Those old school arcade and Atari 2600 games played mostly as one would remember them, 8-bit visuals and audio in tact and well emulated by the developers at Krome, responsible for Game Room. Some played better than others at this point—Scramble and Crystal Castles played near flawlessly, Finalizer a little slower than it should—but Microsoft reps say the team is striving for accurate emulation on all titles, with plenty of work still left to be done before launch later this year.

In between bouts of playing old school games, we browsed the Game Room arcade virtual space, distributed across multiple floors and arcade rooms. Each room can be customized with an overall theme—one looked very Tron-like, another like a spooky graveyard, another featuring an Old West aesthetic—and decked out with arcade cabinets and decor.

That decor consists of items as straightforward as coin changers and Atari or Intellivision logo-style tables, but it also means items like chainsaws, wig stands and paintings of vampires that can be hung on the walls. Customizing rooms was simple, choose a theme and place cabinets on empty slots.

The service doesn't follow a PlayStation Home-like interface in the sense that you don't see your Avatar walking around the virtual space, heading from room to room or machine to machine.

And while Game Room does offer a handful of two-player games, those games will feature real-time multiplayer in a local sense only. Two-player games like Football, Sea Battle and Armor Battle will be playable in versus modes locally only at launch, according to Microsoft, something that could change in the future.

On Xbox Live, two-player score challenges will require each participant to play through the game in full, then compare scores. The option to play one life, then let a friend take his or her turn, won't be available for Xbox Live matches at launch. Microsoft reps stressed that should the community demand real time multiplayer for Game Room via Xbox Live it would look into adding such features.

Getting in and out of individuals games was quick to load and easy to navigate, something Microsoft says it will continue to focus on as the Game Room library expands from 30 at launch to over 1,000 in the next three years. It expects to dole out 5-7 games per week via Xbox Live Marketplace.

One aspect that may make the purchasing of (somewhat pricey) Game Room games go down easier will be the addition of Achievements to each title. In the demo we saw, this included three medals, based on time spent playing a title and high scores. It sounds like Microsoft and Krome don't plan on adding more specific Achievements to Game Room titles, as it may compromise emulation. But if you're into Gamerscore boosting, you'll find more options here.

Additional competition will come from the option to play regular or ranked versions of each game, letting you compare your scores to friends within the Game Room. Each title in your personal arcade will display a virtual banner above it, with the high score in your circle of friends. Those banners are color-coded and display green if you're the current champ on a particular cabinet.

We saw a few games not mentioned in the list of announced titles, including games like Super Breakout for the Atari 2600. That particular title—and Crystal Castles—didn't play quite as they did originally, as each required a custom control scheme. Microsoft reps say they didn't intend to offer paddle or trackball controllers to support titles like these, but that controls will be tweaked to make games like Super Breakout more playable on an Xbox 360 controller.

Super Breakout was one of the titles that was recommended by Game Room after playing through another title. You'll see game recommendations like this in the menu screen after a gaming session and on virtual monitors scattered about the arcade.

If you'd like to see more of Game Room in action, check out our quick video from earlier today.

Game Room is planned to be released to all Live members later this year on Xbox 360 and Games For Windows.

Reports covered by Kotaku this morning indicated that the Natal would use 10-15 percent of the Xbox 360's "computing resources." Those reports gave way to comments we received from a source familiar with the development of Project Natal who said that the peripheral would actually need to use up to 33 percent, a third, of the 360's CPU.

The source explained to Kotaku that, while Natal wouldn't use the horsepower of a full core of Microsoft's three-core central processor, it would need to use a core on its own in order to reduce latency between human input and what happens on a TV screen. That would leave the CPU's other two cores for the other processes needed to run Natal-compatible Xbox 360 games.

While this would seem to even further curtail the ability for technologically complex big-budget games to work with the Natal — such games would seemingly need as much of the 360's CPU for their non-Natal functions — the source said those fears were a little off. High-end graphics such as those in a richly-rendered racing game such as Forza 3 could still be possible, the source told Kotaku, but compromises might have to be made for "slightly reduced" artificial intelligence, sound or physics.

Microsoft was aware of the brewing gamer anxiety and expressed a desire to explain Natal's full potential in the future.

For today, they focused on shooting down the source's 33 percent figure: "The software behind 'Project Natal' is what makes it special. While we aren't able to share further details at this point, we can assure you that 'Project Natal' does not require a dedicated Xbox 360 CPU core."

At E3, Project Natal was played by several reporters, including me, with several games, including the high-end Burnout Paradise. At the time, Natal was actually a bunch of sensors held in a box, not a streamlined product in its final shell.

Part of today's Natal confusion has been over the rumored elimination of a dedicated processor in the Natal peripheral, first reported on the 4 Guys 1 Up podcast. That elimination seemed even more certain this week due to the slight but specific tweaks made in Microsoft's official Project Natal fact sheet. As noted earlier today on Kotaku, in mid-2009, the fact sheet cited a dedicated processor as a feature of Natal, but today in early 2010, it does not. Most of the rest of the fact sheet's language is unchanged, but the two references to the processor, in two parts of the fact sheet, were removed.

