2007: A year in review, March

The PS3, 360 Elite and Nokia N95 all appear while YouTube gets Beeb backing

27 December 2007 9:00 GMT / By Katie Scott

Let the battle begin!

March kicked off with the launch of the PS3 but hot on its heels was the arrival Xbox 360 Elite.

Shivering gamers waited outside the Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street in London for the latest launch from Sony.

It was well worth it though as everyone who bought a PS3 priced £425 was also given a 46-inch BRAVIA HD television worth over £2500 - as well as a taxi home.

165,000 consoles were bought in 2 days, making the PS3 one of the fastest selling console in the British history of gaming, beating both the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

But Microsoft fought back with the launch of the Xbox 360 Elite - a black version of its next generation console with HDMI connectivity and a larger 120GB hard drive.

Meanwhile, both US politicians and the Beeb tapped into the zeitgeist by teaming up with YouTube.

The BBC struck a content deal with YouTube, delivering three YouTube channels, one for news and two for entertainment, where it started to showcase short clips of BBC content.

Meanwhile, over the ocean, the video sharing website owned by Google became an unlikely battlefield for the battle of the next US President.

President hopefuls including Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Republicans John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani all signed up to have their own channels.

And throughout the month, the "will they, won't they" rumours of the Google phone dominated blogs and headlines.

On 13 March, a forum user on Mobileburn.com claimed he was asked to fill in a survey about the Google phone, which he said listed some of the technical specs such as 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity along with a 2-megapixel camera.

Nothing was confirmed by Google until 3 days later when it admitted a phone was in development but remained tight-lipped about the specs.

But by 22 March, a Wallstreet analyst blew every theory out of the water insisting that Google was building software for phones, but not its own hardware.

The blogs went into overdrive, while European reviewers were distracted by the arrival of the Nokia N95.

The new phone sported the fast HSDPA connectivity, a 5-megapixel camera, GPS with maps of Europe and a two-way slider design that reveals dedicated music buttons to compete with Sony Ericsson Walkman range and a standard keypad when slid the other way.

And when they had finished with the phone, there was the UK launch of Apple TV - "the iPod for the living room".