Sony’s PlayStation 3 has been the highest selling home console in Japan for the month of March. It is a position the Wii has held for 13 straight months. The PS3 sold a total of 146,948 consoles during the month of March, while the Wii sold 99,335 units. The PS2 and Xbox 360 finished third and fourth, respectively. The PS3s success in March is fueled by the release of Resident Evil 5 and Yakuza 3.

According to analyst Koya Tabata from Credit Suisse, Nintendo’s manufacturing costs for the Wii have almost halved since the console’s introduction in 2006. The analyst cites a 45% decrease in costs hardware costs, however, that does not translate in 45% more profits for Nintendo, as fixed costs (such as packaging, transportation etc.), remain the same.

Although, since Nintendo already made a profit on every Wii sold, that has certainly increased. None of this is confirmed however, but Nintendo will probably reveal some details at the company’s upcoming financial meeting with investors in Japan.

It’s hard to imagine how Deadliest Catch became sufficiently popular to merit its own Xbox 360 game, but the fact remains that the game exists, and thus, it’s necessary that I talk about it.

There’s not so much of a plot to this game–you’ll play as, apparently, the steersman of the biggest crab-catcher in the Alaskan fleet–the Northwestern.  You’ll be backed up by Hansen brothers Edgar and Sid, and the rest of the Northwestern crew as you hunt crab and assist Coast Guard operations throughout the Bering Sea.  You’ll deal with bad weather, strategic crab hunting issues, the successful use of such valuable equipment as plotters, ship autopilot, and advance reports from the Alaska Department of Fish And Game to decide where to hunt, how hard to hunt, and how long to hunt.  Stay out too long and you may run out of fuel, adrift in the Bering Sea.  Not long enough and you’ll lose opportunities to get “on the crab”, lose cash and go bankrupt.  You’ll hire a crew, keep the boat maintained, and do plenty else besides.  Down the line, you’ll also get the opportunity to take over other boats like the Cornelia Marie, and you’ll get to hunt different seasons of crab including King and Opilio (or snow crab, in case you don’t watch the show).

This is not necessarily a BAD idea…nor is it necessarily a bad game.  The biggest problem here is that it should have such limited appeal as to render it almost unplayable.  First, you have to enjoy the show Deadliest Catch to such an extent that you follow it nonstop.  You have to know the cast.  You have to know one captain from the other—after all, if you’re on board the Rollo and you’re looking for Phil, well, you’re in entirely the wrong place and you’re going to be really surprised to discover that Phil’s been on the Cornelia Marie all this time.  And even assuming you’re sufficiently enrapt with the show to think that a game for it would be a great idea, you’re then going to have to resign yourself to the fact that, as far as gameplay goes, you’re basically just setting a waypoint, proceeding to that waypoint, laying pots, letting them soak and then taking your haul back to processing at Dutch Harbor or somewhere.  And then, when you’re done, you do it again.  And again, and again and again, until the end of the season.

Playing Deadliest Catch felt like nothing so much as a job—except I wasn’t getting paid.  Worse yet, I had to pay to GET this job.  Oh, sure, it plays smoothly enough; everything’s nicely laid out and fairly intuitive, and there was plenty of help from both the narrator and regular video clips from Sig Hansen to get me started, but still; I was basically just working a job and punching a clock, except at the end of the season, I wasn’t going to come away with twenty to fifty thousand dollars for being a crewman.

I confess that it was fun for a little while, and handling the controls of the big crab boats is interesting in a whole lot of ways, especially running the bow thrusters for small changes in attempting to dock.  It’s a very faithful and realistic simulation, even if there’s not a whole lot of action involved in the whole affair.

If you can’t get enough Deadliest Catch and want a fairly accurate simulation of piloting a crab boat, then the game should be exactly what you need.  Otherwise, there’s no reason to board this one.

Sometimes, just sometimes, mind you, games don’t need a point.  All they need is some fun gameplay and an interesting hook, and this is the idea behind PowerUp Forever, a new shooter game on Xbox Live Arcade that’s an amazing hybrid of Warning Forever, Geometry Wars and Katamari Damacy.

I know, not exactly the most likely pedigree, but in a game where you fly around, blast stuff, and grow larger and more powerful with every successive level, you can definitely see the connections.  As you grow, you get new weapons, and you’ll need them to take on the new, larger enemies you find that were formerly part of the background.  The difficulty is surprisingly rich, with enemies moving in hard and fast to intercept as early as the fourth level.  Controls have some issues in this game, sadly, as switching between weapons isn’t terribly easy, and the more advanced weapons have an unfortunate tendency to run out of juice quickly, forcing you to switch back to your main gun so rapidly you might well start to wonder why you even bothered switching to the other guns to begin with.

Yes, it’s similar to a whole lot of other games you’ve played, but a couple new twists make this one worth trying.

