Fucking hell, Angel's let himself go a bit.

Well, we’ve recently had a pop at Microsoft and Sony so, in the interests of fairness, it must be Nintendo’s time.  What can we have a moan about?  Oh, here’s something.  In a reversal of usual console pricing, the Wii (which is over two years old) is actually going up in price.  Despite the fact that it’s sold about a trillion units since yesterday.

The Wii is going to cost retailers an extra £22 now and it is up to them if they want to add that to their prices.  What do you reckon?  They are blaming the exchange rate between the pound and yen, even though Nintendo still think that England is simply a level in a platforming game somewhere.  Greedy pricks.

Also, in unrelated and uninteresting news, Nintendo have ceased supplying white and silver DS Lites.  Shame really as a white DS Lite is a thing of sleek beauty.  Even if most of the games on it are dogshit.  Nintendo are all about the red, black, green and turquoise ones apparently.

Anyway, here’s hoping that Nintendo’s fanbase carry themselves with a lot more dignity than Killzone 2’s.  We don’t want to go through that again in a hurry.

Want.

So, thanks to Microsoft’s ridiculous pricing polices, XBLA is dead to most of us old-time supporters of the service but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from hyping up their new ‘Days of Arcade’ release schedule.

They did something similar last year with the ‘Summer of Arcade’ but that was mostly horseshit with a lovely bit of Braid thrown in.  These days everything is fucked on XBLA though.  1600M$P for Watchmen?  An episode of Watchmen in fact.  Spit on my balls, Microsoft.

Anyway, it kicks of on March 18th with Hasbro Family Games which appears to be an overall game engine that then allows you to play Hasbro board games on it.  Of course, these board games are set to cost 800M$P each and that includes Connect 4.

It’s followed by Outrun Online Arcade (win!), Lode Runner (better be 400M$P but won’t be), Capcom’s Flock (interesting until you recall Capcom’s last few efforts on XBLA), The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix (expect to pay through the fucking nose) and Uno Rush (Uno Gash).

And in FAILY NEWS, Microsoft have announced a temporary price cut for a year’s Xbox Live subs.  They’ll cost £34.99.  I paid less than thirty for thirteen months but anyway…

Seriously, has anyone been stupid enough to pay full price for Live in the last two years?  Really?  REALLY?

True that.

Sadly not this Stringer.  He’d sort them out, all business-like.  But no, some fat guy who looks like he’s having a stroke is in charge of them now. Will this mean they’ll stop acting like fucks and finally start being the Sony we used to quite like ten years ago? Probably not.

Still, whilst I’m using a thin Wire reference to make a news story here’s some more info about Sony. Rock Band is coming to the PSP (for no discernable reason), Playstation joypads give you rashes and apparently PSN revenues total $180m, Xbox Live revenues total over $1bn. Blah.

Sometimes £39.99 just isn't enough.

Fucking hell.  DLC is going crazy right now.  We’ve reviewed individual things but we’re going to struggle to keep up so here’s the latest on all this DLC bollocks.

Unreal Tournament 3:  The latest rather blaverage sequel to the best ever FPS gets the ‘Titan’ pack which offers new maps, characters, vehicles and modes and is COMPLETELY FREE.  Win!  The game’s a bit duff but even so, FREE!!!

Fifa 09:  The new ‘Ultimate Team’ mode is apparently some sort of collect up the players/fantasy football thing.  It sounds intriguing and adds ten new achievements (hopefully fixing the fucking awful 10v10 one).  Expect a cost.  Expect 800 M$P (guess).

SKATE 2:  New challenges, new levels and new achievements.  Sounds good.  Sounded even better when the DLC hit and it was 400 M$P.  However that only covers SOME of the new achievements.  It looks like two more packs at 400 M$P are on the way.  That’s on top of the 800 M$P video pack that makes video replays better or something.  Fuck off, EA.

Mirror’s Edge:  800 M$P buys you seven new time trial maps.

Tomb Raider:  This gets a new ‘Beneath The Ashes’ pack which is 800 M$P and adds 125 gamerscore (expect another pack then).  Whatever.

Ah well, it looks like EA have reverted to their usual tricks and are looking like early contenders for ‘Biggest Twats of 09’.  I wonder what Namco have got up their sleeves?

Cadavarous.

Ugh.  We hate weeks like this.  All the big xmas games are out now and there’s nothing on the release lists worth mentioning and all anyone involved in games journalism wants to talk about is some GTA4 bollocks download.

The main reason for this is it makes it harder for us to nick find any decent news.  It seems this week all we’ve got is Nintendo saying that they are single handedly driving the whole industry, Halo Wars being the most downloaded demo ever and Microsoft claiming that January was Live’s most successful ever month.  We don’t care.

It'll end with Richard Blackwood.

Urgh!  What is it?  Why’s it all different?!

Well, sexy readers, PEOWW was a year old last November and so it was probably about time we started doing things properly (ie – not in Notepad).  So, what we’ve got here is the new PEOWW which is all sat on a database and shit like that.  I dunno.  It’ll be just as ropey as before but now you’ll be able to search for reviews and comment on things.  It’ll also mean that we might start updating during the week and stuff.

Old PEOWW had over 130 reviews and almost 60 features and we’re hard at work maxing out Skate 2 importing them in and making sure everything works but for now, here’s what we’ve got.  Ta from PEOWW.