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Console News For Wednesday, October 27th

Sony To Introduce Its Own Console Phone?

As reported by Engadget, it looks like Sony is looking to steal some of Microsoft’s thunder in the phone market with their own Playstation phone.  While still considered a rumour, I can’t but wonder if this is the reason why Sony has so drastically marked down the price of the PSP Go.

Microsoft has been working very dilligently to bring the XBox Live experience to the mobile platform with the introduction of Windows Mobile 7, and further extend the Live experience with their upcoming revamp of Games For Windows Live to unify gamers across all devices.  An entry by Sony with a Playstation phone could very well take a bite out of Microsoft’s efforts in re-entering the mobile market.

Of course, if Sony is to do this, then the real winner would be Apple Inc.  As a split of users determined not to buy an iPhone between Microsoft and Sony would only bolster their position as the number one mobile phone maker in the market.

Source: Engadget

NATS and Xbox Live

@majornelson‘s (Xbox Live’s Major Nelson) Twitter feed this morning links us to a Microsoft Xbox Engineering blog talking about NATs (Network Address Translation) and how strict and moderate NAT’ing can affect your Xbox gaming experience.  It’s full of plenty of extremely useful information of how Xbox devices under networks of certain NAT configurations will react to Xbox devices under other NAT configurations.

Of course it was written by an Engineer, so if you find the details to be a bit cumbersome, they included a very easy to follow diagram for the regular non-geek.

Source: Twitter, XBox Live Engineering Blog

 Game Pack 11 For Game Room Released

Microsoft has released Game Pack 11, the add-on for Xbox’s own classic video game emulator just a couple of weeks after the closing of Krome Studios.  The Microsoft dev team responsible for Game Room and the “regularly scheduled releases”.

I haven’t downloaded the pack to see what games are on it as of yet, but one fellow blogger seems to be quite taken with a Konami game that found its way into the release.

Source: Xbox Live, The Examiner

Sims 3 On Xbox 360 And Playstation?

EA has announced that the popular Sims franchise is now available for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.  So now you can date, get a job, be a criminal and set your virtual you on fire from the comfort of your couch!

Interestingly enough, there’s been a lot of news about problems with Microsoft’s Xbox Live guidelines and MMOs in the press lately.  With that said, you have to wonder if any of the guidelines were bent or broken to allow the Sims 3 to come to the Xbox?  Or is it a case of the subscription requirements in the other MMO games that are the real sticking point?

Only time will tell.

Source: Electronic Arts; MCVUK

News for Tuesday, October 19th

AT&T Offering Free Month of Zune Pass With Win7 Phone

AT&T Wireless is offering a 30-Day trial of Zune Pass with the purchase of a Win7 Mobile Phone.  Dubbed the “Entertainment Pack”, you also get access to 30 days of AT&T’s Uverse services, as well as ilomilo, a new, cutesy Xbox Live game.

Source: AT&T; ilomilo

Best Buy Still Doesn’t Have Any New 250GB Slim/Kinect Bundles?

Apparently Best Buy is still having issues with procuring the $399 Xbox 360S Bundle with Kinect for pre-order.  With Microsoft stating that this is a bigger launch than that of the 360, you have to wonder exactly how many units have been pre-ordered, since the 360 only had 400,000 units available when it launched in 2005.

Source: BestBuy

Kinect To Launch With 17 Titles This November

Looks like the guys over at Wired UK have gotten the up-to-date launch list for Kinect this November.  Not much has changed with the exception of a couple more games from Konami.  With all of the sports and fitness games releasing at launch, there are going to be a lot of skinnier geeks this coming spring.

Source: Wired UK

Call of Duty: Black Ops Stolen From The Presses?

Apparently, some guy (or gal) in Alabama swiped a few copies of COD: Black Ops from the presser not too long ago.  Shortly thereafter, the enterprising thief sold the copies to a few upstanding gentleman on some of the forum sites dedicated to cracking and copying software.  One person in particular, “Ungodly Leaker”, who was responsible for the leaking of Halo: Reach apparently had posted that they received a copy as well. 

