NOVEMBER 2006 – It’s one of the biggest months ever, as the PlayStation 3 and Wii both hit store shelves for the first time and developers compete for the Christmas sales bonanza. Nick Thorpe is your timetravelling guide to all of the excitement
» Happy shoppers pick up the Wii, and hopefully Excite Truck too. That game is great.
ThePlayStation 3 launched in Japan on 11 November, and the initial response to the system was odd. 81,639 systems were sold in the first two days, with 45,774 being the more expensive 60GB model, but only 66,684 games were sold – meaning almost 15,000 players went home with nothing to play, leading to speculation that many systems were being picked up by. scalpers for resale online. Ridge Racer 7 narrowly beat Mobile Suit Gundam: Target In Sight to become the most popular launch game, selling 21,654 copies. The North American launch followed on 17 November, with 197,000 consoles sold by the end of the month – just shy of half the number Sony had promised for the launch.
The Wii launched in North America on 19 November, and also faced supply issues as a million units had initially been expected to be available. Despite this, Nintendo claimed that the first week hardware sales totalled over 600,000 units, making for its best launch ever, and The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess was unquestionably the most popular game with 454,000 copies sold. As always, import impressions from the UK press would have to wait until later.
» [Xbox 360] Glorious destruction awaits those who take up the Just Cause challenge
