Friendz for xbox & iPhone

App Shopper: Friendz (Social Networking).

Friendz is the iPhone/iPod Touch version of the popular mac app. Friendz shows you which of your Xbox Live friends are online on Xbox Live. You can then check what they’re doing, view your messages and send new messages to anyone in your friends list.
(You need a Xbox Live Gold Membership to send messages, but you can still view them with an Xbox Live Silver Membership).

Friendz is different from the other Xbox Live apps because it doesn’t require you to add your friends manually, it will also work if your friends are set to private.

Friendz will also download your friends’ gamer pictures and display them neatly next to the player. That’s great, but what if you have a lot of friends? Even over 3G it would take a while to download everything, so Friendz grabs the gamer pictures in the background and loads them in as they are received. This means you can still see what your friends are doing, even if things are still loading.

Friendz will also send messages in the background, meaning no obtrusive alerts while sending takes place. Friendz will, however, let you know once the message has been sent, just so you can be sure your message has reached the recipient.

PS3 v xbox 360

It’s been a few months now since I bought the PS3 and I have been very pleased with it. Initially, it was an odd feeling getting to grips with the new style controller but now it feels just fine. In fact, its more compact size is more appealing now than the bulkier xbox one. I feel the PS3 has some advantages for me over Microsoft’s finest. For starters, it is virtually whisper quiet whereas the xbox chugs and wheezes and that incessant whirring noise is both annoying and worrying. A second advantage is that the PS3 has built in wifi whereas you have to buy the xbox add on and it is not cheap at £59. I get a much better and stronger signal too when connected to my home network on the Sony console and it has not dropped yet. Getting a signal on the xbox xould be hit or miss. I never used xbox Live so not having that is not a miss for me but for many who are addicted to online gaming then the PS3 is still well behind on that front. Could be a deal breaker for many…..

Games-wise, most of the newer releases are available for both consoles so it is not such a big deal now. Console exclusives do not appear to be so prevalent these days and there is not a game coming out soon that I wish to get that will not be out on the PS3. Obviously, the Blu Ray support is appealing and is a big advantage at the moment, it is just a pity that the film discs remain so expensive. One annoying PS feature relates to the demo discs that come with the “official” UK mags. On the xbox you just needed to shove the DVD in the drive, pick your demo and start playing whereas on the PS you need to download the game first to the hard drive, which can take 2/3 minutes, then install it onto the hard drive before playing. I don’t understand why you can’t just play it straight off the disc? Graphically, I don’t notice any discernible difference between games on either console in terms of visual quality but I have fewer “crashes” when playing on the PS3.

One other factor that may be relevant is that there is a better choice of xbox themed iPhone apps. I downloaded one the other days that links to my xbox live account. It shows stats such as games played, achievements and you can browse stuff for sale/download. There is nothing similar for the PS3. For those of you who use a mac there is little or no inbuilt help for streaming music and video but luckily NullRiver software offer solutions for both. I’ve tried 360 Connect with the xbox and it worked quite well but have not tried their MediaLink PS3 software yet. To be honest, this is an area I should make more use of but can’t be bothered or just aren’t interested enough. I did however burn a cd full of images an loaded it up on the PS3. The pics looked amazing, too amazing in fact for my wife’s liking as she complained they were too “detailed” which is testament to the quality of the PS I suppose.

I have had problems with xbox reliability down the years, three have needed to be replaced but the PS3 also went back after a few weeks as it just packed up. This is unusual apparantly. I read a post from one of the gaming sites very recently, can’t recall where, which suggested there is a 53% failure rate with the 360 console which if true, is fairly damning on Microsoft. The same arti cle suggested it was less than 10% on the PS3. Just also read too that Sony have announced the PS3 “slim” which looks like a winner both on looks and price.

quelle surprise…xbox 360 packs up (again)

If people ask me why I don't particularly like Microsoft my xbox experiences down the years just about sum it up. Our first 1st gen xbox packed up about a week after the warranty expired and the first xbox 360 console also packed up within a year. The xbox 360 we got for my son's xmas in December 2007 has just also packed up, showing the fabled 3 red rings of death. It's not exactly been pummelled to death useage wise either, it rarely gets more than an hour a day use.

