If you bought an Xbox One or a PlayStation 4 during the recent holiday shopping season (or someone else bought it for you), then you directly helped fill the coffers of AMD. Sales of both systems gave AMD a boost in its fourth quarter earnings, narrowing the chip-maker's full-year losses. Both systems use custom chips made by AMD.

According to a report on Ars Technica, Microsoft and Machinima colluded to get Machinima YouTube content creators to say nice things about the Xbox One for money and required that they not disclose the financial relationship to viewers.

According to NPD Group's retail sales numbers for the month of December, Xbox One was the top-selling console in the U.S., moving right around 908,000 units. The Xbox 360 came in third with roughly 643,000 units sold.

"We're grateful for the excitement and support of our fans - many purchasing their next Xbox console and many joining the Xbox family for the first time," commented corporate vice president of marketing, strategy and business for Xbox Yusuf Mehdi.

Xbox Chief Product Officer Marc Whitten tells Engadget that he isn't too overly concerned about two of the biggest things coming out of CES last week: Oculus VR's latest prototype ("Crystal Cove") and Valve's Steam Machines. In an interview with the publication, Whitten said that he's excited about both initiatives and that their entry into gaming can only bring good things to the industry.

PlayStation marketing VP John Koller says that the PlayStation 4's early lead over the Xbox One is not a big deal. Koller tells CVG that his company is not focused on any advantage it has at this early stage of the new console cycle.

China has officially lifted the ban on selling consoles, though the measure is temporary it seems, according to the BBC. China banned the sale of home video game consoles in 2000, saying that it did so because it had an adverse affect on the mental health of the country's youth.

In a self-congratulatory post on Xbox Wire, Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President of Marketing, Strategy and Business, Xbox announced that the next-generation console system has sold three million units to-date since its launch on November 22.

Apparently the appetites for pornography vary depending on which next-generation system you own, if you believe some freshly released stats from porn site SugarDVD. The "Netflix of Porn" (a nickname Netflix no doubt objects to) says that, while PlayStation 4 owners look at more porn than Xbox One users do, Xbox One users look at it a lot longer.

MMO company Perfect World Entertainment is making a major push into the free-to-play market on video game consoles. The company announced that it has completed a company expansion by creating a console division targeting current and next-gen consoles. Planned console products expected include current and future games from Perfect World Entertainment’s suite of developers, the company said.

Vlambeer developer Rami Ismail has shared his concerns over the parity clause in Microsoft's new ID@Xbox scheme for indie developers in an interview with VG247. Speaking to the publication, Ismail described the parity clause, which requires participants to launch any title releasing on other platforms to launch on Xbox One simultaneously, as "problematic for the indie scene at large."

According to this Polygon report citing a YouTube video from "Team Spooky After Hours," the DRM in the Xbox One title Killer Instinct reared its ugly head during a tournament that took place at Queens College in New York.

A Consumer Affairs report says that hacking attempts against the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are ramping up. According to the report, which is based on information from security firm Kaspersky Lab, hackers have launched an average of 34,000 attacks per day across the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and other game platforms. Kaspersky also says that it has found 4.6 million pieces of gaming-focused malware against the various game systems to-date.

The second free offering from Microsoft's "Games With Gold" for the month of Dec., Shoot Many Robots, is available now on Xbox Live for Xbox 360. In the first half of the month Microsoft offered Gears of War for free as part of the program. Shoot Many Robots is usually priced at $4.99 on the Xbox Games Store. Shoot Many Robots is a four-player action platformer developed by Demiurge Studios and published by Ubisoft for Xbox Live Arcade.

The CEO of a major Chinese corporation has hinted that the Xbox One will be available in China next year. Luo Jiangchun, CEO of online video service Funshion, said during a marketing and advertising strategy meeting last week that the Xbox One would be available in China in 2014, according to Chinese tech site Sohu IT (as uncovered by this Kotaku report).

As the supposed console war kicks off, it looks like Sony has a slight edge over Microsoft. According to data released by retail research firm NPD Group, the PS4 edged out the Xbox One in sales, but Microsoft says it won a battle on a different front during the launch window for the next-gen consoles. More PS4 software was sold as well during the period, but more sales of PS4 consoles and software makes sense given that the system went on sale a week before the Xbox One did in North America.

Microsoft said today that it has sold more than two million Xbox One consoles worldwide in a little over two weeks since the system launched on Nov. 22.

Sony said earlier in the month that it had managed to move 2.1 million hardware units in roughly the same timeframe after it launched a week before the Xbox One. The Xbox One launched in 13 regions, while the PS4 only launched in the U.S. and Canada to begin with, and was subsequently released in multiple other regions two weeks later.

Microsoft has confirmed that it has raised prices on the digital downloads of Ryse, Forza Motorsport 5 and Dead Rising 3 in the UK. The games were initially offered at £45 when the system launched on Nov. 22 in the region, but today those games costs £50 each.

