As long as there have been video games, there have been weird video games. In the burgeoning days of the arcade scene we had the likes of Q*bert and Joust, but then weirdness really took off with the home computer era. Bedroom coders, locked away for months at a time, with no genres to work from, no sense of a development ‘community’… no wonder they came up with titles like Deus Ex Machina, Sentinel and Jet Set Willy.

Weirdness persisted into the PlayStation era with the likes of Polaroid Pete, Mr. Moskeeto and No One Can Stop Mr. Domino, and we do get glimpses today thanks mostly to Suda 51, Tetsuya Mizuguchi and a million indie devs.

But what strange games have entertained you the longest? Which have you played beyond the initial ‘wow, this is really strange’ moment? Are there any truly odd titles that make it into your favourite games of all time list? Really?

For this Friday, let’s think about the offbeat titles that we genuinely do love, rather than just sort of pretend to love so that people think we’re weird, too.

I’ll get us started…

Gribbly’s Day Out (Andrew Braybrook, 1985)

This seminal Commodore 64 title involves a character named Gribbly Grobbly navigating a surreal 2D world attempting to track down his missing children – or ‘gribblets’. The controls are wonderful, the landscapes richly detailed for the era, and the Defender-like gameplay thoroughly compelling. Braybrook would go on to write two bona fide C64 classics, Paradroid and Uridium, but this was a game I just played and played.

Incredible Crisis (Polygon Magic, 1999)

An early progenitor of the mini-game collection, this PlayStation oddity followed a Japanese family though a disasterous day, with each complication captured by a strange mini-challenge. It’s a sort of Japanese game show, rendered into eccentric interactive life complete with office dances, stressful supermarket shopping and hellish elevator rides. But all of them worked well, tied together with a decent family-in-crisis plot – and you just had to keep playing to find out which bizarre flight of gameplay fancy you’d be steered down next.

Rez (United Game Artists, 2001)

Tetsuya Mizugushi’s masterpiece has been accepted into the canon of truly great games, but back in 2001 it was very odd to be controlling a hacker’s avatar through a super computer while crafting techno tunes out of defeated enemies. Odd, but also astonishing. I’m not really sure if any other game has ever captured quite so well Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s theory of the flow state – that sense of utterly focused immersion. Hypnotic and compelling, and still wonderful.

The Rub Rabbits (Sega, 2006)

Okay, it’s another mini-game collection, but I played this freaky take on the dating sim for hours and hours when my first son Zac was a (particularly demanding) baby – it got me through many sleepless nights. Like its predecessor, Project Rub, this crazed game uses every input facet of the Nintendo DS in a range of teeny tasks designed to get you together with the girl of your dreams. Stylish, strange yet utterly intuitive and fun. I was deranged with lack of sleep though.

Games

Keith Stuart

guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

This blog is updated frequently per day with the very latest Free Slim PS3 news, reviews and features.

Are we reaching the tipping point at which the downloading of games begins to dominate the industry? And will it be more about old games than new ones? Some interesting events this week suggest we’re close

During a conference call to investors and analysts on Wednesday, Electronic Arts revealed some rather impressive – and telling – figures. Apparently, the company’s revenue from digital games exceeded $1bn in 2011.

Its controversial download service Origin generated $100m through the year, its social and casual games performed well, and its online multiplayer release – Star Wars: the Old Republic – managed to attracted 1.7 million paid subscribers barely a month after its launch.

Of course, the publisher’s boxed big-hitters – Fifa 12 and Battlefield 3 – did good business too, selling 10m units each, but the thrust of the company’s attempts to claw back into profit are coming from the digital sector.

Meanwhile, fellow publishing veteran THQ is reported to be in dire straights, cutting staff and facing a Nasdaq delisting.

Although the company was one of the first publishers to recognise the rise of mobile gaming with its THQ Wireless arm, it has not succeeded in transferring major brands such as Saints Row and Darksiders to mobile and social platforms. In fact, it sold its Wireless division in February 2011, while a lacklustre Facebook version of Saints Row did little to take on the likes of Mafia Wars at its own game.

THQ’s problems no doubt run deeper than failing to exploit the rise of digital downloading, but it seems as though the future of traditional publishers is going to rest on how well they’re able to explore the online, mobile and downloadable possibilities of their brands.

Physical media, though beloved of hardcore gamers, is generally suffering. The high street chain Game is facing its own major difficulties – financing problems have led to rumours that its stores would be unable to stock the week’s new releases; though the company has since confirmed that the likes of Metal Gear Solid HD and Final Fantasy XIII-2 will be on sale this weekend, and that it has secured new deals with lenders.

