September saw a brief respite from the bad news, but October brought it in spades for the video game industry.

Sales of video game software dropped 19 percent, compared to a year ago to $573 million. Hardware was even worse, falling 23 percent compared to a year ago to a little shy of $381 million. That was particularly worrying, since all three systems announced price cuts recently.

The news was particularly grim for Sony from a pure numbers standpoint. The company sold just shy of 321,000 PS3 units – a 33 percent decline from September (although it was a 69 percent improvement from 2008).

 Microsofts old just under 250,000 Xbox 360s, while Wii sales spiked to 507,000 units sold. That was better than September, but not enough to match the 2008 numbers – when 803,000 Wiis were sold.

As for games, “Uncharted 2” led the pack – but the real story was “NBA 2K10,” which sold 524,000 copies on the Xbox 360 and PS3 versus a measly 141,000 units for EA’s “NBA Live 10.

The full top 10 is after the jump.

September was the month things were supposed to turn around for the video game industry. Analysts were forecasting increases of up to 25 percent from the 2008 numbers – but the economy and the buying public gave them an ugly surprise.

Sales were up overall in September, but just barely. Game sales jumped 5 percent, thanks almost exclusively to “Halo 3: ODST”. But hardware sales were down 6 percent, even with price cuts by all three manufacturers.

Despite this, you won’t hear Sony complaining too loudly. For the first time since it hit the market in 2006, the PS3 beat the Wii and Xbox 360 in sales (though the Nintendo DS topped everyone for the sixth consecutive month).

PS3 sales more than doubled from August, while the Wii and 360 both saw increases of over a 60 percent.

While some people were skeptical that a Master Chief-less “Halo” title might not have the appeal of other series installments, the game managed to sell over 1.5 million copies, making it the sixth best-selling launch in the industry’s history.

(The full software sales figures are listed after the break.)

Ugly. There’s no other way to describe August for the video game industry.

For the sixth consecutive month, sales fell below last year’s pace – meaning if the industry wants to merely break even this year, it will have to see sales jump 14 percent for each of the remaining four month.

That ain’t likely. While September will probably show positive growth, October is likely to be down again. November should spike, thanks to the arrival of “Modern Warfare 2” and the momentum could carry into December. But all in all, it’s an ugly year to be a game publisher.

Game sales fell 15 percent in August – despite the arrival of “Madden 2010” and the first full month of sales of “Wii Sports Resort”. Sales of both games were… well, all right – but hardly spectacular. “Madden” is showing some real weakness at retail, despite a very aggressive marketing campaign. And “Wii Sports Resort” isn’t clicking at the rate Nintendo had hoped.

How weak is Madden? The Wii version of the game only sold 67,000 copies, according to IndustryGamers. That’s less than half the number the PS2 version sold.

Year to date, the entire industry is off 14 percent as well.

Hardware, overall, was down 25 percent from the 2008 numbers, but that’s misleading. All major console saw a sales increase, with the PlayStation 3 showing the biggest gains following its price cut late last month. Sales of PS3 hardware were up 72 percent from the July numbers. (The Wii continues to lead overall sales.)

As for software… the top 10 are listed after the jump:

The recession continued to pound the video game industry in July, with game software sales spiraling 26 percent compared to the 2008 numbers, according to the NPD Group. That puts year-to-date game sales – and the overall industry – 14 percent lower than a year ago.

It’s not as bad as last month’s 29 percent drop in game sales (the worst decline in nine years), but it’s pretty darned close. And it’s much worse than analysts were expecting. (Wedbush Morgan Securities’ Michael Pachter, for instance, had predicted a 16 percent drop.)

Nintendo and EA were the only companies to have games in the Top 10. And, in news that’s bound to make Activision and EA cringe, things continue to get worse for the music genre.

"Of all genres, the music/dance genre has suffered the greatest declines this year, with nearly $390 million less revenues than the same time period last year," notes NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

Hardware sales took another dive, too, down 37 percent from a year ago. It’s the third month in a row that consoles have been more than 30 percent behind last year’s pace. And it’s certain to reinvigorate calls for a price cut.

A full breakdown of the sales – and best selling game titles – after the break.

Sales charts are imminently useful tools to discover the popularity of games, but they tend to focus solely on what’s hot at the moment. They are poor indicators of which games continue to captivate the hearts and minds of players.

That’s what makes Tweet My Gaming so interesting. The site monitors the popularity of video games not by sales or players, but by the chatter about the games on Twitter. Not surprisingly, there’s a big cross over between video game enthusiasts and the social networking site, so it’s a pretty accurate representation.

Believe it or not, “The Sims 3” has a larger buzz factor than “World of Warcraft,” with over 144,000 tweets vs. roughly 116,000 for the Blizzard game since the site's launch on June 1.

Stats are viewable in a 24 hour, weekly, monthly or all-time format. There's also a feed of all gaming-themed tweets that demonstrates quite remarkably how much Twitter users like to talk about video games.

Did you buy a video game last month? No? You weren’t alone.

Video game sales in June posted the biggest year-over-year decline in nine years. Put another way, we haven’t seen this big of a fall since September 2000 (when sales dove 41 percent).

Game software sales fell to $626 million, a 29 percent plunge compared to the 2008 numbers, according to market research firm NPD Group. Hardware sales tumbled 38 percent to $383 million.

For the year, the industry is down 12 percent versus the 2008 numbers, with sales of $7.3 billion.

The numbers are worse than analysts were expecting – and even NPD analyst Anita Frazier, who typically takes a rosy outlook whatever the numbers, had some glum comments on the month.

“The first half of the year has been tough largely due to comparisons against a stellar first half performance last year, but still, this level of decline is certainly going to cause some pain and reflection in the industry,” she said. “This is one of the first months where I think the impact of the economy is clearly reflected in the sales numbers. The size of the decline could also point to consumers deferring limited discretionary spending until a big event (must-have new title, hardware price cut) compels them to spend.”

In other words, you won’t hear the words “recession proof” or “recession resistant” used to describe gaming for a while. And you will hear the words "price cut" a LOT more. 

A month or so ago, we’d be able to shrug this off, saying the games coming out in the back half of the year would save us – but the number of potential blockbusters in the holiday season continues to shrink. And there are rumors of even more delays coming for big games.

The month’s top 10 selling games are listed below. See if you can spot the one that’s missing: 

Looking back, we might all come to remember 2006 as the year everything changed in the video game industry. That’s when the Wii and the PS3 hit store shelves and software sales, which were already strong, began to explode.

Now, a new report from Global Industry Analysts predicts the video game industry will see global software sales hit $91.96 billion by the year 2015. It’s a bold claim, which would require the numbers to nearly double over the next six years. (Global software sales are estimated in the $50 billion range currently. The precise number is difficult to nail down because there is no central repository of data.)

Global Industry Analysts says the expansion will be fueled by “continuous technology developments, upgradation of gaming platforms, rising broadband penetration, and increasing uptake of massively multiplayer online games and wireless gaming.”

All are fair points. With the increase in broadband penetration, you’re likely to see more people sampling massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. That means more people shelling out $15 per month to play, which will drive revenues. And the intrusion of the iPhone onto the mobile gaming scene is opening up that field for people who swore they would never play games on their phone.

Additionally, the Asia-Pacific and Latin American markets are beginning to open up, which publishers and console makers are counting on to offset any possible loss in traditional markets.

The study notes that while PC and console markets are faltering a bit, due to the recession, online and wireless are continuing to expand. (This is, in part, why you’re seeing certain publishers rush towards MMOs right now. Even a moderately sized loyal audience can make a game a big financial winner.)

Right now, according to the report, the United States and Europe account for more than half of the world’s video games software market. Asia-Pacific is expected to spearhead growth, though, especially in online game.

In the U.S., the introduction of new consoles has had a dramatic effect. The NPD Group says domestic game sales in 2006 were $7.4 billion. In 2007, they jumped to $9.5 billion – and were up to $11.7 billion in 2008.

They’re tracking a bit lower so far this year, but the back half of 2009 is loaded with top-tier games that could let the industry reclaim its ‘recession resistant’ label and once again show sales growth.

It looks like gamers just aren't ready for mature content on the DS.

Despite stellar reviews, a major marketing campaign and one of the biggest brand name in video games, "Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars" bombed last week. According to new data from the NPD Group, the DS-only version of "GTA" sold a pathetic 89,000 units in its first two weeks on sale.

It was the first effort by any publisher to bring a huge, M-rated franchise that has previously existed solely on living room consoles to Nintendo's portable device. It seemed hard to argue with the logic: The DS is the most popular console in the country and the world by far, with 26.3 million sold in the U.S. The conventional wisdom was that only kids' games and casual titles, as well as ones made by Nintendo, sold well. "GTA" publisher Rockstar decided to challenge that wisdom with "Chinatown Wars." Bad decision.

By contrast, last April's "Grand Theft Auto IV" sold 2.85 million units in just its first few days to a combined Xbox 360 / Playstation 3 install base of 14.4 million. Rockstar's previous two efforts to move "GTA" to a portable device: 2005's "Liberty City Stories" and 2006's "Vice City Stories," sold 158,000 and 108,000 units, respectively, during their first month on sale. And those were both for the PSP, which had (and continues to have) a much lower install base than the DS.

Even the Xbox 360 exclusive downloadable "Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned" has, I'm told, sold about 1 million units to that console's 13.5 million owners.

Rockstar has to be devastated by those numbers. And any third party publisher thinking about taking an M-rated franchise to the DS has to be paying attention and thinking twice.

Other important points from NPD video game sales data for March:

-Nintendo's actually sees a... DECLINE. Yes, sales for the Wii and DS both fell in March. It's the first time that has happened since, well, as long as I can find. Given that "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" came out last year, it's understandable on the Wii count. And DS sales have been pretty much flat for a while.

Combine that with the Wii's already infamous slip to second place in Japan last month behind the PS3, thanks mainly to "Resident Evil 5," and it's easy to see why investors have become concerned and Nintendo shares fell 17% on Friday.

But let's keep it all in perspective. Nintendo's sales are still extraordinary. The Wii and DS sold over 1 million units combined last month with no holidays, not even Easter, to boost them, and only one major DS release, "Pokemon Platinum" (which sold a very healthy 805,000 units). And library titles like "Wii Fit," "Wii Play," and "Mario Kart Wii" continue to sell extraordinarily well. Nintendo is like a team that has gone undefeated for several seasons and finally loses a game or two. It's not exactly time to become a Sony Cubs fan. I would have to agree with Barrons that at this point, Nintendo stock is being oversold.