Microsoft director of product management Aaron Greenberg told Kotaku today that "The description of the product at E3 and the description of the product now shouldn't have changed as far as I'm aware." But he and other spokespeople for Xbox 360 declined to directly address whether the processor had been removed.

Greenberg did allow for the possibility that some of the elements of Natal may have changed: "The sensor that we showed and whatever basic details we gave about the sensor were very much in the incubation state [at E3]. These were early mock ups and things as we were describing how this would be done. And now, as we have development kits in developer hands and we've got developers actively working on games, those details are obviously becoming much more firm."

The bottom line as far as Microsoft is concerned, that Natal will still be an innovation. "This product... will see you," Greenberg said. "It will hear you. It will work." But with what kind of games? That remains an unanswered question, one that will come closer to be answered as more technical specifications are revealed and games running on final Natal hardware are shown closer to the device's late 2010 launch.

Borderlands' "role-playing shooter" combination makes it one of 2009's most spectacularly addicting games. But what happens when you strip out the role-playing? Does Borderlands deliver enough of a fix, and the pangs of withdrawal, as a pure shooter?

Loved
Madcap Mayhem: If you want long - and I mean long - gun battles, the Underdome Riot is where you need to be. Only in Old Haven on singleplayer did I have a shooting campaign north of, say, 30 minutes in the main game. This add-on sextuples that, if not more. Three very large boards comprise the Underdome, with plenty of cover, camping spots, and alleys and avenues that funnel into useful killzones. The rules also change capriciously, placing a premium on certain weapons, speeding up the combatants, reducing gravity, or requiring certain types of shots for a kill. Gearbox built this to be a very long, very challenging experience and at that it absolutely succeeded. For the firefight itch that only a nonstop shootout will scratch, this is your DLC.

Hated
Fifty is the New Zero: Do not, however, buy this if you are looking for another set of missions to complete, because that is not its point. That's fine, but if you take pride in your level 50 character, you're going to feel like all that work amounts to nothing in the Underdome. I'm not talking about having some advantage or getting special treatment. I'm just talking about feeling like you're able to compete. As a level 50 Hunter with a level 47 Soldier as backup, my friend and I battled for a solid two hours advancing no further than wave two of round three in Hellburbia, the first arena. Inviting reinforcements would have just doubled the onslaught facing us. I think it's because once you get that high, every enemy is a 50 and so are you, making it a real immovable object/irresistable force showdown. So my friend switched over to his level 19 Siren, invited me, and then I chainsawed through the hordes. (It still took us a good 90 minutes to clear those first three tournaments.) That's cheating, of course. But Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot leaves no middle ground, and the fact you have to survive 25 consecutive, very tough waves or start all over again will become frustrating because, at some point, you're in this to win it, right?

Payoffs? You Kidding Me? Payoffs?: Motoring through a lesser-level Underdome, yes, I didn't expect to see much loot worth hauling, even for the cash (which I already have, like $8 million). But for what I could complete at Level 50 I wasn't that impressed with the level 43 weapons dropped at the end of a round. Only a couple of items made it into my active loadout. The "bank" offered in the Underdome's lobby was a little puzzling to me. The extra space to save weapons is nice, but is it really that useful? Maybe it offers a tactical advantage in that you can stick your lesser-used, but still valuable items in there so you're able to quickly switch out weapons and class mods when the rules change, and still have the rest of your gear when you leave. Then, completing the "lesser challenge" for one measly extra skill point, for me, was like seeing the odometer tick up to 1 after finishing Desert Bus. Tackling the "greater challenge" (and even longer) - you'll get another one (1) skill point. Experience does not accrue here like it does in the rest of the game. Fine, you can't have this be a grinder's cheap paradise. But that also means kills also do not count toward your in-game challenges (which pay out experience at milestones) and that's a real pisser to discover.

As the RPG shooter, Borderlands is spectacularly addictive - but fundamentally driving that addiction is the grind incentive and there is no payout for that here. Forget achievements or weapon proficiencies, I was powerfully disappointed to learn my guardian kills did not even register on the internal challenges. I'm already dealing with a character at the level cap, so not getting the experience points is not a big deal. But those at level 20 or 30, however, are probably going to wonder why they're doing this around wave four of the second arena.

Admittedly, this review was one of the rare instances where the mandate to complete a game doesn't serve the intent of the game very well and fundamentally changes the experience it offers. It's clear the Underdome is about the journey - a body-strewn bullet-riddled one - and not the destination. The comparatively paltry bonuses for completing it would reinforce that. But without any meaningful experience gained or milestones reached in combat, there's not much to reap from the process, either. Unless, as the Spider-Man theme reminds us, action is our reward.