Meawhile, digital newcomers are flourishing. Freemium publisher BigPoint announced on Tuesday that it now has 250 million users of its free-to-play online games; on the same day, web gaming company Spil Games, revealed that it now boasted 170 million unique users, with many of its customers spending up to £38 a month on virtual goods. A recent report by Juniper Research claimed that in-game purchasers would be spending $4.8 billion by 2016.

“My basic argument for digital generally is that, first, it allows the publisher to reach a massive audience at no marginal cost, by going free,” says games industry analyst Nicholas Lovell.

“Secondly, it allows you to let the people who love what you do to spend lots of money – for example, the Bigpoint users spending €1,000 on a drone.”.

Unsurprisingly then, smaller developers are increasingly adopting digital-only agendas. On Monday, the UK game developer trade body, Tiga, released a report showing the impact of digital downloads on British studios.

Apparently, 102 British games companies are currently developing browser and download-based casual online PC games. These studios released more than 600 titles in 2011 and employed nearly 700 development staff, contributing £70m to the UK’s GDP.

“We are fast approaching the tipping point,” says Tiga managing director Dr Richard Wilson. “UK retail sales figures for video games have been in decline for several years now, but all the indications are that digital consumption of games is increasing.

“Tiga research from 2011 shows that 50% of UK developers regard retail as the largest monetisation mechanic for their games. However, 47% say their games are also sold via online stores such as XBLA and the Apple App Store. 13% generate money from subscriptions, 26% via micro transactions and 29% use free-to-play mechanics.

“Additionally, almost half of UK developers are now self-publishing online or on mobile. The shift towards digital distribution is enabling developers to become self-publishers and reduce their dependency on publishers. It should also allow more innovation and choice for consumers.”

But more telling than new titles and fresh ideas are the possibilities for older brands in the digital space.

Earlier this week, the veteran MMORPG Everquest became a free-to-play title after 15 years as a subscription service. Long past its incredible peak as a massively multiplayer phenomenon, profit can still be made via a freemium model that will make the game more attractive to casual users.

Meanwhile, publishers such as Ubisoft, Konami and Capcom are busy filling the online stores of the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii consoles with spruced up versions of classic titles, as well as fresh additions to nostalgic lines such as Rayman.

While the ability to sell DLC and create free-to-play titles is enticing, it might be that the real driver into a digital-first business is the ability to exploit that old internet chestnut, the long tail.

In packaged-goods retail, games have a very short shelf life and need to make all their money in the space of a couple of weeks. After that, titles get shoved into the back catalogue. Years ago, there was another opportunity to make money here via special cheaper editions of old games – the PlayStation Platinum range, for example.

However, that market has been all but destroyed for publishers by the rise of the pre-owned sector. Go into any branch of HMV or Game and you’ll usually only see a chart display of new titles, and then a huge area dedicated to second-hand titles.

That’s because retailers make 100% of the revenue from these second purchases – there’s little benefit for them in providing shelf space to first-hand copies of older titles.

In the digital space, though, publishers can keep flogging old titles indefinitely. When the title is out of the charts, it can be kept alive with DLC; after this, there are price reductions on digitally distributed versions of the original games. And then, on titles like Everquest and Lord of the Rings Online, there’s the option to convert to a freemium model.

For new titles, the digital arena is more complex. As Lovell points out: “Chris Anderson’s original definition of the long tail is that in a world of infinite space, everyone can get on the shelf. But the App Store shows that just being on the shelf is no guarantee of sales.

“The App Store has hundreds of thousands of apps, and the long tail players are not making much money.” Indeed, research released last autumn by developer Owen Goss showed that 50% of game apps on the App Store make less than $3,000 (£1,900).

And over in the social and casual gaming spaces, it’s not old brands that are being regurgitated, it’s old ideas. Zynga’s release of Dream Heights on iOS has prompted a furious response from bloggers who feel it is effectively a rip off of NimbleBit’s hugely successful iphone game Tiny Tower, merely adding a social layer.

The cloning of games has become a huge issue in the sector, but with little in the way of legal recourse, it is running amok.

And really, the digital gaming princples behind continually re-inventing old brands for new business models and continually “borrowing” other studios’ successful ideas are the same.

It’s all about mining proven concepts for all they’re worth in a marketplace that allows swift development, easy distribution and lightening fast iteration based on rapid customer feedback.

