Both Nintendo and Sony have weighed in on the prospect of starting the next generation of video game consoles — and neither company is in a rush to see it happen.

Cammie Dunaway, who heads up marketing at Nintendo of America, told Gamespot in an interview, “Even though our installed base it, at this point, 5 million households larger than the PS2 was at the same point in its lifecycle, [The Nintendo Wii] still has a lot of room to grow.”

Despite this affirmation, there are rumours that new hardware from Nintendo is expected to appear at E3 this spring, possibly in the form of a Nintendo DS follow-up.

Meanwhile, Sony says it’s in no rush to develop a PlayStation 4 anytime soon. Their reasoning: the PS3 has yet to meet its potential.

“I can’t even imagine what can be done technically beyond the PlayStation 3 in the near future,” said Jack Tretton, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment’s American division. “A question I often get is when we are going to see PlayStation 4. When somebody can craft the technology that exceeds what were able to do on the PS3, but we are still just starting to harness it.”

Early in this generation, all three game console companies were quick to say that they expect this round to have a much longer life-cycle than recent generations, which only lasted about five years.

Sony has reported a surge of PS3 sales which, by no mere coincidence, occured during the launch of Square Enix’s highly-anticipated RPG, Final Fantasy XIII.

In fact, during the week of the launch, which occured December 17, Sony sold over 240,000 PlayStation 3 units.

Final Fantasy XIII will be released in other territories on March 9, 2010, but in Japan the game remains a PS3-exclusive. Final Fantasy game launches are always big news in Japan, and undoubtedly Japanese consumers are snatching up Sony’s console in order to play the new game.

Sony’s PlayStation division finally has some good news, or at least some signs of it, amidst disappointing financial reports from Sony. Although the PlayStation group has reportedly lost 4.7 billion dollars since it launched the PS3 console, sales seem to be picking up.

Adding up its second-quarter results, Sony reports 3.2 million sales, a 1.1 million increase over the same quarter a year earlier. The same period also saw a signficant increase in game sales for the PS3 console.

Meanwhile, Sony’s little-engine-that-could, the PlayStation 2, is finally showing signs of decline. The system has been selling comparably to the PS3, as well as other current-generation competitors, the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. Now, the PS2 has declined to 1.9 million in sales with only about half of the total games sold compared to the previous year.

The PSP also had a bit of a decline, dropping from 3.2 million to 3 million in sales, though game sales are up.

Sony bet heavily on the long-term adoption of its technically-superior PS3 console when it realased the device in November 2006. The console had to compete with the Xbox 360, which was out a year earlier, and Nintendo Wii–both of which had lower price-tags and comparable, or arguably superior, game libraries.

Adoption of the PS3 has been slower than Sony expected, but if sales continue to rise there’s hope for the PS3 yet.

Sony has announced that over 21 million PlayStation 3 consoles have now been sold worldwide, with 17 million accounts registered on the online PlayStation Network.

The announcement comes alongside news that Sony plans to take on Latin America by releasing its PS3, PS2 and PSP systems there.

The company’s phased approach involves eventual expansion to thirteen countries in the area, beginning with Argentina, Chile, Columbia and Peru in the first phase.  Sony also plans to set up a localized PlayStation Network in the area.

Ian Jackson, VP of sales at SCEA, has high hopes for the region.  “Long-term it has a very good opportunity to be bigger for SCEA than the Canadian market was,” he says.

Square Enix and Sony are releasing a new PlayStation 3 offering in Japan, featuring a PS3 branded with a Cloud Wolf logo.

The bundle includes the branded 160 GB PS3, as well as the new Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete movie set.  The Advent Children Complete set also contians a PS3 demo of the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII.

The Final Fantasy PS3 bundle goes on sale on April 16, 2009 in Japan for 49,980 yen, about $550 U.S.  There are no known plans to release the bundle outside of Japan.  The Advent Children Complete set goes on sale the same day, also containing the FF13 demo.

Sony’s PlayStation Home for its PS3 console is set to go live tomorrow, but Microsoft doesn’t feel the new service is a threat to their popular Xbox Live.

Speaking with Kotaku, an Aaron Greenberg, an Xbox 360 product manager, says that he isn’t impressed with the service:

“What Home to me feels like is Second Life for hardcore gamers … It doesn’t feel like it broadens the experience and invites people in. When they unveiled it, it seemed innovative. I think what’s happened is now here we are a couple of years later and we feel beyond that … It feels like 2005 tech in 2008″

One of the biggest points that PlayStation Home tries to make is that it’s a free service, while Xbox Live Gold members have to pay in order to play their games online.  Greenberg insists, though, that no price drops are in Xbox Live’s near future, and that the cost of Live is justified by the service:

“I think we have seen people are willing to pay for the premium experience. When they compare Live, even to Home, there is still a huge gap.”

