Ex-Newsweek reporter Croal wrote about his meeting with RE5 producer Jun Takeuchi in the June 2009 issue of Edge. The column is not available online yet (though a related preceding one is).

For background, Croal had given an interview to my former site MTV Multiplayer, in April of last year, in which he talked about how the first trailer for the Africa-set Resident Evil 5 had struck him differently than anything he'd experienced in the Spain-based Resident Evil 4.

Croal won fans, enemies, friends and critics for his discussion of the trailer. So what happened when he finally sat down with Takeuchi in February at the DICE show?

As he relates in his Edge column, the two men talked about the game's controls, Dead Space, Left 4 Dead and then addressed some of the racial imagery stuff.

Takeuchi talked to Croal about his designers' and artists' research trip to Africa, though the producer couldn't remember which country the members of his team visited. They talked about addressing the complexion of the zombies and the feedback the developers received about these issues as they were making the game. It reads as if no voices were raised, no objects thrown.

In conclusion, Croal wrote:

"And as Takeuchi went on to explain that the enemies with the grass skirts and spears were seeking to defend the ruins from intruders and that he'd been inspired by Indiana Jones movies, I felt like I once again understood where he'd been coming from. That a two-to-three-week trip to unspecified African countries and looking at a number of movies set in Africa alongside pop-cultural inspirations like the Indiana Jones series simply hadn't been enough to sufficiently educate him or the team about he legacy of the imagery that they were tapping in to and, as a result, they'd lost control of their message. That's my take on it, of course; I doubt that the man who sat across from me and thoughtfully answered all of my questions would agree."

There's more in the column, which is on sale on newsstands now and will be at Edge-Online.com in the next month.

And with that, this chapter's closed?

(Full disclosure: I consider Croal a good friend. Furthermore, I played through the first half of RE5 with him on split-screen co-op this past March.)

This time, GameTrailers' Geoff Keighley, Game Informer's Andy McNamara, N'Gai Croal's N'Gai Croal and Kotaku's me sit down to chat third-party developers. What third-party developers are you eagerly awaiting news from?

Today, Croal posted his final update on Newsweek's Level Up.

I had a chance to speak with Croal recently about why he decided to leave Newsweek after 14 years at the magazine.

"The simple answer is that Newsweek had buyouts last year in may and then in the fall they reopened the buyouts," Croal said. "I didn't consider the first one, but the second one, I was like, ‘You know I'm 36 years old… I studied film making in college and I directed plays and short films and stuff like that, so I've always had a pretty pronounced creative side."

"I always thought I was going to do end up in movies or something else, but I kind of got sidetracked into journalism. It's one of the most amazing things that's happened to me. But when the buyout came around again, I said to myself if I don't do this now when am I going to do it?"

"That's really what it came down to. My editors never said to me don't cover games."

There are changes being made at Newsweek, a redesign and a shift in tone, but Croal says that didn't mean that there wasn't a space for video games.

While Croal hasn't cemented his future, he plans on shifting more of his time away from covering games and toward helping developers.

"I want to do something more creative than when you are on the journalism side of things," he said. "I think it's going to be a combination of things, I'm still in the process of figuring that out. There is some interest in me consulting on games, that's something I'm interested in as well.

Croal says that he believes there is a stratification that's going on in the video games industry. That developers concentrate too much on an audience of 12 to 24 year olds who have plenty of time on their hands to play, but forget that the older audience has less time to play.

That's something he thinks he can help with.

"As a journalist you sort of get a broad perspective across multiple genres," he said. "I've covered things here ranging from pop music to movies and other things. To be able to bring a bit of a broader perspective, I think that might be useful at a time like this for certain developers who want to expand their audience."

That doesn't mean Croal will give up writing about games entirely. He will continue his column in Edge and says that there are other outlets interested in having him write about games for them.

"I wont be doing pre-release coverage of games the way I was for Level Up and Newsweek because that can be a conflict of interest," he said.

Instead his writing will be more akin to commentary, he said. Let's hope that he continues stirring the pot as he did so famously with Resident Evil 5.

The two will be talking with Fallout 3's Toff Howard and BioShock's Ken Levine in what they're calling Vs. Mode Live. The one hour discussion and debate will center on the current generation of video games and what's to come.

You can also expect, according to Totilo, a "freewheeling exchange" which is much better than those other kinds.

