Just noticed that Fallout 3 has announced:

E3 2005: Fallout 3 Confirmed
But what have we seen?
by David Adams

May 19, 2005 – Just a few days ago we spotted a promising sign from the E3 show floor which suggested that old-school RPG players might see a dream realized: Fallout 3 is actually happening.

As these things usually go, the truth turns out to be good and bad news. The good, even great, news is that IGN confirmed with Bethesda that Fallout 3 is indeed in development. Sadly, however, the sign we saw didn’t point to a demo or any showing of the game; it was meant to confirm the title’s existence.

While we aren’t going to check out Fallout 3 this week as we’d hoped, it’s reassuring to know the apocalyptic RPG franchise — rescued from the fading embers of Interplay — is alive and wriggling. Given Bethesda’s impressive RPG track record (The Elder Scrolls, anyone?), Fallout is in good hands. We’ll just have to wait a little longer to see what magic those hands are working.

Secondly Microsoft claims that they are going to announce their plans for the rest of the year in a press conference in Japan this July. I for one can’t wait.

Also noticed that they are reporting on Ratchet: Deadlocked, over at GameSpot, which is going on my list since I’ve already got all the previous titles even though I haven’t finished all of them.

In spite of some news reports that the X-Box users would have to buy their X-Box 1 games again, that has now been dismissed and Microsoft says that the games will need to be recompiled but users will not have to pay for that, most likely it will be in the form of new .xbe files located on the hard drive which would be located on it at launch and updated via Life! later if necessary.

Edit: Microsoft’s engineer is now saying that they don’t need to be recompiled and will work straight out of the box, most games will work but they only promise that top games will:

“We’re not sure where this came from, and is incorrect. At launch, Xbox 360 will be backward compatible with the top Xbox games. Our goal is to have every Xbox game work on Xbox 360. You will NOT need to purchase a new ‘version’ — your original games will work on Xbox 360.”

Lastly IGN has reported their hand-on opinions on the Revolution. It doesn’t contain much info but at least it’s something.

Also noticed this synopsis on next-gen console prices that looks really plausible:

Considering each companies track record…

Sony Released the PS and the PS2 at $300 USD
They released the PSOne and the PSTwo at $150 USD
They released the PSX at $500 USD

MS Released the Xbox at $300 USD

Nintendo Released the SNES, N64, and GC all at $200 USD
and the GC-DVD player released in Japan worked out to about $350 USD

I think each company is going to base their pricing on what they’ve priced things at in the past.

the PSX was a PS2 with DVR functionality, if Sony thinks the PS3 will do so much more than play games I don’t think it’s out of the question that they would launch at $400 or even $500 USD. Nintendo has always launched at $200 but considering the hardware (the leaked specs show it a hair more beefy than the 360) and the fact that most other consoles will probably be more expensive I wouldn’t put it past Nintendo to shoot for a $250 or even $300 launch price (though I’m hoping for the $200). MS says they found a way to turn a profit on the sale of the 360 and I can’t imagine they would purposefully launch the console at more than the $300 they did last time.

So My predictions
Xbox360: $299 USD
Revolution: $250 USD
PS3: $400 USD

Related posts from the blog:

• Article of the week (22/2009): Rising Interest Rates Finally Start to Matter
• E3 – More X-Box 360 info
• Monkey Island SE & Tales of Monkey Island
• Which console shall I get
• E3 – PS3 Game Screenies