Xbox 360 Weekend Warrior: Gloat-worthy sales numbers, games updates and price cuts, and… surfin’ birds?

Interesting week for Microsoft, wouldn’t you say. If you take a look at the bullets for each category after the jump, you’ll see that they’re pretty even, yes, both Gaming and Industry news are. Usually Industry news will be just a couple of bullets, but not this week. Yep, it’s been yet another exciting week for the big MS. More record-breakers are here, anticipated demos, BioShock 2 updates, new maps, price cuts, trailers and a certain bird that is apparently also the word. Word.

 

Interesting week for Microsoft, wouldn’t you say. If you take a look at the bullets for each category below, you’ll see that they’re pretty even, yes, both Gaming and Industry news are. Usually Industry news will be just a couple of bullets, but not this week.

Yep, it’s been yet another exciting week for the big MS. For one, they did pretty well in the recently-released NPD Charts results for the month of February past. And what do you know, not only did they outsell the PS3 yet again, they also exceed the predicted expected sales (actually, everybody else did, too) by almost 30%.

And because of this, Greenberg cannot help but gloat, pointing out that the PS3 is “hemorrhaging in sales”. Yeowch, but hey, the numbers can speak for themselves, right? In fact, it was only early this week that David Gosen of MS Europe proudly proclaimed that the Xbox 360 has “sailed past” the 8 million sales mark. Fine, granted that he’s probably talking about Europe numbers, and the NPD chart is in the US, it only supports the fact that the console is still bringing home the bacon, raking in the money, laughing all the way to the bank, singing Surfin’ Bird from dusk till dawn.

However, from the other side of the fence, Steinberg retorts that Killzone 2 is so kick-ass, it can lure Xbox 360 gamers to jump to their side of the PS3 fence. That should be a sight to see, seeing as how steadfastly loyal the green machine’s fanboys are.

As for the Gaming bit, there’s a whole lot of them, as usual. More record-breakers are here, anticipated demos, BioShock 2 updates, new maps, price cuts, trailers and more.

Dig in and enjoy.

Gaming News:

• Halo Wars breaks records, sells 1 million units in three weeks. Link
• Guitar Hero demo arrives on the XBL. Link
• BioShock 2
• Subtitle “Sea of Dreams” scrapped, won’t have co-op mode, will have simultaneous platform release. Link
• New, complete details from Game Informer preview Link
• Daddy’s coming back, bigger, better, stronger. Link
  
• Sacred 2: Fallen Angel gets second life. New release date announced. Link
• Mass Effect 2 officially announced, to launch 2010. Still quite a long way away. Link
• Xbox 360 “classics” collection gets Halo 3, Mass Effect, PGR 4. Oh, and a lovely price cut too. Link
• Gears of War 2 is getting a brand new experience-based ranking system, revealed by Rod Fergusson. There’s also a new auto-balancing feature in Title Update 3 to swap bots to players who drop out in the middle of the match. Four new maps included, too. Link
• Fallout 3 trailer for The Pitt DLC was launched. Swell, swell. Link

Industry News:

• Greenberg gives his two (or three, or four) cents: PS3 is “hemorrhaging in sales”, absolutely ecstatic about their NPD results for February, and has solid faith that The Lost and Damned DLC for GTA IV could have seriously given Killzone 2 a run for its Helghast money. Link
• Sony’s Steinberg declares faith of his own: Killzone 2 will make Xbox 360 gamers want to try the PS3. Jump ship, too, maybe? Link
• Xbox Live accounts phished, and in circulation. Uh-oh. Link
• EEDAR weighs in on Xbox 360 games. The verdict: only 13% have an 85/above score from reviewers. Link
• Xbox 360 “sails past” 8 million marks in sales. No word on what sales figures are these for exactly (in Europe only or what?). But hey, 8 mill is 8 mill. Link

Stick around, as we’ve got another kewl week coming up ahead. More so because it’s … tada!!!.. the Game Developers Conference happening in San Fran! We’re sure to get loads more of hot gaming news from there, so just keep it jumpin’ right here with us.