With the release of Sony’s PlayStation Move and Microsoft’s Kinect looming on the horizon, it’s worth looking at the history of competition within the industry to see the potential impact the two devices may have.

Most gaming generations have hot topics, memorable controversies and stiff competition: However, from this gamer’s point of view, most generations haven’t been as interesting as this current one due to the increasingly high stakes.

For all of the ways that Sony’s PlayStation shook up gaming when it entered the fray in 1994 — as an entrant into the gaming world that wasn’t made by Sega or Nintendo, as a 32-bit system that didn’t suck — one quiet change came in the form of its controller buttons. Previous systems from the Sega Genesis to the Super Nintendo to the Atari Jaguar to the Neo Geo CD had all identified controller buttons with letters: With its triangle, circle, square, and X, PlayStation was one of the first to use shapes.

Interestingly enough, they weren’t picked arbitrarily, but actually had carefully considered meanings corresponding to their roles in gameplay. In a recent interview, Sony designer Teiyu Goto spills the beans as to what he had in mind with each button:

Following the one-two punch of Microsoft and Nintendo’s seriously impressive video game conferences, Sony was under intense pressure to show us…well, something. What was once the gamer’s console is now trying to appeal to a greater audience, a point hammered in when Sony’s fictional Vice President of (Fill in the Blank) Kevin Butler told hardcore PlayStation gamers not to “hate” on the casual gamers like your girlfriend or mother. I’m sorry, I love my mom to death, but I would prefer the bulk of games not be determined by her.

Some gamer veterans (including this guy) have been shaking their heads at the general marketing trend of gimmicky 3D and motion games. So what does Playstation have in features and upcoming games that can excite a crowd with sky-high expectations? Check out the good and the bad, after the jump.

File this under things that we really really really hope are true. A couple of different (Warning: The second link is NSFW and NWYT [not worth your time]) places around the internet are saying that gamemaker Team Ico, the makers of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and the upcoming The Last Guardian, are planning to re-release their much beloved first two games.

Ico is nearly ten years old, and Colossus half that age. Both were released with the best graphics that the Playstation 2 could offer, and a visual update, even if it’s just an increase in resolution, would be a welcome addition to the already legendary game mechanics and stories.

Read on...

Microsoft has announced that their showstopping pre-E-3 Project Natal-related event will be “a spectacular live performance imagined by Cirque du Soleil.”

Uh, okay. It’s also said that this pre-show is a “technology free” event, which is the most homey word for “seriously, no pictures, videos, leaks, texting, twittering, or – you know what? We’re just setting off an EMP five minutes before curtain up,” I’ve heard in a while.

We fully understand if you know what Natal is, but don’t know what Cirque du Soleil is, or vice versa, or if you have no idea what either of them are. Allow us to explain why this is weird.

Sony has finally revealed the name and form of its new motion controller for the PlayStation, the PlayStation Move.  Like Nintendo’s Wiimote and Nun-chuck, it also has an off-hand peripheral with a joystick.  Unlike the Nun-chuck, there is no cord, and, unlike the Wiimote, the Move has…

Please pay attention, Nintendo.

Rechargeable batteries.

According to Kotaku, Lucasarts may be giving the sequel to its bestselling game The Secret of Monkey Island the same special edition treatment it gave the first.

Last year’s The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition had the same gameplay as the original, but that gameplay was packaged with updated character art and painted backgrounds in a widescreen resolution. In addition to visual polish, it also featured an updated score and voice acting (which was beyond the game’s capability in the original 1990 release), a new user interface, and a 3-tiered tip system. If there were aspects of the new version that players didn’t like, they had the ability to switch seamlessly between the original game and the special edition at any point in gameplay with a single keystroke.

Kotaku’s mysterious sources say that Monkey Island 2: The Special Edition is now in the works, based on the sequel to the original Monkey Island.

Yesterday, many PS3 owners were frozen out of online — and offline — games due to a glitch that knocked down online hub PlayStation Network. Sony told PS3 owners not to turn on their consoles in the mean time. Curiously, the glitch only seemed to be affecting owners of the old, ‘fat’ PS3s.

PlayStation Network is back up now, fortunately, and Sony has confirmed what some on the Internet were speculating yesterday: the glitch was due to a Y2K-like calendar bug that made fat PS3s ‘think’ 2010 was a leap year.

PlayStation Network, the online hub that connects millions of PlayStation 3 gaming consoles worldwide, is down for many users. Receiving error messages like “Registration of the trophy information could not be completed. The game will quit. (8001050F)” and “8001050F – Hardware failure. Cannot update Firmware or connect to Internet,” many users are being blocked not only from games that require online connection, but from offline gaming as well.

Owners of the original “fat” PS3 seem to be the only ones afflicted, whereas owners of the newer “skinny” PS3 seem to be spared, Sony confirms via Twitter.

Though it’s not yet clear what’s caused the PSN outage, early signs point to a mix of a calendar issue and faulty DRM:

So someone at Sony corporate thought it would be a good idea to create a reality show based on the mini-industry of game testing for the Playstation. The good parts — Hal Sparks! — and the bad parts — a bunch of sallow Sony executives in open-collared shirts! — are in the new trailer below.