It's already been well-established that Epic Games' Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War is a hit. In the first two weeks after the game's November release, Microsoft confirmed that it had already sold a million copies worldwide and that it had surpassed Halo 2 as the most-played game on the Xbox Live service. There was even speculation about a fourth installment in the series when a sequel of any kind has yet to be announced. Today, less than six weeks after Gears of War's "Emergence Day" launch, Microsoft announced that sales had tallied up to more than 2 million copies worldwide. The game has also gone platinum in the US, reaching the 1 million mark. Since the game went on sale November 7, the daily rate of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions, which are required for online play, has increased more than 50 percent. In a statement, Epic Games president Michael Capps said the development team was "stoked" at the news, and said fans can count on the company delivering "new gameplay" through Xbox Live. Previously, Capps assured fans that his company would provide free downloadable content for all its games.

Developers at Epic Games say "we always take care of our customers; we always give them stuff for free"; details on shooter's downloadable content still a mystery. Given Gears of Wars' success and its pedigree, downloadable content for the game isn't so much a question of if it will happen so much as it is when it will happen. Back in August, Epic Games vice president Mark Rein admitted that the studio was already planning downloadable content, but wouldn't go into specifics. Epic has been very tight-lipped about what it has planned for the shooter on Xbox Live Marketplace, but now we know one fairly important detail--the content will be free. Speaking with Spike TV after the network's Video Game Awards (where Gears won four awards), Epic Games president Mike Capps was asked about how the company was going to keep Gears a top-seller. He quickly replied, "We always take care of out customers, we always give them stuff for free, and we're going to keep doing that forever. That's how we do it, this is Epic." He added that the content has been in development long before the game was released, but did not divulge a timetable of when it will be released. For more information on Gears of War, read GameSpot's review.

  Games in Germany already face strict censorship laws--titles such as Gears of War are deemed to be too violent, and the German board of classification (the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbskontrolle) refuses to give them a rating, effectively meaning that the games can be sold only at adults-only retailers. Nazi symbols are also banned in the country, except for art and educational purposes--so games which use them, including the Wolfenstein series, are also banned from being released in Germany. Even games such as Dead Rising are regarded as crossing a threshold of acceptability since violence towards zombies is considered to be too close to violence towards real people. Now. legislation currently being drafted would take these standards a step further. The bill, which was introduced last week by the states of Bavaria and Lower Saxony, proposes a new offence. Those found guilty of "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters" could face fines, or jail time of up to 12 months--and those it applies to include developers, retailers, and consumers, reports UK newspaper The Guardian. The proposed legislation comes on the heels of a shooting on November 20 where an 18-year-old student went on a shooting rampage and wounded six people in his school before killing himself. Backers of the bill also point to the 2002 Erfurt massacre where another German student shot 13 people, according to the paper. Both incidents have been blamed in the media on violent games and much has been written about the two shooters' fascination with games such as Half-Life: Counter-Strike. The proposed legislation makes the future for German game companies unclear. One company, Far Cry and Crysis developer Crytek, has already made known its plans to relocate to another country should the any legislation of this kind be made law.

 After months of year-over-year growth, October's sales figures surprised some analysts and industry watchers. With the market-depressing effects of a console transition largely behind them, US retailers started off the key fourth quarter of the year with sales more or less in line with what they had taken in for October 2005. Despite that month's unspectacular showing, analysts were upbeat this week in anticipation of significant sales growth for November. And according to the industry tracking NPD Group, their optimism was justified. For the month of November, US retail game sales amounted to roughly $804 million, a 15 percent increase over the prior year's $702 million. Sales were led by the Xbox 360 release Gears of War (which broke the million-unit mark), followed by Square Enix's Final Fantasy XII and Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii. Twilight Princess was the only game for either of the month's newly released systems--the Wii and the PlayStation 3--to crack the top-10 best-selling games (by units sold). Despite the performance of Gears of War and the release of Sony and Nintendo's next-gen consoles, it was portable systems that experienced the more pronounced growth. Portable game sales were up 28 percent to $185 million, compared with home console game sales' 11 percent bump to $618 million. Sales for PS3 and Wii games would no doubt have been higher if more of the consoles had made their way into gamers' hands. NPD shows 197,000 PS3 systems sold for the month, while the Wii managed to move 476,000 units. The Xbox 360 bested them both, though not by much, sporting sales of 511,000 for the month. None of the next-gen systems could measure up to the DS, however, as Nintendo's newest portable sold 918,000 systems, according to NPD. All tallied up, US retailers sold $771 million worth of gaming hardware last month, 69 percent more than the $456 million moved in November 2005, when the Xbox 360 launched

