NPD has announced their sales figures for the busy holiday season and the results were a very pleasant surprise for the industry. Hardware was king this holiday season, though, surprisingly, it was the two recently launched consoles (the Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3) which carry the biggest disappointments.

Nintendo, as expected, destroyed their competition, but it wasn’t thanks to the Wii, which sold a respectable (but still disappointing) 604.2K units bringing it’s LTD up to 1.1 million in the US. It appears to me that shortages hurt here, though nowhere near as much as the shortages and lackluster interest in the PS3 has hurt Sony. The DS hand held however, cleaned house, selling a breathtaking 1.6 million units for December, solidifying Nintendo’s hold in the hand held race and giving thrifty parents a perfectly priced stocking stuffer for their kids.

Microsoft fared quite well, with the Xbox 360 clocking in with 1.1 million units, with Gears of War becoming a new “Halo-like” franchise for the strongest running next-generation console so far.

Sony are clocking in with surprising results. PS2 post major numbers, selling a whopping 1.4 million consoles. Whether this is actually a good thing remains to be seen. It appears the PS2 is still running quite strong, which may point to a lack of interest or lack of affordability to the PS3. I don’t know how proud Sony could be of having their last generation machine tearing into the customer base which should be purchasing their new console, but, income is income and right now they certainly aren’t making anything off of the PS3. More good news for Sony followed with the PSP, which showed a stronger than expected sell through, posting 953K units, surprising those who can’t figure out a reason to even turn their PSP on anymore. On to the PS3, which posted better than expected numbers, but still pointed to a worrying start for the more than half a grand machine. With 490.7K units (687.3K LTD) the PS3 showed that it’s supply problems were holding it back, but those are rumored to be clearing up.

Overall, total hardware sales rang up to $4.6 billion USD (up 42.8%) and software amounted to $6.5 billion USD (up 6.4%).

Read more: NPD analysis by GameDaily Biz

Line Rider, the highly addictive sledding flash “toy” created by a student for illustration class, which then went on to become an internet sensation, will be making it’s way to the Nintendo DS and Wii consoles thanks to inXile. Line Rider allows a user to sketch out lines which is then transformed into a sledding course, allowing an ultra cute character on a tobaggon to sled his way down, crashing, banging and flipping on the lines you’ve just created. A perfect fit for both Line Rider and the hardware, I’m highly looking forward to these coming out!

Read more: Line Rider |

..and by announce I mean they released another in a long line of poorly written and absolutely unexciting press releases. Moving on. LifeSigns: Hospital Affairs is a Japanese drama-soap game for the Nintendo DS, which JoWooD has chosen to be their debut title for the Nintendo DS, bringing Austrian-backed games to yet another console! LifeSigns will be released first quarter 2007 for the Nintendo DS console.

From JoWooD’s ‘Marketing Manager’:

Lifesigns for Nintedo DS takes part of all Nintendo DS features and we are really proud to publish such an innovative game concept on the successful Nintendo DS. This is for JoWooD the perfect possibility to have a good start on the DS console

Read more: LifeSigns: Hospital Affairs

Harvest Moon, the excellent Japanese farm/love/ultimate cuteness RPG from Nintendo will be making it’s way to Europe Q1 2007! Players will be tasked with running their farm, making sure all of the animals are happy, that their crops are tended to during the right seasons, and to gain rewards such as higher quality milk, eggs and wool from their flocks. Unfortunately no news on whether there will be any Nintendo WiFi support or not, but, I could only imagine the possibilities.

Read more: Harvest Moon DS coming to Europe Q1 2007

The newest in the Bubble Bobble series, Bubble Bobble Revolution, appears to be stricken with a major bug which doesn’t allow the players to proceed past the level 30 boss fight. Though whether this is a bug in the code or a manufacturing defect in the cartridges remains unclear. This is however a rather embarrassing occurrence for developer Codemasters and manufacturer Nintendo, who have recently confirmed that all of the cartridges sold in North America are faulty and will have to be replaced.

Statement from Codemasters:

We have been looking very hard into this issue with Nintendo and have now determined that all of the cartridges that have been shipped in North America are faulty.

