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It's been a huge year for video games. Halo 3 became the biggest-selling game of all time, Sony horrified the Church of England by recreating an alien massacre in a revered cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man, and more people than ever went online to join multiplayer gamers.
But did the video game console makers achieve their promise of delivering a multimedia hub for the lounge? In many ways, yes. The PlayStation 3 ($1200 for the full version, $799 for the basic model) has done the best job of delivering a device that handles everything from gaming, DVD and high-definition playback to wireless networking, music, photos and web surfing.
But despite the arrival of some blockbuster titles this year, there just aren't enough good PS3 games yet.
I'm not using my Xbox 360 ($419 basic version; $650 full version) for those sorts of media applications, though it does many of the same things as the PS3. Instead, I use it almost solely for playing games and going online to join multiplayer gaming tournaments, such as Halo 3 and Crackdown.
The Xbox 360 has the upper hand in availability of a good range of high-quality games. That may change next year as game development for the PS3 accelerates, but you can expect it to be another big year for Xbox and the Nintendo Wii as well.
What can we expect to be delivered to the consoles next year? Here are some of my picks.
In the PlayStation camp, more firmware updates, more add-ons and hopefully a better range of games. A digital TV tuner gadget for the PS3 will be released, allowing PS3 owners to turn their console into a personal video recorder compatible with the free-to-air Freeview digital TV service.
There'll be an electronic programming guide and recorded TV will be stored on the PS3's hard drive. The PSP portable console will be tied even closer to its mother with a firmware update, allowing the PSP camera to be used to conduct video chats with other PS3 and PSP owners via the web.
Imagine that. You could be sitting in a Wi-fi hotspot zone in San Francisco, conferencing with your family gathered in the lounge in front of the PS3 in Auckland. Sony bosses have said the PS3 will catch up with the Xbox 360 in making available content downloads to the console - TV shows, movies, music, and the like.
Online additions to franchises, such as the ability to upload your Singstar karaoke performances to the web via the console for others to see, will be huge next year.
In the Xbox camp, it may turn a profit for Microsoft for the first time. The console market is a tough, long-term game. The hardware is often sold at a loss just to get people on board.
It's unlikely Microsoft will put out a radically overhauled Xbox console, given its release of the Xbox Elite, which features a high-definition port, but Microsoft is likely to make a call about building a high-definition player into the console. Will Microsoft add HD-DVD to the box, or ditch HD-DVD altogether and go with Blu-ray or even a dual-mode player? Too early to tell but the Xbox 360 needs hi-def out of the box.
In the Nintendo camp, the formula that has made the Wii such a hit needs mere fine-tuning next year. The continued success of the console relies on a fresh batch of new games. Nintendo struck gold with a number of titles that took advantage of the innovative Wii remote and Nunchuck controller, which added a new level of interactivity to games, even if overzealous kids have injured themselves in the process.
Nintendo has the weakest online platform of the three consoles, so work needs to be done in this department. A price cut (the Wii sells for $499 here) will probably do more than anything to keep Wii selling in truckloads.
