DICE Summit 08 had much to offer with the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, and games such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, BioShock, and The Orange Box came home as big winners, garnering four awards each.

Individual achievements by Mike Morhaime and Ken Kutaragi were also recognized by The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Details in the full article.

Renowned game developer and Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi recently expressed his distaste for former Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Ken Kutaragi, criticized Microsoft's marketing strategy in Japan, and expressed no plans to make games for the Nintendo Wii as of yet.

The founder of, arguably, the most successful RPG franchise in history told Electronic Gaming Monthly that he didn't like Kutaragi and his creation, the Sony PlayStation 3. "The machine's architecture is tricky, and I don't like Ken Kutaragi," says Sakaguchi. He offered no explanation as to why he's no fan of the father of the PlayStation line of game systems.

When asked about Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sakaguchi said he found the games in the platform far superior to those of its rival's. Microsoft's problem, he says, is how to reach out to Japanese consumers. He said Gears of War is a great title but nobody knows what it's about. He then describe the Windows Vista commercial as a "terrible" one.

Next on the plate was Nintendo. Amazingly, Sakaguchi had a high regard for the Wii. He said "The system is intriguing, but right now, I have no plans on making a game for the Wii."

By the looks of it, videogaming giants are kind of warming up to third party developers this round of the console war. We're not pretty certain about Microsoft but Sony mentioned the other day that they teamed up with Namco Bandai to establish a new studio and Ken Kutaragi himself will head the new venture.

Likewise, Nintendo awarded today one studio with a developer status. What's interesting about this is that the said studio, Telos Productions Inc., is composed of just nine employees and is operating in one of Prince Edward Island's cities, Charlottetown.

We don't mean anything here, but if Nintendo did execute such a move, it could only mean that Telos is very, very good. The president of the company Sean Yeomans is still quite baffled as he said:

Nintendo provides authorized developers with highly proprietary information, and many of Nintendo’s licencees also rely on recommendations and referrals to authorized developers. For these reasons, Nintendo exercises a very high level of care in approving only a select number of authorized developers.

Yeomans, however, added that they are likely to begin developing new IPs for Nintendo around 2009. According to the official, there are certain hurdles they must overcome first like office facilities, equipment, personnel and financial resources. Currently, they are working on an original IP called City of Saints and Sinners as well as a computer game titled Shadow of Panopticon.

We've seen lots of stuff happen during 2006. The next-gen consoles alone got the the gaming industry at the edge of its seat. The handhelds also had their own booms, bangs, and whistles, too. There were thrills and spills, exclusives and not-so-exclusives-anymore, and lots of other gory stuff to mix into the whole brew. Of course, none of this would be possible without the movers and shakers of the gaming industry themselves.

The recent edition of Japanese magazine Famitsu published the final roundup of their biggest Japanese industry presidents. They took the presidents of Japanese companies and asked the vox populi to vote on how they each gave an impact on the industry and how much influence they held sway on the market. Here's the final list:

1. Nintendo's Satoru Iwata - 201 votes
2. Sony Computer Entertainment's Ken Kutaragi - 181 votes
3. Mistwalker's Hironobu Sakaguchi - 126 votes
4. Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto - 41 votes
5. Konami's/Kojima Productions' Hideo Kojima - 33 votes

We're sure you have your own thoughts and opinions about this list. We're just reporting how things tallied up at Famitsu. It's not much surprising - these people really are the industry's biggest movers and shakers. As to the ranking of these five, yeah, you can say it's contestable. But the fact still remains that, no matter how you jumble around this party of five, you'll still end up with these guys topping the list.

It's not your soundcards, folks. This video doesn't have audio. It's not your eyes, either. The on-screen text is German. We believe this is the first and only YouTube video of the foreign film/silent film genres. A perplexing combination that we know will leave most of you saying those three infamous letters: w, t, f.

Fortunately, early viewers of “Wii Fights PS3/Xbox 360” have provided the rough translation and you can read it as you watch the video.


Check out the translation after the jump!

It's not really news that Nintendo will not have anything on the show floor of the Tokyo Game Show, after all, they never do. However, this year, there will be no Nintendo executives making a keynote speech at the show. Last year, Iwata used it to reveal the controller for what was then known as the Nintendo Revolution. It completely stole any thunder anything would have at the show. The only game to come close to receiving the type of attention the RevMote did was the trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4.

This year, it looks like Ken Kutaragi will be doing the keynote in Iwata's place. Sony fans should be excited because Kutaragi has big shoes to fill. After Iwata's speech last year, there's a lot of anticipation for this year's keynote. Seeing as TGS is so close to the launch of the PS3, expect full details on what's going to be happening!

What about Nintendo though? The only other game conference before the launch of the Wii, which should be shortly before the PS3, is the Leipzig Games Convention next month. It doesn't seem likely that Nintendo will reveal their stuff there, although it is the third largest games convention of the year (behind E3 and TGS). Maybe Nintendo will hold another Space World this year? The last time they did it was to reveal information for the Nintendo GameCube. We'll keep you posted!

We recently featured a lot of photos of the Wii which were taken at some foreign demonstration event. Well, there were a lot of pics in that one, but it seems that the Wii's power supply is a bit camera shy. We caught a picture of the Nintendo Wii's power supply which has an uncanny resemblance to that of the Cube.

The next-gen gaming console war is indeed heating up, and this time it looks like we've stumbled upon a next-gen power supply size war. The Xbox 360 is already boasting its power brick and the mighty Sony was also considering taking the power module out of the case, to improve the temperature. If you could recall, we earlier featured one of many Ken Kutaragi interviews wherein he hinted on the possibility of an external power supply.

The heat is on indeed, no pun intended. But what do you think about this new development? Tell us what's in your mind through your comments.

What the next gen console war will look like by King Cobra

Yes, all the rumours going around gaming circles are true! Sony and Microsoft informants have leaked hidden images from top secret headquarters. As you can expect, the images are a little below the belt towards the opposition, revealing their rival's weaknesses, whilst others have hidden messages about their own console.

NOTE: Xbox 360 fanboys may want to avert your eyes. Sony fanboys, don't get too excited. Nintendo fanboys and anybody else: enjoy the show!

Without further ado, here they are....after the jump.