We'll be on hand at Comic Con, though it's still unclear whether we made the list to get into this unprecedented event.

Announcement: Todd Howard, Ken Levine Will Be MTV’s Featured Guests At NY Comicon Panel

N'Gai delved into the multiplayer aspect, too. He's looking to DLC and other online buildout to really deepen the game. "Once the Scotsmen absorb all the feedback from the millions of gamers who take the plunge into its online experience, we have no doubt that something special is in the offing," he writes.

Naturally Rockstar pumped N'Gai for the possibility of being covered in Newsweek, hard copy. (His reply: "Stay tuned.")

Partying Like A Rock Star, and Reflecting on Grand Theft Auto IV Multiplayer With Rockstar [Level Up]

The group covers a variety of topics, including the responsibility of a game journalist, the role of the reporter versus that of a critic, the impact that the emerging casual game market is having on game journalism, and one question from an anonymous contributor about the pay structure of gaming sites. One of the most interesting discussions, though, surrounded the influence giving a score to a game has on not only the game, but whether people will read the article:

"I hate game scores," Crecente said. He cited a film reviewer's quote that if you put a letter or score on a review, no one will actually read it. Keighley agreed that the score-driven culture bothers him because the industry views the score as "objective." "You never hear someone say [that] about a music album," he noted.

On the other hand, I'd think that the game score means a lot to the game industry, since that number (or letter, thanks to 1UP) may be what makes or breaks someone's interest in the game. Those scores are also a factor for advertisers when looking around at what games and publishers to support. Having that score could potentially be what gives other games from a publisher or franchise a future. The rest of the discussion is definitely worth taking a look at.

Best of GDC: The Game Industry Confronts The Press [Gamasutra]

In the latest post, Seth Schiesel manages to neatly sum up my main criticism of this Gaming Club concept.

This has been great, but my, haven't we been serious! All of us have been so busy weighing industry trendlets and esoteric points of game design that I almost fear we have come to resemble the chin-stroking, self-styled sophisticates that made the arts writer such a lampoonable stereotype in the first place.

What Slate's Gaming Club lacks is a layman. I think it would be much more interesting if every fifth post was from a less-erudite fellow, who instead of responding with countless paragraphs of exhaustive analysis and intellectual musings simply responded with, "Um, what?"

The Gaming Club [Slate Magazine]

How To Say 'N'Gai' Like A Pro, According To The 'End-Guy' [MTV Multiplayer]

...you're going to see the creation of a new, low-end SKU this holiday. It'll likely remove integrated WiFi, memory card reader, and most controversially, all backward compatibility. (Remember, there's still some back-compat hardware in even the new "software only" back compat SKUs; removing the remaining CPU is a significant cost savings.) You'll see a new WiFi dongle made available. And finally, this low-end SKU will likely come with a smaller 40 GB hard drive. The low-end price will be set at $399, with the higher-end 80 GB SKU dropping to $499.

Oh, and the dread(ed) wig was rejected by Croal this time around. The new wager? A steak dinner that is bound to taste better than some old wig.

Another Day, Another Microserf, Another Bet on Sony Hardware [levelup]

It was held at the popular Sushi Roku restaurant, a fact lost on me until two days later when a famished Team Kotaku spent three hours waiting to actually eat food at the place on our own. (I actually left to go pass outsleep before it arrived.) Set on Ocean Boulevard overlooking the pacific, the restaurant was packed to the gills Tuesday night with Sony execs, pr folks, developers, journalists and just-dead fish.

Shortly into the party, I was chatting with some writer friends when Phil Harrison walked up to say hi. We talked about Microsoft's press conference for a few minutes before he cut to the chase.

"So, what are the odds on the hug?" he asked. I was a little flummoxed, there was no way he could be talking about Fahey's prediction that Peter Moore, Phil Harrison and Reggie Fils-Aime would participate in a group hug on stage. No way.

He was.

"Why, are you going to do it?" I asked.

"If I can bet $5 on it."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that Kotaku's fantasy pool was paid out solely in Kotaku Points.

A few minutes later I spotted Kaz Hirai over in the corner, behind, I swear, behind the sushi making counter. Was Kaz rolling sushi? Probably not.

The place was packed, people were sucking down beers and eating raw food when Jack Tretton took to the mic to announce that the first wave of party-goers would be ushered into the room to watch the latest Killzone 2 demo. With a black band, I was in the second batch. When I finally got in and watching the thing, MTV's Stephen Totilo and I stayed around to try and cajole the developers to let me have a go.