Borderlands: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot was developed by Gearbox and published by 2K for the Xbox 360 on Dec. 29 and for PlayStation 3 and PC on Jan. 7. Retails for 800 Microsoft Points/$9.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the developer for reviewing purposes. Completed the three tournaments for the "Prove Yourself" mission. Swore constantly.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

I have to admit that I know next to nothing about the Palm Pre, but it has to be good news that games like Need for Speed Undercover, The Sims 3, and Let's Golf are now available for the platform, right? Those are just three of the seven new 3D games available today, with Monopoly, Asphalt 5: Elite Racing, Glyder 2, and X-Plane making up the difference.

The new games are all a result of the new Palm webOS Plug-in Development Kit, which extends the Palm webOS SDK with tools and API's, making it easy for developers to include C and C++ code into their applications. Electronic Arts, Gameloft, Glu Mobile, and Laminar Research were all given early access to the kit, a public beta of which will be made available in March.

"The performance of the platform allowed us to create these great games in a limited timeframe," said Baudouin Corman, vice president of publishing, Americas, Gameloft. "webOS allows us to deliver an outstanding gaming experience, and we look forward to bringing our best games to Palm customers worldwide.""We expect the plug-in model to play an important role in the evolution of the webOS platform, just as plug-ins have with web browsers," said Mitic. "And with this plug-in, we are making it super-simple for developers to bring the hottest games to webOS."

In addition to the 3D titles, EA has released Tetris, Sodoku, and Scrabble, with Gameloft delivering Brain Challenge and The Oregon Trail as well.

"We are very excited about the potential of webOS as a platform for mobile 3D gaming," said Katie Mitic, senior vice president, Product Marketing, Palm, Inc. "This is a key application category, and we've worked closely with some of the leading game developers to deliver a great game experience for our customers."

Any Palm Pre owners out there suddenly getting the gaming itch?

Initially, the service will launch this spring with 30 original arcade and old school console games, with Centipede and Asteroids Deluxe name-checked as leading the charge. The line up is comprised entirely of games for the Atari 2600, Intellivision and arcade offerings from the likes of Atari and Konami.

As the line-up is announced to reach 1000 games, it will at some point have to go beyond that small list of companies.

The following 30 games were showcased in the Game Room debut trailer, with a few more making cameos, but not yet officially announced.

1. Centipede (arcade)
2. Asteroids Deluxe (arcade)
3. Tempest (arcade)
4. Crystal Castles (arcade)
5. Lunar Lander (arcade)
6. Jungler (arcade)
7. Road Fighter (arcade)
8. Scramble (arcade)
9. Finalizer (arcade)
10. Tutankham (arcade)
11. Shao-Lin's Road (arcade)
12. Super Cobra (arcade)
13. Red Baron (arcade)
14. Gravitar (arcade)
15. Battlantlis
16. Astrosmash (Intellivision)
17. Mountain Madness Super Pro Skiing (Intellivision)
18. Armor Battle (Intellivision)
19. Space Hawk (Intellivision)
20. Sub Hunt (Intellivision)
21. Sea Battle (Intellivision)
22. Space Armada (Intellivision)
23. Astrosmash (Intellivision)
24. Star Raiders (Atari 2600)
25. Outlaw (Atari 2600)
26. Yar's Revenge (Atari 2600)
27. Millipede (Atari 2600)
28. Football (Atari 2600)
29. RealSports Tennis (Atari 2600)
30. Combat (Atari 2600)

Sky Diver for the Atari 2600 makes a brief appearance in the first Game Room trailer, so expect it—and many other 2600 titles—eventually. The initial Game Room leak showed off games like Shark! Shark! and Star Strike for the Intellvision and Atari's RealSports Baseball and Realsports Basketball, so expect those too.

Ford's new MyFord Touch driver connect technology and second generation SYNC system features a WiFi signal receiver that gives passengers wireless internet access in the vehicle. The system lets you plug a compatible USB mobile broadband modem into SYNC's USB port to produce a secure wireless connection that will be broadcast throughout the vehicle.

The system also includes an 8-inch touchscreen that can browse the internet when the vehicle is parked.

Ford doesn't detail what protocols they will be using for the wireless signal, but I'd like to think it's at least 802.11g, though 802.11n is where the real action's at. Of course, all of this will be riding on a cell signal, so don't expect blistering speeds.

Now they just need to add a trackball and a couple of mouse buttons on the gear shifter and we'll be set.

Debuting today at CES in Las Vegas, the Nyko Wand+ features Full Motion Technology, offering the same 1:1 movement tracking capability as the regular Nintendo remote with the Wii Motion Plus add-on attached. In the official announcement, Nyko takes a subtle swipe at Nintendo for not creating an all-in-one controller of its own.

By building the technology into the controller, the Wand + provides all the functionality Wii gamers expect, plus the versatility and convenience they deserve; no more dongles, no more custom sleeves or incompatibility with docks and other accessories not able to accommodate attached dongles.