With almost 1.8 million pre-orders placed, this looks to be yet another very hot download for the less than ethical gamer.

Source: Escapist; VGChartz

Halo: Reach Stats Updated By Bungie

Bungie released updated statistics on gameplay and matchmaking this last Friday.  Some interesting numbers:

16,445 Man-Years have been spent playing Halo: Reach (Not to be confused with Dog-Years)

784,000,000 player-games have been played (1 game with 4 players is tallied as 4 player-games)

544,000,000,000 Credits have been earned (spend that money, playa!)

3,900,000 Screenshots have been uploaded (and plenty of them feature juvenile looks at Kat’s “bad side”)

5,970,000 total files have been uploaded (your bandwidth bill is in the mail)

300,000,000 Mountain Dews were do’d

If only the real world economy was based on Halo dollars…

Source: Bungie.net

Console News For Monday, October 18th

Weekly Sales Update: Microsoft Pulls Ahead of Sony for Year On Sales

Microsoft this week finally pulled ahead of Sony in sales for the year by 1,000 units for the year last week.  This comes after Sony managed to have a commanding 1 million unit lead before the 360S was released last June.  While it’s still anyone’s game with the Christmas season looming, things are looking well in Microsoft’s favor.

By the numbers:

Console	Americas	Japan	EMEAA	Worldwide
	118,030	51,427	92,225	261,682
	92,079	2,700	68,995	163,774
	70,156	18,659	69,405	158,220
	61,067	12,266	57,356	130,689
	21,449	34,747	29,503	85,699

Source: VGChartz

Total monthly sales for the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 stand at 269,067, 308,145, and 343,265 respectively for October.  With a few weeks to go, it looks as though console sales are starting to warm up for the Christmas season.  Unfortunately for Nintendo, it doesn’t look like the Wii will be doing well this month, being behind number 2 placeholder Sony at 269,000 sales for the month so far.  This is a shortfall of almost 40,000 units behind Sony and a little over 60,000 units behind Microsoft.  This may turn out to be the first October that Nintendo has failed to sell more than 1 million units since launch.

Konami Dates Kinect for Xbox 360 Titles

Konami recently released a presser announcing the dates of their upcoming Kinect for Xbox 360 titles.  Konami, not to be outdone by upstart Harmonix in the dance ring is releasing Dance Evolution on November 10th along with CROSSBOARD 7, a racing game with animals.

On November 25th, Konami will release Sports Island Freedom under their Hudson Soft brand.  This title will add a few unique sporting events to the already sports packed game line-up including: Archery, Paint Ball, Beach Volleyball, Dodge Ball, Kendo, Mogul Skiing, Snowboard Cross and Figure Skating.

Source: GamersHell

Microsoft Spending $1 Billion on Kinect, Windows Mobile 7 Marketing

Microsoft is shelling out a lofty billion dollars on their marketing campaign for Kinect and Windows Mobile 7 to make sure it stays in the game of…gaming…and…phoning.  Money spent includes Ads on Nickelodeon and Disney (presumably for Kinect.  Unless they’re marketing phones really early nowadays),  product placement ads on Glee and Dancing with the Stars’, a Times Square Event and ads in various magazines.

What really makes me angry about this is that there are plenty of innovative products that Microsoft comes out with that just get thrown at the wall just to see if they stick.  Perhaps if they gave the Zune team a bit more than enough to cover money for lunch, they’d see more ZuneHD sales.

Source: TheNextWeb

Nintendo Wii Getting NetFlix Without A Disc

Following in the footsteps of the Xbox 360 and PS3, Netflix and Nintendo have announced that you will no longer be required to use a disc to stream your multimedia goodness on the Wii without the use of a disc.  Which is great, if you like watching your hi-def shows in 480p.  Good future proofing Nintendo.

Source: Business Wire

Fallout: New Vegas DLC Announced Before The Game Even Releases

Bethesda Softworks recently announced that Xbox Live will be getting the first New Vegas downloadable content before the PS3 will.  Now, call me old fashioned, but shouldn’t we be talking about the game before it launches?  And not its DLC?