Gaming and financial analyst Roger Eherenberg’s epic post tracking EA’s stock price and strategy is a great great read which he’s just revisited and revised. I’m actually still ingesting it all after the third read, but I can’t help but agree on just about every point raised. Focusing on EA’s mistake with focusing too much on the PS3, the article also takes Sony to task for their continued mis-steps in getting the PS3 into the homes of gamers and Nintendo’s brilliantly handled Wii which Eherenberg predicts is replacing the PS2 as the console of choice for mainstream gamers.

Read more: EA Revisited: Playing Catch Up on the Wii, Waking up to the Failure that is PS3

Wow! That’s all I can say. Many think of me as a Sony-hater, but I’ll prove them wrong here by saying how amazing this looks, but oh, this is for he PS2! Granted, give the devs a few years and $30 or $40 million dollars and they could pump something even more beautiful out on the PS3, but, who can afford a PS3 plus games, plus accessories anyways?

Check the video after the jump..

Read more of ”God of War 2 Pegasus gameplay video, who needs a PS3?“

Nearing a year after the closure of Rockstar Vienna, who was rumored to be developing Manhunt 2 for the PS2 before their sudden closure, Rockstar Games has announced Manhunt 2 for the PS2, PSP and (shock!) Wii! Not that anyone still cares about the Manhunt license or anything, the exciting news here is that Rockstar is making a go at a Nintendo Wii title! If anyone was doubting that the big N was trying to attract the 3rd parties, eat up a bit of that piping hot crow. Granted, I’d rather have a GTA Wii or Max Payne Wii, but who knows, if things work out well for Manhunt 2 Wii, guaranteed we’ll see more Rockstar titles appearing on the platform. Rockstar Games also went on to say that Rockstar London is developing the PS2 version, Rockstar Leeds the PSP and Rockstar Toronto the Wii version, with of course, Rockstar North overseeing all three. Look for all 3 versions appearing this Summer.

Read more: Manhunt 2 announced for PS2, PSP and Wii

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

It’s been posted hundreds of times before (Slashdotted in 2003 to be exact), but I still love seeing this beautiful shelf of clustered PS2s at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and Computer Science department at the University of Illinois. Utilized for the power of the Emotion Engine CPU, the PS2 supercomputer cluster is used as a test bench for scientific computation on ‘toy’ hardware and consists of 65 compute nodes, 4 user login and development nodes and 1 prototype node for software install tests. The cluster is running the Sony Linux kit running a ported Linux distribution based on Red Hat Linux. I’m not sure what the current state of the cluster is, if it still even exists, but I’m sure they can easily add in a few PS3s to the mix, they’re not hard to find, what what I hear (har har har).

Read more: Scientific computing on the Sony PS2

JoWooD has launched the teaser page for Freakout, an upcoming freestyle skiing title to be released on the PC, PS2 and PSP platforms Q1 2007. Developed by Coldwood, who seem to be stuck making skiing titles for the Austrian publisher, Freakout aims to bring freestyle skiing to the masses, or at least to the countries where anyone actually cares about freestyle skiing.

Read more: Freakout | JoWooD

The English promotional site for Final Fantasy XII has gone live with a little bit of information regarding characters and a basic introduction to the storyline. For hardcore Final Fantasy fans naturally they need no intro to story, but for those interested in finding out what the heck is going on it’s definitely helpful and exciting to see English information finally started to appear. Final Fantasy XII is scheduled for release October 31, 2006 for the Sony Playstation 2.

Watch the Japanese-language FFXII promotional video after the jump..

Read more of ”Final Fantasy XII English site now live, promotional video of FFXII (in Japanese)“