Industry and multi-console news:

• EA has announced that Madden NFL has sold five million copies over ten different systems since its August release, making it the best selling game of the year.
• The official website for BioShock has opened.
• Adam Sandler has donated a Playstation 3 to a family fighting cancer from his home state of New Hampshire. The daughter has bone cancer that has spread to her lungs, and the son has lymphoma.
• A New Zealand transport spokesman blames "Playstations and X-boxes" for recent roadway deaths, "for making teens think they can drive stupidly and just push the reset button if anything goes wrong." Prior to 1978, all teenagers were perfect drivers.
• PC World looks at the history of game consoles as seen through their TV ads.
• Bonus Round is a new show being produced at GameTrailers that hopes to be a Crossfire for video games. Episode 2 features Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, composer Tommy Tallarico, and Scarface (the game) producer Peter Wanat talking about the Wii. It's an interesting idea, with a few flaws, like: A) Talking about whether the Wii "works" as a system has been beaten into the ground, and B) I do not actually want to hear what Tommy Tallarico thinks about anything.
• Gamasutra has an interview with the author of Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Superheroes and Make-Believe Violence, talking about violence in video games. On an unrelated note, the author looks uncannily like James Urbaniak.
• Sega and Hello Kitty company Sanrio have agreed to a "tie-up," meaning "for example, Hello Kitty may appear in our video game software." They will also "discuss jointly developing new products based on their stable of characters."
• Kotaku has an interview with Outkast's Big Boi about his involvement with the Def Jam games and gaming in general. The interviewer sounds so much like a white guy trying to be street that it hurts.
• The Hartford Courant notes that Joe Lieberman, who has been fighting against sex and violence in video games since the Night Trap days, also takes campaign contributions from the WWE.
• Big titles like Twilight Princess and Gears of War are $39 this week at Target.
• Game Studies is an "international journal of computer game research" and also probably too heady for 99% of the population to want to read. Features articles like "Street Fighter and The King of Fighters in Hong Kong: A Study of Cultural Consumption and Localization of Japanese Games in an Asian Context."

PC news:

• Armchair Arcade has put up the first part of a feature on the history of computer role playing games. This part focuses on 1980 through 1983.
• A new book has debuted called Unreal Tournament Game Programming for Teens. It's just like a regular Unreal programming book, but more rad.
• The Multi Theft Auto team has released a new montage of footage, teasing some of the features in their upcoming beta version.
• Acclaim has begun pre open beta testing for their martial arts MMORPG 9 Dragons, available for all players.
• A 2007 MMO calendar is being produced by MMO Portal, with all proceeds going to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The calendar features original art from 12 different games, signed by their respective developers.
• CVG has a short interview with Half-Life plot man Marc Laidlaw.

Nintendo news:

• Nintendo will be launching the DS Lite in South Korea in January, and the Wii in late 2007.
• If you've resigned yourself to believing you'll never get a hole-in-one in Wii Sports yourself, you can watch someone else do it.
• I'm kind of surprised that this Link graffiti from back in September is still up, though admittedly looking a little worse for wear.
• Here's another gallery of Flash games for the Wii.
• The LA Times talks about Nintendo using "alpha moms" as grass roots campaigners to get parents interested in the Wii.

Sony news:

• Game Brink has a review of the import version of Armored Core 4, complete with several videos.
• This video seems to demonstrate that the PS3's portrait slideshow mode uses some kind of face detection algorithm.
• Fan art: Shadow of the Colossus + Katamari = Uh?

Microsoft news:

• New cars have been added to the Marketplace for Test Drive Unlimited, including one free car.
• The smaller 360 CPU reported yesterday has been delayed to mid 2007.
• Capcom plans to release six new 360 games in 2007.
• Armored Core 4 will hit the 360 in Japan on March 22.