Greenberg also insists that Xbox Live is prepared for the holidays.  The service, which experienced difficulties last Christmas after an unexpected number of people went online, has reportedly been improved since.  “We are well prepared for the type of growth we expect this holiday,” says Greenberg.

Sony has, in a rather timely manner, announced that it has hit the 14-million user mark for its PlayStation Network (PSN).  If accurate, this matches Microsoft’s current claim for Xbox Live usage.

The announcement comes the day before Microsoft releases its highly-anticipated Live Experience to Xbox 360 users.  The new system will improve interaction among players on the network, introduce player avatars and revitalize the Xbox 360’s interface.  Sony is probably hoping to dispel the common conception that its PSN is inferior to Xbox Live, which seems to be preferred by most regular gamers.

Microsoft is very excited about the new Live Experience, insisting that it represents that future of home entertainment content. “With the New Xbox Experience we will reach the next generation of Xbox owners, 25 million and beyond.” said Don Mattrick, senior VP at Microsoft. “We are at a watershed moment, backed by the largest entertainment brands, with an incredible line up of entertainment unmatched in any industry.”

As Mattrick indicated, Microsoft is approaching 25 million Xbox 360 consoles sold.  Compare that to 35 million sales for the Nintendo Wii, and 17 million for the PS3.  Although the Wii is reaching a wider audience, Microsoft is confident that it can maintain its lead over the PS3 indefinitely.

Needless to say, Microsoft has high hopes for its updates, but insists that the new Live Experience is just the beginning.  Xbox 360 players can judge for themselves tomorrow.  The new Xbox Live Experience update will begin downloading automatically on Wednesday when players sign into Xbox Live.

After the success of its lowered price, Microsoft saw its highest month of the year in September, selling 347,200 in the U.S.  The console is also making grounds in Japan and increasing quickly worldwide.

Aaron Greenberg, product manager at Microsoft, tells Kotaku, “we feel confident that we’ll outsell the PS3 this holiday season in North America and in Europe. We’ll do it on a global scale.”

The Xbox 360 is now the cheapest console on the market.  Microsoft also points out that its console sees a higher number of games sold per console than the others.

According to Greenberg, the company is also taking measures to ensure the stability of the Xbox Live service, which suffered downtime last holiday season after an “unexpected” surge of new users joined.

Despite analyst’s expectations, Sony has gone on record to say that it will not lower the price of its PlayStation 3 (PS3) console this year.

As Patrick Seybold of SCEA explains to Edge, Sony believes that its lineup, not a lowered price, will push the PS3 ahead this holiday season.

“We aren’t making any price moves this holiday season. In my opinion, we have the best line up of any PlayStation generation going into this holiday and consumers will be very receptive to it … With PS3 titles for this including Resistance 2, LittleBigPlanet, SOCOM, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift to name but a few of our multiple exclusives, combined with PlayStation Home and increasing multimedia features for the hardware, we expect to have continued momentum going into and beyond this holiday season.”

Price has always been a major sore point among consumers when considering the PlayStation 3, which is the most technically sophisticated of the current console generation.  With last month’s Xbox 360 price drop and the already-lower price of the Nintendo Wii, analysts expected Sony to push the PS3’s price down for the holidays.

Sony will have to hope that consumers will be as impressed with its lineup as they expect.

In an interview with Golem.de, Microsoft Germany’s product manager Boris Schneider-Johne said that aside from first-party titles, exclusive games are becoming less and less important.

“In the past, in the eighties and nineties, that was a major issue,” he explains. “I remember the big ‘Mario vs. Sonic’ debates. What we see today is that the influence of exclusive titles on the sales curves becomes ever smaller.”

“Given the production costs of the games, it is hardly possible for developers to commit itself exclusively to someone,” continues Schneider-Johne.  He illustrates how the console developers have a business incentive to limit themselves, but that third-party developers “like Electronic Arts or Activision can have a business model of rarely developing for a console exclusively. Therefore, the exclusive title is a little less important.”

And indeed, this is becoming more and more apparent as big-name titles abandon exclusivity.  Until Grand Theft Auto IV, the GTA series came out on PlayStation consoles first, and was only later ported to the Xbox and Windows PC platforms.  Final Fantasy XIII was set to be a PlayStation 3 exclusive, but Square Enix has since decided to “port” the game to the Xbox 360, even delaying the release to do so (although its sister title, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, is still slated as a PS3-exclusive).

Speaking with Gamesindustry.biz, Sony’s Scott Steinberg says that his company’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) is beginning to take the lead.

