Japanese sales tracker Media Create has released their sales numbers for the final week of the Japanese holiday season, for the week of December 28, 2008 to January 4, 2009.

As you already know, Square Enix's Dissidia: Final Fantasy has topped the sales charts, selling 104k units. Coming in second is Nintendo's rhythm sensation Rhythm Tengoku Gold for the Nintendo DS, selling 89k units. Rounding out the top five are Kirby Super Star Ultra (NDS - 77k), Wii Fit (WII - 74k), and Animal Cros...

"In years past, NeoGAF has done their favorite moments in gaming, using only MS Paint to show you. Looking back at 2008 brings us some of the coolest moments, great memories that can look amusing to just plain epic, even when in Paint. I purposely left out the names of the games as half the fun is guessing (but if you can’t figure it out, right click and hit properties to see the file name where I put the game)."

"A raid at a Staffordshire house has resulted in the apprehension of an unemployed man who operated an illegal chipping service on several websites – all linked to Gumtree.com, a classified ads and community site. In an intelligence-led operation involving Staffordshire Trading Standards and investigators from ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association), the home of an unemployed 30 year-old man was raided this week."

"Sonic is the immortal gaming icon who cannot die, it would seem. His latest outings have been poor but he has been kept alive by both his fame and the party Olympic and tennis games that feature his blue spiky hide.

Now we have a new fully ‘Sonic’ game called Unleashed and the question is will it revive past glory, or will it sink the hedgehog closer toward inglorious termination. The answer is…well, yes he’ll survive, but if he wants to be a star again, he’ll have to reinvent himself. ..."

"Topics Include:

Apparently Video Games are not recession proof, find out why?

Home is making Sony a killing despite problems, and Silverthorne has a problem with that.

World at War and Prince of Persia down to $49, could we be heading back to this price point for games during this generation?

New Mickey Mouse game being made by the creator of the Deus EX series, is the Wii to blame for all of these casual games?

Take Two spends $11 million dollars, just so they will not be boug..."

"In this time of penny-pinching, it makes sense that even the U.S. Army would try saving money everywhere except on the things directly affecting our national security.

Example: More money spent on body armor for our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq is good; more money spent on costly toys like video game simulators might not be so good.

Nevertheless, the Army plans to spend nearly $18 million on a training simulator that lets soldiers fire virtual guns, drive virtual tanks and launch vi..."

"Ever since the debut of the Atari 2600 in 1977, if a console vendor's gaming instincts were not clean and strong, consumers would hesitate at the moment of truth. The consoles would not sell. And console makers died.

It's now clear that lesson was lost on Microsoft and Sony. Expect Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to talk a lot about the Xbox 360 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday, and Sony Chief Howard Stringer to highlight the role of the PlayStation in tha..."

"Square Enix Co., Ltd. today announced that Square Enix and Ubisoft Japan entered into an exclusive distribution agreement under which Square Enix is entitled to distribute UBISOFT Group games exclusively in Japan starting April 2009."

"However, Rigopolous says that we won’t be seeing Rock Band 3 this year as the team is making “a choice to break out of the annual release cycle for Rock Band this year.” He explained further stating, “[This is] partly because the annual cycle places limits on the choices you can make as a developer. We’re trying to take a long term view.”

Of course that sounds a bit too much like PR BS, but this Harmonix and they’re cool dudes. Thus Rigopolous admits that it’s also because the company want..."

This new peripheral from ezGear looks pretty darn sweet - it is called the You Rock Guitar and is part Guitar Hero/Rock Band controller and part real guitar to use on your PC as a MIDI instrument. It features a touch-sensitive full fret board and strings to strum. It is a pretty pricey instrument at $149, but that is cheaper than most real guitars.

"A 6-year-old Virginia boy who missed his bus tried to drive to school in his family's sedan — and crashed. His parents were charged with child endangerment. State police said the boy suffered only minor injuries and authorities drove him to school after he was evaluated at a local hospital for a bump on his head. He arrived shortly after lunch, Sgt. Tom Cunningham said."

"The editors of Think Services Game Developer Magazine have decided the winner of the Front Line Awards 2008, for its 11 the edition of an award involving several categories of Game Development, such as Audio, Graphic, Game Engine and so on.

These are the results:

Hall of Fame:
Unreal Engine
Epic Games

Art Tool:
Photoshop CS3
Adobe

Audio Tool:
FMOD
Firelight Technologies Pty, Ltd

Middleware:
Havok Physics
Havok

Engine:
Torque Game Engine Advanced 1.7.1
GarageGames
..."

