The Year in Games 2006 - July

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

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One of the big reasons the PS2 got as far as it did was because it had the games people wanted to play. It seems obvious, but that hasn't stemmed the tide of exclusives away from Sony. In July the first rumours were doing the rounds that Ubisoft's acrobatic Crusades game Assassin's Creed was adding Xbox 360 and PC editions to its PS3 version. Ubisoft, of course, was quick to deny the veracity of the reports.

How long until all Assassin's Creed's secrets are spilled?

Microsoft's can-do spirit is ever-present these days and nowhere more than in Japan. The company has taken a clobbering in Japan, with first the Xbox and now the Xbox 360 failing to ignite anything like a sizeable fan base, but Microsoft said that it would carry on trying to make things work here.

Handhelds did especially well in 2006, with the DS proving the system to beat. Nintendo's humble portable overtook the PSP in the UK in July, selling 200,000 units in just 10 days. Even Microsoft looked to be getting into the game, with the first of two rumoured portable Xboxes making headlines in July. None of them was worthy of the attention they got in the gaming press though.

Meanwhile, the PSP suffered the indignity of having its format called into question, as movie studios and major retailers said they were rethinking their commitment to UMDs for movies. Sony's response - a flirtation with the release of movies on memory cards that seems to have gone nowhere.

Epic, which was this summer hard at work on Gears of War for Microsoft, came out strong against episodic gaming. Mark Rein came to the UK for a developers conference and called the system a mess. Valve's inability to follow up on its promises of regular Half-Life 2 content seemed tacit confirmation of the outburst. Valve did, however, confirm that Half-Life 2: Episode 2 would be coming to Xbox 360, PS3 and PC simultaneously.

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