The graphics capability of the PS3 is becoming more apparent as first- and third-party titles begin to show off more of the system’s power, says Steinberg:

“I think that we’re seeing, graphically, PS3 games starting to create some distance.  Some of the other competitors are going to feel that they’re getting long in the tooth, looking quite dated, because they haven’t created that ten-year vision from a horsepower standpoint.”

And indeed, games like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Gran Turismo 5: Prologue are starting to widen the gap in the appearance of the systems, and give the PS3 more unique titles that would make it a worthwhile system.  (We’re still curious to see the difference between the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Final Fantasy XIII.)

Steinberg went on to deny claims that they’re developing a Wii-like controller, and re-affirmed their core market: gamers.

“…as a brand, Nintendo’s got their thing, and we’re not trying to get the senior citizen group to get into gaming.”

The console wars continue…

A little while back, Square Enix announced that it would be releasing Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox 360, instead of the PS3 only.

Now, it looks like the dual release will essentially be a port from one console to another. The game’s developer said at a recent Square Enix event that the Xbox 360 version won’t be developed until the PS3 version is complete.  The team doesn’t even have the Xbox 360 dev kit yet.

Square Enix also recently announced that it will release FFXIII in Japan in 2009, ruling out any hope of a release this year.  They also said a demo of the game will ship with the Blu-ray release of Advent Children next March.

Since development of the Xbox 360 version hasn’t started, though, the North American and European releases of Final Fantasy XIII will almost certainly be delayed.

Sony released version 2.40 for the PlayStation 3’s firmware today, but the results have not been good.  The talk online is that the update is causing major problems for some PS3 owners, who have been reporting freezing and lock-ups of their consoles.

Sony hasn’t commented on the problems, but they’ve reportedly pulled the version update off of their servers to prevent problems for those who haven’t updated yet.

The firmware update was meant to bring several updates to the PS3 console and online system, including PS3 Trophies.

Sony released an update to the PlayStation 3 firmware today.  The PS3 has been upgraded to version 2.40, and a number of updates come with it.

Most notably among them is the addition of Trophies, a new system that basically imitates the Xbox 360’s Achievement system.  Players can earn permanent awards for completing in-game challenges that are linked to their profiles.

A handful of publishers have stepped up to confirm that they’ll be incorporating trophies into their games.  Burnout Paradise and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune will both get trophies added to them in future updates.

The Xbox 360 achievement and gamerscore system has proven a great success for Microsoft.  Some players have gone to great lengths to improve their Xbox gamertag’s status, even playing games they wouldn’t have otherwise played.  King Kong is a classic example of this — the game received low reviews but has been played by an unusually high number of gamers because of the ease of earning achievements.  [See more ways to earn easy achievements and gamerscore.]

Although not all PS3 games will support Trophies, at least at first, this is the next step in the PS3’s gradual attempt to match the Xbox 360’s success in its online network.

Sony has said that it will soon launch YouTube on its PlayStation 3 console, allowing gamers to interact with the popular Google-owned video service directly from their consoles.

Players will be able to upload videos from their games directly to YouTube, allowing them to easily share in-game moments with friends.

Sony also says that older games will be able to use the YouTube integration via an update.

There was a rash of news erupting today on the matter of Grand Theft Auto: IV. Here’s a quick summary of what went down:

• EB Games reported that the PS3 version of GTA IV was outselling the Xbox 360 version on pre-orders in Australia, causing some sites to report that the same was true in North America. UK retailer Asda, however, reported the same findings. HMV reports the opposite.
• Sam Houser at Rockstar told 1UP.com that there will be some differences in the game between the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, mostly to do with the subtle differences in rendering between the consoles. (Which reminds us of the differences between Firefox and IE rendering.) Houser chooses the PS3 as his favorite in terms of visuals: “There’s a certain kind of softness without being blurry – some warmth to it – and then there’s a certain more clinical element to how the 360 looks.”
• Word has spread that a leaked copy of the game has popped up on the web, pointing to the complete impatience of some gamers. The leaked copy will supposedly run on Xbox 360 systems with the necessary mod chips. (Just — don’t plug that console into the Internet…)
• Some sites also leaked in-game footage. The complete intro was posted on YouTube, and quickly removed from the site.
• Sasha Grey, a porn actress, said she’d like to appear in a Grand Theft Auto game, “strapped with two MP5K’s and a black and grey skintight outfit”. Hype for GTA V, already?

Grand Theft Auto IV will be out on April 29.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has confirmed that Guitar Hero will expand with more instruments in future versions. The news is hardly a surprise, since Rock Band, which also features drums and vocals, has been doing quite well.

“We’ll include a lot of other instruments, vocals. It will help us expand internationally. It’s the first game we’ve had in which we can use local content and local bands.”

Activision hasn’t confirmed when they’ll be making this introduction, but a new Guitar Hero is scheduled for release at the end of 2008.