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Remember when the term “next generation” meant systems like the N64 and original PlayStation? Those were the days. Now the term next generation can only be legally applied to the post-PSWii60 systems that are no doubt being planned as we speak. While no one knows anything for sure about these units yet, that hasn’t stopped Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson from predicting a 2010 start date for the next console cycle.

Talking about EA’s bullish revenue projections, Wilson let slip to Gamespot that he believes Nintendo will launch first, followed by Microsoft later in the year (no word on when the assumed PS4 will come). On the portable side, Wilson also predicts the next round of Nintendo DS and Sony PSP hardware will appear sometime in 2010, though it’s not clear whether he’s calling for a new chipset or just anotherredesign.

If these predictions pan out, that means you only have 687 to 1051 days to save up for a very expensive year.

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According to a trademark application, Apple has recently updated their “Apple” trademark in relation to:

…hand-held units for playing electronic games; hand-held units for playing video games; stand alone video game machines; electronic games other than those adapted for use with television receivers only; LCD game machines; electronic educational game machines; toys, namely battery-powered computer games.

So does this mean we’ll be seeing a sweet new Apple handheld gaming device to counter the likes of Sony and Nintendo? Doubtfully. It’s more likely that Apple is keeping their options open and/or playing a bit defensively with the trademarking world.

And besides, any Apple die hard knows by now that the company will always let you down when it comes to video games. Every few years when they announce new partnerships with developers like id, it’s just to keep the hybrid 50% hardcore gamer 50% Apple fanboy from shooting himself.

[Via  Trademork]

Circuit City has a cobalt blue/black DS Lite for preorder on their website. Considering three minutes have passed since the last time the DS got a costume change, this makes perfect sense to us. No word on the release date, but as always, it’s $130. Get it now to complete your collection and make Nintendo a few more dollars.

[Via Gizmodo]

When we heard about Blu-ray-to-PSP movie transfers getting all official we got pretty excited, even though the announcement was a little skimpy on the details: How big are the files? How long will it take to download a movie? How odious is the DRM? Most importantly, when? Well, we’ve got ‘em all right here.

The deets: The movies are around 1GB (standard def and PSP-optimized) and take about 3-5 minutes to download via USB to the Memory Stick Duo in your PSP. Currently, the idea is that they aren’t stored locally on your PS3. Sony expects it to be available sometime this year—nothing more fine-grained than that timewise, unfortunately

The sweet news: For now, the plan is that the service will be free and it “can be used potentially on any Blu-ray movie title.” Hopefully that means it’ll be available for every Blu-ray title.

The potentially bleh news: Sony is still in the processing of reviewing how the DRM is going to work, and how portable the copies are going to be (important, since they’re stored on Mem. Stick Duos, which are pretty pocketable.) In particular, the number of copies you can make from each disc is still up in the air—so it looks like how many friends you can share with is definitely going to be limited.

DRM-wise it’s nothing unexpected—given Blu-ray’s emphasis on strong copy protection, Sony’s obviously not going to give free reign with the PSP copies. But even with some limits placed on the service, it stands to be one of the best PS3-PSP connections yet.[Via Gizmodo]

To all those who’ve been tipping us like crazy about Xbox Live going back down again: yeah, we heard, and we know you’re not happy. If you’re having problems (or even if you’re not), feel free to let us know in comments. Almost two weeks of outages, yeesh.

To all those sick of hearing about Xbox Live being up and down: feel free to stop reading here, there will be another news story along in a few minutes. But do remember that Xbox Live is possibly the most widely used paid gaming service in the world, so forgive us for keeping close tabs on this story. Mwah!

[Via Engadget]

Wii modchips have been around since the start of the year in one form or another, but some folks at the 24th Annual Chaos Communication Congress just demoed a new Wii hack that lets them have full access to the console, including all the hardware. By using a custom serial interface, they were able to grab access to the encryption and decryption keys during runtime by doing memory dumps. Don’t worry about the details if you’re not sure what’s going on, just know that you’re going to be able to run even better homebrew and “backup” Wii games in the near future.

[Via Gizmodo]

Intel seems like it’s going to be making a bigger push at gamers with the launch of Penryn, and HotHardware managed to score some deets on the company’s upcoming “Skulltrail” platform, which is built-around server-class hardware reconfigured for gaming. The new mobo pictured here supports dual quad-core Penryn Xeon processors, SLI graphics, and four PCI Express x16 slots, as well as two standard PCI slots. You’re also looking at a whopping six internal SATA ports, dual eSATA ports, six USB ports, a lone FireWire port, and Gigabit Ethernet. That’s quite a foundation for a gaming rig — let’s just hope pricing is at least pretend reasonable, eh?

[Via Engadget]

For all you Devil May Cry fanatics out there (wait — are there Devil May Cry fanatics out there?) you’re about to get a super-special, unicorn explosion from Microsoft. That’s right, babies, it’s the Devil May Cry special edition Xbox 360. Actually, it’s more like a bundle of the boring, old, non-special (though HDMI equipped) Xbox 360, coupled with the brand-spaking-new Devil May Cry 4, where the Devil, crying, and the possibility of crying meet for a fourth — but probably not final — time. Right now it’s looking like a Japanese-only deal, but you never know when something this gooey will drip over to these shores. Available January 31st for ¥37,800 (or about $330).

[Via Engadget]

Our friends over at is82.com, the official Interstate 82 website, had a new map released today for the Christmas season. The map is called “feed problem” designed and released by Shrooms from is82.com. This map takes place inside a huge model sized house with a table and a fruit cake on top with a holiday disco on the top playing music from Wizards In Winter (Instrumental) by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. This map is a must to download if you play is82. If you have never heard of is82 but own Battlefield 1942, check it out at www.is82.com.

Download “feed problem 1.0″

Download “feed problem 1.1 patch”

[Via Is82]

That new PS3 firmware that just dropped has a little more going for it than just DivX and WMV support — Sony’s enabled PSP Remote Play of PS1 games from a PS3, no matter whether they’re downloaded from the PSN Store or the actual physical games inserted in the PS3’s drive. Our peeps at PSP Fanboy tested it out and found it worked great with both a downloaded copy of Wild Arms and the disc of Metal Gear Solid. This means you could theoretically leave all those pesky UMDs at home and play games from anywhere in the world with a net connection — as soon as Sony gets some more PS1 games online.

[Via Engadget]