It truly was a battle of the consoles this Christmas, with big-hitters Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all looking to set the Yuletide cash tills ringing.
According to analysts at the US research firm NPD, Santa’s bags were mostly straining with Xbox 360’s over the festive period, closely followed by the Nintendo Wii, with the PS3 trailing in third place.
Preliminary findings from NPD revealed that the Xbox 360 outsold both the Wii and the PS3 in the US, with around 2 million Xbox 360s shifted between the start of November 2006 and Christmas.
Not far behind was the eagerly awaited Nintendo Wii which registered 1.8 million sales, while the PS3 could only muster a mere 750,000 Stateside sales.
According to NPD, these figures represent a huge leap from November’s figures which saw 511,000 Xbox 360s, 476,000 Wiis and 197,000 PS3s flying out of the stores.
It’s worth noting that Nintendo’s Wii didn’t launch in the US until 19th November – nearly three weeks behind the Xbox 360 – with the first batch of stock reported as selling out in hours.
It was a similar situation in the UK, with Nintendo Wii’s near-impossible to find in the shops (yes, we were looking too and someone’s still waiting for their Christmas present!).
One of PC World’s flagship stores in the West End told Digital Lifestyles that their consignment of Wii consoles went almost as soon as they came through the door, although we noted no shortage of XBox 360s in the store.
NPD is expected to release the complete figures for December later this month.
While announcing the release 3.0 of their VoIP software, Skype have unveiled the US Unlimited Calling Plan.
Those Europeans who are surprised that calls to mobiles are included, should know that in the US owners of mobile pay to receive calls, so callers don’t pay extra to make them.
We see that Engadget are offering a charity auction for Save Dafur. 
Ever self-aware, Engadget also point out they understand the irony of raising money for a Dafur charity, by playing a video game called Gears of War. Their defence is that their readers chose the charity and that they’d already decided what the event was going to be. As some step towards balancing this, Engadget have named the event Gears of Peace. 
Nintendo’s eagerly awaited 
The first punter to get his hands on the shiny new console was the time-rich Isaiah Triforce Johnson, who had sat outside a New York store for more than a week. 
Sony had shipped 400,000 PlayStation 3s in North American stores at the end of last week, but Nintendo boasted that it would have “five to ten” times as many Wiis available at launch, with an end-of-year shipping figure of 4 million units expected. 
As new media continues to challenge the traditional means of delivering music, video and other digital content, copyright lawyers can expect to get rich in the legal fall out. 
“We have been keeping UMG closely apprised of our industry-leading efforts to protect creators’ rights, and it’s unfortunate they decided to file this unnecessary and meritless litigation,” the statement said. 
The US is responsible for a fifth of the world’s spam, according to security firm Sophos. 
Most unsolicited emails are churned out by zombie PCs. These don’t walk towards you, arms outstretched and making funny groaning noises, but are computers that have been silently infected with Trojans, worms and viruses that turn your lovely PC into a spam-spewing beast. 
Starting 22 November, US Xbox 360 owners will be able to download TV programmes and films to their Xboxes to rent and watch. 
No definite European plans as yet, but it’s expected once they sign the content deals. 
AMD, the second largest microprocessor manufacturer has complete the purchase of graphics, chipset and CE specialist ATi Technologies in a deal worth around $5.4Bn. 
The capabilities of graphics processors have been gathering pace over the recent years to the point where they come close to rivaling the main processor themselves. 
Cellular phone provider T-Mobile US is offering a service, HotSpot @Home, giving unlimited calls to US phones via WiFi. This in itself isn’t big news, but what is significant is that callers leaving the range of the WiFi will automatically switch to their cellular service. Initial roll-out is limited to Seattle. 
T-Mobile is the mobile communications subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, the German telco incumbent. 
Coming straight from the you-must-be-having-a-laugh folder, news reaches us that the Los Angeles Scout group is introducing a new merit award — the Respecting Copyright Patch. We kid you not.