A mid-year price cut and a strong lineup of software titles gave Sony's PlayStation 3 a record holiday season, the company said Wednesday. Sales of the console in the last five weeks of the year totaled 3.8 million units worldwide, a 76 percent jump on 2008.

"Last holiday season was the most successful holiday season in the history of PlayStation 3," said Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, during a news conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Sales were helped by… Continue

With lingering economic pain, holiday shoppers did not shell out as much for video games this season as GameStop Corp. hoped, and the company slashed its profit forecast Thursday.

The news sent shares of the world's biggest video game retailer down as much as 19 percent.

GameStop executives said sales were still strong in November, when "Call of Duty 3," "Assassins Creed 2" and other well-reviewed new titles came out. But the holiday crowd did not pick up where hard-core gamers left off.

"The… Continue

Microsoft's full-body game control system Project Natal will be launched in time for the holidays this year, in what promises to be a big year for Xbox 360 users.

The Xbox news was the highlight of CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote opening the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Wednesday, which was delayed by a brief power outage and included a lengthy pitch for Microsoft's recently launched Windows 7 operating system.

Ballmer also showed three new tablet PCs that will ship later this year, incl… Continue

The Xbox 360 topped Nielsen's top US game consoles ranked by usage minutes (23.1%), polling slightly ahead of Sony's PS2 (20.4%) and the Nintendo Wii (19.0%). No, that's not a typo. I meant to write PlayStation 2. Sony's PS3? Not on the fact sheet, which either means Nielsen didn't want to embarrass Sony, or they've done the rest of us a disservice by failing to include Sony's flagship game and Blu-ray box in their breakout.

Gaming remains exceptionally popular, with 73% of US households statin… Continue

Bayonetta is the most flamboyant video-game heroine in a long, long time. Leggy, bespectacled and clad in a skintight black catsuit, she struts across the screen like a model stalking the runway. That model, however, is more campy than sexy, more RuPaul than Gisele.

Her starring vehicle, "Bayonetta" (Sega, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, $54.99), is just as ridiculous. It's a mess, frankly, with about a half-dozen issues that would normally make me shut down a game in exasperation. But it's so… Continue

Hackers claim to have found way to play copied software on Sony’s previously impervious console

With piracy rife in the Wii, Xbox 360, DS and PSP markets, the PS3 has to date proved the only current-gen machine to successfully fend off the hackers – but it seems that things could be about to change.

According to reports on Maxconsole, a lengthy and convoluted workaround has been discovered that allows users to… Continue