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UK sales in games consoles are on the wane despite the reduction in price in all three formats, with the total units sold over the crucial Christmas period down by over 10 per cent year on year, ChartTrack figures have revealed.

The top selling UK game for the second week running was EA's Need For Speed: Underground - one of five titles from the US giant in the top six, with Rising Sun, FIFA 2004, Return Of The King and The Sims: Bustin' Out still selling strongly despite the huge discounting rife in the high street.

The next version of Splinter Cell will feature "ambient AI" that tunes the game to fit the player's skills, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot has revealed in an interview with the BBC.

American publisher DreamCatcher Games has issued a statement advising gamers to steer clear of a leaked multiplayer build of first-person shooter Painkiller, which recently joined the ranks of PC titles to flood warez channels well in advance of release.

Ubisoft has announced plans to release Rainbow Six III on PlayStation 2 this March, following the success of the Live-enabled Xbox version particularly in the US. Ported by Ubisoft's Shanghai studio (the same folks who handled its PS2 version of Splinter Cell), Rainbow Six III retains the Xbox game's voice-activated command system (something of a mixed blessing), 15 single-player missions (including one exclusive) and, best of all, its multiplayer support.

This week, one man's entrepreneurial instinct is teaching Ubisoft a harsh lesson about attention to detail, thanks to a website URL left unchecked in one of its Tom Clancy titles.

Getting to grips with Microsoft's Xbox Music Mixer has been an interesting experience for me. Completely deprived of karaoke up until now, I'd never really experienced the banshee in a tumble dryer that is my angelic singing voice, and the sheer novelty of that kept me happy for the first few hours - and gave us all something to laugh about around here, particularly during my squeaky cat-in-a-blender inspired rendition of Radiohead's High and Dry.

EA scored yet another number one last week after Need For Speed: Underground swapped places with Medal Of Honor: Rising Sun to claim the top spot for the last chart of 2003.

Sega Europe has confirmed release dates for its first quarter line-up, including Sega GT Online, Sonic Heroes, Puyo Pop Fever and Nightshade (Kunoichi in Japan). On February 6th Xbox owners can look forward to the delayed release of Sega GT Online, which will have to work hard to compete with Bizarre Creations' heavily advertised and downright brilliant Live-enabled Project Gotham Racing 2, or they can opt for Sonic Heroes, which is also out on the 6th on Xbox, PS2 and GameCube. According to The Magic Box, Sonic Heroes picked up a 31/40 on PS2 and a 32/40 on Xbox and Cube in Japanese magazine Famitsu.

Medal Of Honor: Rising Sun held on for a fourth straight week to claim the coveted Christmas No.1 position, with EA managing an impressive six titles in the Top 10, and a further six titles in the Top 40 to cap an amazing year for the US publisher.

If you're bored already this Monday morning, Capcom may have just the answer in the shape of a new promotional Flash-based game on its Japanese Killer 7 website (click the "Game" link to play), in which players have to double-click to shoot at different body parts of a series of zombies as they saunter towards the camera one by one. Striking a body part twice will see it explode, and the idea seems to be to kill as many of them as possible without letting them get too close for comfort.

Following on from the recent announcement of Mega Man Anniversary Collection on PlayStation 2 and GameCube, Capcom has further announced a compendium of the blue bomber's handheld adventures, Mega Man Mania, to be released on Game Boy Advance in the US this spring.

Konami is aiming to follow up the success of its Yu-Gi-Oh series of games with another licensed comic book property, Shaman King, having secured the rights to develop and publish games based on Hiroyuki Takei's anime series in Europe and North America.

Sales of WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos have topped one million units in Europe, Blizzard announced as the WarCraft III Battle Chest went on sale recently. That's according to various estimates from internal company reports and retailers.

Excitable types have been emailing us this weekend highlighting a recent addition to the ranks of pre-order titles on Amazon.co.uk - none other than Grand Theft Auto IV: Sin City, priced £29.99 and allegedly due for release on November 5th, 2004 on PlayStation 2.

Nintendo has finally responded to demand for another Zelda Collector's Edition promotion with a cracking offer open to gamers here in the UK. To get your hands on the coveted trinket (a GameCube disk containing the original NES Zeldas I and II and N64 titles Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask), all you have to do is buy a full price Nintendo game from a selected range or buy two from the budget Player's Choice range and send proof of purchase to the Nintendo Service Centre.

