On October 9th at midday, Schappert will present his keynote address "A Canvas for the World” which will apparently lay out how the Xbox 360 will bring people together to enjoy "the next wave of interactive entertainment experiences."

No, we don't really know what that means either —- but we bet it is pretty flippin' important. Who knows? Maybe MS are on a roll - by this time next year there could be an Xbox Elite in every self-respecting Japanese home.

Tokyo Game Show - John Schappert Keynote Address [Gamerscore Blog]

Levine, compatriot and family (including in his parents) are actually sitting right next to me. They're all very nice people. Hit up the jump to follow along as Levine wows us.

Taylor will also be appearing with Dr. Michael Capps and David Perry at a "Best Selling Games" panel on Tuesday of the conference, where they will discuss...best selling games? Hey, at least I gave you a pretty trailer to look at.

Chris Taylor to Present the "Making of Demigod" at GCDC

LEIPZIG, Germany - July 29, 2008 - The organizer of the GC Developers Conference (GCDC) today announced that industry legend Chris Taylor will be the keynote speaker for Wednesday, August 20 at this year's event. Under the title, "The Struggle for Independence and the Making of Demigod," he will address the challenges of developing games today. Moreover, together with Dr. Michael Capps and David Perry, the other two keynote speakers of GCDC 2008, he will participate in a panel discussion on "Best Selling Games" on Tuesday. GCDC takes place prior to GC - Games Convention in Leipzig, August 18-20, 2008.

Chris Taylor will reminisce about his 20-year career in the interactive entertainment industry covering his budding years and the experiences that inspired him to form his own independent games studio. He will talk about how the industry has changed over the years, and how he has had to adapt his own mindset and the direction of his company to meet its new challenges. Taylor will also speak about the difficulties faced when delivering new, truly innovative games versus the typical sequels and derivative works currently plaguing the industry.

"Expect a surreal journey into my bizarre and twisted mind," said Taylor, adding, "Please bring your sense of humor with you."

For the past 20 years, Taylor has been one of the game industry's most imaginative and dynamic visionaries. The creator of the first true next-generation RTS game, Total Annihilation, has a well deserved reputation as an innovator who is able to push both technology and gameplay to their limits.

Taylor is the CEO and Creative Director of Gas Powered Games (GPG), which has released the Dungeon Siege series, Supreme Commander, and its expansion, Forged Alliance. In 2008, GPG will unleash its newest action/RPG, Space Siege, and in 2009, the company will launch the innovative action/RTS game Demigod.

"Our goal is to present keynote speakers that inspire our attendees, while providing valuable insight into the changing landscape of the games industry," said Frank Sliwka, project director of GCDC. "Chris Taylor's participation takes the already content rich conference program to a higher level and makes GCDC an absolute must-attend event."

Further information about the schedule and the speakers of GCDC can be found at: http://www.gcdc.eu.

Hirai went on to apologize for the delay, insisting that the service must spend more time in development so gamers around the world can experience the game when it is ready.

If there's one thing Wil Wheaton knows how to do, it's get a reaction from a crowd. Whether he's inciting the ire of millions as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek or kicking off PAX 07 with his keynote speech, he never fails to make an impression. He makes his way onto the stage with dramatic musical accompaniment, citing the above line to an adoring crowd. After railing through every gamer cliche' that one could imagine and dropping a few f-bombs along the way, he begins recounting his days as a young nerd playing video games in the local arcade. He compares his generation's love of the old arcade to this generations attachment to World of Warcraft and Xbox Live. These, he says, are the arcades of today. The crowd is in the palm of his hand as he moves on from arcade classics to home consoles, hitting every classic title along the way and filling everyone's heads with nostalgic memories of the golden age of gaming.

Moving on to the present, Wheaton ruminates on the Wii and how it brought his love of gaming back to the fore. He sees the Wii and games like Guitar Hero as social tools and new ways of bringing families together. He knows that making sure what his kids play and experience in games is his responsibility and no one else's, finally giving a another big fuck you to Mr. Thompson and his ilk, whipping the crowd into a frenzy once again.

His speech is equal parts love letter to geekdom and a call for gamers to rise up in force and show the world that we can and will be taken seriously. The rapturous audience is duly impressed and indeed rise to the occasion and their feet, sending Wheaton off with a well deserved standing ovation.

During today's keynote Shigeru Miyamoto announced a new channel that would allow people to compare their Miis in a popularity contest.

Today people are so taken with the Miis around the world. Im working on a new Mii channel.

With this channel we are going to let people compare the Miis they created in a popularity contest.

And you will be allowed to do this with people from around the world.

No pictures, dates or details were announced during the keynote, but I'm sure we will be hearing more down the line. Brian Crecente

LiveBlogging Nintendo [Kotaku]

Earlier today during a keynote Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that Super Mario Galaxy would be coming out this year.

Miyamoto said that Super Mario Galaxy explores some of the things first seen in Mario 128. The brief video he played, showed Mario flying through the air, running around small planets and other rotating surfaces and climbing vines from one planet to another, with the gravity flipping as he changed locations.

He ended that part of his speech by saying: "You'll be able to play Super Mario Galaxy this year."

Liveblogging Nintendo [Kotaku]

We're at the Nintendo Shigeru Miyamoto keynote. It's starting any minute now.

I just spoke with Reggie and asked him if there were going to be any fireworks during the keynote. He said "a couple." He's the second one to tell me that today's keynote isn't going to be quite as bland as people initially expected. Hit the jump to follow along. Brian Crecente

Niero from Destructoid just stopped by and starting bowing to us. Mike M pretended to unzip his pants. Not an auspicious start to the event.

That and Chobot is dancing around. Odd.

The music's quite nice. We're now 15 minutes past when it was supposed to start. No announcements, though I see movement behind the curtain up there.

I just ran over and talked to Phil Harrison, after reading in our comments that he's here in the front row. I asked how he got the choice seat. "Membership has its privileges," he said.

"I hear something might happen here today, what do you think? Are you looking forward to it?"

I'm just happy that I'm able to sit here and don't have to be up there."

I like Phil, he seems like a nice guy.

They just told us to quiet it down. Ah, here comes Jamil Moledina.

He's introducing Shigeru Miyamoto, pointing out that while he's called the Steven Spielberg of gaming it probably doesn't do him justice. It should be the other way around.

Moledina says its time to present a different kind of keynote a personal experience with Miyamoto.

The lights when down and Mii Creator came up on the screen and here comes the real thing, standing on the stage with Bill Trinen and Moledina like he is on the Wii.

"I can't believe its been eight years since I've had a chance to talk to you, you haven't aged a bit, just like me."

Miyamoto is going to use the Wii and the photo channel to do his presentation. Screw power point.

He's going back to the beginning to Donkey Kong. He's showing pictures of kids playing games, of him playing Super Mario World wearing one of those skinny black ties.

Now he's talking about the top games of 1998. Top of the list was Goldeneye 007.

"Within a few years, something changed."

He shows the top games in 2004, topped by GTA.

He said the questions asked of him changed too. People started asking what sort of effect games were having on people.

"Even as sales went up, our reputation went down."

This was a period when Nintendo and myself personally found ourselves at a crossroads.

All of this leads me to my topic today, the essence of any game designer. The creative vision, as well as Nintendo's vision.

He's talking about the Nintendo difference now.

First is the Expanded Audience.

Shigeru says he has his own way of determining how good a game will be. He calls it the Wife-o-meter. It measures the interest level of his wife.

He's talking about how as games became more casual, his wife became more interested in gaming.

Now he's talking up Nintendogs and talking about the fact that why his wife loves cats, he loves dogs.

Now he's talking about his dog Pick.

"Getting back to my point today, this relates to moving up the wife-o-meter. I was watching our dog friends and my wife. Maybe if we could get these people and turn them into game players we could expand the user base. When I eventually showed (Nintendogs) to my wife, she finally started to look at video games in a different way. And then came Brain Age, this is the game that turned her into a true gamer."

