The Year in Games 2006 - November

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

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Game sales were ramping up in a big way in November and no game was doing better than Gears of War. Epic's third-person shooter had been the subject of a lot of hype over the past six months and to the delight of all involved it seemed that the game delivered on that. The game debuted on top of the UK charts and stayed near the top for weeks. Even before release Microsoft was confident of selling more than a million copies.

Did you get one?

Sony was building hype of its own for Guerrilla's Killzone for the PlayStation 3. The target movie shown at E3 in 2005 raised the bar on the game and according to Phil Harrison the final game could look even better. But that impressive feat wouldn't come cheap, as Guerilla boasted that Killzone for PS3 was the biggest entertainment product ever to come out of the Netherlands, topping more than €16 million.

November was, however, dominated by the launch of the PlayStation 3 in both the US and Japan and the US debut of the Wii. Sony's console hit first, arriving in Japan on a cold Saturday morning. With less than 100,000 units to go around, lines were inevitable, and the world watched as Sony boss Ken Kutaragi handed the first console to a tired young man in Tokyo. He reportedly didn't buy any games, and he wasn't alone.

The Japanese and US launches were marred by reports of people being hired to stand in line for consoles that would then end up on auction sites such as eBay. This profiteering was echoed at the US launch of the PS3, when thousands of people lined up to get one of the 400,000 units on offer on launch day. The situation was sometimes ugly too, with reports of abuse, thefts and even shootings in the lines. Things went better for Nintendo, with the Wii arriving in late November to a much calmer though equally enthusiastic reception.

Europe was, of course, forced to watch most of this from afar, since the Wii wasn't due until December and the PS3 had been delayed into 2007. At least Sony was confident about that date. Sony's Phil Harrison said the company was on track for the March launch, thought going by past performance there's still every chance that Europeans will be in for shortages come launch day.

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