Since console argum...er...discussions are popular here, I figured I'd start a thread to talk about whatever's happening at the Tokyo Game Show (which just started).

Gates made the keynote address, which I watched streaming from xbox.com. It was lame, like most keynotes. =) They debuted the new Japanese controller and really tried to make it clear that Japan was super-important, yadda yadda yadda. I think he said in the first minute that "Japan is the center of this business" or something. It was a good idea and well represented, but then Gates went off in his lame Bill Gates Coporate Speech way, using words like "Richness" or "experience" as often as possible. Sigh...the man is bright, and important, but doesn't know how to speak to gamers.

Anyway, the biggest Xbox news from the show so far was that Sega entered into a ELEVEN title deal with Microsoft. Four games were revealed: Gunvalkyrie (used to be a DC title, now Xbox only), Sega GT 2 (yay! The first was highly regarded as being quite good competition for Gran Turismo 2), Jet Grind Radio Future (yay again), and a Panzer Dragoon sequel. No word on whether it's like Panzer Dragoon Saga, an RPG, or a rail shooter like the first two. Either way I'm stoked, because I loved all three games (and I'm not the biggest rail-shooter fan).

Tecmo is doing Dead or Alive 3 for Xbox, and it's pretty much exclusive--the deal included Microsoft doing worldwide distribution, so unless they're going to start distributing Gamecube and PS2 games, it should be Xbox only. I personally never got into DOA2 (especially after the masterful single-player Soul Calibur game), but fighting fans seemed to really like it. I could dig it if they beef up the single-player stuff and include more stuff to unlock this time around.

I'm keeping my eyes peeled for Gamecube stuff...

Jason, did you get the invitation to the Xbox press announcement in LA on the Wednesday before E3 starts? It's at 8am in the freaking morning! What the heck are they thinking? It's at the Convention Center in downtown LA, so anyone not staying at a hotel within walking distance will have to leave at 7am to be sure to get there in time. Uh, I don't think so, unless they're going to show us that the Xbox is really the Holodeck.

Yesterday I had a chance to speak with Seamus Blackley, Microsoft's "Xbox Technology Officer," about the announcement. Among other things, I specifically asked him whether the new Panzer Dragoon game would be a shooter or an RPG (or something else), to which he said it was reportedly a shooter. Yeah, what a great bit of news--and have you seen the Dead or Alive 3 footage yet? It's impressive all right.

--Greg Kasavin

We're staying across the street from the Center. Not to make you jealous or anything, Mark--just sayin'... =)

It really beats the 50 minute cab ride through traffic that we had to endure two years ago. Still, close or not, 8:00am is a bit on the early side.

-Ben

ah, XboX finally gets a fighter (DoA3) and a racer (SGT2)...things look better for XboX...

now they only need is an rpg...get the Bioware ppl to make a knockout rpg for XboX and I'm as good as sold...

btw, DoA2 is perhaps the only game I've ever played where the women look better than in real life! woooh Kasumi is a hotty. here's hoping for a nudie mode !

etc

I didn't get the invitation, but our plane to LA doesn't even land until like 12 or 12:30 or something, so wouldn't be able to go anyway.

Other console manufacturers have done this kind of thing before, though. Early the day before the show they'll have a big press announcement, it's really lame, but it's typically one or two big pieces of important info (like price and release date).

They do it because there are conference proceedings all day on Wednesday before the Expo actually starts on Thursday. So if they have lots of promotional materials around that list the release date or whatever, they want to make sure they have a formal announcement before conference attendees see a big banner or something and go springing the news. Guys in the industry like Buyers and marketing folks have stuff all day Wednesday.

Not saying that's the case here, but it's certainly possible.

Hey, a Panzer Dragoon shooter is fine with me! I loved the first two...

Yeah, DOA3's stuff looks good. At least what they've shown. I just hope they beef up the singler-player element from DOA2 hardcore.

The tech demo of the Xbox first-party japanese developer fighter was really impressive. "Project KX" I think it was called. The characters look very detailed, and the lighting was "wow." Easily all Doom3 has...everything was lit with real-looking soft shadows, everything shadowed itself, etc. Very slick.

