2007: The Year in Games

Join us as we take a look back at all the big stories that made 2007 one of the most exciting yet for games.

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August

When the PlayStation 3 launched, it broke the opening week sales record held by the PSP. Though Sony's portable has continued to sell well in the years since its debut, there have been some concerns about the lack of software sales. In August, Sony decided to boost the hardware to reinvigorate the platform.

In July, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Sony revealed a new version of the portable that was lighter and slimmer. In August, announcements promised several interesting new features for the portable, none of them related to playing games.

Among the new features were the promise of better connectivity, including full access to the global positioning system. Complementing this were new communication features including a messaging client and, perhaps most ambitious of all, a new service that would allow PSP owners to watch video content from Sky right on their handhelds.

The Manhunt 2 brouhaha continued forward in August. In the US, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board approved a cut-down version of the game, moving it that much closer to release. Meanwhile in Europe, the BBFC was still battling to make sure the game stayed off shelves, but a legal loophole seemed to suggest the game would be released in the Netherlands.

Rockstar also featured in the biggest news of the month. After shooting down analyst speculation that it would delay Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar turned around and did just that, pushing the game not only out of its October release window but out of 2007 altogether.

Not delayed was BioShock, the new shooter from Ken Levine, the lauded creator of such PC classics as System Shock. The game surprised many by not only hitting the hardware target it was aiming for but breaking into the mainstream too.

The success of BioShock was more good news for Microsoft, which had the only console version of the game on the Xbox 360. Microsoft had something new planned for its audience too. The company confirmed in August that it would soon release a new model of the Xbox 360, the Elite, that included a larger hard drive and an HDMI connector to get the best picture using newer TVs.

Scanning game sites in August would have given the impression that there wasn't much going on with the Wii, but Nintendo knew otherwise. Fueled by the success of Wii Sports, the Wii was revealed to have sold a million units in the UK. And with Nintendo enjoying the bulk of that success, third parties were scrambling to get games onto the system, turning to conversions of PS2 and PSP games or even cutting down Xbox 360 ones (such as Rockstar's Table Tennis) to get them running on the comparatively weaker system.

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