
The above illustration from Key’s visual novel “Tomoyo After – It’s a Wonderful Life” conceals an amusing easter egg visible only to users of dread browser Internet Explorer.
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The slide in Xbox 360 sales, which seems to herald the end of its Japanese resurgence, continues with the news that the console now occupies the most humiliating spot of all in the Japanese retail hierarchy: the wagon.
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Ota-idol Shoko-tan has attracted much consternation recently with her announcement that she has acquired a PS3 (along with a demo copy of Final Fantasy XIII), after only recently swearing eternal fealty to Microsoft, which is being read as a sign of the times – the Xbox’s Japanese rally is over it seems, and now the console flies into headlong retreat…
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Japanese PS3 sales figures for the month of April just released show the PS3 to have enjoyed a drastic increase in sales over this time last year.
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Whatever glimmer of hope Microsoft may have purchased at great cost for its console in Japan has been dimming of late, but that doesn’t stop Microsoft from pushing the marketing battle to the next level: here we see an aggressive piece of marketing published by retailer Messe Sanoh, making use not only of Xbox 360-tan, but also a blustering comparison of the PS3 to the vastly superior Xbox 360 (if they are to be believed).
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The much anticipated PS3 version of Tales of Vesperia was recently announced, and of the many extras included in it the most notable addition is pirate loli character Patty Fleur.
However, a 2ch denizen who just happened to be browsing the compiled code for the game with a hex editor (let us not enquire too deeply as to why) has discovered evidence that she was in fact in the game from the start, in the form of mentions of her name alongside those of other characters.
This plainly casts doubt on her “new” status, and possibly suggests that all this was planned from the start?
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The much heralded resurgence of the Xbox 360 in Japan appears to have been as fleetingly ephemeral as the life of a mayfly; the latest sales figures show it being outsold by the lowly and supposedly obsolescent PS2, and the PS3 is outselling it by a margin of nearly 5 to 1, also beating the Wii:
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Microsoft has released a new bug for their successful Xbox 360 console, complementing the popular “Red Ring of Death”, which for years has been ensuring a steady stream of broken consoles are supplied to end users.
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Microsoft has faced intense criticism after banning a lady gamer for mentioning her sexual orientation in her profile on Xbox Live.
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A sparring match between top figures in both the Microsoft and Sony camps has lead to Sony castigating Microsoft’s “lack of longevity”, whilst Microsoft then shoots back, calling Sony an “out of touch” dinosaur of the previous generation.
What emerges is some very interesting speculation about the direction of the console wars, along with some good old fashioned brawling…
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Major electronics retailer Yodobashi Camera’s huge flagship Akiba store has been displaying a broken Xbox 360 for some time, and it seems they are not even minded to cover up the glowing Red Ring of Death, a problem which has been the bane of both Xbox owners and Microsoft PR for some time now.
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And Microsoft’s reply would be “no thanks”? Crooked former billionaire felon Horiemon (堀江貴文 / Takafumi Horie), disgraced former boss of Livedoor, has come out in an interview saying that Sony would be better of selling off its hardware business, including the PS3, and focusing on pursuing its true calling of producing blockbuster movies, going on to claim he was planning to buy Sony and make this so.
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