Shiggy says that on Valentine's Day he returned home and heard the sounds of the Wii. Initially thought she had waited up for him, but in fact was just casting votes on the Everybody Votes Channel. It meant she had decided to use the Wii on her own.

"This is a big event in my house, It would have been more expected for me to come home and find Donkey Kong eating at our table."

Now his wife brags about being able to beat him on the second Brain Age and she's always playing Wii Sports and making Miis.

"I think this is something that is very lucky for me. She is learning to create things. I think this is her first step to game design."

The second key element to Nintendo's vision is the company's devotion to the game industry. They don't have to worry about diversification or expanding beyond this market.

The entire company, both on the hardware and software side, only think about game design and game hardware design, he says.

Shigeru points out he's had a hand in designing every controller for Nintendo since they got in the business. Which means it was easier for him to work with the team. Those creations, he says, were all group cooperations.

With the creation of the Wii they had different teams working on different elements of both the design and the ideas behind the new console.

Now he is showing off a bunch of different controller prototypes. Finally, they decided on the tv remote-like controller. That final version, he said, was the result of a lot of collaboration between many different teams.

At one point we even wondered with the recent advances in portable gaming, did we even need to have a device that connected to a TV at all.

As a controller the Wii remote does a lot of what I have always dreamed of as a designer.

Nintendo definition of technical progress often focuses on new interfaces.

He's showing off the museum that Ashcraft visited for us awhile back for ancient playing cards in Japan. Ash did a great feature on it and the technology for us awhile back.

Shigeru said he was put in charge of producing http://kotaku.com/gaming/nintendo/shigureden-poetry-readings-151079.php">the interface.

Now he's talking us through the museum, something Ash did quite well. Here's Ash's original story with tons of pictures. Essentially you use a DS to move through the museum and interact with it.

This bring us to the third element: Risk.

None of our risks have ever rivaled the design of the Wii.

:"Frankly the Gamecube was just a half step toward working with a wider audience."

He says that while they were fairly secure about taking the risk, they weren't sure if it was worth taking until E3 and the reaction they got there.

But corporations don't make video games, people do.

My primary focus in development are not the individual pieces, he says, instead he concentrates on the core element of the game. He does that by thinking about the face of the gamers, what they will look while they play his games.

Now he's taking us to MyFirstTouchDS, which shows people's first experience with the Nintendo DS. He's showing us one of a little girl giggling manically as she plays. Now an older person laughing away as he plays.

"Not only is the person playing the game being happy, but the person around them are getting excited and that's what I've always wanted as a designer."

"In my personal case the feeling I strive for is positive. So I keep this image of the person playing the game in my mind until the game is finished. If I think that we have lost our way in a game design, then I'm going to take that risk and, as people say, up-end the tea table."

"When we are creating a game, we have to force ourselves to make the game purely from the viewpoint of the gameplayer. If I feel this so strongly that I think we need to drastically change a spec, I will up end a tea-table."

"I think my vision of a happy gamer's face is a good match for Nintendo's vision."

He's talking about the success of Wii Play now.

Oh, now he's saying that reviewers maybe need to add a new way to score games, something that reflects how fun it is to play a game for people who don't normally game.

Now he's talking about Communication. I hope to god they announce they're getting rid of Friend Codes. Please get rid of Friend Codes. We like names, thank you very much.

Right now he's talking about single player versus multiplayer gaming.

Zelda was confusing to those in Japan, he said. They told him to make one way through the dungeon, no multiple paths. "But I ignored them."

He said he took their sword away from the beginning of the game because then they would know what they wanted to do. And in turn they would start to talk and think about the game, share their ideas about how to beat the game.

It was a new form of game communication.

"In this sense Zelda became the inspiration for something very different: Animal Crossing. This was a game based solely on communication."

He's talking about prioritization now. People are always complaining about not having enough, he says. Not enough graphics, not enough gameplay, but as a developer he needs to prioritize.

:He's talking about applying prioritization to Wii Sports baseball.

The game, he points out, only has one stadium, has no real teams and the characters themselves are very simplistic.

"We had these concerns in Nintendo, but we agreed that our time could be better spent making the game feel more realistic."

They spent all of their time working on pitching and hitting.

It was only by applying this strict priortization that we were able to deliver this game on time.

Being a baseball fan myself I'm really hoping I will be able to play a more realistic baseball game on the Wii.

The final aspect of his personal mission is about tenacity.

He's talking about a indoor pitching machine, a sort of real world toy Nintendo once made that never took off. Shigeru never forgot about that and finally was able to work that into Wii Sports with Baseball.

Next he's talking about the disc drive on the Famicon. He showing how you can draw your own face on the old Famicon.

"So this was coupled with something called the Scenario disc which would animate the face. I thought this would be a great idea, but there weren't many people who agreed with me."

"It awoke from hibernation after several years."

When the released the Nintendo 64 they sold a similar game to members of their service in Japan.

The key features of this program were the wide variety of clothing and the editor.

Then came the e-Reader in the GameBoy advance and the GameBoy Camera.

Again they tried a similar approach. He's got some super freaky avatars up on the screen James Browning it up. The audience is all clapping.

I'm a little scared.

Shigeru said it was obvious that it would be a huge hit, but the Nintendo folks said it's funny, but how's it a game?

When Wii planning begin, again he returned to the same idea.

He said Iwata told him one day that the DS team was working on a similar game and making good progress.

"I said this is exactly what I was thinking of. I went back to my team and said you guys are useless. I then left them for awhile and worked with this other team for awhile."

Shigeru says that while it was always a good idea there were questions they could never answer, like how is it a game or how could it be used. The Wii answered those questions.
Over the years his idea became less of a game and more of a utility because of the increases in technology. They were actually reducing the number of people would play with it. But once they limited it, it became accessible to a wider audience.

"My tenacity finally paid off, but only when I was willing to take the risk of looking at the problem from a different angle."

Today people are so taken with the Miis around the world. Im working on a new Mii channel.

With this channel we are going to let people compare the Miis they created in a popularity contest.

And you will be allowed to do this with people from around the world.

Now he's talking Mario. What happened to Mario 128?

When people ask me what happened to Mario 128, I'm already at a loss of how to answer. Most of you have already played it, but you played it in Pikmin.

You will be experiencing a new element of Mario 128 soon in Super Mario Galaxy.

He's showing a video of Super Mario Galaxy.

The video shows Mario soaring through the air, running around globes, rotating surfaces and shooting from vines with gravity shifting on him.

Wow, some really amazing stuff here and the video just ended.

"You'll be able to play Super Mario Galaxy this year."

My main message is that creative vision isn't just one element of game design it is the most important element."

"We much reach out to those to not only those who don't understand video games, but those who fear it. Wouldn't it be great if we could get them to play games too?"

"We are humans, and our job is to entertain humans and to do that we must always remember the human touch."

"After all if we can convert my wife, we can convert anyone."

And the show's over.

For the first time in eight years, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto will be presenting a keynote. A Creative Vision, presented on March 8 at the Game Developers Conference, will have Miyamoto explaining how a single creative vision drives his work and what his creative process is for making games like Donkey Kong, Nintendogs and Twilight Princess.

"The Game Developers Conference is a place for developers to learn from one another, and I think it is safe to say that every member of the community has at one time or another fantasized about having Shigeru Miyamoto as a mentor and teacher," said Jamil Moledina, Executive Director of the GDC. "By guiding us through his creative vision with a keynote at this year's GDC, Miyamoto is allowing all attendees this incomparable privilege."

This should be interesting. Last year's talks by Will Wright and Iwata were some of the best I've seen from game developers. I'm sure this Miyamoto's will be right up there.

