Gamertell

Ah, obligatory end-of-the-year lists. How I love and hate you. So much work yet (we hope) so fun to read.

Here’s a recap the more interesting, note-worthy, popular or simply weird stuff we’ve reported during 2008. Here’s the first installment in this holiday two-parter, covering January through June, 2008. If you want to check out the second part, we sure as heck ain’t gonna stop ya.

Januuary 2008

• Microsoft gets sued over motion-sensitive controls and says “Sorry” to Xbox Livers for holiday down time
• Blu-ray becomes the de factor high definition disc format after Warner Bros. commits to the format (sorry HD DVD)
• Bill Gates gave his final CES keynote as CEO of Microsoft
• There’s some Gerstmanngate fallout.
• Nintendo gets sued, again, this time along with Sony
• Game text starts to shrink.
• GameBoy finally retires.

February 2008

• The Wii becomes and exercise and rehabilitation device.
• Guinness World Records releases first gaming edition of its infamous book (and we reviewed it).
• Nokia revamps and re-purposes the N-Gage name.
• Phil Harrison resigns from Sony.
• PC Gaming Alliance is formed.

March 2008

• EA’s interest in Take-2 gets a little competition.
• Teachers protest Bully
• Take-2 sued by shareholders (again)
• Activision and Harmonix settle lawsuit out of court while Gibson and Activision sue each other.
• Cloris Leachman!?
• We start to get glimpses at the Watchmen movie.
• Microsoft continues to denounce Blu-ray.
• Sony’s Playstation Network gets hacked

April 2008

• The last of the Sixaxis controllers head to stores, Dualshock 3 released.
• Rachael Ray must be stopped!
• Stop Uwe Boll, sign this petition.
• N-Gage service begins.
• Games for Windows stop print edition, goes online only.
• Nintendo stops Pokemon card ring.
• Dan Hsu resigns from EMG.
• Stop playing with your Patapon in public!
• Ghost in the Shell to get a live-action film.
• Happy Earth Day: Most games now cost less than a tank of gas
• MADD mad about GTAIV

May 2008

• Ireland begins banning violent games.
• LittleBigPlanet gets delayed.
• GTAIV ads are pulled, Take-2 fights back.
• The Sims start to shop at Ikea.
• WiiWare launches.
• Penny Arcade makes leap from webcomic to game.
• Jake Gyllenhaal named the Prince of Persia for live-action film.

June 2008

• James Cameron pulls a Spielberg, decides to work with Ubisoft on movie-game project
• Game systems ain’t so green.
• Super Monkey Ball available on the Apple App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch.
• DiCaprio to portray Bushnell in Atari (the movie)
• Postal wins an award.
• Nintendo vs. Nyko
• British Wii-exercisers damaging their homes.
• Microsoft decides to drop the Xbox 360’s price.
• Guitar Hero action figures?

Biggest Non-News:

• My Live Blog of my first Bawls G33k B33r