Earlier today Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer let everyone know that there will be a new Xbox 360 console released in 2010 sporting a built-in camera.

Well, according to Microsoft Ballmer may need to get his facts straight; Director of Productive Management for the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live over at Microsoft, Aaron Greenberg, told Kotaku:

There will be no new console… We’re not going to be launching a new console any time soon. I really believe he was speaking about Project Natal. We want to make sure people know that we’re excited about Project Natal but we’re barely halfway through this generation. We’re happy with the Xbox 360, so there are no changes from that standpoint. For the time being, we’re really just showing a new category of gaming.

Who will you believe? Steve Ballmer, or Aaron Greenberg. While it’s possible that Ballmer slipped up and announced a product before it was supposed to be announced it’s also possible that he got a new console mixed up with Project Natal. Either way, we shall see how this story unfolds as this isn’t the first time Microsoft has denied a new console rumor.

Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, has recently predicted that games for the next generation of video consoles will cost upwards of $60 million to make.

Now, there is no word on when Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo will release their next generation consoles but Guillemot says since playing next gen games will be like playing one of today’s CGI movies its no wonder that the cost will be so high.

To put this into perspective, games for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 cost between $20 million and $30 million to make with the Wii costing much less. With games currently priced at $50 and $60 is it safe to assume games of next generation will cost $100 and $120? Let’s hope not but it would make sense if Guillemot’s predictions prove true.

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The biggest irony about this one is that it’s a next-gen update of a previous-gen release.  The first time I got my induction into the world of Bullworth Academy, it was back on the PS2.  But then, the tail end of 2008 comes along and, boom…Bully gets an update.  The Scholarship Edition comes packed with lots more new content, and frankly, is a whole new class by itself.

But just for a refresher course, in case you’ve already sampled this one back in the PS2 days, you play as Jimmy Hopkins, a young man with a lousy family life as his mother’s neck-deep in what seems to be a lifelong round of Wheel Of New Husbands.  Jimmy’s mom and newest hubby are about to head for a cruise ship for their year-long honeymoon, but something’s got to be done with Jimmy.  Jimmy’s new stepdad has just the concept—Bullworth Academy, a boarding school with plenty of problems.  Jimmy’s first meeting with one of the students is both opportune and problematic—he meets Gary, a kid with even more problems than Bullworth itself (he’s admitted to having ADD and being on medication that he’s recently stopped taking, and getting to know this scary bastard reveals that he’s got at least sociopathic tendencies.).  Gary’s given Jimmy an interesting idea, though—taking over the school.  But with four separate cliques in operation, and a whole town outside Bullworth Academy, such a feat won’t be easy for Jimmy.  And if Gary takes exception to Jimmy’s methods…well…Gary has the potential to make Jimmy’s life a living hell.

Who will win?  Who will lose?  And will Bullworth Academy be left standing?

This is about half of why I love Bully—the sheer epic of this storyline is fantastic by itself.  But when you add the OTHER half, couple in the spectacular variety of things to do in and around Bullworth, you get a game with all sorts of replay value.  I love how you gather new skills not by defeating enemies or collecting things, but by going to class.    Almost ironically, Jimmy is very much AGAINST bullying, and it’s his repeatedly stated goal throughout the course of the game to end it at Bullworth.  There’s a lot of unexpected fun in this game, and it’s especially worth mentioning as a result.

Sure, maybe the graphics look a little last-gen for a product developed so late in the season, and sometimes the game mechanics get a downright aggressively skewed in favor of screwing the player over—hypersensitive enemies, floods of enemies, you know what I mean—but none of this really gets in the way of a good time.  And that’s what Bully: Scholarship Edition will offer–a good time action game with an epic storyline and lots to do in between.

In no uncertain terms, this is a fun game.  I had literally hours of fun with it, and I gladly came back for more.  You may want to try the original first to appreciate the fullest extent of the additions and changes made, but it’s not strictly necessary.  The key take away?  You’ll have fun.  That’s what counts.

While we are just over half way through this current console generation, curiosity, rumors, and speculation on the next generation of consoles has been far from dormant. The Wii HD has all but been announced, the PlayStation 4 has been mentioned several times by various Sony employees, even if only speculatively, and the Xbox 720 is probably going to be announced the next year or two.

While these future consoles are still in development, there several features and functions that we should be able to expect from all of them.