-Industry revenue was down a whopping 17% for the month. But again, that's overblown. As NPD fairly pointed, Easter wasn't in March this year and there was nothing remotely on the scale of "Smash Bros.," which sold 2.7 million units last year.

Still, hardware sales were soft across the board. Every single console except the Xbox 360, which was supply constrained last year, saw a sales drop. So while things aren't -17% bad, they're not good.

The more notable figure may be that for the first quarter, industry revenue grew 0%. As in it was flat. That may be the kind of year 2009 is going to be: low or no growth. Not bad in a recession, but pretty amazing after 19% growth last year.

-"Resident Evil 5" launched big. No surprise there. Over 1.5 million units on PS3 and 360. The only other solid debut was "Halo Wars," which started off with 639,000 units. "Killzone 2," which launched at the very end of February, falls in that category as well. For Feb. and March combined, it sold 592,000 units.

-Sony won the baseball battle. "MLB '09: The Show" sold 305,000 units on Playstation 3, easily beating 2K's "Major League Baseball 2K9" on either console (the 360 version sold 205,000 and the PS3 sold less than that).

-Though they launched in the last week of the month, making it a little tougher to hit the top 10, neither Universal's "Wanted" nor Midway and Ubisoft's "Wheelman," starring Vin Diesel, tore up the charts enough to sell over 200,000 units. It's safe to say neither one will be a major hit.

As everyone prepares for NPD's report of what was likely a slow- to no-growth March for the video game industry (thanks largely to tough comparisons to last year's mega-hit "Super Smash Bros. Brawl"), I'm particularly struck by this point made by research firm EEDAR in its sales preview:

I've previously written about how important I think DLC is becoming to the Xbox 360 / Playstation 3 business model. To take a recent example, I'm told by a good source (though Rockstar hasn't confirmed) that "Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned" has sold around one million units on Xbox Live. That's over $20 million in gross revenue and would be approximately $14 million for Rockstar, if it hadn't already done a $50 million deal for two DLC chapters with Microsoft.

"Call of Duty: World at War" similarly sold a million-plus units of its "map pack 1." That's over $10 million in revenue and more than $7 million forActivision (given the way Bobby Kotick drives deals, I'm willing to bet Activision gets more than the standard 70% from Sony and Microsoft). 

Most importantly, the margins are much better for both pieces of DLC than standard retail games. While they arguably have one-third and one-sixth, respectively of their original games' content (thus justifying the consumer price ratios), the production budgets are much lower than that. After all, they reuse the same engine, art style, user interface, asthe retail titles. That stuff is expensive to design.

For most AAA 360/PS3 games to make an extra 10% in revenue, with higher profit margins, by next year, is a very big deal. But we'll never understand just how important it is. At least not in a systematic way. BecauseNPD doesn't track download sales. Microsoft and Sony, the sellers in this case, guard that data jealously.

Sure, occasionally they or the publishers issue press releases when they have a big hit, as with "World at War." And publishers will inevitably give Wall Street some insight into their DLC revenue as it becomes an increasingly important part of their bottom lines.

But the numbers will be scattershot. We won't have any comprehensive tracking the way we (kinda) do with NPD.

Add PC sales, cell phones, and Web gaming to the growing amount of DLC and there's a huge video game industry outside of the retail consoles sales NPD tracks. Which means the figures upon which most of us analysts, journalists, and other interested folks rely are becoming less representative of the business, particularly its high growth areas.

More and more, it seems like the the NPD figures are becoming for the video game biz what box office grosses are for film: An important set of data that shows only one part of a dynamic and diverse industry.

How is it that people in Hollywood (and we journalists who cover the industry) always have a good sense of what movies will gross before they open? It's because there are a variety of tracking services that monitor consumer awareness, intent to buy tickets, and other statistics that combine to give a very accurate indication of how films will perform at the box office.

Now one of the biggest companies in that space is trying to bring the same type of analysis to video games. OTX, which stands out from competitors like NRG and MarketCast (owned by Variety parent company Reed Business) by doing all its research online, is launching its GamePlan service in beta and opening it to customers this week at the MI6 video game marketing conference.

OTX started moving into the space last year, has been compiling data since October, and has been testing the service with about 10 publishers for the past month.

Nick Williams, OTX's director of gaming, previously headed up IGN's GamerMetrics service that does something similar based on what its users are clicking (GameSpot and GameTrailers both have competing offerings). As anyone who has spent time on those sites know, the audience is a bit skewed toward traditional young male gamers. It may be the perfect place to figure out how eager fans are to buy "Killzone 2." But they probably didn't as accurately predict the "Wii Fit" phenomenom.

OTX is looking to change that by doing what's already commonplace in film: interviewing a statistically representative samples of everyone who plays video games.

"Our biggest challenge up front was getting as big a piece of the population who play games as possible," Williams told me. "We range from people who spend three hours a week on Yahoo Games to people who spend 50 hours a week on Xbox Live."

So far, the service has tracked over 23,000 gamers and 500 titles. While most have been retail games, it's also looking at downloadable content like "Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned."

The core of GameInsight is its weekly polls to find out what games people are aware of, what they're interested in, what they think they'll buy, and even what they intend to pre-order. It's also the first outside company to offer full access at GameFly's rental data, as well as eBay used games sales data. The latter could be particularly useful for publishers trying to figure out how quickly and in what quantity past games with similar characteristics have hit the resale market and seen their prices fall.

OTX is planning to keep tracking games well after their release. For instance, Williams noted that GameInsight noted that "intent to purchase" of "Left 4 Dead" increased substantially after its release. That reflected growing buzz about the quality of its online experience that led to strong sales well after launch. "Left 4 Dead" undoubtedly had the best "legs" of any action game in 2008.

By the end of this year, Williams says he's hoping to go beyond tracking separate statistics and combine them into actual sales projections, making OTX the first company to do so for the video game industry.

Of course, as with all things in this business, they'll be very closely guarded. Studios get full access not just to how their movies are tracking, but all their competitors' films too. However, Williams says game publishers will only get precise estimates for their own titles. For others, they may just get broad ranges. Game publishers just aren't as willing -- or haven't been forced -- to share their data as movie studios and TV networks are.

Bringing reliable sales projections based on consumers surveys to the video game industry would be a pretty significant advance. But in the long run, OTX has an even more ambitious plan: To bring all its entertainment research together.

"We have a consultant from MIT working with our marketing sciences division to look at the ecosystem of all the data we're collecting in one giant entertainment simulator," Williams explains. "You can look at that model and say, 'Don't launch game X when movie Y is opening.' Because all these things are interconnected now."

February video game sales data was just released today and all the data, including the top 10 titles, console sales, and industry growth, are below. But here are your key points:

The industry is slowing, but still growing despite the recession

It's nothing close to the phenomenal 34% growth of the U.S. video game business last year. But 10% when the rest of the economy is contracting is still quite impressive. And software and hardware are contributing virtually evenly to the mix -- a good sign that the hardware cycle isn't slowing and that current gamers aren't cutting back disproportionately on buying new titles.

Microsoft had a good comparison, Sony had a bad one

The 54% jump in Xbox 360 sales is impressive. But you have to remember that last February Xbox 360 sales were dismal, due largely to supply constraints post-holiday and in anticipation of "Grand Theft Auto IV." This past Fall's price cut helped too of course. But nothing as amazing as that 54% number would indicate actually happened for Microsoft. It's just back to where it should be.

Sony, meanwhile, had a decent month, given its recent problems. Sales were almost flat, despite the fact that the PS3 sold unusually well last February (thanks in part to the then-recent victory of Blu-ray, as well as the 360's supply problems). Still, I'm sure Sony would love to see PS3 sales actually grow for a change. The PSP, meanwhile, continues to suffer. No wonder Sony's pushing aggressively for big new titles like "Hannah Montana," "Assassin's Creed," and "LittleBigPlanet" on the device.

 Killzone 2, Street Fighter IV both had solid launches

323,000 units in fifth place isn't bad for a PS3 exclusive that launched on the last Friday of the month. Quite good, in fact.

And Capcom kicked ass, at least as far as February releases go, with "Street Fighter IV," selling 849,000 units across the two high-end consoles. By contrast, Capcom's big sequel last February, "Devil May Cry 4," sold 528,700 on the same platforms.

FEAR 2 and 50 Cent, not so much

Warner Bros.' heavily hyped "FEAR 2: Project Origin," it's first stab at a non-licensed title for the  hard-core market, flopped. Despite launching early in the month, both the PS3 nor 360 versions sold less than 136,000 units. There are all sorts of possible reasons, most notably that in the current economy mid-level hard core titles simply aren't selling. But it's still a bad sign for the studios' ambitions to compete with major publishers that a sequel with relatively good reviews couldn't do better.

"50 Cent: Blood on the Sand," had the same problem, though it did launch late in the month. Still, THQ's expectations may have been more modest, since it bought the former Sierra title from Activision at what was likely a sizable discount off the full development cost.

Remember Nintendo? They're still dominating

There were no major new Nintendo releases, but that didn't slow the House of Mario down too much. It still claimed five of the top 10 games, with another, "Guitar Hero: World Tour" breaking into the top 10 only with its Wii version. Notably, the newest Nintendo game on the top 10, was at #1, "Wii Fit." It's "only" nine months old. "Mario Kart DS," meanwhile, is on the top 10 over three years after its debut.

And the Wii, once again, topped the market, growing 74% -- helped, of course, by easing supply. DS sales were flat, but still well ahead of every other console except the Wii.

For the latest edition of the monthly NPD videogame sales data, I thought I'd try something different. Instead of writing up a little article, here's bullet points on the most important trends and data points (in this writer's humble opinion) followed by the data itself for you to interpret:

The big winner: Nintendo

Boy, that's been the story for a while, huh? But facts are facts. In the normally slow month of January, during a recession, sales of the Nintendo Wii rose 150% from last January to 679,200 in the U.S. Sales of the handheld DS console rose 103% to 510,800.

Oh, and Nintendo had the three best selling games of the month and five of the top ten. The newest of those games came out last march and the oldest came out in November of 2005. By contrast, the oldest non-Nintendo game in the top ten came out in October. As I've written before, Nintendo has got legs. Every other publisher has stumps.