You can say what you like about the PS3, about it being more expensive in comparison, but failure rates, if you believe what you read on the internet, are much lower and that is a fact. I'm starting to believe other facts too, one being that Microsoft, in search of ever larger profits, use junk components in their hardware. Luckily, this one has the extended guarantee which was purchased at the time it was bought so I have some protection.

That's it though with the xbox 360 and my next gaming console purchase will be a PS3. Three out of four consoles packing in tells its own story in my view, the reliability level is obviously dreadful and they won't be getting another penny from me.

FarCry 2

I've been struggling of late to find an xbox game that I wanted to play. There is a game coming out shortly that I quite like the look of, Velvet Assassin, as it promises to bring something slightly different to the rather tired 1st person shooter genre and also appears to have a large element of stealth action it it. Oh, how I love a bit of skulking around in a video game. In the meantime, having re-played the stunning Dead Space and the good but slightly flawed Half Life 2, I needed to get something new.

Enter FarCry 2, intended as nothing more as a stop-gap until something better appears. I have to admit I disliked the original FarCry as I found it hugely frustrating. I kept getting stuck and eventually gave up about 2/3rds of the way through. This one though is different, completely different in fact as the developers have revamped it nearly beyond all recognition. First up, graphically it is amazing, with lush graphics and near video quality scenery. Although it is basically a first person shooter the pace is somewhat more relaxed with numerous side missions and a great deal more tact and planning needed to advance. You also get to level up weapons by finding the only currency that counts, diamonds and using them to buy upgrades and new stuff. It's set in Africa and you can take advantage of the huge open playfield by zooming around from zone to zone either using the numerous vehicles left lying around or using the transporter like "bus" system which gets you from A to B in a flash. I like the fact that so far, the game lets you play it how you want and does not force you down certain paths like most other xbox titles.

Yep, there's a lot to do and mucho planning needed. You can, for example, just barge into enemy camps with all guns blazing on a mission but that can get a bit messy. Scoping around looking for an alternative and less gung-ho approach can pay dividends and is more satisfying, for me at least.

So far, this has been a pretty deep game. There's lots to do and you can pick and choose missions to suit your approach. You get extra assistance by making "friends" who are there to help you out of scrapes. I've been playing it for nearly a week now and according to the info in my saved game, I have completed less than 4% of it! This tells you two things, firstly that it is a big game and secondly, that I am basically crap at these games.

Internet Sharing – Mac to xbox 360

This may be useful to those who have a mac and use an xbox 360 and who wish to be able to connect via xbox live but do not wish to fork out for the £59 wifi adaptor. Courtesy of MacApper website…

A very hidden and somewhat unused feature of Mac OS X is the internet
sharing application which can be found in System Preferences >
Sharing > Internet Sharing.  This feature is very basic and easy to
setup but it allows you to share the incoming internet connection on
your Mac with other computers in your vicinity.  You can even turn your
Mac into a wireless hub using this feature.  We’ll help show you how to
set this up properly in this guide, along with a step by step tutorial
of how to use your Mac’s internet connection in order to get your Xbox
360 online without having to purchase a wireless adapter.

On another xbox related matter, I finished off Tomb Raider Underworld the other night and was left feeling a bit disappointed. This game has some terrible glitches and some dreadful camera angles. Laura gets randomly stuck near scenery and can walk/jump through rcoks and stuff. When climbing and you need to use the camera to look around to see where to jump or move to next, the camera can go haywire, jumping around randomly. terrible for a 2008 next gen game.

Lara Croft Underworld

I read somewhere recently that the developers have been disappointed with sales of the latest and not so greatest instalment of the delectable Miss Croft adventure. This comes as no surprise to me as the game, which I got from Santa, is good but is a little predictable and brings nothing new to the franchise. Games have moved on immensely over the past 18 months, look at the innovation in titles such as BioShock and Dead Space, yet these developments appeared to have washed over the Lara Croft people.

