The Year in Games 2006 - September

We take a look back at the highlights, lowlights and things we'd rather just forget about the past year.

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Rumours were confirmed in September when Ubisoft admitted that Assassin's Creed would be coming to Xbox 360 and PC as well as PlayStation 3. This was yet another example of publishers hedging their development costs by spreading it across multiple consoles, especially in light of Sony's expected shortages of the PS3.

Bully offended many people this year - it's pretty good too

Rockstar, which had been keeping characteristically quiet on Bully over the summer, decided that it would rename the game Canis Canem Edit in Europe. Notorious anti-game lawyer Jack Thompson had been pushing for a complete ban on the game in the US, and pressure groups across Europe seemed to agree with him. Rockstar insisted, though, that it was not buckling.

Not so for Sony, which finally came clean in September and admitted that it was having trouble getting parts for the PS3. Specifically mentioned was the blue laser diode, which powers the Blu-ray drive. Because of this, Sony had no choice but to delay the European launch of the console until March 2007, and it also cut launch numbers for both the US and Japan.

Things were going much smoother for Nintendo and the Wii. The company held a trio of press conferences ahead of the Tokyo Game Show where it laid out its worldwide launch plans. The hardware was more expensive than many people were expecting, but that was tempered by the inclusion of Wii Sports as a pack-in outside of Japan. Nintendo also promised that it would have healthy supplies for the November and December launches.

It wasn't all fun for the Wii. Nintendo revealed the unfortunate news that Wii games and games released through the Virtual Console would be region locked, raising concerns that Europeans would be forced to relive the dark days when Nintendo cared little about the region. Still, those same Europeans were lapping up the DS, which hit another milestone, selling its 6 millionth unit. Impressively, nearly half of those system went to girls and women, an audience game makers have been desperate to reach for years.

P L E A S E   V I S I T   O U R   S P O N S O R :

Dead Rising was riding a crest of excitement as the zombie thriller made good on the promise shown at the Tokyo Game Show in 2005. This year's event was much more Sony themed, largely thanks to the console having its first public exhibition. Tens of thousands of people packed the halls of the Makuhari Messe outside Tokyo to play the console, and the reception was much better this time around. Microsoft also basked in its duo of bespoke Japanese titles, Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon, both from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. Xbox bosses would have been elated to see an unfamiliar sight: hours-long lines of Japanese people waiting to play their games.

It was Microsoft, too, that closed off a heady month with its own X06 event in Barcelona. There was no Halo 3 to be played, but we did get the next best thing: a real-time strategy game set in the Halo universe. Microsoft also announced that it had secured exclusive deals for BioShock and the new Splinter Cell game from Ubisoft.

(Continued...)

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