Microsoft PR tactics are simple. What better way to distract people away from the fact that you’re getting your ass kicked by Nintendo than by telling everyone how you’re kicking Sony’s ass? It make perfect sense! Before, they let us know how they tooled on Sony on Black Friday, now they’re saying the 360 dominated the PS3 in Europe as well. According to Microsoft, Christmas 2008 was their best Christmas in Europe, ever.

“2008 saw us grow faster than any of our competitors and we over-achieved in sales during the crucial Christmas selling period,” offered Chris Lewis, regional VP of Microsoft’s Xbox business in Europe. “With eight million consoles sold since we launched, and consistently out-selling PlayStation 3 in EMEA, we’re poised to build on this success in 2009.”

Gameindustry.biz also adds that the “Xbox 360 was the fastest-growing console in 2008, with sales in the last three months of the year over double the same period in 2007 in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain.” Impressive, Microsoft. Most impressive. Although year-to-year 360 sales didn’t increase by that much over here in North America, you still have to tip your hat to MS considering how strong the Sony brand is in Europe.

VG Chartz is now reporting Wii Sports is the highest selling game of all time, finally surpassing the long held benchmark set by Super Mario Bros, overtaking it with a massive 40.52 million units sold.

Currently the top 15 consist of all Nintendo produced games except one, see if you can spot it.....................................

Detective work recovers candid tell-all blog of former Sega employee

Maybe you’ve heard of this story before, and maybe you haven’t: Back in 2006, an anonymous Blogger by the name of “jpeg” appeared, claiming to be somebody within the game industry. He made various posts about both his personal life and his job (like any normal Blogger), though never anything terribly specific. That all changed in early 2007, when he made a post about NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. He spoke on a great many things; he confided that he did not have much faith in the game, despite what he considered the best efforts of Sonic Team. He knew of the game’s troubled development, which he used as a segway to discuss the internal workings of Sega and how it related to Sonic Team, claiming that he knew Sonic Team, personally, “on a professional level”.

Given the deliberately anonymous nature of his blog, though, not many people knew whether to believe him..................READ ON........

 Mark Rein of Epic writes: "As I mentioned before xmas  we've been working on a major title update for gears2. This update will address bugs and exploits as well as add some new achievements related to downloadable content. We don't have an exact date for it but all indicators are it will go live within January. If that changes we'll let you know.

We're fixing a whole bunch of online exploits. For example we've fixed the ability to wield an invisible shield, melee through some walls, gain infinite Lancer ammo and equip a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously plus many more.

We're also making several small changes to improve the overall online gameplay experience. A few of the ones that might interest you are; increased penalties for quitting matches early, adding additional spawn protection against planted grenades and chainsaw attacks, and adding the ability to see the Submission flag carrier destination by using Tac/Com." ............READ ON

In 2005, A United Nations report labelled Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America. That year saw homicide rate hit a 10-year high, most commonly committed with store-bought knives and other sharp objects.

In this same year, Rockstar North was ramping up production of Grand Theft Auto IV, sitting snugly in their Edinburgh offices, dreaming up ways to lampoon and parody American culture and receiving much controversy for their portrayal of New York’s crime ridden underbelly.

Crime in the UK is perceived very differently than other countries; Japanese movies centralise the omnipotent Yakuza gang, while American shows capitalise on the country’s venerable Mafia (The Sopranos) or organised drug trade (The Wire). ..........Read on

The Wii 2....  Our educated guess on the release of 'Wii 2: Wii Harder'
Or possibly the Wii 1.5

Console Releases: Nintendo Entertainment System (1985), Game Boy (1989), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1991), Nintendo 64 (1996), Nintendo Gamecube (2001), Nintendo Ds/Lite/DSi (2004-2008), Wii (2006)
Sales since launch: NES: 61 million, Game Boy Family: approximately 200 million, SNES: 49 million, N64: 32 million, NGC: 21 million, DS Family: 77 million, Wii: 34 million
Predicted next move: 2010

Ah Nintendo, the little games company that took off over the fence and hasn’t looked back since. To say that Nintendo’s recent success is surprising would be a massive understatement. The have managed to tap into an audience that Microsoft and Sony can only dream of trying to reach – it really is quite amazing.

Of all the big players, Nintendo is in the enviable position of not actually needing to worry about releasing a new console – after all, when you’re selling Wiis faster than stores can stock them, why bother spending more money on another console? Having said that, we believe, given Nintendo’s past hardware release trends, that a Wii 2 (or 1.5) may come sooner than expected.

Nintendo has shown that it’s not afraid to tweak existing products – just look at all the Gameboy and DS iterations. This approach sees small innovations added to existing hardware. It’s entirely possible that the Wii will receive similar treatment, particularly given that it falls somewhat behind the 360 and PS3 in terms of HD compatibility.

The Wii 2 will undoubtedly include DVD support, higher resolutions and more memory. Possibly a camera, microphone (although the recent Animal Crossing game introduces chat already) and much better online integration. So really, we’re expecting a Wii upgrade rather than a fully fledged console............READ ON

Chris Hartmann, the President of 2K Games made an interesting comment in an interview with MCV

“UK retail slashes prices if something’s not quite hitting its numbers,” he said, “I’m not talking about a big gap – I’m talking about expecting to sell 1,000 and selling 950.”

As a consumer in the UK, I say hell yeah this is great news.  I’ve seen Fallout 3 tumble in price at GAME to GBP 27.99 from it’s RRP of GBP 49.99.  While it’s a shame to see retailers drop quality titles to make shelf space for the next AAA, I do appreciate the discount.  Retailers should keep some stock of back titles to entertain discount buyers, the latest releases are not always the best for the customer...................READ ON..........