Ouch. If I were Nintendo, I'd be a bit embarrassed.

The Wand+ also includes Nyko's Trans-Port Technology, which allows action buttons to be replicated electronically on attached accessories, as opposed to Nintendo's analog connector.

All this for $39.99 when the Nyko Wand+ ships this March.

How often do gamers commend the bravery of the people who make games for them to play? A gamer might respond: How often do the games they play give them reason to?

How often, though, do gamers, myself included, have trouble distinguishing bravery from stupidity, innovation from mistake?

Bravery is a value developers seldom promote. Bigger, we hear. Better, we're told. More badass, it's hyped.

Bravery? That commodity goes unsold. Yet last year I found bravery through another B-word: Banjo. I found it in a game that I mistook for stupid, for which I was stupidly mistaken. This was Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, a sequel from Microsoft-owned Rare studios, a game no one thought was slavishly copying its predecessors or other games, but a game that was possibly an evolutionary error. Again, my mistake.

The early Banjo Kazooie games, made in the 90s in the shadow of Super Mario 64, were character-based platforming games. You controlled Banjo the bear, who ran around in yellow shorts and a blue backpack that contained his bird-friend, Kazooie. You jumped. You squashed enemies. You collected shiny gold things. And while that all made the game a lot like Mario, it wasn't until Banjo's fourth game, the 2008 Nuts & Bolts, a game I played in 2009, that I realized how those early Banjos weren't just similar to Mario but similar to just about every other game. To put it another way, when I played Nuts & Bolts, I realized how different this new one was from just about every other game I'd ever played.

The difference between Banjo new and Banjo old wasn't what you'd think it was, had you tried the game early like I did or seen an ad or read a preview. The new game was bigger and — here's a nice b-word — beautiful, offering players some of the most vast and gorgeously designed cartoon 3D worlds ever rendered in a video game. Vast as the game world was, it wouldn't make sense to force the player to run through Banjo's world. While the game would require the player to squash enemies and collect shiny gold things, the player would be abetted in that adventure with vehicles: Cars, planes, tanks. Just as the railroad, the automobile and the passenger plane made our great Earth small enough so that we could traverse it like 17th-century settlers in a village, Banjo's vehicles would make his great world down to the scale of his earlier ones.

Nuts & Bolts would be a platformer with vehicles — that was the innovation, yes? Or, to some, that was the ruin. Change our games for sequels, gamers chant, but the backlash sometimes betrays them: Don't change them too much. Banjo needs a floating platform on which to jump to, right? Cars don't jump onto floating platforms, not well.

Rare pitched another innovation with the new Banjo, one that easily aroused suspicion. This new game, they showed, would let gamers create their own vehicles, opening access to a garage of collectible fenders and engines and wings and egg-shooting guns. Wheels, tired, fuel tanks, springs, armor, chairs, trays, rear-view mirrors and rocket engines. Plug them all together and don't think too much about how user manipulation of content might interfere with tight, careful level design. For those of us who liked being led through a Banjo Kazooie obstacle course of a level, it now seemed we'd have to do more of the work ourselves, not only going through the course, but constructing our means to do so.

Rare conceded one cheat: They'd make some vehicles for the player, make it easy. You don't need to build your own, they said. You don't need to customize your cars, trick out your rims, pretend you're playing LittleBigPlanet or do your own mash-ups. Just play with what we give you, if you must. That's how I decided to play.

So early last year, I put Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts in my Xbox 360 and started to play and started to get disappointed yet again. This was not the Banjo of old, the one I knew I liked and had recognized it wouldn't be. But it was also something that didn't feel like a good change. First impressions, thankfully, can be wrong.

I played with custom vehicles, driving my Banjo car or flying my Banjo plane across a field or through some giant innards of a computer, collecting shiny things and hauling stuff. I found some racing levels, and frowned. Rare had said that we shouldn't worry that Nuts & Bolts was a racing game, despite the addition of racing levels. But, oh, here was racing.

Then, a turn happened, both in the game and in my attitude. And it happened on a racing track. The old way you play games — the way I first attempted to play Nuts & Bolts for a few hours — is that you try a level or a mission and, if you fail, you try it again. Maybe you gain experience points, your character levels up and it gets easier. Maybe, more often, you just try it and try it and get better, learn the intricacies of the mission or level, and finally you get it. That's how it normally works. That's how I've approached Mario games. That's how I've approached Banjo games. That's how I've approached racing games.

In Nuts & Bolts, however, in one mission, I kept failing. I couldn't win a race. The other racers passed me every time. I messed up the same turns. And I probably could have overcome all that by trying and trying and trying again. But the lightbulb went on. I went into the Nuts & Bolts garage. I started rebuilding my vehicle. You construct these vehicles as if you're making Lego builds, bolting on cubes and cones, latching one part to the next. I was having trouble making a turn? I'd reshape the fender. A guy was passing me on the sides? I'd add a gun on the side to shoot him away. I was falling behind? I added an extra engine, some extra fuel and then lightened the chassis so I was still swift enough.

