News of expensive video cards has caused some to wonder whether the PlayStation Vita's ship might sink, but we didn't mean that literally... or did we? Find that story and more odd tidbits from the world of gaming this week.

The S.S. Vita Goes Down

Corporations frequently sponsor sporting teams and events, but there's an inherent risk involved in boating sponsorships. Sony learned this the hard way when it sponsored a PlayStation Vita-themed boat in the Talisker Atlantic Challenge, a month-long race from the Canary Islands to Barbados.

On the eighth day of the trip, the Good Ship Vita (not its actual name) was hit by gigantic waves, which capsized the boat and flooded the cabin. The two gentlemen who were sailing the boat were rescued, expressing their disappointment that they were unable to continue their journey. We just hope Sony doesn't believe in bad omens.

In other odd Vita news, there was a bizarre incident after last week's SPIKE TV video game awards. DJ Deadmau5 was apparently one of the first people outside of Sony to handle a PS Vita, thanks to his participation in the PR campaign for Sound Shapes. After the show, Deadmau5 tweeted that he'd lost his Vita demo unit in a cab. Strangely enough, the next morning he tweeted that it had all been a joke, and he'd been interested in seeing "how much management would freak out over it." Seriously? Sounds more like he's covering his rear, but even so, why would anybody claim to be pulling that kind of prank? I suspect Mr. Deadmau5 may not be partnering with Sony for very long.

Microsoft Has Strange Bedfellows

What exactly is Microsoft's long-term strategy for its gaming division? It's hard to tell nowadays. The new dashboard update for the Xbox 360 hasn't been received very well by gaming critics, who complain that it's stuffed with ads and difficult to navigate. PC owners have been looking askance at the thing, hoping that the next version of Windows isn't going to come with an inflexible user interface and mandatory advertisements.

What's Microsoft doing in the meantime? We know the company wants to make the 360 into more of a general entertainment device, and the next step appears to be creating original television programming for Xbox LIVE. Rumors are that the company has approached two former NBC executives to produce said programming, which would run on LIVE's upcoming television service. Microsoft is reportedly only going to go ahead with original programming if it can find the right person to do the job, so this search may or may not pan out for the company.

In particularly unusual Microsoft news, the company's pet-sim Kinectimals series is coming to iOS. Has Microsoft admitted that Apple's mobile platform is kicking the virtual rear of the Windows phone? Perhaps, perhaps not, but Apple fans can now play with cuddly, cutesy wildcat cubs on their iDevices. A Microsoft game on an Apple device? What's next? Nathan Drake on the Wii U? Super Mario in a Ubisoft dance game? Oh wait, that second one is actually happening. Go ahead and YouTube it. It's rather frightening.

Nintendo Discovers Game Patching

Recently, news circulated of a game-breaking bug in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Players who completed a late-game quest in an unusual order and spoke several times to a certain NPC found that the game's story would stop progressing. The only way to proceed once this bug occurred was to restart the game. Issues this large are unusual in first-party Nintendo games, and the company decided to offer a solution for the problem.

Gamers with an Internet connection can download a program that will fix a save file that has been affected by this bug. Wii owners who can't connect the device to the Internet will be able to send their system or SD card to Nintendo, and the save file will be fixed. As this isn't an actual patch for the game, players will need to be careful not to trigger the bug in a new save file, especially if they don't have an Internet connection.

I'm interested in the implications of this incident. Will Nintendo provide the proper infrastructure for games to patch in the Wii U? Will it continue its tentative move into the world of DLC that we're seeing with the Mario download for Just Dance 3? Would embracing these two things signal Nintendo's move into the twenty-first century, or is it a sign that the company is abandoning some of its principles in the face of market losses? It all depends on what you think of the modern, increasingly digital-driven gaming market.

There we have it, odd news from all three big console companies this week. Hopefully it's more entertaining than the inevitable Christmas Pink Slip stories (we salute you, uDraw team) that I chose to forgo for this Weird, Wired Christmas theme. Have a good time trimming the tree and settling in with all those big November releases you haven't had time to get through!

By Becky Cunningham
CCC Contributing Writer

*The views expressed within this article are solely the opinion of the author and do not express the views held by Cheat Code Central.*