Making a DVD menu is made simpler by Womble EasyDVD

As expected, following last week’s news blitz, this week has been relatively quiet. Which is a good thing because I managed to fill the gap with a new DVD authoring guide for Womble EasyDVD. Having played with the software for a week, I can say that it’s very easy to use and mostly intuitive. There are a couple of missing features such as subtitle support and multiple audio support, which I hope Womble can fix in future releases (this being their first effort after all, so you can’t have everything), but it’s mostly what you would expect, and the menu creation offers a bit more flexibility than your average authoring suite, without ever going into the semi-pro territory (complete with the much steeper learning curve) of tools like DVD-lab Pro. The other thing that was available this week was the October NPD US video game sales stats, I wrote the analysis for it yesterday here. The PS3 didn’t manage to sell over the Wii as it had in September, but it’s the Xbox 360 that’s the loser in terms of the recent price wars it seems, although it’s doing fantastically in software (for now, thanks to its larger install base). The coming months should give us an even clearer picture of what’s in store for 2010, and Microsoft will be hoping to see similar scenes as last year this time as people enthusiastically grab their cheaper holiday bundles. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Anyway, onto this week’s news.

In copyright related news, the BBC’s proposal for adding DRM to their HD broadcasts has been denied by the British Office of Communications. But the idea isn’t entirely dead and the proposed DRM scheme may appear later on, with existing hardware likely to support such a DRM scheme if it is ever introduced.

The MPAA are still of course campaigning vigorously in the US to try and get the FCC to allow them to introduce  Selectable Output Control. The old “pro consumer” argument was brought out, to argue for SOC’s use in bringing new release movies faster to the home if the studios were more confident of its resistance to piracy. Many studios are already doing this without the fake security blanket that is SOC. But SOC is just a trojan horse for the MPAA, because once you can control one aspect of how someone watches TV, you can then control all aspects of it eventually. If the MPAA and their cohorts can get away with banning all  TV recordings, then does anyone really doubt that this is exactly what they would do? Pro consumer indeed.

Further prove that movie studios really don’t give a crap about the people that are supposedly their customers – a free community Wi-Fi service that brings tremendous benefits to a huge number of people has been shut down all because of a single piracy complaint, from Sony (who else?). It’s a case of the studios exploiting people’s fear over lawsuits, and an innovation that helps the local economy, local law enforcement, small businesses and visitors is attacked and destroyed. Obviously the people who decided to shut down the network, as the cost of adding anti-piracy filters is excessive, must shoulder some of the blame for this over reaction, but the MPAA’s reaction to the story shows the depth of their arrogance. Instead of calling for a reasoned approach and balanced response, that a single movie download does not constitute a widespread piracy operation, they used the occasion to further spread their anti-piracy propaganda. But that’s what they are. They are an industry lobby group and they’re paid to say and do these things. What is really wrong is politicians and others in power taking their word as gospel, and acting without taking into consideration the serious consequences  for issues like privacy, and the economic damage that would occur if the MPAA’s wishes were turned into reality.

iiNet's freezone: damned if you do, damned if you don't

It’s week 4 of the Australian AFACT vs iiNet trial, and it was closing statements time.  Once again, you can check out a summary of the week’s events here, but the arguments from both side remain the same. The AFACT thinks iiNet is basically a piracy provider, even suggesting that  the ISP’s use of phrases such as “happy downloading” was in fact an encouragement for people to download the latest Harry Potter movie. And even iiNet’s attempt at promoting legal content, through their freezone service, was attacked. You would think the movie studios should be delighted that ISPs are providing quota-less downloads for legal content as a way to to provide further incentives to go the legal route, but you would be wrong. The argument is that because quota is not used, it leaves more free quota for downloading pirated movies. The same argument was made for iiNet increasing download quotas for their customers, as the AFACT assumes anyone who needs a large download quota must be a movie pirate. This “sky is falling” and “you’re a pirate until proven otherwise” attitude that these lobby groups have adopted is working wonders in their political lobbying activities and have proved useful in the legal arena as well in the past. Our only hope is the judge can see through these exaggerated truth to balance the need for anti-piracy and the need to protect consumer rights, and the rights of ISPs to operate without being burdened by the responsibility to prevent piracy. Surely the industry that profits, often in record amounts, from the movies and TV shows that are being pirated should be the ones responsible, at least financially, for the anti-piracy operations, not the ISP or its subscribers. Either put up, or shut up.

Most independent game developers say that piracy is not a significant problem, at least for now, according to the latest survey. While most fear that it can become a big problem in the future, only 10% felt that it was a serious problem at the moment. One thing to note about  piracy, including games and movies, is that people who do have the ability to pay for content will usually do so. It is only those that never had any intention to pay for anything, some because they don’t have the capability, that are the more dedicated when it comes to sourcing pirated content online, and these people were never likely to provide any sort of income for the content owners, now or in the future. So the key is to at the very least increase the number of people who have the capability to pay for content, and that can only be achieved through pricing changes. Digital distribution allows this to occur without the cost being a huge issue (certainly compared to physical media and the associated costs like packaging, shipping  …), and even more reasonable pricing can open up previously untapped markets, such as developing countries where piracy rates are even higher. Or the alternative is to fight against logic and try to stop all piracy through technology that has proved inconvenient at best, and completely unworkable at worst, or through ever harsher legislation that completely disregard some of society’s basic principles in relation to justice and human rights.

Microsoft banning 1 million Xbox 360 accounts over suspected system modding (which allows for piracy) may seem excessive, but console piracy is actually not a huge problem and that’s worth examining. The anti-piracy success is largely to do with technology, all games consoles carry some form of DRM for games and being closed systems, they are easier to enforce (unless somebody decides to mod their Xbox 360, that is). The DRM systems used are also fairly straight forward, usually just a DVD check, and with digital downloads being available, even the DVD check won’t be necessary anymore. There are still many aspects of the DRM system that are inconvenient, such as when one needs to move from one console to another, but there are at least solutions and workarounds. And I guess more reasonable pricing comes into it. Games are expensive, but given the number of hours of entertainment they provide, it’s still better value compared to your typical movie or MP3. Consoles are also now very good at providing demos for new games, thus eliminating the need for people to “play before they pay” (which I admit is often used as an excuse for piracy, and play doesn’t always lead to pay). They certainly aren’t going out there lobbying the government to throw people off the Internet for downloading games, or getting ISPs to work as their spies, or suing individuals for using pirated games.

HD news now. Not much on Blu-ray to report, but the holiday season is upon us and there will be a steady stream of big releases to give the format a big boost. But HD is more than just Blu-ray, and the future of HD may be SD.

Blockbuster tries SD digital rental

Not SD, as in standard definition, but SD as in the memory storage format. Blockbuster is trialling a new way to rent movies by allowing customers to download them to their SD memory cards. These movies expire after 30 days if unwatched, or 48 hours after the first viewing. Obviously DRM is involved, but further details are a bit sketchy. If compatibility with hardware players, then the DRM used may be the SD card’s own internal DRM system, CPRM. This would then allow the actual video file to be unencrypted, and playable in a wide variety of players, probably. The lack of DRM on your common USB stick may be why they didn’t go with the more common format.