I played BioShock again recently and it's light years ahead of most other games. There is so much to do and the ability to buy power-ups and ammunition with your money adds another dimension. Not only is there a limited amount of cash floating around but this becomes more relevant when you the game forces you to make choices…what do you do with your money, what to spend it on, what will help me in this current level most? The next level, it could be completely different. Not only is this a dilemna with cash but it also applies equally to the plasmid power-ups you can purchase by obtaining "Adam", which is even harder to come by. You could play this game through 3/4 times and depending on which items you buy, the experience will be different each time.

I'm afraid though the developers played very safe with the latest Lara Croft adventure. Sure, it is graphically wonderful but there is no depth to it. It desperately needs a revamp but it is as if they are scared to tinker with the basic gamplay for fear of upsetting the cosy franchise. Games like this were fine 3 years ago but are in danger of getting left behind now. They need to introduce the ability to equip Lara with different weapons and powers, as in BioShock and Dead Space, introduce decisions in this respect that can influence how the game plays out and which make the gamer feel more involved in the outcome.

It's not a bad game, far from it, but compared to others I have played of late it just feels a little shallow and too simple. It is very similar to all the other Lara Croft games I have played down the years and that is its biggest drawback.

Is Blu-Ray taking off?

I was reading a post at the weekend about the PS3 and how sales are lagging behind that of its main competitor, the xbox 360. Some guy from a gaming website gave several reasons for this. One, it's more expensive than a comparable xbox model, £299 here in the UK compared to a top of the range xbox at around £229….debatable when you think the former includes a Blu-Ray player. Two, there are very few PS3 exclusive "must-have" game titles, which may be true, that would make a gamer buy it over the xbox equivalent and three…and this is the most surprising and possibly contentious, Blu-Ray discs are only worth watching and only show their superior video quality on TV's with a screen size of 50 inch plus. All the blurb for Blu-Ray players I've read says that they are 5 times superior to DVD in terms of picture quality, which I'm inlcined to believe more than the word of some xbox 360 fanboy

Now, I don't know if this guy is right as regards picture quality, if so it is a shock to me. The players are still relatively expensive with only the most basic being under £200 when a good quality DVD player can be had for £70 or so. The discs are around £20 plus which is way too high when compared to new release DVD films being available for a tenner. How many folk, when money is tight as it may be now, can justify paying twice the price for something they may not even notice is of an appreciably better quality. We got a Sony DVD player about 6 months ago, for under £100, that "upscales" DVD films to near HD quality and, when combined with a good quality HDMI cable, I suspect that this level of quality is plenty sufficient for the majority of buyers, myself included, and probably helps to contribute to the low take up level of BluRay to date.

If you go into the likes of Currys or Dixons here in the UK there aren't many Blu-Ray players on display and this a year or so after the format triumphed in the noughties version of Betamax v VHS video. I just get the impression that the cost of players needs to fall to DVD levels as does the cost of films or else DVD will be hanging around a heck of a lot longer, at Blu-Rays expense, than was originally thought.

PS3 beckons

I think I would like to get myself a PS3. I can sense that my xbox 360 days are nearly over as the console has been hugely unreliable for me, I'm currently on my 3rd and this one is showing signs of being on the way out. If it does then I certainly don't intend spending/wasting any more cash on another one. One of the big problems with the PS3 would be having to start again from scratch on the game front although I could of course trade most of the 360 titles in. It would be nice also to have a BluRay player although the films are still far too expensive, new releases weighing in at around the £22 mark…nearly double the cost of a similar new DVD release. Worryingly, they show no signs of coming down in price either.

All this started the other week when the 360 started shutting itself off and refusing to read discs. My son has a 360 too in his room and we moved it into the front room and attached via a HDMI cable to the HD ready telly. Wow, what a difference it makes to the picture quality of games. Unfortunately, my 360 is the base Core model and has no HDMI connection port so I can't move it through full time. I was thinking, it would be nice to be able to play these games, which are after all designed to be viewed in HD resolution, in the proper fashion.

