The NPD numbers are in for February and both Microsoft and Sony give their little twists on things. Hit the jump  to check out the results.

February was a good month for video games, as both hardware and software sales were above expectations. 1.1799 million hardware units were sold, beating out the expected 1.602 units. This strong growth came from Nintendo DS sales; 427,300 units were expected to sell but the total end number was 587,600.

The Playstation 3 sold 280,800 units, outselling the Xbox 360 yet again, which sold 254,600 units. The PS3 outdid expectations by 411%, while the 360 underperformed by 2.33%.

This is where the PR battle starts. Microsoft claims that the 360 still had some supply issues, accounting for the loss. Aaron Greenberg, Xbox 360 group product manager, actually told Next-Gen:

“Our expectation is that because of our shortages at retail during February, we will sell less than PS3.”

He goes on to call Sony’s win a “hollow victory.” Sony obviously didn’t see it that way, boasting that “PS3 Sales Eclipse Xbox 360 for Second Straight Month,” without acknowledging Microsoft’s supposed supply issues.

Sony also reminds us that GTA IV, Gran Turismo 5, MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots, as well as many other large titles are on the way, so they’re only getting started.

And then way ahead of the pack is the Nintendo Wii, which sold 432,000 units, 31,300 more units than expected.

Finally, the Sony Playstation Portable underperformed by 4.71%, selling 243,100 units.

Software sales fared even better than hardware, beating out the expected sales by $76.7 million, coming in at $668.7 million. Software sales have also increased 47% from February of last year.

Call of Duty 4 took the top spot once again with the Xbox 360 version selling 296, 200 units. Devil May Cry 4 under whelmed on both consoles, selling 295,200 units on 360 and 233,500 on the PS3. The predicted numbers were 438,400 and 272,600.

Sales of newer titles such as Lost Odyssey, Turok, and Frontlines: Fuel of War more or less met expectations.

Sources: Simexchange, the bitbag, next-gen

According to both gaming magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly and gaming website PSU, we may see Resident Evil 5 before this holiday season – maybe even as early as October.

The latest issue of EGM contained rumors the Capcom plans to release Resident Evil 5 either before or during the upcoming holiday season. Now PSU has come out to say that they’ve heard that we could see the game as soon as October of this year.

Resident Evil 5 is due out on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The game puts you back in the shoes of former S.T.A.R.S member Chris Redfield, who many fans will remember as one of the main protagonists of the original Resident Evil.

Resident Evil 5 will feature much of the same camera and control scheme from its predecessor. The game takes place in the African Desert.

Source: PSU

At this year’s Game Developers Conference, Microsoft has stated that GTA IV’s upcoming Xbox-exclusive downloadable content is scheduled to hit in fall of this year.

Not much has been said about what the DLC will include, but episodic content has been mentioned in the past.

Grand Theft Auto IV is scheduled to hit both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on April 29th, but the DLC remains an Xbox exclusive.

The idea of a Bourne videogame completely free of Matt Damon worried me. As far as I’m concerned, Damon is Bourne. That said, the trailer looks pretty awesome and the voice actor – while no Damon – sounds cool in his own right.

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Three new screenshots of Grand Theft Auto IV have surfaced thanks to Best Buy.

These are only low resolutions shots, but hopefully higher res ones will pop-up soon. The lighting in the second screenshot just screams “crime drama” to me and I couldn’t be more excited. Or could I?

Via GTA4.net

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty does a lot of things right, but misses the mark where it counts.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty presents an interesting alternate-history premise. On December 13th, 1931, Winston Churchill was struck by a car while visiting New York City. He was injured, but he survived (Note: this is all true). Fall of Liberty deviates from history when it presents the question: What if Winston Churchill hadn’t survived?

Without the great leader’s help in WWII, the German Army grows stronger than ever. As the game begins, a Nazi fleet descends upon New York City.

You take control almost immediately. Your character is a construction worker and you find yourself up on some scaffolding as chaos reigns all around you. You must make your way down the scaffolding as your co-workers plunge to their deaths. I wish I could’ve helped them, and at times it feels as if you should be able to, but everything is happening so fast that it’s understandable that you would immediately run for safety.

The atmosphere and feeling here is great, but it’s ruined by some pretty terrible graphics. The screenshots for the game didn’t look that bad, but in action everything looks very unimpressive, such as the awful textures. The character animations also look very stiff and unrealistic, for the most part.