The other path for HD is digital distribution. The main stumbling block has always been bandwidth, and also processing power (many of the Netbooks you see today will struggle with 1080p content). But YouTube is not waiting around for things to catch up, and will roll out 1080p playback support next week. The link to the left has a couple of further links to test videos that you can already use to see if your system is fast enough for 1080p. On my Intel C2D E8500, I recorded 40 to 50% CPU usage, which is reasonable, but you can see why some Netbooks will struggle. With GPU assisted decoding (unfortunately Flash does not yet support ATI based solutions), the CPU usage can be greatly reduced. This was proven when I downloaded the YouTube 1080p video (about 100 MB for 4 minutes worth) and used PowerDVD 9 to play it back (as it supports GPU assisted decoding). CPU usage dropped to below 10%, and my ATI Radeon HD 4850 was hardly worked (about 5% usage) despite the CPU savings. So it seems for 1080p video delivered through YouTube, most modern computers should be able to handle it, some better than others depending on whether GPU assist is available or not now or in the future. The bandwidth usage is reasonable, roughly the same as downloading a DVD movie (so the 1080p quality isn’t as good as say Blu-ray, not really close yet), but it will still use a large chunk of people’s quotas.

And lastly in gaming, not much to link to, except for the NPD analysis, which I’ve already linked to above. I think we finally have a proper console war on now, where there’s not much between the three top consoles, the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. The Wii has the superior hardware numbers, but is weak on games, especially third party ones and ones that appeal to hardcore gamers. The PS3 has only started to do well to suggest it may take top spot eventually, but there’s still some catching up to do both in hardware and software. The Xbox 360 is enjoying software sales, at least in the US, for now, but it won’t last forever if it the last two months becomes a trend and they continue to sell less consoles than the PS3. But they have a great multi-player community and that counts for more and more these days. And of course, Natal, which may be beaten to the punch, innovative software wise, by PS3 Eye Pet (a new category of games, using the buzz word  ”augmented reality”) . But if Eye Pet is a success, then that may actually bode well for Natal, since it plans to offer similar things but in a more mainstream, and technologically advanced fashion. The only problem is the late release date, now semi confirmed as November 2010, which may be too late to help if things stay the way they are.

See you next week.

The figures for US sales in October 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (October 2008 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Wii: 506,900 (Total: 22.1 million; October 2008: 803,000 – down 37%)
• DS: 457,600 (Total: 34.4 million; October 2008: 491,000 – down 7%)
• PS3: 320,600 (Total: 9.1 million; October 2008: 190,000 – up 69%)
• Xbox 360: 249,700 (Total: 16.5 million; October 2008: 371,000 – down 33%)
• PSP: 174,600 (Total: 15.9 million; October 2008: 193,000 – down 10%)
• PS2: 117,800 (Total: 44.7 million; October 2008: 136,000 – down 13%)

NPD October 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of October 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

It’s time to make a prediction of October 2009’s results. For my money, I’ll say that the order of the hardware sales will remain the same, although the Wii numbers will be closer to the PS3 numbers. The PSP Go debuts, but based on an Australian report about the poor sales figures (a couple of hundred sales per week in an entire country, is not the best), the impact of the PSP Go may be muted. Sony will continue to have good month, but this time backed up in software sales as well with Uncharted 2. It might not sell enough to top the number one title, which might be Wii Sports Resort. Wii Fit Plus might take a place in the top half of the charts as well. I expect FIFA 10 to show up in one of more flavors in the top 10. Borderlands might make a showing too.

Some right, some wrong. The biggest surprise, if you can call it that, was that the Wii price cut managed to do enough to unseat the PS3 from the top spot. Part of this was also due to the price cut, Slim induced sales bump not lasting as long as one would expect. This is true of the Xbox 360 price cut as well, and if November wasn’t such a bumper month for sales, it might also be true for the Wii as well next month. My predictions about PSP Go sales being relatively subdued was also correct, with combined PSP sales of both the old and new models actually dropping compared to last month (but dropping less than it would have been had the PSP Go not been released). For my software predictions, I was right about Uncharted 2 doing well for Sony, but wrong about it not taking the number one spot. It did, and quite comfortably. Wii Sports Resort failed to keep its sales up, and was beaten in the end by Wii Fit Plus. FIFA 10 did show up, albeit in last place, but Borderlands did well on the Xbox 360 at least.

So let’s take a look at the PS3 numbers first. After a great month in which it took top spot amongst the home consoles for the first time since I’ve started analyzing the figures, it quickly felled back down again, but at least it managed to beat the Xbox 360. We’ll still need a couple of months to see if the price cut has any long term effects, but one thing is for certain, that last month’s bump for the PS3 had parts of it which were very temporary in nature. I would expect a price cut to be more long term, and the introduction of a new model to be more short term (due to the number of people who upgrade, which only occurs once), and so one can conclude that what made the PS3 the number one selling home based console in September was down to a fairly even combination of both events (price cut and new model), but that the temporary has started wearing off for October. Certainly those that expected the PS3 to be selling over the Wii from last month onwards were a bit too optimistic in their predictions, perhaps. In any case, Sony can still be extremely happy with the results, as the PS3 recorded what was the only year-on-year sales increase of all the consoles (more on that later).

The Wii’s sales bump is welcome news for Nintendo in what has been a fairly miserable year, especially in the last quarter. The price cut, while occurring in the last month, seems to have had the full effect in October as the Wii was the only console to record growth compared to September. But the overall picture is still not a happy one for Nintendo, as the year-on-year sale of the Wii saw a huge 37% drop, the largest of any console. Part of this was due to how incredibly the Wii was selling this time last year, way above any expectations. The other part is the slow decline in Wii sales that has occurred over 2009. At least the DS is still doing relatively well, keeping a firm grip on the number one spot and only recording a small year-on-year drop.

The Xbox 360 figures are again not looking great for Microsoft. A huge year-on-year drop breaks the trend for 2009, in which the Xbox 360 was pretty much the only console to record year-on-year growth (or negligible losses in a couple of months). This suggest the PS3 price cut has really hurt the Xbox 360 where it counts, and the fortunes have been reversed for the two consoles post the PS3 price cut, as the PS3 was the one recording large year-on-year sales drops up until the price cut. With Project Natal not coming until this time next year, later than PS3’s motion controller, which might be able to steal the Natal thunder if it’s properly integrated with the PS3 Eye and with useful software, time is running out for Microsoft to do something. To be fair, it was always a difficult struggle for the Xbox 360 to beat the PS3, and it has outperformed everyone’s expectations up until this point. Price cuts had allowed the Xbox 360 to outperform the PS3, but price cuts are not something that can go on forever, and given similar prices, the PS3 with its Blu-ray functionality and more advanced design will always win. So it may not be a case of the Xbox 360 losing to the PS3, but rather, both consoles finding their rightful place now that the PS3 ridiculous pricing has been removed as a factor. For Microsoft, Natal is a step in the right direction, but the November 2010 release date may just be too late to change things. The only thing that Microsoft has in its arsenal is the larger install base of the Xbox 360 over the PS3 in the US, which should at least mean that it will take some time before the PS3 finds parity, and will still allow them to sell software in good numbers until then. And the better multiplayer platform in Xbox Live over the PlayStation Network, and add to that the larger install base, does still give the Xbox 360 some momentum (the “if my friends are already on the 360, I have to be on it too” principle). Making Xbox Live Gold free is probably the only other weapon left for Microsoft to use.

