LogFAQs > #876410945

The third direction is what made the DS sell like hot cakes: weird gimmicks that explored with casual fans. Animal Crossing was one the Gamecube but probably made more sense on a portable with a clock. Nintendogs was a stupid tamagatchi thing. It was barely even a game. But man did it blow up. Brain Age took the DS and turned it sideways like a book. It became one of the hottest piece of edutainment that we've seen, especially on a handheld. Both Brain Age and Nintendogs had many sequels in a short amount of time. Each sold something crazy like 10 million copies on the system. The PSP had.. hang on, I'm looking it up because it had to have something. Yeah, it had Ridge Racer and Wipeout and GTA: Liberty City Stories but it was all smaller versions of games that were better on the PS2. There weren't really any interesting titles that felt new and fresh. The DS kind of trashed it by simply having interesting software. games and experiences that you couldn't have anywhere else. The PSP would right the ship eventually (I love that system) but 2005 is where it went from being an interesting console race to being a clear DS win.

The other big thing that hit in 2005 was the Xbox 360. It was HD. It launched with a headset. It had achievements and achievement points. It had multiple SKUs which was a new and weird thing. There were shooters galore. The big game was Perfect Dark Zero which was the classic launch dud. PGR3 and Call of Duty 2 also came out with it and were apparently pretty good.

I don't think any of those games are super memorable though, not today. The big game changer was Xbox Live Arcade, a service for getting classic arcade games on the cheap. There was one game that stood out above all others: Geometry Wars. Geometry Wars was eye-opening because of how much fun it was and how it was priced ($5). On XBLA, every game had a demo, every game had a size restriction (I think it was 50mb at first), and every game had achievements. XBLA wasn't a big deal yet but we'll be coming back to this in future years.

Holiday 2005 is one of the weakest holiday seasons in my memory. The big games are like.. Shadow the Hedgehog, Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, Mario Kart DS and the 360 launch. If you liked the smaller titles that came out throughout the year, though, 2005 was pretty great.
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xyzzy