If you're planning on going and still haven't registered you'd better get to it before the end of the month if you want the cheap tickets. Brian Crecente

GDC

SAN FRANCISCO - Jan. 22, 2007 - Videogame development legend Shigeru
Miyamoto will make a rare public appearance at the 2007 Game Developers
Conference (GDC) for his first keynote since 1999. Dubbed "The Spielberg of
Video Games" by Time Magazine, Miyamoto, Nintendo's Senior Managing Director
and General Manager, Entertainment Analysis & Development Division, will
present the talk, "A Creative Vision." In this session, he will reveal how
a singular creative vision drives his work, not only in terms of his
world-renowned software like the Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda
series, but also in generating key technologies, including the current
global phenomena, Nintendo DS and Wii. GDC, CMP Technology's annual
conference dedicated to the art, science and business of games, takes place
March 5-9, 2007 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

"A Creative Vision" marks Miyamoto's first major talk since Nintendo's
release of Wii, and its smash-hit launch titles, Wii Sports and The Legend
of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which all serve as examples of the design
legend's matchless artistic leadership. His much-anticipated title, Super
Mario Galaxy for the Wii, is expected to release later in 2007. In his
keynote, Miyamoto will invite the attending developers to apply the creative
process he will outline in their own distinctive styles.

"The Game Developers Conference is a place for developers to learn from one
another, and I think it is safe to say that every member of the community
has at one time or another fantasized about having Shigeru Miyamoto as a
mentor and teacher," said Jamil Moledina, Executive Director of the GDC.
"By guiding us through his creative vision with a keynote at this year's
GDC, Miyamoto is allowing all attendees this incomparable privilege."

Miyamoto joined Nintendo in 1977 as a staff artist and quickly built a
reputation for himself. In 1981, Nintendo released Miyamoto's creation
Donkey Kong to arcades, launching what would come to be known as his first
masterpiece. In 1985, Nintendo released their Nintendo Entertainment System
with Miyamoto's Super Mario Bros; over time, more than 40 million units of
the game were sold worldwide, and a series of mega-hit titles was born,
including the 1996 Nintendo 64 best seller, Super Mario 64. More than 193
million video games in the Super Mario series have been sold worldwide.

To date, Miyamoto has worked on more than 100 different Nintendo video game
titles, supporting younger video game creators as a producer for Kirby and
Pok mon games. Miyamoto's most recent video game projects include Wii
Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Nintendogs, Super Mario
Galaxy and design work on the Wii hardware. He also was responsible for The
Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Super Mario Sunshine,
Pikmin, Luigi's Mansion and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which has
been called the greatest video game of all time.

In 1998, Miyamoto was honored as the first inductee into the Academy of
Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. In 2005, he and his best-known
creation, Mario, were honored as inaugural inductees into the Walk of Game
in San Francisco. In 2006, he became one of the first video game creators
knighted into France's Order of Arts and Letters.

Miyamoto's keynote, "A Creative Vision," will take place from 10:30am -
11:30am in the Esplanade Room of the Moscone Center's South Hall on
Thursday, March 8.

More than 12,500 game industry professionals will convene during GDC, the
world's largest games industry-only event dedicated to the advancement of
resources, tools and technologies used to create interactive entertainment.
The GDC features more than 300 lectures, panels, tutorials and round-table
discussions on a comprehensive selection of game development topics taught
by leading industry experts.

For more information, or to register for the Game Developers Conference,
please visit www.gdconf.com. The deadline for early rate pricing is January
31st.

Also, don't forget to check out our in-person chat with Gates. In it he talks about the new push for the Xbox team, the Xbox as PC trojan horse, how Zune is following the Xbox model and his own personal gaming habits.

CES 06 Keynote

Our very spunky part-time British bird Alice spotted an intriguing observation made by Rod over at Gaming Edge about Ken Kutaragi's TGS 06 keynote: it's almost point-for-point the same damn speech he delivered 6 years ago.

"We need an open system. Like an internet. People can have a first hand experience: the network world of the game has to be open to everyone."

"Sony has Sony's agenda. But (I) want a very open platform, equal for every person."

"For instance: for movies. You looked at the [..] you can jack in and watch the new world. We are very lucky to live in this era. We try to open the door for the future."

"You can communicate to a new cybercity. This will be the ideal home server. Did you see the movie 'The Matrix'? Same interface. Same concept. Starting from next year, you can jack into 'The Matrix'!"

The first in each set of quotes is from TGS this year. The other is from a press piece from 2000, prior to the PS2's launch

As good old Alice notes, "Naughty man. If only he could break out prices from 6 years ago too." Florian Eckhardt

Wait, it's 2006 - right? [Gaming Edge]

Ribbon cutting, line waiting, and Sony's Ken Kutaragi talking. A lot. Here's how TGS gets its warm-up on. Do note: Before the keynote, we were given a flier that said we could only show 15 seconds of footage from Kutaragi's speech. I asked an event organizer why? Her reply: My boss told me too. Well, we are no match for that kind of logic. Brian Ashcraft

After some weird rumors of a "big" announcement coming out of Ken Kutaragi's TGS 2006 keynote, it has passed with stifling a yawn and feeling "blah" But there's still some pretty hysterical commentary in some of the other liveblogs that covered the event.

First of all, from the lovely Alice, who wrote some really withering remarks in her liveblog, this comment on Ken Kutaragi hating sequels:

Sony finished off with a little finger-wagging at the development community: "why so many sequels", Ken asked, having demo'ed Ridge Racer SEVEN, Virtua Fighter FIVE, Mobile Suit Gundam SIX (at least, if I'm not wrong) and Final Fantasy THIRTEEN. Innovation will come from users, or the power of the network, or by returning game designers to the creative process instead of having them out there photographing cars and landscapes for the next racing game.

And this off-the-cuff diss by the Eurogamer crew:

If you're wondering when Ken is actually planning on talking about games or anything remotely concrete or relevant to gamers, developers or anyone else - so are we!

Finally, from Joystiq:

During the keynote, the DS pictochat room that had fallen silent sprang to life as bored attendees decided to entertain themselves, since it was clear that Ken Kutaragi had no intention of doing so. After the keynote, we head the words "meltdown," "total disaster," and "trainwreck" bandied about the press room. This keynote was worse — way worse — than Sony's E3 showing.

You know, Sony, the second you guys stop fucking up every last details of your launch, we'll cover it. Keep us posted, okay, guys? Florian Eckhardt

Related: http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/tgs06/tgs06-liveblogging-kutaragis-keynote-202427.php

The system would allow gamers to upload content for use in gameplay. Ken Kutaragi did not expand on the announcement, though he did mention Gran Turismo as an example. In that game, he suggested, maps could be created using real world maps. Brian Crecente

Liveblogging the Sony Presser [Kotaku]

Sony has said there will be at least 20 playable PS3 titles on the show floor as well,

TGS06: Liveblogging Kutaragi's Keynote [Kotaku]

Makuhari Messe. International Conference Room. At a little before 10am. AND NO ONE IS HERE.

Well, no. That is not true. No one is in front of us. Not yet. The foreign press has been shoved to the back of the bus, leaving the front of the hall wide open to more important people. Mike just ran off to "fix the hairdo" before the keynote kicks off.

Oh. Wow. The section in front of us filled right up, right quick. Mike is back. They are limiting the press to only show 15 SECONDS of the keynote. That is it. You can film the whole thing, but only run 15 secs.

Mike here. I'm back from fixing my hair — another few hours and it'll be perfect. Now the struggle to use a Japanese Mac goes into full force. More Japanese press is streaming in. Not sure if that body odor is European or not, but it's super strong.

Brian is on his knees, snapping pics of the Weekly Famitsu hearthrob editor in chief and president of Enterbrain. We're in the same row. Maybe our seats aren't so ghetto after all.

It's now 10:03 AM. Kutaragi is now officially late.

Okay, this is bordering on rude. Maybe Sony is going to come out and announce that the keynote has been delayed until Spring 2007. They obviously don't realize we have a schedule; developers to interview, campaign girls to ogle, crappy food to eat.