Looking at sales as a whole, October performed badly compared to September and certainly compared to the same time last year. There might be a recession related thing going on at the moment, or just the lack of really big titles, but the stimulus given by the price drops, or new models being released, seems to be the only things keeping the figures from sliding further down. Things will be on the up in November for sure, but the numbers will be extremely interesting to see if there is a year-on-year growth or decline, and whether how well the PS3 numbers do compared to the Wii (and to a lesser extent, the Xbox 360), both to see if temporary factors were responsible for the Wii’s sales increase this month, and again to confirm the longevity of the PS3 price cut boost.

Moving on to software, things are slightly better, although a year-on-year decline was still the order of the day. The top title was a PS3 title for only the second time since I’ve started keeping track (the previous one was Metal Gear Solid 4 in June 2008). Uncharted 2 was the top selling title in question, and being an exclusive, that’s exactly where it should be. But compared to last month’s number one, which was also a follow-up game in a series and also a platform exclusive (Halo 3: ODST), the sales are still somewhat disappointing (Halo 3: ODST outsold Uncharted 2 by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1). Getting more out of platform exclusives, especially high profile ones such as the Uncharted series, whether that’s through more extensive marketing or other tactics, is something Sony can work on to better its software sales. There was only one other PS3 title in the top 10, NBA 2K10, a multi-platform release. There were only two Wii titles in the top 10, Wii Fit Plus as predicted and Wii Sports Resort, which saw sales drop compared to last month. The rest, apart from one DS title, was all Microsoft. 5 titles in the top 10, and even though the highest placed was only third, it still managed to grab 44.3% of total sales, the third best set of results in 2009. Wii games accounted 25.1% of the top 10, and the PS3 was third once more with 25% of sales.

Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3, Sony) – 537,000
2. Wii Fit Plus (Wii, Nintendo) – 441,000
3. Borderlands (Xbox 360, Take-Two) – 418,000
4. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 314,000
5. NBA 2K10 (Xbox 360, 2K Sports) – 311,000
6. Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360, Microsoft) – 271,000
7. NBA 2K10 (PS3, 2K Sports) – 213,000
8. Forza Motorsport 3 (Xbox 360, Microsoft) – 175,000
9. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS, Square Enix) – 169,000
10. FIFA 10 (Xbox 360, EA Sports) – 156,000

Prediction time. This is a hard one. Sales will go up considerably compared to October, that’s for sure. The DS will be top, the number two spot will be closely fought between the PS3 and Wii, although I’m leaning towards the Wii winning that battle right now. The Xbox 360 is 4th, followed by the other two PlayStation consoles. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be the number one selling game, and the controversial game will be a record seller if the hype is anything to go by. The Xbox 360 version of this multi-platform game should be the one occupying the top spot. Other titles that will do well for the Xbox 360 include Assassin’s Creed II and the console platform exclusive Left 4 Dead 2. For the Wii, a new Super Mario Bros game will always be a hit, and it could give CoD: MW2 some competition (although mainly for the PS3 version, one suspect). Dragon Age: Origins, from the same people that gave us Mass Effect, could make the top 10 as well, since I’ve been hearing a lot about this game recently.

See you next month.

The figures for US sales in September 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (September 2008 figures also shown, including percentage change):

NPD September 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of September 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

So for a concrete prediction, I would say the PS3 to outsell the Xbox 360 and the Wii, and the number three being contested between the Xbox 360 and the Wii (too close to call, at this point). The PSP Go is coming in October, so we won’t see the numbers until November. Halo 3: ODST should top the charts next month, followed by Wii Sports Resort. The Beatles game should sell well too, although the Wii SKU may outsell the PS3/Xbox 360 ones.  At least one SKU of Batman: AA should still chart, although whether it’s the Xbox 360 or the PS3 version is too close to call at the moment as well (Xbox 360 users will be fully occupied by Halo 3: ODST to think about buying other games, I feel).

Mostly right, a couple of minor mistakes. As predicted and expected, the PS3 managed to beat the Wii to second place, but it wasn’t enough to unseat the DS as the number one selling game console. I predicted that the Wii and Xbox 360 would be neck and neck, which wasn’t the case, but when I made the prediction, Nintendo had not yet announced the Wii price cut which helped it to at least hold on to third place. The software predictions are mostly correct, even down to the uncertainty as to which platform for Batman: AA was going to win (it was the PS3, beating the Xbox 360 version that finished just outside of the top 10). The Wii version of The Beatles: Rock Band did not outsell the Xbox 360 version though.

So the big news of course are the PS3 numbers, which are simply put, head and shoulders, and a couple of body length, above last month pre-price cut/Slim numbers. There is a seasonal bump from August to September – one can work out just how much by looking at the PSP/PS2 numbers, which weren’t affected by new models or price cuts – this seasonal bump turns out to be around 35%.  Now taking this into account, the PS3 numbers are still about a 100% improvement compared to last month, and this is the amount that the Slim and price cut contributed. Now, how much of it was Slim based, and how much of it was price cut based, is impossible to tell with the numbers I have. The PS3 numbers are also a 112% improvement upon last year’s numbers, which is quite amazing. However, the jump in sales may only be a temporary spike, and it will be useful  to see next month’s numbers before coming to any conclusions. There won’t be a sales drop next month compared to this one, as the holiday season heats up and increases sale naturally, but the question would be how close Wii and Xbox 360 sales are to the PS3, whether the PS3 can hold on to second place or even get first. What is clear though is that the combination of a price cut and a new PS3 model has revived the flagging fortunes of the PS3, although whether this kicks of a period where the PS3 starts to dominate, or whether the Wii and Xbox’s market saturation will prevent this dominance, is a question that can only be answered in a few month’s time.

The biggest loser, and why total hardware sales are still down compared to the same time last year (despite the positive PS3 numbers), is the Wii. Another month in which the Wii managed to sell less than the same time last year, this time by 33%, is just not good enough for Nintendo. The price cut came a bit late to make a huge difference, so Nintendo will hope that its full effects will be felt next month. But what has driven Wii sales, the novelty factor, is starting to wear off. And it will only get worse as Sony and Microsoft debut their own motion systems, especially Microsoft’s Natal which seems a lot more “next-gen” than either the Wii or the PS3 motion controller.

