Industry and multi-console news:

• These Google Earth photos make the James Kim story even more depressing. Not only did he make a wide loop straight into a canyon, but if he had just kept going down the road they were travelling on originally, he would've hit a fishing lodge in a few miles.
• A Sega marketing survey asks for opinions about an upcoming action horror game they may or may not make.
• Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 is headed for a spring 2007 release.
• A consumer survey finds the most important thing to generation Y (God, I hate that term) females when deciding where to buy games is the availability of special offers like free items or discounts.
• Ricky Gervais talks to Wired about video games and his voice work in Scarface.
• NPR looks at the 25 percent of the gaming audience that's over 50.

PC news:

• New trailers are up for the second episode of Sam and Max.
• Certain key employees have left Ritual, leaving the future of SiN episodes and Ritual as a whole in doubt.
• Cult favorite sci-fi TV show Firefly will be reborn as an MMORPG.

Nintendo news:

• The Wii has sold 50,000 units in its first 12 hours in the UK. GAME CEO Lisa Morgan called the Wii queue the largest GAME has ever had.
• An electronic interface company is filing a suit against Nintendo over alleged infringement of their "Trigger Operated Electronic Device" patent.
• Hudson has dropped a hint as to their next TG-16 Virtual Console title: "All brain, no skull. All eyes, no nose." This has led many to believe next Monday will see the release of Alien Crush.
• The replacement straps Nintendo is sending out are thicker than the original straps. Most likely, they'll start using these in Wii packages from now on.
• IGN has a new interview with Suda 51 about No More Heroes.
• Nintendo retracted an earlier statement in a press release about having "well more than a million Wii systems" available by the end of the year. But why?
• A Wii game developed entirely by one person is one of the system's European launch titles. (link is to DuggMirror since Digg crushed the original site)
• First 4 Figures has gotten the hint and is selling a statue of a character people actually care about: Ocarina of Time Adult Link.
• Wii owners in the UK can soon put Stars they've collected on Nintendo's site towards the purchase of Wii points.

Sony news:

• Impress Watch has the first screenshots of Tekken 5: Dark Ressurection on the PS3, which will be distributed through the Playstation Store.
• The next installment of the Burnout series, Burnout Dominator, will debut on the PS2 (yes, 2) and PSP next year.
• Newsweek examines what the recent corporate reshuffling at Sony really means. It's not always so clear as the analysts would like to believe.
• A new Devil May Cry artbook is set for release December 26th in Japan.
• The Final Fantasy Versus XIII trailer shown at E3 has only just now been released to the public.
• A Gamestop in Forth Worth sold a "refurbished" PSP memory stick that was actually full of porn.

Microsoft news:

• Current Geometry Wars record-holder K4rn4ge has plans to play a one billion point game over his winter break. What a good use of his time, especially since he says his top score of 360 million took 30 hours to do.
• Woo hoo! $14 worth of new cheats are available for Need for Speed Carbon! Who needs to play a game to unlock content!
• A "housekeeping" patch for Gears of War will be out before Christmas.
• Here's a comprehensive list for all the places Europeans can go to try to get into the Halo 3 beta.
• A couple guys from GameVideos.com and 1up aggressively analyze the Halo 3 ad.
• Take a picture, 'cause it might not last: Japanese people actually standing in line for 360s (thanks to the release of Blue Dragon).
• Dear Epic: Thank you for making your awful Mad World ad and inspiring dorks worldwide to rescore hundreds of game ads with ill-fitting music, like the Halo 3 ad with John Lennon's Instant Karma dubbed over for some Goddamned reason. No, this being the anniversary of his murder is not a valid reason.