Last week, newly installed president of EA Sports Peter Moore told GameSpot that August sales of one title would prove third-party publishers aren’t being squeezed out by console-maker-made exclusives. Ironically, the game in question wasn’t an EA Sports title. Instead, it was BioShock, a PC and Microsoft Xbox 360 action adventure game made by bitter EA rival Take-Two Interactive.

“I’m particularly pleased with the tremendous market response to 2K’s BioShock,”

said Zelnick.

“It is reported we are the top-selling title at GameStop, less than a month since launch. We have already shipped more than 1.5 million units. Clearly we have a new hit franchise on our hands. And this one was developed internally, and we own the IP. We’re proving our ability to diversify Take-Two’s product portfolio.”

The most popular game rentals according to Rogers Video for the period ending Sept. 9.

1. Bioshock (Xbox 360)
2. Two Worlds (Microsoft Xbox 360)
3. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Nintendo Wii)
4. Liar (PlayStation 3)
5. Medal of Honor: Airborne (Xbox 360)
6. Mario Party 8 (Nintendo Wii)
7. John Woo Presents Stranglehold (Xbox 360)
8. Madden NFL 2008 (Microsoft Xbox 360)
9. Carnival Games (Nintendo Wii)
10. Stuntman: Ignition (Xbox 360)

BioShock Story

The game takes place during 1960 in Rapture, a fictional underwater city built on the mid-Atlantic seabed. Constructed in late 1946 by industrialist Andrew Ryan, Rapture was envisioned as an Objectivist utopia, entirely self-sufficient and geothermally powered by submarine volcanoes. During the early 1950s, Rapture’s population peaked at several thousand, though ranks of elite grew out from the rest, discomforting many

BioShock is a first-person shooter video game by 2K Boston/2K Australia. The game is a PC and Xbox 360 title. It was released on August 21, 2007 in North America and on August 24, 2007 in Europe and Australia.

Microsoft has refused to blink in the video game console war with Sony, revealing that it will ely on exciting new games such as the third instalment of Halo to boost sales of its Microsoft Xbox 360 rather than entering a price war with its rival.

Sony slashed the cost of its advanced PlayStation 3 console this week in the US by $100, a move that turned up the heat on Microsoft.

Yet Microsoft has refused to take the bait and has instead unveiled a Spartan Green version of the Microsoft Xbox 360 to accompany the highly anticipated Halo game. The decision to maintain its pricing structure comes despite the company missing its target for 12 million global console shipments by the end of June after it reported it had sold 11.6 million units thus far.

Shane Kim, the head of Microsoft Games Studios, said:

“We have no desire, no need, to react to anything the competition has done … We feel really great about the Xbox 360 right now.”

Microsoft has sold nearly six million Xbox 360 consoles in the US, although it was released much earlier than the latest incarnation of the PlayStation that has achieved a disappointing 1.4 million sales in the region. Sony has suffered as a result of Nintendo’s Wii console that has shifted 2.8 million units since its launch last year.

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Nokia has started development on at least one cross-platform game, codenamed “Project White Rock”, which will offer an identical experience on PCs and N-Gage mobile phones, Pocket Gamer reports.

RedLynx is, apparently, developing the title, which will run at the same resolution on both devices, and features over 1,000 lines of recorded dialog. Whether PC gamers will be forbidden from using a mouse, or more than a dozen keys, isn’t recorded.

The most popular mobile phone games often ape their desktop cousins - sharing branding and parts of the gameplay, though few developers would claim the mobile experience is as good as that possible with a decent screen, speakers, and controller.

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