Some screens:
http://www.msxbox.com/php/full_post.php3?id=958

I've been checking out some of the news at ps2.ign and man, the other companies have a lot of work to do to usurp Sony. Final Fantasy X looks killer -- I downloaded a couple of movies filmed with a video camera. It looks amazing. That game will sell 1-3 million PS2s in Japan alone, I bet. Then there's MGS2. It looks like most of the really hot console games will be PS2 games this year.

Perhaps, but you could have said that about the Dreamcast last year. Aside from one or two standouts like SSX, Sony had nothing particularly compelling for the PS2 prior to Christmas, and even now their lineup pales next to what's available for the DC.

Of course that's because the DC is on it's second generation of games while the PS2 is still on it's first. The Xbox will be in the same situation in relation to the PS2 this fall. I would HOPE that Sony's lineup would be more impressive than Microsoft's--it would speak pretty poorly for Sony's future in the market if it's second generation titles couldn't even compete with Xbox's launch titles.

That said, even the stuff that Microsoft has announced makes it sound like the Xbox's launch lineup will be a hell of a lot more impressive than Sony's (or Sega's) was.

"That said, even the stuff that Microsoft has announced makes it sound like the Xbox's launch lineup will be a hell of a lot more impressive than Sony's (or Sega's) was."

Well, I wasn't impressed with their Gamestock stuff. What else besides the Sega games have they announced?

Well, it's not surprising to me that the hot games this year will mostly be PS2 games. March was the 1 year mark for PS2, so we're looking at the second-year titles. That's going to compare well against launch titles most of the time. Same was true with Dreamcast games last March, when PS2 was launched.

Fun fact about MGS2 - the main engine programmer guy on that project defected from Konami to work on Microsoft's first-party Japanese development studio.

> Well, I wasn't impressed with their Gamestock stuff. What else besides the Sega games have they announced?

Y'know, the long high-quality Halo movie is a helluva lot more impressive than the first crap that was released outta gamestock. Most of the other stuff looks good for "6 months go to" to me. Besides Sega, they've shown DOA3, and mostly tech demos from the Japanese first-party team (though those won't be launch titles). EA has formally announced Madden 2002 and NASCAR 2002, and of course they're working on other stuff. Konami said they're planning on having Silent Hill 2 by launch time (at least the Japanese launch).

Microsoft really hasn't tipped much of their hand yet, and what they've shown hasn't been totally impressive. I guess that's kinda understandable, since the video chip is just now starting to arrive (developers get final hardware late April or May), and nobody wants to show stuff that doesn't look half as good as it will be on final hardware. They've said on numerous occasions that they could easily have 50-60 titles ready by launch time, but they're going to cherry-pick the best 20 or so. So apparently there's a lot in the works that hasn't yet been shown.

I wish they'd announce Square.

Personally, I can't wait for the Xbox. My PS2 lies dormant next to my Dreamcast, except for the odd DVD I'll watch. FFX looks like it'll rock, and the same goes for MGS2. EA is making the only quality games for the PS2 right now, which is sort of sad.

I'm playing Ring of Red, Z.O.E., MGS2 trial demo, Onimusha and Star Wars Starfighter on my PS2. I've yet to want any of EA's games to this point. Just providing a different viewpoint on the PS2 situation. :)

About the only X-box game that intrigues me is Red Storm's Ghost Recon, which has some echos of Rainbow Six but is more of an all out action game with tanks and recoilless rifles and advanced, in development real world weapons. Other than one Gamepro preview, I haven't been able to track any more info down on it. A PC version's supposedly planned, if the Gamepro article's accurate. It mentions that "X-box and PC Ghost Recon players will be able to play together online."

Ring of Red looks pretty neat -- fun game, eh? It's taking some time, but there's starting to be a core of nice games available for the PS2.

My personal take on Xbox is this:

I'm a big console fan. I buy 'em all anyway. So I'm not much into this "my console is better than your console" crap.

