Welcome to “Carbonated News,” GameCola’s news column that gets you up-to-date with all the latest gaming news.  Or, as I like to call it, the column that desperately needs a new author, because I don’t keep up-to-date with the news.  In fact, I skip over news stories more quickly than your average hopscotch champion.  I think this column would do better if it was written by someone who knew what he was talking about.

In my defense, though, videogame news tends to be really boring.  It’s all about companies I don’t know promoting games I’ve never heard of.  Most news stories look something like this:

Company A Thinks Game X Will Be
A Best-Seller

Company A’s Vice President of Marketing made an official statement today saying that they are planning on sales of Game X to increase profit during the spring quarter. “We hope the game sells in the millions,” said Mr. Doodlebug today. “A strong first quarter will be a great way to start off the year.”

Some variation of that story appears at least twice a week on gaming news sites.  And if that’s news, I’ll eat my hat, by jingo.

So, that’s why we here at “Carbonated News” don’t give news updates every day, or week, even.  There’s just not that much news we can find that’s interesting enough.  Well, that and we’re lazy.  Why else would we write a column about December so late that it’s already two weeks into January?

Anyway, here’s the news for December 2009:

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 made over $500 million in its first week of sales. Attempting to capitalize on the game’s popularity, President Obama ordered that 30,000 new troops be sent into Afghanistan. What can we say? The man is certainly dedicated to generating new jobs for Americans.  The President later went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize, although we have no idea how.
• Assassin’s Creed 2 is releasing downloadable content in January and February. Few details have been released about the DLC, besides the fact that they’re both 1 GB in size and…whoa, what? 1 GB? Seriously? Man, I remember when people thought a game was big if it was 3 MB.
• On Days of our Lives, it was finally revealed that Nicole switched her baby with Sami’s. She attempted to flee the country with Baby Sydney, only to be knocked unconscious at a bus station by a mysterious stranger.  The baby was once again kidnapped, this time by Anna Dimera.  Meanwhile, our heroes are going crazy in their attempts to find the little child.
• Various celebrities I don’t know are providing voices for Mass Effect 2.  Mr. Doodlebug, EA’s Vice President of Marketing, made a statement about how he hopes this will increase the game’s sales.

• Sony started planning the release of the PlayStation 4, ten years ahead of time.  This is because they expect the PS3 will last for at least ten years, and…ugh.  The PlayStation 4?  It’s too early to be talking about that!
• Nintendo responded to Sony by saying the Wii 2 is also in development.  Their Vice President of Marketing, Ikoru Doodlebug-san, says we can expect it to have revolutionary technology.  Something we have never seen before.  According to patents filed by Nintendo’s development crew—I am not making this up—this technology involves the ability to save games to the Wii console itself instead of using a memory card.  How revolutionary!
• Not wanting to be left out, Microsoft also made a statement about its next-generation console, but we were tired of hearing about consoles we won’t see in at least three years, by jingo.
• Mega Man 10 is being released next year.  While this is good news for Mega Man, the details about the game that were released are…odd, to say the least.  Specifically, information was released on a boss named Sheep Man.

• Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is being released next May. This is the fourth game in the Sands of Time trilogy, and it’s coming out at the same time as the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time movie. Fans of this column will remember that last month, I said a Prince of Persia game is in development that has nothing to do with Sands of Time. Clearly, either I was wrong, or they’re making two Prince of Persia games at the same time.  Either way, we’re not complaining.
• Ignore the second news item on this list. We did get official information about the DLC for Assassin’s Creed 2.  This is a good lesson in why it is important to post your news articles before the news becomes outdated.
• The UN held a climate conference in Copenhagen recently. The United States of America sent three representatives, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to attend this historic event.  All three representatives went to Denmark separately, on his or her own private jet, which gives you an idea of how much they really care about reducing emissions. By most accounts, the conference was a huge failure.
• In less-depressing news, the Professor Layton movie is coming along nicely.  A trailer and details were released, but unfortunately, the movie takes place after the fourth game, and only the first two have been released outside of Japan, so we have no idea what is going on in the trailer or who most of the characters are.

And that’s the news for December of 2009, everyone!  More war, no attempts to prevent the impending ecological disasters that environmentalists have been warning us about since the 1970s, and Sheep Man.  Clearly, the future is so bright that we’ll have to wear shades.

Oh well.  Maybe next month we can get an exclusive interview with Mr. Doodlebug. That’d be pretty interesting, by jingo. Until then, stay carbonated!

…Whatever that means.