I’m back! Weekly news recap…

Well, i’m back from my long hiatus. With the holidays behind us, i’ve completed the most stressful 3 months of my life. This holiday saw record sales for video games, with all major consoles and handhelds reporting robust sales.

Many things have happened since we rang in the new year, most of these news items have been hurtful to the 360 camp. What started out as rumors turned into major blows for Microsoft and its fanbase. Let’s recap what has happened since the end of 2007:

1. Ps3 hardware sales beat Xbox 360 hardware sales over X-mas: According to vgchartz and NPD numbers, the ps3 outsold the 360 by around 40,000 units worldwide. This put the 360 almost last in hardware sales for the month of december, beating the 7 year old ps2 by 14,000 units. The 360 has been steadily losing market share since the Wii and the Ps3 hit the market over a year ago.

2. Rumor: Metal Gear Solid 4 Coming to Xbox 360: Yet another rumor, this time started by xboxfamily.com claiming they spoke with an unnamed source who works for Konomi as a distribution rep. They claimed that MGS4 will come to the xbox 360 12-18 months after it is released for the ps3. This rumor was later debunked by thegamereviews.com

3. Xbox Live Outages: Since before christmas, its been reported that XBL has been having many service problems. many speculate it’s due to the 2+ million new xbox users loggin into live and trying to create gamertags, play games, and download content. Later, MS released a statement saying the outages were due to a denial of service attack on thier servers, a rumor later debunked by thebitbag.com. A network specialist for gaming stated live was having problems due to updates being downloaded to all the new clients for the dashboard, halo3, etc… Supposedly MS will be offering a free arcade game to all its gold members for compensation.

4. Xbox 360 Ultimate: Stuff magazine claimed to have iniside info that at CES 2008 MS would reveal their next iteration of the xbox 360 console, the ultimate. It was claimed that this newer console would sport a 320gb hard drive, built in wi-fi, built in hd-dvd, cooler chipset, etc..Many cried out that MS was doing exactly what they criticized sony for, and just playing catch up with this upgraded console. There has been a ton of speculation surrounding this one, with no firm answer either way.

5. Warner Brothers drops HD-DVD for Blu-ray: A major blow for the HD-DVD camp, warner bros. signed a deal with Sony for an estimated half-billion dollars to release its movies on the more popular Blu-ray format starting in May 2008. This move has many speculating that this will end the format war, with paramount studios expected to follow suit. New line has also made the switch to blu, with cnet.com advising consumers to avoid HD-DVD.

Well, there you have major happenings this past week, all of which spelled early trouble for MS in the battle of gamers’ hearts and minds. Look for the 360 camp to turn things around next week with an onslought of viral marketing, rumors, and attacks. We at pswi60 hope the 360 stays competitive, but this is not a good start for 2008.