In addition to those five Nintendo first party games, the only version of "Guitar Hero: World Tour" to make the top ten was for the Wii.

The big loser: Sony

We've been seeing that story for a while too. But the beat's still going. Sony is purposefully not cutting prices in order to keep its games division in the black for the fiscal year ending March 31.

The result is that the PS3 is overpriced (amongst other problems) and saw sales fall 24% from last January to 203,200. The PSP, which is suffering more from a lack of good games and the complete dominance of the DS, saw its sales fall 25% to 172,300.

Not a single game for any Sony consoles in the top ten this month. Hopes that "LittleBigPlanet" would become a big seller after the holiday madness appear to be crushed.

 The biggest surprise: Left 4 Dead

Valve's co-op horror shooter is the no. 4 game of the month and the best selling non-Nintendo game. It beat big franchise sequels like "Call of Duty: World at War," "Guitar Hero: World Tour" and "Skate 2," as well as the big new licensed game, "Lord of the Rings: Conquest."

Talk about a sign that, while it's really tough, flawlessly executed original IP can work. Is there anybody out there who's possibly not thrilled to see this game's success?

Fading franchises: Call of Duty and World at War

Activision Blizzard may be doing better than its competition, but it's not starting off 2009 with the best footing. After launching with sales figures virtually idential to 2007's "Modern Warfare," "Call of Duty: World at War" slipped well below sales of the last installment in January. "Modern Warfare" for the Xbox 360 sold 331,000 units in January of '08, but "World at War" sold 235,000 last month. The Playstation 3 version last year sold 140,000, but this year's didn't make the top 10, meaning it moved less than 113,000.

Similarly, "Guitar Hero: World Tour" for the Wii slipped 36 from "Guitar Hero III" on the Wii, selling 155,000. And while "Guitar Hero III" sold 183,000 units for the Xbox 360, this year's version sold under 113,000.

So-So and soft launches: Skate 2 and Lord of the Rings: Conquest

Neither of the month's major new games, both from EA, did particularly well. "Skate 2" sold a mediocre 199,000 units on the Xbox 360, while "Conquest" bowed to a weak 113,000 on the same console.

Growing in weird ways: The industry, thanks to Nintendo

In the depths of a recession, 13% industry growth, 17% hardware growth, and 10% software growth is nothing to complain about. As you can see in the chart, most of that hardware growth is coming from Nintendo, with a little assist from Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Why are games (aka software) sales growing slower? As NPD analyst Anita Frazier admitted, "At this point in the console lifecycle, we would expect to see a greater percentage of total industry sales generated by software sales, but the continued strength in hardware sales is changing that scenario a bit." Translated to plain English, that means all these new Wii and DS owners aren't buying as many games as gamers traditionall do.

Game                      Console     Publisher     Units sold in Jan.  Release date

Wii Fit                      Wii           Nintendo        777,000                May 19

Wii Play                   Wii           Nintendo        415,000                Feb 12, 2007

Mario Kart                Wii           Nintendo        292,000                April 27

Left 4 Dead              360           Valve/EA        243,000                Nov. 18

Cod: World at War    360          Activision       235,000                 Nov. 10

Skate 2                   360           EA                199,000                 Jan. 21

Guitar Hero: WT       Wii           Activision       155,000                 Nov. 18

New Super Mario      DS           Nintendo        135,000                 May 15, 2006

Mario Kart               DS           Nintendo         132,000                 Nov. 14, 2005

LOTR: Conquest      360          EA                 113,000                Jan. 13

Console       Jan. unit sales  Growth from Jan. 2008       Lifetime-to-date
Wii              679,2000                  150%                           16.2 million
DS              510,800                    103%                           25.1 million
360             306,000                      34%                           12.8 million
PS3            203,200                      24%                            6.3 million

PSP           172,300                       25%                          13.4 million

Category             Jan. revenue   Change
Total industry     $1.33 billion        13%
Hardware           $445.4 million     17%
Software            $676.6 million     10%
Accessories       $209.8 million     11%

Viacom is the latest media conglomerate to report weak fourth quarter earnings, though after News Corp, Disney, and Time Warner all bombed, investors seem to have been expecting it, so the stock was actually up.

One of the many disappointments? Rock Band 2. According to numerous reports (I didn't listen to this morning's earnings call), the company was disappointed by sales of 2 million units through Dec. 31 and blamed the weak retail environment in the last two months of the year.

In last year's fourth quarter earnings, Viacom announced that the original "Rock Band," which had only been on sale for a month for two consoles at the time (as opposed to three-plus months on one console and two-plus on another for "Rock Band 2") had sold 1.1 million units. It's a little tough to compare sales on those differing schedules, but it's clear Viacom expected a significant increase for the sequel and didn't see it.

Nonetheless, according to PaidContent, Viacom is looking for "Rock Band 2" -- and, I'd bet, Harmonix's upcoming Beatles game -- to be one of its few bright spots in what's shaping up to be a bleak 2009.

Capcom released its earnings late last week and buried in the stats was this little detail I almost missed: "Grand Theft Auto IV," which Capcom has been selling for Rockstar in Japan since November.

"GTA III," "Vice City" and "San Andreas" all sold poorly in Japan, at least compared to their massive worldwide figures. For such distinctly Western games, 4440,000, 560,000, and 419,000 units, respectively, aren't bad. But when you compared that to the 12.1 million, 15.3 million, and 22.2 million units, respectively, sold worldwide for each game, the sales are miniscule.

It looks like "GTA IV" won't be any different. In its first two months on the market, it sold just 280,000 units. For the sake of comparison, in its first week in the U.S. and Europe, the game sold over 6 million units.

Back in November I interviewed Rockstar VP creative Dan Houser about the Japan launch. He admitted that with the dominance of the Wii and DS in Japan -- platforms on which "GTA IV" is not available -- sales were unlikely to be massive. "Our hope is just to step it up a little," he said.

But it looks like it's not to be. Unless "GTA IV" does really well as a discounted catalog title, reaching the approximately 500,000 units its predescessors sold is probably the best case scenario. Of course, given the low install base of the Xbox 360 and PS3 in Japan compared to the PS2 for which the other "GTA" games were available, that could be considered something of an accomplishment. Nonetheless, compared to the 10 million-plus units "IV" has already sold in the West, that's another drop in the bucket.

It'll be really interesting to see how "Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars" for the DS performs in Japan (we get it in March; it'll probably land there later in the fall). Nintendo's handheld console is near ubiqutious in Japan, so there will be no issues with the platform. It will be a pure test of whether Japanese consumers dig the "GTA" franchise in 2009.

(Unless the "Chinatown" aspect makes a difference one way or another in Japan?)

Photo from Wired's Game/Life

It’s no surprise, after seeing the 2008 NPD numbers, that the videogame segment of Sony’s earnings today were pretty dismal, while Nintendo’s were pretty fantastic. Just as in the U.S., Playstation 3 worldwide sales declined during the quarter ended Dec. 31 -- 9 % to be exact, to 4.46 million -- which is decidedly not good for a two year old console. Nintendo Wii sales, meanwhile, surged 50% worldwide to 10.41 million. (Microsoft, we previously learned, sold 6 million Xbox 360 consoles last quarter, up 28%.)

However Sony did point to one positive: a 57% jump in PS3 software sales. But software sales only matter compared to the total number of consoles (a ratio known as the attach rate). And after working that out, we find that the PS3 has virtually the same attach rate as the Wii. Meaning Sony really has nothing to brag about.

By Dec. 31, the PS3’s worldwide install base was 21.39 million, about double what it was last year. The Wii’s grew 123% to just under 45 million. On the software side, Nintendo and other publishers sold 82.4 million Wii games in the quarter ending Dec. 31, up 74%, while Sony et al sold 40.6 million PS3 games, up 57%. The comparative software sales growth rates for the quarter almost exactly mirror the comparative growth in the two consoles’ install bases.

So if software sales compared to hardware sales are growing at the same rate, are they ending up anywhere different? Nope. Sony says 40.6 million PS3 games were sold last quarter, or 1.89 for every console on the market. Consumers bought 82.4 million Wii games, or 1.83 per piece of hardware. Almost identical.

(Microsoft, alas, doesn’t reveal its worldwide software sales. And while it has traditionally had a very strong attach rate in the U.S., it’s tough to know how it all ads up when you combine that with the weak Japanese market and Europe.)

Playstation 3 owners might be willing to shell out more for a console, it turns out, but they’re not buying more games (though they are, to be fair, spending about $10 more per game). Microsoft has the advantage, in the U.S. at least, of a much higher attach rate than its competitors. Sony doesn’t have that. It’s third place in consoles and tied with its biggest competitor in comparative software sales. And compared to Microsoft, it’s not making nearly as much money online (since Sony doesn’t charge for subscriptions or run ads). Which means after two years, Sony still has a fundamental problem to solve: What is the business advantage of the PS3 over its competitors?

(Sony also has a problem in common with Nintendo: the devastating impact of the strong Japanese Yen on earnings. That's one of several reasons why struggling Sony has had to cut earnings forecasts, but the only reason why otherwise prospering Nintendo did the same.)

In Hollywood we're very used to the concept of the "review-proof" and even the "unreviewable" movies -- ones about which reviewers struggle to say anything relevant that perform extremely well commercially. This past weekend's $39 million grosser "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" springs to mind. As do some of the biggest movies of the past few years, like "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," "Twilight," "Transformers," Pirates of the Caribbean 3"... You know what I'm talking about. They may get reviewed, but reluctantly, and there's rarely much in the way of follow-up discussion and online buzz the way there is about, say, "Slumdog Millionnaire" or "The Wrestler."

I always thought that videogames were different. Most of the top sellers were usually games thoroughly discussed by reviewers (and, more recently, bloggers), usually very positively. As recently as last year, four of the top 5 titles (Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero II, Super Mario Galaxy) fall exactly in that category. Out of the top ten, "Wii Play," "Mario Party 8," and maybe "Pokemon Diamond" were games that didn't exactly have critics buzzing.

Even three games seems like a lot, historically speaking, But this year, and this holiday season especially, I think, the number of top selling videogames that simply eluded critics exploded. Here's NPD's top 20 games of December, ranked and followed by the number of reviews each title received in Metacritic (that doesn't include everything, of course, but for comparison's sake, it's a good sense of what videogame critics are talking about):

Notice a trend? Eight of the the ten least reviewed games are for Nintendo consoles. Only five of the top ten and two of the top five are (and two came out more than a year ago, making them only arguably relevant).