I didn't get better at the game. I made myself better at the game — by making something better for myself.

And I didn't only have to do it in racing levels. I could do it in collection levels. I did it in aerial dogfight levels. I made planes when I think they thought I'd make helicopters. I made an absurd transforming boat when I think they thought I'd use a car. I mad a vehicle that could bounce over my enemies instead of fighting them. I took glee and breaking things apart and solving problems my way.

That's how I discovered the bravery. This wasn't a game designed for me to sit back and play it, nor was it a game that allowed me to make some simple tweaks. This was a game that presented some problems and, in a manner of speaking, gave me the ability to break it, to hack it, to re-set the rules by re-setting what my character could do. It would be like allowing a player to give Mario a gun or offer Lara Croft a jetpack. Or, it would be like allowing Master Chief to suddenly be a foot shorter if there was a level in Halo where he needed to be harder to hit or if, in Madden, I could change the shape of the football to match my technique and get the bounce I wanted.

My Banjo discovery changed the way I played the game. It also changed my view of the kinds of problems we face in games and the ways with which we might be given the opportunity to address them.

What I thought was a mistake of design revealed itself to me as bravery, as a developer willing to concede control to its player, willing to let its player mess with its game. This wasn't classic Banjo. This wasn't classing anything. This was new. This was bold. This was brave and maybe the best thing about 2008 gaming I experienced in 2009 or any other year, a breakthrough I couldn't appreciate in an hour of playing time, but that I found at long last.

But first, some caveats! This isn't pure fantasy. We're not going to be asking for HD graphics with simulated surround sound speakers and a wholly digital shopfront. Those are things Nintendo just will not bring to the table, at least not over the next few years.

Instead, we're going to say what we want, but within the parameters of what we believe Nintendo, a company as conservative as it is successful, could actually deliver.

NOTE: The picture above is not intended as a true "concept", or mock-up. It's just a DSi XL, modified to give you an idea of where we're headed with all this.

GRAPHICS
Iwata says the next Nintendo handheld will have "highly detailed graphics". Now, this doesn't mean "high definition"; that would be far too costly and tech-savvy than Nintendo have shown themselves willing to be in recent years. And besides, on a small handheld screen, you're not going to notice (or care) whether something is really 720/1080p or not.

It just means "highly detailed", something the Nintendo DS was not. It was a Nintendo 64 on a smaller screen. Just like the Game Boy Advance was a Super Nintendo. And the Game Boy a NES. Put the dots together and it's not hard imagining the DS's successor having the graphical punch of, say, a GameCube. Or, for that matter, a Wii.

A GameCube in your hands? That's something we'd like to see.

CONTROLS
A big reason for the success of the DS was the accessibility of its touch-screen controls. Nintendo are also (usually) big on backwards-compatibility. So we'd say it's a lock that the next handheld will have some form of touch-screen interface.

But! We'd like to see some changes to the rest of the controls. Namely, the introduction of not just one thumbstick, but two. Sony had kind of the right idea including a nub on the PSP, but then blew it by only having one, meaning direct ports of not only PS2 games, but many successful PS2 control schemes, were out of the question. And the PSP has suffered from this ever since.

Including two thumbsticks might not be as aesthetically pleasing as Nintendo's Apple-copying designers may like, but sometimes you need to trade beauty for functionality. Plus, it would let Nintendo do what they're enjoying so far on the Wii, and that's re-release a ton of old GameCube games.

DISPLAY
It's 2010. Time to cut your ties with the 4:3 aspect ratio, Nintendo. Widescreen is the industry standard these days, so the DS's successor needs to stretch its screens out a little. Those screens also need to be of a slightly better quality, especially the "spongy" bottom screen, which on the DS sometimes looks a little washed out.

And yes, we said "screens", not screen. The two-screen gimmick worked well on the DS when developers made proper use of it, and with Nintendo on top of the world and in no need of further zany attempts at differentiation (as the dual-screen layout was thought of when first unveiled), we're fine with the company's next handheld again coming with two screens.

Though, if costs could be kept down, two touch screens would be nice...

APP STORE
We're only copying Apple's name for the thing so we're all on the same page. Nintendo have shown with the DSi that they're finally comfortable not only with downloading games directly to a handheld, but downloading non-gaming applications as well. Thing is, with these games and apps available only for the DSi and DSi XL - and not the more numerous DS Lite - it's more a niche service than a full-blown aspect of Nintendo's handheld strategy.

But on a new platform, they can step things up a little. Really integrate it, make it a cornerstone of the device. Applications, small games, retro re-releases, even communications (with Nintendo unwilling to make a phone, a Skype application could plug the gap), they could really go to town. The only limits would be that Nintendo would of course control the store (so it wouldn't be flooded with crap), and there's always a question of size...

