SAN FRANCISCO (AFX) -- Now that Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp. have provided more details on the rollout of their new video game players, Nintendo Co. Ltd. is expected to share its plans for a rival device at an industry conference this week.
Details on when the Japanese firm will ship its competing product, called Revolution, and how much it will cost may emerge during a keynote address by Nintendo President Satoru Iwata Thursday at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California.
Iwata's speech follows Sony Corp.'s announcement last week that it will delay the release of its own PlayStation 3 game console until early November.
Sony, which remains the global leader in console sales with a market share of about 70%, will be demonstrating the PS3 on the expo floor, which takes place at the San Jose Convention Center.
Microsoft will also be present at the show with the latest version of its player, the Xbox 360. On Tuesday, the software giant said it was now shipping two to three times more units to its distributors than it had been, improving the chances it will hit its goal of selling between 4.5 million and 5.5 million by the end of its fiscal year in June.
That news, combined with an upgrade of Electronics Arts, the largest game publisher, helped push video game stocks higher Tuesday.
Results at video game publishers have been hurt during the last 12 months as consumers delayed purchasing games while awaiting the next generation of consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.
Together, the three new consoles are expected to drive the majority of video game publisher revenue over the next several years.
Yet the GDC is less the trade show to introduce new products and games than its larger counterpart, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), held in early May in Los Angeles.
'GDC is the conference where game creators meet to talk about the nuts and bolts of making games -- without all the marketing, publishing, and sales talk of a show like the E3,' said Joe Rybicki, Senior Editor of Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine.
Sony Computer Entertainment Studios President Phil Harrison was scheduled to give a keynote of his own at the industry event on Wednesday. His speech, entitled 'PlayStation 3: Beyond the Box,' is expected to focus on the new creative and technical capacities of the device, which will pack graphics and computing power superior to the Xbox 360, which became available last November.
In the conference's final keynote, the largest video game publisher, Electronic Arts Inc. , will be serving up Will Wright, chief designer of its Maxis studio, the creator of 'SimCity' and 'The Sims' and one of the most high-profile developers in the industry.
Wright's presentation is entitled 'What's Next in Game Design,' and could provide an in-depth look at new Maxis games including 'Spore,' expected out later this year. EA is hoping the new game, which allows users to control various life forms from the cellular level to the galactic level, can replicate the success of 'The Sims.'
Beyond keynotes, the trade show features numerous panels and conference sessions focusing on game design, as well as the expo floor with booths from the most prominent hardware, software and chipmakers in the industry.
'The expo floor is sort of like being in a foreign country; there's a lot of very high-level, very tech-heavy content -- it's like popping the hood on your favorite games and checking out the innards,' said Rybicki. This story was supplied by MarketWatch. For further information see www.marketwatch.com.
© 2006 AFX News