Then there's the vaguer issue of buzz. I can't quantify it, but I'm willing to argue that videogame bloggers, message board posters, etc. were talking a lot more about "Fallout," "Gears," "Call of Duty," "Left 4 Dead" and even titles that sold beneath the top 20 like "Dead Space," "Mirror's Edge," "Prince of Persia" and "LittleBigPlanet" than almost all of these Nintendo games.

The simple reason is that most of these Nintendo titles are either the umpteenth revision of very familiar formulas ("Mario Kart," "Animal Crossing") or "games" that aren't really games, at least in the sense that we critics and writers usually think and talk about them ("Wii Fit," "Wii Music," "Personal Trainer: Cooking," etc.) And then there's the multi-platform titles like "Call of Duty," "Shaun White Snowboarding" and "Guitar Hero" for which we clearly prefer to review and discuss the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.

It's a growing trend, but again, I feel like it really exploded this year as, for various reasons I and others have discussed, Nintendo took control of the sales charts and did so with a very different slate of titles. Last December, by contrast, videogame critics and writers were eagerly discussing four of the top five titles ("CoD 4," "Super Mario Galaxy," "Guitar Hero III," "Assassin's Creed") and a much bigger percentage of the top 20 (see for yourself).

 I don't really have a proscriptive take on all this. Should we find more to say about "Wii Fit" and "Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force?" (Hey, Variety reviewed it!) Well, if all artistic criticism mirrored the sales charts, that would be a sad thing for our culture. Should we review the Wii version of multi-platform franchises more often? Perhaps, but if it doesn't have as many features as PS3 or 360, that seems a bit bizarre (at least for publications like Variety without the resources to review multiple versions).

It may in fact be a good thing. The videogame industry is maturing and we need our review-proof blockbusters just as much as we need everything else. It's also, perhaps, no coincidence that 2008 was also the year that we saw an explosion of interest in, discussion about, and a business model coalescing around independent games. The market may simply be expanding and some parts of it need critical attention more than others.

I had thought that when NPD sent out its list of the top 20 games of December, (with no sales figures for 11-20, as is traditional), we might see some of those big non-Nintendo games from the holidays that didn't make the top ten (on which six games were for Wii or DS).

But instead, the evidence points even more to utter Nintendo domination. Of games no. 11 through 20 sold in the U.S. in December, seven were for Wii or DS and four were published by the house of Mario itself.

Sometimes I think these facts are hard for those of us who write about games, or play them "hard core," to get our minds around, so I want to emphasize them carefully:

Also of note on the top 20 beyond Nintendo:

-Disney's "Club Penguin" DS game scored a very impressive no. 15 Now that it owns the virtual world and this first effort was such a success, we can expect to see plenty more "Club Penguin" videogame spin offs (and hey, this first effort wasn't too bad, according to Variety's Chris Dahlen)

-"Guitar Hero: World Tour" sold better on PS2 than 360 or PS3 (but not, of course, Wii). It was the only PS2 game in the top 20. Now that's a maintream franchise. And it's still beating "Rock Band 2," which didn't make the top 20 in any form.

Let's not forget the high profile games released in November and December that didn't manage to make the top 20:

Here's the full top 20, with sales figures for the top 10:

Game                      Console     Publisher     Units sold in Dec.  Release date

Wii Play                    Wii           Nintendo        1.46 million          Feb 12, 2007

Call of Duty 5            360           Activision       1.33 million          Nov. 10

Wii Fit                      Wii           Nintendo        999,000               May 19

Mario Kart                Wii            Nintendo        979,000               April 27

Guitar Hero: WT        Wii           Activision       850,000               Oct. 28

Gears of War 2         360           Microsoft       745,000                Nov. 7

Left 4 Dead              360           EA/Valve        629,000                Nov. 18

Mario Kart                DS            Nintendo        540,000               Nov. 14, 2005

Call of Duty 5           PS3           EA                533,000               Nov. 10

Animal Crossing...    Wii           Nintendo         497,000              Nov. 16

Wii Music                Wii           Nintendo             -                      Oct. 20

New Super Mario...   DS           Nintendo            -                      May 15, 2006

...Trainer: Cooking    DS           Nintendo             -                      Nov. 24

Fallout 3                  360           Bethesda           -                       Oct. 28

Club Penguin...        DS           Disney               -                       Nov. 25

Links's Crossbow...  Wii            Nintendo            -                       Nov. 19

Guitar Hero: WT       PS2          Activision           -                       Oct. 28

Madden '09              360           EA                   -                        Aug. 12

Call of Duty 5           Wii           Activision           -                       Nov. 10

Shaun White...        Wii           Ubisoft               -                        Nov. 16

I think the overwhelming predominance of Nintendo games on this list, and the fact that so many of them are titles that those of us in the gaming press and blogosphere just don't talk about, is a really important fact. One that I'll probably have more to say about on Monday.

Comes on Sony's analysis of the new NPD data, which is full of bad news for PS3 and PSP:

PlayStation Brand Staged for Continued Momentum in 2009

It had better be.

I just changed the title of this post (thus the different url for you nitpickers out there) for one simple reason: After thinking about the new NPD data for a little while, that strikes me as the real story.

Despite the ongoing recession, the videogame industry had a grew 19% in 2008, a figure most any other industry, especially every other sector of media, would envy.

But there's no denying that figure is being hurt by the recession. In October, the biz grew 18%; November, 10%; December, just 9%. Just a year ago, in December of 2007, the U.S. videogame biz grew an astonishing 28%. It's looking very likely that industry is looking at single digit growth in 2009.

Almost every major company is feeling the pain of the economic downturn to one extent or another. All the big publishers have admitted in recent investor calls that they are retail traffic and ordering grow more conservative. Electronic Arts, the nation's biggest publisher, had to warn it wouldn't hit earnings targets.

And then there's Sony. The latest NPD data is just plain dismal for the Playstation maker and explains why it's likely on the verge of major layoffs. Forget slowing growth -- sales for the PS3 and PSP actually declined in December compared to a year ago, the second month in a row that happened. All those great reviews for "LittleBigPlanet" and the victory of Blu-ray and the "Ratchet and Clank" PSP entertainment pack just didn't make a difference. Though total PS3 sales did grow a healthy 40% from the terrible 2007 figures, the console remains mired far behind 360 and Wii with virtually no chance of catching up (here's one theory why).

So with all those problems, how is the industry even doing as well as it is? One word: Nintendo. Wii sales boomed 62% this year, breaking NPD's all-time record by selling more than 10 million units. DS grew 17%, coming in just a hair behind the Wii with 9.95 million. Both figures are more than the 360 and PS3 combined.

The story's the same in games. Five of the top ten games of the year were for DS and Wii and all five were published by Nintendo itself. And things are only getting better. Six of the top ten in December were for those platforms with five published by the "Mario" maker itself.

For those of us interested in the wide variety of innovative, interesting games released on all five consoles (and PC!), it's important to keep this fact in mind: In a year that featured new releaes like "Dead Space," "LittleBigPlanet," "Fallout 3," "Far Cry 2," and "Metal Gear Solid 4," none of those games sold more than 1.65 million units domestically (in a single sku, anyway) and made the top ten.

Particularly notable is the staying power of Nintendo's games (as I noted last month, it really does have the best legs in the videogame biz). While every game from competing publishers in December's top 10 chart was released in October or November, Nintendo had two games release in the spring, one in 2007, and another -- the astonishing "Mario Kart" DS -- came out in November of 2005.

Microsoft remains right in the middle. 360 sales grew 2% in 2008. It continued to boast strong sales for its biggest franchises -- "Gears of War 2" sold over 2.3 million units -- and very strong third party sales, with three of the top ten games third party titles for the 360. It may be losing that advantage, though, as the Wii ended up with the most third party third party games sold in December for the second month in a row.

More thoughts coming soon, no doubt. Meanwhile, here's the data to ponder yourselves:

Game                      Console     Publisher     Units sold in Dec.  Release date

Wii Play                    Wii           Nintendo        1.46 million          Feb 12, 2007

Call of Duty 5            360           Activision       1.33 million          Nov. 10

Wii Fit                          Wii           Nintendo        999,000               May 19

Mario Kart                Wii            Nintendo        979,000               April 27

Guitar Hero: WT        Wii           Activision       850,000               Oct. 28

Gears of War 2         360           Microsoft       745,000                Nov. 7

Left 4 Dead              360           EA/Valve        629,000                Nov. 18

Mario Kart                DS            Nintendo        540,000               Nov. 14, 2005

Call of Duty 5           PS3           EA                533,000               Nov. 10

Animal Crossing...    Wii           Nintendo         497,000              Nov. 16

Game                      Console     Publisher     Units sold in 2008  Release date

Wii Play                   Wii            Nintendo        5.28 million          Feb 12, 2007                                   

Mario Kart                Wii            Nintendo        5 million               April 27                                        

Wii Fit                      Wii           Nintendo        4.53 million           May 19                                        

Smash Bros...        Wii            Nintendo        4.17 million           Mar. 9                                          

GTA IV                    360           Rockstar        3.29 million           Apr. 29

Call of Duty 5           360           Activision       2.75 million           Nov. 10

Gears of War 2         360           Microsoft       2.31 million            Nov. 7

GTA IV                    PS3          Rockstar        1.89 million           Apr. 29

Madden NFL '09       360           EA                1.87 million           Aug. 12

Mario Kart                DS           Nintendo        1.65 million           Nov. 14, 2005

Console       Dec. unit sales  Growth   2008 units sales  Growth     Lifetime-to-date
DS              3.04 million         23%      9.95 million         17%             26.6 million
Wii              2.15 million         59%     10.17 million        62%             16.6 million                                 
360             1.44 million         14%      4.7 million           2%               13.9 million
PSP            1 million            -4%        3.8 million           0%              14.2 million
PS3             726,000             -9%       3.5 million          40%              6.8 million                             

Category             Dec. revenue   Change     2008 revenue       Change
Total industry     $5.29 billion        9%       $21.33 billion          19%
Hardware           $1.88 billion        2%       $7.81 billion            11%
Software            $2.75 billion       15%       $10.96 billion          26%
Accessories       $662 million        8%       $2.57 billion            14%

(Thanks to Justin Kroll for help compiling data. And apologies if the charts don't look good on your browser. I did my best!)