Those who imagine that the tipping point from physical media to digital distribution will herald a new era of fresh innovative gaming experiences could well be hugely mistaken.

We may be about to enter a new epoch in which the digital sector transmogrifies into one giant thirft store – your favourite game ideas served back to you in different forms on different platforms by different publishers, forever.

Games

Digital media

Xbox

PlayStation

Casual gaming

Facebook

Keith Stuart

guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Slim-PS3 is updated regularly every day with all latest Free Sony Slim PS3 news, reviews and features.

The working humungopad, which is 4m long and weighs 120kg, was created by British engineering student Ben Allen and collaborators from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. It takes two people to play with and has to be transported in a lorry.

“We built the controller to celebrate the 105th anniversary of our student association,” Allen told us. “We’re all electrical engineering students, and every five years we like to do something crazy.

“The actual build took around four weeks. There were plenty of sleepless nights, especially before the big reveal. I fell asleep under the controller for about half an hour at one point. It’s not necessarily hard, it’s just a lot of work. You need to saw the MDF, you need to paint it, you need to get the circuitry organised, and then bring it all together.”

We went to chat to the team behind the controller and play some epic-scale Super Mario Bros. We’ve also scoured the Internet for more gargantuan gizmos, including the world’s largest mobile phone and the world’s biggest electric guitar. And because we were hungry, we also put in the world’s biggest cake, a monstrous 12-tonne, 50-metre long dessert made for the president of Azerbaijan’s 50th birthday. See it and much more by clicking play on the video.

Would you like to see more gigantic gadgets? Or do you think making huge versions of normal-sized things is a pointless waste of time? Do let us know in the comments below, or on our perfectly proportioned Facebook page.

Slim-PS3.com is updated frequently every day with all very latest video game news and gaming reviews.

In the game you take contol of both the Doctor and companion River Song, voiced by Matt Smith and Alex Kingston, to unravel the mystery of The Eternity Clock. Players sneak, run, swing and jump across rooftops and fog-shrouded London streets, heading “into the belly of the beast” to defeat the nefarious plans of the new-look Cybermen, Daleks, and Silurians, as well as the Silence. Er… what were the Silence supposed to be again?

The trailer offers little clue to the latest travails of the Time Lord, aside from telling us that the TARDIS is at the heart of the maelstrom. Ruined London streets and what looks like a mission into a vast Dalek spaceship have got us a wee bit excited about the game: Allons-y! Er, we mean, Geronimo!

There’s no sign of Amy Pond in the trailer — sorry dads — but you do see plenty of River Song. Press play below to see the action:

There are a bunch of options for Gallifreyan gaming, including cartoony online game Worlds in Time, iPhone and iPad puzzler The Mazes of Time, and various interactive episodes.

You can also play Evacuation Earth on the Nintendo DS and Return to Earth on the Wii.

For all your gaming goodness, check out our button-bashing buddies at GameSpot UK. They may not wear bow-ties very often but they all look great in a fez.

Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock materialises on the PS3 and PS Vita via the PlayStation Network in March 2012, with a PC version to follow later.

Are you hoping to get your hands on a copy of the game? Let us know in the comments below or head over to our Facebook page.

Our blog is updated frequently per day with all latest Slim PS3 news and gaming reviews.

Project Fiona is basically a Windows tablet with two massive prongs stuck on the side. Each of those prongs plays host to an analogue stick, four face buttons, and shoulder and trigger buttons.

Fire up a game on Fiona and control the on-screen action by holding those two prongs. We played recent smash-hit Skyrim, and were actually rather impressed by how well it ran, as well as the feel of the controller itself.

The idea is that this tablet will appeal to hardcore gaming nuts who wouldn’t be seen dead prodding at an iPad. There’s an Intel Core i7 CPU inside, which could put serious drain on the battery.

The compromise is obvious though — Project Fiona is absolutely massive. The prongs alone mean it’ll take up a huge amount of space in your bag, and even the tablet bit itself is really thick. It’s also expensive, with Razer tentatively pegging it at $1,000 (£650).

We wonder if Project Fiona is really necessary. There are countless brilliant games for Apple’s iPad, and while they might not rely on macro-filled mice or keyboards, they’re still a lot of fun.

It’s just a concept right now though, so let’s see where Project Fiona goes next. Razer says it could be on sale by the end of the year, but previous gaming concepts from the company have failed to hit the shops, so we’re not holding our breath.

Would you buy this if it went on sale? Tell us in the comments or on our Facebook wall.

Slim PS3 is updated frequently every day with all very latest general console news and reviews.

