See, according to a report in Britain’s The Times, Will (guess he was spilling anonymously) not only bought the game and stayed up late, he called in the next morning and said he was “sick”, when really he was up to his eyeballs in knife-fights and dead Russians.

Harmless day off, you say? Would be, were “Will” not a judge. A judge of 15 years, at a county court in Britain.

Some will be upset at this, and think a judge is too important a man to blow off a day’s work for some video games. But you know what? Judges have to play games too, man. Judges have to play games too.

Meet the secret gamers [The Times, via VG247]

1,128 gamers were polled (note: it was a self-selected survey, not a blind study), with 562 owning an Xbox 360, 473 having a PS3 and 591 a Wii. Obviously, some respondents owned more than one console.

The results found that a crushing 60% of 360s had died, while only 16% of PS3s and 6% of Wiis had suffered the same fate. Even worse was the rate of repeat failre: of those who have reported a busted console, 32% say it’s happened more than once, with 19% saying it’s broken three times or more.

Count me in the latter camp; I’ve had two red-ringed consoles, and recently got back from my honeymoon to find my third 360’s power brick had simply ceased to function, despite the console not being turned on.

Being a self-selected survey, it’s likely the actual numbers across the board would be lower, but still; a little less than awful is still awful.

CNET UK’s games console reliability survey: 60 per cent of Xbox 360s have broken [CNET]

In its first five days on sale, the game sold 1.78 million units, with platform honours going to the 360, which accounted for “over one million” of those. In terms of the British market, that’s so many sales that if you combined every other game sold in Britain last week, Modern Warfare sold twice that amount.

The 1.78 million sold and £67.4 million raked in easily beats the country’s previous launch record-holder, GTAIV, which could “only” manage 927,000 units at £39.9 million.

Yes, while most other games on the planet would be happy to ship one million copies across the entire planet, three million units were sent just to the UK, a nation with a population of just over 60 million. So when you consider there are over 300 million people in the US, 33 million in Canada, 80 million in Germany, 21 million in Australia… yeah, you get the idea.

There are a lot of copies of Modern Warfare out there. Wonder how long it’ll take to sell them all?

3m MW2 shipped in to satisfy UK demand

You’ll see Wii Fit and Wii Sports Resort up there, which is awful swell of them, but if the 360 and PS3 versions of MW2 aren’t sitting in their spots next week I’ll eat whatever hat you put in front of me. Nacho, beret, bowler, doesn’t matter.

Matter of fact, FM2010 in third place is probably also in danger, what with MW2 also shipping on PC. I know, the British charts aren’t normally very PC-friendly (aside from, you know…FM2010), but if ever a PC game was going to crack it, it’s going to be this one.

A joint report issued by Enterbrain, the NPD Group and GfK Chart-Track has revealed that video game sales across the world’s three largest markets (the US, Japan and the UK) are down 6 per cent in 2009’s third quarter compared to the same time last year.

The breakdown? Sales are down 9 per cent in the US, and a whopping 19 per cent in the United Kingdom. Japan, however, bucks the trend, with game sales up 15 per cent year-on-year. Thanks, Dragon Quest IX!

International game sales down 6% over Q3 [Gamespot]

Why? Because the arrangement – which was first announced a few months back – means 360 owners get access to the “Sky Player”, a platform that will be integrated into the system’s dash in much the same Netflix is in the US.

And this player lets them access not only TV shows, documentaries and films, but sport as well. In particular, Premier League matches. Imagine the 360 getting DirectTV’s live NFL games in the US and you’re on the right track as to how important this could be to selling the system to a particular type of customer.

The October date was announced in the latest issue of Sky’s subscriber TV magazine [digital spy]

There will be three, all offered from October, all costing £285 ($526). The first will go on sale on October 1, with a pack consisting of a 250GB PS3 and either a copy of Infamous or two platinum games.

The next goes on sale on October 16, consisting of a 250GB PS3 and a copy of Uncharted 2, while on October 19 there’ll be a pack with a 250GB PS3, a Blu-ray remote and the movies Wolverine and The Dark Knight (Blu-Ray versions, of course).

SCE UK Announces 250GB PS3 Bundles [Edge]

It’s called the “Connection Ambassador Promotion”, and rewards people with 500 Wii Points for every new console connected to the internet: 500 points for the person recommending the service to a friend (the ambassador), and 500 points for the person actually connecting.

Sounds…well, OK. But the deal actually gets pretty sweet if you manage to convince 10-20 people. Get 10 people signed up and you’ll be able to download all first-party NES games for free. Get 20 and you can download every single Nintendo game on the Virtual Console free of charge, whether it be on NES, SNES or N64.

Topping the charts was not Batman, not a Wii game, not a DS game, and definitely not Beatles Rock Band, which didn’t even make the top 10.

No, coming in at #1 was the 360 version of Colin McRae: DiRT 2. Bit of a shock, seeing the sequel to a decent if unappreciated racer come in ahead of The Beatles and The Batman. Then again, neither of those games were advertised by a pair of tits.