STORAGE
Ah, a tricky one. Adding a considerable piece of onboard storage would drive the price of the device up, and Nintendo don't traditionally release pricey devices. But it's got to come with something. A continuation of the trend set with the DSi would be fine; a small amount of onboard storage (though 1GB would be nice instead of the DSi's paltry 256MB) built into the handheld, then the option of inserting an SD card for more space, or for transferring stuff off the internal memory.

Nintendo should also learn a lesson from the Wii's early problems, and support the running of applications and smaller games directly from an SD card.

MEDIA
Nintendo have traditionally shied away from multimedia convergence with their devices, but this is gradually giving way, particularly with the more recent editions of the DS, which can do things like play music.

This new device, then, needs to have some sort of media functionality. Though nothing fancy; a basic mp3 player, a basic movie player, and we're good to go. I should be able to insert an SD card with music or movies saved in a basic format (.wmv, .mov, .avi), and the handheld can play them. Same goes for photos, too.

In essence, then, what they've "trialled" with the DSi, only refreshed and improved for an all-new console.

MEDIUM
While the PSPgo has set a trend by going wholly digital, it's one we can't see Nintendo following just yet. Their #1 priority is accessibility, and since casual gamers aren't likely to be as comfortable making digital purchases as they are bringing a box home from a store, the next handheld's games should still come on a physical medium.

A cartridge similar to that used by the DS, only with a larger capacity (at least 4GB) would be fine, as it would provide the added bonus of making it backwards-compatible with the DS. It may not alleviate the rampant piracy issues currently afflicting the DS, but until the world becomes more comfortable with digital downloads, that's something Nintendo are just going to have to live with.

MOTION CONTROL
We've covered some possibilities on this already, but here's what we want: we want motion control with the precision of Wii MotionPlus, but used sparingly. This is a handheld device, used primarily while people are travelling or away from their homes. Games can't, and shouldn't, require people to go jumping around or waving them madly in the air. The odd tilt or lean would be fine.

Basically, learn from the Wii's mistakes: unless you're Nintendo, don't go motion-crazy for the sake of it.

One area motion control would be beneficial to Nintendo's new handheld is when you combine it with the App Store. Like, literally. If the new device has a touch-screen and motion sensing, developers could easily port the more successful iPhone games to Nintendo's handheld.

CONCLUSION
So, a quick run-down:

- GameCube-quality graphics
- Dual thumbsticks
- Improved Dual display (bonus: dual touch-screen)
- 1GB onboard storage space
- SD card compatibility
- Music & movie playback
- Advanced motion-sensing, equivalent to Wii MotionPlus
- Backwards compatible with the DS

And a few more things to finish off with:

- A free, integrated web browser
- NO MORE FRIEND CODES; a single user ID, like every other company uses, should suffice
- A telescopic stylus; the DS ones are too short for prolonged play
- Keep the microphone; some games use it well, while applications like Skype would find it just as useful
- A Mini-USB charger; when everything else you own is charged from mini-USB, using proprietary Nintendo chargers is stupid
- The camera on the DSi seems to be going down OK; if it's cheap, may as well stick it on the new handheld, let developers plan to actually release games that support it
- The systems and games must be region-free
- All that for $199 at launch would be just fine

So, there you have it! That's what we want from the new Nintendo handheld. It might not be fancy, it might not be terribly daring, but remember, this is Nintendo we're talking about. Now they've taken the plunge with dual-screens in the portable space and motion control at home, it'll be time for a little consolidation, which is why we see this device being to the DS what the Game Boy Advance was to the Game Boy: more of the same, just better.

Back in late December, David Ellis and John Davison from the 4 Guys 1UP podcast mentioned that this is something Microsoft would do.

This decision, sources tell Games Industry, does not affect the existing 100ms system lag. However, the decision to go with a software solution will enable Microsoft to update in a regular and consistent fashion.

According to Games Industry, the majority of the processing chip work will be done by one of the three main Xenon processors. A percentage will be lost, but most games don't use a hundred percent of processing power.

"The full Natal hardware/sensor combo always looked like an expensive proposition in a market where Microsoft really needs to turn a profit," Digital Foundry editor Richard Leadbetter told the site. "The notion of offloading the processing to the 360 CPU in the name of lower costs and easier upgradability makes sense.

"Patching up older games to run with the new hardware now looks rather unlikely unless they have the CPU time to spare, but hopefully this will serve to focus developers on Natal-specific concepts as opposed to revisiting old classics."

GI points out that in support material Microsoft distributed for the recent keynote, the company hinted there was no longer a single chip solution, stating, "A proprietary software layer makes the magic of 'Project Natal' possible."

The decision to use a software solution will also ensure that Microsoft can release Natal at a competitive price point.