However, those previous gripes are small potatoes when compared to the game’s absolutely atrocious shooting. Enemies show no signs of flinching or anything while being shot and it isn’t until you see the death animation that you know you’ve been making any progress. The AI is decent. Some enemies will run at you and make no attempt to hide, but plenty will run for cover and some will even blind fire.

The game has a fun grapple mechanic, where you can instantly kill opponents with the butt of your gun (there was one part where you could throw a guy off a building) or use them as a human shield. The feature works well and unlike Turok, the game is challenging, so charging someone head-on in hopes of grappling them will usually get you killed.

At the end of the demo, you’ll hop in the back of a truck and watch behind you as people struggle to stay alive. A building in the center of the background collapses, sending a shockwave and dust cloud straight at you. Again, if it weren’t for the lackluster graphics, this sequence would be amazing.

There is definite potential here, but it’s completely buried underneath the poor graphics and flawed shooting.

Talismoon, the makers of the original Whisper Fan for the Xbox 360, have now upgraded to the Whisper Max, which offers less noise and more cooling power. Cooooooool.

The biggest new feature that the Whisper Max boasts is Nitro Mode, in which the fan can run at 240% more power. It’s ideal for long gaming sessions, but it probably sounds like eighteen vacuum cleaners all going at once.

Much less important are the LED lights that will illuminate the back of your Xbox 360. You can choose between red, green, or blue, or just turn them off completely. This is great for those fans that stare at the back of their console while playing.

Keep in mind that in order to install the Whisper Max, you have to dismantle your console, thus voiding the warranty. Not to mention that if Microsoft finds out that you have a modded fan, you’ll be banned from Live as well.

You can pick up the Whisper Max at Divineo.

Via Video Game Generation

MTV has struck a deal with Mad Catz, a popular manufacturer of videogame accessories, to allow the company to start producing Rock Band peripherals.

Mad Catz expects to start releasing products in the first half of 2008. The products will include a wired microphone, a drum kit, and wired and wireless bass guitars.

Mad Catz CEO Darren Richardson comments:

“This agreement with MTV Games represents a natural opportunity for Mad Catz to combine our core competencies of producing and distributing high-quality accessories with the entertaining experience of Rock Band’s interactive controllers. Mad Catz will produce premium instruments, allowing gamers and music fans to experience music in an entirely new light while taking on the personality of their favorite music idols.”

I’m excited to see what Mad Catz whips up, but for folks who have already purchased the bundle, I can’t see them buying anything other than an additional guitar. That being said, the original Rock Band equipment did have its fair share of problems, so it’ll be good to have a cheaper, third-party option if you find yourself needing to replace some hardware.

Via The Escapist

For anyone who someone isn’t aware, Xbox Live has seen better days. This past week, gamers have been having tremendous trouble using the service, whether it be with matchmaking, lag, or just flat out not being able to go online. Well, if this rumor is correct, we may see a little compensation from Microsoft.

Torrence Davis of The Bitbag was informed by his Microsoft contact that:

“…we will definitely be doing something for our Gold members that weren’t able to get online over the last week.”

I can deal with a few hours of downtime, maybe even a day. I know that nothing is perfect and I trust that Microsoft’s Xbox Live team does whatever they can to keep the service up and running. However, this past week has been ridiculous and I think we justly deserve compensation. Let’s all hope Microsoft delivers.

For those you of that have been more than a little peeved with Live’s performance issues, what do you think would be fair compensation? A refund? MS points? Let me know in the comments section.

Via Kotaku

For the week ending December 9th, the Sony PSP sold 91,481 units in Japan. The next week, ending on the 16th, it managed to more than double that number with 184, 610 units sold. Surely it’s catching to the Nintendo DS in sales, right?

While it’s closer than it was, the Nintendo DS still outsold the PSP by almost 40,000 units, with a total of 222,144 sales for the week ending December 16th. To top it off, 28 DS titles placed in the top 50 best-sellers.

As for the other video game systems, the Nintendo Wii took the lead of the home consoles with 170,558, the PS3 came in second with 63,720 units moved, 18,025 Playstation 2 units were sold, and the Xbox Box 360 trailed behind everyone with only 8,561 systems sold.

Poor Billy Gates just can’t catch a break, can he?

Via The Escapist

This is getting a little ridiculous. It seems that Microsoft will ban you from Xbox Live for just about anything these days, including fan modifications.

Over at Maxconsole.net, Malloc posts an email he received from a man whose friend’s Xbox 360 was banned from Live for having a fan modification. Apparently voltage is easy to detect through Bios settings, so installing a huge fan is going to undoubtedly raise red flags.

