This warfare will now take place across 25 different maps scattered across five separate worlds, each with their own environmental configurations.

Once Jobe finished with his presentation, we were unleashed upon the pre-alpha build of the game, which feels like a fast paced version of Battlefield 1942 with the art style of Timesplitters.

Warhawk will wind up taking to the skies and the ground sometime this September, although at this point, Incognito and SCE aren't sure if the game will be available solely as a downloadable title, a store bought disc, or a combination of the two.

Another facet of the multiplayer is the "On Demand Split Screen" feature, which will allow another player to join someone next to them on a couch without needing another monitor.

- There will be spaceship battles, and they will return to the arcade style of the first game, rather than the wannabe Colony Wars/Wing Commander sequences of Going Commando.  
- Rail gliding levels will be back for the first time since Going Commando. The article doesn't say if the rail gliding or spaceship sections will use motion control, although it would be nice.
- Competitive online multiplayer is in the air and may not be included. Online co-op is more likely, but not 100% confirmed.
- Captain Quark will return, and will be the only returning supporting character.

La semaine dernière encore, nous revenions sur les nombreuses frasques médiatiques de Ken Kutaragi qui fut un temps responsable du lancement de la Playstation 3 chez Sony avant d'être remplacé à la tête de Sony Computer Entertainment par Kaz Hirai fin 2006. Et même si Ken Kutaragi continue de superviser les agissements du groupe SCE, à titre honorifique, il a alors clairement payé ses erreurs de communication répétées qui firent souvent défaut à l'image de Sony et à celle de sa nouvelle console de jeu, la Playstation 3. Si bien qu'en juin 2006, Ken Kutaragi s'offrait une place de choix dans la liste des "10 personnes qui ne comptent pas" publiée à l'époque par le site Business 2.0 en marge d'un dossier qui revenait sur les 50 personnalités du monde des affaires qui, au contraire, étaient les plus influentes.
 
Et bien sachez que la maison "brûle" à nouveau, la faute au PDG du groupe Sony, Howard Stringer himself, qui s'est amusé à faire état du manque de professionnalisme de Ken Kutaragi lors d'un récent entretien accordé au Wall Street Journal. Trois mois tout juste après que Newsweek, premier magazine économique américain, ne revienne lui aussi sur l'incompétence de Kutaragi à conserver les exclusivités de la PS3 (GTA IV et Assassin's Creed en première ligne), Howard Stringer révèle les difficultés qu'il a rencontrées à devoir travailler avec Ken Kutaragi et notamment le manque de "communicabilité" de l'ex président de Sony Computer Entertainment. L'entretien en question révèle donc que Ken Kutaragi multipliait les prises de décisions relatives à la Playstation 3 sans en informer les autres cadres de Sony et qu'il était quelqu'un qui gardait pour lui les problèmes qu'il pouvait rencontrer. L'un des exemples cités par Howard Stringer concerne l'attribution d'un nouveau budget, plus conséquent, accordée à l'équipe de recherche sur la Playstation 3 "sans en demander l'autorisation au conseil général d'administration de Sony".
 
Aussi, c'est Ken Kutaragi qui décida, seul, de la baisse du prix de vente du modèle 20 Go de la Playstation 3 au Japon. Une réduction à laquelle Howard Stringer avoue qu'il "aurait adhéré s'il avait été prouvé qu'il s'agirait de la clé du succès de la console sur l'archipel", ce qui n'est pas le cas comme nous pouvons l'assurer aujourd'hui. Howard Stinger révèle également avoir fait les efforts nécessaires pour se rapprocher de Ken Kutaragi en étant le plus proche possible de ce dernier et "en dînant davantage avec lui" qu'avec sa propre femme, ce qui n'a rien changé aux problèmes de communication rencontrés. Voilà qui explique pourquoi Stringer a pris la décision d'alléger Kutaragi de ses fonctions en décembre 2006...

"en dînant davantage avec lui" qu'avec sa propre femme, ce qui n'a rien changé aux problèmes de communication rencontrés

Moving to enhance its PlayStation 3 game console, Sony today plans to announce new online capabilities for it, meant to draw gamers into Sony’s cyberspace community and allow them to share entertainment content they have created, à la YouTube.
 
The centerpiece, a new service called PlayStation Home, is to become available to consumers in the fall, said senior game industry executives, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans. PlayStation Home is meant to build on and surpass somewhat similar offerings from Sony’s competitors Microsoft and Nintendo by allowing users to create persisting online identities that record players’ achievements in different games. As players progress through a game, they will unlock various virtual prizes that they can then show off to friends and rivals, the executives said.
 
Phil Harrison, president of Sony’s worldwide game studios, is expected to announce the new service today in San Francisco at the Game Developers Conference, the top convention for game designers and programmers. Shigeru Miyamoto, a top Nintendo executive and perhaps the world’s most famous game developer, is also scheduled to speak tomorrow but is not expected to make any major announcements. For its part, Microsoft earlier this week announced a contest that will award $10,000 to the best new game for its online Xbox Live service.
 
