Early last week, we ran our 2006: The Best (And Worst) feature, which ultimately crowned The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as our Best of ’06 winner. But in addition to the annual award fest, the new year greeted us with countless sales figures and reports to swim through.
One such report stated how the PlayStation 3 would be crowned champion of the console wars by 2010, effectively contradicting most every other report we’ve had–the majority of which point to the contrary.
Two others discussed the big sellers of 2006 and the Xbox 360’s superior Christmas season sales figures. While Madden topped the list, Gears of War had a phenomenally successful year, helping to provide Microsoft with a very merry Christmas.
Hardware and software sales were on the rise in ’06, which can be heavily attributed to two brand new systems being released, as well as the appearance of the DS Lite and continued Xbox 360 and PS2 sales. Irrevocably, GameStop posted extraordinarily high sales numbers for the year.
Microsoft is apparently attempting to push its new title Crackdown through to the mainstream crowd by packing in a Halo 3 beta invitation with the game. Whether or not this is due to the game not living up to expectations, or simply because it isn’t being viewed as a game with mainstream appeal remains to be seen, but this certainly guarantees that Crackdown will be a big seller when it’s released in February.
GamerNode’s choice for best game of 2006, Oblivion, is going to be receiving an expansion at some point this spring. Details are scant as to how console gamers will receive the expansion (or if they will at all), but we do know that it’ll offer plenty to do with 30+ hours of new gameplay.
Other noteworthy happenings included rumors of a new, HDMI-enabled version of the Xbox 360; the apparent cancellation of EA’s The Lord of the Rings: The White Council RPG; Bioshock being slated for a June release; two of the founders of developer Rare leaving the company; and the Xbox Live Video Marketplace’s surprising success.
Don’t forget to drop by our forums and share your thoughts on anything and everything, located here. While you’re there, be sure to participate in these hot topics:
An interesting discussion is going on now as to what game has the worst load times, in the wake of a recent Sonic the Hedgehog video that made its way onto YouTube.
Discussion of the recently-released GoldenEye Source modification continues to be all the rage with the forums’ PC game fans.
Forum-goers are also wondering about your all-time favorite game and favorite game character.
New Reviews:
Super Castlevania IV (VC)
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (VC)