When his friend contacted Microsoft customer support in regards to ban, they confirmed that he was indeed banned for using a custom fan, as opposed to the stock one.

“…Microsoft have started banning xbox 360’s with modded cooling. So if you’ve done the 12v mod your in risk of being banned for it…. How do I know this?? Because a friend of mine just had a nice chat with Microsoft About why he was banned and they explained it was because he had non-stock/modded fans.”

Given the 360’s tendency to overheat, this is sad news, especially considering that your only other option is to purchase a Nyko Intercooler, which reportedly drains too much power from the console and causes a general hardware failure.

I know that Microsoft extended the warranty on all consoles to three years, which is great and all, but it’s still entirely possible for your system to go kaput after the warranty is up. Banning users for trying to save their $350 console that’s prone to breaking is pretty much bullshit.

UPDATE: Chad Lakkis, our glorious leader here at Ripten, contacted Microsoft’s PR company earlier today regarding this claim. It is his understanding, based on the conversation he had with the individual at Edelman, that Microsoft is capable of scanning an individuals console and the company has indeed banned users from XBL for “modding” their Xbox 360.

While he was not able to obtain a quote regarding this specific incident involving a fan, he did obtain the following statement:

“As part of our ongoing efforts to keep Xbox LIVE safe and secure for the more than 8 million members of our community, it is our policy to ban modified consoles from the Xbox LIVE service. We have found that a small percentage of gamers are playing with modded boxes which would potentially compromise the gameplay experience for other gamers on the service. We believe that even one modded console on the system is one too many. That said, if one of our customers feels like his or her console was wrongly banned from the service, he or she can contact 1-880-4my-xbox.”

I have to say, I’m really glad that Microsoft has a dispute system in play now. They’ve had more than a few wrongful bans, so it’s good of them to acknowledge that and give those unfortunate souls a way to clear things up.

It’s important to note that this incident is simply one guy’s side of the story, and I apologize if I didn’t make that clear. Another thing I want to make sure people know is that this isn’t simply snapping a fan onto your console, this involves opening it up and tinkering around with its guts via this method or something similar.

Now I’m not saying that I think that the fan banning is justified – if it’s even true – but in Microsoft’s defense, they’re being perfectly straight with us. If you mod your console in any way, shape, or form, they reserve the right to ban you. And it sounds like they do have a way to remotely scan it, so don’t try to be sneaky.

I’ll let you know when we get a response about the whole fan situation.

Five new Rockband songs hit Xbox Live today but won’t be hitting the Playstation Network until next week. It looks like Christmas is going to be a little merrier for Xbox fans.

The two songs I’m most excited about are Move Along and Dirty Little Secret by rock/punk band The All-American Rejects. While I personally would like to see Swing, Swing show up as DLC, Move Along and Dirty Little Secret are both very good songs. It’s worth noting that these are the original songs performed by The All-American Rejects.

Alternative rock band 30 Seconds to Mars contributes to the mix with their songs The Kill and Attack. I’d never actually heard of any of their stuff until I checked it out because of the DLC and now I’m thinking that these songs might be worth picking up as well. Like with The All-American Rejects songs, these are the originals.

The last song is a cover of Song With a Mission by the Swedish New Wave band The Sounds. For those that haven’t heard of The Sounds, the band’s lead singer, Maja Ivarsson sang with Cobra Starship for Snakes on a Plane (Bring It) for the Samuel L. Jackson film of the same name.

All the songs are available individually for 80 Microsoft Points.

Via Major Nelson

Merry Christmas, Nintendo! For the second year in a row, the Nintendo Wii is one of the must-have holiday items. And although I’m completely aware of the console’s success, I was still pleasantly surprised to see just how well the company was doing on Amazon.

Amazon’s videogames best sellers list goes as follows:

1. Nintendo Wii Console
2. Super Mario Galaxy for Nintendo Wii
3. Wii Remote Controller
4. Wii Nunchuk Controller
5. Crackdown for Xbox 360
6. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for Xbox 360
7. Wii Points Card
8. Wii Play with Wii Remote
9. Wii Zapper with Link’s Crossbow Training
10. Wii Charge Station

The thought of all those little children running amok with their Wii Zappers blasting just warms my cold heart. The list changes hourly, and while the positions have been shifting somewhat, the same items have been there for several hours.

As a Nintendo fanboy, I’m pretty ecstatic. It’s also nice to see Call of Duty 4 doing so well, because I personally believe it’s the best game of the year. As for Crackdown? That seems out of the blue, but I think I remember Amazon having it on sale for $19.99 a little while back, which would explain its presence.