Microsoft, now the least popular of the home consoles, may seem like the biggest loser, but if you look closely at this month’s numbers, they still have something to be happy with. While I don’t think the Xbox 360 Elite is priced competitively enough to combat the PS3, and I don’t think the Arcade can battle with the Wii, it’s clear that by having these two price points, Microsoft want to take on both Sony and Nintendo. It’s not working too well. What would have made more sense was to drop the Pro bundle to Arcade prices, get rid of the HDD-less Arcade model, and price the Elite at much less than the PS3 Slim. But you do get the feeling that any price cut is only a temporary measure until Microsoft unveil Natal, which should push it ahead of the PS3 and the Wii in terms of the novelty factor at least. But as I mentioned above, the other numbers, which is basically the software numbers, are quite encouraging actually, obviously helped by the platform exclusive Halo 3: ODST. In fact, 32% of the total video gaming revenue belonged to Microsoft products (hardware, software and accessories) this month, the single most contribution of any console. For the top 10 software, Microsoft dominated with 64.7% of the revenue, the most dominant performance since I started collecting data, even beating the month when Wii Fit was released in which Nintendo dominated with 61% of the top 10. So it’s not all bad news, and the lead they’ve built up over the PS3 over the last few years should allow them to keep their lead for at least another couple of years, and that’s assuming the PS3 performs as well as this month from now on.

So let’s move onto the software stats. My prediction of Halo 3: ODST and Wii Sports Resort occupying the number 1 and 2 spots respectively was a pretty easy one to make, and it was correct. Halo 3: ODST’s numbers were amazing, making it the 6th best selling SKU launch of all time, very good for a title that was only available on one platform, and an add-on to boot. There was room for 4 more Xbox 360 titles in the top 10. The only slight point of concern was that the PS3 version of Batman: AA outsold the Xbox 360 version, something that rarely happens for multi-platform releases, but the PS3 version did have exclusive content, and as I said last month, the Xbox 360 gamers might have been too busy with ODST to think about Batman: AA. There were only two Wii games in the top 10, gone are the days when Wii Play, Wii Fit and Mario Kart would all make regular appearances. These games have had a good run, but if Wii software sales are to improve, then the platform needs a string of must-have third-party games. Forget about a string, there hasn’t been even a couple of third-party Wii games that can be called “must-have”, so that’s a worrying point for Nintendo. For the PS3, the hardware bump did not translate over to software, with only two titles in the top 10. Madden NFL 10 on the PS3 did well to bridge the gap between it and the Xbox 360 version, but even the Wii version of the Beatles Rock Band game outsold the PS3 version, and so it did not place in the top 10. And as mentioned before, Batman: AA was the other PS3 entry in the top 10, beating the Xbox 360 version which finished 11th (sales figures unknown, but probably just over 200,000, and maybe about 10,000 copies short of the PS3 version). Microsoft’s dominance meant a 64.7% share of the top 10, with the Wii  getting 16.8% (plus 6.7% for the single DS game in the list), and the PS3 on 11.8%.

Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360, Microsoft) – 1,520,000
2. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 442,900
3. Madden NFL 10 (Xbox 360, EA) – 289,600
4. Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS, Nintendo) – 258,100
5. The Beatles: Rock Band (Xbox 360, EA) – 254,000
6. Madden NFL 10 (PS3, EA) – 246,500
7. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 (Xbox 360, Activision) – 236,000
8. Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3, Eidos) – 212,500
9. Guitar Hero 5 (Xbox 360, Activision) – 210,800
10. The Beatles: Rock Band (Wi, EA) – 208,600

It’s time to make a prediction of October 2009’s results. For my money, I’ll say that the order of the hardware sales will remain the same, although the Wii numbers will be closer to the PS3 numbers. The PSP Go debuts, but based on an Australian report about the poor sales figures (a couple of hundred sales per week in an entire country, is not the best), the impact of the PSP Go may be muted. Sony will continue to have good month, but this time backed up in software sales as well with Uncharted 2. It might not sell enough to top the number one title, which might be Wii Sports Resort. Wii Fit Plus might take a place in the top half of the charts as well. I expect FIFA 10 to show up in one of more flavors in the top 10. Borderlands might make a showing too.

See you next month.

Starting with copyright news, anti-piracy has become a real business, that’s not too surprising. But has the business of fighting piracy become more profitable than actually stopping piracy?

That’s what one anti-piracy firm thinks, and it even made a presentation showing just how more profitable it can be, for them and content owners alike, to allow piracy to continue and to make money off it by suing people, or threatening to sue them, for copyright infringement. They estimate that a quarter of all people they scare pay the penalty that they’ve arbitrarily set, and each successful claim is worth hundreds of legitimate downloads in terms of profit. This follows a rather candid interview that was given by a similar anti-piracy outfit not too long ago, where they revealed that they’ve put out content on P2P networks to lure people in, and they’ll only go after the people who they can make a good profit from. Stopping piracy, seems to be a distant second objective to making a bundle of cash by exploiting people’s fears about going to court, people’s lack of knowledge of the law, and the anti-piracy crusade that content owners are hell bent on pursuing. And your government is not only allowing it, but probably helping and profiting from it as well. Is this really acceptable?

Speaking of governments and unacceptable practices, have you heard about the proposed anti-counterfeiting/piracy treaty, that will be discussed in South Korea next month by several leading countries. The plans that could cause your iPod or laptop to be searched at the airport for suspect pirated content, or make file sharing illegal, or use legislation to turn ISPs into copyright cops? You haven’t heard of it? Well, that’s no surprising, because the US government is making sure nobody knows about the proposals until they’ve been passed, citing “national security” reasons. Only a handful of selected individuals were privy to what’s on the agenda, and even they had to sign non-disclosure agreements beforehand. Has counterfeiting and piracy, and not even the kind that takes place on the seas, become such a major issue that it’s being treated in the way as the war against terrorism or the war against drugs, and no public discussion is even allowed on the subject? Incidentally both of the wars I’ve mentioned just now seems to be the never ending types of which winning is all but a distant dream at the moment – a glimpse into the future of the war against downloads perhaps.

Ringtones are a public performance, just one of the many zany things that the ASCAP claims

But before the governments can agree on how long to lock people up in Gitmo for downloading the latest Miley Cyrus album or a screener of Zombieland, the RIAA and MPAA have to do things the hard way. One method they’ve tried before is to attack BitTorrent networks, using techniques such as “piece attack” and “connection attack”, both of which designed to frustrate the downloading experience for other users. However, a study has shown that despite the millions of dollars given to anti-piracy firms to implement these methods, they do not work, and at best, they are a minor annoyance to downloads for only a couple of minutes. More millions down the drain, millions that could have been used to give people what they want, which is cheap, accessible music and movies. Instead, they’re doing things like trying to get royalties from ringtones, or to charge people to listen to the 30 second previews on iTunes. This, and many other claims, are being rejected even by the copyright friendly courts, as the ASCAP found out this week. The content owners, and the people who have been profiting from royalties, are doing everything they can to hold on, even asking Congress to make it a law so that they never lose their cash cow. Instead of embracing change, they’re fighting it, and you wonder how long they can go on doing the same thing. The longer that legitimate and comparable alternatives to illegal downloads are not implemented, the more likely that illegal downloads will be accepted as acceptable practice by the general public.

