Kikizo Games' 2005 Review

So it's been a pretty decent year for games, all things considered, right? It's certainly been exciting one. Kikizo takes a brisk month-by-month look back at 2005.

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April: With the PSP launching in the US late March already, April saw the first numbers roll in, and to Sony's delight they were huge. More than 600,000 PSPs were snapped up in the first week along with over a million games.

We love it when a plan comes together. The photos we took of PSP over a year ago still come in useful today.

Things weren't, however, looking good for Europe as Sony refused to get drawn into revealing any specifics about the launch. There were rumours at the time that Sony would only release the PSP in Europe after the summer, but few believed that the company would wait so long.

Meanwhile, Microsoft was laying the foundation for a massive unveiling of the Xbox 360. The company revealed that it was teaming up with MTV for a worldwide, mainstream unveiling of the long-awaited console.

May: If there's one event to point to as the highlight of the year, the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo is usually it, and this year was no different. All the big names in games descended upon Los Angeles for a weeklong festival of all things gaming. Thousands of games make their debut at E3 every year and this year they were joined by new hardware too.

After weeks of teasing (including the awful MTV launch special), Microsoft used E3 to show off its next-generation Xbox 360. There was, sadly, little on the show floor apart from Sega's launch titles, Call Of Duty 2, and a handful of other video-only demos - along with a sense that Microsoft could be losing the plot.

Perhaps Microsoft's offerings had lost their lustre because of Sony's phenomenal PlayStation 3 demos. While the debate over what was real-time and what was flat-out fabricated would rage for months after the show, on the day jaws were agape at the technical marvels on show.

PS3's unveiling stole the show at E3 in May

Like its rivals, Nintendo brought new hardware to the show too, though it was much too early to get a grip of what to expect from the Revolution. Instead, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata was forced to praise the diminutive size of the console. That said, the announcement that Revolution would be able to play games from all of Nintendo's past consoles drew tears of joy from longtime followers of the company.

June: As summer hit, Sony started to do some hitting of its own. With the company pushing back the PSP's release until September, many frustrated gamers turned to importers to satisfy their demand. Sony was not impressed. The company sent its lawyers after retailers big and small, demanding that they stop bringing in the popular portable, which was at that time selling for sometimes twice its retail price.

But bad publicity for the PSP was hardly what Sony needed. Fresh numbers from outside of Europe showed the portable being clobbered by Nintendo's relatively underpowered DS. And despite a lack of new games, the DS was doing well too.

It was also around June that Rockstar began courting controversy again (though the worst was yet to come). Opportunistic politicians caught wind of Bully, a game where you can get up to all sorts of school-based mischief, and they ran with it, chiding Rockstar for brewing teenage unrest.

Everyone begins targeting the mainstream more than ever

The difference in the approaches of the three companies to the next generation was made clear again when Nintendo announced that despite Sony and Microsoft's welcoming of high-definition, it would not. As more snippets of info were released for the Revolution, it became clearer that Nintendo was not going to compete directly with its longtime hardware rivals.

Despite the vastly different paths to the next generation, however, all three hardware manufacturers were firm in their newfound respect for the mainstream. The International Games Summit, held in London, saw top men from Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony all lay out their plans for growing games by attracting those with barely a passing interest in them.

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