Microsoft drops internal Natal chip [GI]

Nothing more specific than that was offered, but we take "holiday season" to be "November". Guess the motion-sensing peripheral's other important aspects - namely its price, included games and final name (remember, "Project Natal" is just a working title) - will have to wait for E3.

In fact, we wouldn't be surprised to see some more firm dates applied to both Project Natal—maybe even getting a peek at some non-game related demonstrations—and Game Room, confirmation of which leaked earlier today. Read on for our up to the minute liveblog of Microsoft's CES keynote if you want to know what Steve Ballmer and crew will be doing for the next hour.

A thousand years after the original Crystal Chronicles the world has changed. The four races are three, with the now dominant plant-like Lilties having defeated the Yuke tribe of machine people in the Great War. Swords and spells have given way to guns and ammo, with magic outlawed and the few remaining practitioners - the Crystal Bearers - feared by normal society. Players take on the role of one such Crystal Bearer, the hero-for-hire Layle, as he embarks on a journey that will something something something fate of the world.

It's Final Fantasy. There's always an epic quest that involves the fate of the world. This time there's telekinesis. How'd that work out? Read on.

Loved
A Grand Adventure: At the core of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers is a compelling story that managed to keep my attention despite all of distractions Square Enix threw in my way in the form of mini-games and side quests. The characters are entertaining, even if the voice acting is sub-par and some of them have serious character flaws (the main character, Layle, is a bit of a jerk). My only issue with the story is that just as it was getting really good, the game ended. I'd say around 10 hours of my 18 hour play time was spent completing the story, which seems a little short to me, but could just be an indicator of how much I enjoyed it and hated to see it go.

Everything Is Beautiful: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers is a very pretty game. The environments are lush and colorful, the characters attractive and expressive, and your enemies are varied and unique, while still maintaining a bit of that Final Fantasy flavor. It's a little rough around the edges, but if you can look past some jaggies you'll see one of the most gorgeous games the Wii has to offer.

That's Telekinesis, Holmes: Layle's Crystal Bearer power is telekinesis, and I've not spent this much time picking things up and throwing them about since Konami released Elebits back in the early days of the Wii. You'll open doors, catch fish, pull up plants, control trains, and fight with your telekinesis, and aside from some control issues, it's a great deal of fun. Plus, if you get frustrated, you can always pick up an innocent civilian and fling them off a cliff. If you're looking for a Wii title that makes good use of the Wii remote, then look no further.

The Power To Movie Enemies: At first I was less than thrilled with the combat system in The Crystal Bearers. Picking up enemies and throwing them seemed a simplistic way to handle fighting in a game. It wasn't until an encounter with a pair of beetles that I began to understand the true potential of the system. By stunning one beetle and throwing it at the second, the two monsters connected into a ball, which I could then fling about the battlefield, doing damage to everything in its path. Ah, now I see. To get the most out of combat in The Crystal Bearers you need to experiment with the enemies and objects scattered about the battlefield. Some enemies grant you special attacks when held, while some items will kill enemies faster than others. It's a learning process, and with patience you'll find there's a great deal more to combat than simply picking things up and tossing them about.

The Joy Of Discovery: Exploration is a major aspect of The Crystal Bearers. Every location is riddled with little nooks and crannies, filled with treasure chests, new challenges, and small details that help add character to the lovely world you're playing in. One could spend hours simply running about discovering new things without advancing the story whatsoever.

It's The Little Things: The game is filled with little side quests and mini-games that can substantially increase the amount of time you spend playing the game. Activities like garden building and the always welcome chocobo races help keep the game from becoming too monotonous, while an extensive awards system will keep you exploring both the world and your options in combat, rewarding you with kudos for everything from catching certain fish to finding interesting new ways to dispatch your enemies.

Hated
There's Never Enough Time: While the game's battle system eventually grew on me, I never quite got used to the timed battles. Enemies appear in some areas during specific times of the day only, giving you a limited amount of time to dispatch your foes and earn the rewards for doing so before transitioning back to a more peaceful setting. Not only does it limit the amount of time you have to fool around with the telekinesis-powered combat system, it adds an element of frustration to the mix. Far too many times I found myself one enemy short of clearing an area, only to have the time shift occur, leaving me to either wait until the next shift or wander off to do other things.

Control Issues: The Crystal Bearers relies heavily on the Wii remote for just about everything you do, so when the Wii and your hand don't agree on which way you just flicked your wrist, the game suffers accordingly. This issue was particularly prevalent when the Wii remote was being flicked up or down, with a good 3 out of 10 strokes registering incorrectly. I also encountered some problems when trying to target enemies while holding a monster that shoots some sort of beam (fire, electricity, etc.). At times it seemed as if I was shooting behind character instead of in front of him. Square Enix does include options to adjust the sensitivity of the Wii remote, but I didn't notice much of a difference on any setting.

We Got Lost: A fair amount of my exploration was due to one simple fact - I was lost. There really isn't a map function, other than a word map where you're represented by a dot, and when your land and cityscapes are littered with those little nooks and crannies that make exploring so much fun, it's quite easy to get turned around.

