EU Xbox 360 price drop this Friday

THERE HAS BEEN heated debate on the World Wide Wibble concerning the differences between Madden '08 on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

It's been reported that the PS3 version will operate at half the frame-rate of its cousin on the 360.

Judge for yourself using these side-by-side videos from Gametrailers, reported by Joystiq.

Despite the frame-rate of the video is much lower than that of real-world visuals, the 360 version still seems to have a very slight edge - the odd stutter appears to the naked eye within the PS3 video.

EA tried to defend the sluggish performance, stating that it was due to the 360's longer time at market, as Gameindustry.biz reports.

PS3/PSP
Despite the Xbox 360 receiving a price cut the week ending August 11th, PS3 sales were stil up 7% - due to the Motorstorm 80GB package, available at retail.

PC World reports that PS3 failure rates are "around .02 percent" according to Sony Computer Entertainment Europe founder, Chris Deering while speaking at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival on Tuesday.

If accurate, that puts PS3 failure rates well below the industry average of three to five percent. By comparison, some reports pin Xbox 360 failure rates as high as one third of all consoles in existence. As a result, Microsoft extended the Xbox 360 warranty from one to three years in July citing "an unacceptable number of repairs" without disclosing specific failure rates.

This probably explains the robustness of the PS3 when tested to the maximum - and PS3vault.com did just that.

In June, it was revealed that the v3.5 firmware update for PSP - which also adds the ability Remote Play with the PlayStation 3 - finally allows developers to use the full 333MHz of which the PSP CPU is capable.

According to more recent news from developers regarding the unlocked 333MHz operation, running at the highest clock speed will disallow the usage of the handheld's Wi-Fi feature, reports Beyond3D. The current developer tools only permit network play when running at 222MHz.

Hopefully the CPU will be put to good use in the new Alien vs Predator game from Rebellion.

Xbox 360
The week ending August 11, 2007 saw the August 8th price drop for the Xbox 360 which went into effect for all three Xbox 360 SKUs.

Xbox 360 sales went up 50% for that week alone, which is an impressive boost for Xbox sales. Lets hope 33% of them don't need to be returned for repair.

Now that the US has received the price-cut, every other territory is anticipating a similar drop in price.

Xbox-scene has a French advert indicating a lower cost 360, supporting rumours that an EU price drop should occur on the 24th - this Friday. Thursday is this hack's birthday...any chance of an Elite, Microsoft?

The disposablemedia.blogspot.com blog also states a 'Microsoft source' has confirmed the 24th will see a price drop in the UK - with the following prices: Core 360: £179.99, Premium 360: £249.99, Elite 360: £299.99.

Australia has already received their cut - you can now buy a 20GB premium unit for AUD $579.95 (£240), and a core console for AUD $399.95 (£166) - a saving of AUD 69 and 29 respectively.

T3 is stating that the UK will also get the HDMI equipped premium SKU at the same time. But if you live in the US hold on before you purchase that discounted console - customers who purchase the Xbox 360 Elite and HD DVD drive from Amazon will receive seven free HD DVD titles, curbing virtually the entire cost of the player, reports TG Daily.

The top-performing Xbox Live Arcade games have been revealed in a talk at Gamefest by platform manager Mark Coates, following on from a lecture by Chris Satchell, who spoke about some of the latest Xbox Live numbers.

According to a report on Gamasutra, Microsoft is predicting 45 million downloads and over 100 games on XBLA by the end of 2007, with a 156 per cent return on those published so far.

Streetfighter II HF is top of both the volume and revenue lists, with UNO and TMNT following up on volume, and Worms and Doom runners-up for revenue. More at Gameindustry.biz.

Microsoft XNA Game Studio, the user-creation tool that allows you to make Xbox Live Arcade-quality games for the Xbox 360, has just been upgraded to 2.0. The most interesting improvements in the new version are the multiplayer networking APIs, reports Gizmodo.

The bigger story this week concerns the future use of the Xbox 360 hard-drive. Though Microsoft always stated that it would never be 'required', reports are spreading that future MMOs will need the HDD to operate. Extremetech follow up with a thoughtful article.

Wii/DS
The Wii is already nipping at the Xbox 360's sales figures.

The Xbox 360 is at 10.32 million consoles sold while the Wii is close behind at 10.10 million consoles. The PS3 brings up the rear at a distant 4.11 million.

It's expected that the Wii will take the UK lead, come November of this year.

This could be hampered by Nintendo's delayed Wii expansion plans - a report out of Taiwan from Digitimes states that Nintendo has delayed a Wii production ramp-up this summer, but Nintendo of America tells Next-Gen.biz that hardware forecasts are firm regardless.

As expected, due to the massive sales of the device, Wii parts makers are making a fortune, so Joystiq reports.

Fancy a Yoshi customized Wii? Check out this great example of Wii modding. Or maybe you'd prefer a chrome DS.

Alternatively, if you can't wait for the Wii Balance Board - check out this DIY version.

Don't expect to play much Wii on this Wiimote knock-off though.

If you get sick of that rip-off, try a Knibble on 5,000 web based games for the Wii.

An interesting commentary on Nintendo and a merge with Apple can be viewed over at Joystiq.

Before we finish, be sure to check out the usual Wii Virtual Console round-up at Eurogamer.µ

See Also:
PS3 powers server farms
PS3 gets ready to rumble with DVR
Console price-cut rumours surface
Xbox 360 is in the mire