"Penny Arcade has today announced Diane Melville from Babson College as winner of the Penny Arcade Scolarship 2008, as student willing to have a career in the Game Industry.

The student will receive $10.000 to help her reaching her targets and continuing ger studies.

For further information: http://www.penny-arcade.com/pas/"

"Sales of videogames hit an all-time high in 2008, according to ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) which today revealed annual sales figures from GFK Chart-Track. Total sales of all videogame software and hardware amounted to £4.034 billion. There was a huge increase in games sales in 2008, with growth of 23 percent on figures for 2007. The market has now more than doubled over the last five years. The increasing popularity of videogames took total sales to £..."

"The hero of the piece, CID is thrust from the dull drudgery of his every day life into an exciting mission to rescue Mia. CID is a Crash Impact Dummy, one of millions created by the Professor B.M. Werken's company to ensure that every product available on the market is safe for humankind. He diligently crashes, smashes, checks, re-checks and re-re-checks everything from lemonade to escalators. Like most of us at one point or another, CID thinks that there must more to life than just work. He'..."

Electronic Theatre reports on the launch of a brand new community-focused website for Eidos' Battlestation's franchise, specifcally highlighting their forthcoming Battlestations: Pacific release on Xbox360 and PC.

Patrick Klepek of multiplayerblog.mtv.com blogs about his unfortunate tale. He packed himself ready these Christmas holidays, he was ready to spend two weeks destroying his wrists, but he ended up doing absolutely no gaming at all! With this he poses the question, is he the only one?

"

1. Bus Simulator 2008
2. Imagine Wedding Designer
3. Homie Rollerz
4. Hail to the Chimp
5. Secret Service: Ultimate Sacrifice
6. Legendary
7. Sonic Unleashed
8. Vampire Rain: Altered Species
9. Facebreaker
10. Pong Toss: Frat Party Games
11. Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon
12. Rock Revolution
13. Castlevania Judgment
14. Golden Axe: Beast Rider
15. Wii Music
16. Alone in the Dark
17. Target Terror

"

Remember this? Well, we still don't know whether it's going to be true or not, but we can now be assured that 2009 is going to have a new Lego game that will "be a surprise" according to a source at Traveller's Tales.
And it is also said that the game won't be Harry Potter.

"Before you get your hopes up high and start expecting great things, beware that this game is for the PlayStation 2. Nevertheless, what Nobunaga's Ambition lacks in graphics it more than makes up for it with strategic, turn-based action. You can check out the game for yourself with the new trailer."

"DS
1. Chrono Trigger
2. The World Ends With You
3. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
4. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
5. Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Dud
Homie Rollerz

PC
1. Fallout 3
2. Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor
3. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
4. Grand Theft Auto IV
5. World of Goo

Dud
Beauty Factory

PS2
1. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
2. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
3. MLB 08: The Show
4. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
..."

myreviewpoint.com has posted their list of the top five video game series that should move on over to the latest major console by Nintendo, the Wii. They've been seen on the other two consoles, why not this one?

"I have to admit that when I first heard that a feature-length CG film based on the Resident Evil video game series was being made, I was pretty skeptical. I mean, the last three live action Resident Evil movies by Paul W. S. Anderson weren't exactly spectacular (forgive me Milla). Plus, I couldn't help but remember what happened when they made the Final Fantasy video game franchise into that abhorrent CG movie that cost a bazillion dollars to make. I was wrong though. Resident Evil: Degenerat..."

"Harmonix and MTV Games announced today the addition of one of the most influential pioneers of rock and roll, Roy Orbison, to the Rock Band Music Store catalogue of downloadable content. Grammy Award-winning Roy Orbison was a singer, songwriter and performer whose distinctive sound scored him an astounding nine Top 10 hits in four years in the early 1960’s. Orbison’s historic career began in the 1950’s and saw a huge resurgence in the late 1980’s, when he became a prominent influence on artis..."

"Today, 5th January 2009, is officially the twelfth day of Christmas. Most of you are probably back into your usual daytime routine by now, and are looking for something to entertain you during those long winter nights. The Twelve Games of Christmas is a feature series that has been run on each of the twelve days of Christmas here at Electronic Theatre, looking at the disc-based European releases of 2008, and selecting the best performers of each month. Today is the final instalment, and so it..."