And many things that have been adopted as common practice, such as recording TV shows to your VCR/DVR or ripping your CDs to MP3, are now considered legal. But they won’t be legal if the Canadian group Access Copyright have anything to do with it, and they propose that any of these acts should carry a fee that goes toward the content owners, or at least the people who profit from giving out licenses, such as Access Copyright. It seems that the copyright debate has gone all the way back to pre Universal vs Betamax times, and the content owners are still trying to fight innovation, even if that particular innovation (the ability to record stuff) is a couple of decades old already.

Nobody likes the MPAA, not even the studios that it represents

This anti innovation drive has a lot of people angry, and has given agencies such as the MPAA quite a bit of bad PR. So what do they do about it? Instead of calling it “anti-piracy”, anti-piracy is now called “content protection“. Protecting the content from those pesky and annoying people called customers, perhaps, and also protecting profits again innovation. The studios are also unhappy at the MPAA’s approach, calling it not aggressive enough. The shift in strategy will mean that the MPAA will now go after ISPs and network operators, to clamp down on the spread of information from a higher level. Yes, this should make them more popular. And this brings us quite nicely into the iiNet trial, the landmark “studio versus ISP” case that could determine the future of the Internet. It’s the second week of the trial, and you can read the summary in the linked post. Suffice to say, if ISPs are to become copyright cops with the power to kick people off the Internet, then you have to wonder, due to the ever increasing importance of the Internet to people’s way of life (and work), whether this infringes on people’s rights in a democratic society. Finland has just made 1 Mb broadband a basic legal right for anyone who lives in the country, and they will up the speed to 100 Mb by 2015. This seems to be the direction many countries are going towards, making Internet a basic utility just like power or water. But if the Internet is a basic utility, then how does the three-strikes system (or as in the iiNet case the “one-strike” system) affect this basic legal right. Can you be denied water or electricity because you’re a suspected criminal? Can the government deny anyone the ability to make a phone call, and even so, is it something they can enforce at all unless that person is in prison, or under house arrest. And in the end, will any of this actually protect the profits of billion dollar movie and music studios, or will kicking people off this brand new global distribution platform actually hurt profits in the long term. And why is the government doing anything to protect profits of private companies anyway, especially at the tax payer’s expense?

But let’s end this section on a slightly happier, and sane, note. Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire and 28 Days Later says that perhaps the best way to fight piracy is to cut movie prices, because the cinema still has something unique to offer in terms of the viewing experience, compared to a poor quality screener. It’s a crazy suggestion, so it might just work. Or we can just ban the cinema, so nobody can bring a camera into the cinema and record it. Problem solved!

In high definition news, the CEO of Netflix says that DVDs may be on the way out. But instead of Blu-ray replacing the format, it will actually be streaming. Of course, he’s referring to movie rental, not sale-through, and his director of corporate communications had to soften the statement by saying that growth is positive on all the formats.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings based his opinions on the fact that more and more people are opting for the cheapest DVD rental plan, while still keeping the most fully featured streaming option. I think the convenience of streaming, instant access, no need to wait for the disc in the mail and post it back, might be the reason for this shift. But until HD streaming becomes an affordable reality for everyone, which means bandwidth speed and allowance will have to increase, Blu-ray is still the only show in town if you want the best quality HD movies.

TDK's 100 GB Blu-ray Disc: May not work on current Blu-ray players

What may be not so good for Blu-ray, or actually Blu-ray owners, is the news that 50+ GB discs may not be compatible with current players. So if the movie studios ever decide to use 100 GB discs, say for TV series box sets, then Blu-ray owners will have to upgrade their Blu-ray players again. And I say again because many have already had to upgrade their profile 1.0 players to 1.1 or 2.0, to access features like PiP and Internet content. Chances are, this won’t ever happen, because it will just hurt the format too much if people are yet again forced to adopt new hardware with new disc drives, which further highlights just how out of date the idea of using discs is in the age of digital distribution. And I don’t think people mind having a bunch of discs in a box set, as I think it actually makes it look like more value.

China Blue HD, which is HD DVD for China, is being imported into Europe, along with cheap movies. Can’t see the studios being happy about it, since they licensed movies to CBHD for sale in China only, and the cheap player that comes with a dozen free movies may confuse buyers when they’re out there shopping for Blu-ray.

And for Trekkies or Trekkers, and those who don’t mind a bit of DRM, then this might be for you: A Starfleet badge shaped USB thumb drive with a copy of the latest Star Trek movie on it? How can one resist!

Not much going on in gaming, as everyone is waiting for the delayed NPD stats (due on Thursday, but has been delayed until Monday). It is expected that the Sony PS3 will jump to first place, from third, for the first time since its launch in 2006. Most expect the Wii to be second, with the Xbox 360 third. Microsoft has already came out with a pre-emptive attack on the numbers, calling it a temporary bump and saying that the 360 will still be the number one selling console for 2009.

2010 is looking like a decisive year for this generation. Sony has it’s Wii like motion system, but Natal may trump it as the must have casual gaming gadget. Nintendo has been quiet, which makes me suspect they’ve got something up their sleeves.

The NPD analysis for September 2009 should be posted sometime during the week, so until the next edition of the WNR, I hope you’ve had a good time reading this, have a good week and don’t forget to tip the waiter.

Otherwise, it was a fairly quiet week, with a few stories occupying the headlines to still make it a very interesting week, although most of it was yet again about the issue of copyright.

Let’s start with the copyright news. There was only really one news item that really caught the attention of people this week. And not even Sir Elton John could push the news out of the headlines, much of it thanks to the reactions to the story on the Internet.

A screencap of the Google cache of Lily Allen's anti-piracy blog, which has now been closed

Earlier in the week, musician Lily Allen decided to take a stand on the issue of online music piracy. But unlike many others who have come out against the proposed three-strike Internet banning policy, Ms Allen has come out for it, even launching a blog called “It’s Not Alright” to voice her views on piracy. Now there is nothing wrong with someone expressing their views, in fact, that’s what the Internet is for. However, if you do come out with some opinion, especially a controversial one, then make sure you are untouchable when it comes to arguing the facts. Unfortunately, Ms Allen made the mistake of not doing enough vetting into her personal history in regards to piracy, and in netspeak, she has been truly and thoroughly pwned. It turns out that, in publishing her anti-piracy views, that she might have pirated the article of high tech news and discussion website, Techdirt. And not only that, a few days later, it was revealed that Ms Allen was a distributor of pirated music herself, with some self-made mixtape MP3s that was available for download from her website, that featured songs that she (and her record company) did not have the distribution rights to. Oops.