Rentrak just provided the data. It's pretty standard stuff, basically the most popular games released from fall of 2007 to spring of 2008, since those of course had the most time to rack up big rental numbers throughoug the year. The two notable exceptions:

-"Mario Party 8," from all the way back in May of 2007. This is the Wii game people were still renting? More than "Super Mario Galaxy?"

-"Fallout 3" was the only game released this fall to rack up enough rentals to make the top ten. In just nine weeks. That's impressive.

Here's the list, as well as the platforms:

Way back two years ago when I covered box office, I became extremely familiar with the concept of "legs," which in Variety-speak means movies that perform well at the box office for a while, instead of just doing some business on their opening weekend and then quickly fading

In the videogame business, legs are rare. Most games in NPD's top 10 ranking came out that month or the previous month. Gamers, by and large, seem to know what they want and they buy it pretty quickly.

There's one big exception, however: Nintendo. The continued presence of "Mario Kart Wii" and "Wii Fit" in the top 10 every single month since they debuted (eight and seven months, respectively) is simply astounding. Then there's "Wii Play which has been in the top 10 for 22 months, though more for the extra Wii-more it comes with than the game.

I decided to take a look at "legs" in the videogame biz this year and it's amazing how much Nintendo dominates. I defined "legs" as videogames that are on NPD's top 10 two months or later after they came out. With the sole exception of "Call of Duty 4" for the 360 and a brief appearance by "Guitar Hero III" on PS2, every game with legs was for a Nintendo platform, and all but one of those were for the Wii.

Starting in February (I'll exclude January since almost nothing new came out that month), here are the games that have shown legs in 2008 and how many months they stayed in the top 10 after their first two:

Wii Play: all 10
Mario Kart Wii: six
Wii Fit: five
Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360): three
Guitar Hero III (Wii): two
Guitar Hero: On Tour (DS): one
Guitar Hero III (PS2): one

Even some of the biggest games of the year, like "Grand Theft Auto IV" and "Madden NFL," fell out of the top 10 after their second month. "Mario Kart Wii," meanwhile, has built up an astounding 4 million plus units in the U.S. alone. "Wii Fit" has sold 3.5 million units and counting. And there's still the little matter of December left to go, when both games should see huge sales. I wouldn't be surprised to see them end up the #2 and #3 games of the year, after "Wii Play."

What's going on? As the continued dominant sales of the Wii (capped by a phenomenal 2 million units last month amidst a recession) demonstrates, Nintendo buyers are a whole different class than the traditional gamers who, by and large, are still buying the 360 and PS3.

Millions of people are buying the Wii and when they do, they're buying "Mario Kart" and "Wii Fit." Which makes sense, since those are well branded games that almost anybody can play (if that word even applies to "Wii Fit") and they're also endlessly replayable, which is probably why there's not a healthy used market for them (used copies on Amazon.com, in fact, are all well over the standard prices). It doesn't even seem to matter that "Wii Fit" costs $90, way more than your typical videogame.

The core gamer audience is still eager for the right titles, of course, as the huge launch for "Gears of War 2" shows.  But what any media company, be it a film studio or videogame publisher, wants is legs. A big launch takes a big marketing budget, but when a game is still performing six months after debut, it's mostly selling itself.

Nobody else has figured out how to do that. Sony couldn't even keep "LittleBigPlanet," which has plenty of mass appeal and replayability, in the top 20 for two months. Even the terrible "Wii Music" managed to sneak into the top ten during its second month. If it stays there in December and beyond, that's officially scary.

It was a good November for Nintendo and Epic/Microsoft Game Studios, but a bad one for the industry, especially Sony and, to lesser extent, the makers of "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band."

The latest sales data from NPD shows overall sales growth was 10%, which in the midst of a recession is pretty good, but is still down a LOT from last year. That shows the videogame biz is hurting, on a comparative basis, just like pretty much every other sector.

NPD points out that this November had seven fewer post-Thanksgiving shopping days than last on its calendar, which is a fair point. But even still, the growth rates are down by such a huge amount that that can't explain the whole difference. Total growth, for instance, plunged from 52% to 10%. Hardware sales growth fell from 41% to 10%, which is somewhat expected since we're now later in the console cycle. But software sales growth plunged from 62% to 11%, which isn't what you'd expect. Seems like software sales should be further increasing now that the console install base is so much bigger.

Without a doubt the company in the most trouble is Sony. Forget about declining growth rates. Playstation 3 sales were actually down 19% in absolute terms from November 2007. Considering that Sony has some very high profile exclusive games out in the past two months, like "LittleBigPlanet" and "Resistance 2," that's downright disastrous. Looks like people just aren't willing to pay $400 for a videogame console right now. (PSP sales were down an even worse 26%, but at least that has the excuse of launching 3.5 years ago, not two).

Also suffering are "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band." 1.5 million "Guitar Hero: World Tour" units have been sold so far this year by Activision, off 55% from "Guitar Hero III" at the same moment in 2007. "Rock Band 2" has sold 809,000 units for MTV and EA. It's tough to compare to last year, since this sequel launched in September, but only for 360, and the original launched last year in late November for 360 and PS3 and added PS2 in December. But consider this: Last November Rock Band sold 382,000 units on its two launch consoles, followed by 463,000 in December for 360 alone, for a total of 845,000. December's always the biggest month, of course, but one week for two consoles and one month for one, compared to a month on one console and a month and a half on two sounds like a more than fair comparison. And "Rock Band 2" is losing to the original.

I'm almost as confused as you are, so here's a cleaner stat: According to UBS analyst Ben Schachter, combined "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" revenue was down 12% in November from last year. And keep in mind that the "Guitar Hero: World Tour" band kit costs $100 more than the highest priced version of "Guitar Hero III."

"Gears of War 2" had a huge month, as expected, though. And "Call of Duty: World at War" launched almost exactly even with "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare," a start that Activision has to be very happy with. The only new original game in the top 10 for November was "Left 4 Dead," which debuted with a strong 410,000 units.

There is one other company I'm forgetting... Oh yea, Nintendo. It seems that recessions don't impact them. I'm not even sure if the law of gravity is in effect at Nintendo HQ. Thanks to more supply and growing demand, Wii sales more than doubled to 2 million last month, the biggest ever for any console outside of December. No doubt Nintendo will break that record next month. Meanwhile, two of its games continue to show what the movie business calls "legs." "Wii Fit" was no. 4 and "Mario Kart" no. 5 six and seven months after their debut, respectively (I'll exclude "Wii Play" because of the free controller issue). Every other new game seems to come and go from the top 10 quickly, but "Fit" and "Mario Kart" keep being snatched up by all those new Wii buyers. Even the much maligned "Wii Music" came back from a weak October launch to sell a solid 297,000 units in its debut.

Notable new games that sold less than that -- though I can't tell by how much and so it's hard to evaluate whether they're bombs or just not quite big enough -- include "Quantum of Solace," "Tomb Raider: Underworld," and "Mortal Kombat vs. DC." There's also "Mirror's Edge," but we already know that one is a bomb.

Here's the complete set of NPD November data. At the suggestion of a smart reader, I've added release dates, so you can fairly compare games that came out earlier or later in the month. I've also added percentage growth from last November for each console, just because I think it's interesting.

Game                      Console     Publisher     Units sold in Nov.  Release date

Gears of War 2         360           Microsoft       1.56 million        Nov. 7

Call of Duty 5            360           Activision      1.41 million       Nov. 10

Wii Play                    Wii           Nintendo        796,000            Feb 12, 2007
Wii Fit                      Wii           Nintendo        697,000            May 19
Mario Kart                Wii            Nintendo        637,000            April 27
Call of Duty 5            PS2           Activision       597,000            Nov. 10
Guitar Hero: WT       Wii           Activision       475,000            Oct. 26
Left 4 Dead              360           EA                  410,000            Nov. 18
Resistance 2            PS3           Sony               435,000             Nov. 4
Wii Music                PS3            Nintendo        297,000            Oct. 20

Console       Nov. unit sales  Growth from Nov. 2007       Lifetime-to-date
Wii              2.04 million                108%                           15.5 million
DS               1.57 million                 3%                              24.6 million
360             836,000                       9%                              12.5 million
PSP             421,000                      -26%                           13.2 million
PS3             378,000                      -19%                            6.1 million

Category             Nov. revenue   Change  Year-to-date revenue  Change
Total industry     $2.91 billion        10%       $16.04 billion             22%
Hardware           $1.21 billion        10%       $5.93 billion               14%
Software            $1.45 billion        11%       $8.21 billion               31%
Accessories        $255 million         7%        $1.91 billion               17%

As the first information about sales in November -- the most important month of the year for videogame sales -- starts to creep out ahead of Thursday's official report from NPD, it's looking like amidst recession, gamers are going for the familiar and the cheap.

To wit, Nintendo prexy Satoru Iwata told Reuters that his company sold 800,000 Wii units in the U.S. during Thanksgiving week, more than double last year's figure. The increase is helped in part by the fact that the supply is bigger, but still, the fact that there's still that much demand indicates consumers are still happy to buy the cheapest (or rather believed to be cheapest, sorry Xbox 360 Arcade) console.

Also selling very well,. it appears, is "Gears of War 2." Microsoft already announced it sold more than 2 million units worldwide and Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter predicts the game sold as many as 3 million units domestically last month (EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich predicts a more conservative 2 million-plus). The other huge game, according to Pachter, was likely "Fallout 3." Bethesda already announced that it shipped 4.7 million units worldwide and the analyst predicts it sold around 1.5 million units in November, on top of the 510,000 from the end of October.

Not selling so well? It looks like the big music games could be in decline. "Guitar Hero: World Tour" sales were already down 61% in October from "Guitar Hero III" last year (as I detailed here) and Divnich predicts the November "III" to "World Tour" drop could be 50%. "Rock Band 2," meanwhile sold a so-so 238,000 units in October and Wii Music moved a dismal 81,000. Only the latter is a flop, but it seems that none are setting the world on fire they way they did last year and even in the first half of this year (when "Guitar Hero III" for Wii, in particular, was very hot).

Another sign: Prices for "World Tour" on eBay are significantly cheaper than retail, indicating that supply is no longer a problem.

