In this week's Famitsu, three major Japanese developers discussed this year's E3 and how they feel about the various motion technology displayed. Grasshopper Manufacture's Suda 51, Q Entertainment's Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Level-5's Akihiro Hino all somewhat agree on what they see as the future of gaming. "Hardware-wise, it was all about Project Natal," Mr. Suda said, as translated by 1UP, noting his excitement on the possibility of creating a game specifically based around its technology.

"It's not a shift from 2D to 3D or in the number of polygons, but it's games trying to open up an entirely new door," Mizuguchi agreed, continuing, "I thought it would take longer, but it's happening faster than I expected." Ironically, when the trio chose the most exciting games at E3, the list quickly filled with Western-developed games, from Splinter Cell: Conviction and Assassin's Creed 2 to The Beatles: Rock Band. Could they resist the ubiquitous Final Fantasy name drop? No, no they could not. "The visual quality was so impressive that I doubted it was even a game," Hino said of AC2, adding, "Final Fantasy XIII is the same way." Impressed/interested by the motion technology but still loving AAA-franchise sequels? Sounds like the whole game industry right now.

Square Enix has finally started ramping up the promotion for a game that basically needs no promotion: Dragon Quest IX. With a new semi-open-ended structure and multiplayer gameplay, there's a lot of mysterious new content in this game -- even after Square Enix and Level-5 toned down the "new."

The last half of this (seven-minute-long) new trailer focuses on the multiplayer mode, which adds a bit of the unexpected to the expected (the expected being a tavern lobby and multiplayer dungeons). You can see players taunting each other and dancing, and one player even demonstrates the ability to be a jerk to other players by setting pit traps. Classy. Check out the trailer after the break.

White Knight Chronicles is targeting a Q1 2010 release date in the US and Europe -- over a year after its Japanese release last Christmas. The reason the game is taking so long to get to the West is because Level-5 is working on extra content, which will be included on the disc. This content will be patched in to the Japanese version for free at around the same time.

Smaller features that are going to be added to the western release of the game include an autorun feature and improvements to the targeting system. The extra online missions that have been released since the Japanese launch -- roughly two a month -- will also be on the disc. Level-5 is also adding a system that was key to their Dark Cloud series, Georama, which will allow you to create your own town during the online portion of the game. Exactly how it'll work or how it will affect gameplay is unclear.

Level-5 is looking in to getting Japanese voices into the western version of the game for Japanophiles, and is still "working on" voice chat, but White Knight chronicles will definitely support cross-region play for the US and Europe when it launches.

After years of literally hearing nothing from Nintendo about the release of any of the Professor Layton sequels, it's got a release date: August 24. A two-month wait for the North American release of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box doesn't seem so bad after all that agony. Not that Nintendo actually said anything about releasing the game. It was a bullet point on a list of games on the press site, and nothing more.

Like the last one, Diabolical Box will feature downloadable puzzles every week for 33 weeks. Thanks, Level-5, for the steady drip of Layton puzzles -- let's hope it doesn't run out before at least an announcement for the next one.

Last year, in the midst of a pile of news from Level-5, the company quietly announced three DS puzzle games called the Atamania series. The first game in that series comes out on May 21 in Japan, and it looks like something worth getting excited about!

Sloane and MacHale's Mysterious Story is, like Level-5's Professor Layton series, a collection of brain teasers wrapped up in an overarching mystery tale. The puzzle content in this game consists of lateral thinking puzzles from Paul Sloane and Des MacHale, presented as both animated scenarios (in a very cool silhouette style) and text. The puzzles seem to involve moving the text of the puzzle around with the stylus to make connections.

Of course, Level-5 has yet to say anything about localization on Mysterious Story. We'd say it's an obvious choice given the success of Professor Layton, but we have yet to see any of the Layton sequels!

Do you like your RPG trailers with an extra helping of drama and guy-trying-to-sound-like-the-movie-announcer-guy? We hope you said "yes," because the latest official video of SCEA's White Knight Chronicles is pretty bombastic. It's also just plain pretty. The footage is pieced together from in-game visuals, as we saw when playing WKC for our recent hands-on. We even battled as the giant mech White Knight itself, which looks like it could have leapt right out of RahXephon. So, after watching the trailer, what do you think -- is Level 5 doing the PS3 justice?