#1 Real Custom Soundtracks

While all of the current generation consoles have custom soundtrack abilities to some extent, the implementation is extremely lazy. Using the same amount of effort as to play “custom music”, players could simply turn the music volume off in a game’s options, and listen to their iPods while playing.

The problem is that the music isn’t dynamic at all. A consequence of this is that players have to go out of their way to adjust certain settings, for example it’s difficult to balance music and dialogue in any given game, and players often have to go out of stop the game so that they can pause music during cut scenes and other important game instances.

All of the next generation consoles should remedy this with advanced custom soundtracks. What this means is that each game should have it’s own settings category where players can select tracks for specific situations. For example, the players can select “track 15″ for ambient music, and “track 9″ as their chase music. Then the game will know that there is a chase, and when the chase is over to return to “track 15″. Or, better yet, the advanced custom tracks could be built into the consoles themselves, which then automatically changes the song or it’s volume and have the game communicate the appropriate circumstances to activate them. Microsoft, and to some extent Sony, are in excellent positions to do this because they could easily modify the achievement/trophy technology to work as a soundtrack handling system. If a system can tell when you roll a car four times without landing, and then pop up an achievement notification on the screen, it can easily know that you’re in a fight and to switch songs.

#2 Free Online Play…. That works

Actually, this is something that should have been expected this generation. There’s no reason that people should have to pay to play online, right now the Xbox 360 is the only device that charges for online play. Circumstance allowed Microsoft to get away with it, but if there’s one thing that needs to be changed for the Xbox 720, aside from the pandemic of the red (rings of) death, it is free, completely free, online play. On the other side of things, players should also expect that online play will work. It’s no use having free online play if you’re getting what you pay for, friend codes should be treated as numeric gamertags, not confirmation codes, and online multiplayer should be encouraged more for third parties. Then it should work properly, unlike, for example, in Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Online games shouldn’t be near unplayable.

#3 Competent Media Players

It isn’t too much to ask that the new consoles should be able to play virtually any and all media that console owners place into their consoles. Not in a DRM sense, that’s an unavoidable issue. Rather the list of formats supported for videos and songs should be extremely large. If someone edits a home video, then exports it under an incompatible video format, it’s a bit ridiculous that the system won’t play it. Right now Sony has the best support for video since essentially any movie you put into your PlayStation 3 will work. Only supporting the most popular formats on the console’s media player is unnecessary.

#4 Free, Effective Web Browsers

There’s also no reason that the next generation consoles shouldn’t have more or less fully functional web browsers. They don’t have to be advanced, but it’s completely possible for a working web browser to be built into the console. There’s also no reason to charge for this functionality. Now, this is a novelty and not a necessity, but if the consoles, today can do it, there’s little reason not to include browsers into the consoles of tomorrow.

#5 Complete Backwards Compatibility

If I pay $60 or so dollars on a game, it’s not fair that the game only works for five years. Sure, it isn’t too much work to plug in both my new and old console, but it’s an unnecessary waste of A/V jacks. Even if you had unlimited jacks available, what if the old console dies? New 360’s are hardly reliable as it is, and it isn’t a big setback to implement backwards compatibility into the software of the consoles. If the consoles do have backwards compatibility, it should also be done properly. It is unreasonable that Microsoft only supports popular original Xbox games. If nothing else, proper backwards compatibility should be included as a sign of good faith to customers.

#6 Motion Controls

At this point motion controls have gone from being Nintendo’s innovation, to Sony’s gimmick, and soon it will probably be Microsoft’s latest “discovery” and “advancement”, like Avatars. But more than this, I think it’s become expected. Much like rumble, motion control should be included in every next generation controller, preferably competent motion controls of Wii Motion Plus caliber. And if game developers exploit it and turn motion detecting into a cheap, gimmicky button replacement, at least, like rumble, there could be an option available to turn it off.

To be clear, the motion control support should be native to the standard controllers. No perhipherals, attachments, or any other extra equipment should be neccessary to use it. What would be the icing on the cake was if all the consoles supported IR sensors. Sure, fans can complain all they want about ripping off the Wii, but it would make playing shooters on the PS4 and Xbox 720 a lot easier.

It seems that Microsoft has posted a recent job opening that talks about the future of Halo on their next-gen console.