If you've ever felt like dabbling in massively multiplayer online RPGs but haven't the stomach (or beer money) for the hefty monthly fee, then Tiscali Games may have just the answer for you in the shape of BiosFear, from South Korean developer Nako Interactive. BiosFear is an MMORPG, which has already swept up thousands of gamers in Asia as Laghaim, Eternal Chaos and Chaotic Adventure in various countries, and looks set to launch here soon.

Why bother with secrets? They always sneak out when you're least expecting them to, and the hoarders of the elusive information end up worse off than if they'd just blurted it out in the first place. Evidently the Nazis were really rubbish at keeping mum during World War II if LucasArts' latest flight combat classic is anything to go by. But heavy artistic license, comical stereotyping and dubious historical accuracy can't disguise the fact that Secret Weapons Over Normandy is the most enjoyable flight combat game ever.

Virtua Tennis on the Dreamcast had me convinced that tennis games had reached their evolutionary peak. They couldn't develop beyond this point. This was the pinnacle of bat-and-ball gaming. As far as I'm concerned that certainly was the series' peak, with the sequel and PlayStation 2 ports heralding a steady decline in quality, eventually making way for the arguably superior Top Spin on the Xbox. However, the original VT made a pretty successful leap to a handheld format with the Game Boy Advance port. With the N-Gage pulling off a number of fairly convincing GBA impressions with its range of launch titles, I was hard pressed to see how Sega could go wrong with this one.

It has to be said that this item is a little bit on the redundant side of things this January 2nd. With the exception of the Grand Theft Auto III/Vice City Double Pack for Xbox, there's very little to herald the coming of the Chinese Year of the Monkey - and, as many of you will realise, most retailers broke the street date on the Double Pack anyway. Kristan even saw it on sale in GAME in Norwich on Christmas Eve.

Haitian civil rights groups have filed suit with the state circuit court in Palm Beach County, Florida to have Grand Theft Auto: Vice City banned from sale and more than $15,000 damages awarded, notwithstanding a move last month by publisher Rockstar Games to settle the complaint by removing an offensive line of dialogue from the game.

Ubisoft has acquired the rights to distribute MMOG Shadowbane all over Europe, with a "Gold" edition of the game featuring the original release version and the new expansion The Rise of Chaos due out in January on PC and Mac.

Microsoft has extended the range of premium content available via Xbox Live, introducing a selection of new karaoke tracks in five-song packages compatible with the recently released karaoke and general music tool Music Mixer.

Sony Online Entertainment has announced the planned February 2004 release of Gates of Discord, a sixth expansion pack for the ever-popular massively multiplayer RPG EverQuest.

Activision has issued an expected release confirming that the upcoming Shrek 2 game will no longer be co-published under its previous agreement with TDK Mediactive, now terminated following Take-Two's acquisition of the latter in 2003.

Atari is claiming another "convergence first" this week with the announcement that Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), the commercial production company owned and run by filmmakers Ridley and Tony Scott, has produced a three-minute live-action film inspired by DRIV3R.

Deep Silver, formerly Koch Media's European publishing arm, has announced that German developer Egosoft has completed work on X2: The Threat and has certified it gold in preparation for its release date of February 6th.

BattleBorne Entertainment's soon to be announced game for next-generation platforms will be released by Acclaim, the publisher announced just before Christmas. Due to be unveiled later this month on BattleBorne's website, the game is said to have been under development since 2002 using homegrown tools along with technology from Snowblind Studios.

Massively multiplayer online game developer Turbine Entertainment has issued a statement clarifying what it plans to do with the $18 million in venture capital is acquired last year, correcting an error in its original announcement relating to Dungeons & Dragons Online and the company's relationship with publisher Atari.

If you haven't seen this one pop up on your regular trawl of download sites, then we can't really blame you. Giants developer Planet Moon's peculiar shoot-'em-up may be well worth downloading, but a large number of popular download sites have rejected its "exclusive" release at a number of locations and, in their words, "have agreed not to host any exclusive demos anymore, even after they eventually become public." You can read their open letter on exclusive demos here.