  Following just behind the latest trailer for Halo 3, which was released on Monday, a few new trailers for another pair of highly anticipated games are invading Xbox Live Marketplace. Now available on Microsoft's online service is the "Theater" trailer for Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, the upcoming sci-fi shooter from Capcom. The 60-second trailer shows the snowy setting of the game, a large battle between opposing forces, and features the tagline "Blood runs cold." Fans of Mass Effect will be happy to know that a new trailer of the super-secret action role-playing game will be released this Friday, according to Chris Priestly, community coordinator at BioWare. In a post on the game's official forums, he says that after a long time coming, the X06 walkthrough trailer will appear on both Xbox Live Marketplace and the BioWare Web site. Priestly goes on to detail some of the trailer's contents in a separate post. "You will be seeing the video that was shown at X06 almost in its entirety, with only a very little filler material removed." He also says the X06 demos, which were given independently to media outlets, ran about 20 minutes long with pauses in action and replaying certain scenes. However, he did not give any indication how long the Xbox Live Marketplace trailer would be. Lost Planet is due in stores January 12. Mass Effect will be released sometime in 2007.

Gears of War has long been hyped as the holiday title to get for the Xbox 360, and so far critics' reviews agree. It's no surprise, then, that the sci-fi shooter, which was released in mid-November, has already sold more than 1 million copies and is a frontrunner for Game of the Year in many people's books. The Epic Games-developed game also took a crown from the Xbox family's reigning king of sci-fi shooters, Halo 2, when it was recently revealed that the most-played game over Xbox Live was Gears of War. Previously, Halo 2 had owned Xbox Live, besting all other Xbox and Xbox 360 titles in online play. With all the online fragging Gears is facilitating, it's no surprise that the game is bringing some dormant gamers out of the woodwork and onto Xbox Live. According to Sandvine Incorporated, a network traffic tracker, 80 percent more users were drawn to Xbox Live since Gears of War's first week of release. "The effect Gears of War and other games are having on networks indicates to service providers that online gaming is not just a craze," said Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo. Since the game went on sale November 7, the rate of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions, which are required for online play, has increased more than 50 percent. While Sandvine only pointed out Gears of War by name, it did mention that other games released that week also aided in the spike in Xbox Live users. Also released that week for the Xbox 360 were Viva Piñata, Call of Duty 3, and Tony Hawk's Project 8--the latter two of which were also released on the original Xbox.

 Nintendo has reportedly sold the vast majority of its promised launch stock for its next-gen console in Japan. According to Weekly Famitsu, the game giant sold 371,936 Wiis during December 2 and 3, just shy of its 400,000 target. That's five times the 80,000 consoles the top Japanese gaming magazine estimates were available at the PlayStation 3's Japanese launch on November 11. Both consoles quickly sold out. According to Famitsu, the Japanese software tie ratio for the Wii is 1.69, which means that most people who bought the console also bought two games. The PS3's Japanese tie ratio weighed in at just 0.98, which some interpreted to mean that many of the Sony systems had been bought a la carte for resale on the secondary market. In Japan, Wii Sports did not come free bundled with the Wii as it did in the US--and will in Europe. However, the game was still the top title, with sales of 176,880 units. Wii Play followed closely in second place, selling 171,888 copies, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was in third, shifting 145,068 games. Other games in the top 10 included: Tecmo's Super Swing Golf in fifth place, with 12,673 units sold; Ubisoft's Red Steel at number eight, selling 8,823 copies, and Konami's Elebits at 10 with 6,505.