It could be that "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero: World Tour" are so expensive and these are obviously lean times when not many people are ready to spend $200 on a videogame ("Wii Music" is only $50 but has other problems, like the fact that it's not very good). Of course the bigger question that Activision and MTV have to worry about is whether this is a sign that the music videogame biz has peaked. Given the hundreds of millions MTV spent on Harmonix and the major investment it's making in a Beatles game, plus the fact that Activision plans to triple the number of "Guitar Hero" skus by 2010, that's a worrying thought.

Finally, it appears that EA's "Mirrors Edge" experiment may not be working out, at least off the bat. I am hearing industry sources that initial sales on the first person parkour game were quite soft.

Of course we'll get actual hard data on Thursday from NPD.

The videogame biz is definitely losing a bit of its mojo.

The best evidence? New NPD data shows that Guitar Hero: World Tour has sold 534,000 units in its first week. Pretty good. But consider that last year, "Guitar Hero III" sold 1.4 million units in the exact same period. That's a drop of 62%.

Overall, the industry grew by 18% in October. Again, that's impressive, especially compared to the rest of the media sector and the overall economy. But last October, it grew an astounding 73%. Perhaps most importantly, October's 18% grown was actually less than the 25% year-to-date growth, meaning the hugely important fall season is so far dragging down the industry, rather than accelerating it.

Nintendo, however, remains the ultimate exception. It sold 803,000 Wi''s in October, which is simply astounding. It's the biggest month since last November and December for Nintendo's console and is more than the 360 and PS3 combined. Sony's console, meanwhile, was the only next gen console to see sales drop from September, indicating that "LittleBigPlanet" was definitely not a console seller. That's definitely not a great sign for Sony, or for the movie studios hoping that more PS3's will lead to more Blu-ray sales.

The month's biggest game was "Fable II," good news for Microsoft and also, I'll admit, people like me who loved the game (though it's even more reason to not let everyone in the world annoy me by completely opening the co-op mode). On software too, though, the biggest story was Nintendo. "Wii Fit," "Mario Kart Wii" and "Wii Play" were the no. 2, 4 and 5 titles for the month. Considering that they came out in May, April, and last February, respectively, that's astounding (even discouting "Wii Play" since people buy that for the controller). "Wii Fit" has sold more than 2.8 million units in the U.S. so far, a pretty amazing figure.

On the other hand, "Wii Music" didn't make the top 10 in its launch date. Given how inaccessible and quite frankly annoying the game is (read the review) I'm not too surprised.

In other game debuts, "Fallout 3" did very well with just one week on sale, "Saints Row 2," "SOCOM," and "LittleBigPlant" did pretty well, and "Dead Space" wasn't as hot as I'm sure EA was hoping.

Here are all the month's stats:

Game                      Console     Publisher     Units sold in Oct.

Fable II                     360           Microsoft        790,000
Wii Fit                      Wii           Nintendo         487,000

Fallout 3                   360           Bethesda         375,000
Mario Kart                Wii           Nintendo          290,000
Wii Play                    Wii           Nintendo          282,000
Saints Row 2            360            THQ                270,000
SOCOM                    PS3            Sony                231,000
LittleBigPlanet         PS3            Sony                215,000
NBA 2K9                  360            2K                   202,000
Dead Space             360            EA                   193,000

Console       Oct. unit sales       Lifetime-to-date
Wii              803,000                    13.5 million
DS               491,000                    23.0 million
360             371,000                    11.7 million
PSP             193,000                    12.8 million
PS3             190,000                    5.7 million

Category             Oct. revenue   Change  Year-to-date revenue  Change
Total industry     $1.31 billion        18%       $13.13 billion             25%
Hardware           $495 million         5%        $4.72 billion               14%
Software            $697 million        35%       $6.76 billion               36%
Accessories        $120 million        -8%       $1.65 billion               18%

This is probably old news to most videogame fans (and thus Cut Scene readers), but I've got an article in today's Daily Variety about the fact that while the videogame biz is still growing steadily and has plenty of hit this fall, there's no "Halo" or "GTA" size blockbusters.

Every summer seems to bring Hollywood something akin to "The Dark Knight" or "Pirates of the Caribbean," but the videogame can go through its hottest season without anything remotely close to breaking a record. Instead, we've got games "opening" with a few million units, like "Gears 2," "Fallout 3," "The Force Unleashed," etc.

And we still don't know how some of the season's potentially biggest hits, like "Guitar Hero: World Tour," are doing, though we'll at least get a hint in terms of U.S. sales tomorrow when NPD figures are released.

Of course, a bunch of doubles and triples can still make for a very healthy industry. But with the economy in freefall, I can't help but wonder whether the hit won't be quite as big as they used to be.

Full story: Vidgame biz awaits fall sales figures

Two big entertainment properties had strong Septembers in the videogame world, as "The Force Unleashed" hit no. 1 on the U.S. sales charts with 1.43 million units (across all consoles), while "Lego Batman" sold a solid 544,000 units, despite only being available for the last week of the year.

"Rock Band 2" also had a decent launch, selling 363,000 units as an Xbox 360 exclusive. That's just a little less than the original "Rock Band" sold on 360 and PS3 combined when it debuted last November.

Also noteworthy: In its fifth month on sale, "Wii Fit" was the no. 2 best selling game of the month, with 518,000 units. That's really remarkable and yet another sign of just how successful Nintendo is at selling non-traditional games to non-traditional players.

Overall industry sales were down 7% from last September, but that's mostly due to how well "Halo 3" did last year, rather than a dour sign about 2008. Also, Microsoft unsurprisingly got a health sales boost for the 360 thanks to the price but, though it's still far behind Nintendo's Wii.

Game                      Console     Publisher     Units sold in Sept.
Force Unleashed        360           LucasArts       610,000
Wii Fit                      Wii           Nintendo        518,000

Rock Band 2              360           MTV/EA         363,000
Mario Kart                 Wii           Nintendo        353,000
Force Unleashed        PS3           LucasArts       325,000
Mercenaries 2            360          EA                  297,000
Wii Play                    Wii           Nintendo         174,000
Madden NFL '09         360          EA                  224,000
Force Unleashed        Wii          LucasArts        223,000
Madden NFL '09         PS2          EA                  158,000

Console       Sept. unit sales      Lifetime-to-date
Wii              687,000                    12.7 million
DS               537,000                    22.5 million
360             347,000                    11.3 million
PSP             238,000                    12.6 million
PS3             232,000                    5.5 million

Category            Sept. revenue   Change  Year-to-date revenue  Change
Total industry     $1.27 billion        -7%       $11.82 billion             26%
Hardware           $498 million        -9%        $4.22 billion              16%
Software            $616 million        -6%       $6.07 billion               36%
Accessories        $153 million        -3%       $1.53 billion               21%

LucasArts just announced that "The Force Unleashed" has exploded out of the gates, selling 1.5 million units worldwide in its first five days. While not exactly "Grand Theft Auto IV" or "Halo 3" numbers, that's a pretty fantastic launch, even given the gigantic marketing push LucasArts put behind it.

Given the very disparate reviews for the game (I really liked it; others did not), I think the interesting question now is how players will react and whether word of mouth will be good enough to make this a strong holiday seller and give LucasArts a solid 4 or 5 or even more million units. Or whether the buzz will be bad enough that parents and girlfriends will be getting recommendations not to buy this game as a Christmas present.

EA recently said that "Madden NFL '09" revenue is up 6% from last year in August, but NPD specifies that overall unit sales were up just two percent from last year. Given industry growth, a larger console install base, and the stronger critical reception this year, that's got to be a disappointment. Still, 2.3 million units is 2.3 million units and that's still a big chunk of money for EA and an easy number one for the month.

Looks like EA's going to have to do a better job selling (or is that developing?) "All-Play," though. Despite continues huge sales for the Wii, the more accessible version of "Madden '09" for Nintendo's motion sensing console sold only 116,000 units last month, way behind the 360, PS3, and PS2 sku's.

Overall, it was the slowest growing month so far in 2008 for the videogame biz, though most other industries would kill to be up 9%. "Too Human" was the only non-"Madden" new game to even make the top 10, and it wasn't an impressive showing, with just 168,000 units last month.

Here's the full data dump for videogames sales in 2008 from NPD:

Game                      Console     Publisher     Units sold in August
Madden NFL' 09         360           EA                1 million
Madden NFL '09         PS3           EA                643,000
Madden NFL '09         PS2           EA                425,000
Wii Fit                      Wii          Nintendo        395,000
Mario Kart                 Wii          Nintendo        329,000
Wii Play                     Wii          Nintendo        200,000
Soul Calibur IV            360         Namco Bandai 174,000
Too Human                360          Microsoft        168,000
Madden NFL '09          Wii          EA                  116,000
Guitar Hero: On Tour  DS          Activision        111,000

Console       August unit sales      Lifetime-to-date
DS               518,000                    22 million
Wii             453,000                    12 million
PSP             253,000                    12.4 million
360             195,000                    10.9 million
PS3             185,000                    5.3 million

Category            August revenue  Change  Year-to-date revenue  Change
Total industry     $995 million        9%         $10.55 billion             32%
Hardware           $395 million        3%         $3.73 billion               20%
Software            $551 million        13%       $5.45 billion               43%
Accessories        $137 million        13%       $1.38 billion               24%

Electronic Arts' press release today boasting a six percent increase in "Madden NFL '09's" sales from its August 12 launch to the end of the month compared to "'08" last year is kinda bizarre. I suppose it may have been motivated by concerns that the game was underperforming, but 6% growth to $133.5 million in a year when overall videogame software sales are up a whopping 48% in the U.S. is hardly awe-inspiring. Given the wider install base of consoles, not to mention rising prices as more players switch to 360 or PS3 and pay $60 per game instead of $50, a 6% rise seems like it barely qualifies as staying even.

I'm not saying the game is some kind of flop. "Madden" has always been a huge seller and it looks like this year's version will continue that trend. But EA Sports doesn't have anything more to brag about than usual here, so it's weird they felt a need to put out a press release less than 48 hours before NPD comes out with its August sales data, which should show the same thing.

This press release also wins the award for the most ridiculous comparison I've seen yet of videogame sales to movie grosses. Any games-to-movies comparison is sketchy for all sorts of obvious reasons, mainly having to do with the wildly different business models for the two products, but at least in the case of "Halo 3" and "Grand Theft Auto IV" they could point to opening grosses that beat all-time movie records. Here's what EA said about "Madden NFL '09":

The retail dollars generated from Madden NFL 09 [$133.5 million]  beat dollars       generated by the country’s top blockbuster       movies, for the month of August, such as Tropic Thunder ($83.9       million), Mamma Mia! ($56.4 million), and Pineapple Express       ($79.9 million).