Some dude said nearly 2000 years ago that “let he who is without sin, cast the first stone”. And if one is to take the moral stance that anyone who has downloaded or shared an illegal MP3 (and that’s a lot of people) is a thief and should be punished harshly, than he, or she, should at the very least ensure that they have not committed the same “crime”. Because the truth is that it’s very easy to commit this crime, it may be because you think you’re not doing anything wrong by not paying for something you never had the intention to pay for in the first place, or perhaps you think sharing songs is a great way to promote the song and the artist and it may lead to you, or the people you shared the song with, to become a fan and start buying. There are legitimate arguments for and against a heavy crackdown on piracy, but as the Lily Allen incident showed us, it’s far too easy to be labeled a pirate just because, earlier in your music career, your appreciation of other artists led you to make a mixtape that somehow ended up online. And as Ms Allen posted on her blog about the mixtapes, “I made those mixtapes 5 years ago, I didn’t have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry back then”. But Ms Allen, under the very legislation that you support, you would be punished for what you claim you did out of ignorance 5 years ago, and guess how many other people might get punished for similar acts if what you support becomes law? And the article you stole from Techdirt, well, that’s copyright protected as well, even if it were just some text on some website you’ve never seen before. So I’m glad Ms Allen spoke out, because she has successfully demonstrated the worst aspect of the three-strikes system, something nobody else could do until it was actually made into law. Ms Allen has since then decided to quit the music business, which could be to her genuine loss of hope in the future of the music business due to continuing losses to piracy, a publicity stunt, a bit of sulky sulk sulk over the whole affair,  or a bit of everything.

Oh, and Sir Elton John made similar statements but nobody really cared, not when the Lily Allen Show was so interesting.

UK ISP BT says that policing Internet usage could cost more than simply ignoring the problem

In all of this, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the whole point of the anti-piracy drive, and the three-strikes system, is all just about increasing profits for the music industry (and other industries). Not that there’s anything wrong with this of course, they have the right to take actions to increase their profits. But will the three-strikes actually stop piracy, and what about the cost to implement and maintain such a system. One of UK’s leading ISPs, BT, has came up with some estimates as to the cost of spying on Internet users, and they put the cost at £24 per person, or roughly £365 million per year in the UK. The UK music industry actually only claims £200 million in lost profits due to piracy per year, and as with their estimates, the actual loss is probably less than a quarter of this amount, if that much. The extra cost, the full amount of which will no doubt be passed onto the consumer, will hurt the Internet as access plans become less affordable and some are priced out of being able to connect altogether. This will in turn hurt legal online music sales and promotional efforts. I would be surprised if the music industry actually comes out ahead at all, but for them it’s of little risk since they scream so loudly about the seriousness of online piracy, yet are unwilling to fork out a single cent for a solution that they came up with. Probably the most effective way to actually kill off the three-strikes system is to actually force the music, movie (and other) industries to come up with the cash to implement such a system.

But the movie studios (or at least movie theaters) are spending on implementing systems that try and stop camcorder pirates. The latest such system uses infrared pulsing lights situated behind the screen that the human eye cannot see, but will be recorded onto camcorder images. This is supposed to deter pirates and purchasers of said pirated content, but they’ve obviously never bothered to download and examine a cam recording of a movie, what with part of the picture being blocked by somebody’s head, and the sound of popcorn chewing louder than the explosions in the movie. I don’t think quality is what people care about when it comes to cam recordings, and so feel free to spend millions upgrading cinemas with this technology, and in the end, some guy who works at the cinema for $10 an hour will still manage to get their hands on the original reel and hand it over to the right people to make a perfect rip.

So what would drive the copyright holders to spend so much fighting against online piracy, when by reasonable estimations, the loss to online piracy isn’t anywhere near as bad as the copyright holders make out, and that the benefits of the Internet will probably eventually outweigh any effect that piracy has. Many people can see that Internet and digital distribution provides a lot of new opportunities, but why does the industry treat it as a disease that must be eradicated? Well, William Patry, the senior copyright counsel at Google might have found the reason in his new book, Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. He explains that this isn’t, nor will it be the last, time that copyright holders show mass panic in the face of a new distribution medium, to identify it as the enemy and do all in their powers to stop it, and then only to find out later on that it actually benefits them the most in the long run. It happened with the introduction of radio, television, VCRs, and now, it’s the Internet that’s public enemy number one where copyright is concerned. I guess it is understandable to a degree. To have something so valuable, you will want to protect it, against new things that you don’t fully understand and sometimes that means going too far. I keep on thinking back to the Susan Boyle episode, and wonder if her performance, and the show she performed on, would have been as popular if somebody hadn’t illegally uploaded the clip of the show onto YouTube. Had the copyright holders got to the video before the general public, how much of an adverse effect would that have had on the finances of said copyright holders, I wonder. Not to mention the financial fortunes of one Susan Boyle (although the publicity has had an adverse effect on her personal life, but that’s a whole other problem).

Onto high def news now. Still not much happening, and that’s true on the release front as well, as the last few weeks (after the Watchmen bump had subsided) has been fairly quiet ones. However, one thing is for certain, and that’s the price drops for Blu-ray happening all over the place, for both hardware and software.

Blu-ray prices have come down, for example, Crash on Blu-ray is now under $10 on Amazon

I’ve noticed this trend from analyzing the NPD stats, and NPD themselves have also been monitoring the situation and found that average prices have indeed dropped and are getting closer to the pricing of the DVD versions, even compared to just a few months ago. And from looking at the price history info on our own Amazon Blu-ray Price Index section, you can see the trend quite clearly. New releases, which used to be priced at just below $28 on Amazon, are now almost always under $24, with older releases previously hardly ever discounted, sometimes now falling to under $10. And whenever there has been a discount for older titles, it will usually shoot to the top of the charts. It’s good new for consumers and good news for the Blu-ray format, but probably not great news for the backers of the format, who have envisaged a premium format to combat ever lowering DVD prices. It hasn’t totally failed in this respect, as DVD prices are falling faster and so Blu-ray has at least slow downed the bleeding, but I think it’s time studios start to think about ways to sell more copies of the movies, rather than to make more money per copy.

Not much happening in gaming as it’s still a couple of weeks away from official sales figures for September, which should tell us how well the PS3 Slim is doing, and whether the discount to the Xbox 360 Elite has worked or not. The Wii price drop has been confirmed as well, but it comes too late in September to really have an effect on the month’s sales figures. But the fact that Nintendo is doing it may suggest they’ve had a look at the September sales figures and weren’t really happy with what they saw. And there is also news of a further $50 rebate offer for the Xbox 360 Elite, which suggests that Microsoft weren’t that happy with what they saw as well.

That’s it for now, have a great week, and see you in about 168 hours time.

In Copyright news, subtitle download sites are now under the spotlight in Israel, or rather, the people who upload subtitles to these sites are the ones being targeted. Three individuals have been sued for uploading subtitles to the site Qsubs, and have been ordered to pay $240,000 in damages each, and to further humiliate them, made to publicly apologise for uploading them.