We managed to convince some of the development team and even some of the PR folks, but were finally shot down just before the third, sliver-banded folks made their way in.

Later that night, or perhaps the next day, N'Gai Croal had a bit more success and got his hands on the game. Something he mocked me about later in the week. Croal is totally becoming my Red Baron.

The name Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare doesn't just inspire the jaded eye-rolling of yet another military FPS. It causes Croal (and presumably countless others) to yawn with boredom and type angrily "enough is enough." With a name that smacks too closely of EA's Battlefield 2: Modern Combat and is nearly indistinguishable from Medal of Honor, Band of Brothers, Company of Heroes, and Hour of Victory, something's gotta give. This is probably the easiest part of game development, so why do these names suck?

Honestly, I can hardly tell any of these games apart anymore. When THQ announced Frontlines: Fuel of War, I was sure someone was joking. The answer isn't more colons and ofs, guys, it's fewer.

Can anyone out there come up with anything original anymore? Are publishers writing scripts to generate these dull brands? One thing's for sure, don't hire N'Gai to come up with your title. While it would certainly be interesting, there's no way in hell it's fitting on the box. Michael McWhertor

Critical Hit: Day of Disgust, or, Why Can't Publishers Come Up With More Original Titles for Their Videogames? [N'Gai Croal's Level Up]

It is, I would think, no big secret that MTV's Stephen Totilo and Newsweek's N'Gai Croal are two of my favorite gaming writers. (Clive Thompson would be the third, in my trinity of game writers)

So N'Gai's latest feature over on his Newsweek blog is for me, quite a thing to behold. In Vs. Mode Totilo and N'Gai take one another to task over their feelings on God of War 2.

I'll summarize, poorly, their takes on the game here, but you really, really owe it to yourself to go over there and read the whole thing because it's the sort of game critiquing that you will almost never find.

Totilo comes down on the side of liking God of War 2 but not really being blown away with it. It is a marvel of game creation, he argues, but it's also very much more of the same. And not just because it's a sequel that uses some of the same sorts of setting and themes, but because the game, like its predecessor, uses "level design to define a character's personality", the personalilty of Kratos. And the sequel relies heavily on this same sort of trick.

While he doesn't come out and say it, I think Totilo might also be trying to say that this not only fails to move the development of the game forward, but the development of the character of Kratos forward. He remains fairly unchanged from the first game. And I have to agree, that is a disappointment, though one I didn't totally grasp until just now.

N'Gai comes back swinging, pitting Totilo's encyclopedic knowledge of games against his skills at comparative media analysis and using it to try and pick apart his gaming sensei's arguments.

N'Gai argues that referencing your previous game, either in story or in design, is an acceptable form of homage often used by music producers and rappers. Intratextuality in games is a good thing, he says. He goes on to point out that David Jaffe freely borrowed from the cannon of video games to create his magnum opus, so why shouldn't Cory Barlog do the same.

He conclusion places me squarely on N'Gai's side of this argument. Sometimes a good game is just good, it doesn't have to shake the bounds of its genre or reinvent something. Or as N'Gai put it, misquoting screenwriter and journalist Cheo Hodari Coker talking about P. Diddy's music: God of War II may not be perfect... but it is unquestionably a game that will make you shake your ass.

Damn straight. Brian Crecente

Read this, or you can't call yourself a gamer [Newsweek]

279 days ago, give or take a few hours, J Allard should have appeared on stage at Microsoft's 2006 E3 press conference wearing a dreadlock wig. He should have done this after losing a particularly bad bet to Newsweek's N'Gai Croal.

For those of you not up on this fascinating bit of game lore, here's the story from N'Gai's mouth:

The following May, Microsoft hosted a small dinner at Morton's steakhouse in downtown Los Angeles for a handful of journalists attending that year's E3 trade show in Los Angeles. The Xbox side included Allard, Xbox Live marketing manager Aaron Greenberg, and PR maven David Hufford; on the media side, Game Informer editor-in-chief Andy McNamara, G4 producer Tom Russo and Business 2.0 writer and TV host Geoff Keighley were among the invitees. As the steak was consumed and the wine imbibed, the subject of Ken Kutaragi's new baby—set to be unveiled in less than 48 hrs—naturally arose once again. And within a few minutes, it was clear that our positions hadn't changed in the slightest.

