It's been a hectic year for the gaming industry, with new platforms, interesting games and even the odd moral panic.

As ever the year kicked off with the CES show in Las Vegas. This annual jamboree was dominated by the fight for the next generation of storage, Blu-ray or HD DVD.
Thankfully for the gaming community the fight's over; Sony is putting Blu-ray drives in its next-generation console, and Microsoft hasn't fully committed to using HD DVD in the Xbox 360. 

Bill Gates's legendary luck failed him at the show when a game crashed his system during a demo, allowing his competitors to twist the knife.

It's been a bumper year for platforms, with two new examples from Nintendo, a new Sony handheld, the Xbox launch and speculation about the forthcoming PlayStation 3 from Sony.

In May the new Game Boy Micro was announced, the smallest handheld games platform on the market. The dual screen DS got good reviews when it was launched, but sales have been disappointing for the company and the future looks bleak, sad news considering that it invented the handheld gaming sector. 

No such problems for the Sony PSP. It sold like hotcakes from the start, even though the Europeans got the system six months after the rest of the world.

To make matters worse Sony blocked imports, showing that the company is only in favour of free markets when it suits. It was also less than happy about the consoles being used for porn. 

Sony faced problems over cracking, after the copy protection system was quickly defeated, not once but twice. The platform also got its first malware this year. 

On the console front Sony confirmed that it will be using the new Cell processor in the Playstation 3, due out next spring. But it faced a product recall in September over faulty PS2s.