Christmas: the season of gluttonous gorging for gamers the world over. More titles than we know what to do with, games we cant devote enough time to, and hidden gems lost amongst the piles of sequels and licensed trash that litter our local temples of videogame commercialism. 360, PS3, High Definition, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, Sixaxis… Considering that list of marketing acronyms and technobabble, one thing was made abundantly clear to me over the holiday period; no matter how crazy they seem at times, Nintendo know how to market a product better than anyone else in this industry. Needless to say, as with so many other anecdotal reports, the Wii was a huge success in our household. Everyone had fun creating their own Mii, and it was a strange feeling watching people old enough to know better abandon previously-held inhibitions and discover a new form of entertainment that they hadn’t been exposed to, or had flat-out chosen to ignore. The sheer look of surprise and delight when picking up the Wii controller and striking down the first set of pins reminded me of the same feeling many of us will have experienced years ago when loading Sonic or Mario for the first time, or discovering the fun of sticking a plasma grenade to a friends head in your first Halo Multiplayer session. For many people, the Nintendo Wii, and the pack-in title ‘Wii sports’ in particular, has all the bases covered. Intuitive? Check. Fun? Check. Simple, one-handed control? Check. New people, new experiences, exactly the way that Nintendo had envisaged when introducing the concept fully at E3 05, when Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime made the now infamous statement: “If all you want is next generation you're in the wrong place. What we're unveiling is the next leap in gaming. It's no longer confined to just a few, it's about everyone. The next leap is about playing because playing is believing": A bold statement of intent to eschew the technology race, grow the market and pull in a new audience. Unlike similar bursts of enthusiasm from Microsoft and Sony, its one that’s seemingly close to delivering on its promise. Or is it? Assuming that some of those new customers actually go out and buy the console for themselves; fast forward 12 months from now. Where is the hook? What’s keeping those people playing? Sure we have some fantastic titles to look forward to: Mario, Metroid, Smash Brothers; but will any of those appeal to the new customers Nintendo has gone out of its way to market to? Not a chance. Just try sitting down mum or dad in front of Zelda or Mario when it comes out. You sometimes forget as a gamer the vast raft of implied knowledge and conditioning that we have in order to spend time with our chosen pursuit. Analogue stick? Three-dimensional spatial visioning? Multiple button presses? Not a hope, and very few of the new Nintendo devotees will have the patience to sit and learn when they’ve already been delivered gesture-based simplistic gameplay that caters to the need for quick, intuitive and most importantly co-operative fun. Nintendo are in a unique position to deliver on their promised goals and break the market into new territories. Regardless of whether videogame devotees see this as a necessary move, it can only be considered healthy for an entertainment industry to grow its audience and revenue stream, encouraging acceptance from a wider variety of media outlets and commentators in the process. In that respect, strangely, lessons can be learned from Sony. Where are the Buzz or Singstar variants? It seems a simple correlation to look at the some of the largest successes in other entertainment mediums and produce content to tap into that market. Quiz shows, board games, music titles, all successfully marketed on the aging PS2 hardware, but never quite enough for anyone that wasn’t already a gamer to think about purchasing the unit itself. Nintendo have that momentum, they have a product that’s shiny, small, well-designed and will happily sit out-of-sight on a shelf or in the closet when not in use. Perfect design for the audience they are attempting to attract, and given the failure of the Gamecube its the audience that they need in order to continuing producing hardware outside of the handheld market. It’s a strange position to be in for a company that’s known for software supremacy rather than hardware, and perhaps that may be the issue here. Nintendo clearly has a vision, and who knows, maybe that have some trump cards that no-one knows about yet. If they haven’t revealed anything by the summer however, it could be the writing on the wall for what could have been one of the gaming world’s greatest innovations. Lets hope that isn’t the case, and that my Mii can partake in a variety of activities for a few years to come.