So fueled by the liquid courage of Morton's finest Cabernet, we gentlemen decided on a friendly wager. The bet: whether the PSP would reach worldwide shipments of 10 million units within the same 12 month span of time it had taken the PS2, give or take 3 months. We took the pro; Allard, the con. If we were correct and the PSP hit its mark, Allard would wear a dreadlock wig for the entire month of May, including the week of E3 2006. But if Allard were right and the PSP missed our agreed-upon milestone, he would get to shave our dreads. Onstage. During the Xbox E3 2006 press conference. In front of 1,500 attendees. (Did we mention that wine was involved?)

Naturally, what happened in Los Angeles didn't stay in Los Angeles. Word spread among the folks at Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, other publishers and among a few of our fellow journalists. During a September 2004 interview with Kutaragi in his Tokyo offices, Molly Smith, then head of U.S. PR, asked us to tell her boss of our wager. We did. He chuckled. We asked him whether he thought our six-year-old dreads would be safe from the covetous Allard. He looked us dead in the eyes and said "Yes." And just ten months after the PSP's December launch in Japan, Kutaragi was proven correct, leaving our prized dreads intact.

While Croal would have most assuredly manned up and gotten shaved in front of a hooting crowd of Microsoft employees and journalists, it looks like Allard ducked out of the show entirely.

But to be clear, the bet has him wearing that wig for an entire month, and we saw him at the hotel prior to the show, wig-free.

It is time, Allard, to put your money where your mouth is. I don't plan on letting this go until I see a picture of you in front of a sizable crowd wearing said wig. Do the right thing, you know you've gotta. Brian Crecente

Double Life: The Level Up Staff Looks Back, Wistfully, At Its First 100 Posts [Level Up]

Ps. Happy 100th Level Up, consider this our present.

Let's go straight into it.

Some people were saying these questions were written in advance. Phil has never seen these questions. Phil thanks for doing this.

Thanks for indulging our little experiment here. Just backstage he said can you give me a little steer at the first question, and he just laughed at me. We can't talk about two things, I'm told. We can't talk about things that affect the stock price and we can't talk about my personal life. Which I found strange. No questions about my jail sentence or my stint in rehab.

In North America the price of the PS3 is $500 and $600, what kind of games will you have that will convince gamers to buy in at that price point?

Plenty is the short answer. Something that we've done in Europe is social aspect gaming, Singstar has sold over 7 million units and we're developing Singstar in PS3. I did bring a PS3 with a couple of game demos on it. If Ngai asked a bunch of boring questions, we could just play Motorstorm. We've got this concept of the Singstore, I can see a preview of the track, streamed off the server. Some of you will notice that we have background downloading now. [Applause]

You can save video performances.

[N'Gai points to the SingStar attract screen featuring a sunset.] Are those ducks flying by?

Yes, CELL rendered ducks. [Laughter.]

I can upload my video performance captured via a USB camera and other users can rate and review my performance. Thanks for letting me show this.

Do you have any examples of a users homepage?

You can see user info, themed weeks, who's the best Elvis singer this week. We call this "my SingStar", you can imagine this applying to a lot of products and services.

Do you think that kind of interface should be done on a game basis or on a higher level, like the friends section of the XMB?

This is I think the best integrated example we have. We do need to expose this to that layer of the XMB. We have some initiatives to move to that.

Many developers have said that Microsoft's support of development, from documentation to tools, has been better than Sony's. How does Sony plan to narrow this gap?

We can always provide better tools, documentation, service. I think its a myth that we provide documentation in Japanese. Many components were made all over the world. The CELL was made in Austin, Texas. We did in the past, in the PS1 days, work with Japanese documentation and translated docs from Japanese to English. We can always do better, its not something under my management, but we need to take those comments on board.

Programmers feel that while Sony platforms have more power, they feel that coding for them is generally a pain in the ass?

PlayStation One was the first platform to ship with an integrated OS, that integrated library, where we extracted the developer from the metal. They said, we want to work directly with the system. On PS2 we gave them access, they said no, we want the OS again! We want that abstraction. We are always struggling to get that right.

I think David Jaffe put it well, "You can have a development environment that does everything for you, but it will abstract you so much that you won't be able to get the full power of the machine."

