Acclaim's BMX XXX may be too hot for Sony to handle. Rumor has it that the title may have to censor the adult content with black bats If it's to appear on the PS2. What's more interesting is that Nintendo and Microsoft won't restrict the game on their consoles.

There is a chance that Square will not bring Final Fantasy XI for the PS2-an online-only title- to the US. The differences between networks in Japan vs. America and the fact that the PS2 Hard Drive hasn't come out may be to blame.

Microsoft's N.U.D.E. (Natural Ultimate Digital experiment) title has you nurture a robot "That has virtually no intellect" to full maturity -complete with emotions- via the Xbox communicator. Of course, the first thing I thought about when I heard this was all the cuss words we could teach our new friend. Fully-grown female robots say the darndest things! N.U.D.E. is scheduled to land in Japan in 2003.

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With recent news that Sony has shipped its 40 millionth PS2 console worldwide, talk is already starting regarding when it's successor, Playstation 3, will debut. Japan's newspaper Financial Times has reported that the company is planning on releasing the console in 2005.
Work on the system's microproccessor, named CELL, has been ongoing for some time now. Unlike the PS2, Sony isn't handling its development alone -both IBM and Toshiba have been helping out. This should help in controlling the console's manufacturing costs for Sony. The newspaper contends that the platform will retail for less than $400 and, like its predecessor, will be backwards compatible with PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games.
Interestingly, Sony itself is less focused on the PS3 than it is in the possibilities in the CELL microprocessor itself. Kenichi Fukunaga, spokesperson for Sony Computer Entertainment Japan said, "We're not thinking about hardware. The ideal solution would be having an operating system installed in various home appliances that could run game programs. We've started with boxes -making boxes do specific things. But if you have a chip this powerful, you can add functions to any box. It's a reverse thinking." Such a ubiquitous use of the chip would be more in line with the multi-faceted "entertainment hub" capacity that the company has always wanted for the PlayStation 2, but has yet to realize.