The Last Word: January 15-19

In the United States, the Martin Luther King Jr., holiday lopped the top off the work week. No matter, though, as the game news kept on coming. The week began on a tragic note, with a California mother dying of "water intoxication" during a radio contest to get a Wii for her three children. Apparently, when drunk in great quantities during a short time, Leah Betts-style, H20 can saturate the brain, causing swelling and death. In the aftermath, most of the radio show staff was (deservedly) fired.

Meanwhile, in less tangentially game-related news, the week also saw the PlayStation 3 hit its 2006 goal of 2 million units shipped...more than two weeks after 2006 ended. Although anti-PS3 partisans pounced on the news like starving, rabid jaguars hopped up on pheromones, Sony put a positive spin on the milestone. "Compared to its predecessor PlayStation platforms, [the] PS3 is the fastest to reach cumulative shipment of 2 million units worldwide," the company said. That means that, despite its hefty $599/$499 price points, the console is getting into the retail channel faster than the original PlayStation and PlayStation 2 did in 1994-95 and 2000, respectively.

Sony also announced that now more than 1 million PS3s have shipped in Japan, where sales of formerly next-generation consoles have slowed, apparently. According to the latest numbers from Media-Create, Japan's answer to NPD, both Wii and PlayStation 3 sales have declined . During the week ending January 14, sales of the former declined to a second-lowest point of 93,708 units in the island nation. That was over three times the 25,531 PS3s sold during the week, which was the worst performance the console has had since its supply-constricted launch in Japan on November 11. Still, both consoles did better than their competitor, the Xbox 360, which sold just 9,035 during the same week.

Also this week, NPD released the 2006 sales figures for the granddaddy of all gaming platforms, the PC. In 2006, sales of PC games totaled some $970 million, an increase of 2 percent above the year before. But while that may seem like only a modest increase, keep in mind that the total is only for boxed copies of PC games sold at retail and does not include revenue from online purchases or subscriptions to massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft, which has more than 8 million accounts sold.

Speaking of WOW, the first expansion to the game, The Burning Crusade, went on sale this week. Blizzard Entertainment, the cash-flush, Vivendi-owned developer and publisher of the massively popular MMORPG, held eight midnight-sale events early Tuesday to help launch the game, with the biggest bashes being in California and London.

MONDAY (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day)
Woman dies after Wii contest
UK Burning Crusade launch draws thousands
Q&A: Blizzard's Jon LeCraft

TUESDAY
ChartSpot: December 2006
Sims Life Stories to laptop-dance next month
Research firm: XBL TV, movie sales $92M in '07
Sony ships 1M PS3s in Japan, 2M worldwide
Burning Crusade scorches California

WEDNESDAY
Canada posts record year for gaming
Sony: Europe PS3 still set for March
Q&A: Sony's Sir Howard Stringer
EA arrives on Live Arcade
Wii-contest radio station fires 10 staff

THURSDAY
COD3 Map Pack deployed, KIA
Shivering Isles confirmed for 360
Supreme Commander golden
EA returns to Battlefield 2142
Wii-contest DJs could face criminal charges

FRIDAY
Gray Matter slips to Q1 2008
Koei delays Xbox 360, PS3 games
PC gaming stops slide in 2006
MotorStorm's not a-comin' 'til March
PS3, Wii sales slow in Japan

RUMORS OF THE WEEK
Utopia to be next Guild Wars expansion?
Warhawk down?

RELEASES
Shippin' Out January 15-19: Buurnnning Cruuusade!