The programmers that do the best work are the ones that like to get the deepest into the technology. That's why I think we have the right approach with the CELL design.

When Ken Kutaragi announced a PS3 worldwide release date in 06, why did Japanese developers still get special treatment in the form of dev kits?

That's not true. The first dev kits that were purely CELL based went to American developers.

I stand corrected.

EA also got a head start on dev kits. When is there going to be equal footing for all developers?

There was no preferential treatment. Some of the EA folks drove up from Redwood to get theirs from the office, so maybe they got them a little faster. [Phil defers to EA dev in the crowd for clarification.]

[Croal summarizes the audience member's comments] In his opinion he thinks the dev kits were equally distributed this time around.

The major distinction between PS2 and Xbox was that Xbox Live was superior than the roll your own approach Sony took with the online experience. Why didn't the PS3 online service match Xbox Live?

The day you buy the console is the start of a long term relationship that will evolve over time. The chipset stays the same, but the software will change over time. The features we have for delivering online content today, which are free of charge, are an open platform for developers to customize as they see fit. We'll add features over time.

My friends at Redmond say you can't offer the feature set because it's free.

No that's not true. While it may be free to the consumer, we know there are revenue streams for us to earn in other ways. We have a number of things that we'll announce shortly that will add clarity to that statement.

What do you see as the key features of Xbox Live and what is Sony's timetable for meeting those features?

PlayStation 3 shipped with content that delivered a pretty compelling online experience. Resistance 40-player multiplayer on day one was amazing. Thanks, Ted. Motorstorm is shipping in the next few weeks and someone has said that twelve player races in Motorstorm is as much fun as humans should be allowed to have with their clothes on.

What's the timetable for some of those features to the PSP?

We've got some interesting plans that we want to share at the right time.

Gabe Newell told Game Informer that "The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels, I think It's really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted. 'd say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a 'do over'. Just say, 'This was a horrible disaster and we're sorry and we're going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it.'"

It's a great quote.

He isn't the only developer who wanted me to ask you this. Why wasn't the launch postponed until many of the launch issues could have been resolved?

I have deep respect for Gabe's output, not so much for his comments in the press. He and his company have made two of the best games I've ever played. I have to ask this, though. By what measure is the launch unsuccessful? We had people lined up in stores in three continents for days. We sold everything we shipped into the marketplace. We continued to supply week after week. We have supplied more products in Japan, Asia and the US, and more software than we did for the PS1 and PS2. "What's wrong with this picture" is my view? We can always sell more, have more software.

The European launch is on track for the 23rd of March. The supply is on its way from China to European ports as we speak.

I just hope the Suez Canal doesn't get closed, otherwise we're all screwed.

When we announced the Emotion Engine, people said it would be too hot, too large, that we could never make it in high volume. People said the CELL would be too hot, it could never be made in volume. But we're exceeding targets.

Why do you think there's so much amneisa or skepticism in publishers and developers if that's the history?

I don't know. It baffles me. We haven't done a good enough job in sharing the issues with our stakeholders. But having said that, the challenges we had when launch PS1 and PS2 were quickly forgotten. I think we'll be the same on PS3.

With all the PSPs features why do you think it's taking so long for developers to create great, unique PSP expereinces?

I think we can go deeper, we can explore more capabilities of the machine, rather than borrowing trends in TVs and consoles.

What are you playing that's not on your platform?

Personal or professional? I've looked at many for competitive analysis. I was recently playing Loco Roco's next version. There's plenty of content on the PS3 and PSP to keep me entertained. Actually I've been playing a lot of this...

[Phil fires up duck demo. Super Rub A Dub.]

People say I have an unhealthy like of ducks. This is a title played entirely with the SIXAXIS. It requires no buttons. It will be available in a few weeks from the PlayStation Store.

One of the most powerful things about the PS3 is the "Install Other OS" option. It won't be Vista. It'll be Linux.

Do you have plans to have homebrew on the PSP?

The system doesn't really lend itself to having a secondary OS.

[N'Gai moves to questions from the audience.]

With Renderware off the market, and UE3 the de facto standard, is there any kind of alarm at Sony that you really need to start providing more compartmentalized tool sets?

Linux is for the non-professional game community, its not for games that will ship on the PlayStation Network or Blu-ray. It clearly takes time for developers to get all the functions of PS3, but if you look at Motorstorm, these distributed architectures work. As far as the rendering pipeline is concerned, there are other solutions besides Unreal Engine. If developers and publishers, don't want to use Unreal, don't buy it.