Another hugely irritating thing about the 360 is that I can't transfer saved games between his and mine as both have different "profiles" set up. Even if I add my gamer profile onto his it still won't let me transfer a saved game from another machine. And they talk about DRM…..apparantly it is all to do with this silly "achievements" thing. Casusal gamers like me then get penalised, I don't care if my ranking is high or low, I just want to be able to play MY games, which I have paid for, on any bloody machine of mine that I wish.

Dead Space…update and shitty xboxes…dead annoying

Being basically a shit gamer, I continue to struggle with any game that is remotely not incredibly easy. I need to set these things up on "easy" mode to give myself a chance.

Dead Space is good but I have encountered problems in that my relatively new (and replacement) 360 keeps freezing in that it tells me it cannot read the disc and that it is dirty. It even told me this after about 10 minutes playing Fallout 3 last week…which I'd bought about 2 hours earlier. The discs are perfectly clean so it is a hardware fault. This could be a sign that another 360 is heading on the way out and if so it will be my last dalliance with the console as I will get a PS3 instead. Frankly, the xbox 360 for me has been hugely unreliable as was the xbox before it.

Back to the game. You can power up your weapons and skills by deploying "nodes" which you either find lying around (but not in huge quantities) or buy using your amassed credits. A node is quite expensive to buy and if you do have sufficient credits it boils down to the choice of buying more stuff like ammo or healthpacks or a node or two. The problem is, to deploy nodes to add extra damage or storage capability to a weapon in a quantity that makes an appreciable difference requires about 10 nodes per weapon to get up to about half the maximum settings. It takes a heck of a lot of time to get 10 nodes which is the main problem….especially when there is such a wide choice of weapons. I think the developers ballsed up here.

I decided therefore to concentrate on making one weapon super powerful instead of having 4 weapons that have only been modified to a small extent. Plus, I ensured that my "stasis" power, which enables you to "freeze" the aliens prior to pumping the annoying big buggers full of plasma bullets, was also maxed out. This seems to be working quite well.

After a particularly frenetic mini battle with a group of rather ugly and deeply unfriendly aliens my wife complained about the amount of swearing emanating from the conservatory. My Dad never swore, she pointed out which is undeniably an admirable trait. On the other hand, I pointed out, he was never tasked with saving the planet from maurading aliens.

Needs must and all that……

[]

Dead Space update…

I'm about half way through this game now and am still enjoying it although one or two rather irritating things have sprung up.

Number 1. For some reason, the developers thought it would be a good idea to have several points where something just jumps out at you, out of the blue, and at a point where you had absolutely no way of knowing it was going to happen, or more importantly, could do nothing about it. For example, at one point I stepped out of a lift and this thing just jumped straight at me…there was no way of avoiding it. This would not be that annoying were it not for the fact that health packs are a scarce commodity and you waste some health fighting it off (see below)

Number 2. This relates to the above. Such unexpected attacks get followed by silly cutscene type incidents where you have to repeatedly press the A button like some demented typist to try and shake it off. During said cutscenes, you can't use any of your weapons and basically have to sit back and wait and hope you have bashed the button to a sufficient degree to shake it off. Again though, valuable health disappears.

Number 3. A problem with 3rd person shooters is the camera angle when fighting. Sometimes, you're left floundering mid fight, facing completely the wrong direction or jammed in some corner shooting at the wall. Frustrating.

Basically though it is a good game, well paced, superb graphics and a variety of missions. I also like the fact it is a slightly more refined FPS game which satisfies without the need for constant, blast 'em round every corner type action which so many lesser games fall into when they can't be arsed developing the storyline.

Dead Space – xbox

Yikes, this game is a bit spooky. It reminds me of a cross between Doom 3 and BioShock, the former because it is set in space and the scenery/backgrounds are quite Doom-ish, and the latter because of the "power-up" system whereby you can buy extra powers to fight the enemy in strategically located stores throughout the levels.

