No, it's the Wii, which looks set to enjoy its fourth successive Christmas atop the British charts. Fourth. I mean, come on. Mario Kart in the top 10? Another year or two of this and the game will be older than the people it's being bought for.

His poetry is bleak, but not bleak in a way that makes you feel empty. Bleak in the way that it makes the worst in video gaming things to be celebrated. In a perverse, self-masochistic kind of way.

Craig's got a new book out, called "64 Bits of Pain", and if you're looking to stuff a gamer's stocking with something other than a GameStop gift voucher this Christmas, this might be a good idea.

You can read some preview pages here. I'd recommend you start with Assassin's Creed.

[64 Bits of Pain]

I'm talking about Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 2010. There once was a time that Britain's best-selling Christmas games were as predictable as clockwork; there'd be a Call of Duty game, there'd be a Need For Speed game, and there'd be Pro Evolution Soccer.

There's no more telling indication of the slipping quality of Konami's series than a look at the British charts only a few weeks out from Christmas. While FIFA 10 - a game released in September - is still doing well, Pro Evo has failed to even make the top 40.

Mamba Games have picked up the publishing rights to the adventure game, and will release Machinarium to stores next March in the UK and Europe.

As an incentive to opt for the boxed copy, the retail Machinarium will ship with a walkthrough, A3 poster, art book and a copy of the game's excellent soundtrack, composed by Tomas Dvorak (which you can sample here).

It's obviously aimed at capturing new customers, but with a nice box and some enticing goodies, I'm sure a few people who already own - and love - the game will pony up again for a piece of it they can touch.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is at #1, followed by Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, as Britons gear up for the Christmas season stocking up on gifts for people who already own Wii Sports and Wii Fit and need something new.

The Wii went on sale in the UK in December 2006, so we're looking at an average of 2 million per year. Not bad. Sure, sales have slowed over the past 6-9 months, but I'm not going to be the one to rain on Nintendo's parade.

Six million is good, but if it wants to claim the title of best-selling British console of all time, it's got another four million to sell before it overtakes the PlayStation 2.

Wii hits six million in the UK [MCV]

Because Modern Warfare 2 has already been toppled from its perch, after only two weeks on sale. And it's been toppled by Nintendo's multiplayer platformer, incessant TV ads and family appeal winning out over MW2's formula of guns, multiplayer and rubbish story.

The dispute is centred around BBC's iPlayer, a service that allows people in the UK to watch BBC programs from their computer, PS3 or Wii. There were also plans to include the iPlayer on the Xbox 360, but because Microsoft insisted on restricting access to the player to paying, Gold subscribers, the BBC are withholding it.

Why? Because the BBC can't charge the British public for access to BBC programs, as use of the iPlayer is already covered under the TV license fee the Brits have to pay (Americans may wish to read this before continuing).

"Microsoft only wants to offer its users access to platforms it can charge for as this is the model it is pursuing" a BBC source told The Telegraph.

"This does not fit with the BBC's model and Microsoft will not budge at the moment. It is really frustrating for those involved on the BBC side who want to make sure iPlayer is rolled out on as many popular entertainment platforms as possible".

A more subdued, official statement from the BBC reads "BBC iPlayer has been extremely successful on PS3 and we recently re-launched on Nintendo Wii, from which the public response has been fantastic. People clearly want the BBC iPlayer on their gaming consoles, and we don't think Xbox users are any different, so we've had discussions with Microsoft about bringing the service to the platform."

Xbox 360 iPlayer launch delayed indefinitely [The Telegraph]

A report in The Times says they'll be used to "read and listen to coursework and practise on-screen tests in confined quarters". It follows a recommendation from Britain's maritime warfare school at HMS Collingwood in, Hampshire, England, aimed at encouraging students to do a little more study, and a little less of the other stuff they'd been doing instead of study, which had recently led to as many of 25% of electrical engineer students dropping out and re-taking courses.

Call me Doubting Thomas, but the PSP sounds like one of the worst devices on earth for the tasks at hand behind notebooks, netbooks, laptops and even the DS. Wonder how much it cost Sony for a little militaristic sponsorship?

Navy hopes the PlayStation will help officers sail through exams [The Times]

That's Beautiful Game Studios, the developers of the Championship Manager series. A Square Enix statement reads "Our current business model does not allow us to compete in a fast-changing industry with any degree of flexibility or commercial confidence".

"To achieve this, we will be restructuring Beautiful Game Studios, which will regrettably bring with it unavoidable job losses."

Ironically, 2009 was the first year since the great Football Manager/Champ Manager split that Square Enix's series (well, it used to be Eidos' series) actually stood up to the might of Sega's superior game.

Square say that both the developer and the series will live on, but how strongly BGS will be able to compete next year after job cuts and a thinly-veiled public vote of no-confidence from Square Enix is anyone's guess.