Level-5 has announced that its ROID digital distribution service will launch in Japan on June 1, two months later than originally announced at TGS. The service's mobile game distribution service will be available first, with the PC-based service following soon after.

A Famitsu article about the service reveals one shockingly familiar-looking game. There's no information about what it actually is, but, as the caption asks, "could it be that RPG?" There's very little actual chance of it being Earthbound, but it is possible that Level-5 lured creator Shigesato Itoi into creating an unofficial sequel. Level-5 is full of surprises!

In addition to those two Professor Layton DS games that Japan has that we don't, a Layton anime movie, with an original story by Level-5 president Akihiro Hino, is scheduled for release sometime this year. The two short teasers here advertise the movie in true Layton form: with puzzles!

SPOILERS for these thirty-second clips: the first trailer features two animals whose Japanese names together form the word eiga "movie." The animators even drew the DS UI elements on the screen! The second is a riddle: "What is something using light and shadow that many people enjoy?" Movies, of course!

Now here's a quick riddle: what is so much easier than a DS game to add English text to?

[Via Kotaku]

It's a minor thing, but the map screen in Dragon Quest IX is quite lovely. And, honestly, it's more important to have a nice world map than it may seem, because you'll be staring at the thing all the time. The sepia-toned map provides a detailed drawing of the world, including bridges and other narrow crossings.

Less detailed, but still pretty great, is the treasure map, seen here. These maps imitate the color scheme of the main world map, but are drawn crudely and with much less detail. Treasure maps, of course, are marked with an X in a location corresponding to some mysterious treasure -- housed inside caves.

Once inside the cave, you switch over to a blank automap that fills in as you explore. That's a lot of different mapping for one game!

Level-5's J-RPG White Knight Chronicles has been out in Japan for little under a month now. While some have perhaps already finished the main story, it doesn't mean that the adventure is over just yet. DLC for WKC will appear on the Japanese PS Store on January 15 (tomorrow) and will add new costumes and a whole new quest for online multiplayer.

Those who own the game and plan to download the DLC will find that they'll have to meet certain in-game requirements before triggering the new mission. It'll only appear for those who have a guild rank of 7 or above, and it is recommended that players be at least level 36.

We wonder how frequent Level-5 plans to release these packs, as we're certain that there will be more. Also -- since it was not mentioned in the source article -- is Level-5 charging for this content? We'll probably find that out when the update hits the store tomorrow. Anyway, hopefully we'll see this additional content come our way when the game voyages to North America.

Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino has confirmed that the PS3's White Knight Chronicles is coming to North America, though no release window has been announced. This should come as good news to JRPG fans, especially those who like having "Chronicles" in their titles.

In an interview with GameTrailers, Hino also dances around the issue of the game's online features and whether cross-region play will be possible. Check out the full interview after the break.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Yes, White Knight Chronicles is coming to North America; Akihiro Hino, the CEO and president of Level-5, says so himself. In an interview with GameTrailers, Hino reaffirmed that Level-5 plans to bring the game over to North America, but he did not disclose when it would be coming.

Furthermore, when pressed for the possibility of North American gamers playing alongside Japanese gamers in WKC's online components, Hino neither denied nor confirmed the cross-region play with a "hasn't been decided yet" response. This sort of wording leads to speculation that such a feature might be in the works and will be implemented if Level-5 works out all the kinks. It would be great if they do. To see the full video interview, just have a look past the break.

If you want new in the next Dragon Quest, you're going to get it. It looks like Square Enix and Level-5 are making up for a long silence on the game, considering we're looking at more than two dozen (!!) new screenshots, and lots of new goodies for the title. In the recent screens, loads of new things were revealed: at least two new monsters were shown (Zucchinya and Moomon), as well as one, and maybe two new classes.

While we've only seen someone labeled Bodybuilder (possibly new?), the Traveling Performer (possibly minstrel) was officially revealed. Among the performer's abilities are acrobatics and making the monster laugh ... too hard to attack, we presume. If it laughs and then kicks your ass, it's not much help.

Traveling Performers would be restricted to one of the goofier faces, in a perfect world.



[Via Game Tsunami]