PS3 Fanboy

The PEGI watchdogs at Siliconera have discovered yet another PlayStation Network downloadable: Space Invaders Extreme. Taito's re-imagining of the classic arcade shooter got tons of accolades for its psychedelic visuals and music when the game launched on PSP and DS earlier this year. Backbone Entertainment will be responsible for bringing the action from the tiny screens to the big 1080p screen. No other details are known at this time.

SackBoy plushies have been the object of desire for LittleBigPlanet fans for a very long time now; however, such a prized possession has yet to be made commercially available -- until now, that is. Japan is getting the official SackBoy squeeze toys this month and they're already available for purchase off Play-Asia.

Currently, the online retailer carries four versions of SackBoy: Normal, Pirate, Soldier and Sunflower. They're the 4" dolls we've reported on before, and they're actually cheaper than we thought at the price of $9.90. Import them today, or just wait for those North American plushies that we know are coming.

Some of you might remember our post about King of Fighters XII coming to the PS3 in 2009. That seems like a long time from now, but don't worry old school fighting fans -- 2008 won't be going down without a little SNK love. The SNK-Capcom website tells fans that the AOU 2008 expo in Tokyo's Makuhari Messe convention center will feature King of Fighters XII in video format.

Not much else is know about what will be shown at AOU, but we do know that KoF XII will use a whole new game engine and rehashed old character sprites will be a thing of the past. The game is expected to come out first in the arcades by June/July 2008, running on the Taito Type X². A PS3 port (and possibly an Xbox 360 port) will follow in 2009.

Yoichi Wada, president of Square-Enix, recently gave some opinions about the game industry over at GameSpot. He said that users will demand more innovation and originality. He makes note of the Nintendo DS and the iPod and their subsequent successes in the industry for being innovative. Wada also said that "entertainment is not a necessity, so the users don't know what they should demand." Whatever! I demand nine-thousand more World War II FPS's! Not really.

Wada describes that in three years, things may be changing as the next big thing could come from anywhere (maybe even Squeenix, nudge nudge). He summed up his speech with this statement: "This is one of the reasons Square Enix will collaborate with Taito, a company that produces physical hardware. In our talks with Taito, ideas for an actual physical product have come up. In any case, we will be releasing some 'thing.' It's interesting in that it's not the sort of thing you expect from Square Enix." It definately isn't! What's your take on it? What could Square-Enix-Taito possible create that would be innovative and new as far as hardware goes? Will they pull support from PS3 to make this hardware a success? PS2 was held up pretty well by the Final Fantasy franchise. What would happen to the PS3 should it lose that?