Those expecting a straightforward shoot-em and 100 mile an hour run through exercise will be sorely disappointed. This is a fairly slow paced game with side missions, well so far anyway, and it has a nice feel to it as the suspense builds up. Graphically too it is very impressive although in true mid-space fashion, it is all very dark grey and industrial looking. It doesn't look like the sort of place you'd take your granny for a weekend break anyway.

So far so good then. The only thing I am slightly iffy about is the 3rd person view you are forced to adopt, personally I much prefer 1st person view as I'm not keen on having to watch the slightly odd crab style movement of 3rd party heroes on screen.

Dead Space for xbox 360

Just a couple of days to go now until this game is out and boy oh boy, does it sound promising. I have a soft spot for first person shooters set on spooky abandoned spaceships even though the premise is hardly revolutionary. Doom 3 is still one of my favourite xbox titles, Prey was excellent too and Halo had the odd spaceship moment.

This one though does sound genuinely spooky:

The story behind Dead Space takes place hundreds of years in the
future, during a time when mankind has exhausted all of the natural
resources on Earth. Fortunately, in this dire time, humanity has
mastered space travel, and a process known as planet cracking has been
developed to combat this drought. A celestial body is split into
pieces, and its minerals are strip-mined and melted, returning the
byproducts to Earth for consumption. An entire fleet of ships sails the
stars performing these tasks, and the crown jewel of this mining fleet
is the USG Ishimura, which has performed more planet cracks that any
other vessel. However, on a routine mission, the ship cuts off all
communication from galactic command, which is somewhat strange. To
discover what's going on, a small maintenance crew is quickly
dispatched to the Ishimura from a nearby vessel.

Greedy developers

Read this post from xbox360 fanboy website and see what you think. This guy laments that the second hand gaming market impacts on sales of new games…no way, really? Instead of bleating about it perhaps the developers should reduce the price of their games so that they are more affordable, that would help things for starters.

He then goes on to infer that developers should also get a slice of the income pie from the 2nd hand games market. Can you believe that? Let me put it this way. I own a VW car and when I sell it to either the garage as a trade-in or to a private buyer I wouldn't expect, and neither would the law, that I would have to pass a slice of that sale price back to VW. They already made their profit on day one.

What a cheek these people have. They seem to think that after you have paid your hard earned dosh for a game they still have some sort of right of ownership to it and would then try and dictate what you can and cannot do with your property. Well, luckily the law thinks different chaps at the moment.

xbox Live

I finally caved in last weekend and went for a 3 month trial membership of xbox Live Gold, mainly so my son Edwin can use it to download demos and stuff. I don't think he will play online until he is a bit older. I just felt that we were missing out on something by not having the Live thingy and it was time to bite the bullet.

Setting up was no problem. I bought the Microsoft Network adaptor, cost £59.99 (ouch) and plugged it in the back of the xbox 360 in Edwin's room, turned on the xbox, went into settings and it sort of automatically detected it, entered my password and then the sign-up process began. I will also try it in the conservatory where my 360 console is situated but I fear the wifi signal from our Airport Extreme won't reach that far. I have trouble surfing on my laptop in there so I ain't too hopeful. Now, I know that "conservatory" sounds quite posh but let me dissuade you from that notion. This is a place we call "The Fridge" or the "outback". It was built by the previous occupants, who were obviously on a very tight budget, and it is far too hot in the summer and far too cold in the winter. We had to get a heater put in it as there were icicles forming on the roof, I kid you not, the first winter we moved in. For some reason, they decided it would be a good idea not to have any blinds or protection against the elements added. We added blinds all round a couple of years ago and it is now almost tolerable.

The conservatory is a sanctuary for all sorts of unpleasant creepy crawlies, particularly spiders, slaters and slugs for some reason and often, when I am out there gaming in the late evening, there will be a steady procession of them marching across the floor….some coming in and some going out for the evening. It seems churlish to stop them.

xbox 360…gameless again

I'm still struggling to get a good game or two for the 360. I played Prey again, this is a pretty decent first person shooter with a interesting enough story line and some interesting touches to the gameplay. I probably enjoyed it more 2nd time around. You can pick it up for under £20 online or in shops.

