Features// SPOnG's Review of 2007: March/April

Perrin Kaplan - Vice President, Marketing & Corporate Affairs, Nintendo of America - 11/04/2007
Wii Shortages Will Continue Says Nintendo

To mangle a couple of metaphors, April kicked off with the banging of a drum. Harmonix, MTV and Electronic Arts' drum, to be exact. There was the faint future echo of guitar, bass and the hint of vocals, too. It was Rock Band. Harmonix, the former Guitar Hero developer, had teamed up with MTV and EA to one-up its old rhythm-based creation with the introduction of a full band kit. Our pockets trembled at the prospect of all those peripherals, even as one SPOnG staffer began driving the rest of us insane with his pre-emptive pen drumming... okay, it was Tim the Evil Editor and someone has got to make him stop, for the love of Jove make him stop!

A swift (and huge) genre change later and GTA IV was back grabbing headlines. Not only is the PlayStation 3 not getting the game as an exclusive, we learned – it's also going to be trumped by the Xbox 360 in the downloadable content department. Yup, the 360 was set for episodic content not to be found elsewhere. That had to sting...

In fact, after a successful launch, things weren't looking too stunning for the PS3 across the board. Leaked Chart-Track figures showed that the PS3 had been outsold by the Wii in its third week, with the Wii in short supply and PS3s aplenty lining retailers' shelves.

In fact, such were the problems with Wii supply that Nintendo's VP of marketing and corporate affairs (and attempted killer of the GameCube), Perrin Kaplan, went on record to tell the world of the shortages, “the product is so very popular that we may see the situation last for some time.”

By the middle of April SPOnG was beginning to long for simpler times. Sony Computer Entertainment America announced its intention to stop supplying 20GB PS3s to US retail. Remember when consoles came in one configuration that was, barring regionalisation, the same in every country? SPOnG has a great big flow chart these days just keep on top of all the different iterations and their prices.

Thankfully, just as we all started getting perplexed to the point of injury, the calming power of Japanese dating porn for the PC entered our lives...

It seemed no-one was going to make it out of April on a high note. By the end of the month reports were emerging that the 360 Elite was proving just as prone to the Red Ring of Death as its brethren.

Still, any month you can walk away from, eh?

If anything could redeem April, it was a God of War game. What luck, then, that God of War II came out! Jolly good it was, too. Just a shame about that bloody goat. Among others, we also got Prince of Persia: Rival Swords and Guitar Hero II made it to the 360.

Roll on summer!

So that was March. To read SPOnG's review of January and February, click here.