Here’s the lowdown on Crysis:

Being a Windows exclusive title, Crysis will unfortunately grace your computer screen only, not home console.

The story is based around an asteroid that hits earth on a Pacific island. The island is sealed off and you’re part of the US special forces sent there to see to the matter. When the asteroid later opens up, an alien craft is revealed, and somehow, the aliens freeze the surrounding area, where they later they use the Hunter to attack.

Crysis looks brilliant thus far, and the release date is said to be between 2006-2007, but there’s still a fair amount up in the air to be disclosed about Crysis, so we’ll keep you posted. And if you were wondering what the future of gaming might hold, this is it.

Lately, I for one have been playing the original Unreal Tournament online with some friends. I am not very good, but the game is simply brilliant, even to this day.

Of course, when I heard that Midway would be releasing the Unreal Anthology set in August; so, a bunch of quality games (as well as a rather less quality game) all for $29.99. What more could one ask for?

Oh yes, Unreal Tournament 2007 – that’s what! We will have to wait a bit longer for that one, I’m afraid.

Source: Midway

Since the launch of the Nintendo 64 in mid-to-late 1996 (or early 1997, depending on whether you live in North America, Japan or Europe), Nintendo have repeatedly struggled in their attempts to gain their previous stronghold authority in the video game industry. The Nintendo 64’s sales were reasonable, but totaled in at less than one third (1/3) of the amount the, then pretender to Nintendo’s throne, Sony PlayStation managed to achieve in it’s lenghtly life span. Reaching around 32 million consoles worldwide, the Nintendo 64 only sold around 3 million more consoles than its predecessor, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (also referred to as SNES), and sold 2 million less copies than the 1989 SEGA console, Genesis (MegaDrive) which were released in a far less video game-orientated generation.

Realistically, the PlayStation (released in North America and Europe in 1995) was what saw off competition from SEGA, effectively killing off opposition from two of its consoles, the SEGA Saturn and the SEGA Dreamcast, thus ending SEGA’s time as creators of video game consoles.

With the Nintendo 64 failing to live up to the standards set by previous Nintendo consoles selling figures, the 2001 release of the Nintendo GameCube was clearly surrounded with anxiety from the Nintendo team, and astutely so. The PlayStation 2 was selling in a big way since the release in October, 2000, but not only this – there was a new kid on the block.

Microsoft were previously a company who made Personal Computers, and whose only foray into video games were limited to a number of small games were now to enter the big time, by bringing out their very first game console, the Microsoft Xbox. Not only was the GameCube desperately trying to compete with the PlayStation 2, but they now had a second opponent; an opponent whose financial potential was unlimited.

The GameCube’s sales figures showed a noticeable decline in the fortune of Nintendo, with the company at this point more than ever, being considered as the ideal alternative for people who loved Mario and Legend of Zelda games, rather than ’serious gamers’. Snobbery was such, that many gamers were put off the console as they felt it has an alienating ‘cutesy’ element to it. This was certainly not the case in either the Sony or Microsoft consoles, which boasted hugely popular titles such as Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec and Halo respectively. The GameCube was also unable to offer gamers the huge number of titles the other consoles catered for. With the total sales of the GameCube (to date) being approximately 20.85 million, the console faired unsurprisingly worse than the PlayStation 2, which has to date recorded a massive 103.6 million shipments, but also worse than debutants Microsoft, who sold in the region of 24 million Xbox units.

This brings us on to more recent times, and Nintendo are set to take the metaphorical battle fields once more, this time taking on Sony’s third gaming system, the PlayStation 3, and the now weighty opposition of the already released Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 is performing reasonably (at not far under 4 million copies sold thus far), but speculation is rife that the PlayStation 3 console is set to disappoint some fans in a number of ways. It seems that the cost of the PlayStation 3 is going to be between $499 and $599 (depending on the size of hard disk desired, the options being 20 and 60 gigabytes respectively), a fee a lot of potential purchasers are put off by. Moreover, the PlayStation 3 has seemed rather anti-climactic in terms of improvements since the PlayStation 2.

The criticisms of the next Nintendo console, the Nintendo Wii are far more limited than those that the PlayStation 3 is receiving. People seem highly excited about many of the innovations the console is making, not least the motion-sensing “Wii Remote”. Frankly, the main concern people seem to have about the console is the name, Wii.

As such, it seems that the console will have much more backing from game developers than previous Nintendo consoles have enjoyed. LucasArts, of Star Wars fame seem likely to jump the PlayStation 3 ship, and bring out an exclusive game on the Wii instead.

With all the speculation surrounding the release of the PlayStation 3 and the Wii, it appears that the balance of fortunes could be set to swing unpredictably in favor of the Nintendo system. Should more big name companies pledge allegiance to the interestingly named system, there could be a huge alarm bell ringing in the Sony headquarters. Game on, Wii.

Source for data, Wikipedia.

There have been recent murmerings from Apple that they wish to move into the lucrative gaming arena, and a move for in-fashion Nintendo may be the solution to this.

Should such a stunning takeover occur, the news would be likely to cause further unrest to Bill Gates and Microsoft; not only would they have to worry about the PlayStation 3, Google’s dominance, and open-source software, but they will have to pay further attention to the United States’ number 3 in consoles, Nintendo.

Clearly Apple purchasing Nintendo is only a rumour, but there is a still a possibility of it occuring, as Apple desperately want to capture the video game market as they have so beautifully captured the music market with their iPod, perhaps buying such a respected gaming franchise which invariably struggles against the money power of Sony and Microsoft is not such a strange concept!

“We don’t say it’s a game console. PlayStation 3 is clearly a computer, unlike the PlayStations so far.” — Kutaragi (2006)

One of the main reasons for holding this view appears to be the that the PlayStation 3 will allow greater modification than the previous consoles. As such, different generations will be likely to feature somewhat different specifications than earlier consoles. This can clearly be connected to the Revolved.net article of the 5th of June, where Izumi Kawanishi discussed the possibility of additional hard disks and network capabilites.

Kutaragi developed on Kawanishi’s interview:

“As the PlayStation 3 is a computer, it also wants to evolve. We’ll want to upgrade the HDD size very soon – if new standards appear on the PC, we will want to support them. We may want the [Blu-ray] drive to [have a writable version upgrade].” — Kutaragi (2006)

All the above indicates that while Sony are suggesting that they are confident that the PlayStation 3 will compete with the Nintendo Wii in terms of gaming capabilities, they are desperate to re-market and innovate in order to gain some of the various markets in which the Wii might lose out.

Game trailers can be found at the Apple site.