But developers go where the people go, and they put their best efforts behind the most successful platform. First-party development teams recruit from each other, too.

Given all that, I'd rather Xbox come out on top. I mean, if I'm going to buy and play some game that comes out three years from now anyway, I don't care what platform it's on, I just want it to be the best game it can be, right? Well, it seems to me that the console with the most powerful CPU, most powerful graphics chip, most powerful audio chip, a built-in hard drive, built-in ethernet, and a pretty darn friendly development environment and tools would be the one that could allow games to be their best.

So I'd like to see Xbox dominate this round of console wars if for no other reason than becuase in terms of capabilities and ease of development, it's the platform I'd like to see the best developers put their best efforts on. It would translate into a better game for me. But before that happens, developers need to have confidence in Xbox's success, which is hard when it hasn't gone on sale yet, doesn't have an announced price or on-sale date, hasn't started marketing yet, and only has in-development first-generation titles to show running on hardware that's not as powerful as the final unit.

So I say, "go Xbox...and good luck." And Gameboy Advance.

Well, I'm a big console fan too and in the end, I usually own them all also. The problem here is that there are going to be multiple versions of certain games and while Xbox may have the most theoretical power (which isn't confirmed given you and I know nothing of Gamecube's power), that doesn't always translate into the best versions of games. There were a number of titles on Genesis that were much better than their SNES counterparts and the Genesis was pretty underpowered at the time.

You're also throwing out the exclusives which are a major part of buying a system. So far, no one is exclusive on Xbox that I care too much about. Sega's 11 games aren't exclusive, none of Konami's stuff is and Namco, Capcom, et. al. aren't announcing anything yet. Dead or Alive 3 is one game and while that movie is quite good, it's not enough for me. However, what DoA3 shows is what I've said for a long time. Xbox absolutely NEEDS Japanese developers. With that one movie, Microsoft has turned the tide with some console gamers to be sure. It also shows the absolutely unparalelled skills of the Japanese companies and teams when it comes to any console. Absolutely nothing at Gamestock was even close to the brilliance in that DoA3 movie. And it's likely they hadn't been working on it for too long either...

I know as PC gamers, there are a lot of guys here that won't like that comment, but tough luck. It's 100% truth that the best console games since the dawn of the NES have come from Japan. The only place they're not in charge is sports, and that's only because we have a ravenous appetite for those games and the competition has been fierce in that category. When it comes to fighters, racing, platform, action, etc. The Japanese are light years ahead of US developers. Even in FPS games, I found Outtrigger to offer me a lot more in its simple demo for Dreamcast than I was getting out of UT or Q3A.

I also think you too easily dismiss Gamecube. No one knows anything about it really... Capcom is saying it looks like something they want to support, Sega has voiced similar ideas and Namco is there too. With those companies and Nintendo themselves along with their second parties such as Rare, the content on Gamecube will most likely eclipse all the others. I think Nintendo is currently the right choice to get ALL the best games if you have to get one console over another. And if its true that they'll launch at around $199... that has confirmed them as my choice for this Christmas season and I'll wait to get one of those giant-sized Xboxes or the blue LED of the PS2.

--Dave

Ah, but that blue LED is what makes the PS2 so good! .

Gamecube... hmm. Well, the N64 took the metaphorical shotgun out of the metaphorical gun cabinet, and shot nintendo in the metaphorical face (for some odd reason, I almost spelled that as 'phace'). That system is almost 5 years old, and it's still absolutely horrendous. There's a handful of games worth buying, but the rest is geared towards 10-year-olds. I really don't see Nintendo halting that trend anytime soon - I expect to see another 75 Pokemon titles for the Gamecube. Nintendo will still sell mad systems, but they won't sell one to me.

Console wars seem littered with Best Top of the Line Machines that ended on the scrap heap, or, in fact, my closet. :) On the one hand, I wouldn't bet against Microsoft. On the other hand, this is the company that still can't get Windows right (I think Win98 was great, and then they somehow managed to make it worse with ME and ensuing versions), that created Microsoft Bob, that took years to catch up with Palm after completely misunderstanding the PDA market. MS may be monolithic but they also know how to really screw up when they put their minds to it. :)

I sank my dough into PS2 based on a few promising games that appealed to me that I'm unlikely to see on PC (Ring of Red, MGS2, Psygnosis' Dropship perhaps the top ones).