Last week saw the release of the much awaited "Too Human". This game has been in development for yonks but the pre-reviews have been mediocre at best and it seems to be plagued by poor camera controls, a fairly fundamental flaw. My own view of the 360 platform is that the majority of games have been mediocre and the whole thing has been saved by the online multiplayer system. If you are an avid online player you will love the xbox 360, if you are not and are like me in that you just want to play games on your todski then you may feel well disappointed by the lack of overall quality. Sure, there have been some great games but frankly, I could count them on one hand…about 5 in nearly 3 years!! And two of them came from the same franchise.

Where is the 360 style Thief Deadly Shadows or Castle Wolfenstein or Beyond Good and Evil?? I was thinking of getting Too Human but am having second thoughts, too often I have read pre-reviews of games in development where it gets built up as the next Halo and then when it is released things turn out to be somewhat different. I go into the likes of Game or HMV, stand there and sort of stare at the rows of games and just end up thinking…there's nowt here I particularly want to play. Oh dear, it wasn't like that a few years ago.

Anyway, over the weekend I was in Game with my son Edwin perusing the fare and I traded in Grand Theft Auto, which I barely played as I found it tiresome and hard to get into the flow with the constant cut scene interruptions, for the new Tiger Woods 09 game. I already have the 07 version so gave 08 a miss but apparantly 09 is a decent improvement with lots of new courses and varied gameplay. Here goes…..

xbox 360 drivel

I was chuckling to myself the other day as I perused through last months Official Xbox Magazine here in the UK. I always head for the new game reviews first to see if there is anything worthwhile out that has gotten a decent review. Last months new games got shocking reviews. This months batch is barely better, for instance, The Bourne Identity, which they have been drooling over for months has finally appeared and got slated. Great. These guys must get invited to all these corporate jollys to get advance plays of forthcoming games, have a great time and then report back how great it is all shaping up to be. Then, when the game appears it turns out to be pish.

There’s been nothing for months that has appealed to me. I was really enjoying Lara Croft Anniversary Edition, as I mentioned before, then about a week ago I got stuck halfway through at some silly “boss” fight against these Centaurs. No problem you’d think, there will be some cheat or something, some way to get eternal health to beat them or a way to skip to the start of the next level. Errrrr…no. No cheats at all, nowt, zip all, zero help so I am basically gubbed. I tried for about 4 nights in a row, each session lasting over an hour without getting anywhere so I have just given up as it has now ceased to be any fun and is just plain irritating. I’ve spent hours perusing Forums looking for tips/cheats, anything to help me through this bit but nothing.

I have always hated these “boss” fight things, they just seem so 90’s and out of place in a game like Lara Croft. If anybody in the UK has done this bit on the 360 ad wishes to kindly help then I will willingly copy my saved game onto a memory unit and ship it to them. That would be a huge help.

Lara Croft on the xbox 360 and the PS3 threat

I bought and played the Lara Croft xbox 360 game that came out a while back and it was okay dokay, a bit short and a bit easy. That put me off buying the next game, Lara Croft Anniversary Edition which is apparantly, a reissue sort of thing of an older game. It’s hard to describe how much better this game is over the one set up for the 360. The graphics are a bit basic, more original xbox than 360 and are not as lush as those on the 360 version but the gameplay is far better and more immersive. I’ve been playing it now for 3 weeks and I’m only about a third of the way through. Parts are difficult, the puzzles are good and require a good bit of thought whereas on the 360 original, you just sort of flew through them as they were quite straightforward and it all felt a bit underwhelming and it left me feeling a bit short-changed.

This game shows how glossy graphics and fancy dan animation do not in themselves make for a great game, much more is required and so few 360 games, for me anyway, have delivered to date.

Anyway, despite coming to market a good while before the PS3 and despite having the lower price advantage for almost all of its life, it seems the xbox 360 is going to be falling behind the PS3 in sales on a regular basis from now on in. There is nothing wrong with the 360 as a console but the HDVD fiasco has done it no favours and now that the PS3 ships with the winning BluRay drives consumers may see it as being more future proof. Add in a distinctly lacklustre and unexciting line up of recent games, compared to the PS3, and you can see that Microsoft needs to do something sooner rather than later, hence more talk of another price cut.

