July was a clutch month for all three major companies, and all their of their respective consoles. I'll spoil the surprise: the Wii and DS are still kicking everyone's ass, though for the first time there was a dip in their Japanese sales numbers, giving the competition a chance to catch up a bit, and possibly implying that a similar trend could happen here (at the normal Japan-to-USA-trend-migration-time of the approximately 27 years it takes us to catch up with their tech markets). While technically this means that the growth rate of the massive, staggering gap between the Wii and the fat unloved PS3 had a chance to diminish somewhat, this means less of a catch-up and more a shrinkage in the ratio of Wii:PS3's sold (from 4:1 to 3:1; whoop-de-doo).

Meanwhile, back home, things got interesting. Despite early predictions that July would be a huge month for the PS3 wherein it would outsell the 1.5 year old Xbox 360, that never quite happened. The RRoD issues for the 360 piss off fanboys, but people are more concerned with playing the library of excellent games than buying a non-RRoD-prone PS3 and playing Blu-ray movies on it for lack of any decent software. Of course, all three companies wasted no time in putting their own positive spin on the numbers, Sony in particular, but in the end it's the same as it has been: Wii kills the next-gen sales (fastest selling console evarrr in the UK!), Xbox 360 is selling well and will continue to gather momentum as the game library increases (Halo 3 anyone?), and the PS3 is too big, too expensive, and too boring for the masses just yet.

Perhaps the rumored price cuts for the PS3 will kick it in the pants...

Well, the numbers are all over the place, but one thing is abundantly clear: Nintendo, with the most underpowered and modest hardware/PR campaign, is clearly on top. By far. So much so scrambling for second place has been an ugly, ugly fight between the twin juggernauts of Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo basically smiled its way into first place while the other two were shelling each other with FPS screenshots and venomous statements. Not that they're not taking pot shots at Nintendo now...

Anyhow, the numbers don't lie. For a second, just a quick moment, Nintendo actually surpassed Sony's market value. Sony has sold 1 Million PS3 units in Japan, which according to the same report is more than double the meager 420K Xbox 360's that have sold there. "Oh really? That's nice for you" says Nintendo, chuckling on their way to the bank with huge bags of Yen after having sold their 3 millionth Wii in Japan. So, Sony beat Microsoft 2 to 1, and Nintendo beat Sony 3 to 1. Ouch.

Sony meanwhile remains confident that they can meet their sales goals of 11 million PS3's sold this year, pointing out helpfully that their system should be the logical choice that the Xbox 360's "don't even work!"

Yeah. Wii = money mint. So there. Despite ongoing Wii shortages, reports of increased production of the console may make this a white (and blue LED) Christmas for more people after all!

Microsoft has done a bit of nimble footwork lately to take some long-overdue and quite crucial steps towards fixing it's torrid Red Ring of Death (RRoD) issues with the Xbox 360. It's though (hoped) that when the next 65-nm process 360 (possibly included in the unit codenamed Falcon) arrives, that the lower heat production will fix this issue, but in the meantime there have been truly outrageous reports of 360 failure.

How outrageous?

Well, Brian Crecente at Kotaku is currently on his 11th Xbox 360, and not happy about it (to be fair, #10 died from a DVD drive, not RRoD). Justin Lowe also went through over 10 Xbox 360 consoles. People have made condolence cards suitable for the seeming inevitable occurrence, 360's are being refused by service centers that would formerly take a crack at repairing them, and most shockingly, two reports have pegged the failure rate of consoles sold via retail at 30-33%.

30-30%. 1 in 3. One third of all units sold.

Ouch.

Microsoft had (in)famously suggested a failure rate that was much lower than these actual figures, but fortunately they're all geared up to do the right thing. Now-departed Xbox chief Peter Moore has gone on record saying that MS is committed to doing the right thing (also noted in this Kotaku interview), and extended the Xbox warranty to a full three years to solve the RRoD issue.

In sum, they can break, 1/3 broke, they'll fix the ones that done did broke for 3 years, but I'm still waiting to get one.

Things appear to be changing in the next-gen who's-bought-and-plays-what arena. First off, take a look at these polls from Joystiq, as they appear to indicate what we'd expect over here: most people play/own a 360, but those who have a Wii play it as much as the 360'ers, and not too many people either own or play a PS3 (ouch).

But wait! What's this over here? PS3 is suddenly leapfrogging up the charts? Could it be due to a slightly surprising early victory in the format war? But that's just Japan, so what about the US?

Well, as the stat-crunchers over at 1up have discovered, the PS3 is actually on par with where the 360 was back in a similar point on its respective timeline. Given the heavy financial damage that a PS3 will do to your wallet, this is a pretty good stat, but also remember that while PS3's are (intentionally? yeah right...) in ample supply, it was gonzo-tough to get a 360 this close to launch (similar to Wii availability now). So perhaps it's not that good news...

And just when Sony though it was beginning to gain ground, take a look at what's coming screaming around the corner:

The brand new, one-uppified Xbox "Elite!"

This is what I was waiting for before buying my 360 - a workable hard drive size (120 gigs!), better HD out, and most importantly, a 65 nanometer CPU chip, which will help this red-ring-of-death prone console run quieter, cooler, and hopefully for longer.

And it's in black. Neato.

So the toss up continues: Wii is in self-imposed games-famine mode, PS3 is starting to gain momentum, the Xbox 360 is performing as solidly as ever, but will soon see a hardware boost that will put it technically within striking range of the PS3's storage and media handling capabilities (now it just needs WiFi and a Blu-Ray...).

In a landmark ruling in the land down under, in the Sony/Hardware/System maker vs. Mod Chip war, the Mod Chippers have won! The case basically points out that region-encoding limits consumers unfairly (amen), but also comes dangerously close to opening up the pandora's box of legalized piracy. It's a tough nut to crack: personally, it's my damn hardware and I should be able to play it, broil it, turn it into a habitrail, and yes, mod it if I want to. Telling console owners, consumers, that they don't have the right to mod their hardware is like saying Honda Civic owners can't tweak their engines. All of the you-bought-this-unit-so-therefore-you-agree-to-this-license-agreement is rubbish IMHO; if someone sells you something, that's that. It's yours. Do with it as you wish. If Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo wanted to lease consoles from now on, that'd be a different story. But for now, as long as we're lining up for days and buying consoles by the tens of thousands, any country with a decent legal system should follow suit with the aussies and let us crack the case and solder away.

Nintendo has already led a strong charge in circumventing the need for chips by making the DS region-free (play imports! all you want! yippie!), and if Sony and Microsoft would get out of their proprietary mindsets, chances are they'd see modding drop a notch as well by letting US/EU Otaku play Japanese imports on their systems.