It's been a fairly predictable couple of weeks in the next-gen horserace. The happy news for Sony was that their UK PS3 went off without a single murder or riot, and shattered sales records... right before dropping like a stone. So what gives there? Well, everyone that wanted one went out and bought them at the same time, which then left a country full of the rest of folks who, like most in the USA, Japan, etc., could care less about owning one. Poor Sony. At least they're winning the format war, sorta.

So what's Sony's take on this? As usual, the numbers clearly have no significance. "Meaningless," they've called it. Um, well, actually, no. You have to sell consoles, not disinformation.

Meanwhile, Nintendo is installing special showerheads that will spray their board members with a constant stream of Yen! The DS has sold a greater number of units than bagels that have been sold in NYC since the dawn of time, and the Wii is still a pretty tough item to find anywhere.

What's up on the Micro$oft front? Well, they're seriously not happy about the Xbox 360 Elite story leak, which baffles me somewhat. I mean, every company (Apple, for one), wants to completely blow the doors off the world with every shocking new release, but in the VG industry where people are constantly buying new hardware, software, and accessories, it's a very good thing to know what's coming down the line. They seemed pretty grumpy about it though:

"For the Elite, for example, people were talking about the functionality and had pictures and all this stuff, but they didn't have the full story. They didn't know the price, they didn't know the accessories, they didn't know additional information that really puts a lot of context and a lot of information behind it..."

But so what? We've got all the facts now. They just seemed a little put off about getting their secret let out.

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...).

So in a past life, I was a Molecular Biologist, and I've still got a graduate degree in Microbiology and Immunology collecting dust somewhere. For all I do to bag on the PS3, there is a rather spectacular, and totally unlikely area in which the console has demonstrated some real utility: protein folding kinematics.

You see, every protein (what you hear referred to on infomercials as enzymes) has a 3D shape that allows it to do its job. Like the way only your key opens your lock, so too will only a correctly shaped protein do its job. Which can be to prevent a cell from becoming cancerous, generate energy for the cell, or just about anything else - proteins do ALL the work that goes on in our cells. Understanding how they "fold" (settle into these 3D shapes as they are created) is key to molecular medicine, since drugs are basically chemicals with a shape that allows them to "fit" into a little groove or pocket on the protein's 3D structure, either helping or hindering it as it attempts to do it's one job within the cell.

The more we know about protein structure, the better, more specific and more potent drugs will get. This is a VERY GOOD thing, because it increases efficacy, reduces required dosages, and will significantly reduce side effects (which can be caused by drugs sticking to parts of enzymes you didn't mean for them to interact with).

The PS3 is a supercomputer, no question about it, and the Folding@Home project (read all about it in this Wired magazine summary) taps into these übermachines when we're not killing zombies with them to solve 3D structures of proteins, and do good for modern medicine.

In short, neat. Good job Sony. Good job scientists.

"In this month's Rumor Mill, EGM reports that three new Katamari games will be coming out in 2007; one for the Wii, one for the PlayStation 3 and one for the Xbox Live Arcade"

They'd better not be effing with me. I'll cry if it's not true. I really will.

I really don't know where to begin on this one, so I'll let the excellent summary over at Joystiq do most of the talking, but here are the key points:

Sony is expecting to resolve "PS3 shortages" by May... HUH? They're completely nuts, in short. They're spouting rubbish at every opportunity, claiming there's a fierce demand for the PS3, when they've sold 1/2 of all shipped PS3 units... um, whaaa?

Despite this fact, Sony Entertainment CEO Phil Harrison says they are under no pressure to drop the PS3's price, since it's clearly selling so well and all. His take on the widespread availability of PS3's sitting on shelves for days or weeks:

"I think the fact that we are able to have a very well organized, very well managed supply channel, which allows us to keep the stores restocked, is a really positive thing. You would be sitting here saying, "Why the hell are you out of stock? Why the hell can't you manage the supply chain and why can't people buy PS3s?" So we're actually doing in succeeding in managing to keep the demand satisfied, so I think that's a positive."

Oy. I can't even begin to figure out where this guy has gone crazy. This is almost as bass-ackwards as watching Tony Snow.

I mean, come ON guys, you're getting completely dusted by Nintendo ever since the launches in November, and the Xbox 360 is more than keeping pace, if not blowing your socks clean off.

Add to this the recent tragic FUBAR wherein Sony blackballed Kotaku for reporting a rumor about the future of one of the PS3 services. Which got them promptly slammed, both by other gaming news sites of note and by the oodles of Kotaku readers in the comments of the offending posts. Though in the end, everything resolved itself for the better, this was a total scandal that rocked the flimsy sinking ship that Harrison continues to steer on the wrong course, powered on delusional visions and false rhetoric, while everyone else is bailing like mad.

In the end, I'm speechless. Dismayed. Let me let this song speak for me in summarizing my sorrows:

Now that the DS Lite has hit Korea, they've wasted no time in making some amazing skins available for the handheld. These are really beautiful, and if you're headed to Seoul I'll pay you back...

In other news around Southeast Asia: ever wonder where game company names come from? Well, JC Barnett has all your answers right here. Back to Korea, where despite years of shunning the Japanese-manufactured console market (for obvious reasons), there is a slow movement to embrace console gaming on the peninsula. Accordingly, given how tech-savvy the S. Koreans are, the big three game shops are gearing up for a new kind of war in the S. Korean gaming market.

