October 19, 2007

Video Game Blog Dump

The new NPD numbers are out for the month of September (though there seems to be some question as to whether they count the first week of October here as well) and Halo 3 sold 3.3 million units. Keep in mind that Halo 3 came out the last week of September. The game also bumped the hardware sales up to over half a million as well, surpassing the Wii. We'll see how that carries through to the holiday season, but my guess is this is only the beginning. Link.

Microsoft is offering five free HD-DVDs if you buy the HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360. At $200 it's not super cheap, but it's probably the cheapest of the HD players and five free movies helps a bit I guess. Plus, as far as deals like this go, this is a fairly decent list of options. Link.

When the PS3 launched both 20gb and 60gb versions contained both the CPU and the GPU (graphics processing unit) of the PS2 in addition to all the computing stuff that makes PS3 games go. When they brought out the 80gb version of the PS3 they ditched the PS2 CPU in order to cut some costs. From what I understand this solution worked pretty well for playing PS2 games. For the new 40gb version, however, Sony is *also* ditching the PS2 GPU, meaning the machine will be completely unable to play PS2 games. It will, of course, be $399 rather than $499 they're charging for the 80gb version, but Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton thinks we're actually better off without backwards compatibility. You see, now you can buy a PS3 and a PS2 for a combined price of $70 less than the original 60gb PS3. What a deal! (/sarcasm) Link.

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