Next Gen has an interesting article on a Linux based console that features an NVIDIA video chip that is upgradeable. (You just pop in a new chip for maybe $100 down the road). Although it probably doesn't have a prayer, it seems a better idea than having a closed, nonupgradeable console that's based on regular PC parts.

"It also shows the absolutely unparalelled skills of the Japanese companies and teams when it comes to any console."

I need to invite you to my next Asian Klu Klux Klan rally. ROUND EYE DOGS!!!!

Oh yeah, and that "upgradable linux console" combines the worst of several worlds. The people behind it are completely deluding themselves.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

"Oh yeah, and that "upgradable linux console" combines the worst of several worlds. The people behind it are completely deluding themselves."

I just don't get Indrema. How did they even think they had a chance to compete in the marketplace? They could make the best system and they still would have no chance.

My guess is that their real, unannounced business plan was to work on the technology and hope that one of the biggies bought them out.

As to upgrading consoles, I think Sony has the right idea. Just put out a new one for $300 every 3-5 years and make it backwardly compatible. In fact, I wouldn't be suprised if the PS3 debuts in 2.5 years if the Xbox and Gamecube make inroads against Sony.

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I need to invite you to my next Asian Klu Klux Klan rally. ROUND EYE DOGS!!!!

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Oddly enough, Nintendo is moving pretty strongly to broaden their appeal. Perfect Dark, and now Conker's Bad Fur day, are both M titles I think. In fact, there was an article in the tech supplement of our local paper (every Tuesday, it's a syndicated Gannet thing of e-news and tech stuff, including games) about Conker, and how some parents were up in arms. Nintendo's response is that folks who grew up playing Mario are now adults, and hence the company wants to keep them as customers by delivering more mature content.


I rather suspect we'll see Nintendo do what Disney has done over time, that is, keep their kiddie stuff and add progessively more "adult" content.

> In fact, I wouldn't be suprised if the PS3 debuts in 2.5 years if the Xbox and Gamecube make inroads against Sony.

That might happen--that would be the earliest I would expect to see PS2 (2004).

I think the backwards compatiblity in the PS2 was a total waste. I don't think it helped sell consoles (DVD playback did though), it wasn't even part of their marketing at all, and I don't think anyone even gives a rat's ass about it who doesn't already own a PSX. I know they wanted to keep selling PSX games, but with the PSOne selling so well at it's low price, that really isn't a problem.

It's another excuse for top third-party developers to take their time moving to the new platform, too.

Dave - I agree that MS needs Japanese developers (and so do they, and they've been saying that all along). And I think they have a lot more cooking over there than they've shown. Remember, the system debuts six or seven months from now over there, and Japanese developers just don't show off their stuff that early. They've got a first-party Japanese studio with three teams (and growing), staffed buy experienced Japanese developers--Sony's former head of first-party stuff runs it, and they've got programmers and artists from Konami, Square, Capcom, etc.

And yes, most of what we see from Japanese developers over here is superior (as an average), but it's a polarized view. We don't get the hundreds of crappy games Japanese developers release over there. Don't discount US/Europe developers, either: Tony Hawk, SSX, Perfect Dark, Conker's, Goldeneye... in fact, lots of Nintendo's much-expanded 2nd party stuff for gamecube is made in the US.

Gamecube's power - I know exactly what it's capable of. I've talked with the former ArtX guys (now at ATI) who designed the graphics chip, I know what their CPU can do, I know what the architecture is. It's not half of what Xbox can do, but the games will certainly look good.

Heh...Indrema. Man, making a console upgradable defeats the whole purpose (for developers and consumers!) and making it open-source is pointless as well. What are they THINKING?

