Consolation Prize

The April US hardware sales make interesting reading. Nintendo must be feeling pretty smug about now as the all conquering “DS” headed up the hardware sales chart closely followed by the “Wii”. No doubt the recent release of Pokemon Diamond / Pearl has helped the DS consolidate its position.

What’s amazing is that last gen hardware is still doing so well. The PS2 and PSP sold a respectable amount and the GBA is still hanging on in there, all of them surprisingly outselling the PS3. I don’t think the alarm bells are ringing quite yet in Sony HQ as it’s early days still, but surely they must be a little worried?

1. Nintendo DS (471,000)
2. Nintendo Wii (360,000)
3. Sony PS2 (194,000)
4. Sony PSP (183,000)
5. Microsoft Xbox 360 (174,000)
6. Nintendo GBA (84,000)
7. Sony PS3 (82,000)
8. Nintendo Gamecube (13,000)

It has been reported that the Halo 3 Beta Crackdown issues have been resolved. It’s fairly hefty download and as you’d expect things are running at a bit of a snails pace so you should be prepared to wait a few hours before you can finally get your hands on the game.

To compensate for the problems the beta end date has been extended by four days and should now end on June 10th 23:59 PDT (June 11th 07:59 GMT)

I was pretty excited today as I remembered the Halo 3 Beta was due to be available for download. Those lucky enough to get an invite from signing up via Halo3.com or from purchasing a copy of Crackdown (with invite) should be basking in some multi-player mayhem…

However all is not well as it looks like the download via Crackdown has been delayed. I keep trying every now and again just in case it’s finally been sorted but the relevant option is still greyed out. I’ll just have to be patient as the day is now drawing to a close over here in the UK.

The beta is scheduled to run until June 6th 23:59 PDT (June 7th 07:59 GMT).

In some other Halo 3 related news it’s been announced that the game will release on September 25th in America and Australia and a day later, on the 26th for Europe.

I’m a bit late posting this information, but there are four releases this week on the Virtual Console:

Wonder Boy in Monster World
Shockman
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
Virtua Fighter 2

I’ve not played any of these games, but there’s a good review roundup on
Eurogamer should you wish to get some impressions.

In a bit of news relating to a previous post “Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords” is set to appear on Xbox Live Arcade courtesy of “D3Publisher of America, Inc (D3PA)”. The release date and price have yet to be released.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (Impressions)
Press release details on TeamXbox

Catan, the Xbox live arcade variant of the popular board game “The Settlers of Catan” is to be released tomorrow priced at 800 MS points. As previously posted I’ve been looking forward to this game for some time and I will definitely be downloading it tomorrow. Impressions will follow shortly afterwards.

Catan: looking forward to live

In addition to Catan, Atari’s classic games
Centipede and
Millipede will be released as one download for 400 MS points.

It’s Friday, and as usual the Virtual Console has had a few more releases added to it’s growing portfolio of retro games.

This weeks offerings are:
Final Fight (SNES),
Mighty Bomb Jack (NES points) and
Battle Lode Runner (TurboGrafx-16)

Of those listed I’ve only ever played the GBA version of Final Fight. The game is a side scrolling “beat-’em-up” with players progressing from left to right dispatching a steady stream of enemies and end of stage “boss” characters. Eventually they will come face to face with the final boss “Belger”. I remember the game being quite fun, and if you’re looking for a quick fix of action this may be worth checking out.

It’s been confirmed that
Forza Motorsport 2 for the Xbox 360 will be released in Europe on the 8th June. The game will be available in both standard and limited editions.

Microsoft have stated that a demo of the game will be available on Xbox live sometime soon. Although I never played the original game I’ve a penchant for racing games and I can foresee I’ll be playing this as soon as it’s available.