Sony PlayStation 3 owners, heads up - there's a new development about the infamous PlayStation 3 80010514 Error, and it's direct from Sony itself. It seems that the company is just a bit unprepared for the bug itself - and that's never good. Are we going to see a repeat of the dreaded Disc Read Error that plagued early versions of the Sony PlayStation 2? All the details in the full article.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 console went through a lot recently, and right now it appears as if it's losing favor among gamers and retailers in Australia. A survey taken from the country's top retail stores revealed that the Xbox 360 doesn't perform as well compared to its rivals, the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii. Is there any hope for Microsoft's white horse to catch up again? Check out the full article to read more.

Nothing is infallible, but it definitely makes good business to make your product's failure rate to be as low as possible. Now check out what a warranty-providing company has found out about the failure rates of today's three next-gen consoles (them being the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii) and how the company came up with it. The info at the full article.

Developing a single game for three consoles helps in increasing awareness of the pros and cons of each platforms, and Valve's Gabe Newell of Half Life 2: Orange Box (for the PC, PS3, Xbox 360) is no exception.

Newell has beef against all the three consoles that he worked on for the great-looking Half Life 2 installment, and even his preferred platform, the PC, is not spared. Games for Windows Live is one of his pet peeves towards Microsoft, saying that the software mogul still continues to neglect gaming on PC despite the innovations Vista had presented. "I don't even know what it is," said Newell about Games for Windows Live.

He does acknowledge that Microsoft is still way over its head with its current Red Ring of Death issues, which he supposed is the reason why there is a lack of marketing for the PC at the moment. Nevertheless, he prefers developing games for the PC than any other platform. "It's a great platform. The Internet capabilities are much more mature and the graphics you find on consoles are essentially derivative of the PC and sales on the PC are great."

On the other hand, Newell didn't have a more enjoyable experience with developing a game for the PS3, saying that Sony's console was not developer-friendly. He supposed that Sony didn't get enough developer input before putting out their console in the market, and that certain flaw hampered the PS3's hardware potential despite the powerful Cell Processors.

Despite the flaws of each console, Valve's Half Life 2: Orange Box will be out for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in October. Stay tuned for more updates!

Analyst Michael Pachter from Wedbush Morgan Securities has predicted that the PlayStation 3 outsold the Xbox 360 last July. While this can't be confirmed until NPD comes out with the official sales figures, it's worth noting that Pachter had made some pretty accurate predictions before.

He believes that 160,000 PlayStation 3s were sold last month compared to the 115,000 Xbox 360s. Pachter credits this surge of sales to two factors: the red ring of death and the price-cuts of the PlayStation 3. While this may be good news for Sony, the analyst also pointed out that the console industry is still being led by Nintendo with the Wii expected to rake in a whopping total of 330,000 consoles sold.

If Pachter's prediction does hold true, can the Sony sustain the momentum they've generated and, if possible, get even closer to the Wii's figures?

It's common knowledge that the Christmas holidays are very important for boosting market sales. This also applies to the gaming industry, as Paul Hochman of Today notes. He writes that the big three console makers will be having some problems this holiday season, facing their "biggest shakeup in years," due to some deficiencies on each console maker's part.

For the Xbox 360, Hochman cites its persistent problem of product malfunctions - the now-infamous Red Ring of Death - something that Microsoft is scrambling to fix with an allocated US$ 1 billion budget and an extended 3-year-warranty. Microsoft also advised customers to wait at least one week while their console is being repaired.

In Nintendo Wii's case, all seems peachy for the console. However, there's one spot that Nintendo hasn't managed to fully fix, and that's undersupply.

With an almost chronic case of undersupply, the quest for a Nintendo Wii usually involves the following inconveniences: queuing up in long lines in Best Buy once a fresh stock becomes available, getting overpriced Wiis on eBay, and limiting the allowance of sales to one console per buying group. This problem has prompted an apology from Nintendo's CEO Satoru Iwata, who promised to use Nintendo's Mario video game factory for Wii production.

Finally, Hochman cited the PS3's current underperformance, saying that Sony's PS3 trailed behind and sold only about 90,000 units in June, compared to Xbox 360's 198,000 and the Wii's strong 435,000. He also mentioned that Sony loses about US$ 300 every time a PS3 console is sold, with the total estimated loss of US$ 2 billion for the fiscal year that ended in March.

For those wondering why Sony is willing to take such losses, there is a reason behind that: According to Hochman, when Sony's Blu-ray wins the format wars and becomes the sought-after format for home viewing - partly with the help of the PS3 - then the PS3 losses will be more than worth it.

Check out Hochman's take on each of the console's good points in the Full Article!

