The publisher shipped three million units to the U.S. and other territories this week. A total of two million units of the FFXIII PS3 SKU shipped in Japan in Dec.

Microsoft this week began sale of the Xbox 360 Elite Final Fantasy XIII bundle to include the Xbox 360 250GB Elite hardware, two wireless controllers, AV cable, headset, network cable and a copy of Final Fantasy XIII at $399.99.

Amazon this week is offering a free Final Fantasy XIII Faceplate with the purchase of Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 Elite Final Fantasy XIII Bundle.

Final Fantasy XIII, the latest entry in the RPG franchise, includes a turn-based Active Time Battle System and Paradigm Shift option to switch to offense and defense tactics in battle.

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t,” Ubisoft Montreal’s Max Beland stated when asked by Edge Online if the next game could appear on PS3.

“I’m not involved in the business deals. I joined Splinter Cell after the exclusivity deal with Microsoft had already been signed, but there’s no reason why Splinter Cell couldn’t be on the PS3. Conviction? No because of the exclusivity deal.

“But the next game is open to new deals. If Microsoft wants an exclusivity deal, they don’t call me, it’s Yves Guillemot dealing with the business people. But yeah, I guess we could even be a PS3 exclusive if there’s a deal that makes people happy there.”

Beland went on to add that while the wait for Conviction’s release has been a lengthy one, gamers shouldn’t expect the same to be true of Splinter Cell 6.

“This is a long-term vision, so I’m not telling you that yes, in a year you’ll have another Splinter Cell,” he added. “But right now the direction Yves gave us and where the company is going to go [means that] you’re going to be seeing Splinter Cell games, just like Assassin’s Creed games, just like anything else, released a little bit more often.”

Splinter Cell: Conviction was first mooted way back in May 2007 and was at one stage expected to be released in Christmas of that year, though it then slipped to 2008 and subsequently to April of this year.

At approximately 3:45pm PT, reports began flooding gaming boards suggesting units were coming back to life after a time-date error that left them unable to connect to Sony’s PlayStation Network or play certain games offline. I’d been waiting for GMT +0:00 to pass, but risked powering up early based on the sudden deluge of anecdotal evidence.

For starters, the screen color was different at startup, a kind of deep green (hello March!) suggesting some internal mechanism had silently triggered and automatically switched the date setting (the PS3 draws its default color scheme from the system clock). A glance at the system date confirmed it was now sometime in April 2010. To paraphrase the guys on How I Met Your Mother, Future-PS3 had apparently solved Current-PS3’s problem.

Tapping over to the system’s time-date settings, I ran an auto-sync–a feature that wasn’t working during the glitch–and the system auto-righted itself to March 1, 2010. One last thing to check, and sure enough, my copies of Heavy Rain and White Knight Chronicles loaded without incident.

Just to be extra-sure, I powered up my debug PS3, and presto, it too was working again. Thank goodness, because I’m on the hook for a Final Fantasy XIII review–not the sort of game you want to fall even a single day behind on.

Sony has yet to update its international blogs or Twitter feeds, possibly because the company’s collectively collapsed from stress-exhaustion, but more likely because they want to be sure things really are back, not just bits and pieces. I can vouch for my own recovery–two units, one retail, one debug, but that’s it.

If you want to test yours safely, power up, then before doing anything else, run a time-date interent sync. If it works, you’re back in business, and if your trophies don’t seem entirely right, try performing a manual trophy sync.

One thing’s for sure: Sony has some ’splainin to do.

Sony’s responded to the community, stating:

“Hi folks, this is just to let you know that the issues reported in this thread and elsewhere are being looked into. We’re currently trying to establish any common factors for people who are experiencing game freezing so if you are having trouble please be as thorough as possible with regards to your PS3 setup – are you using a launch version of the console or a brand new slim, playing in standard or high definition (I’m not suggesting that these are potential causes, just making the point)… any information you can give may help to find where the issue lies.

