Blizzard Entertainment responds to the LGBT debate happening in World of Warcraft. The company stated: "To promote a positive game environment for everyone and help prevent such harassment from taking place as best we can, we prohibit mention of topics related to sensitive real-world subjects in open chat within the game, and we do our best to take action whenever we see such topics being broadcast."(Edge)
Sony announces that ten servers will be merged with ten others on Everquest 2. Players are cautiously optimistic. (Sony), (Darniaq)
A mandatory update for Xbox Live on the Xbox 360 was released. Microsoft claimed the update was for bugfixes and improvements. Members of the modding community claim that "the true purpose of this update was to halt the progress of the modding community". (Gamasutra)
Nintendo released a statement regarding the Red Tulip phenomenon on Animal Crossing: Wild World, stating "We have isolated the problem and determined that there was a temporary error with the upload tool when this letter was posted". Earlier, there had been speculation that the tulips were a result of black hat hackers. (Gamasutra)
January 27, 2006
Players of the Horde clan from World of Warcraft start the "Gamers Against No Kash" charity, to pay the subscription fees for valuable players strapped for cash. (Gameshout)
Microsoft lowers its estimate of Xbox 360 sales in its first 90 days from 2.75–3.0 million units to 2.5 million due to supply shortage. The yearly estimate (4.5 to 5.5 million) is unchanged since Microsoft plans to increase its console production with the help of a new manufacturer, Celestica. (TeamXbox) Meanwhile, Microsoft postpones the Australian 360 launch from March 2 to March 23, 2006 due to a "short term manufacturing challenge" . (Gamasutra)
Microsoft of Japan made a statement to Japanese game magazine Famitsu regarding the Xbox 360 launch. "It was a lot more difficult than we had imagined. We couldn't prepare the launch titles that we had promised, and it made an impact," said Microsoft of Japan Xbox chief of operations Yoshihiro Maruyama. At the launch of the first Xbox in Japan, more units were sold in three days than have been sold of the Xbox 360 in one month. (Gamasutra)