It seems those green pigs are up to no good again…

The trailer — which you can see here — doesn’t give much away. The green pigs are shown peeping through the floorboards a couple of times, eyeing up lanterns, eggs, and other goodies in an otherwise tranquil setting. A quite terrifying pig mask makes an appearance at the end too.

The description is similarly vague. “Squawk!” it reads. “Fireworks popping, lanterns glowing, red envelopes bursting with money — it’s Chinese New Year! But what are the pigs up to? Stay tuned for more!” So we could see more teasers before the week is over.

It’s the latest update in the massively successful Angry Birds Seasons series. Previous incarnations include an Easter version, and ones for Halloween and Christmas. There’s also a huge range of merchandise, playgrounds themed around the irritated avians, it has its own championship, and you can play it online using the Google Chrome browser. Just before Christmas it was estimated the series had reached over half a billion downloads since launching in 2009. Considering Nintendo has sold about 260 million Mario games in the 30 years it’s been making them, Rovio must be justifiably proud of itself.

Admittedly Angry Birds sells for far cheaper than a full console game, but it’s a huge achievement nonetheless. And maybe a sign that consoles are on the way out — with phones about to become quad-core, expect far more advanced games to come to your handset.

Do you think consoles like the forthcoming PS Vita can compete with the slew of wallet-friendly mobile games? Let us know below, or on our Facebook page.

Slim-PS3.com is updated frequently every day with all latest console news and console reviews.

We haven’t done a Friday question for a while, so let’s remedy that right now. This year is going to be a big one for games hardware. There’s the launch of the PS Vita next month and the arrival of the Nintendo Wii U at some point later on. Plus, everyone is expecting Microsoft to announce its successor to the Xbox 360 at the E3 event in June.

It’s exciting – and it’s an excitement that tends to get lost behind the pervading notion that smart phones are going to kill dedicated gaming machines. I now have a PlayStation Vita for review and it’s a beautiful piece of consumer electronics engineering – stylish, highly specced, wonderfully ergonomic – it is all about the fetishistic qualities of good games hardware.

But what single console, arcade machine or handheld device would you like to own from the annals of interactive entertainment history, and why? I don’t mean just for the games it runs, I mean for the aesthetic appeal of the object – just the look and feel of the thing; I mean something you could almost display as an object d’art. If you’re into that kind of thing.

I’ve provided three of my own choices below. Let’s have some of yours in the comments section!

The Vectrex, 1982

This marvel of early eighties consumer electronics is utterly unique, with its vector-based graphics technology and its series of plastic overlays, which added colour to the otherwise monochrome visuals. I love the arcade-style portrait display, and the formative joypad, with its four-button layout. It looks like it belongs in a seventies sci-fi movie.

Star Wars, 1983

Yet more Vector graphics! But the beauty of this machine is the intricate cabinet design, with its gorgeous illustrations and the authentic instrument panel design inside. The sound is incredible for the era too, with a lively rendering of the soundtrack and clear digitised speech. Despite a cacophony of competing machines, I could always hear the Star Wars attract mode as soon as I wandered into any of the old coin-op arcades along Blackpool’s golden mile… Anyway, check out the video above, I like the way the guy sort of stalks the machine, like he’s about to murder it.

The blue debug PlayStation, 1994

These were littered around the offices of Future publishing when I first joined Edge back in 1995 and they seemed impossibly arcane and glamorous. This is where I would have played the likes of Ridge Racer and Resident Evil for the first time. I also like the chunkier, squarer design of the original PlayStation, before the slim re-model. I liked the array of obscure ports and connection features on the back as well. I’m not sure I like them quite as much as the chap in this YouTube video, though…

Games

Game culture

Keith Stuart

guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Slim-PS3.com is updated frequently per day with all latest games consle news.

With The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim proving one of our collective games highlights of 2011, and the likes of Witcher 2 and The Old Republic snapping at its heels, a rejuvenated RPG market is suddenly brimming with quality.

Yet debut developer 38 Studios has bold plans with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning – not least by breaking a few of the genres oldest rules.

Founded by former professional baseball pitcher Curt Schilling, 38 Studios established instant kudos in 2009 when it took over Rise of Nations developer Big Huge Games from THQ.

It meant that this first game from the Rhode Island-based studio became a collaborative effort involving two teams, a combined staff of almost 300 and nearly five years of development.

Ahead of the game’s February launch, I caught up with two of the game’s key creative forces – “creator of worlds” R.A. Salvatore, and art director Todd McFarlane.