Cuts hit Champ Man studio [Develop]

Assassin's Creed II has dropped from the rafters and, with a flick of the wrists, shanked MW2 in the guts, the 360 version of Ubisoft's big franchise coming in at #2, with the PS3 iteration not far behind at #5.

See, according to a report in Britain's The Times, Will (guess he was spilling anonymously) not only bought the game and stayed up late, he called in the next morning and said he was "sick", when really he was up to his eyeballs in knife-fights and dead Russians.

Harmless day off, you say? Would be, were "Will" not a judge. A judge of 15 years, at a county court in Britain.

Some will be upset at this. Think a judge is too important a man to blow off a day's work for some video games. But you know what? Judge's gotta play games too, man. Judge's gotta play games too.

Meet the secret gamers [The Times, via VG247]

1,128 gamers were polled (note: it was a self-selected survey, not a blind study), with 562 owning an Xbox 360, 473 having a PS3 and 591 a Wii. Obviously, some respondents owned more than one console.

The results found that a crushing 60% of 360s had died, while only 16% of PS3s and 6% of Wiis had suffered the same fate. Even worse was the rate of repeat failre: of those who have reported a busted console, 32% say it's happened more than once, with 19% saying it's broken three times or more.

Count me in the latter camp; I've had two red-ringed consoles, and recently got back from my honeymoon to find my third 360's power brick had simply ceased to function, despite the console not being turned on.

Being a self-selected survey, it's likely the actual numbers across the board would be lower, but still; a little less than awful is still awful.

CNET UK's games console reliability survey: 60 per cent of Xbox 360s have broken [CNET]

In its first 5 days on sale, the game sold 1.78 million units, with platform honours going to the 360, which accounted for "over 1 million" of those. In terms of the British market, that's so many sales that if you combined every other game sold in Britain last week, Modern Warfare sold twice that amount.

The 1.78 million sold and £67.4 raked in easily beats the country's previous launch record-holder, GTAIV, which could "only" manage 927,000 units at £39.9m.

Yes, while most other games on the planet would be happy to ship one million copies across the entire planet, three million units were sent just to the UK, a nation with a population of just over 60 million. So when you consider there are over 300 million people in the US, 33 million in Canada, 80 million in Germany, 20 million in Australia...yeah, you get the idea.

There are a lot of copies of Modern Warfare out there. Wonder how long it'll take to sell them all?

3m MW2 shipped in to satisfy UK demand

You'll see Wii Fit and Wii Sports Resort up there, which is awful swell of them, but if the 360 and PS3 versions of MW2 aren't sitting in their spots next week I'll eat whatever hat you put in front of me. Nacho, beret, bowler, doesn't matter.

Matter of fact, FM2010 in third place is probably also in danger, what with MW2 also shipping on PC. I know, the British charts aren't normally very PC-friendly (aside from, you know...FM2010), but if ever a PC game was going to crack it, it's going to be this one.

A joint report issued by Enterbrain, the NPD Group and GfK Chart-Track has revealed that video game sales across the world's three largest markets (the US, Japan & UK) are down 6% in 2009's third quarter compared to the same time last year.

The breakdown? Sales are down 9% in the US, and a whopping 19% in the United Kingdom. Japan, however, bucks the trend, with game sales up 15% year-on-year. Thanks, Dragon Quest IX!

International game sales down 6% over Q3 [Gamespot]

Why? Because the arrangement - which was first announced a few months back - means 360 owners get access to the "Sky Player", a platform that will be integrated into the system's dash in much the same Netflix is in the US.

And this player lets them access not only TV shows, documentaries and films, but sport as well. In particular, Premier League matches. Imagine the 360 getting DirectTV's live NFL games in the US and you're on the right track as to how important this could be to selling the system to a particular type of customer.

The October date was announced in the latest issue of Sky's subscriber TV magazine [digital spy]

There will be three, all offered from October, all costing £285 (USD$464). The first will go on sale on October 1, with a pack consisting of a 250GB PS3 and either a copy of Infamous or two platinum games.

The next goes on sale on October 16, consisting of a 250GB PS3 and a copy of Uncharted 2, while on October 19 there'll be a pack with a 250GB PS3, a Blu-ray remote and the movies Wolverine and The Dark Knight (Blu-Ray versions, of course.

SCE UK Announces 250GB PS3 Bundles [Edge]

It's called the "Connection Ambassador Promotion", and rewards people with 500 Wii Points for every new console connected to the internet: 500 points for the person recommending the service to a friend (the ambassador), and 500 points for the person actually connecting.

Sounds...well, OK. But the deal actually gets pretty sweet if you manage to convince 10-20 people. Get ten people signed up and you'll be able to download all first-party NES games for free. Get 20 and you can download every single Nintendo game on the Virtual Console free of charge, whether it be on NES, SNES or N64.