Finally, despite the fact that it's typically a disturbingly peaceful place, Japan's crime news continues to be punctuated with exceptionally shocking and tragic murders, including this one describing how a man and his mother were murdered by a youth who was trying to obtain money to support his arcade gaming habit. Contrast this to the USA, where we have murders and gun violence galore, but despite the best efforts of many out-of-touch firebrands it's not always possible to link the violence to videogames. This was the case with the tragic Salt Lake shooting rampage, where the teen was found to have owned no console or computer games, and not to have played them much at all. Despite the fact that Jackass Thompson earlier speculated that the shooter played GTA...

Sigh.

Good. Lord. Where to start. Well, it is Valentine's day, so I'll start off by sending some love to Sony - I know I ain't called in a bit, but I do love you. Really. I really do. It's just you've made it so hard to keep the love strong, what with all the poor choices and launch disasters surrounding your new toy (if you can call something that costs $600 a toy)...

Well, to begin, there's the e-mail from EA developer Andrew Garrett, who works on such small titles as Command & Conquer, saying that it would be best for consumers and developers alike to skip the PS3, and go grab a Wii or Xbox 360.

Ouch.

Okay, so let's add some salt to that wound: Bloomberg financial news predicted loses of up to 50% because of the PS3. This is due to speculation that the Wii would outsell the PS3 almost 2-to-1, which is a trend that we've already begun to see on eBay, and other analysts have forecasted for the January sales numbers. We're also seeing sharp drops in Japanese PS3 trade-in values, and even the Grey Lady is getting in on the fun by noting how badly the PS3 is getting Wii-acked around. So, to recap, Sony is losing the new-console-war, badly, on the the sales front, to the Wii certainly, but also to the still-selling-like-hotcakes Xbox 360. Which is about to potentially put a nail in the coffin of the advantage is has in numbers over the PS3, by dropping a black HDMI-enabled 120GB 360 on us later this year...

In fact, Sony is already toying with the notion of price cuts, which would potentially (hopefully) move consoles, but would also increase their already lousy loss margins (that's $300 loss per unit, not profit).

Anyhow, to assert their current market dominance in the 2006-release-date nextgen console race, Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan gave us this priceless quote in an interview with Gamespy:

"Well, we didn't have anyone in line that got shot waiting for our system."

Finally, on the more lighthearted (but still tragic) note, the brilliant comics over at Penny Arcade have made Sony eat their words, those words being courtesy of SCEA President Jack Tretton, saying he would "pay $1,200 for any PS3 found on store shelves..." Well, Jack...

I'll let the comic speak for itself. A must-see!

So while the top dog at Sony is lyin... er, boasting his way through press conference after press conference:

"I think Kutaragi-san (PlayStation chief Ken Kutaragi) said that it would be break-even by the end of the year, at the end of '07. PS2 was not profitable in the first year. You make it up on the content as the content gathers momentum, the licensees from that and so forth..." - Howard Stringer, CEO (full text)

Look man, I love Sony. I really do. But no way. I'm calling you out on this one.

So, with lines and sales numbers like these, is it any wonder that the PS3 launch is the defining example of consumer FUD regarding an appliance? That's Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt to you and me, and it's the 3-letter name for what's keeping the PS3 on shelves and $600 clams in everyone's pocket...

...a real faceful. Seriously, ouch, ouch, ouch. I mean, how do you recover from things like:

"Gabe Newell suggested that Sony should scrap plans to release PS3 and develop an entirely new system."

This from the daddy of Half-Life. NOT small potatoes. Also, notably:

"'The happy story is the Wii,' he added. 'I’m betting that by Christmas of next year, the Wii has a larger installed base than the 360. Other people think I’m crazy. I really like everything that Nintendo is doing.'"

So basically, Sony gets a beatdown, Mario gets a handjob.

In the recently released 4th Quarter 2006 numbers (compiled by the research firm NPD), Nintendo pretty much mopped up the competition. Kotaku has done a rather thorough analysis of the numbers, and while the Xbox 360 outsold the Wii in December, Nintendo totally hit their target and sold 1.1 million Wii units in 2006 from launch to Dec. 31st! In the same story, the DS Lite kicked the living crap out of the PSP, which should be surprising to no one, but the lead they've established is shocking: 2.5 million more DS/Lite units sold than PSPs. Ouch. In fact, the DS and (of all the darndest things) the PS2 were the real winners last month, with Nintendo selling 1.6 million new DS units, and the PS2 selling an impressive 1.4 million. This over the "next-gen" console sales for December, which clock in at 1.1 million for the Xbox 360, 604,200 for the Wii and an anemic 490,700 PS3s.

So, in short, Nintendo hit their launch goal (1 million by year end), and sold more DS systems than any other system. Microsoft won December, and has sold 4.5 million Xbox 360 units since its launch in 2005 (though this means in a month and a half, the Wii sold enough systems to make up 25% of the 360-owner market). Sony sales are in the shitter - PSP losing badly to DS, and the PS3 is finding more of a home back on store shelves rather than in people's homes or selling like hotcakes on eBay.

But the PS2? Sony's saving grace? What could be up with this? I've got an idea, but I'll talk more about that later...

So at any rate, because all of Sony's current systems are falling short of everyone's expectations, Microsoft is now taking note of the real competition: Nintendo. Bill Gates himself acknowledged that Nintendo is their "toughest competition," even though the company isn't directly aiming at any of their users. This is an interesting admission, and is a double-slap in the face of Sony, especially after such a smackdown on the PS3's nascent online service by MS reps recently.

Poor Sony. My heart breaks, and yet my Wii elbow throbs on...