There go the lights! It's on.

Kenny takes the stage. Good morning, Ken! He's thanking the CESA and talking about the PlayStation 3 launch, which will "open the eyes of the new generation of gamers".

They've brought 200 PS3's to the show.

He's inviting us to "feel" the PlayStation 3 while we're here. Eww. Brian just grabbed by bicep. Trailers are kicking in.

Ridge Racer 7. Looks hot. Looks 1080p, but don't quote me on that. Ships 11/11.

Now Sega's Virtua Fighter 5 gets the trailer treatment. Mobile Suit Gundam: Target In Sight is up next. Lots of bullets, lots of mecha, lots of building smashing.

The E3 trailer for Final Fantasy XIII kicks off. Still looks unbelievably (keyword: unbelievable) amazing.

The lights come up and Ken asks "How did you like that?". Not bad, Ken. Not bad.

Ken's talking about the history of the PlayStation and how computing power, memory capacity, and graphics capabilities have improved. He's quite pleased with himself. He's going on about the controller, the advances in controller interfaces, real time response with games and how that requires fast calculations.

He's making a big push on the capabilities of PC's. "There's a breakthrough that is almost upon us", he says. He's seriously namedropping Oracle and talking about networking and databases. C'mon, Ken! Show more video game trailers! He won't stop. Viruses, cell phones, blah blah blah. We want to see Devil May Cry 4!

What he's finally getting to is that we can use all of this data across a network to do things like pull real map and building data and use a controller to fly through them. He actually just said "if you look at the building permit data... the capabilities are enormous". He's talking about how that data could (is?) used in Ridge Racer 7. Instead of actually rebuilding maps based on real locations, he implies that developers will be able to use real map data to build tracks.

He says that that software is now available, that it will help developers eliminate costs for creating art and assets. Hypothetically, using a global mapping system, users can upload data to a world map. He says that pictures from a handycam can be uploaded to this system. "This is not a pipe dream. Not a pie in the sky."

Now he's going back to search engine functions, foresees personalized shopping, 120% accurate search results for individuals.

Gran Turismo is up for discussion. He's going on about, you guessed it, using real world map and landscape data to create locations like the Grand Canyon and Nurbering. Plus, information about cars themselves must also be collected and then transformed into something the PlayStation can understand. The GT slide says "After four long years in the making does the latest instalment [sic] of the Real Driving Simulator bring us one step closer to driving heaven? Try several hundred steps..." Okay.

He talks about opening up the PlayStation platform for developers. Not sure exactly what this means.

Now Ken moves on to the internet. Users will be able to upload, classify, share massive amounts of content. We now have the potential for massive digital distrubution of music, movies, and more.

Now we're going back in time, 12 years, to the original PlayStation. He talks about the manufacturing problems and cheap cost of using CD-ROM technology to store game data. Touches on the "long-tail" business model potential for the 15,000 original PS1 titles.

He just won't shut up about the network! Let's hope that Sony has their act together on the online gaming front, because if it doesn't live up to Live, it sounds like the business could shatter from within.

We're almost an hour in and Ken isn't slowing down.

Sounds like Ken is saying that users will be able to play PS1 and PS2 titles via emulation over the network, no physical optical media required. The translation is sketchy, but I swear they just said PC Engine games would be playable over the network. Again, don't quote me on that. Hopefully, Ken will get to the PowerPoint presentation soon.

Okay, he's going on more about the network in the form of the Folding@Home project.

Ken is about to wrap it up but is going to show us a video. Rhino Studios Afrika comes up. A grassy plain, followed by gorgeously rendered elephant herds, wildebeasts by the thousands, giraffes walking against the sunset. Hyenas! Zebras! Hippos! I am unnecessarily excited to be looking at digital wildlife. A rhino just charged the camera.

Holy crap. That cheetah looks photorealistic. It just took down some poor gazelle. Owned.

And... that's it. That's it? Huh.

Well, there's a Q&A session coming up, but we're off to interview developers. We'll have footage and reactions up later (a whole 15 seconds worth, but they'll be thrilling I'm sure). Bye!

Penny Arcade's keynote is about to start. I'm sitting in the packed main theater watching a bunch of trailers for some hot looking games. I've seen Assassin's Creed, Guitar Hero 2 and an RPG video for Warhammer Online. Man, that looks hot.

Weeeeee. I've got WiFi. For as long as it lasts I promise to update. So far I'm still sitting around waiting for the keynote to start. Hang and I'll update on the fly.

Ooooh, it's starting. Hit the jump for the liveblogging.

Robert Khoo is on the stage, he's just introduced Alex St. John.

ASJ is a happy man. I think St. J just had his two daughters toss a bunch of bigg ass balls into the crowd. Typiing with balls flying at my face, this must be what Paris Hilton feels like.

Ooh man, now he's throwing ping pong balls and frisbees into the crowd. If I break my laptop again, I'm going to be ticked. Oooh I just beaned someone in the back of the head with a Pilates Ball.

Fuck a ping pong ball just bounced off the space bar.

OK, St. J is talking about the birth of the Xbox. This hasn't, however, stopped his daughters and the crowd from pelting each other with balls.

Fun.

St. J is walking us through the history of the Manhattan Project, Microsoft's bid to move PC games to Windows.

Ah, just interupted himself to light up a cigar. I kid you not.

Oooh, cool he's showing off the official Manhatten Project shirt. There's 35 of them out there in the world. It shows a mushroom cloud and says "Shall we play a game?"

St. J met with Richard Garriott, says he tried to convince him to get into multiplayer gaming.

Oh, oh. They just came and took away his cigar.

"I've got another one here," he says smiling.

This is pretty cool, it's basically a sorta stream-of-consciousness speech about St. J's memories of great gaming events.

He's on to the importance of violence video games.

He met with the gaming team and told them to stop "making this shit" that they needed some blood, action, violence.

"They turned down publishing Quake from id. A little too violent can't publish that game, too fun."

At the unveiling of DIrectX, St. J says that the computer blue screened and the crowd started chanting DOS! DOS! DOS!

At another launch party, Judgement Day, on Halloween. During the party they showed a funny video made by Bill Gates.

"I had to get a trench coat and a shotgun for Bill Gates. I said, Bill we're going to blue screen you into Doom."

They had a haunted house on the campus and Msoft asked the different developers to make the different rooms. id invited GWAR. GWAR brought a 8-foot vagina with 100 phalusis hanging from it and OJ's severed head.

We had the haunted house and every Msoft exec went through it and laughing and covered with goo. Just laughing their asses off.

Several days later, St. J asked someone who went through, what happened inside. They said it was dark and it was chaotic... the punchline is they had no idea what was going on or what they were looking at. Nobody saw a damn thing.

Sooo, let's talk about BunnyGate. We decided to have a Roman Orgy.

One of the lions got loose and tore itself off the chain it was one and started roaming around the crowd. The drunk guy is tapping a lion with a turkey stick, but nothing happened.

There was a playmate, she was Ms. April, and she was also the president of Black Dragon Entertainment, which made games.

I said I think it would be cool if she was one of the sponsors.

We decided to have a skit with her as Cleopatra. Caused a huge scandal, there was an incredible amount of press about it.

Bill Gates couldn't make it. So I had some guy who looked like him and everyone thought it was really him.

Nobody realized they did not see Bill Gates that day.

Now he's talking about the "DirectXbox." I hired Kevin Bachus as my successor.

Bachus and Blackley put together the original pitch to build the Xbox.

I caused a bit of a hostage situation. I had ordered a new Hummer because I had enough Microsoft stock.

He was sitting in my purple HumVee planning the next big DIrect X party.

He had planned to have Bill Gates peel off a fake face on national TV and reveal he was an alien.

He was going to kidnapp the entire audience.

