Sales Chart: DS is back on top.

Weeking ending 18 February 2007

DS has reclaimed the ichiban spot after the PS2 sidelined it for the past 2 weeks. The game Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village (レイトン教授と不思議な町) not so mysteriously takes the top honours. Professor sold 136,736, while the next best game (PSP's Tales of Destiny 2) was 63,700+ units behind, at 73,022. Looks like Level-5 is having another top-selling on their hands.

Not a bad week for new games, actually. All top 5 games are all new games. Number three and four are occupied by anime-related series, with Bleach DS an Deathnote (both on the DS), while Soul Cradle on the PS2 takes out number five.

Last week's ichiban, Virtua Fighter 5, went straight down to 25. Looks like all the hardcore fans out there got what they want. The rest of us just don't care. Well, considering the price of the game and the console that it's on, you can probably master the game just on the arcade, and save some money too.

The rest of the top 10 all belongs to Nintenodo's usual suspect. Dragon Quest Monsters Joker back from the dead, from 23rd to 7th.

Hardware side of things. It's consistent with last week, and the week before, and the week before that. *yawn* DS Lite still outselling PSP by more than 100,000 units (136,846 vs 34,505). Wii (63,618) sold 43,000 more units than the PS3 (20,676), and more than 12 times the Xbox 360 (5,210).

Best selling games for each platform (that is on the chart) this week:

DS - Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village
PSP - Tales of Destiny 2
PS2 - Soul Cradle
Wii - Wii Sports
PS3 - Virtua Fighter 5

Number of titles in the top 50 for each platform this week:

DS - 33
PS2 - 7
Wii - 6
PSP - 3
PS3 - 1

Oh look, the number of titles in the top 50 haven't changed from last week.

Source: Media Create

Pal PS3 to play LESS PS2 games and MORE expensive (for some people)

It is a known fact that the new Sony PlayStation 3 is an expensive piece of shit hardware. But imagine you are a Greek, or the Irish, you would be hard pressed to even consider looking for one. According the Sony, the RRP of the Irish PS3 is EUR 629, and Greek PS3 is more expensive at EUR 659, about 60 Euro more than everyone else in Europe.

It's almost better to just jump across the border and and buy it from the nearby countries. If I were a game shop, I could probably open a PS3 stand just next to the border.

Now, this other news affects not only the Greeks and the Irish, but the all of the PAL region. It seems like that the PAL PS3 will not have backward compatibility as good as the NTSC (read US and Japan) version. In a statement released by Sony, they said:

"PS3 is first and foremost a system that excels in playing games specifically designed to exploit the power and potential of the PS3 system. Games designed for PS3 offer incredible graphics quality, stunning gameplay and massively improved audio and video fidelity that is simply not achievable with PS and PS2 games. Rather than concentrate on PS2 backwards compatibility, in the future, company resources will be increasingly focused on developing new games and entertainment features exclusively for PS3, truly taking advantage of this exciting technology."

That has to the biggest load of shit I've heard so far from Sony regarding the PS3. Not even the ridiculous pricing could top that. They tried to covered their asses by dodging the entire issue here.

Just admit it, Sony, your PlayStation 3 is full of shit. If you say PS3 is backward compatible, make it so. If it doesn't, fix the damn thing, or don't say it in the first place. But then again, they did say the PS3 was to have a worldwide release.... *roll eyes*

Ken Kutaragi makes a great candidate for a fine politician.

More Wii, Less Weight

So it's official. According to the latest research, Wii will help your kid lose weight.

New research commissioned by Liverpool John Moores University has showed that kids who regularly play Wii games burn up more fat than those who sit on their lazy Cartman-size asses watching South Park all day.

Tim Cable, a researcher Professor at the university claims that regular use of Wii could help kids shift 12.25kg (27lb) a year. They used 12 kids aged 13 to 15 to conduct their research. While I'm not saying the result is bad, but isn't 12 a little too small a number to conduct a conclusive research? (yeah well, I know they didn't say anything about "conclusive", but still....).

The research came after a completely non-scientific experiment was conducted by a 25 years old Yankee, Mickey DeLorenzo, who lost 4kg (9lb) after a 6 weeks of Wii Sports. The guy didn't do anything different, except for 30 minutes of Wii Boxing everyday for 6 weeks.

This is definitely good news to kids everywhere. The next time your parents say, "No, games are bad for you", go get them a lecture on Professor Cable's research. And then demand them to give you a Wii. But of course, Wii is not something money can buy at the moment.

Source: FitSugar

Yet another Final Fantasy DS Special Edition

After the success of the Final Fantasy III Special Edition DS, SquareEnix have decided to follow the same path with their latest offering on the DS, Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings. The game is the squeal to FFXII, following Vaan and Penelo and their sky pirate way of life. But let's not worry about that for the moment. I'm more interested in the Special Edition DS. Let's put the two DS side by side:


Final Fantasy III Special Edition


Final Fantasy XII Special "Sky Pirate" Edition

Which one do you prefer? In case you're colour blind, it only comes in white. And only available in Japan.

For 21,840 yen, you can take one of these baby home after waiting in line for 6 hours. Oh sorry, you can only import them, so I guess you can skip the line then.

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark here, but a Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle: Ring of Fate special edition is coming too, right?