Back when it was announced, it sounded like Nintendo’s WiiWare would let bedroom coders get their games into their Wiis, just like Microsoft XNA lets anybody write for the XBox 360.

Not so. Apparently all the usual NDAs and licence fees apply. The difference is the games can be developed by small teams (within licenced developers) and the games are distributed via Nintendo’s online service.

Nintendo snubbing small developers for WiiWare

WiiWare is a lie

I know I was never going to get around to coding any more games, not with my current workload, but all the same, I liked the idea, and it was helping leaning me towards buying a Wii.

Microsoft has dropped the price of XBox 360 in Australia, to $349 for the base-level Arcade (note, it doesn’t run old XBox games because it has no hard drive, and won’t provide HD video), $499 for the Pro (what should be called the standard model), and $649 for the XBox 360 Elite.

XBoxWorld reports the Arcade can be got from BigW for just $278 at the moment.

Hmmm. $278 to play Pacman Championship Edition. Am I enough of a sucker to buy it?

Comparative RRPs: Nintendo Wii $399.95; PS3 $699.95. (Why does Nintendo’s web site include no price information?!)

Very cool. MIT are using sixteen Playstation 3s rackmounted and setup as a cluster to do supercomputing.

If you’re like me, and clinging to your “classic” XBox while you ponder upgrading to your next console, now’s a good time to go out game shopping. Arm yourself with a copy of Metacritic’s index of XBox games (if you copy it into Excel and only print the half-decent games, say those rated above 70, you can probably get it down to a fairly small and inconspicuous size) and hit the shops.

For those in Australia, JB Hifi in particular are selling a lot of well-regarded games (and some crap ones as well) at good prices. Pro Evolution Soccer (rated 91 at Metacritic): $15. Want a racing game, but can’t decide between (the late) Colin McRae 2004 (84) or Rallisport 2 (87)? $10 each. Lego Star Wars (76): I think that was $15. Forza Motorsport (92): $15 too I think, but don’t quote me on it. They also had Star Wars Battlefront (80), Destroy All Humans (76), Oddworld: Strangers Wrath (88), Sonic Mega Collection Plus (75).

Or if you just paid $30 for Harry Potter: Goblet Of Fire for the kids a few weeks ago at EB (and it was secondhand), seethe with rage as you spot it for just $20. (Grumble)

(Different games showing up in different stores, natch.)

It’s amazing to see how quickly (original) Xbox games have disappeared. There’s still some on the shelves, but their space has shrunk markedly to make space for other platforms, and there’s nothing in most advertising — it’s all gone onto the Xbox 360.

Contrast that to the Playstation, where PS2 games are still being promoted along their PS3 companions, and even the newer games are still being developed and released for the PS2. Which reflects the massive install-base of the PS2 against the Xbox, I suppose. In fact, you can still buy a PS2 in the shops.

I have an old Xbox… I’m not ready to upgrade yet. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I rarely have time for it, but I’m still enjoying PGR2 and Halo. Will I still be able to find games on the shelves in six months’ time? Probably. Twelve months? Who knows. You can still buy GBA games new.

When I bought my Xbox a few years ago, I pondered that buying it was actually a good way to fight back against the dominance of Microsoft, because they lose so much money on them. Turns out Microsoft reckoned they lost US$4 billion on the venture.

Sony’s PS3 will be available from March 23rd in PAL territories such as Australia and Europe. The Age reports it’ll retail for A$999 in Australia, and it’ll be the 60Gb hard drive version — the cheaper version won’t be sold. The BBC notes Europeans will also get the more expensive model.

Now, how many people are umming and erring because they want a PS3, but are still officially boycotting Sony because of the rootkit debacle?

Curmudgeon Gamer shows a History of Console Prices, trying to show that in inflation adjusted terms, PS3 isn’t going to be so expensive.

But the price comparison between it and the XBox360, wow. And the XBox ain’t cheap either. I can buy a PC for that kind of money.

The XBox-360 is out in the States. Those of us in AU will have to wait until March to get it. A$499 for the non-HD version, or A$649 with it.

Meanwhile some sneaky people on eBay have been selling what appears at first glance to be an XBox 360, but upon closer examination is actually an email address on Hotmail/Yahoo mail. Pity the poor fools that have bid for them. (via Lex)

Okay, now why does an eBay AU listing have a “Report This Item” link, but the same auction on the US site doesn’t? Ah, turns out it’s being trialled in Australia, with the rest of the world hopefully getting it soon…ish.

That’s it, ladies and gentlemen, it’s over: the High Court has ruled that mod chips for video game consoles are legal. All six judges of the High Court held that widely used mod-chips are legal and that playing a game on a consumer’s machine does not constitute an illegal copy.

This effectively clarifies that using mods to get around regional coding is legal — something important to consumers of video games and with clear ramifications for DVDs.

Pirated games, of course, are illegal. But mod chips are a legitimate technology.

Full judgement

Microsoft announces a bunch of XBox 360 game collaborations and confirms XBox 360 will be compatible with (old) XBox games, though there’s some doubt over how it will be achieved, and evidently it won’t be clean: Microsoft representatives did say they would start with more popular titles such as “Halo,” then move down the line.. Yeuch, sounds messy.

Meanwhile Sony has pulled the covers off the Playstation 3, with what sound like some very impressive performance stats.

Oh, and some mob called Nintendo with a console called Revolution appears to be destined yet again for third place.

(Thanks Tony)

As everyone on the planet would know by now, Microsoft has revealed the design of the new version of the XBox — which they’ve called the XBox 360, which shows the marketing bods have won over the dev geeks, who I’m sure would have been happy to call it the XBox 2.0.

There’s a bunch of info on the hardware specs which make it sound suitably groovy, with the most notable thing being a move away from Intel CPUs over to the Power PC. Presumably this will give it more power for the money, which after all is MS’s money, since it’s not like Wintel machines where they just tell the manufacturers the spec — oh no, this thing they have to build themselves, so they’ll want it to be as cheap as possible.

There seems to be no official word on XBox 1 compatibility with this thing, though evidently a user survey hinted that the 360 would play the old games. They must have some pretty good brains working on getting that going, but then I suppose these days you can run PC software on Macs using Virtual PC, so software Intel emulation on a PowerPC isn’t anything new.

And the price and availability? Well they’re saying end of the year for US and Japan (and Europe???). The rest of us will have to wait for sometime next year. With the price of the console likely to be about double what an XBox costs now, it remains to be seen if the games for it will really blow people away enough to shell out for it though.

Hey I wonder if, unlike the PS2, it’ll stand up like in all the pictures without you having to buy an optional stand?

If you’re looking for maps of your favourite video games, check out the Online Video Game Atlas. There are some very large and detailed maps for download.

Be careful, though. This quote may act as a warning:

Weellll… I just learned how big a PNG has to be before Opera rolls over and plays dead.