They canceled the event. The Union guys said they wouldn't let any of the contractors who are building in the hanger out unti lthey get paid.

St. J called the union rep and is told, tactfully, that he has a hostage situation and needs a check for a quarter of a million dollars before he lets them go.

Three days pass. He's having food brought into the hanger to feed the hostages.

St. J tells his boss that he's work a deal to have the military clear the hostages out for a mere $60,000. They go for it and the press never found out. But he lost his job.

Funny guy.

We need to liven it up some more. Oh oh, He's going to throw shit again. Duck and cover!

St. J is giving away a jacked up computer. It's a brand new Gateway and some other stuff. Nice, he's mailing everyone free games from his company, WIld Games.

He gave the super computer to the guy who was beaned with a white ping pong ball. Clever idea. Damn, I think I had that.

The Gamespot reporter won it and now he's throwing the ping pong bal lback into the crowd. Nice guy! Brian Crecente

Just in case you thought all of that talk about Will Wright's giant brain hurting everyone during his GDC keynote was crap, I've uploaded a taste of the brainy blather. This is Wright addressing why the existence of life is so... or rather that radioactive...um, that life spreads really...actually, I have no idea what the video is about.

Hey, Sony, how about releasing some official pics of this stuff before everyone and their GameFAQs board admin tears them apart?

PS3 Keynote At GDC On Flickr

Thanks for giving me the honour of speaking before you again this year. In my work I have to talk to a lot of people but as you all know since I still have the heart of a gamer I have most fun talking to you.

Once upon a time way back in the 1980s a company became number one because its products meant fun to young people. But then in the 1990s another company became a bigger brand and its bigger budget took away the first company s number one position. Luckily this company had a product that was still appealing, and this company used a strategy to win over new customers. It would redefine its own business and expand it market to new users. Could this work, this company asked? Well we know the answer, the answer is yes. Because that first company, Pepsi,

[laughter]

became number one, displacing Coke; it stopped asking how can we sell more cola , instead it started asking, what else do people want to drink . Today Pepsi is number one in bottled water, sports drinks and health drinks, and it remains number one in the snack business too. As every game developer understands, the three basic food groups are Fritos, Cheetos and Doritos.

I m here today to share some stories with you. But I began with Pepsi because it demonstrates how thinking differently and holding strong to your strategy can disrupt an entire industry - and in a good way. For some time, we have believed that the game industry is ready for disruption, not just from Nintendo but from all developers. It s what we all need to expand our audience and to expand our imaginations. Several years ago when I began talking about reaching out to casual gamers and non-gamers, people [listened?].

Today the Nintendo DS is succeeding in disrupting the handheld market. Most industry growth last year came from just this one product line. Now people are listening more closely. I know many of you smiled when we demo'd Nintendogs last year at E3, and I m sure not many of you believed it would sell 6 million copies around the world by this time this year! But the success of the Nintendo DS is not just a story of one game, it s also the story of several new software titles creating brand awareness. Let me explain how disruption is working for us. Let me share some information about Japan s market.

When it launched in 2001 the PlayStation 2 sold 6 million units in its first 21 months. The Nintendo GBA reached 6m in 20 months. But the Nintendo DS is selling much faster we ve reached 6m in just 14mths! This number would be far higher if production could keep up with demand. In part the success of the Nintendo DS is due to how we define technology with new features, but more the disruption comes from how we take advantage of [ ]: no system has created more discussion or surprise than our Brain games. The first Brain Training sold 1.9m units in one month!

I have been asked many times how we decided to develop these games. So this is the first story I should share. Where did this idea come from? You can guess. It started where all great creative ideas begin: from a board of directors.

[laughter]

When [person] was a member of our executive company, he complained no one his age played games. Japan is an aging society. He thought a game for seniors might work. I agreed that it was a good start, but it thought it would be perhaps a mistake to target only seniors. Something to appeal to other users as well maybe? So just after E3 two years ago, we were finalizing the Nintendo DS hardware as well as preparing the Nintendo DS launch games. It was a busy time. Even so I asked each of our four main development groups to nominate a few people to start a task force on this. Some of them did not have much experience making games, so I got to play the role of professor.The goal of the task force was to invent a game whose appeal would include everyone young, baby boomers, seniors. Our brainstorms didn t produce any solid ideas, but at that time people in Japan were reading a book; Train Your Brain. 60 days to a better brain . I thought this sort of game would be a good idea. Our CFO was doing these exercises already and convinced me to go forward. Then I consulted with Miyamoto and he got excited too.

Several of the taskforce said maybe exercising game would not be enough. Would there be a way to measure brain age? What an idea! People would compete with their scores! But nothing could begin till we came to an agreement with the author of this book. As we are the same age, I decided to meet with him. He agreed to find just one hour on just one day to talk to me, he was a busy man .. and that day was the day the DS launched.

[laughter]

The meeting lasted 3 hours. We showed him our prototype brain training software, and explained how his mark might translate to other media. He was enthused. The doctor offered to demonstrate evidence of how the software was stimulating brain activity. He asked if he could borrow one of my team members. I said, certainly. His assistant came in with a strange bowl with wires attached. He placed it upside down on my team member s head. It looked like a 1950s sci fi movie! He could prove that the game was changing the blood movement on the surface of the brain. I m sure people at Nintendo wondered how I could spend so much time on this meeting, on the day of the DS launch. But I think it turned out to be a great idea.

Internally we have one thing we call the [development environmental group?]. They d finished a library of tools for voice and sound recording. Simultaneously, handwriting recognition. When they began this work we all thought these functions would be useful for the DS someday but we had no idea how. But then suddenly it seems to Miyamoto and me that they would be a perfect match for this brain game. I was very enthusiastic about the project now! But the development team didn t feel the same way. I assembled a group of 9 and told them this wasn t very complicated. They should be able to finish the first game in just 90 days. Including holidays. I could tell they were not happy! But at least with such a short schedule they couldn t waste much time complaining.

[laughter]

My concern was how the market would react. Few people inside Nintendo believed the retailers would place big orders. It was too different from what they knew already. So at this point one member of the sales team suggested a new rule: when a salesman showed the software, the first 15 minutes of the meeting must be the buyers trying the brain exercises themselves. The retailers hated this idea. They were disgusted! But we gave them no choice.

[laughter]

We could only wait to see how they react. And how did they respond? Well at this point I think I will take a risk and see if we can reproduce those first reactions right here on stage. Here s Nintendo s Localisation team person, with some friends.

[demo, using Will Wright as a tester, hehe]

Iwata: Thanks Will, Jeff and Jamil. I think we have discovered people who are now determined to improve their brain age! That s the secret appeal of this game. Let me add one more note. Those retailers agreed to buy a total of 70,000 units, which was just a few more than our team expected, but I was not satisfied with that number. Between the launch of the first game and the second, you could see a disruption in Japan, something had changed, many new people were playing. We returned some months later with the second version. The retailers quickly placed orders for 850,000 units. Brain Training 2 recorded the biggest first week sales of any DS game ever. Now, the three games, including Big Brain Academy, have sold 5m+ units in Japan. The moral of this story is: if you want to succeed in game development, you need to follow 2 simple rules. First, listen to your board of directors. And second, listen to your chief financial officer.

[laughter]

The development of this game came from our belief that people wanted something new and in this case it took form of a treadmill for the mind. But we learned that the only real way to demo the appeal of these games is to have people play them. In Nintendo Japan we had teams take the game home to show to their friends and family. Suddenly family members who had never played before were playing. So I decided the same thing might work here in America. The time to start is right now. So when we finish today, I thought we should test your brain age and you can show it to a friend and parent. So when you leave this keynote, please, all of you take a copy of Brain Training for the DS with you!

[applause]

Please only take one!

