iHunger

Huzzah!

Now that I'm all set up in my new gaff with my excellent but slightly odourous new housemates, we might as well get this ball-shaped thing rolling. In what should be the first in a weekly splurge (extreme laziness notwithstanding), iHunger presents a weekly round-up of the juciest gaming news shamelessly pilfered from various sources, chosen by my good self and the boys, presented in a haphhazard fashion.

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First up, my new friend The C.H.U.D (of 80s cheeseball horror C.H.U.D - kind of... it's a long story) was utterly relieved by Next Gen's report that Sony's much-delayed Home, the in-development, entirely pointless-sounding, social networking-type thing for the PS3, will indeed arrive in August, and, more importantly, won't be a Beta in the traditional video game sense that it'll take ages to sign up for the bloody thing only for servers to explode and faces melt as soon as a few thousand punters show interest. PSN director Eric Lempel promises an "open, working beta" and has drawn comparisons with Google's Gmail, which, if you remember, worked wonderfully as a fully-functioning web-based mail service during beta testing, but turned out to be a bit rubbish in the end anyway. No bad omens there, then.

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Supreme videogame overlord and house landlord Sinistar, who lives down the hall and has the only room with an en-suite, was utterly mortified when GAME offered him less than £4 for his copy of the under-rated Assassin's Creed on Xbox 360. So much so that he considered eating the poor young lass behind the counter, but didn't when he realised the wee thing was, as he described, "as red with embarrassment as I was anger". Top choice for him this week then, is the news that HMV are about to make a a push into the used-game market. Strong profits and yearly financials from the retailer means they're willing to take a stab at the lucrative high street enterprise that has, until now, been the domain of GAME, Gamestation (GAME in drag) and the much-loved indies. Let's just hope Sinistar doesn't burst a blood vessel when they offer him something from the 5 for £30 section for his mint copy of Radiant Silvergun

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And finally, in the spirit of keeping it short this first week, my own personal story of the week is that Sony's excellent little wonder-gadget, the PSP, is still holding strong in Japan, holding onto the hardware sales top spot again this month. Having been introduced to the joys of playing Field Commander on the loo after my recent PSP purchase, I can understand why it continues to fly out of stores despite a negligible attach-rate. It's probably the most versatile entertainment gadget on the planet. It's a shame I've developed mild OCD through worrying about leaving it on the bus though. Oh well...

PSP - 58,861
Nintendo DS - 48,884
Wii - 48,480
PlayStation 3 - 17,973
PlayStation 2 - 7,673
Xbox 360 - 5,104

* figures courtesy of Media Create, the darlings that they are.

Your Opinions and Comments

10 / 10
10/10!

You are excellent!
posted by Matthew Smart on 4/7/2008 21:35
iHunger?

Has Steve Jobs got his eye on the McDonalds market now???
posted by Mark Oates on 8/7/2008 02:31