Time runs out, and Phil and N'Gai leave the stage. Now to hunt down Phil and ask about Killzone! Michael McWhertor

Newsweek's N'Gai Croal spent the weekend hanging out in Miami checking out the Electronic Arts affair leading up to this year's Super Bowl.

With EA monopolizing the rights to make NFL-branded games, this was it in the way of video game related Super Bowl happenings. That's right. no more Sony sponsored Game Before the Game. Instead we had Sony's Challenge a Playmate event, featuring Madden. And we had Microsoft's Madden Bowl 2007.

Croal says EA insists it is working to change their tone, making it "less arrogance, more humility." Could this change in demeanor have something to do with 2K Sports announcing that they are getting back into the videogame football biz? Who cares? What really matters is how the games look come publishing day. And for that I have to say a big thank you for the renewal of competition in this market. Brian Crecente

Double Life: At the 13th Annual Madden Bowl, Electronic Arts' Football Marketing Director Christopher Erb Discusses The Future of Virtual Pigskin [Level Up]

Last week Newsweek's N'Gai Croal spoke with Gamehead's Geoff Keighley about his Internet-only show Bonus Round. The three party Q&A is worth a read if you've ever seen or read anything Keighley has done, which is almost 100 percent likely. GameTrailers sent N'Gai this trailer for their upcoming show which has Sierra Online president Ed Zobrist, Gamefly co-founder Sean Spector, and Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter all talking next-gen game pricing. Brian Crecente

N'Gai Croal, that lucky bastard from Newsweek, got a chance to hang-out with Will Wright backstage prior to the developer's appearance on the Colbert Report.

In fact, he even got to hitch a ride in the back of a black town car to the show.

Wright told Croal that Spore, expected to hit in the second half of 2007, is currently in pre-alpha five, a stage of development for the game that means that EA employees outside the development team can play it from beginning to end, though the game is still quite rough in spots.

The game is expected to hit Alpha next spring.

Croal, while seated in the certain luxury of the Colbert Report's green room, asked Wright if he felt pressured by EA head Larry Probst's recent statement that Spore could be EA's World of Warcraft. To which Wright replied, that everyone at EA's making that claim right now in hopes of getting their project green lighted.

Croal watched the show from the stairs next to the audience seats and thinks that Wright held his own. I still think that Colbert wasn't at his best game, and that Wright seemed scared stiff. Brian Crecente

Exclusive: Behind the Scenes of Will Wright's Visit to the Colbert Report [Newsweek]

The most intriguing comments from Probst on the matter come after the CEO says that the Playstation Portable needs to be cheaper and in a different form factor for EA to change their current, port strategy for the portable.

I think what moves the needle is a new form factor that's smaller than the existing unit, at a lower price, and hopefully that price is $100 lower. This is pure speculation, we don't know what Sony's plans are. But it would not be hugely surprising if they had that lower priced unit at $149 and then a more fully-featured upscale unit that retails at $249 or $299. Again, that's pure speculation. We don't have any inside information on that.

Probst goes on to say that it would help to have more interoperability between the PSP and "other platforms". Amen. Let's get that PS3 PSP hook-up in overdrive already.

In this chunk of the interview Probst also touches on EA's next break-out hit (Spore, of course) and the chances of Warhammer Online posing any sort of threat to the MMO goliath World of Warcraft. Brian Crecente

Loot: The Larry Probst Interview, Part II [Newsweek]

No, I'm not being sarcastic, I mean it. That's how you get it done, you know your shit and you don't let a scowl scare you away from a question.

Take for instance this fantastic question and follow up by one N'Gai Croal, of Newsweek, during his recent interview with Electronic Arts CEO Larry Probst.

Here's my first question. PS3 is supply constrained and will likely remain so until early 2008. 360 demand is—

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Early 2008?

You don't think so?

I don't think they'll be supply constrained that long. You think all through 2007 they'll be supply constrained?

