Last week the annual GDC was held. This conference is more geared towards the game devs, as the name implies ;) However time and again, new tidbits of info are released to the public. But rest assured, the big smoking guns are firmly held on to until E3, where the console war will reach a new high this year.
Microsoft did not have a keynote at GDC. Then again, they had some nice stuff to show and hand out to people. The buzzword was XNA, their new game dev framework. Basically what it does is provide devs the tools to create games in a more timely fashion, because of the tools. It allows content creators, programmers, testers to work together in the XNA Studio. It also features a unified set of class libraries which will allow for maximal re-use of code and assets across target platforms. Those target platforms are obviously Xbox 360 and Windows. Write once, play many :)
Attendees of GDC were given the March XNA build , which includes the complete source code of Mechcommander 2 as a product demo. If you are interested in the DVD, you can get it at Microsoft's website.
On the Sony side, not much news has surfaced on the PS3 during their keynote. Most notable was another confirmation of their online service. This will launch simultainiously with the console. So they have a lot of work to do, since they are starting from scratch. It remains to be seen how their cooperation with GameSpy will turn out. However there are some fishy claims about the price of this online service. Some claim online play will be free and gamers would have to pay for particular content. On the other hand, other sites are reporting a per-game fee for online gameplay. I guess we will get more specific details at E3. On a positive sidenote, their final devkits should reach devs before E3 ;)
Nintendo also had a keynote at GDC. Their biggest announcement was that they have made a deal with Sega to make the top Genesis games available through the Revolution. How about that! If you told me years ago, when I was playing my Sega Master System, that by 2006 I would be able to play Sonic on a Nintendo, I would've declared you crazy :D Well time passes, and here we are, being on the virge of doing just that.
I guess the console war will now blend into a cold war, until battle is reopened at E3, where armies of marketing soldiers will draw their guns and let the bullets do the talking.
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