While I enjoyed the various side quests and activities that Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers provided, I can't shake the feeling that a lot of it is padding for a main adventure that isn't quite complete. This mainly stems from the fact that nearly 50% of the time I spent playing the game didn't involve the actual storyline. The feeling is deepened by the strange appearance of CGI cut scenes later in the game. The majority of the story is told using the in-game engine, but then suddenly there are two or three CGI scenes dropped in, giving me the impression that something was missing. Odd.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers comes off as more as a Final Fantasy activity book with a story running through it than a fully realized FF title, but the sights are lovely, the activities entertaining, and as long as you know what you're getting into you should have a good time.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers was developed and published by Square Enix for the Wii on December 26th. Retails for $49.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through the story mode once.

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"In terms of Natal, there's a lot of creativity we're going to unleash," Bach said as part of anew, leaked Microsoft-produced video outlining the company's 2010 plans. "We're going to start it in the context of Xbox, but even in the context of Xbox it's not just going to be about games. It will be a much broader context for people. People will think about that as entertainment, not just about games. "

As president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, Bach oversees Microsoft's Xbox, Windows Mobile and Zune teams, among other groups. From that high level view, he grouped the Xbox's Project Natal, the hands-free gaming camera/sensor/microphone full-body control system that his company debuted at the last E3 gaming trade show, with other "natural user interface" projects and concepts underway at Microsoft.

"For us, interacting with technology in the most natural way possible that can be voice, it can be touch, it can be multi-touch, motion, there's all kinds of different ways for people to do that... the closer we can get our technology interface working that way, the better off we are."

Bach declared that 2010 has the potential to be one of the Xbox 360's "biggest years yet." He mentioned the forthcoming Halo: Reach and Natal as two reasons why. Of Natal, he added: "That has the potential to be magic. There's still a lot of work for us to do, but I think there's tremendous potential there."

Natal's magic will be transformative, he added: "I think [Project Natal] is going to revolutionize how people think about the gaming business and actually turn it into an interactive entertainment business. I think we're finally going to get there where people can break the mold of [makes airquotes] gaming and get to real entertainment."

We'll have more CES, Microsoft and Natal coverage as it breaks.

More specifically, that's from the quickly pulled video, originally posted on Microsoft's On10.net and Channel 9 video blogs. In that video, Bach is said to have discussed a "one stop shop for retro games," according to a tipster who saw the video before it was pulled.

If true, that sure sounds a lot like the Atari and Intellivision game-filled arcade populated with Xbox Live Avatars that leaked in a survey late last year. At the time, the names RetroCade, RetroGame, Game Preserve, Game Gallery, Tower of ROM, Tower of Game(s), Classics and Classics LIVE were all competing against what sounds like the final winner, Game Room.

Microsoft's CES keynote is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 PM PST. We'll be liveblogging the event from the show, so check back to see just how much of a rumor this really is.

Thanks to Ian for the heads up!

Update: Looks like the video interview wasn't fully removed. Bach does confirm the Game Room addition to Xbox 360.

"It's sort of a retro approach. It's interesting, there's a generation... who grew up with a set of games like Centipede," Bach says of Xbox Game Room. "They look almost like casual, fun games today, at the time, they were high-end, edgy games. So Game Room is the idea of bringing that back to the market."

He also describes the Xbox Game Room as "like my daughter going to watch Journey." Hopefully that actually means Journey the video game will be playable.

Just days before the official start of the E3 gaming trade show that year, Nintendo's chief game designer provided me a private demonstration of the then unreleased Nintendo DS. He introduced me to the system's dual screens, touch screen and microphone. And he told me the feature that Nintendo omitted.

As I wrote in The New York Times back then:

To keep costs down, Mr. Miyamoto said, some features were left out of the DS. Maybe next time, he said, he will be able to include a tilt sensor for gyroscopic control. For now, he is focused on double screens.

Nintendo had experimented with tilt controls previously, including a motion sensor in the cartridge for the Game Boy's 2000 game Kirby Tilt 'N Tumble. In 2004 Nintendo would release Wario Ware Twisted, a Game Boy Advance game with a cartridge containing a rotation sensor.

Iwata told the Asahi Shinbun this week that a DS successor would need motion detection: "[It will have] highly detailed graphics, and it will be necessary to have a sensor with the ability to read the movements of people playing."

Current Sony and Nintendo handhelds do not detect motion. The Apple iPhone does.

Just as some other long-discussed Nintendo projects such as Miis have come to fruition in recent years, now it seems that a motion-controlled Nintendo handheld may be upon us.

Kotaku has requested clarification on plans for a new motion-sensitive handheld and will update you if we find out more.

[PIC: Cropped photo of the DS, as it looked when it debuted at E3 2004 via Wired... The DS was redesigned prior to release]