PS4 sales are outpacing Xbox One sales in Spain, according to PlayStation Spain and Portugal CEO James Armstrong. Armstrong claims that the PS4 is outselling Xbox One by more than three units to one. The console has sold about 80,000 units in Spain since the European PS4 release date of November 29, he also claims. Armstrong said that the company is working hard to fulfill another 12,000 - 15,000 pre-orders that have yet to be met due to supply constraints.

Speaking at the Game Monetization USA Summit in San Francisco this week, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said that Nintendo president Satoru Iwata should be fired for his handling of the Wii U and the company in general.

"I don't know why Iwata is still employed," Pachter said during his presentation, according to a GamesIndustry International report, adding that the Wii U’s commercial performance has been "underwhelming” and that he believed it was “possible but unlikely” that new titles could help the system to recover.

Rakuten, owner of the UK-based games retailer Play.com, claims that Nintendo’s Wii U has seen a 75 percent sales spike in October. The company predicts that Wii U and iPad will be more popular than Xbox One and PS4 amongst children during the holiday season. The company also cites a Twitter analysis that comes to the conclusion that its Wii U and iPad range are "the most talked about presents for children this Christmas."

A 19-year-old man who thought he was buying an Xbox One on eBay instead was shocked to learn that he had purchased a photo of an Xbox One instead. 19-year-old United Kingdom resident Peter Clatworthy paid £450 +£8 shipping (around $750) for a piece of paper, according to the Nottingham Post.

The final episode in the Black Friday/Game of Thrones/Xbox One v. PS4 South Park storyline aired last night on Comedy Central and it was as wild, funny, and gruesome as anyone could imagine. There's not a lot we can say about the episode here that won't spoil it for viewers, but we can say that the episode mixes some crazy anime, some outlandish Game of Thrones jokes, and a couple of executive cameos to make for a highly amusing episode.

We'll leave you with this quote from the episode:

"I just want us to play Call of Duty on the right machine."

Vlambeer says that after learning about Microsoft's launch parity clause, it contacted Sony to set up launch exclusivity on PS4 for its next-gen game Nuclear Throne. When Microsoft reached out to developers to gauge interest in developing games for its platform, it promised two console development kits, a Unity license and the opportunity to self-publish their games via the ID@Xbox program.

Microsoft announced today that 32 indie developers have signed up with Microsoft's ID@Xbox development program to develop games for the Xbox One. Eurogamer has confirmed some of the titles that these developers will bring to Microsoft's system and speculated on a few others.

Day-one Xbox One buyers have had their fair share of problems with Microsoft's system that launched on Nov. 22. From failing hard drives that made some systems very expensive paperweights to technical problems with voice chat and missing features, fans have had to deal with a number of challenges. This is of course the price of early adoption of new technology, but today Microsoft has promised that they'll do better in the future and fix the various shortcomings of the new platform in an expedient manner.

Microsoft fared considerably better than Sony on Black Friday, according to data analysts InfoScout. The firm claims that Xbox One was the highest selling console during the period, comprising 31 percent of total hardware sales. The Xbox 360 also fared pretty well, grabbing a 30 percent share resulting in a joint Microsoft lead of 60 percent. Joint sales of the PS3 and PS4 amounted to 30 percent share in sales total, while sales of the Wii U and Wii combined was 7 percent.

EA Studios executive vice president Patrick Soderlund predicts that the life cycle of the newest consoles from Sony and Microsoft will not be as long as the last console cycle (which has not ended yet) Soderlund says that he expects the PS4 and Xbox One console cycle to last for five to six years. Soderlund, who is in charge of EA's console and PC games development, also said that the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation "may have gone on a little bit longer than I would have wanted."

Is this next story officially the dumbest story of 2013? I don't know but it has to be in the running. Some users who bought Xbox One systems with failing disc drives say you can solve the problem by punching your console. Yes, you've read that correctly: people are so frustrated with the Xbox One that they have decided to, as Wally Cleaver liked to say (an obscure 1950's reference to the show Leave it to Beaver) "Give it the business."

According to this Reddit thread unearthed by Eurogamer, Microsoft has been banning Xbox One users who have been deemed to have used foul language in their chats via Skype and uploaded videos through Upload Studios. Dozens of users have also complained about the bans on the Xbox forums, according to Eurogamer.

Recognizing that some Xbox One owners might be a tad bit upset that they can't play their shiny new console while Microsoft makes right on failing disc drives in some systems, the company announced that it would provide digital downloads of at least one launch title per customer so they have something to play while they wait for a replacement console.

The games offered as part of this include like Dead Rising 3, Forza Motorsport 5, Ryse: Son of Rome and Zoo Tycoon.