has predicted a Sony surge into second place behind Nintendo and the Wii.

In Europe EA expects the PS3 to sell between 5 million and 6 million units, compared to just 1.5 million to 2.5 million for the Xbox 360.

While the company thinks the two will tie in North America on 4.5 million to 5.5 million unit sales, the two sets of numbers combined give Sony’s flagship console a compelling 3.5 million lead.

However, the report points to Wii as overall winner, with a combined figure of between 12 million and 14 million for the two regions. The PS2 is expected to shift between 3.9 million and 4.9 million units.

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Absolute Gadget: Thrustmaster have launched a pad that will work for your PS3, PS2 and your PC. The Dual Trigger 3 in 1 controller features all the usual buttons you would expect from a Playstation pad, including mini-sticks and the home button for PS3 owners.  

Just like the official PS3 pad it also features 6 axes. A switch on the underside of the pad allows you to switch between PC and console without having to change any settings on the pad itself.There is also a mapping function allowing gamers to save their own control configurations thanks to the pad’s internal memory. This will no doubt come in useful when your annoying friend who changes the whole button layout to play Tekken visits. 

A preset button will allow said chum to switch to their preferred configuration at the touch of a button.

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Engadget: Unlike Microsoft, which dropped the original Xbox in favor of the Xbox 360 in manner similar to Paris Hilton dropping her old cellphone, Sony has continued to maintain the PlayStation 2.

Somehow, Sony has managed to make a new iteration of the PS2 that decreases the console’s weight by almost a third: they’ve trimmed the console itself down to 600 grams from 900 grams, and the power adapter to 250 grams from 350 grams.

The external design of the console is unchanged, but the lower weight and the new components should decrease production and shipping costs.

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Product Reviews Net: PSM France has revealed some new news regarding the PS3 SIXAXIS rumble controller. One of the rumors that surround this much needed controller for the Playstation 3 is that it could contain Touch Sense. This is a much more sophisticated vibration system than the old PS2 controller, as it meant that the vibrations do not come just from the handles but from various areas of the lever.

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Gizmodo: Sony greeted its PS3 fans with a shiny new update this morning. Version 1.50 fixes backward compatibility issues with PS1 and PS2 games. Specifically, it’ll allow them to run in progressive scan mode.

Other than that, it’s hard to tell what else has been fixed since there’s no update log.  (…)

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TechDigest: A survey by Nielsen shows that of the 117 million active gamers in the US, 56% play games online, and of those, 64% are women.

Active gamers were determined as being over 13, having at least one games device, and playing at least one hour of games each week. Men outnumber women gamers overall, but not online.

The survey also looked at casual gamers, who tend to jump around from free demo to free demo without any particular loyalty, and found that they spent around £5 (around €7) per month on gaming.

More dedicated gamers such as those playing World of Warcraft spent around £15 (€22) per month, though a lot of that would presumably be for ongoing subscriptions. At the top of the pile came Xbox 360 owners who spent around £20 (€30) per month.

Most console owners have at least one platform for playing games – either more than one console or a console and a PC. The Playstation 2 took most market share, with 59%, followed by Xbox’s of all generations at 33%. The GameCube came in at 30%.

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Nintendo has finally released pricing details about the Wii. According to Bernd Fakesh, Nintendo’s head of German operations, the console would have a price tag of about £150 (220 euro). That’s even cheaper than Sony’s recently discounted PS2.
The Nintendo Wii, Nintendo’s 7th generation video game console, is expected to hit the European market, in the fourth quarter of 2006.
(source: T3.com)

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