Made all the sweeter by the fact that Mike Patton will be doing the voice-acting!

Again, ouch. No beautiful Katamari for PS3; instead they're forced to get the vague promise of a future release, or possible future release.

It's a little silly. Katamari is bonkers popular in Japan (the leaderboards for every level in Beautiful Katamari are dominated by Japanese flag icons); PS3 is the home-team console in Japan, and the 360 is not popular in Japan. And yet it still looked like a bad horse for Namco I reckon...

...sigh. The poor PS3. So big. So sad.

It's been a crazy month when it came to console sales. Microsoft is doing all sorts of crazy dance moves (obviously dancing with the stars match-up with Master Chief helped things along), the Wii is doing its slow-and-steady-means-I'll-still-be-unavailable-for-Xmas bit, and Sony... well, other than the PSP Sony isn't doing much of anything.

It went down like this. Pre-game, the Xbox 360 was first thought surpass, but only temporarily, the Wii for sales. Indeed, in August, the Wii was still champ (with it's little bro the DS right on its heels). However, with the nice boost it got from Master Chief's latest installment, the 360 did pull ahead right on schedule, selling well through the end of September.

Here's where it gets strange: Japan. The Xbox sales have been anemic at best, but despite Halo 3 selling out as previously noted, Nintendo was dethroned by the PSP in the same bump that saw the Xbox jump up a few spots as well. Even more crazy, the introduction of the 360 Elite in Japan saw sellouts in multiple stores, which one could almost take as a sign of the impending apocalypse.

In a similar story, there's more at work regarding the bump in 360 sales than just Halo 3. I'll use myself as a data point here - the achievement system is worse than crack. It was actually the subject of a real live scientific study recently, and it was demonstrated that these meaningless, useless GP points we get for doing tricky stunts in 360 games actually drive sales. I'll totally admit it - I'm more likely to play a cross-platform release on my 360 just to bump up my Gamerscore. It's crazy, but it taps into something deep inside and makes you go crazy trying to nail that one last 5G achievement....

Anyhow, finally, in big-number-news, the gaming industry is on-track to be a $47 billion USD industry by 2009, and since Sony can't get a foot in the door with the PS3, they're gently reminding they have other (better) wares to offer: the PS2. It's pathetic, but one of the biggest current selling points for the PS3 is the awesome PS2 library for it, and since they just eliminated backwards compatibility for some stupid, stupid reason, they're now reminding us that there are four, not three, consoles to buy this holiday season. Yeah, well, it should be three. And since the PS3 don't count, it kinda is...

The Dreamcast is still, despite my 360 Elite's best efforts, my favorite console ever. Among the shining gems in its untouchable library were the 2K sports games, which knocked some much-needed competition into the EA-dominated landscape, and made for some furious 4 player hockey showdowns.

Nowadays, since we're at 2K + 7.5, I keep having to rub my eyes to make sure I'm still playing a game and not watching an HD telecast. Check this craziness out.

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...

Ouch. Microsoft had a full year of a head start, Sony had Blu-ray and cell processors, and who is the current best-selling next-gen console based on total units sold? Well...

...it's 2 Gamecubes duct-taped together, actually. Hee hee.

At long, long last. Well, almost, but close enough for me. First there was the price cut, then there was the Halo 3 tax, and then finally despite the fact that the 65nm "Falcon" chipset isn't being implemented just yet, the inclusion of HDMI and new heatsinks in Premium 360 models is what broke the camel's back. Okay, Microsoft, despite all my previous whining, I'll get one. The HDMI premium looks like the best deal, since it's possible an HDMI Core may never materialize.

Besides, it'll be way more fun to play Halo 3 the game, instead of running around looking for people to play Halo 3 Lasertag with...

Anyhoo, it's been a mixed couple of weeks for the 360 and Microsoft. Sales dropped almost 60%, which could have tied into all the issues the console was experiencing (even if some were due to clueless users and were just loose cables). Simultaneously, the Wii has been closing rapidly on the total 360 sales numbers, which must make the money-printing fiends at Nintendo giggle and Ballmer bawl or bellow with rage. Furthermore, though the 360 sales are sure to see a substantial jump this month owing to the revised hardware, I was somewhat shocked to see that most 360 users generally don't know how to use their consoles to their fullest extent, including using XBL or media playing capabilities.

To round out the current next-gen news and sales figures: Nintendo is ramping up production to (maybe) finally meet Wii demand, their stock jumps handsomely simultaneously (and they're taking along all their parts manufacturers along for the profit-ride). Shockingly, the Wii was seen slipping in the Japanese hardware charts, to a mere 60K units for last month, being beaten by the DS (who else?). On the Sony front, even though the PS3 is the least played console (beaten by it's most-played-overall cousin, the PS2), the price drop has created a minor sales surge, which must be a breath of fresh air to Sony.

But what's really making this the right time to get a 360? Halo 3? Naw. It's this. Hit the jump to watch the intro movie for what's going to be my wife's favorite game of 2007.

It's been a bad run for Sony's consoles with regards to keeping homebrew out. On the PSP front, if you have a PSP and any firmware version from 0-3.5, you can utilize this hack as an exploit to run unsigned code (emulators, etc) on your system. Sony was quick to patch this with firmware version 3.51, but it allows you to run homebrew on very recent firmware without having to downgrade. Hit the jump for a video of the exploit in action.

And first steps were taking in compromising the PS3 recently: hackers were able to boot copied games on a hacked firmware, though they couldn't play them.

You can hear the programmers scrambling to battle stations over at SCEA and SCEJ.

Killzone 2. A.k.a. why I'd get a PS3 (and maybe the only reason until FFXIII)...