What a random selection. They didn't even all open in August ("Mamma Mia" debuted July 18) and they're not even the top grossing August openers (that would be "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," which bowed Aug. 1 and made about $100 million for the month). But it does conveniently leave out films like "The Dark Knight," which opened July 18 but still made about $150 million in August, and other "top blockbuster movies" like "Indiana Jones," "Iron Man," and "Hancock," all of which made more than "Madden's" $133.5 million in their first two weeks.

Apologies for the slow posting this week as I'm preparing for a big family wedding on Saturday. Meanwhiles, here's the big news I'm behind on posting:

-I reported back in July that there would likely be a price for the Xbox 360 this fall. Then earlier this month, ArsTechnica reported that the price cut would likely be to $200 for the Arcade, $300 for the standard (formerly known as "pro"), and $400 for the elite. I said that sounded about right for me. Now Joystiq has a Radio Shack flyer that confirms those new prices are coming September 7. Which is good timing, given that temporary 360 exclusive "Rock Band 2" comes out later in the month. Given the slowdown in sales for the 360 this year, it seems like a price cut is necessary. Now Microsoft is in the much stronger position of having one version even cheaper than the Wii and it's highest quality version the same price as the PS3, while its standard version is nicely positioned between the two.

-NPD, working with Chart-Track and Enterbrain, makes its data a bit more interesting by providing year-to-date sales for the top 5 games in the U.S., UK and Japan. Not clear whether they will provide this quasi-global data on a regular basis, though. Data is below. No surprise that "GTA IV" is #1, though NPD's 6.3 million is still far below Take-Two's self-reported total of 8.5 million as of May 31, revealing the limits of NPD's incomplete reporting (since Take-Two is a public company and we can probably assume we're being honest. It's also notable that "Wii Fit" is the one game to actually sell even better in Japan than the U.S. "Guitar Hero III," meanwhile has virtually no sales in Japan. I guess the Japanese like funky peripherals that let them improve their balance, but not become a rock star.

-Jamil Moledina, who has led the Game Developers Conference for five years and helped it grow into an event that's now arguably more important to the industry than E3, has left his job with the ever mysterious intention to "pursue other interests." Meggan Scavio, who already had the job as "event director" of GDC, is now in charge.

-The FTC has, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the OK to EA acquiring Take-Two. Now the only question is whether their upcoming private talks will lead to a deal.

I'll be back on Monday, with some fresh reporting coming next week.

Here's some slightly old news from GameDaily that I just came across, but it's really disappointing to discover the Electronics Arts' awesome "Boom Blox," which I think is a candidate for best game of the year so far (my review here), sold only 60,000 units in the U.S. during its first few weeks on sale.

Here's an example of a game tailor-made for the most popular console on the market that, in my opinion, is accessible to casual players and offers depth for experienced players, but apparently didn't appeal much to either. Did the cartoony aspects turn off the latter group and the newness turn off the former? Was it just not marketed well? Should creator Steven Spielberg have been out there pumping it more (he certainly didn't have a big presence publicity wise that I saw)?

Whatever the reason, I hope EA can give it another push around the holidays. Because there certainly weren't problems here quality wise. "Boom Blox" is easily better than many of Nintendo's first party best sellers for the system. There's got to be a way to sell an innovative game like "Boom Blox" to the millions of people with  a Wii.

Here's your monthly data dump from NPD as I sort through May videogame sales for an article in tomorrow's Daily Variety.

First take: Playstation 3 is really opening up a lead over Xbox 360. And there's no obvious reason for it beyond just greater interest in one console over another. "Grand Theft Auto IV' was the only game either system had in the top 10. It seems the price cut, Blu-ray, and better games (especially "Metal Gear Solid 4") are finally driving new buyers to pick PS3 over 360 or gamers who bought a 360 early to finally buy that PS3.

Of course Nintendo still remains dominant. Seven of the top 10 were for its consoles and six were self-published. Wii Fit made a fantastic debut, especially for such an alternative and expensive game, selling 688,000 units in its first few weeks.

"Wii Fit" was one of only two new games, along with "Iron Man," to even crack the top 10. Among the big new releases that didn't sell over 102,000 units last month were "Haze," "Boom Blox" and "Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian."

"Grand Theft Auto IV" remains dominant. After a little more than a month, Rockstar's mega-hit has sold a total of 4.16 million units in the U.S. according to NPD (and 8.5 million worldwide according to Take-Two).

More analysis coming later, but for now here are your numbers. Again, all data is U.S. only, according to NPD, for May

Game                        Platform    Publishers    Units sold
Grand Theft Auto IV      360         Rockstar      871,300
Mario Kart Wii              Wii         Nintendo      787,400
Wii Fit                         Wii         Nintendo      687,700
Grand Theft Auto IV      PS3        Rockstar       442,900
Wii Play                       Wii         Nintendo      294,600
Super Smash Brawl       Wii         Nintendo      171,100
Iron Man                      PS2         Sega            130,600
Guitar Hero III             Wii         Activision     116,800
Pokemon... Darkness   DS          Nintendo       107,000
Pokemon... Time         DS         Nintendo        102,000

Console  May sales   Liftetime-to-date
Wii         675,100       10.3 M
DS          452,600        20.05 M
PS3         208,700       4.5M
360         186,600       10.3 M
PSP         182,300       11.6 M

Category          May revenue  Change  Year-to-date revenue  Change
Total industry    $1.12B        +37%       $6.5B                          +32%
Hardware          $428.6M      +34%       $2.27B                        +17%
Software           $536.9M      +41%       $3.42B                        +45%
Accessories       $150.8M      +30%       $901.3M                     +29%

More coming on Take-Two Interactive earnings soon, but I had to immediately post the new sales figures from "Grand Theft Auto IV." Take Two revealed that it as of May 31, the game has sold 8.5 million units to consumers and 11 million total into retailers (meaning that's what stores ordered and eventually expected to sell.

Remember that in its first week, "GTA IV" sold 6 million units. So things have slowed down a bit since then, but it's still racking up huge numbers and seems well on its way to being the best selling Xbox 360 and PS3 games (Infinity Ward recently revealed that "Call of Duty 4" has sold over 10 million units, but I don't know how many of those were PC).

Based on the $500 million-plus figure that Take Two put out along with first week sales, basic math indicates that is has now generated over $700 million in sales, with over $900 million worth of games sold into retail.

No wonder Microsoft made a big deal yesterday of announcing that Xbox 360 is the first console to reach 10 million units in the U.S.

The folks there undoubtedly knew that today's NPD numbers would be pretty dismal. Not that they're any better for Sony. Neither console maker got any visible bump from the debut of "Grand Theft Auto IV" in April. Xbox 360 sales were down 28% from March to 188,000. PS3 sales fell 27% to 187,000.

Everyone expected that both console makers would benefit, of course. The theory is that lots of people haven't made the switch to PS3 or 360 yet, but would do so with a hugely popular game like "GTA IV" to motivate them. But while Rockstar sold 1.85 million units in the first five days on sale, almost everybody who bought one appears to already own a 360 or PS3.

By contrast, Wii sales were virtually flat at 714,000, as Nintendo moved from one big hit ("Super Smash Bros. Brawl") to another ("Mario Kart Wii"). Nothing can slow down that Wii mojo, it seems.

Of course it's possible that the early "GTA IV" buyers already have a 360 or PS3 but those who are buying it in May are more likely to be buying a console, but that's not what anybody expected. When "Halo 3" debuted in September with 12 days left on the NPD calendar, 360 sales nearly doubled from August.

It's bad news for Microsoft and Sony and calls into question whether they're already close to tapping out the audience of people willing to pay $350 or $400 for a console, no matter how good the games are.

Also worth noting are the videogames that launched in April and didn't even manage to sell the 141,000 units necessary to break into NPD's top 10. Those include THQ's ``Battle of the Bands,'' Midway's ``NBA Ballers: Chosen One,'' and D3's ``Dark Sector.''

I'll provide a link to my full Daily Variety story as soon as it's available (Hey, here it is!). Meanwhile, make what you will of the month's raw data:

Top 10 games                       Platform    Publisher    Units sold in April
1. Grand Theft Auto IV            360          Rockstar   1.85 million
2. Mario Kart Wii                    Wii          Nintendo   1.12 million
3. Grand Theft Auto IV            PS3         Rockstar    1 million
4. Wii Play                              Wii         Nintendo   360,000
5. Super Smash Bros. Brawl     Wii          Nintendo   326,000
6. Gran Turismo 5: Prologue    PS3         Sony          224,000
7. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: DS           Nintendo    202,000
    Explorers of Darkness
8. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: DS           Nintendo    202,000
    Explorers of Time
9. Guitar Hero III                    Wii         Activision   152,000
10. Call of Duty 4                    360         Activision   141,000

Hardware sales      April          Lifetime-to-date
Wii                        714,200       9.6 million
DS                         414,800       19.6 million
PSP                       192,700       11.4 million
Xbox 360               188,000       10.1 million
Playstation 3          187,100       4.3 M
Playstation 2          124,400      ?

                                 April 2008     Change from April 2007   Year-to-date     Change from 2007
Total Videogames        $1.23 B                  47%                         $5.47 B              31%
Hardware                    $426.2 M                26%                         $1.84 B              13%
Software                     $654.7 M                68%                         $2.88 B              46%
Accessories                 $154 M                   39%                         $750.6 M            29%                

(This post has been updated since I spent a little more time going through the data)

Remember when I reported last month that, according to Take-Two Sources, "Grand Theft Auto IV" was on track to sell over $400 million at retail in its first week? Turns out my sources underestimated by around $100 million.

As I'm reporting in Variety this morning, Take-Two and Rockstar actually sold more than $500 million worth of "GTA IV" units, totalling more than 6 million units. That demolishes the $300 million-plus record that "Halo 3" set in September.

In fact, "GTA IV" broke that record on its first day, selling $310 million, or 3.6 million units on April 29. "Halo 3" sold $170 million on its first day in the U.S. (the game didn't quite have a simultaneous worldwide release)

And to the extent that it matters -- only a bit, in my book, given how different the economic model is -- it's bigger than the closest comparable box office record we could find: $404 million over six days for "Pirates of the Caribbean: at World's End."

