The Year in Games 2006 - December

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

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There is probably no game that is more eagerly awaited than Halo 3, so the news that Microsoft was planning to hold an open beta test of the multiplayer bits was big. Following a new trailer for the game, which debuted on TV, Microsoft started taking names for the beta. It's presumed that everyone who wants to get in on the beta will be able to, but Microsoft still hasn't come clean on exactly what it will offer or how long people will be able to play it.

Reggie Fils-Aime kicked off the Wii debut party the month before

Thanks to Gears of War, Rainbow Six: Vegas and other big Xbox 360 games, Microsoft's console was doing better than ever in December. The company said that it was still on course to hit its target of 10 million sales by the end of the year. But that wasn't enough to make it the most popular console in the UK.

Driven by mass-appeal games such as Dr Kawashima's Brain Training and old-school ones such as New Super Mario Bros, the DS wound up as the most popular game of 2006 in the UK. Somewhat surprisingly, the second most popular system was the PSP, despite the tangible sense of gloom surrounding it.

One of the most surprising news stories of 2006 was Square Enix's announcement that the next proper instalment in its Dragon Quest series would be coming not to the Wii or the PS3 but rather to the DS. Dragon Quest isn't big in the West, but it's absolutely massive in Japan.

Nintendo looked to be on to another UK winner with the Wii. The console launched across Europe in early December and it was a sell-out for the rest of the month, breaking the console sales record in the UK. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was the obvious big seller and Ubisoft's Red Steel did well too. Nintendo was making sure that people knew about it too, thanks to an omnipresent TV advertising campaign.

Another big game for 2007 is God of War 2, but that is coming for the PlayStation 2. It's almost a foregone conclusion that there's a PlayStation 3 game in some stage of planning, though Sony hasn't said much on that. Series creator David Jaffe did, however, admit to mulling concepts over during a drunken interview at the Playboy Mansion.

The year ended badly for Sony, with Sega revealing yet another game that would no longer be exclusive to the PS3. Amid rumours that publishers were taking their games multiplatform because Ken Kutaragi had been tardy in negotiating with them, Sega said that it would bring Virtua Fighter 5 to the Xbox too.

And so 2006 comes to a close. This has been one of the most interesting and exciting years yet for video games, mostly because of all the new hardware that it brought but also for the long-ranging effects on the industry, such as the death of E3, and the maturation of downloadable content and microtransactions.

If you ignore the matter of the European PlayStation 3 in March, 2007 should be less about the systems and more about the games. Come join us in January as we kick off coverage of what is sure to be an exciting year.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo

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