[laughter]

The second story I want to share is disruption of a second type. Not only of a new technology but finding a way of making it attractive to everyone, so opening up to a whole new audience. This technology was the Nintendo wi-fi connection. You used to have connection in Japan, you could use your NES to trade stocks, but the time wasn t ready for networking then. Recently we decided to launch Nintendo wi-fi connection. We knew Animal Crossing and Mario Kart were coming, and we wanted them to have multiplayer wi-fi. Development time was short. Then I wanted the connection to be seamless. Someone around the world or next to you in the same room, it should be the very same experience. This causes problems. Making things easier for players makes things harder for developers.

But the hardest thing would be to decide who to connect with. Online gamers can be a very aggressive, vocal group. For the casual player this kind of interaction can be intimidating. If we only cater to this very vocal hardcore we will never expand the audience, I think. I wanted the wi-fi network to be a gameplay version of MySpace. We referred to it as project houseparty . This idea of comfort, of inviting friends to play in your own home. Well in Nintendo of America this name wasn t very popular. They thought it sounded like a Tupperware party. But no matter what we called it, I believed it should be simple and fun.

It s simple to connect locally when you re in a room with friends. It should be just as easy even if they re thousands of miles away. But fun depends on the players you may want to play mariokart with only friends you know, or maybe your fun is to defeat total strangers. No one playing Animal Crossing wants someone to come in an cut down all their trees and trash their town. I wanted players to have the choice. Freedom to choose. For developers: easy and fun? That would mean the work would be easy OR fun. There were many barriers to overcome.

In the end, it is the freedom of choice that has made the Nintendo wi-fi connection so successful. We ve surpassed 1m players, and 29m sessions, in 18 weeks. This is faster than Xbox Live! It took them 20 months to reach 1m. Of course this has made our wi-fi development team very happy! Here is a picture of them: you can t see the sign they re holding up in this picture, so I shall show you. It says Hello GDC, Wi-fi loves you .

[applause]

They wanted to come but I told them sorry no. But I promised at least I could bring their picture.

[laughter]

This week we added a new game to Nintendo Wi-fi; Metroid Prime Hunters, and it has brought something new. I knew a wi-fi demo would be nothing new to demo to you. Instead the true appeal is seen best if we hold a 4 person demo here on stage.

Demo: this demo will show you something close to mouse and keyboard ! You use the touch screen to aim, then you slide left back front with the control pad. You jump by doubletap.

[Alice: This is amazingly speedy. Very Quake 3.]

I know I am much better watching this than playing it.

When we talk about expanding the market to new players, may times this means new kinds of software. I hope that metroid shows we re not [ ] ..we re catering for all tastes. Tetris DS is something your grandmother would enjoy and you can compete head to head with people over wi-fi! We re bringing out an all new Super Mario Bros game...and because you are all such game fans, I ve decided to reveal one more brand new adventure for you today.

[Zelda clip for DS]: to rapturous applause

So Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is designed exclusively for the DS. It will launch later this year. It s a product from the same team who created most of the Zelda hits in the past. You can play both on DS and Gamecube at E3.

The third story I have to share is the answer to a question that people ask me all the time, how did you have the idea for the Revolution s freehand controller . We started with a simple question: why is it that anyone is comfortable picking up a remote for a TV but that most people are afraid to even touch a normal controller for a game?

Our first meeting started in 2004. First we decided the controller must be wireless. We must give players freedom to move. Second it must be simple, non-threatening. But it should be sophisticated to serve the needs of complex games. And yes, we wanted it to be revolutionary . Finding an answer to all of this was not easy. For more than 6 months two people in Nintendo did nothing but produce sketch after sketch. Each led to more discussion. Dozens of prototype designs. All in all, 15 people were involved trying to figure out the answer. I was considering technology that would incorporate a direct pointing device

Many good ideas were floating around but nothing felt revolutionary. Then last year a young team leader came up with a disruptive idea. What if you could play with just one hand? Mr Miyamoto quickly imagined a small simple wireless device. But we saw an immediate problem how to do backwards compatibility to games requiring two hands? Mr Miyamoto had the answer make the small wireless controller detachable..[..]. this sounded good, but when we shared the idea with our Metroid Prime producers, they objected. They said their game wouldn t work with what we invented. They added another idea keep the one hand device but add another device for the other hand if the game required, like this nunchuk device. We think this is something that will entirely change first person shooters. So now we really went to work.

What did it look like finally? Well it looked like the TV remote control that we first imagined a year earlier: sometimes ideas are like good wine, they just need time. After all the mockups, we were happy. It was wireless, inviting to new players, and something brand new for hardcore players, plus a new interface. But it also represented something else. As you can imagine, this was a very expensive process, not just in research and development but also in manufacturing such an elaborate control system. Some people bet their money on the screen [being the most important innovation], but we put our money on the experience. This is an investment in market disruption.

We believe there is a new way to connect a player to his game. New is good. But there also is an appetite for old. For young players, classic games are brand new! For others, they are a way to feel young again. After we announced the Virtual Console concept last year, I can announce that .. specifically developed for the Sega Genesis and Hudson games will also be ..[ ]

[applause over speaking]

available for Revolution via a budget system. Between them these guys built a library of over 1000 games. But not all the games will be available, only the best of them will be available.

Thank you for listening to my stories this morning, however the most important story of all is still to be told. I hope all of you, the creative force of our industry, will help us write it. It s a story of how disruption will help all of us overcome the growing barriers to game development. We know the main barrier is cost. There is one dominant business model for our industry. Publishers work backwards from a console game at retail for 50-60 dollars. Games must be longer, larger and more complex to compete. This requires bigger development teams. Success is more likely if a strong license is acquired. But even then huge amounts of money are needed to market that game to a mass audience. It s understandable that publishers feel most comfortable with sequels as a way to manage risk, but as a result our business is beginning to resemble a bookstore where you can only expensive full-set encyclopedias. No romance novels! No paperbacks!

In our business too often people with a fresh idea don t have a chance. I believe if Tetris were presented today here s what the producer would be told: more levels, better graphics, cinematics and you ll need a movie license to sell that idea!

The producer would go away dejected, and today Tetris might never be invented. We understand [ ] the future zeldas, marios and metroids will be bigger masterpieces. But this doesn t have to be the only business model. We want to help you make new ones. We offer a combination of opportunities that can t be matched. Our controllers .. it allows for game creation that isn t just dependent on the size of the development budget. Our Virtual Console concept is the videogame version of Apple s iTunes music store. Since I announced this virtual console, other people have been interested in digital downloads. But they will not be the same as us: for we will be truly disruptive. The digital download process will bring new games to the widest possible audience of new players.

When I think of what faces all of us right now I imagine what it must have been like for the new explorers who first set foot on new continents. Our adventure is still ahead of us! We are committed to creating an environment where all of you can prosper. I began by saying that disruption is not just a strategy for us. We ve disrupted handheld and it worked. We disrupted wi-fi and it worked. We disrupted the definition of a game, and that s worked. In a few weeks [at E3] you will understand how better to disrupt a console game!

We do not run from risk, we run to it. It should be our goal to reach new players as well as current players for all of us. Show them surprise. Our reward, to convince them overall: videogames should just be one thing. Fun.

Fun for everyone!

Thank you!

Full Speech [Wonderland]

Took forever to upload this, but it should be working now. Straight from the front row at Iwata's keynote.

Weeee, I get to keep my front row seat for Will Wright's keynote entitiled What's Next in Game Design.

The stage is bare and the big screen is showing a bunch of cosmos images. Oh, Wright is up there tinkering around with his Powerpoint presentation.... and he's gone.

Check back on the jump for more as it happens.

Sorry about that. My cell's battery completly crapped so I couldn't post live. Here's what I wrote from the event.

Wright decided to focus his talk on how to come up with concepts and research them for a game.

He said that books are his primary inspiration. Most of my games are usually started by one book.

Sweet, Wright just said Otaku. Now I need to get him to add a K.

His point: Learn to develop your inner (k)Otaku.

