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Looks like another PC game is heading to Xbox Live Arcade, with Third Wave Games reportedly planning to release upcoming mech shooter War World on both formats.

Nintendo Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3 have predictably both sold out across the pond, with both companies trumpeting the fact this week.

Nintendo Wii's due out in Europe next week and demand's likely to outstrip supply.

In the days before Sony started making videogame consoles and Sega stopped, when Microsoft made Windows and Nintendo made millions, when games came on cartridges not discs and there were no such things as ROM files or emulators or IPS fan translation patches, and buses ran on time and children were seen and not heard and don't you know I fought in two world wars you ungrateful etc.

The PSP has received a boost from major record label EMI Music UK, with a deal that will allow users to download music videos direct to the Sony handheld.

A PlayStation 3 owner is inviting people to hack their way into his console - with the first person to manage it winning the machine itself.

Sony plans to release a special festive-themed LocoRoco level on 11th December full of sleighs, reindeer and other Christmassy characters.

Robbie Bach, the president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, has said that he believes Sony is focusing on too many different areas - and is feeling the strain as a result.

If Tetsuya Mizuguchi ever runs an airline, he should totally call the planes "Lumines". Because then he can write on the side of them, "Lumines: How Time Flies".

Hideo Kojima, currently developing Metal Gear Solid 4 on PlayStation 3, says he's missing the rumble functionality.

Continuing Microsoft's recent splurge of classic arcade content on Live Arcade, last week saw the slightly overdue release of Konami's 1981 celebrated side-scrolling shooter - to the surprise of no-one. Retroactively considered to be the first game in the long-running Gradius series, its place in gaming history is forever assured, but does it deserve a place among the Live Arcade elite, or is it destined to derided for being yet more overpriced retro fodder?

Yes, they literally mean he's got an enchanted arm.

Next to the massed ranks of cinematic mafioso and triads, the yakuza are a bit of a mystery. Of course we all know about the snakeskin shoes and severed fingers (interesting fact: it used to be about weakening the sword grip), and some of us know about tattoos creeping above shirt collars, and the familial relationships that underpin the organisation. But next to the mafia, which Mario Puzo really did a number on, we're still waiting for Hollywood to catch us up. How many knew that yakuza families aren't actually secret organisations, for example, and actually have buildings sitting right there on the street bearing their name?

A compilation of Xbox Live Arcade games! Excellent idea. Just the thing that people who can't get their 360s onto the Internet might need. Although, hang about - two of the games are virtually reliant upon multiplayer, you can't unlock the full versions of the bundled demos without connecting to the Internet (at all), and the free month of Xbox Live Gold access just sort of rubs the lack of connectivity in your unused ethernet port's face.

Rising Star Games has revealed that it's to publish another Bubble Bobble game for the Nintendo DS in Q1 2007.

Visitors to the Science Museum's Game On exhibition will get the chance see how the next-gen consoles match up when the Wii and PS3 go on display from Wednesday.

Having admitted last week that the PlayStation 3 won't upscale a 720p image to work on a 1080i HDTV, Sony America has now confused the issue a bit by admitting it's not sure whether anything will be done about it.

Sigh, a good walk ruined. Oh, hang on, that's the other one. Ah, the comforting sound of leather on willow, long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell said, 'Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist'. And Freddie Flintoff going to the Prime Minister's house while shitfaced live on telly, and Girls Aloud playing at the Twenty20 final (which is easily the best thing that ever happened to the sport). Yep, cricket, the nation's favourite sport last summer (and maybe still, what with the terrible rugby results over the weekend and Steve McClaren's uninspiring performance as coach of the England football team).

Pity poor Dimitry Shalinakov. He was a unit artist in the RTS department of Ukrainian developer GSC Game World. For five solid years he did nothing but draw men with muskets. French chasseurs for Cossacks: European Wars, Swiss harquebusiers for Cossacks: Back to War, British redcoats for American Conquest, Dutch musketeers for American Conquest: Fight Back, Mexican cazadores for American Conquest: Divided Nation, French chasseurs (again) for Cossacks 2... the monotony drove him to the brink of madness. Then in the summer of 2005 he heard the wonderful news that the company were finally ditching historical strategy in favour of fantasy. His spirits soared, his imagination gamboled like a wild Don pony. He waited excitedly for his first job on the new project. When his boss came over with concept art for a Dwarven musket trooper, Dimitry rushed screaming from the office straight into the path of a passing tram.

"Let me tell, youse guys, it ain't easy being a freakin' gangster game. One minute you're riding high on the power of a cultural zeitgeist, the next you're lying face down in a bargain bucket in some two-bit games shop with nothing but a 'Buy 2 Get 1 Free' tag to identify you. Sometimes that's the least of your freakin' problems. Like what happened to my old pal Joey 'The Getaway' Pompeii. After they'd massacred him in the press, the boys opened him up and gutted his freakin' manual. They had to bury him at the back of the second-hand rack. Those godless sons of painted freakin' ladies."

Another year, another broken NBA Live on 360. While not as busted as Live 06, the addition of more features actually makes the problems with NBA Live 07 all the more apparent. It looks like shit on the court, and the controls aren't responsive enough. And in any videogame that requires quick reflexes, stiff controls are the absolute worst crime imaginable. It's the badger baiting of videogames.

Join us again in parts two and three as we lead up to the launch of Sony's PlayStation 3.

Following suggestions that Gears of War is to end up a trilogy, Mark Rein has gone one further and suggested it could go on for as long as Mario or even Final Fantasy.

Catch up with the first and third parts of this series on the history of PlayStation.

Growing up on the outskirts of a small rural town, hedgehogs were just part of the tapestry of nature for me as a child. Small, shy creatures, they scurried about at night munching on the garden's insects and shuffled through the undergrowth occasionally when their daytime sleep was disturbed by boisterous play. Saucers of milk could sometimes entice them into the pool of light by the back door, as long as the cats didn't get there first. Along with badgers, they were nature's treats for eagle-eyed children who kept an eye out after dark.

There's a surprise hit every year, and 2005's was definitely Traveller's Tales' Lego Star Wars. It was a game so full of cute touches and heart-warmingly playability that it charmed the pants off anyone who came across it - even those hardcore Star Wars nuts still nursing their wounds about the relative merits (or lack of) of the second trilogy. But let's not rip the scab off that particular wound. Let's talk about happier things.

Konami has scored the top spot in this weeks All Formats Charts, with Pro Evolution Soccer 6 achieving the highest week one sales since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Konami has announced that Pro Evolution Soccer 6 will debut at E3 - the first time in the series' history it will have done so.

Sony UK MD Ray Maguire has said he believes that despite the rise of digital distribution, there's still plenty of life left in the disc format and the traditional retail model.