I wonder how much of a hit this put on Microsoft’s $500 million advertising budget?  Last night, Kudo Tsunoda from Microsoft and Naoko Takamodo from Harmonix visited Late Night with Jimmy Fallon with dozens of Kinect cameras on-hand.  Thankfully, Kudo listened to his mom (?) and decided not to sport his signature indoor Jackie-O sunglasses.

Dance Central was shown second and after Fallon plays for a moment, his female guest jumps in but the Kinect correctly follows Fallon on the side (look for the small black box on screen focusing on Fallon) instead of her.  She feels like a failure but obviously, Kinect was functioning as designed.

At the end, the entire crowd gets 360 Kinect combo packs!  Hurray!

Move and Kinect have yet to show me some true…peripheral sellers.. but this Move tech demo over at IGN definitely got my attention.  Terminator 2 and Wolverine references aside, the sheer speed at which the PS3 follows the wands in this demo is pretty damn fascinating.

“Further down the line, we may investigate a totally free model or supported model,” replied Colaco.

While a free Dev kit would definitely bring a flood of games to the handheld, including a pile of iPhone ports, I’d be seriously concerned about the quality of the games.  I’ve been told by numerous iPhone owners that the quality of titles on the AppStore leaves much to be desired.  A more popular comment I hear is that shopping for apps is more fun than the apps themselves.

Via Develop Magazine, September 2009

The demo is filled with – PLAY: a hand full of in-game levels and mini-games by yourself or with 3 of your friends, CREATE: Customize your Sackboy and plaster levels with a variety of stickers and objects, SHARE: a few community levels picked from the over 125MM levels created online.

Sounds like the demo alone could suck away hours of your precious life. LBP is definitely one of my “Stranded on an Island,” objects, alongside a raft and a helicopter.

Via the Playstation Blog

I recommend full-screening this sucker.

The second phase of the MAG beta begins on 9/17, to Qore subscribers.

Tonight, I decided to take a stab at a free trial of Pirates of the Burning Sea. Unlike other MMO titles that often have you download a torrent client of some sort to download the game, Pirates pointed me toward this five part download of CAB files!  After I download all these files, then and only then can I begin installation.

Has anyone else seen anything like this for a game recently!?  Talk about a horrible first impression.

While details apparently weren’t specified during the conference, Takashi stated that,

“collecting fees for some services [that] will allow us to adapt flexibly.”

Games that will require payment to play will be tagged with a red “Nintendo Wi-Fi” Icon on them with the words, “Pay & Play”. I find this pretty humorous, especially considering how anemic their online plan has been thus far. Maybe this has come to pass simply because Nintendo isn’t making enough money right now? Oh wait, their profits doubled in the first three quarters of the year so that can’t be it. Maybe they’re just money-sucking bastards without a clue of what their community really wants?

Pardon me, I’m going to go write, “PISS OFF” into the dust atop my Wii.

How about adapting now, at least just a little, then charge me for the advanced features once I see that you can actually accomplish anything significant online? Hopefully that’s where this “Pay & Play” eventually leads.

For the record, that red icon is not from Nintendo.

Via EvilAvatar.com

I’m sure they’ll work this product into the gameplay, trying to make me believe that Cisco is the leader for intel media distribution for Special Force-type soldier guys. Maybe, in the helicopter between missions, they can nibble on McGriddles and call their wives on their new pink Razr phones!?

I’m all about advertisements on billboards in racing games because to me, I do think that it adds a level of realism to that type of game. When it extends to the shooter genre, such as that Cisco ad above or those horrid Dodge ads in GRAW, I think it goes a bit too far. I hope I don’t have to look at that splash screen through the entire campaign…

I’m actually quite comfortable with ads in the world that I’m traversing through. If I’m walking past a vending machine, I expect it to say, “Pepsi” or “Coca Cola” on the front and not, “SODA”.

The newly announced PixelJunk Dungeons might just scratch my itch. While Q-games has yet to officially release a trailer for their upcoming game, only releasing a trailer for Eden today, I’m eagerly awaiting more information about Dungeons.

Via Videogamesblogger.com

I logged 200 hours (yes, 200) on WipEout Pure and that was without any sort of Infrastructure gameplay. Now, Pulse adds in a heck of a lot more pulse-pounding content…..plus online 8-player racing. The racing online has been completely lag-free and refined so far.

There’s also an awesome ship editor over at the official WipEout-game website, which allowed me to design my hot little ride above. I can use this skin online and they’re saved into your online profile via the PSN. So if you lose all your hard work on a skin, you can easily download it again if necessary.

What else can I say? Mp3 off of the memory stick (you can skip songs using your PSP remote controls), PSN login functionality and downloads, the aforementioned ship editor, I can go on and on. Excellent game and at $29.99, a fantastic deal so far.