Now he s talking about making Sims into Sims Online and why it didn t work. His answer, no way to control time. You re stuck with the boring stuff.

He also found that like 60 percent of gamers use cheats in Sims, but you can t do that in online.

The game became an unmanageable behemoth, he said, which is sorta what drove him to Spore.

Players keep surprising us.

Spore came about because of Wright s fascination with astrobiology.

The rest of Wright s schizophrenic speech intertwined astrobiology and game development research and as funny as that sounds, it worked quite well.

Wright broke his talk into bite-sized chunks, taking turns talking about his technique for taking a concept, research it and turn it into a workable game design and then flopping over and talking about aliens and the evolution of life in the universe.

I won't try to summerize anymore, but I will post a ton o pics for you, many of which are from concept art for Spore.

I'm sitting in the front row of the Nintendo keynote waiting for things to get underway. Word is that there will be little announced today, but I'm probably wrong.

Check back on this post for more as it happens. Hit the jump for more.

Update 1:
Iwata just took the stage. He's going through the short history of Nintendo competition with Sony and Nintendo's decision to redefine their business strategy.

Oh, funny guy. He was actually talking about Pepsi and Coke not Sony and Nintendo.

The three basics food groups for gamers, according to Iwata:

Fritos, Cheetos and Doritos.

Iwata's talking about Nintendo's decision to reach out to casual gamers through the DS.

"For some time we have bleived that the gaming industry is ready for some disruption."

Update 2:

Iwata is walking the audience through the tremendous success of their portable line and how it compares to the Playstation 2 in Japan.

The Brain Games, he says, are an example of the possibilities of the DS.

Where did this idea come from? I m sure you can guess it started where all great games begin, from a board of directors.

The story goes that an exec complained he didn t know anybody his age who plays games.

I thought it was a good idea but I thought it was a mistake to create something that would appeal just to seniors.

I asked each of our four development groups to nominate someone to start on a task force.

The goal, he says, was to make a game that would appeal to everyone from young to old.

Update 3:

Once the book, Train Your Brain, hit the radar, Nintendo decided to look into translating into a game.

Iwata decided to meet with Dr. Ryuta Kawashima on the launch day of the DS in Japan.

The three-hour meeting enthused the doctor and he and Iwata started talking how to do it.

Kawashima slapped a device on a Nintendo team member s head to see how playing games could work out different parts of the brain.

Iwata met with the development team and told them they should finish the first game in 90 days.

Initial orders for the game, Iwara said, weren t very good. To get around their fears of the unknown, the Nintendo sales people got the buyers to play the game in their meetings.

Iwata just called up a localization team member for the Brain Age game to the stage.

It looks like a demo is on hand.

Update 4
The U.S. version, as we ve reported, will include a fairly robust Sudoku program. (I ve played the heck out of it and love it.)

Nintendo just got Will Wright to get on stage to play Brain Age. Awesome. There s also a G4 guy and the director of GDC up there. They re about to have a brain off.

The Nintendo guy won hands down, but Wright did amazingly well for having never seen the game. He actually dropped his age sizably (a good thing) by the second game. (I ll br posting up a video of the brain off later).

Update 5

Iwata says the first Brain Age had initial orders of 70,000. The second game had initially orders of 850,000 and that wasn t enough, he says.

The three Brain Age games have sold more than five million copies to date.

The moral is to follow two rules in game development: listen to your board of directors and listen to your chief financial officer.

Iwata calls Brain Age a treadmill for the mind. At Nintendo, he says, they have people take the game home and show it to friends. The end result is a whole new market segment.

Iwata is going to give out copies of Brain Age to all the members of the audience. Sweet.

As we leave, we get a copy. It may not be an HDTV, but the crowd goes wild.

Update 6

Iwata s talking about the game network now. He said they knew they wanted Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing Wild World to be online. They also wanted their connection to be seamless.

Initially, they thought WiFi should be set up as a social network, almost a sort of MySpace for the DS, Iwata says.

Iwata says NiWiFi is doing great and way better than Xbox Live. Of course it s free.

Oh, now he s talking Metroid Prime Hunters.

Another fun demo coming up.

Looks like a Metroid Prime Hunters play-off. This time it features some of the development team.

Man, this is going to be a pwning.

(I ll have another video of this in a bit.)

Update 7

Iwata s back. Now he s talking about Tetris DS (Joel totally owned me in this the other night.)

Now he s talking New Super Mario Bros.

Iwata just announced the Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass designed exclusively for the DS and will launch later this year. (I ll have a short shaky cam up in bit.)

Ah, finally. Revolution stuff.

He s talking about the Revolution controller.

Our first controller meeting was in 2004 and we had several requirements. It needed to be wireless and the look of the controller had to be simple, non-threatening but had to be sophisticated enough to server the needs of complicated games.

Two people spent six months sketching proto-types, Iwata said. Dozens of prototype designed were created.

Many ideas were floating around, but nothing felt revolutionary.

He s talking about the struggles the new controller went through to gain internal acceptance.

By adding a second attachable device, they decided they had their controller.

Some people decided to invest on the screen, we decided to spend ours on the gaming experience. It s an investment in actual market disruption. We believe a truly new type of gaming entertainment can not be realized unless there is a new way to connect a player to the game they are playing.

Wow, amazing Revolution announcement.

Games specifically developed for the Sega Genesis will be available on the Revolution.

Iwata is talking about the cost of games now.

Update 8

With Nintendo Revolution we offer a combination of opportunities which cannot be matched.

I consider our Virtual Console concept the gamer version of Apple s iPod download service.

Iwata says that while others will have a download game service, it won t be the same because this process is a part of Nintendo s DNA.

At Nintendo we do not run from risk, we run to it. We are taking the risk to run beyond current boundaries.

Video games are meant to be one thing: Fun.

And that s it s over. No price and little news, but still very fun.

Harrison said that the redesign has nothing to do with the current lawsuit involving their dual shock and Immersion. Harrison said the new controller design would be "unveiled" at E3. Oooooh, maybe this time it will look like a bola. No wait, that's the revolution controller.

First, he declined to talk about whether the hard drive will be included in the PS3. Instead, he said that all PS3 games will require the hard drive.

Hard disk drive is a key feature for the Playstation 3. It is a key feature of the platform.
Developers are designing their games to support a hard drive. Every single game will support a hard drive.

I find it a bit frightening that he wouldn't confirm that the HD would be included.

Hit the jump for more.

Harrison wouldn t talk about how many PS3 s would be available at launch, begging out from any details.

You can see from our history that Sony entertainment has been very effective at matching demand. This is the fastest ramp up we have ever had.
Harrison added that the delay won t hurt the PS3.
It doesn t put us at a competitive disadvantage at all. Throughout our history we have never been the first to market.
Harrison said the e-commerce system announced during his keynote would eventually hit the Playstation Portable.

Harrison also declined to talk about PS3 launch titles, saying they would be unveiled at E3.

The basic service for Playstation Live will be free, Harrison reiterated, with only third-party and micro transactions costing anything. In other words, you will be able to play online for free and, at least it sounds like, there will be no tiered system like what is found with Xbox Live.

Harrison said that a new controller will be unveiled at E3, and Harrison stressed that the Immersion lawsuit has nothing to do with its final look.

Now, onto Playstation 3, probably the main event, Harrison said.
More ducks, GOD NO, not more ducks.
Harrison apologizes and then shows a picture of him getting hammered by a thousand real rubber ducks. Weirdness.
More ducks demo.
The demo shows thousands and thousands of fish swimming around under water. Light shines down and of course, ducks rest on the sea bed.
Why ducks?

PS3 INFO
Full backwards compatibility from day one. Also fill BluRay. The console will support legacy SD to full HD TV support with HDMI.
Production capacity will ramp up faster to over one million a month. No word still on the launch numbers.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

Harrison says the final version of SDK shipping to developers will be shipping in June.