Subtitle files are really just text files, but they are protected by copyright. But unlike things like film scripts (which a few places offer downloads for) which have legitimate use, subtitle files are mostly for use with pirated video files. For the files you make from your own DVDs, well, you can rip your own subtitles in most cases (technically breaking the DMCA or similar legislation), although legitimate use does exist when certain editions of the DVD do not have the subtitles you need, and since region control prohibits you from buying the other editions, using downloaded subtitles are the only way (although you may have to perform additional processing on said subtitle files because it all syncs up). Then there’s the issue that some US DVDs only have closed caption, which is not available in many other countries, and so if you have such a DVD, and you have convert it to XviD, you’ll need to source subtitle files for it from other editions. But these are pretty rare uses for downloaded subtitles, and in any case, copyright still exists for the ripped files. But suing individuals, while leaving the upload site alone, seems like a bit of a strange move.

Veoh wins their legal battle with Universal Music, which should make YouTube happy

And unexpected as it may be, there was a win in court for Veoh in their legal battle again Universal Music. Universal had sued Veoh for copyright abuse, due to music videos being uploaded by users of the video sharing website. YouTube came under a similar suit from Viacom. But the decision, which Universal will seek an appeal on, means that Veoh cannot be held fully responsible for the actions of its users, as long as it takes appropriate action in trying to combat copyright theft. Just like YouTube, Veoh has the ability for copyright holders to seek removal of content, and they have removed content deemed unauthorized on a regular basis, and this was enough for the judge to declare that Veoh has done enough not be to held responsible for those other uploads that it has failed to remove. After all, the responsibility of stopping copyright theft should be shared between copyright owners and websites like Veoh and YouTube, the copyright holders cannot simply demand that these websites, which deals with thousands of videos per day, to do all the work to protect their own content. And it certainly shouldn’t be considered “reasonable” for these websites to censor each and every piece of user generate content, as if this is true, then websites like Twitter and Facebook would have to be. As long as websites show they are making a genuine effort, I think, that should be enough. In any case, the legal boffins at YouTube should be delighted at the ruling, although Universal’s appeal may reverse the decision in due time.

Speaking of appeals, the service provider that was forced to disconnect The Pirate Bay via legal action initiated by the MPAA is appealing the decision. They had to disconnect TPB because the judge ruled that the service provider, which provided network services to the web host of The Pirate Bay, is liable for the content being made available using its services. This is a big ruling, and a very messy one, as these service providers may service an entire city or even country, and for them to be made liable for everything that is being hosted, essentially puts them out of business, and an end to the Internet. I keep on going back to this analogy, but again, this is like the phone company being made liable for the actions of criminals that are using their phone services. Except, this time, it’s not even the phone company we’re talking about, it’s the company that helped to lay the undersea cables that the phone company uses, being sued for someone using the phone to scam people. In real life, neither the phone company nor the cable layers would get sued (and if they do, they’ll win without question), but when it comes to the Internet, the largely clueless legal establishment are handing out rulings left and right that have huge repercussions that they are not close to being aware of. If the government should be taking any action on Internet piracy, it should be to establish clear guidelines as to jurisdiction, responsibility, and all those other legal definitions that make the legal system work, not to do the MPAA’s dirty work and denying it’s own citizens their right to communicate by kicking them off the Internet.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy, friend of the RIAA/MPAA

And it’s a shame, because the French government has just successfully licked clean the bottom of the RIAA/MPAA’s shoes by passing their version of the three-strikes rule, although not exactly what the music and movie studios wanted (they didn’t want that pesky thing called due process), it is still a extremely harsh piece of legislation which hopefully will be appealed. The legislation will even fine or ban anyone who lets other use their connection to download pirated content, and jail time could even be handed out for serious offenders. So if you pirated 3 songs, worth a total of $2.97, you might have to spend a year or two in prison for daring to do something so nasty to those poor poor billionaires at the music and movie studios. Jean Valjean would be rolling in his grave if he were in fact a real person and not a fictionalized character, so Victor Hugo will have to be doing the rolling.

Across the Channel, a group is seeking to add DRM to DTV by adding a piece of encrypted data to broadcasts, which can only be unlocked if you pay them money to buy the license to the decoder. It’s all in the name of stopping piracy of course, and the millions they are set to make in licensing fees is just a nice side effect, honest! Using the piracy bogeyman to scare the bejesus out of the government to force them to put in measures which allows you (or your lawyers) to make a bundle, while inconveniencing legitimate users and not stopping piracy at all – yep, that sounds about right as the MPAA is doing exactly this with the FCC at the moment. If only the rest of the world behaved in the same way as the Japanese, then groups like the MPAA won’t even have to make this effort. They can just bring out the DRM in force and make people use it, which is why all new Japanese phones will now have DRM to prevent playback of anything that it may detect as illegal, including songs and movies you’ve ripped from your own collections. This would also mean that anytime you want to play a song, you’ll have to connect to the Internet to have it checked by the powers that be to ensure you are not in fact a dirty pirate. Japan must be like some kind of utopia for the likes of the RIAA/MPAA, if phone companies can get away with doing something like this without a huge public backlash or government interference.

In high def news, well, there wasn’t anything of real note to be honest. I could talk about Blu-ray sales numbers, but I’ve already covered them in this thread on a weekly basis. Or maybe talk about how all the studios are talking about bringing 3D movies to the home via Blu-ray, but I’ve talked about that before. Some websites are still talking about the Toshiba Blu-ray thing, which suggest there really isn’t that much happening right now. Things will certainly pick up as we get closer to the holiday period, and there are some big releases lined up for Blu-ray this season. So let’s skip high def news for this week and hope that there’s some news of substance soon.

And in gaming, as predicted, firmware 3.01 for the PS3 has been released as a hotfix for many of the issues introduced by the disappointing 3.00 firmware. Sony needs to reduce the number of firmware updates and make each update more substantial (and bug free), because things are getting more ridiculous with each new firmware release. And despite having released tons of firmware updates, none of them have been as substantial or welcomed (relatively) as the New Xbox Experience update from Microsoft last year, which proves that quality, not quantity, is what people want.

Proof of the $50 Wii price drop?

And as for the Wii price drop, you can pretty much notch it up as “fact”, following more leaked catalogues (this time from Best Buy) showing the $50 price drop to come in this month. Is it enough to combat the resurgent PS3, and the Xbox 360 price drop? Price, I don’t think, is the Wii’s major problem. I think the novelty factor is wearing off a bit, and it’s going to be even less unique when Sony and Microsoft introduce their own motion systems, especially Microsoft’s controller-free Natal. Time for the Wii to concentrate on it’s core gamers, so a new Zelda game, a new Mario game or some new devices like Wii Fit, might be what’s needed. Wii Sports Resort helped, but more is needed.

That’s all the news I bothered to “report” on this week. See you next week.

