Sony Computer Entertainment’s Shuhei Yoshida made an appearance at this year’s Tokyo Game Show as one would expect he would. He was there generally representing Sony, but checking out the competition as well.

What’s interesting about Yoshida is instead of bashing on his company’s competitors, he prefers to compliment them instead.

When asked about his feelings on the Xbox 360’s upcoming dashboard revamp, labeled as the New Xbox Experience (NXE), Yoshida responded:

“Yes, I’ve seen the videos, some screenshots and write-ups. I think it’s quite nice. I like the Avatar designs they’re working on.”

He said that the Avatar’s are a “little bit older-looking” than Mii’s when asked if he had noticed a similarity. However, Microsoft’s Avatars are “closer to [Yoshida's] personal preference”.

Hey, at least he’s a nice guy.

It was an idea that we had before Miis were a part of the gaming scene

Turns out Rare had been playing with the idea for a long time, and only when the revamped 360 Dashboard came into existence was there a place for it. Oh well. You’ll get the jump on them next time.

Source: Eurogamer via Shacknews

Now here’s a heck of a scoop, provided it’s for real. Xbox 360 Fanboy has what may be the first glimpse at the character customization options for the 360’s avatars, which will be part of the upcoming Fall update.

It appears to be a much richer suite of tools than the Nintendo Wiis, but to be honest, this still doesn’t make me too excited for this Wii wannabe. Also, is it me, or does that extended ring finger on the right side look like it’s flipping us off?

Source: Xbox 360 Fanboy

Major Nelson let loose on his latest podcast that the upcoming Dashboard update for the Xbox 360 will be entirely optional.  Well, you’ll most likely still have to download it, but you can continue to use the old blades system and even forgo the new Miis Avatars and stick with your Gamerpic.  Oh, and you can do it all in game.

Here are the words straight from the Major’s mouth:

“The Dashboard as you know it today, in other words the ‘blades’; Games, Live, Media and System, We’ve taken those blades and moved them to the Guide. Every single function that you can do today in the Dashboard you are going to be able to do in the New Xbox Experience in the Guide.

When you press the Guide button on the Xbox 360 controller, the new Guide will come up and you’re going to be able to do everything in there. You’re going to be able to contextually browse Marketplace, did you know that? So when you have Gears of War 2 of Halo 3 in there you’re going to be able to go straight to that section. And if you don’t like the avatars, they’re not required. You can use your Gamer Pictures.”

Yay!  Microsoft is doing one of the things that I actually like about them: they’re giving me options.  Now they just need to release a Blu-Ray player, and everyone will be happy.

Source: Play.tm

When I got the chance to ask Jorgen Tharaldsen, the man in charge of the massive Age of Conan MMO (massively massive), I went straight to the heart of importance: sex, God, and why it was developed for the Xbox 360 and not the PS3. Check it out!

Zungre: I’ve seen a lot of the violence in the game, but what are the sexual aspects of Age of Conan? Can you get married or do you just go around getting freaky…

Tharaldsen: Yeah you can, of course you can get married. We haven’t put a system to it, but there is no sexual aspect to the game.

Zungre: There is none?

Tharaldsen: No, there is no sexual aspect to the game. And that’s the thing. And a lot of people will say “Conan, it’s a mature game.” You can get undressed, you know, you can see your nipples. You can be completely naked. And there are certain quests, like you speak to a brothel mama, you rescue a prostitute, stuff like that, but you can’t actually have sex in the game, and we’ve been very careful in avoiding any of that.

When we [originally] said there would be no nipples in the US, there was, like, an uproar. “What?! No nipples in the US! It’s a major crisis!” We had, like, comics being made about it and thousands of forum posts.

Nipples are in… and by that I mean they are out.

And there was a leak that we were reportedly having mini sex games like in God of War in the game and the Internet went crazy. “Whoa, will this mean rape?” and will this mean this and that. People just went off and we’ve never had it.

Zungre: Are there any type of religious aspects to the game? Can you worship Crom?

Tharaldsen: Definitely, all of that. All the different cultures have their own gods, and you’ll see all the cities and all the cultures being made with that in mind. You can see how [our created character] is a Stygian guy. You know that Stygians worship Set, the snake god. And you can see [how he has Set and pictures of snakes in his clothing].

The red lights in the hotel room make Jorgen look like he was born of fire and brimstone.

And you can get the avatars of the gods. There’s some demi-gods you can interact with. And, of course, there’s demons. Like [our created character] could shape into his demon form.

[The gods] aren’t coming down, with the finger from the sky, kind of Monte Pythonist approach, but they’re really there. Close. And people worship them.

Zungre: Did you learn anything from the release of the Conan game that came out last October? It was kind of greeted very luke-warmly. Did you learn anything from that?

Tharaldsen: No, not really. (Zungre laugh!) No, we didn’t learn anything valuable. I think we have chosen a very different focus for our game. And we spent a great many years on building an MMO world, where they built a single player world. So we have gone for a very different approach.

There you could play Conan, where in our game Conan is a more distant character as a king. So, we have had a very different focus for our game.

Don’t worry — Age of Conan’s “different focus” still involves lots of violence.

Zungre: What about the interaction with the people on Xbox Live? Do you have any hopes for that?

Tharaldsen: Yes, but first we’re coming with a complete community focus. And we’re going to reveal that once we’re done with the PC version, simply because we are faced with a large set of challenges which single player games simply aren’t met with in the same way. What about Achievement Points for a game that never ends? That kind of stuff, you know. How do people chat, how do they interact outside the game? Can PC gamers and Xbox gamers play together? Yes, we would like them to. We’ll see how it eventually winds up and what Microsoft wants as well. So we’re guinea pigging our way into this. It’s an interesting challenge.

Zungre: Why did you make the decision to go Microsoft (Windows and Xbox) instead of Sony?

Tharaldsen: Because it’s a very similar code. Xbox and PC are very similar in terms of the code base. And at the time when we started the development of Conan there was only one company with an online strategy, and that was Microsoft.

Zungre: Because this was five years ago.

Tharaldsen: Yes, exactly. They’ve done a fantastic job at bringing online to the consoles, and it was simply easier for us. A Wii version would have been impossible. Playstation 3 would mean putting it up as a completely different game with its own code base. There’s quite a lot of code run in this game. It’s a lot larger than any of the normal single player games.

Video and Pics from the event soon! I held the Conan Sword!