Wii wins round one of console war

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO the INQ proudly presents this week's Monday morning games round-up.

Xbox 360
Microsoft has begun to be a little more pessimistic with shipment estimations for Xbox 360 in the coming year or two. The company now expects to ship a total of 12 million units by the end of June 2007, down from the original estimate of between 13 and 15 million.

This announcement also comes with news from Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, that has posted a US $289 million loss for the 2006 financial year.

Losses are expected to mount further, when Microsoft receive the packaging from the Big Box Project.

At least the 360 is doing good in India, where it's claimed the console is ubiquitous - far opposite of the situation in Japan, albeit Gears of War seems to be gaining momentum in the far east. Take a quick peek at the Indian marketing campaign here.

Halo 3 invites are up and coming in the next week or two, and you can get the low down on how to get into the beta via 1up. ActiveWin.com has exclusive pics of the Halo 3 box-art and the alleged release date of the game - 15th Nov 2007.

Interested in the thermal qualities of your console? Check out the 360's output in picture form, along with a few other devices.

Still jealous of the motion sensitivity of your friend's Wii and/or PS3? Help is at hand...

PS3/PSP
An interview with Sony Computer Entertainment America chief Jack Tretton in the latest issue of Game Informer (via Joystiq) revealed some bad news for consumers waiting for a lower-priced PS3. When asked point blank whether price drops for the PS3 will be "as soon or as drastic as they were for the PlayStation 2," Tretton responded with a curt, "No."

According to Tretton, the increased investment in R & D and hardware makes the system "a lot more difficult to cost reduce" than the PS2.

After the INQ's report on Sony's embarrassment concerning the use of Microsoft game images, comes further red-faced bum squirming from an even more pointless PS3 advert than the original cup-moving twenty somethings. See people doing bike stunts here.

Fortunately better news comes from the recent PS3 1.50 update that has fixed many Playstation 1 and 2 incompatibility issues.

Also, Beyond3D is reporting that developers are gaining access to some kind of hardware video scaling via a new PS3 SDK, but only now, after the first games have developed and the console has shipped, and apparently only offers limited horizontal scaling.

A better video to watch for Sony fanboys, comes from the Virtua Fighter 5 preview on GameTrailers and accessible here.

Orb Networks has recently added support for the PS3, after adding functionality for the Wii some time after launch.

Wii/DS
Nintendo of Europe has announced that 10 million DS units have now been sold across the continent, making it the fastest and best-selling handheld in history.

Gamesindustry.biz reports that the successful launch of the Wii and the continued strong performance of the DS has allowed Nintendo to gain a 43 per cent rise in profits for the nine months ending December 31 2006.

Sales climbed a massive 73 per cent to 712.6 billion Yen (EUR 4.5bn) during April through to December, compared to 412.3 billion Yen (EUR 2.63bn) the previous year.

This is backed up by Businessweek, who report that the Wii sold the most units on launch, but the Xbox 360 is unsurprisingly currently winning via total number of sales. The PS3 doesn't win anything.

Although Wii replacement straps have been shipped and are already in use, some users are complaining that a series of newer straps are of a substantially poorer quality than usual. Some people are never happy.

Wii Metroid looks like having a April-June release, but rumour has it that Super Mario Galaxy won't be around until the end of the year.

Until then, we're hoping to get our hands on Diddy Kong Racing for the DS, a remake of the N64 game and a much loved title. This should go quite happily with the new release of Mario Kart 64 on the Wii Virtual Console, available now on the European Wii.

Don't try playing it on this DS though, not unless you have protection...

You might find this Wiimote recharge pack might be a bit more useful.

PC
World of Warcraft expansion, The Burning Crusade, has broken day-one sales records to become the fastest selling PC game in North America and Europe. In its first 24 hours, says Blizzard, The Burning Crusade sold 2.4 million copies across North America and Europe. Quite impressive figures, considering gamers still have to pay a monthly subscription to Blizzard after purchasing the game add-on.

Unreal Tournament 2007, has now been renamed to Unreal Tournament 3 and is expected to be delayed until the second half of this year, along with a conversion to the Xbox 360.

1up has the low down and alleged actual pictures from Duke Nukem Forever. 3D Realms president George Broussard randomly posted a thumbnail-sized screen shot from the game on the Shacknews message boards, to put an end to speculation concerning the existence of the game.

Expect further shots in several years time. µ

See also
Wii hacked to play backups
Playstation 3 launch dates now official
Tales of PSP2 and next-gen Xbox 360 surface
2006 console sales figures explored