And the winner of the console wars is ...

That said, don’t look for game studios to create marquee titles for legacy systems at this stage. While PS2 games may still sell well — two of the best-selling games this holiday season were, in fact, PS2 titles: Activision’s "Guitar Hero II" and Electronic Arts’ sports juggernaut "Madden NFL 07” — at some point, gamers and studios need to move on.

Rockstar Games, makers of the iconic PS2 franchise “Grand Theft Auto” released a PS2 game, “Bully,” late last year. But according to company spokesperson Rodney Walker, all development heretofore will be for next-gen systems.

Capcom isn’t pulling back that quickly, with PS2 titles slated until the end of 2008. “But after 2008? Not so much,” says Kramer. “As more PS3s and 360s come out into the wild, it’ll be easier for Capcom to get a return on its investment.”

Sometimes, a great game can move consoles, like “Halo” did for the original Xbox. But the notion of console-exclusivity is increasingly rare these days, unless, as Karakker puts it, the hardware company has a bag of money to give over to the developer. (Xbox and Halo are products of Microsoft Corp. and MSNBC.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)

“Gears of War,” the best-selling game of December, didn’t ship with the Xbox 360 when it launched in November 2005 — it hit shelves almost a year later. But its popularity and critical acclaim netted it a whopping 815,700 units sold in one month. It wasn’t “Halo,” but it was darn close, and probably had a good deal to do with the 360’s banner year-end sales of 1.1 million units.

Again, availability probably also played a part in the Xbox 360s popularity this holiday season. Microsoft definitely played up the fact that the Xbox 360 was well-stocked on store shelves — while the newer Wii and PS3 were as scarce as hen’s teeth.

But what could explain the other top-selling system of the season, the Nintendo DS? Yep, this pocket-sized handheld actually trumped all the home consoles this holiday, selling 1.6 million units domestically, and a whopping 10 million since its 2004 launch. That’s a lot of “Nintendogs.”

The success of the DS can largely be attributed to quirky little titles like “Nintendogs” and “Brain Age.” Frazier says that Nintendo was smart to focus not only on their established audience, but on a market that doesn’t necessarily characterize themselves as gamers. “Nintendo created innovative content that wasn’t necessarily core-gamer focused,” she says. “But at the same time, they didn’t abandon their current audience.”

Clearly, the audience for games is bigger than ever — and that’s not just evidenced by the console and software sales in December. Overall, the game industry saw a record year, with revenues of $12.5 billion, up 20 percent from 2005.

Will 2007 be another banner year? Or was the excitement of the console launches the high tide that lifted all boats? Too soon to tell. But one thing’s for sure: It’s a good time to be in games. And to be a gamer.

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