As some of you may know, component cables for the Wii are nigh on impossible to get hold over here in the UK without going through ebay to import or pay extreme prices to the UK-based scalpers. Whilst I can happily play on Wii sports through composite without feeling like i'm missing anything, I flat out refuse to start Zelda without using the best connection that I can. If i'm going to sink 50 hours into a game, I want my eyes to bleed from visual candy, not from visual fuzz. I've been waiting a week now for my set of cables to show up from an ebay import purchase, and its actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. With the Zelda box staring down at me from a shelf, i've turned to games that have long been forgotten in the 'to be completed' pile on my tv stand. As such, i've finally gotten round to completing Kameo about a year after everyone else did, followed by Canis Canem Edit, and i'll be polishing off Yakuza over the weekend. Its very easy to get sidetracked by other attractions when you have multiple systems at hand, and likewise its easy to forget the satistaction that can be gained by playing one game through to completion. Its certainly made me think about the number of games that I've been buying over the last few months. Do I really need all of those 360 titles that i've religiously purchased in November and December? Probably not. Will I finish most of them? Probably not. Maybe less is more, and investing quality time into one game that you love is more rewarding than trying out all the others that dont quite cut it. But can anyone really resist the lure of new titles? Wouldnt you wonder what you were missing? Would I have even bought a Wii if I thought that way in the first place? Probably not.

For many of us game-loving europeans the month of November is indeed 'that time of the year', as it is for the rest of the major territories. All financial resolution goes out of the window in a flurry of new purchases and impulse hardware buys, with enough content to last well into next summer. Do any of us regret it? Not really. There is always the initial pang of financial guilt, but that soon slips away once your settled into your favourite system over the dreary winter months. For a lot of us over here, the Pro Evolution Soccer series usually stands out as a marker of quality and content above most others in the season, consistently evolving gameplay in subtle but effective ways, and adding additional game modes and content year on year. This winter the series adds a number of new play modes, extra stadia, as well as a highly upgraded online mode with support for up to eight players over four consoles. Only one catch... the improvements are only available on current-generation systems. Unfortunately, as is the trend, the much-touted 'next generation' Xbox 360 version seems like a step back in time for the series. The game only has 8 stadia compared to the 34 offered in the 'old' version, it lacks the ability to save replays to the hard drive or a memory unit, online support is less-developed than either the PS2 or the Xbox version, with only 1-1 matches, and finally, the comprehensive edit mode found in all previous versions has been almost eradicated, with only the statistical abilities of players available to be tweaked. Did I miss something here? Since when has this ever been a trend in new systems apart from the 360? I could understand if the team at Konami had poured development time into creating a brand new match-engine, but this isnt the case, its simply an upgraded xbox graphical engine with a few cleaned up textures and better ambiant stadium sound. Does this take a full two years to produce? I've watched the coverage of games like Madden and NBA Live over the past few years and viewed the complaints from the American audience with interest, but had yet to experience this on any of the franchised games that I play regularly. Now I can see where your coming from. The sad fact here is that Konami has short-changed its loyal fanbase with a half-developed and barebones port of a current generation game, and its even sadder that the game will still sell by the bucketload in Europe. It seems the EA approach to 'next generation' sports game development has rubbed off on sports game developers around the world, and are we better off for it? Are we hell. What are the odds of the missing stadia turning up as a 'booster pack' on xbox live market place in the coming months? Or perhaps an 'advanced pack' with the missing replay and edit modes present. I can certainly handle paying above the odds for some next generation games where the experience is simply above and beyond those that I can find on current generation hardware. The recently released Splinter Cell is a fine example, with a much-improved single-player campaign and vastly improved multiplayer support, making the game, in my eyes, worthy of the next generation tag and the priceline to match. I'm sure the game will sell very well due to prior brandname recognition, but will also attract new players due to the overall quality of the experience. Why cant developers learn from examples such as this? It seemed that Konami was treading the right path with previous versions on current generation systems, and you never fealt short-changed with any of the updates to the franchise. If this is the sign of things to come, then i'll be breaking out the PS2 and Xbox pad for a few years yet.

One of the advantages of working 12 hour nights is experiencing the side-effect of extreme tiredness and the effect it has on your brain, especially at 5am in the morning. Usually if its quiet I can watch a few mindless films in the dead of the night, it passes the time and I can still monitor the network and all the systems I need to keep an eye on. You can feel your brain turn to mush, but its so late you really dont care. However tonight was a little different. I just sat through the 3-hour epic that is Steven Spielberg's 'Munich'. Watching something with as profound a story as that when your brain is doing its best to shut itself down has a pretty weird effect. I've spent the last hour or so since the film finished in a sort of waking daydream, the story events poppping into my head, then off on wild tangents based on the characters and on current news events, mixed in with a whole lot of oddness. Its reminded me of the state I spent the whole of Glastonbury in last year, and boy is it fun!!! Anyway, on another tangent, if you havent seen 'Munich' I cant recommend it highly enough, even if your not a Spielberg fan you owe it to yourself to give it a try. The only criticism I can level at the film is that it does come down a little heavy on the pro-Jewish, pro-Israel side of the debate (but then its Steven Spielberg, whaddya expect?). The direction throughout is superb, Geoffrey Rush is excellent as always, and Eric Bana just sealed his position as one of my favourite actors. The dude should make more films.