In November, Bungie Studios and Microsoft announced that they had a huge announcement regarding Halo 3. Many hardcore fans were let down when the news was merely the announcement of a beta program...that wouldn't even start until spring 2007. Today, registration for the beta program began at the Halo 3 Web site. The beta will initially be open to North American gamers, and not everyone who applies is guaranteed a spot. To participate, gamers must have: a) An Xbox 360 with a hard-drive; b) A valid Xbox Live Gold subscription; c) A valid Microsoft. NET Passport account with a Xbox Live GamerTag linked to it. More details on the beta-sign up can be found on halo3.com. [UPDATE 3] A new 60-second Halo 3 ad aired during last night's Monday Night Football matchup between the Philadelphia Eagles and Carolina Panthers. It is now available on Xbox Live Marketplace, Xbox.com, and via the link below. Halo 3 is due out in 2007 exclusively for the Xbox 360.

 The year head start in the next-gen console race for the Xbox 360 has always been seen as a major boon for Microsoft. Late to the party during the last console cycle, Microsoft leapfrogged its competitors this time around by releasing the Xbox 360 in November 2005. Nintendo and Sony released the Wii and PlayStation 3, respectively, in November 2006. But while Nintendo and Sony trumpet sales in the hundreds of thousands--Nintendo says it sold through 600,000 Wiis and Sony has yet to give official numbers--Microsoft is looking toward sales of 10 million Xbox 360s by the end of this year's all-important holiday season. The figure is nothing new. Five months before the Xbox 360 launched, Peter Moore boasted that Microsoft would sell 10 million Xbox 360s in the console's first year on market. More than 17 months later, Microsoft appears to be sticking to that lofty number. Speaking at the NASDAQ analyst conference in London, Microsoft CFO Christopher Lidell talked about his company's future. While touting the upcoming launch of the Vista operating system, he said, "We also believe we can sell 10 million Xbox 360 units by the end of the Christmas season," according to the Wall Street Journal. In the company's first-quarter financial report for the period ending September 30, 2006, Microsoft revealed that it had sold 6 million Xbox 360s worldwide. To reach 10 million sold, Microsoft would have to sell more than 1 million Xbox 360s per month between October and December. Selling 10 million units before the competition is more than just bragging rights for Microsoft. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer earlier this year said the number could very well determine the winner of the next-gen console war. Speaking about Sony's delay of the PS3 to this holiday season, Ballmer told Fortune, "In every other generation, the first guy to 10 million consoles was the number one seller in the generation. Did we just get an even better opportunity to be the first guy to 10 million? Yeah, of course we did." [UPDATE] "I think that Sony's PS3 production issues, sales of Gears of War, and generally positive trends at retail are helping the 360," industry analyst Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets told GameSpot. However, Sebastian isn't entirely sold that the 10 million mark is right around the corner for Microsoft. "Whether they hit can reach 10m units worldwide by December 31 (which is the timeframe I think they mean) depends in part on what happens at retail over the next three weekends, and also on what they can produce and ship before the end of the year. Keep in mind that Microsoft talks about shipments of units, not actual retail sales."

A total of 180 PlayStation 3 consoles have been stolen from a freight forwarder's local office in Japan, reports the Mainichi Daily News. Was it desperate gamers...or Yakuza? Meitetsu Golden Aircargo called police at approximately 6:50 p.m. on the evening of December 5 to report that the consoles had been stolen. The PS3s were part of a shipment of 1,560 due to be distributed to retailers in the Kanto region of Japan, including the Greater Tokyo Area, Gunma, and Chiba. At around 1:30 p.m., an employee checked the consoles and found that 180--valued at 9.5 million yen (around $82,500)--had "disappeared." Sony's PS3 launched in Japan on November 11, with an initial shipment estimated at approximately 80,000 units. A string of crimes has dogged the console's release in the US, including a robbery in California, muggings in Oregon, and the shooting of a man waiting in line in Connecticut.