Given that huge first week figure and that there's likely to be a surge in sales come the holidays  (at least amongst the more permissive or clueless parents out there), I'd say "GTA IV" has a very good shot at beating "San Andreas'" franchise record of 21.5 million units.

Strauss Zelnick and his team are sure to be happy, since this make's Electronic Arts' case that it can do an even better job with the "GTA" franchise than Take-Two a bit harder to argue. It'll be interesting to see today whether investors had sales this massive built into Take-Two's stock price or if its get a bump.

Still have to sort through this all, but here's the raw data that NPD just provided for March video game sales in the U.S. First take: "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" had a HUGE month and Wii sales benefitted as well. PS3 finally got back ahead of the 360, but just barely. And both "Rainbow Six Vegas 2" and "Army of Two" had decent debuts.

Missing from the top 10 chart? Meaning they didn't debut too well: "Lost: Via Domus," "Condemned 2: Bloodshot," "Dark Sector."

                                               March 2007                  March 2008             Change

Total Video Games                    $1.1 B                          $1.7 B                     57%

Hardware                                  $377.9M                      $551.3M                  46%

Software                                   $579.1M                      $945.6M                  63%

Accessories                               $139.5M                      $220M                     58%

Hardware                       Units sold in March 2008            Units sold lifetime-to-date

PlayStation 3                          257,000                                    4.1M

PlayStation Portable                297,000                                   11.2M

Xbox 360                                262,000                                    9.9M

DS                                          697,000                                   19.2M

Wii                                         721,000                                   8.8M

PlayStation 2                          216,000                                     n/a

Top 10 video games                    Platform          Publisher                  Units sold in March

Super Smash Bros. Brawl              Wii                 Nintendo                    2.7M

Rainbow Six Vegas 2                    360                 Ubisoft                      752.3K

Army of Two                               360                 Electronic Arts            606.1K

Wii Play w/Remote                      Wii                 Nintendo                   409.8K

God of War: Chains of Olympus   PSP                 Sony                          340.5K

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII       PSP                 Square Enix                301.6K

Guitar Hero III                           Wii                  Activision                   264.1K

MLB 2K8                                     360                 Take 2                       237.1K

Call of Duty 4                             360                  Activision                   237K

Army of Two                              PS3                 Electronic Arts             224.9K

(Note: all figures are U.S. only. The lifetime-to-date figures are calculated by me with a bunch of annoying addition, since NPD doesn't provide it anymore.)

Breaking news on Variety... I have learned from good sources who know what Take-Two is selling into retail that "Grand Theft Auto IV" is poised to gross over $400 million worldwide in its first week, beating the record set in September by "Halo 3," which grossed $300 million.

Also, while I'm always wary of such comparisons since spending on movies vs. games is so wildly different, it's worth noting that "GTA IV" will be right on par with the biggest movie debut of all time, "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," which grossed $404 million worldwide its first day.

All the details are available right here on Variety.com

Also of note to Cut Scene readers is that I spoke to GameStop's senior VP or merchandising Bob McKenzie for the story. He's being a little more conservative with his estimates right now than the people I spoke to who know what Take-Two is selling to all retailers worldwide. Right now McKenzie thinks "GTA IV" will be a little smaller for his chain than "Halo 3" was.

On the other hand, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes told me that he expects "Grand Theft Auto IV" to "likely to do two times the volume that 'Halo 3' did" for his store. (More on Blockbuster's plans for "GTA IV" coming in another post soon.)

But I also asked McKenzie how the two different console versions of the game were looking for GaneStop and he shared this:

"Looking at the way pre-orders are trending, we're expecting it to be a little stronger on 360 than PS3," he told me, though he (unsurprisingly) wouldn't go into details on what the exact percentage would be.

So... we've had the poll on Joystiq, we have the GameFly rental data, we've had the debates about whether the highest install base of the 360 and the exclusive downloadable content would trump "GTA's" historical association with the Playstation console... and now we have our first solid data. It looks like Xbox 360 is going to beat PS3 for this game.

HOWEVER... it's worth noting that the 360 currently has a significant lead over the PS3. As of February, it was 9.6 million compared to 3.8 million in the U.S., according to NPD. So if the 360:PS3 ratio of "GTA IV" sales is closer than that, like say 60/40, that has to be considered something of a win for Sony, as it implies a higher tie ratio for their console and could potentially sell more PS3's than 360's. That would at least tighten the race between the two.

Vidgame companies try to stay as tightlipped as they can about sales, except when they have a huge hit.

So it's no surprise we heard from Nintendo today that "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" has sold a boffo (as we say at Variety) 1.4 million units in just its first week on sale.

That's a truly astronomical number, especially considering that this is a game that is pretty much targeted at the hardcore gamer audience (who else gets excited by seeing Pikachu take on Sonic?) and it's launching well out of the holiday sales period, when most videogames are sold.

By comparison, "Super Mario Galaxy" sold 500,000 units in its first week in November.

Given all that, it's no surprise, if still impressive, that "Smash Bros. Brawl" is now the fastest selling game in the Nintendo's history in North America. It's well on track to outsell "Super Smash Bros. Melee," which eventually sold 7 million units and was the biggest game for GameCube.

It's worth keeping in mind, however, that this is huge but not quite HUGE. "Halo 3," for example, sold over 2.5 million units on its first day in the U.S. and over 5 million in its first week worldwide.

My story about February video game sales is now up here.

All three of the console manufacturers have in the past few months taken to issuing press releases shortly after NPD releases its data in order to spin things their way. It occurred to me while sorting through this month's data (available in raw form below) that there may just be a good connection between how long each company's press release is (i.e. how much spin they feel the need to provide) and how good their month was (i.e. how much the numbers speak for themselves). So here's a different kind of metric that didn't make my print story. Number of words in NPD sales data press release:

1. Microsoft: 678

2. Sony: 504

3. Nintendo: 201

I'm still working on my story based on the new NPD figures for February sales, but I figured no reason why Cut Scene readers shouldn't have access to the raw data immediately. So here's the top 10 games and console sales for February in the U.S.

It was  a pretty slow month, but still of note: "Call of Duty 4" stays on top: "Devily May Cry 4" has a solid debut and Disney's first M-rated game "Turok" has a decent bow; Playstation 3 once again outsells Xbox 360 (though Microsoft argues that the reason is it remains in a "supply constrained situation" since the holidays, a situation it says will be completely resolved in time for "Grand Theft Auto IV" next month).

Buried in its restructuring statement was this bit of data from Sci/Eidos: Kane and Lynch sold 1.4 million units.

That's a solid, though far from spectacular, worldwide performance for a game that got very mixed reviews (though I personally thought it was great).

However Sci said it could have done much better. "We believe it could have sold more had we optimised the opportunity," it said in a statement.

Given Sci/Eidos' size, of course, it can only "optimize the opportunity" so far. Which was exactly one of EA CEO John Riccitiello's arguments last week as he explained why Take-Two would do better as part of his company."I wouldn't change a line of code in 'Bioshock,' and the same goes for 'GTA' and 'Max Payne,' " he said. "What we would do is sell more of them. Given our scale, we have substantial operations in places we don't believe they have ever visited. ... That allows us to sell more software and do so more efficiently."

Just finished covering earnings for DreamWorks Animation, but I got an interesting tidbit for Cut Scene readers as well.

We've all heard theories that the rapid growth of videogames is impacting consumption of other media, particularly movies and TV. There's little in the way of causal data, of course, only assumptions.

Turns out DreamWorks Animation CEO and Hollywood veteran Jeffey Katzenberg (co-founder of DreamWorks SKG, former head of Walt Disney Studios) agrees. On a conference call with analysts today, he blamed videogames in part for the soft performance of "Shrek the Third" on DVD compared to "Shrek 2":

Competition at retail from other sources such as videogames has had an impact on the overall homevideo market and on the performance of individual titles including "Shrek the Third."

Of course DreamWorks is well positioned to recoup some of those losses thanks to its deal with Activision (Blizzard). This year not only does it have games tied to the release of May's "Kung Fu Panda" and November's "Madagascar" sequel, but a second "Kung Fu Panda" game for the fall tied to that film's DVD release.

I wouldn't be surprised if Playstation 3 is in the headline for most stories about the January vidgame  sales data from NPD, but to me the biggest surprise was "Rock Band."

While most of the top 10 games chart was the same as we saw in December, "Rock Band" rocketed from nowhere (at least not in the top 10) to take the no. 4 slot with its Xbox 360 version. Aided by a high price compares to typical games, and even "Guitar Hero III" with its controller, "Rock Band" across all three of its platforms was the no. 1 revenue generating game for the month at $30 million.

"Rock Band" even sold better on the Xbox 360 than "Guitar Hero III," by a razor thin margin of 184,000 compared to 183,000. Of course, "Guitar Hero III" for Wii did even better, though, selling 240,000.

On the hardware side, the shocker is that PS3 outsold 360 for the first time and almost beat Nintendo's Wii (exact sales figures below). As I noted in my story for tomorrow's Daily Variety, there were likely several contributing factors, including:

-More PS3's in stock after the holidays than the competing systems, both of which outsold it all of last year.

-Warner Bros' decision to switch to Blu-ray, essentially ending the format war and putting PS3 in an excellent position as an inexpensive, multi-use Blu-ray player.

-Good old fashioned momentum for the PS3 thanks to the price cut and a growing library of solid games like "Uncharted" and "Ratchet and Clank: Future."

Of course, it's still worth noting that only one PS3 game was in the top 10 and for total system spend on games, hardware and accessories, Xbox 360 remains in the lead (360: $297 million; Wii: $244 million; PS3: $219 million). Clearly, 360 still has the hearts of the hard core gamers with the most cash to burn.

Here's the data so you can make sense of it yourself:

January 2008 hardware sales

Wii: 274,000

Playstation 3: 269,000

DS: 251,000

PSP: 230,000

Xbox 360: 230,000

January 2008 game sales

Call of Duty 4, Xbox 360: 331,000

Wii Play, Wii: 298,000

Guitar Hero III, Wii: 240,000

Rock Band, Xbox 360: 184,000

Guitar Hero III, Xbox 360: 183,000

Super Mario Galaxy, Wii: 172,000

Burnout Paradise, Xbox 360, 144,000

Call of Duty 4, PS3: 140,000

Mario Party, DS: 139,000

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, DS: 133,000