Sometimes old news is still news worth writing about, especially when it' s " insider" information about the PS3 launch, PS3 games, and the PSP. Hey, just because other people have known about it since before August 18 doesn' t mean that everybody has had access to it, right? More importantly, people aren' t done talking about it yet, and there' s still lots more to be said.

More than a week ago, The Professor told us about an article over at genmay.com, and here' s what that article had to say:

" The launch lineup is shrinking."

* Bad News: What was supposed to be 30 titles (both 1st and 3rd party games) has gone down to 15 titles (Scrivener couldn' t get more specific because the list " literally changes by the hour" ).
* Good News: Postponing some of the games means more development time. This means better quality. Example: Heavenly Sword was revealed at E3 but will be released in March. But it now has " layers and layers of detail" and " looks like f***ing Advent Children" and has gotten a " God of War type violence upgrade."
* Killzone 2 is still in development and is PS3' s " secret weapon." Scrivener says, " Announcements are being held back until closer to the PS3 launch as it' s going to generate a monumental amount of buzz."
* Lair will be held back to at least summer of 2007, but promises to be " absof***inglutely incredible" thanks to " unscripted AI-driven massive scale battles (we' re talking Helms Deep here)" where you control a single dragon and rider. Basically the AI is " playing an RTS with itself" and your character simply tries change the tide of the battle.
* Resistance: Fall of Man is supposed to be a mix of Half Life 2 and Call of Duty. Scrivener says, " I f***ing hate both those games so I was not terribly impressed with the single player. Now multiplayer is a whole different beast, because the weapons are strange as f***." Also, the system checks the distances and environment and mimics the distortion caused by echoes and all that. Unfortunately, the game won' t be out until the first part of 2007 or later.

Scrivener also got into the whole Blu-ray debate: the Xbox 360 uses DVD9 while the PS3 uses BD discs. This means that a PS3 disc will fit in more data: that means more details, more textures, and just more. What Scrivener basically said was:

* There was a demo of an upcoming sports game (Scrivener couldn' t say which game).
o One was on Xbox 360 (DVD9) connected to an HDTV (720P).
o The other was on PS3 (BD50) and HDTV (720P).
o The PS3' s was better.
* The reason why the BD50 one was better: the 360 could have handled the high resolutions, but they won' t fit on the disc. So the 360 suffers. 85% of the games in development for the PS3, according to Scrivener, will not fit on a single DVD9.

Also according to Scriviner: BD is the way to go. Why? He has his reasons: 80% of manufacturing plants are adopting Blu-Ray, Sony has clout in the movie industry, and BD movie costs are now $20 to $30.

Well, Scrivener is not an unbiased writer, but he has a reputation for not making stuff up. While we at QJ have yet to come to a consensus about the whole BD-vs-DVD thing, we' ll leave you with some things to think about:

* Do you think that having your game shipped in more than one disc is a problem?
* If the future of next-gen consoles is all about better processing speeds and all that, do the game cinematics really need to be squeezed into a CD, or could they just be rendered on the spot as you play the game?