January 2009: a cracking month in gaming

January is close to over. Soon we can stop worrying ourselves sick over money, faddish diets or brain-numbing tax returns and get back to what makes our souls sing - namely, playing, talking about and getting hyped up about the new videogames and tech on the way in 2009.

Leaving aside the rather exciting fact that EA's sublime Skate 2 has just come out, Microsoft will soon be releasing Halo Wars and Rockstar has Grand Theft Auto on DS due within a matter of weeks, let's cast our eyes back over January to cherry-pick the highlights of the month's gaming news.

The first news that raised a post-Xmas cheer in the TechRadar office was the mere suggestion that spending more time playing games than watching telly was actually good for you. Well, it was if you believed Luis Vuillazon's argument in his 'Game yourself thin - WoW what a body!' article, in which he claimed that "the Azeroth diet is this year's displacement activity".

Next up, playground news. What is there to do for the top three hardware companies once they've dispensed with their Christmas big-hitters? Tear into the competition, of course. Sony kicked off proceedings, pointing out Nintendo's and Microsoft's flaws – or, alternatively, in crazy ex-girlfriend style, asked gamers: "What do they have that I don't have?"

Sony issued a press release at CES 2009 that pointed out the weaknesses of Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360 in comparison with the (admittedly) feature-rich PlayStation 3. The release achieved little, other than kicking off a predictable slew of fanboy flame-wars on the internet. Which, if little else, kept us mildly amused through yet another afternoon of January doom and drizzle…

Speaking of CES, there wasn't much in the way of interesting game-related news that came out of this year's techstravaganza in Vegas, other than the fact that Nvidia is putting its weight behind developing 'true' 3D gaming, with giants such as Microsoft, Ubisoft and Capcom already offering support for Nvidia's new 3D gaming tech.

In another demo room, Microsoft showed off its answer to LittleBigPlanet and (far more excitingly) Sony pimped some 3D gaming tech demos using WipEout and Gran Turismo, which consumers will see sometime around the year 2015, if the company's current demo-to-shelf averages are anything to go by!

In addition to the dream of 'proper' 3D heading our way, Dolby also promised to improve our audio experience in games – something that TechRadar plans to hear a lot more about from the audio specialists in the very near future. As for the rest of CES? It was all about super-skinny TVs and ultra-expensive portable computers. The usual fare, basically...

Back in Blighty, Rockstar's much-anticipated GTA: Chinatown Wars on DS snagged the first 18-cert for a Nintendo DS game, while we heard that Miyamoto is readying a new in-game cartoon-based tuition-system for the legions of casual noobs buying into Wii. Elsewhere, in a further example of the hand-wringing that seems to infect the culture in January, Greenpeace had yet another pop at Nintendo's overall awareness of the environment.

Sony shot itself in the foot again with yet another PR blunder, claiming that PS3 was still only for 'early adopters' (doh!) so we decided to celebrate the fact that the year had finally (kind of) started proper, with the CES dust having settled, by celebrating our love for co-op gaming, from the teenage arcade wonder that was Gauntlet through to Valve's magnificent Left4Dead.

As every other tech giant seemed to post yet even-more-bafflingly-high losses and announce yet further job cuts, we at least thanked small mercies for the good news that we might finally see a new handheld console in the shape of Gamepark's GP2X Wiz next month. True gaming is not all about the big boys, after all. (Though saying that, we still have our fingers crossed that we'll see the new Nintendo DSi in April for some photo-based handheld gaming to brighten up our Easter hols!).

With the gaming 'news' scene being generally fuelled by rumour and speculation, we weren't in any way surprised to hear that Rockstar is NOT planning to release GTA V: Tokyo this Christmas. TechRadar was pleasantly surprised to hear that Nvidia and AMD have plans to let developers move the processing of basic artificial intelligence (AI) routines to graphics cards in the near future. And that middleware specialists Autodesk reckon the 'uncanny valley' (those minor glitches that make games slightly unbelievable) will soon be cast into the bin of tech history.

This all means that considerably faster, better-looking and loads more believable interactive entertainment is on the way very soon. Great news, we're sure you will agree. Far, far better news than further tedious updates about Sony and Microsoft execs exchanging vapid wars of words or nonsensical surveys claiming that gamers are anti-social weirdoes. All rather passé, in our opinion.

Conclusion: The credit crunch is beginning to bite in certain over-bloated areas of the games industry. But hey, no great shakes, because gaming technology is going to get notably better in 2009. No matter if you are a hardened PC gamer, a casual Wii funboy or a dyed-in-the-wool 360/PS3 fanboy, January is the time to put your partisan differences to one side and celebrate the fact that interactive entertainment technology is marching in the right direction - a higher, better, brighter, faster and altogether more enjoyable direction!

Yay! 2009 is here. Bring on the fun.