At the moment, though, the attention of gamers and the game industry is squarely on Sony as it tries to generate new momentum and buzz around the PlayStation 3 after a lackluster response when it was introduced in November.
 
In addition to squawking about the PlayStation 3’s price — $599 for the top version — critics and players have two major substantive complaints. Sony clearly hopes that developments this week will go a long way toward defusing each of them.
 
First, users have said that there have not been many great games designed exclusively for the PlayStation 3. Most of the big-name games for it have also been released for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (less expensive than the PlayStation 3) and, with the notable exception of the alternate-history shooter Resistance: Fall of Man, the few exclusive titles for PlayStation 3 have largely failed to impress.
 
Mr. Harrison said the new MotorStorm, the high-octane off-road racing game that Sony has been championing for months, may answer those complaints. The glossy demonstration version of this game has already garnered raves online, and the full retail version hit store shelves yesterday.
 
“I really think MotorStorm could be the killer app for the PlayStation 3,” Mr. Harrison said in a telephone interview on Monday. “MotorStorm is the first title we’ve shipped that really hits the high notes of what the PlayStation 3 is capable of. That means really advanced physics and artificial intelligence, the graphical quality and the online gameplay free of charge.”
 
These days just having great games does not necessarily make a great game system (though it is obviously the most important factor). The second, and broader, complaint leveled at the PlayStation 3 is that while it is clearly a powerful machine, its basic operating software and the PlayStation Network online service have been clunky at best, especially compared with Microsoft’s slick, easy-to-use Xbox Live service.
 
This criticism perhaps reflects Sony’s most intractable problem over the last decade: its difficulty building strong businesses online, whether in digital music, in which it essentially ceded the category to Apple, or in console gaming, in which Microsoft has come on strong.
 
It is a deficiency that Sony seems well aware of and that today’s announcements are meant to address. Kotaku (kotaku.com), a popular gaming blog, reported preliminary details about PlayStation Home last week. Mr. Harrison would not discuss specifics of today’s planned announcements but he laid out a clear road map of how Sony intends to improve and augment its online service.
 
“Last year was a year of hardware,” he said. “It was all about the hardware launch, specifications, hardware technology. This is the year of software, about developing new services and, crucially, the migration from pure packaged goods, which has been the traditional delivery mechanism in our industry over the last 25 years, to something that blends the network and online services into the game experience.”
 
By way of example, Mr. Harrison mentioned the PlayStation 3 version of the karaoke game SingStar, expected to be released in May, first in Europe. “By taking SingStar to the network, we can allow users to choose which songs they want to sing and download them from the service,” he said. “The even more interesting thing from my point of view is that the users’ performances can then be shared with one another over the network, and users can score and rank each other.”
 
Sony’s overall plan, Mr. Harrision said, is to allow users to create their own content within games so that the entertainment experience begins to feel more organic, rather than planned.
 
“The packaged media approach on its own offers a closed experience,” he said. “You can only enjoy the game experience that the game developer put on that disc. But with the increase in adoption for the Internet and also the increased bandwidth, the Internet has democratized the audience to become content creators, as well as content consumers, and create what I call emergent entertainment. We’ve seen that with things like MySpace and YouTube and Flickr. Now we want to take those kinds of collaborative experiences and make them more central to the gameplay experience.”

Le grand gourou de la communication chez Sony C.E.A, Mister Jack Tretton, s'est laissé allé à quelques confidences qui, je n'en doute pas, feront sans doute encore couler pas mal d'encre et de salive dans les prochains jours. En s'épanchant joyeusement auprès du magazine online Gamepro, le jovial JT a répondu à ses interlocuteurs, notamment à propos de la manette SIXAXIS, tant décriée depuis sa création pour avoir perdu (question de droits) la sacro-sainte vibration chère aux joueurs depuis des années. Question/Réponse, là maintenant tout de suite, et ne croyez surtout pas que nous sommes la 122ème roue du carosse hein :
 
Question du journaliste :
 
N'avez-vous jamais pris en considération le fait de sortir une manette SIXAXIS "Pro", avec notamment des sticks analogiques décalés et la vibration, pour un prix plus élevé ?
 
Réponse de Jack Tretton :
 
Nous avons une approche limitée concernant la manette PS3. Si vous voulez vraiment avoir autre chose que cette manette, nous laissons cela aux éditeurs tiers. Là nous parlons d'une approche territoriale. Vous verrez prochainement des périphériques de Sony C.E.A. qui s'adresseront avant tout aux américains. Je n'ai rien d'autre de particulier à ajouter, mais nous sommes évidemment ouverts à un changement de la manette Sixaxis si cela s'adresse aux joueurs nord américains.
 
Et là tout est dit.