2006 Top Xbox Live Games Announced

Major Nelson, of Xbox Live fame, today announced the top games on Xbox Live over the past year. There’s a few surprises in the lists, so I’ll post each of the tables, then discuss what they mean.

First up, the top Xbox Live Titles by GamerTag. What this chart shows is the number of individuals who have played each game. This only measures games for the 360 and not original Xbox games played on 360s.

2006 Top Xbox 360 Titles (Unique Users)

1	Gears of War
2	Hexic HD
3	Call of Duty 2
4	Ghost Recon 3
5	Oblivion
6	PGR3
7	Perfect Dark Zero
8	Call of Duty 3
9	UNO
10	EA SPORTS™ Fight Night Round 3

Unsurprisingly, Gears of War tops this list. Given that more then a tenth of all Xbox 360 owners have a copy of this game it’s basically. Hexic in second place is pretty much a statistical blip, since every single Xbox Hard Drive comes with a free copy of it. I was surprised by Perfect Dark Zero getting into the top ten, but it was a launch game, despite being pretty poor.

The Wii Bubble Bursts?

For a long time, the Wii was the holy grail of gaming, defended by a flock of rabid fanboys as soon as anyone mentioned the fact that it was an upgraded GameCube. Now the bubble has burst somewhat.

Yesterday, I reported on the latest Virtual Console games for Europe and expressed my belief that they were a pretty poor selection. At around about the same time, GoNintendo posted an extract from a Spanish language interview with Ernesto Fernánez-Maquieira, one of the managers of Nintendo-Europe. The only section of the interview that GoNintendo has in English is:

RG: One question about the Virtual Console: Many readers put hope in the Virtual Console to enjoy the classics that didn’t make it to the European Market such as Mario RPG for SNES. Is there any hope?

EF: We will see only games that were released in Europe in the past for the Virtual Console, and they will come in the same original languages that they were released.

This has some pretty big implications for European Gamers. Many people will find themselves unable to play classic games in their native language and NES, SNES and MegaDrive releases which were US or Japan only will not be released in Europe at all.

When the Virtual Console system was announced, many saw it as an opportunity to play games which they’d never been able to play before due to regional releases. It’s disappointing that Nintendo isn’t following Microsoft’s lead and creating a real games download service with new and updated content.

In other news, one of the bloggers at Aeropause has written a piece about using GameCube memory cards on with the Wii. Apparently, it’s impossible to transfer GameCube saves from the memory card on to the Wii system memory or to an SD Card. This is just short sighted of Nintendo and points towards some of the Wii firmware either being rushed or just not well thought out.

No console is perfect, unfortunatly far too many people had built the Wii up to be the ultimate gaming machine. It’s good that it’s finally coming down to earth, but it does seem that Nintendo have made some bad decisions regarding Virtual Console and the first release firmware.

[Thanks to Kerri from 8Bit Hero! for the link to the GoNintendo Story]

European Virtual Console Releases for 29/12

Nintendo released a press statement in the early hours of Friday 29th announcing this week’s new virtual console games for the European Region. Unfortunately the last VC releases of 2006 are pretty poor.

This week we get NES classics Ice Hockey and Baseball along with Super Castlevania IV and SimCity for the SNES and R-Type for the TurboGrafx. So all in all, a bit disappointing.

It’s worth noting that R-Type is a ‘premium’ TurboGrafx title and is selling for 800 points instead of the normal 600.

Nintendo Press Release

Christmas Greetings

I’m currently living in 512k land, but I managed to get enough of a connection to post a quick Christmas greeting.

So, first off, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanuka, Kwanzaa greetings etc. Hope everyone has a good day, even if it is just an opportunity to take a holiday off.

Secondly, I’d like to thank all the folks that have been reading my blog, especially in the past few days when Blogging with Opera for Wii attracted more then 200 hits and was featured in WordPress’s top posts for the 22nd. Also, the guys at 8 Bit Hero! deserve a shout out just for being pretty cool and having a cool blog (not to mention cross linking ).

Thirdly, hope everyone is looking forward to 2007. It should be a good year, with both the Wii and PS3 maturing as gaming systems, with a lot of strong games coming for both platforms. The 360 is also in for a good year, with Halo 3 coming out sometime next year as well.

On the PC side of things, 2006 has been a pretty weak year, dominated with add-ons, sequals and hype. Thankfully we’re got WOW: Burning Crusade, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and Windows Vista all launching in Quarter 1. Mac OS X Leapord should also be launching at some point in 2007.

As far as handheld gaming goes, DS has had an amazing year while the PSP has been slated over and over again. The DS should remain strong throughout 2007 but with any luck, as more people pick up PS3s and start downloading content for the PSP, Sony’s much maligned handheld will blossom into real competition to Nintendo’s market stranglehold.

The Machiavellian Nerd will of course be here to cover all of this and more as it unfolds.

Finally, a bit of Christmas cheer thanks to Faith Naked:

Merry Chistmas, Micro-Transactions for All!

As you may have noticed in the past, I am not a massive fan of micro-transaction. I feel that many micro-transactions rip gamers off unless they add a good bit of content to a game. Examples of this are the Horse Armour for Oblivion and the Viva Pinata Accessory Packs, both of which have come under heavy critism for costing money while adding very little to the game.

Thankfully, a few developers have gotten into the Christmas spirit and have released free downloadable content for games on the 360. The first of these is a festive pack for GTA clone, Saint’s Row. It includes skins and clothes.

The second is slightly better, since it adds a decent bit of content to ELIV: Oblivion. Bethesda are making the Mehrunes’ Razor plug-in free from today until December 31st. The pack contains an additional dungeon, a decent number of new items and an opportunity to find Mehrunes’ Razor which is easily one of the best weapons in the game.  Unfortunately, this is only available on the 360 and doesn’t apply to the PC version.

For those of you without 360s, Firaxis has made additional Christmas content available for Sid Meier’s RailRoads! including two new quests, a new engine, seasonal goods and a new environment type. It can be downloaded here.