Features// SPOnG's Review of 2008: December

"We continue to focus tremendously internationally, Europe in particular is a very big area of focus for us. Japan has always been an important market for us. That's an interesting challenge because you're competing with Sony and Nintendo on their home turf there."

[b]04/12/2008
Shane Kim
Microsoft: We Are Competing With Nintendo[/b]


December. The holidays! As with most Decembers, however, not a right lot happened in gaming. Most of the big releases had already happened and the games industry was settling down to warm its cockles by the fire.

Much of the news that did sneak out was retail-related, as companies alternately gloated and struggled through the year's busiest shopping period.

Microsoft, for its part, said it had had a cracking Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving, start of Christmas shopping) over in America. It beat the PS3, in fact. No mention of Nintendo and the Wii, strangely.

Nintendo, for its part, said it had had a cracking first week of Christmas shopping following Black Friday.

Despite the fact that Microsoft omitted mention of the Wii when it was gloating over its Black Friday sales figures, it did manage to break out of its Wii60 thinking to actually admit that it's competing with Nintendo and the Wii.

It wasn't just the American arms of the platform holders that were chucking figures at us, however. Over in Europe they were snowing numbers all over us. Ambiguity abounded.

Things weren't looking quite so grand for actual retailers, though. At least not on this side of the pond. Woolworths and its distribution company, EUK, going into administration heaped woe upon Zavvi, with the formerly Virginal retailer ultimately also finding itself in administration too.

Uncharted 2 got named! Among Thieves is the moniker ascribed to it.

With all the musing over retail that was going on, Marcus SPOnG got into a bit of a tizz and started ranting from the rooftops that a price cut for the PS3 wss in order.

On a more cheerful note, PlayStation Home finally launched in time for the holidays!

On another more cheerful note – we got a Christmas Number 1! It was, of course, fairly inevitable that there would be a Christmas Number 1 of some sort. But, y'know, it was nice for Electronic Arts, which got the top spot with FIFA 09, nudging Call of Duty: World at War down to Number 2.

And games! Erm... what games? Well, there were three releases of any kind of note. Animal Crossing: Let's Go to the City, AC/DC Live: Rock Band and Prince of Persia (reviewed here).

And then the world ended. Well, it probably should have done, but apparently didn't. So now it's 2009.