Joystiq [PlayStation]

Here in the States, we've grown accustomed to certain luxuries: subsidized gasoline for our free Hummers (hey, gotta stimulate that economy!); a complimentary 72oz soda with every purchase (just buy anything!); a lifetime supply of type 2 diabetes; and, of course, monthly updates from NPD charting the sales numbers of the major video game consoles. Our friends in the UK aren't so fortunate. So when we get a peek behind that curtain, we look to share it with you.

And here, courtesy of UK retailer GAME's first-half fiscal statement, we find data from GfK Chart-Track for sales up to June 27th, 2009. Unsurprisingly, Nintendo is in the lead with the DS, having sold 2.7m in the past year, bringing its total up to 9.1m units (that includes 300,000 DSi units sold since launch). The Wii is in second place with 5.4m, up 2.3 from last year. And then we get to the main attraction: 360 and PS3 sales.

You'll recall that in February, Microsoft claimed the 360 bested the PS3 in overall European sales by 1m units, citing GfK Chart-Track data again. In the UK, the Xbox is siting pretty with 3.9m units, up 1.7 from last year, while the PS3 is at 2.2m, up 900k from last year (and, coincidentally, right where Microsoft would've been a year ago). In between the "big boys" is the PSP, with 3.3m consoles sold, up 500k from last year.

It's weird: despite their genetic differences (three stomachs? gross!) the video game shopping trends of UK citizens sound an awful lot like those in the States.

During an interview with GameBusiness.jp, Sony's product planning division head honcho, Naoya Matsui, commented that Sony always had plans to go UMD-less, and that the PSP Go is the fruition of all that planning. "We'd planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning," Matsui said. He further makes his case by stating, "But if we'd simply released the hardware, there wouldn't have been much for everyone to enjoy. We needed to prepare the right environment for it first - things like the transferral [sic] of content with the PS3 and PSN, and PC software to manage content like music and movies such as Media Go."

Matsui explains that part of the progression of the PSP to the PSP Go is that Sony had to wait until digital content was on par with physical media, and that the timing now is right. That's one of the reasons Sony is still selling the existing PSP alongside the Go. Well, that, and it's probably not a good idea to have a single handheld that costs as much as a Wii.

[Via Edge]

Here's a rather interesting game from a small Russian developer. Currently without a publisher, U-Wars is a third-person shooter that takes place primarily underwater. Players will still be able to duck behind cover, but the mechanic gets an interesting twist in the absence of gravity. With supposedly destructible environments, there's a lot of potential in the game's combat: imagine ducking behind cover, thrusting up, and shooting some harpoons at enemies below. If done properly, the underwater setting offers the potential for a lot of fun.

Underwater combat isn't entirely new, as it's been seen in games like Tomb Raider Underworld and Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow. It'll be interesting to see how U-Wars fares once it finds a publisher and makes its way to PC, Xbox 360 and PSP.

Check out a video after the break.