Dozens of games have come out that are set around real-world wars. Though the vast majority of them have covered the various theaters of World War II there have been a handful of others set in various conflicts including Vietnam and the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression if you live south of the Mason Dixon line). Few of these have stirred up any controversy beyond the standard complaints about violent video games.

It seems that while people can easily accept glorifications and digital explorations of conflicts far enough in the past the still-fresh wounds of current battles are considered by many to be off limits. Yesterday Konami announced their plans to publish Six Days In Fallujah, a game based on one of the most violent and horrific battles of the Iraq War and the news has already received heavy criticism from various camps. The father of British soldier killed in the fighting calls this game “bad taste” and while I agree, his concern that a fanatical young Muslim might play the game and be incensed into some sort of retribution makes him a little less easy to empathize with.

A UK peace group criticizes the game for glossing over the brutal actions of American military forces. Most levelheaded is a former soldier and veteran of the Iraq War when in addition to his statement of opposition for the title he says that it’s “too early” for a game like this, hinting that he understands that when time and the dryness of textbooks have drawn the fangs and venom of the war video games and other media will be free to cover it with little offense.

Sony is waking up to a fact that Nintendo realized scant years after their beginning: video game characters can sell more than just more video games. For years Nintendo released cereals, backpacks and even television shows based around their popular characters. Sony has just announced that they’ve signed a licensing deal with Target Entertainment to release “exciting ranges of PlayStation apparel and accessories, colourful toys and plush, stationery and gifts, housewares and food, and plenty of fun-filled promotions.”

The cute Sackboy of LittleBigPlanet will undoubtedly be one of the first items to hit the shelves after fans got excited over the knitting pattern released online and though the only other characters mentioned in the press release are the family friendly Rachet and Clank there’s no doubt that more adult oriented games will get their time in the sun. After all the epic adventures of Kratos and all his various foes are practically begging to be made into the high-detail action figure format for hardcore fans to keep on their shelves, sealed tightly inside their plastic cases in order to keep their collectible value high.

“We really want our consumers to have the ability to interact with our brands and characters in ways other than just on screen,” said Stephanie Freeman, Sony Europe’s licensing and peripherals manager. Of course, by “interact with” she really meant “spend more money on”.

Although the Nintendo Wii has been enjoying an incredible level of success in Japan since its launch on occasion some console has outperformed it in sales. The Xbox 360 saw a couple spikes to the top of the charts with the release of exclusive titles. In March of 2009 the Wii sales were down sixty-three percent compared to last year and the previously underperforming PS3 outperformed it.

Nintendo says that they’re unconcerned about this downturn. They cite the fact that the first few months of the year are generally a time of lower sales for the video games industry. The resurgence of the PS3 begs to differ but with the DSi just released outside of Japan and analysts claiming that Nintendo has nearly halved the production costs of the console they might not have anything to worry about. Throw in the fact that if the Wii Motion Plus is bringing the true 1:1 motion controls it claims to then some companies will be much more interested in the potential games they could make with the console.

Confirming that the game is indeed in development, Ubisoft has launched the official website for Assassin’s Creed 2. Although it is barren in terms of content, it does offer a brief tease.

Currently all parts of the site other than the weird Da Vinci wallpaper/video are off limits.

Assassin’s Creed 2 is not expected until next year. Ubisoft is yet to officially announce the game.

Seeing as how DLC is all the rage these days, BioWare is taking no chances with Dragon Age, as company co-founder Greg Zeschuk has gone on record to say that the upcoming RPG might be supported by downloadable content for up to two years.

"With Dragon Age, our DLC strategy is doing it in maybe a year and-a-half or two years, planning exactly when you’re going to do it and how you’re going to do it," he said.

While he wouldn’t offer any details of the content itself, he had this to say: “Some of our fans would really like us to extend the world, so it’s going to be something that will make the world even bigger and more interesting."

Dragon Age is due out this fall on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

The StarFox franchise has been dormant for a long time, and its creator Dylan Cuthbert just might be the one responsible for it.

In an interview with G4, the very vocal developer – who is also the president of PixelJunk developer Q-Games – stated that he isn’t interested in designing a new StarFox game for the Wii.

He notes that it’d be a big project with “like 100 people on the staff” as one of the main reasons. However, he didn’t rule out the possibility in the future, though he does note that using the Wii controller would be difficult.

“I don’t know…maybe the new one [Motion Plus.] Maybe that’d be more fun to play with. I don’t know. The Wii is a bit more of a toy, I think.”

Cuthbert also has a few choice words for Shigeru Miyamoto, who he points to as the driving force in taking Fox McCloud out of his Arwing and onto the ground. He says that “Miyamoto doesn’t really care about [the core fans]. He wants to make what he wants to make, so he just goes ahead and gets it done.”