Well, looking back to the PS2 launch, Sony shipped a million units for the Japanese debut, most of which sold in the first 48 hours. But for the Japanese launch of PS3, they only shipped around 80,000 units, more than ten times fewer machines. So they're nowhere near meeting demand in Japan. In North America, Sony shipped just under 500,000 units for the PS2 launch, but only 200,000 units for the PS3 launch. So they don't have enough supply to meet demand here. Sony launched in Asia with less than 20,000 units. And early next year, they have to start stockpiling units for the European launch in March 2007—assuming that date doesn't slip. So we're looking at four territories where supply probably won't meet demand, and by the time Sony starts to catch up, it'll be holiday 2007, where the combination of big AAA games and gift-giving will increase demand even more.

So you're not believing their projection of 6 million units shipped by the end of March?

That's right, Croal knows his shit and don't forget it. Now hit the jump to watch a master at work.

You absolutely have to read this entire interview, but here are some of my favorite bits of Croal-flavored schooling.

On why EA should have made more Wii games:

But as long as PS3 remains supply constrained, and as long as Xbox 360 demand is falling short of Microsoft's projections, that leaves Nintendo's Wii as the only platform that has both high supply and high demand. Yet the bulk of EA's AAA titles are oriented towards the PS3 and the 360. How have you adjusted your development plans in light of where things stand right now?

We have two titles at launch for the Wii. We will have five or six in the market by the end of our fiscal year [March 31, 2007.] We have a number in the low to mid-teens planned for [the next] fiscal year. I think we're going to catch up pretty quickly in terms of a broader portfolio on that platform.

On Zune bending over users to satisfy Universal Music Group:

Universal Music Group, the largest record label in the world, gets a dollar in royalty from every Zune digital media player that Microsoft sells, in addition to the lion's share of revenue from every one of its songs—

Wait a minute. They get a dollar for every Zune?

Yeah.

Do all of the music companies have that deal?

As far as I know, it's just Universal Music Group.

Why do they get that?

That's a good question for Microsoft. Now as I was saying, your company is the world's largest videogame publisher, yet by contrast, you pay Microsoft a royalty for each and every one of the games you publish for Xbox 360. Given the importance of brands like EA Sports, The Sims, and Need For Speed, shouldn't you expect similar terms for the Xbox 360 as were granted to Universal Music Group for the Zune?

Good idea. I'll take that up with [Microsoft president of entertainment and devices] Robbie Bach the next time I see him. But in all seriousness, Microsoft has been very supportive and a really good partner as a hardware company. We're pretty satisfied with that relationship. So you're telling me that the Warner guys don't have that same deal?

Not as far as I know.

This interview had to, HAD TO, involve at least one spit take. Check back later for parts two and three which delve into why EA hates the PSP so much and Probst's take on Microtransactions and innovation. Brian Crecente

Loot: The Larry Probst Interview, Part I [Newsweek]

Newsweeks' N'Gai Croal has a fascinating interview up with David Jaffe about Sony's version of Xbox Live Arcade, called (oh, so poetically), e-Distribution Initiative or eDI.

In it Jaffe talks about how he now wants to concentrate on making pop songs (small downloadable games for the service) instead of operas (Twisted Metal and God of War). While he also talks about his most recent game Criminal Crackdown for the PS3, the most interesting and intriguing bits of the interview are where he starts to talk about what he feels are the differences between the Xbox 360's Live Arcade and the PS3's eDI.

I would say that there are pop songs by Ashlee Simpson and pop songs by the Beatles. My goal is to write pop songs like the Beatles, not like Ashlee Simpson. If you want Ashlee Simpson pop songs, go to Xbox Live Arcade. Actually, they're the oldies station, because all you're getting is Scramble and Pac-Man.

Most suprising is just how into these smaller games Jaffe is. When asked if he would go back to making operas like God of War or Twisted Metal, Jaffe says no, unless someone made him.

One day, I may have no choice. Phil [Harrison, president of Sony Worldwide Studios] is a really big believer in this service. It's not just a place to put shovelware. It's our version of HBO original programming. Not everything is suited to a 50-megabyte Blu-Ray disc. It doesn't mean those games don't deserve a platform. This is probably the first time since the arcade days that games of this type have had a viable home. So far, Sony seems really supportive of me staying in this space.

I don't completly agree with Jaffe's assessment of Live Arcade, though recently it has been getting flooded with retros and ports. This is why I love competition. If Sony really is trying to turn their eDI into the next HBO, then Microsoft is going to have to up their game to stay competitive and it's the gamers who win. Brian Crecente

The Artist's Way: Sgt. Jaffe's Lonely Hearts Club Band [Newsweek]