“Curt [Schilling] and his friends had a basic idea of what they wanted” says Salvatore. “I was responsible for fleshing out a broad history of the world, but there were so many people involved on both teams.

“Even my old D&D group worked for me as research assistants. I was really excited by the potential of coming up with a whole philosophy for how Amular worked – everything had to make sense. You can’t just stick a pile of rocks in a forest and call them ruins, you have to know their history and it has to be consistent with everything else.”

Though better known in the US, Salvatore’s skills at weaving deep, compelling and, above all, plausible sci-fi mythologies underpin Reckoning’s epic ambitions. Certainly, the world of Amular has been carved out in painstaking historical detail.

Key to the look and feel of the world was the guiding influence of renowned comic-book illustrator and entrepreneur McFarlane. Though enthusiastic about the concept, he was in no doubt about the scale of creating a new franchise in today’s RPG-savvy market.

“The hardest task of making an RPG is that if you set down 10 people, you’ll get 10 different reasons why they like them,” he says. “That’s very different to a car racing or even an FPS. Some people want to see the map, others to level up, others to quest. It’s all important to each one, so we decided not to treat any of those areas with less significance.”

As a result, Amular is not just epic in scale (five massive areas – including Forest, Coastal and Desert regions – and more than 150 hand-crafted dungeons) but ambition too. It begins in a conventional way, choosing your character from four playable races – the Human (Almain) Elvish (Dark Dokkalfar and Light Ljosalfar) and the nomadic Varani.

Your hero can then be customised for appearance, before embarking into the game’s mammoth single-player challenge, which Salvatore estimates will last more than 40 hours, excluding the hundreds of optional side quests. Reckoning helpfully puts main quest conversations first, so you can see at a glance which NPCs are most worth interacting with.

Which brings us neatly to combat – by no means the game’s most distinctive feature, but probably the one that gamers will debate the most.

Reckoning uses a hybrid system of simple hack and slash (controller buttons mapped to main weapons such as swords, bows or magic staffs) and quicktime events (for boss battles and some finishing moves). The result is a combat system that veers more towards the more cinematic style of God of War than the more realistic Witcher 2.

This may not please hardcore fans of either game, but it’s a system capable of impressive combos, including the eye-catching “Reckoning Mode” where time slows down and moves can be chained together.

McFarlane is pleased with the balance of fluidity and finesse that Reckoning’s combat system has achieved.

“We wanted to make sure the action was big and huge in an RPG context but at the same time avoiding have to hit six buttons,” he says. “We kept the sequences simplistic to avoid it being a ‘combat game’ – yet doing those exact same sequences with a different character will achieve a completely different effect. It’s cool as hell, but not frustrating.”

However, although much of your game time will undoubtedly be spent in combat and questing, Reckoning’s most innovative feature is the concept of Fates & Destinies. Originating from the game’s mythology, it’s an element that will have a potentially profound effect on the gameplay, depending on how you approach it.

Most RPGs and MMOs treat character progression as something written in stone; indeed, the only way to succeed is to pick an upgrade path and concentrate on maxing out those abilities. Effectively, if you choose to be a warrior, that’s what you are from start to finish.

Reckoning takes a different approach. You start the game as a blank slate, able to buy three main paths – Might, Finesse and Sorcery, with each path containing around 20 upgradeable Abilities. However, at any leveling-up point you can choose to specialise in other areas, creating hybrid characters that may combine Abilities from all three paths.

As you level up you also unlock one of eight Destinies, which help shape define not only your combat style but also your profession. For instance, Rangers are perfect stealthy assassins but if you want to add magic to the mix, you can simply accumulate enough points to switch Destiny to Archanist.

It remains to be seen whether such a dynamic form of character development will either empower or baffle the player, but Salvatore believes it enforces a kind of open world realism and flexibility so far unseen in RPGs.

“Your hero is the first person to come through the well of souls and be reborn,” he says. “But these powers have consequences that affects every aspect of the game: what does that mean to the world? What does it mean to religious institutions who rely on the power of an afterlife or to the parents of the last person who died at the well of souls?”

This flexibility also extends to other areas of the gameplay. Looting and Crafting, for instance, has been designed to cater for fans of both expediency and depth. You don’t need to access the Inventory to select, equip or discard items if you just want their value in credits; but if you want to delve deeper, you can head for a town and start experimenting with the game’s three distinct crafting systems – Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Sagecraft.

Use Sagecraft, for instance, and you can start socketing weapons with magical gems; if not, you can still gain bonus points (and a cool onscreen appearance) from collecting complete sets of armour items.