With all the ruckus that the video game industry manages to get itself into, it really isn't hard coming up with a video game that can be attached to the word "scandalous". With this in mind, GamePolitics managed to come up with a list of games and gaming-related events that stirred up the headlines with scandals that could rival Hollywood's daily dose of intrigue.

GamePolitics didn't fail to include the Xbox 360's undeniable trend of console failures - which Microsoft still denies at this point. Indeed, with so many replacement consoles being sent to disgruntled Xbox 360 owners, its hard not to believe that the trademark Red Ring of Death has already become a nationwide symbol of doom and gloom.

Of course, who couldn't forget Manhunt 2 and Resistance: Fall of Man? Who couldn't forget Jack Thompson's smile on his face when he said that the Adult Only rating received by Manhunt 2 in the US was "delicious", or the way Nintendo and Sony quickly dropped the game as soon as Manhunt 2 was deemed essentially unplayable?

There's also the recent problems with using semi-fictitious religious backdrops as settings in video games, specifically in response to the portrayal of a fictitious cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man. With the religious controversy Resistance: Fall of Man has stirred up, many gamers and religious groups have debated whether copyrighted works of art (even if the copyright is about hundreds of years old) can be featured in in games, and even whether the game's inclusion of the religious sanctuary is an act of sacrilege. Even Tony Blair and the Parliament have gotten themselves caught in the mix, so its clearly a shoo-in to the list.

These and other seemingly 'atrocious' games are featured in GamePolitics' list, with titles such as Columbine, and Super Columbine Massacre RPG. Quite a nice read? It sure is, especially if you're a fan of video game history, scandals, or both. Enjoy!

(Welcome to the first issue of QJ.NET's weekly feature, QuickJump QuickPeek! This weekly-updated spot will run the top news of the past week, think of it as your own directory of sorts to the week's news breakers in our second home we like to call video gaming industry. This page could contain something as trivial as Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft bigwigs gathering together for an afternoon teaparty or as groundbreaking as that teaparty turning into a free for all, take-out-as-many-gaming-execs-as-you-can brawl. With that, we take you to this week's mover and shakers...)

We weren't treated to news of filthy rich gaming execs going at each others' throats this week, but we did have an equally gory debacle with the Manhunt 2 and Red Ring of Death bad rap. There's also the groundbreaking release of PSP homebrew hero Fanjita's Illuminati exploit (via Lumines UMD) that later on brought us the highly anticipated 3.50 downgrader. Throw in the talks about Nintendo's WiiWare and the PS3 firmware update and we have a really interesting week. Now for the QuickJump quick peek to the week's top stories...

The QuickJump QuickPeek awaits after the jump!

There's a lot of grief in Europe, North America, and Japan over the recently-reported setbacks in Sony's PS3 launch, from being postponed to spring next year (Europe), from initial numbers being cut (North America), and from initial numbers being cut way back (Japan). As the streets run red with blood from both the PS3's jilted supporters and vindictive skeptics, it pays to calm down (on all sides of this so-called "console war"), take a step back and see things from a bigger, and historical, perspective. Botched launches are a dime a dozen in this industry, and they happen to the best of the lot as often as they do to the worst.

Even the most recent launch, that of the Xbox 360, had its own share of problems. Today, Microsoft's game console is running steady - all the more given that its closest competitors have yet to launch - and in most accounts, smoothly. Its launch was anything but flawless in the eyes of some observers: first with having only a limited number of units available for the launch, then with hardware problems from hardware issues and that Ring of Death popping up unexpectedly, to disk scratching issues (although the latter was admittedly caused by users who didn't pay attention to the manual).

But such things are not new to the industry. Like what's written above, it happens to the best of us, it happens to the worst of us. Even the legendary PlayStation 2 had a just-as-limited initial North American release of 500,000 units. Even the revered Sega Dreamcast had hardware problems at launch - not to mention a number of games that simply refused to work as advertised, such as Mortal Kombat Gold (remember that "Hot! New!" label they added to the re-release?). Both Panasonic's 3DO and the Sega Saturn also fell apart at the gate, but in those cases they became mere footnotes to gaming history. And it's not unique to the industry, either. Even Apple, for example, had to contend with a host of issues that came up after the MacBook's debut.

Call it the price of innovation and competition. Nothing in life is perfect, no matter how much we may demand it be. There may be a lot of grief in the streets of gaming tonight, whether we're talking about the supporters or skeptics of the PS3. But, having taken the long view, we would prefer to think in the long-term. All the bad press, in the long-run, is noise-deafening, yes, but noise nonetheless. We can't speculate or concentrate on noise.

As with all the other consoles in gaming history - and all other innovations in the history of technology - we will simply wait and let the PS3 prove itself come launch day. We don't have to expect perfection, we just expect it to work decently. It's the only fair thing we can do.