The second generation console wars are over, you say? Somebody forgot to tell Microsoft.

Perhaps largely on the strength of the Xbox Live online service, sales trends for the Xbox are on the upswing, up 6% quarter on quarter, compared to 22% and 35% drops for the Nintendo GameCube and the Sony Playstation 2, respectively. Sony still has a commanding lead in market share, however, but the Xbox is making gains.

Sales of the XBL kit were up 17% in August, and eight more countries in Europe and Asia are due to come online soon.

Slashdot has linked to a humorous look at the console wars over at Pointlesswasteoftime.com. The first part is on the GameCube, the second (which is rather short) on the Xbox, and the third on the PlayStation 2.

As I said, the page on the Xbox is a short one, but it does contain this tidbit:

There is a feel of inevitable victory with the X-Box line, despite the fact that this version is still 40 million units behind the Playstation 2 in sales and that Microsoft could have made more money off the expensive machine if it had wrapped them in hundred-dollar bills and fired them out of a cannon at passing pedestrians. But of course, that's the point. One gets the feeling that Bill Gates is willing to spend $500 per unit on the X-Box 2 and mail them out for free like AOL trial disks if that's what it takes to win.

The summary conclusion is that "the past belongs to Nintendo, the present to Sony, the future to Microsoft." Although some might disagree.

According to Xbox365, ATI Technologies announced yesterday that they have an agreement with Microsoft to develop new technologies for future Xbox products. It looks very much like this means that the Xbox 2's graphics processor will be done by Nvidia's biggest rival, possibly a result of ongoing disagreements between MS and Nvidia over costs of the original Xbox's graphics processor.

UPDATE: There's a much more detailed analysis of this situation including some rampant speculation, over at News.com.

GameSpot is reporting that Dustin "HP Darkman" Langton, winner of the Halo National Championship, has signed a management contract with Major League Gaming and also has an endorsement deal with LASR Accessories.

GameMarketWatch.com announced on July 16 that sales of the Xbox version of Halo had reached three million units worldwide.

Reuters has reported that Microsoft's Home and Entertainment division, which produces the Xbox and contains developers like Bungie Studios and others that make games for it, lost $190 million USD in Q3 2002, which ended on March 31. This compares to a loss of $97 M in the same quarter the year before. Quarterly revnue was nearly cut in half, dropping from $943 M to $493 M.

For all those who dream of working at Bungie, but aren't game designers, here is your chance:

There's a rumor running at Xbox365 that interprets some recent trends as meaning that Nintendo intends to pull a Sega and go software-only soon. Consider the source, but give it a look anyway.

... then don't confuse one for the other. That's part of the excellent advice in an article penned by Jaime Case Griesemer entitled Be A Game Designer 101 and posted at Bungie.net.

Ouch.

PlanetXbox has the latest console sales figures from Media Create... and for Xbox supporters, the picture is not pretty.

The Xbox sold 3,600 units, up 600 from the previous week. That's good.

What's not good is the PlayStation 2 sold 90,400 that same week. No, that's not a typo. Ninety thousand. In other words, the PS2 is outselling the Xbox by about a 25:1 ratio.

We've just added the recently captured QT5 version (4 Mb, 480x360) of the television commercial for Halo that's been airing in the Canadian market this spring and was captured by Bill and Bob Maguire. Thanks to Louis Wu at HBO for the notice.