Nerves shot to pieces, excited, frightened, and very drunk... Need say no more Loved every second of it!!! Edit: I forgot to write this, but we have a full page interview in Edge Magazine, as well as being on the cover DVD for PSM2 later in the month. Thankyou Harmonix!!!

Woo! I get to play Guitar Hero onstage at download festival, sometime between 9-10pm on the thursday, cant wait to make a Tool (pardon the pun) out of myself in front of thousands of people... I'm more intrrigued about using a stage setup designed for Metallica, Tool, GnR etc to play on though, i imagine the sound will be freaking awesome, and the number of people will be daunting... We'll be doing Symphony of Destruction (Hard) and Higher Ground (Hard/Expert) Most immersive game experience ever coming up for me :)

This sums up the Sony E3 conference absolutely perfectly.... Check it

It seems like the 'global' videogame industry has finally realised that making the rest of the world wait whilst America and/or Japan get early launches is not a good idea. I mean Europe is as important financially to these companies as Japan, if not more so in most cases, so why has it taken this long to get the ball rolling? I appreciate that it takes time to localize games, and to translate masses of dialogue and cultural references into several different languages is time-consuming, but if localization was to be scheduled earlier in the development process would it be such an issue? Would it be hard to have translators working on the script as development progresses? No. Would it be hard to have sound engineers recording dialogue for the different language versions of games at the same time? No. In fact, you could argue that the quality of the translated versions would increase if this were the case, with all work being done under one roof, with the guidance of the games production teams at hand. Microsoft and to a certain extent Sony seem to have realised this, and the efforts on a grass-roots level are certainly appreciated by gamers this side of the Atlantic. Nintendo however.... somehow their track-record with late releases doesnt seem like it will change. Who knows, perhaps that may be one mistake too many for the future of the company.

It amazes me that people are still confused about how 'current gen' the Xbox 360 looks on a standard definition TV. I mean what were people expecting? Throughout the evolution of games consoles, each generation has brought about graphical advances through increased horsepower, better hardware integration and large amounts of memory, however the key factor at play has always been the output resolution of the device itself. Example resolutions: NES = 256x240 SNES = 512x488 PS1 = up to 640x480 (usually lower in real world use) PS2 = 480p max for games (852 x 480 maximum) Xbox360 in standard Definition mode = 480p (852 x 480 maximum) Xbox360 in native HD mode = 1280x720 Now, theres only so much extra detail that you eyes can percieve at 480i/p resolution no matter how much the xbox packs in, hence people can be disappointed with the results. Move up to a panel that can do the correct resolution for the hardware however, and you can see immediately where that elusive 'next-gen' feel really is. Its simply impossible to gain a real feel for the new wave of machines without upgrading to the correct equipment. Its not Microsoft holding back, its the display technology holding the hardware to previous standards. Trust me, there really is nothing like seeing Fight Night Round 3 on a HDTV projector, firing at a 90" screen, and I defy anyone that sees it to tell me its not everything they hoped for from the next generation of consoles. (You can pick up a HDTV projector for about £400 second-hand by the way, not nearly as bad as you might think)

Still no word from RedOctane on a european release for this yet, but man it needs one!!! I couldnt wait and imported one last week, it cost me £80 all in all, but its worth every penny. I can honestly say I havent had this much fun with a game for a long long time. It pitches the difficulty just right, you can feel yourself getting better with every song that you play, and has a load of unlockable content to keep you going. The sheer addictiveness of it is staggering though, its nailed the whole 'just one more play' down to a tee, and needless to say, if you like rock, the music alone will keep you coming back to it again and again. The most impressive thing about it though is that they manage to convey the feel of playing a guitar very very well, you can even use proper techniques like hammer-ons (although it is a little more difficult in-game than it is in real life). If you get the flow of the song and nail the notes completely, you kind of lose yourself to the game and disconnect with reality for 5 minutes, which above all is what i want :)