There are also nine non-combat skills – some which have unexpected affects on the gameplay. Improving Stealth, for instance, not only introduces some fantastic stealth kills, but opens up corrupt career paths like pick-pocketing. Neither are you all alone in your quest. There are six joinable faction, including Nomads, Travelers, Scholars and Warrior Priests.

So, given it’s a game that thwarts easy summaries, how pleased is Salvatore with the way Reckoning has translated his original vision into a living, breathing, role-playing experience?

“I don’t want to say it will raise the bar,” he says. “But it does bring something a little bit different. With Reckoning, I wanted a world that had beauty and horror – something really frightening that was worth fighting against and then giving you all the tools to do it. I think fans are going to like what we’ve achieved.”

And if they do like it, there’s clearly a big future already planned for Amular. Reckoning only features a small part of a persistent world that will be fully revealed in a forthcoming MMO codenamed “Copernicus”, which both development teams – including Salvatore and McFarlane – are already hard at work on.

Although neither would be drawn on an ETA, having made a fortune from multimedia franchises such as Spawn, McFarlane in particular understands the potential value of an original IP. However, it’s also clear that Amular means more to him than just a string of lucrative sequels.

“I appreciate all the 2s, 3s and 4s attached to successful RPGs – you don’t have to spend as much time reminding people what it is,” he says. “But even Hollywood can’t survive on just sequels, so is there’s room for new ideas? That’s a question people have been asking us from day one … now it’s up to the consumers.”

Reckoning sounds like just the kind of start to 2012 RPG fans were hoping for.

• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning will be released for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on 10 February

Role playing games

Games

PC

Xbox

Microsoft

PS3

PlayStation

Sony

Mike Anderiesz

guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Slim-PS3.com is updated several times each day with the latest Free PlayStation news.

Seeing as the brand new PS Vita sold over 300,000 in its first two days on sale in Japan, it seems the 3DS has some serious staying power.

In comparison, Nintendo sold over 5 million units of the original DS in its first 13 months, but that included two Christmases.

So, which games are selling? Well perhaps unsurprisingly, Mario is king. Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 have each sold more than a million copies, making them the first 3DS titles to do so. That’s all the more surprising considering Mario Kart 7 has been on sale less than a month, and has actually outsold Super Mario 3D Land (1.08 million as opposed to 1.04 million). The release of Mario Kart 7 may well help explain the surge in interest in the console, though no doubt Christmas did its part too.

The stats come from research company Enterbrain.

The PS Vita went on sale last weekend, and while it sold over 300,000 in its first two days, not all units were without problems: some froze, while others had stains on the screen. Sony issued a software update to fix the bugs. It also priced up all the first-party launch titles, though sadly us Brits won’t be getting a 32GB memory card when it touches down on 22 February. Doesn’t Sony trust us with them or something?

Does the PS Vita have enough to knock the 3DS off the top of the handheld podium? Let us know which you prefer in the comments below, or over on our Facebook page.

Slim-PS3 is updated regularly per day with the very latest Free Slim PS3 news and console reviews.

Shortly after Christmas Microsoft was awarded a patent titled ‘Recording media on gaming consoles’. The patent was filed way back in 2007 and describes “a digital video recorder (DVR) application running alongside a television client component” that “allows users to record media content on the gaming console”.

The patent also specifies that the tech would also let gamers record media while playing games, or when the console is switched off.

What can you record? Microsoft lists TV programming, local and online games, music and DVDs as some of the possibilities. You’ll be able to switch between the type of media you’re seeing while the console is recording.

While it’s prudent not to read too far into these patents, this one could give us a clue as to what the next Xbox will look like. And judging by the features described above, Microsoft could be setting its sights at the TV on-demand market.

Microsoft’s chunky console already boasts loads of video goodies including Sky Player and the Zune movie rental service. LoveFilm and 4oD should be making an appearance shortly, with the BBC’s iPlayer tipped to arrive later this year. But one thing it can’t do is record those tasty bits of video.

Microsoft could also be planning to ape a feature of the OnLive streaming gaming service, which lets you save ‘brag clips’, which are the last 10 seconds of gameplay. That means if something cool or funny happens in-game, you can save it at the press of a button.

Once saved, you can share your clip online. It’s a great feature, and we wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft wanted to plant something similar in its next console.

What do you want to see in the next Xbox console? Tell us in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.

Slim-PS3 is updated several times every day with the latest gaming news and reviews.