One word of advice we’ve had already is to avoid switching off your PlayStation while the game is in black screen as this may be affecting your save game. There have been a few reports of incidents where game saves have taken longer than would normally be expected – and with a black screen present it may leave the assumption that the game has crashed. In these circumstances we recommend you wait at least 5 minutes before rebooting – while it’s highly unlikely a save will take this long, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

While incidents of problems with the game are very low we’re working to ensure that everyone gets the Heavy Rain experience they expect. As soon as there is any further information we’ll update further.”

In other disheartening news, those in Europe who ordered the Heavy Rain Special Edition are being advised not to claim their PSN special edition bonuses just yet. Indeed, there is a problem with the soundtrack that should come as part of the PSN redemption code included in the box. Those in the UK who ordered the Special Edition online will be sent a replacement code for the soundtrack, everyone else is advised not to claim the bonuses until next week.

Brian Jarrard, community lead at Bungie, told CVG that Bungie has had an internal team “working on the genesis of what will become our next big thing.” Jarrard also said that Bungie’s “whole future’s kind of undefined right now and it’s definitely not something we’re going to be comfortable getting into too much detail about.”

Bungie has been independent from Microsoft since 2007, but has continued development for the Xbox 360 since.

Sony spokesperson Patrick Seybold explained the news to Joystiq:

“Since the launch of the PS3, we have been continuously making efforts to reinforce our support system to game developers, allowing them to express their creativity freely on the PS3. As part of this support for game development, the size of the PS3 OS memory footprint has been reduced through network update for the game developers.”

The impact is likely to be felt mainly when it comes to graphic textures and effects. While multi-platform games in the past have tended to look slightly better on the Xbox 360, we can expect to see much closer performance in the future between the two consoles thanks to this additional memory. It might also make PS3 exclusives like Heavy Rain look even more incredible than they already do.

While I haven’t had the chance to play it firsthand (2671MB and currently downloading) some of the buzz surrounding reports on the Euro PlayStation blog is that the demo is a near direct correlation from E3 2009.  Those awaiting a demo in the States may be stuck sitting around in anticipation. There is no indication of a similar demo on the US blog, and after checking the store not too long ago, I can confirm that it’s not there. If it does happen to be the demo from the God of War collection released in September of last year, you may not be missing anything new. However, keep your eyes glued to the PlayStation store over the next week, and hopefully our favorite anti-hero will make an appearance soon.

Superannuation reports that Andrea Schiel’s LinkedIn profile had the next edition of the series down as coming to HD consoles as well as Wii.

The profile’s since been edited to remove the mention. However, a screengrab exists at AGB

EA has already confirmed that a Wii version of the game will be released this year.

“What publishers have said is they’re not going to spend the resources on Wii,” he asserts. “In the past, it was ‘Look how hot the Wii is,’ or ‘Look how hot the DS is,’ and ‘We should put resources there.’ They did that and realized, ‘You know what, third-party product just doesn’t sell on that platform.”

This realization is only a boon to the PlayStation 3, according to Dyer. “So now they’re taking those resources, coming back to us and saying, ‘Sony we’re going to be able to provide you with that exclusive content,’ or ‘We’re going to put more engineers on it and figure out to maximize the Blu-ray and get more out of PS3.’ That’s what we’re seeing now.” I like how Dyer is basically saying that third-parties tell Sony: “Well, nobody buys third-party games on the Wii, so I guess we’ll try your complicated-ass system and see how that works.” PlayStation 3 games must require at least 50% more engineers than Wii games.

In Dyer’s opinion, “Unless [third-party developers have] a particular franchise that’s worked well on the Wii, you don’t see a lot of innovative new IP coming out on that platform.” He’s right, thought I’m not sure Nintendo can do anything to fix the problem. People buy Nintendo games because they are the easy casual buy when walking into a store, and they are also fun for the hardcore. When any gamer looks at a wall of Wii games, finding something good is like searching for a needle in a mountain of poop. Nobody can stop publishers from cloning mini-game collections, or from naming and packaging them in a way that makes them look fun, when in reality they are the blights of the current videogame industry. The Wii has a reputation for crap, so even if a good game comes out on the system, it’s associated with the same crap as everything else.