I’m going to stick though with the 360, mainly because I have so many games for it and I kinda like it. The PS3 looks the business and gives the impression it can only get better, hopefully the 360 can rise to the challenges ahead.

xbox360 sales hit 10 million mark in USA

Microsoft have just announced, according to xbox360 fanboy site, that US sales of the 360 console have now reached an amazing 10million with worldwide sales now at 19 million, neither of which is to be sniffed at and outstrips rival PS3 and Wii.
However the PS3 has been out for less time & people are still having trouble finding Wii’s at times so too much should not be read into "outsripping" comments. It would be more interesting to see a comparison of figures since the other two were actually launched.

"Microsoft announced today that they have officially sold more than 10 million Xbox 360 consoles in the United States, with over 19 million sold worldwide since the product launched in late 2005. The Xbox 360 is the first console of this generation to reach the 10 million mark in the US, a very significant fact according to Don Mattrick, the VP of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, "History has shown us that the first company to reach ten million in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry."

360 and the PS3…GTA4

According to this article twice as many people have bought Grand Theft Auto 4 for the xbox 360 compared to the PS3. I’m not sure if this is hugely significant as it could just mean that 360 owners are a far more blood thirsty, aggressive and anti-social lot, myself excluded anyway (well from the first two anyway) than their PS3 counter-parts.

This is odd as twice this year already, PS3 console sales have been greater than those of the 360. Perhaps, now that Blu-ray has won the day this is encouraging people to go for the PS3 and they will have a future-ish proof DVD player built in. Were some folk holding out buying a console until the HD DVD issue was resolved one way or another?

This guy has an opinion on it too…

I think many people have been surprised to see how well GTA IV is selling on Xbox 360 given the history of the franchise. These sales results add GTA IV to a long list of franchises that have switched over from Playstation to find a new home on Xbox 360 similar to what happened last year with titles like Madden and Guitar Hero.

Console Wars…PS3 on the up..and we’re all Doomed

Despite being widely dismissed by all those connected with the Microsoft xbox360, in much the same way that xbox mags laughed at the perceived threat of Blu-Ray against their beloved leaders choice of HDVD, sales of the PS3 have been rising and rising and narrowing the deficit against comparable 360 sales. Indeed, with one or two PS3 exclusives launched over the past 6 months, it has in fact outsold the 360 on several occassions. Here is the view of the Sony President as told to the BBC:

Speaking to BBC News, Kaz Hirai said the machine would overhaul rivals Nintendo and Microsoft within its 10-year lifecycle.

PlayStation 3 sales have outstripped those of Microsoft Xbox 360 in Europe but it lags behind in North America.

Nintendo’s Wii console is the number one next-generation machine globally.

Mr Hirai said Sony was engaged in a "marathon" race with Nintendo and Microsoft.

More than 10.5 million PlayStation 3s were sold worldwide by the end of 2007. To date, in Europe more than five million PS3s have been sold.

I think 360 has to wake up a little, after the flurry of top class games at the end of last year, with the exception of GTA IV, content has been decidely lacklustre since then. I find myself looking at the PS3 more and more these days, particularly as it has a Blu-ray player built in.

On the subject of Grand Theft Auto, I tried to pick up a copy over the Holiday weekend with no joy…all sold out here in Edinburgh which is the first time I can recall a game suffering the same fate. These stats from xbox360 Fanboy suggest a staggering $500 million worldwide was taken in sales in the first week, whapping the pants off Halo3 sales and an amazing 926 000 copies sold in the UK, of which about 40% were for the PS3.

Last and certainly not least comes the great news, for me anyway, that Doom 4 is now in production…yahoo. Unfortunately, it sounds like it has JUST started production and thus it will a long while before we see it on the 360 which is surprising as it now nearly 4 years since the last instalment.