Below is an excerpt from the posting:

Microsoft’s new Halo Studio team is looking for a technical and highly talented program manager to work with an engineering team to help define the next generation of gaming software technology. As part of a next generation team, you’ll be instrumental in helping to lead the development of the engine that will power future experiences for the next generation of gaming platforms.

Not only will the Halo franchise continue on, it has gotten so big that Microsoft has dedicated a whole studio to the development of it. Master Chief would be proud!

Via: EuroGamer

Ask any game developer what sort of feature that the title in question includes, chances are the first thing they mention is the “next gen” graphics, or physics, etc; Of course, it has not taken long for people to start to ask whether features can be next gen or not. After all, all three platforms have been out for over a year. Speaking of which, what about the Wii? Is it truly a “new gen” console? What is “next gen”? What is “new gen”? These questions and more will be answered after the jump.

First order of business: why are we still using the term “next gen”? I believe that there are a few reasons for this. First, thanks to Sony’s PlayStation 2, there has been an unusual amount of overlap between the two generations. Even though the original PlayStation’s production did continue until 2006, the PlayStation 2 was relatively quick to replace it, largely due to the appeal of backwards compatibility. In this generation however, the PlayStation 2 was not replaced by the PlayStation 3 and has managed to hold its position as a current console.

This is not the only way the line separating these two generations is blurred. Looking at many past generations will show that there has often been a much larger divide between two generations. The Nintendo 64 had 3D gameplay compared to the Super Nintendo’s 2D system. Even though the SNES technically did have 3D,it was extremely rudimentary and is not comparable to the N64’s technology. Then lets look at the Fifth and Sixth generations. The graphical leap between the original PlayStation and the PlayStation 2 was immense. Now, I am not saying that there is not a big difference between last generation consoles and the graphical fidelity of today’s HD consoles, but I do not believe that graphics are the next generation feature that the seventh generation consoles (PS3, 360, and technically Wii though, it can’t do HD) have to offer. It is a feature just not the feature that differentiates them from their predecessors. I will expand on this later.

For the average consumer, this simply means that the PlayStation 2 is an old console, where as the Xbox 360, PS3, and depending on whom you talk to, the Wii are new consoles. Naturally, it makes more sense to associate an old console as being “last gen” and new consoles as “next gen”.

So where does this leave Nintendo? They have said that they are focusing on a “new generation” of game console, instead of the conventional approach of upgrading the hardware. Nintendo took an unprecedented step back in hardware power for a new platform, and as a result, blurred the line even more between what is considered old and what is new. This creates more of a need to distinguish between next generation hardware and past generation quality hardware.

This is why the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 likely be considered next gen consoles until replaced by their own successors.

What is it that makes them next gen? Many people are confused with this. In the end, a console’s power is not what separates it from its predecessor, or at least not entirely. As I pointed out before, each generation has had something that made it something entirely new, whether it is graphical prowess, or an entire new game mechanic. As if the seventh generation wasn’t confusing enough, it has several new elements that makes it unique. I already touched upon how High Definition is not what this generation will be about when all is said and done. Another feature that is being taking advantage of in this generation is online feature. Once again, while what online is being used is very innovative; it is not the distinguishing feature.

The power behind the next gen consoles opens up for far more innovative content than just good graphics. One thing that has been generally overlooked is interaction. For the first time, dynamic interaction with environments and characters can be fully realized. Assassin’s Creed was based on this idea. Grand Theft Auto 4 will also make use of Natural-Motion physics technology. In the end, this is what next gen is about. Graphics are almost at the saturation point. The next step is the slow death of animations and replacing them with technologies such as Natural-Motion, procedurally generated animations, etc. In the end, that is what makes a game truly next gen, and not simply a high-res version of a last generation game. High-definition and online are definitely a part of it. But going from Star Wars: Jedi Academy to Star Wars: Force Unleashed is a proper generation leap in the same way that going from Super Mario Bros. 3 to Super Mario 64 was. Not that this is exclusive to physics. Dynamic interaction is not exclusive to physics or even physical interaction. Fable 2 is the perfect example of the side of dynamic interaction, where a player’s actions have significant, analogue, influence on the game’s world. Another example is Spore, which uses both dynamic worlds and procedural generation at the very core of its gameplay.

The seventh generation of consoles is not just about HD or online features. The real innovation is that developers are using the power of the consoles to make the game obey real world laws and properties, rather than just simulate them on a situational level.

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