And now for some more tech demos. Richard Lee and Andrew Bowell from SCEE and Havok show off people getting blowd up.
Think fancy rag doll physics in high def. The demo has thousands of these fully 3Ded, fully skinned people getting blown into the air amidst the sounds of explosions and screams.

Simon Hobbs from SCEE is up next to show off racing physics. The car s detail is amazing. It shows off imperfections of paint in the car and gunfire shows how the car is ripped to shreds procedurally.

This is from a forthcoming title we haven t announced yet, Harrison says. Hmmmm.

Harrison is going on about Blu-ray now. First he points out that Blu-ray has way more capacity than anything.

Now another demo showing a crowded street scene, which Harrison insists is running in real time 3D. He says Blu-ray is absolutely necessary to deliver that sort of fidelity.

Next up another demo.

Dylan Jobe, the producer and director of Warhawk, takes the stage.

Nice, they re showing what looks to be a playable game. A futuristic fighter zooms around large ships. Lasers, missles and gun fire dance around hitting enormous capital ships and hundreds of smaller fighters dogfight. Jobe points out that the clouds and waves are all rendered live.

All of the lighting, which is high def, is being rendered live. It looks amazing.

Update 2:

They re showing off what the Playstation 3 HUD will look like. The right side is a blurred bar that shows images of other players. Each picture shows a little email icon, video icon and phone icon.

Pop-up windows show that a message can pop up saying someone is online or has sent you a message. Very Live like.

Now they are showing the shop HUD. It shows a pop-up for a racing game called Motor Storm. It lets you buy and download new buggies and new tracks.

Now they re showing off Motor Storm. The game has a bright yellow buggie doing donuts in a mud bog. As it drives around the buggy leaves tracks that can actually rut the ground and effect game play.

Update 3:

Insomnia s is showing off an amazing shooter, Resistance Fall of Man. Giant scorpions scuttle toward the player. Man-sized creatures take cover and shoot it out with the player. It looks like they are very far along in development. Wow, he just used a weapon that looked like a ball. When it exploded it spewed nails all over the place.

Very cool, but still just a shooter.

Insomniac guy says they decided to develop for the Playstation 3 mostly because of Blu-ray and the console s muscle-power.

The PS3 can do more for a frame than any system that has existed.

Now Insomniac is showing a non-interactive demo. The game starts with a slow walk through a tunnel filled with moving gears. Outside flying cars zoom by in a busy and endless city. It s all very colorful almost cartoon like, but still real-ish.

Now the camera is dropping down through the city and chasing a train. IT s zooming through corridors crammed with robots. There s just an amazing amount of stuff going on.

Holy shit, the game is a Ratchet and Clank dealio. Sweet!

Update 4:
Harrison is back up.

We will create and service a network of game communities. Our revenue streams will be more complex. With all of the things a PS3 can do we can augment our revenue streams.

I believe games can have the same social currency as a great television show. I believe games can and will fill the same roll in our future

Harrison says money will come in from tradition game sales, network sales, episodic content, in-game advertising, subscriptions, mobile gaming, game object sales and merchandising.

This is what I call the wheel of fortune.

Harrison is announcing a new inititive that will only be available online through their service.

The SCE Worldwide Studios e-Distribution Initiative sounds like a Sony-backed indie game development studio. The site is officially live at www.playstation.com/beyond

Update 5:
They re showing a game called SingStar that is popular in the UK and abroad. They hope is to allow content download for the PS3, so you can doanload specific songs and then karaoke crazy with them. And yes it will support online and camera play. Looks fun, but I don t see any guitars. So sad.

And that s the shows ladies and gentleman. Me and about everyone else is having lunch with Harrison in a bit. I ll make sure to update you again after than.

The show's about to get underway. Phil Harrison will be taking the stage in a few minutes to, hopefully, drop a few bombs. Check back on this post for updates throughout the show.

First up: Phil Harrison, gets quite an interesting intro. He is, apparently, a GOD!

Harrison starts off by saying that more than 100 million PS2s and more than One billion pieces of software. Globabal market share is more than 60 percent.

"Our job is to grow the market, our job is to lead and our job is to innovate."

(MORE AFTER THE JUMP)

Harrison just welcomed David Jaffe, creator of God of War, to the stage. I think they re about to demo it. Sweet. (Man, he s like Brian short.)

There are millions of gamers who will continue to game on the Playstation 2 God of War 2 is totally on track to be better than the original God of War. We brought a clip from the game."

The short clip looks amazing, it shows the lead taking out some big ass monsters and some amazingly large enviroments.

The whole clip is packed with some sweet ass Greek God on Greek God takedowns.

Update Tons more updates from the keynote here.

You can also check out Harrison's Q&A and the PS3 Live announcement.

I'm sitting in the second row at the Sony keynote waiting for things to get underway. The show gets underway any minute. I appear to be the only one in my row with EVDO access, weeeeeeeeeeeee!

I'll be living blogging the announcements so make sure to check back a whole bunch.

Until then hit the jump for some keynote shots.

I'll be there through Thursday night and looking at my schedule, it doesn't look like I'm going to have much free time on my hands. I'll make sure to live blog as many keynotes as possible. Of course, I'll also be updating the site throughout the day.

Stay tuned for all of the breaking news, excited speeches and interesting conversations.

In an interview with GameDaily Biz, Jamil Moledina talks about the conferences highlights:

BIZ: What can you tell us about Phil Harrison's keynote? Will we finally get some new information on the PlayStation 3?

JM: The answer is yes. In general, platform providers have a unique opportunity at the GDC to share knowledge with and inspire the people who will make or break their consoles, namely the game developers themselves. With that in mind, this GDC keynote, along with the Nintendo keynote by Satoru Iwata, have both been in development for several months, and contain significant editorial value and developer takeaway. I strongly encourage you to attend both platform keynotes.

Talkin' GDC with Jamil Moledina [GameDaily Biz]

Sony President Phil Harrison will give the Sony keynote speech at next month's Game Developers Conference. The speech's title? "PlayStation 3: Beyond the Box." Nice double entendre there, if I do say so myself.

New Keynote Announced [GDC Homepage]

I'm sooooo psyched that I'm going to the Game Developers Conference this year. First I heard Iwata was speaking, now they've confirmed that Will Wright will be delivering a keynote as well.

His handlers are a bit tight lipped about what he will talk about, but they did say that he will "explore topics related to next-generation game design and development strategies."

Man, I hope I can get in to listen. Last year I think they ran out of space. I feel like I'm going to a rock concert. I'm such a dork.

We all still love your PC games. Just because we own Xboxen and PS2s and even a few GameCubes doesn t mean we don t still have room in our lives for a hulking, memory cranking computer tower of doom. We know we take you for granted, but sometimes we just need a reminder of all you do for us.

Enter Flagship Studios president Bill Roper, who back-handed the gaming world back to reality with a peppy keynote at the Games Convention Developer Conference about the place PC gaming has in the world.

I'm going to get on my PC soapbox for a few minutes. PC games are on the verge of a major market shift, as PC developers and publishers start to move from selling CDs of single-player games to retail outlets, to selling online games to those with broadband connections. We're already seeing primitive multi-platform games on the PC... Players want to get online and play.

That was followed by another shout-out to the PC by Intel's Germany Segment Manager, Consumer Software and Solutions, Arne Peters.

When it comes to playing games, there are more devices than ever before. But one thing I would subscribe to is that the PC platform is very much alive. Despite all the discussions surrounding the next generation consoles, PC has always been there, and will remain... PCs are the centre of online gaming.

Ahh, I needed that. I m going to run home right now and crank up a my copy of Guild Wars and get to crawling. (I could always return to World of Warcraft which I still have somehow managed not to cancel yet. Oh my God, what is wrong with me?)

Roper predicts major PC games market shift in Leipzig keynote [Games Industry]