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Pocket-lint has an article up stating that Australians are buying a record breaking number of Xbox 360’s in its first week of sales in the country. No doubt it helps that many games have been released since the original release in North America, as well as all the great promotions that Microsoft did in Australia.

Within 4 days of its launch last Thursday a total of 30,421 Xbox360 consoles were sold along with over 60,000 games, according to the market analyst, GfK.

The previous TV console record was held by the Nintendo GameCube which shipped 9,190 in its first week on the shelves in May 2002, followed by the Sony PlayStation which sold 3,366 units over an equivalent period in November 2000.

The console even beat Sony’s recent PSP handheld launch, albeit by a small fraction.

Welcome to Xbox Live Australia and New Zealand.

It looks like Microsoft really does not care what Sony does with their PS3.

This announcement certainly doesn’t change any of our plans. We’ve blasted out of the gate with the greatest launch in the history of video games and we’re keeping our eyes squarely fixed on today and on the Xbox 360 road ahead, including continuous new content and programming through our premier Xbox Live online gaming service, the delivery of 80 high definition games and shipping between 4.5 and 5.5 million consoles by June.

This may come as a shock to folks, but Sony tends to not share their launch plans with us in advance. 😉 We’re continuing to stay focused on Xbox 360.

I especially like the last line, and it will be interesting to see how many games are out for the Xbox 360 by the time the PS3 launches.

Source: Gamerscore Blog

Via the Register:

Sony’s PlayStation 3 will require a hard disk drive, the consumer electronics giant revealed today. It indicated the console would ship with a 60GB 2.5in drive and that it would be upgradeable, suggesting the unit is removable – much like the Xbox 360’s HDD.
…
That said, it isn’t clear whether the PS3 will ship with an HDD.

Why not ship every console with a hard disc as standard? It would cost only about fifty bucks, anyway.

Shane Kim, Microsoft’s Game Studios General Manager, has been talking to Next Generation about various things including Halo 3.

Next Generation: Let’s talk about Halo 3. What are we up to?

Shane Kim: I call it The Mythical Halo 3 – we haven’t announced any such game yet! Obviously the Halo franchise is very important to us. When you have Bill Gates being quoted fairly constantly, talking about a game, you know it’s important to the company. But his recent comments reflect the position accurately. Which is that, if there were a Halo 3 we would be careful about how we announce and introduce it.

It’s exactly the same way we talked about Halo 2, where people wanted it a year after Halo. That would not have accomplished anything.

In the interview he also mentions that Microsoft is not going to play a reactionary game against Sony, and has a business plan that they will execute. I think that is a very good way to push their way to the top spot. Maybe not this generation, but eventually.

Xbox Today says that the Australian launch of the Xbox 360 might be pushed back three weeks to March 23rd, from March 2nd. Australia is currently one of the last markets still needing to get shipments of the console, and so any further delays might cause some normally Microsoft fans to just up and decide to wait for the Sony PS3 to hit the market.

“Based on launch and production capacity, we are hoping not to have any stock issues, but it is difficult to forecast demand,” said David McLean, director Xbox Australia and New Zealand. Although Australia will be one of the last countries to get the Xbox 360 it is, proportionally, the most successful territory for Microsoft with a market share of 35 to 40 percent, which McLean is keen to extend to beyond 50 percent with the Xbox 360.

In 2002 over 10.3 billion dollars of game software was sold. In 2005 that record was broken, adding another 200 million to the previous top.

“The real story for 2005 was the incredible expansion of portable gaming,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. “The GBA continued to realize stellar sales, and the introduction of the (Nintendo) DS and PSP to the market brought older gamers to the portable format.”

“It goes without saying that the full impact of next generation consoles on the consumer market won’t unfold until later this year when Sony and Nintendo’s video game consoles hit U.S. retail shelves,” Frazier said.

Read the details at Next Generation

Making the HD-DVD an external add-on for the Xbox 360 was a smart move because if the world decides that Blu-Ray is better, then, Microsoft can go ahead and release a Blu-Ray drive.

According to Peter Moore. In an interview with Japanese website ITmedia, Moore noted that, if the format war concluded with Blu-Ray as the clear winner, Microsoft could release an external Blu-Ray drive for its 360.

Some people are a little surprised as Blu-Ray is backed by their rival: Sony. But it would not be smart marketing on Microsoft’s side if they did not go with the flow by supporting a dead technology.

Moore again stressed that the external drives would be for movies only, but something tells us that external drive could become vital for gaming two or three years into the console’s lifespan.