"I think the backwards compatiblity in the PS2 was a total waste. I don't think it helped sell consoles (DVD playback did though), it wasn't even part of their marketing at all, and I don't think anyone even gives a rat's ass about it who doesn't already own a PSX. I know they wanted to keep selling PSX games, but with the PSOne selling so well at it's low price, that really isn't a problem."

It might be a waste from a marketing perspective, but it's consumer friendly. There will still be some hot titles released for the PSX over the next year, so at least PS2 owners will be able to play them.

Unless it really took more resources and development time, why wouldn't you want your system to be backwardly compatible? Third parties are going to make games for the platform they think they can sell the most copies on regardless.

Backwards compatibility was one reason I bought a PS2. I wanted to play Medal of Honor :-).

And don't some of the PSX games look marginally better when played on the PS2?

Yup - Gran Turismo 2 looks a fair bit better, as does Vagrant Story.

With the PS2, you can choose to turn on bilinear filtering on textures if you want. Works fine on many games and makes them look better, on some it doesn't.

>Backwards compatibility was one reason I bought a PS2. I wanted to play Medal of Honor.

Have you gotten around to that yet?

I really think that if the PS2 were not backward compatible, it wouldn't have hurt sales one bit.

>Unless it really took more resources and development time, why wouldn't you want your system to be backwardly compatible?

Of COURSE it took resources and development time! You don't squeeze the whole PSX into one I/O chip in an afternoon, y'know. =)

>There will still be some hot titles released for the PSX over the next year, so at least PS2 owners will be able to play them.

I wonder if any of the PS2 owners (who don't also own PSX or PSOne machines) will actually buy them? I know they may say they will, or say they plan to, but when push comes to shove will they just spend their money on PS2 games? I bet in 99% of the cases, they will.

>It might be a waste from a marketing perspective, but it's consumer friendly.

Well, it keeps you from hooking up your PSX and PS2 at the same time to a TV, and that's nice. But why not backward compatible? So you can redesign the controller and memory card, put four controller ports on the system, change the media format if you want to (something more dramatic than CD to DVD), cut costs... Imagine if the gamecube were to be backwards compatible.

Yeah, I've played MoH. Not that much, but some. I like it, though yeah, it looks a bit rough compared to PS2 games. I agree I would have purchased a PS2 without backwards compatibility, but I still would come down on the side of those who support the idea, because if nothing else it builds goodwill, for what that's worth.

Heh. The last PS1 game I bought was "Incredible Crisis."

I have weird taste in console games though. Fighters and sports games, the bread and butter of consoles, completely bore me.

Not that I didn't get my Madden/NHL on back in the Genesis days, or anything.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

Man...being on about 20 final product mailing lists (review copies of games, etc) really showed me how many crappy games are actually released for the PS1. I have about 20 games in my closet that are still unopened. I'll open em once we launch the site again, but they weren't exactly games I rushed to play.

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I wonder if any of the PS2 owners (who don't also own PSX or PSOne machines) will actually buy them? I know they may say they will, or say they plan to, but when push comes to shove will they just spend their money on PS2 games? I bet in 99% of the cases, they will.

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The problem with PS1 games is that they cost just as much (a little less, but not much) as PS2 games. Why would you buy a game for an inferior console?

PSX games are coming down in price (not all, but Sony supposedly has lightened up on its pricing requirements), and the PSOne is still selling quite a bit for the moment.

While I have a hard time going back to my PSX games at this point (other than just testing the retro compatibility), I still think the play's the thing. There are too many $50 PS2 games that give you maybe one or two evenings play at this point. Most of the best PSX games run rings around them in terms of fun and long time value.

I don't know what EA is thinking with the PSX version of B&W though; I was sure that was an April Fool's Day prank when I read it, but sites posted it APril 2. :)

>Is it because it's release is much further away than Xbox's or is it because they haven't been releasing that much info on it?

They've just been very quiet. They launch in Japan in July (if it doesn't get pushed back) and the US in October.