Needless to say we are extremely sorry that this situation has arisen and would like to apologise to you for this issue.

We have already started the process whereby a corrected version is to be manufactured and will ensure that all customers have their copies replaced. Unfortunately this will take 8-10 weeks (simply because of the time required to manufacture new carts). We will update you with what you will need to do to get a replacement game, as soon as this has been determined.

Interesting they place the blame on the carts, as previous reports naturally placed blame squarely on the shoulders of QA, who are of course the default scapegoats. It appears to me to have been a manufacturing problem with the game cartridges, but regardless of who shoulders the blame, obviously you don’t want to pick up a copy of Bubble Bobble Revolution anytime soon.

Read more: Bubble Bobble Revolution sees major bug after shipping

ANACONDA Games, a Germany-based publisher of point and click adventure titles has announced Undercover: Dual Motives, a Nintendo DS point and click adventure title which is a prequel to their well-recieved PC title, Undercover: Operation Wintersun. Developed by one of Vienna, Austria’s few remaining game developers after the messy demise of Rockstar Vienna, Sproing, U:DM puts the player in control of physicist and reluctant spy, Dr. John Russell in his early days, investigating a British research facility. Taking advantage of the DS’s unique abilities, Sproing intends to implement novels ideas into the gameplay, one of which will be the player’s ability to control two characters when they wish, independently of the other. Adventure fans have been asking for more point and click titles coming to the Nintendo DS, so now let’s see how the adventure gaming market responds, for Sproing’s sake.

Undercover: Dual Motives will be released worldwide by ANACONDA, starting with the German-language territories at the end of March 2007.

Read more: ANACONDA Games | Sproing

Man, I really suck at Mario Kart DS, but even more important, I can never create an emblem for my cars, you know, to at least look cool while I’m getting slaughtered on the track. Thankfully, there is the awesome community site DSicons.com, a great little resource for all of us fashion concious Mario Kart racers who need the perfect icon on our rides before we hit the track. You’ll still need a little bit of artistic ability, but, with the zoomed walkthroughs that DSicons provide, it’s much easier for even an artistic clutz like myself to get a hot little hammer and sickle rolling on the front of my little Standard YS.

Read more: DSicons - Fresh icons for your Nintendo DS

The recently released Japanese sales charts for hardware and software sales have been released and it shows Nintendo having amazing week. The software sales charts treat us to a unique sight this week, with the top ten titles in sales belonging all to the same platform, the Nintento DS handheld. Unless the same happened with the NES (which it probably did, but there aren’t sales charts available) this is the first time one platform holder has dominated the top 10 software sales charts. As much as everyone likes to bash Nintendo, I can see great things for the Wii over in Japan (and in the west!), with the gaming market maturing and PC gaming slowly dying, the market for pick up and play, casual AND entertaining games are on the rise and the DS sales only prove this. Wii60 FTW!

01 NDS Final Fantasy III - 503,051 / NEW
02 NDS New Super Mario Bros. - 65,556 / 2,901,264
03 NDS Rune Factory - 42,210 / NEW
04 NDS Brain Training 2 - 41,784 / 3,073,195
05 NDS DS Cookbook - 37,326 / 384,045
06 NDS Tamagotchi 2 - 30,504 / 430,934
07 NDS Mario Hoops 3on3 - 30,355 / 233,762
08 NDS Animal Crossing: Wild World - 30,023 / 3,149,130
09 NDS Brain Training - 22,866 / 2,736,150
10 NDS English Training DS - 17,465 / 1,401,669

Legendary sim-strategy game Sim City will be making it’s way to everyone’s favorite handheld console Winter 2006/2007 according to EA, though exact details haven’t been officially released. This possibly means that the release could occur before Christmas 2006, meaning hundreds of thousands of DS owners will soon be playing god with the little inhabitants of Sim City. Rumours also have it that the DS game will be based on the PC title Sim City 3000 which will no doubt be a must-own DS title when it’s released.

Read more: Sim City coming to the Nintendo DS