Winter Sales & Time Vortices

Over on ihobo today, there's a post looking at sales of videogames for the Winter Festival, entitled The Casual Players Aren't Coming To Your Party. The piece talks about Microsoft, Sony, Fable II, and Call of Duty: World at War, and you can find it here. Here's an extract:

Why can't Microsoft hit the casual market? Well there are two key reasons. The first is that the 360 has been designed to appeal to gamer hobbyists – and in doing so, it has allowed Microsoft to steal this audience from Sony in an impressive market coup. Its controller may seem adequate to players who spend a lot of their time playing videogames, but to the casual player it's a daunting device, something they don't generally want pick up, let alone buy. The second and more important reason is that vast droves of casual players have already bought Wii's and the mass market rarely spends money on two consoles in quick succession. Discounting the 360 may help Microsoft put the boot in with Sony, but the 360 just isn't a casual device, and probably never will be.

I Spy... Temporal Anomalies

And for something completely different, starting today on The Minigame Court, I Spy... Temporal Anomalies, a multimedia blog game challenging you to spot time travel and temporal nonsense in videogames, television shows, books, comics and films. The game starts now and ends 24th December 2008. The winner will have their name (and a link of their choice) inscribed upon the Virtual Cup.

Start playing by clicking here!