Nintendo definitely has the game recognition, but those are all considered by regular Joes to be "kids games." In today's market of selling 50+ million consoles (hopefully) and a much older average gamer age, that MIGHT not go as far as it used to. Nintendo is trying to branch out, but will it be enough? I'm very interested to see how it unfolds. I'm guessing Nintendo will be #2, Sony and MS will battle it out for #1 and the winner will be the BIG winner, the loser will fall behind Nintendo over the next couple years.

I still think the vast majority of the folks out there are buying PSOnes to play cheap PSX games, not playing them on their PS2s. Too bad there's no good data on that. Sure, backwards compatiblity builds goodwill--or does it? Did anyone actually hate Sega or Nintendo for not making their system backwards compatible? Nobody seems bothered by it in the least.

I'd rather they dumped backwards compatiblity, changed the controller I/O so they could put memory cards in a redesigned controller (and ultimately other peripherals like microphones or whatever), and stuck four controller ports on the machine. They probably could have made the system cheaper to boot (not that it would cost less, but Sony would take less of a bath on each one sold).

By the way, speaking of consoles: remember when a bunch of Sonic Team members from Sega, led by former Senior Director of R&D Yoji Ishii, left the company to start up a studio called Artoon? ("uh, no Jason, what the hell are you talking about?") It was around the time that Sega decided to go cross-platform. Anyway, it's a bunch of Sonic Team guys who worked on the Sonic games, Nights, Panzer Dragoon Saga, etc. Lead designer Yuji Naka is still with Sega, though.

They've just announced that they're going to agressively develop a character-based platform game for Xbox, and it's said they hope it kinda becomes the system's "mascot." I'm guessing it's a late-next-year kind of game, but who knows how long they've been working on stuff? Seems like every other week we hear about some company that's a few months into some Xbox title.

"I'm guessing Nintendo will be #2, Sony and MS will battle it out for #1 and the winner will be the BIG winner, the loser will fall behind Nintendo over the next couple years."

This seems a likely scenario. Nintendo has a good base with the kiddie market. One other thing might help Nintendo, and that's their abandoning the cartridges finally. Remember, they lost of a lot of third party support to Sony over that issue.

I guess we'll know a lot more about all three systems next month when they show them at E3.

BTW, we saw a commercial for Ominusha tonight and my boys were amazed that it was in-game footage and not cinematics. I have to say it looked damned good.

Actually, when the N64 was announced, there was a huge hue and cry over the lack of backwards compatibility with the SNES. Then again, once people actually got their hands on the new box, no one cared .

I can always pick out gameplay from the rendered cinematics in PS2 games...the gameplay is always much lower resolution. =)

Onimusha does look really good, but those quick-clips of a TV ad go a long way of masking the fact that it's Resident Evil (or Alone in the Dark) style fixed rendered backgrounds with 3D characters on them.

I hear it's SUPER short, so I wanna go rent it one of these days.

Okay, this is like "holy crap" to me.

According to this interview, Yuji Naka now works for Sega's first party development!

http://www.gameon.it/exephp/viewItem.phtml?articolo=1413&tipocomponente=EXTRA&menu=EXTRA&PIATTAFORMA=TUTTE

The interviewer says "Yuki Nana" but that's not a name I can find anywhere, and it's well known that the guy who created Nights is Yuji Naka, so I think it's just a misinformed name mixup.

So... am I on crack here, or is there really some "Yuki Nana" out there and he's REALLY the creator of Nights, and I just gotta go back to Video Game Geek School?

Speaking of which...got my import Game Boy Advance in today. It's very very cool.

"Speaking of which...got my import Game Boy Advance in today. It's very very cool."

Really? What games did you get? How much did you pay for it, if you don't mind telling? And finally, will it work with the US games once they are released? Man, I'd really like to get one before E3 for the plane ride, especially since I don't have a laptop.

It's SUPPOSED to work with US games once they're released, but there's no way of knowing for sure until some final US games are tried on it. All previous Game Boy iterations were completely regionless, though, and word on the street is that this one is too.

