The Kartel did, so went and paid a visit to FAILSAFE Creative Group, an ominous-sounding company that specialises in the production of trailers for the video game industry.

FAILSAFE have produced both trailers and behind-the-scenes diaries for games like Metal Gear Solid 4, Unreal Tournament III, Dark Void and Stranglehold. Sometimes they create original content (ie, stuff with actors), most times they're tasked with cutting, editing and arranging cinematic and gameplay footage provided by a publisher or developer.

It's an interesting tour of the people and processes behind something most of us take for granted, so if you need to kill ten minutes over the Christmas break, it's worth a quick read.

An inside look at how game trailers are created [The Kartel]

If you want, you could pretend that all of those boxed Wiis are just flowing straight onto your computer desk. I love production porn. Brian Crecente

While gamers vaguely murmur that a PS3 North American delay might, indeed, be imminent, Nintendo, at least, seems to know how to mass produce a console. While Sony managed to overestimate the number of consoles they'd get out this year, Nintendo actually looks to overproduce the number of Wiis they'll be able to get produced by December 31st by almost 100%.

Via Joystiq:

Briefing.com reports (subscription only) that, according to UBS, 2 million Wii consoles were completed in Q3 (July-September) to support Nintendo's upcoming Q406 global console launch, beginning November 19th in North America. In addition, "at least 7 mln and potentially as high as 9 mln more units are in the build plan for 4Q06." The report continues, "this production ramp handily exeeds [sic] a publicly announced tgt for 6 mln units to ship by yearend"; however, Nintendo had previously announced plans to ship 6 million units by the end of their fiscal year (ending March 31, 2007) and only 4 million by the end of the calendar year. The language appears to indicate the possibility of building, if not shipping, as many as 11 million Wii consoles by the end of the calendar year.

Which is great news. More Nintendo consoles available means that gamers who are planning on sitting on Santa's lap this Christmas and asking him to bring you a Wii are likely to be spared a very nasty Christmas Eve surprise. Florian Eckhardt

Sony reiterated to analysts that while they will have 400,000 units available at launch, they plan to air-freight another 800,000 units to U.S. stores by the end of the year. Sony said they will be able to do this because they expext Blu-Ray laser supplies to improve drastically. Last week, Sony told me that more than three million Cell chips had already been shipped to their manufacturers. IBM said that they continue to produce the chips well within expectations, so this second large shipment sounds very doable.

While 400,000 sounds a bit low for the initial shipment, and it's way lower then they wanted it to be, I think the key to Sony's launch is really going to be how quickly they can reship and what their failure rates will be with the console. Those are the two things that really screwed Microsoft's launch of the 360. Brian Crecente

More on PS3 Shipment Plans [Next-Gen]

Every time I post anything that gets picked up by Go Nintendo, the gibbering fan boy fools in their comment sections start shrieking about how I shill for the Playstation 3 (a console I have posted almost nothing positive about, ever) and how I'm prejudiced against the Wii (a console to which I have looked forward with nothing but sheer enthusiasm, although this was sadly dampened by my recent hands-on time with the console).

The fact that I am now picking up a negative article on the Wii from Go Nintendo themselves is not without a tinge of delectable irony. Courtesy of the GN boys, this news: there's apparently some serious quality problems with the Wiimote, and this may actually delay the console's launch.

From the translation:

The factory has received Wii controller's purchasing order and its sample, but is still stucked in testing phrase. From feedbacks of testers, currently the Wiimote and nunchuck still have a lot of small issues, such as buttons aren't sensitive, hard to press 2 buttons together, and even no response occasionally, and the current sample is easy to get damaged, using the controller in normal situation will produce some noise, etc. Entering Sept, if the above hardware problems cannot be fixed, it will directly affect Wii's selling strategy.

Also, the factory has not received the Wii console from Nintendo yet, currently they are testing samples using a dedicated machine only for testing, which means after an up-to-standard sample is produced, it still needs to be sented back to Japan to be tested by Nintendo for the 2nd time. Wii controller uses bluetooth technology for real-time data transfer, and infrared for "space location"(space as in that Eistein(?)) guy Time-Space thingy), and the 2nd phrase of testing procedures maybe even tougher!

Ouch, that's bad news for all of us hoping for a Wii in the next few months. Let's hope it's not true: I found using the Wiimote loosey-goosey enough without production problems on top of that. Florian Eckhardt

Wiimote production issues? [Go Nintendo]

The bad news? Even that might not be enough to guarantee everyone who wants one a DS Lite:

Nintendo is targeting 2 million units per month output by the end of summer, according to a Bloomberg report this week - but if the DS Lite proves to be as successful elsewhere in the world as it has been in Japan, even that may not be enough.

Japanese consumers are currently snapping up around 600,000 units of the DS Lite every month, leaving just 1.4 million per month for every other territory in the world. Nintendo may soon be faced with having to increase capacity once again, to avoid a repeat of the massive shortages in the channel which were seen in many territories last Christmas and early in the New Year.

Nintendo deserves every ounce of their success, but I find the runaway sensation of the DS to be mind boggling. It also really puts into perspective just how ludicrously paltry the PS3's 1 million consoles available worldwide at launch really is. Florian Eckhardt

Nintendo to boost DS production to over 2m [GamesIndustry.biz]

The first rumor is that, currently, the innards of a Playstation 3 are too large to functionally fit in the case. Although fat people can suck in their massive guts or cram fists fulls of cellulite down into a slimming girdle, no such option exists for the PS3, meaning that either the sleek and empty cases they've been showing off will have to grow larger to accommodate the electronic bulk or the components themselves will have to shrink... and soon.

The second rumor? Sony is still bidding on components. As Inquirer states: "This means the development is far from final, and it will be debugging up to, and in a Microsoft overheating manner, past the last minute. Not a good sign."

The last bit of bleakness is the rather astounding news that the OS that the PS3 will be running on will consume 25% of the system's core and 18.75% of the system RAM! Holy crap! Don't we buy consoles so we don't have to deal with that sort of OS overhead?

PS3 currently too big and too clever? [Guardian Gamesblog]

Still can't find an Xbox 360? Dean Takahashi offers an explaination over at Mercury News. He cites Microsoft's use of a German memory maker, Infineon Technologies, as one reason for the lack of availability. Takahashi's piece levels the barrel at Infineon, when Peter Moore and Microsoft have both been reluctant to target a single factor in explaining away the shortages. Takahashi's piece will likely stir some controversy up, it's one of the first big fingers (other than the all-popular middle finger) that's been pointed at the shortage mess.

Memory Chips Are One Reason For The Xbox 360 Shortage [Mercury News]

Sony announced that production of 25-gig Blu-ray discs would be underway at its Shizuoka, Japan plant in February, with disc production ramping up at the Terre Haute, Indiana and Salzburg, Austria plants in May and June, respectively. Aiming for a target of five million units per month for the U.S. and 2.5 million units per month for Europe and Japan. The 25-gig Blu-ray disc is single-layer, Sony will also be producing the 50-gig dual-layer discs this year. In the announcement, Sony Executive Vice President Bob Hurley said this: "We will support all of our customers during the launches of BD video and PlayStation 3 in the coming year and beyond."

Now, about that PlayStation 3 news we've been waiting for....

Sony DADC Announces Global Blu-ray Disc Roll-out [PR]