I bought it as a bundle with the unit (clear purple color), Mario Advance, and Advance GT for around $200. Good game choices because the Mario game is good (even if Mario 2 is the worst of the main Mario line, it's still a very good platformer) and the GT racing game is completely and totally in english.

I don't know when Mario Kart Advance will be released, but I might import that one too. I'll probably pick up another import game between now and E3. Maybe something with a bit more Japanese so I can have an excuse to brush up on mine. I've forgotten so much!

One of the chief reasons I imported it was for the trip to E3. It's a long plane ride, and I don't fit well in those seats as it is, being 6'4" and all legs. There's not any room left over for a laptop (which I don't have anyway).

I really wish they would have kept the Game Gear on the market. That was a marvel of technology at the time (shit, it still is - I can't play my damn GBC in the dark)... stupid Sega... letting me down again.

Game Gear was nice but so was Neo Geo. No one beats Nintendo at handheld, however.

Microsoft is rumored to be working on a handheld.

What we need is a nice $100 handheld gaming device that also has some PDA functionality.

And the Atari Lynx was better than the game gear AND game boy color. Not to mention the TurboGrafx16 portable. It took 10 years before we had something better. About time...

> can't play my damn GBC in the dark

Nor the GameBoy Advance. It has nothing to do with marvelous technology--it has to do with the GBC and GBA using a reflective TFT screen instead of a backlit one. It's actually more expensive (and more advanced), but it's why the GBA gets 20 hours of battery life and the Game Gear got, what, 3 or 4?

I thought the Lynx was a better handheld system myself.

Anyone else here have a Nomad?

>Microsoft is rumored to be working on a handheld.

They've denied that literally every single time anyone has asked them.

>What we need is a nice $100 handheld gaming device that also has some PDA functionality.

That's where the rumor started. In typical Microsoft fashion, they were just asking people questions, guaging reactions, getting opinions, and said that they could conceivably make a portable gaming system and leverage a lot of the work done by the Pocket PC team. Somehow that got translated into "Microsoft is working on a handheld" and "Xboy to come in 2002" and crap.

>They've denied that literally every single time anyone has asked them.

They denied the Xbox too until companies started putting out job annoucements to develop games for it...

I have a Lynx, and almost got the TG-16 portable, but the problems seemed to be -- Atari simply couldn't get enough truly fun, playable games out for it to compete with Gameboy esp. at its initial steep price which was more expensive than consoles at the time ($179-$199); and the TG-16 had no games made specifically for it. TG-16 games were designd to be played on a TV, not a 4 inch screen, and a lot of reviewers said the games suffered for it.

I had a Lynx a long time ago. I don't remember what I did with it, though I think it just conked out on me one day. The only game that I remember that I had for it was Warbirds, which was a WWI flight game. I remember thinking it had quite a few features for a handheld game. You could look to the sides, up and behind, damaged enemies spewed smoke, and you could land to repair damage. I think you could even stall the biplane that you flew, though it wasn't a particular model, and you could do most basic aerobatics and such. Oh yeah, and it was in color too.

I know that I had at least a few other games, but I can't remember what they are anymore.

If the Xbox is successful I would not be surprised if we see an Xboy come out. That's a pretty crafty name, but I wonder if they'd decide to go with something different just because they'd be *too* similar...

">Microsoft is rumored to be working on a handheld.

They've denied that literally every single time anyone has asked them."

Yeah, but I read an article a year ago at a reputable mainstream pub, and I think the author said he talked to Microsoft employees who didn't want to be identified who confirmed that some development work on a handheld had been done.

I can't remember where the hell I read it, though.

Ok, I found the article. My memory was faulty. It's from January of this year. The device would be called the Xboy and the article says the following, which is where I probably got the idea that someone in Microsoft confirmed it:

"Inside the Redmond, Washington-based giant, the discussions on entering the portable games business moved far enough along so that the idea had a name: the Xboy. "We went back and forth on this question," says one person familiar with the matter."

Here's the URL of the Red Herring story:

http://www.redherring.com/index.asp?layout=story_generic&doc_id=RH30017403

BTW, score one for Google. "Microsoft handheld game" came right up with the match.