The figures for US sales in August 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (August 2008 figures also shown, including percentage change):

NPD August 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of August 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

So prediction time. By this time next month, we should have a good idea whether the PS3 Slim is fact or fiction (if I had to put money on it, I would say ‘fact’), as well as what price cuts there might be. The PS3 Slim, according to rumours, won’t be here until September anyway, so it won’t be before October (when I post the September NPD analysis) before we can see what effects it may have on sales. In the short term though, this could spell a sales drought for the PS3, unless Sony does some pre-emptive price drop for the older SKUs to get rid of stock. August is traditionally also a slow month, so I expect sales to drop further, or at best, stay the same with July levels. The same ordering as this month, most likely. Madden NFL 10 should dominate, along with Wii Sports Resort, and there might be a late month surge in Batman: Arkham Asylum sales.

Well, the PS3 Slim was in fact a ‘fact’, but I didn’t put any money on it, and I doubt I would have made much if I had given the odds at that time. The price cut was also a ‘fact’. While the PS3 Slim’s official release date was the 1st of September, many had already managed to secure one through regular retail channels, and so with the price cut on existing models as well, the August numbers do reflect the PS3 Slim/price cut effect, although obviously not the full effect which we will see this time next month for the September figures. The price cut on existing models took place around the middle of the month, and so the sales drought did not occur (although it did in certain places, like Japan). The Xbox 360 price drop came at the very end of the month, so it should not have affected the stats all that much. August is traditionally slow, but with so many announcements and changes happening, I was wrong about a general drop in sales, as August was better than July, if only slightly. And on the software front, I was pretty much on the mark, even predicting the order of the three titles that dominates this month’s charts. In any case, it was nice to see some ‘green’ in the sales figures above, for the comparison with 2008.

So the big news of the month was the PS3 Slim and the associated price cut on all models. It happened around the middle of the month, and while we will only see the full effects of the PS3 Slim in the September figures (due out this time next month), we can already see the effect of the price cut that everyone, myself included, has been calling for. While the effect of the price cut wasn’t as dramatic as I, or many others, had imagined (most likely due to the PS3 Slim not being officially released until the next set of figures), there was an effect, albeit not enough to unseat the Xbox 360 as the third most popular console in the US. This should happen next month. And I would say even if the price cut had not occurred, a new model would have driven PS3 sales over sales of the Xbox 360, so with the price cut, the effect should be even more dramatic. But it’s worth noting that there is a surge of sales for any new model (like what the DSi experienced only a couple of months ago), as people upgrade to the new model along with people getting into it for the first time. The surge, unfortunately, is only temporary, and so it will be a couple of months before we see the long term effects of these changes. In any case, change was needed and Sony brought about it at just the right time. I may be in the minority when I say this, but I am not really sure that a new slim model was really needed, unless of course it is the new model that allowed  Sony to reduce costs and cut prices. Yes, in the short term a new model helps, but in the long term, keeping with the existing PS3, but with a price cut, would yield the same benefits. And then given time and technological improvements, bringing out a PS3 Slim that’s really much much smaller would have made more sense, since the current PS3 Slim doesn’t reduce the footprint of the console by much. With its non glossy surface, and greater depth, the PS3 Slim feels “cheaper” than the PS3 Fat. But that’s just my opinion, and perhaps because I rate the look of the original PS3 higher than many others. I like glossy stuff, you see. In any case, Sony finally breaks the duck of having poorer monthly in every month of 2009 compared to the same month in 2008 – rising a healthy 14% compared to August 2008. No such luck for the PSP and the PS2, but with the new PSP Go coming soon and the PS2 nearing end of line, you can pretty much ignore these figures.

There wasn’t much time for Microsoft to respond following Sony’s price cut announcement, with the Xbox 360 price cut only happening when the month was practically over. But even then, it managed to outsell the PS3 for yet another month, but perhaps as I mentioned above, it will be the last time it does this for some time. The effect of the full price cut comes in next month, with Microsoft positioning the Xbox 360 Elite at the same price point as the PS3, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft can keep the third spot they’ve held on to for all of 2009. But as I said before, I don’t think so, because the short term effects of a new model should not be underestimated. Even a new SKU, like the Xbox 360 Arcade, can produce rather dramatic effects on sales, despite the actual console looking much the same and with no incentive for existing users to upgrade. Both

The Wii is this month’s loser again, dropping a massive 39% compared to the same time last month. In terms of history, it is sill doing quite well compared to consoles like the PS2, but it is quickly losing freshness, and perhaps a saturation point has been reached. Without hardcore gamers jumping on board, it may be difficult to maintain both hardware and software sales, evident in the Wii version of Madden NFL 10 not charting in the top 10, and even beaten handsomely by the PS2 version. And with Natal coming out on the Xbox 360, the “cool” factor will be shifting away from it starting next year when Natal is released, and even those who prefer a wii-mote like controller to the Natal’s controller-less interface, the PS3 motion controller will be taking customers away from the Wii. A price cut should help, but I don’t think price is the Wii’s major problem at this time. More fresh and innovative games and add-ons, like Wii Fit, should help, but just how many add-ons will the typical Wii user be willing to buy, especially when compared to Natal, the extra devices just feels a bit like Nintendo is only making up for the short comings of a system that still relies controller input. And with the PS3/Xbox 360 price cuts, the Wii could very well lose the number two position, and may even slip to fourth.

So onto software. To toot my own horn again, as predicted by yours truly, Madden NFL 10 topped this month’s charts, followed by Wii Sports Resort and Batman: Arkham Asylum. To be completely honest though, this was easy to predict based on last year’s figures for Madden, and a casual glance at the Amazon sales charts. There was a lot of talk during the month about the PS3 version of Batman: AA outselling the Xbox 360 version on Amazon, but Amazon is only one retailer, and it is not indicative of the general market condition. Still, the PS3 version did manage to sell on level terms with the Xbox 360, a trend that’s been happening more often lately, suggesting that for completely new games, the PS3 version will sell nearly on equal terms with the Xbox 360 version. But for franchise games like Madden, where people already have older versions on one particular console, loyalty and convenience may lock people to the console they’ve purchased older versions on if both versions are similar in quality, and so we may still see the larger gap between Xbox 360 and PS3 versions from time to time. And what might turn out to be a trend from now on is the fairly close gap between market share enjoyed by the three competing consoles – this time, the Xbox 360 came out ahead with 34.5% of all sales in the top 10, with the Wii on 28.1% and the PS3 on 26.8% (its best figures for some time). Wii Sports Resort is keeping the Wii in it, but while it had 1 more title in the top 10 compared to both the PS3 and the Xbox 360, the other two enjoyed much less sales than either Madden or Batman. In fact, as mentioned before, the Wii version of Madden was outsold by the PS2 version, in a time when it’s rare to see any PS2 titles in the top 10.

Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Madden NFL 10 (Xbox 360, EA) – 928,000
2. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 754,000
3. Madden NFL 10 (PS3, EA) – 665,000
4. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360, Eidos) – 303,000
5. Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3, Eidos) – 290,000
6. Madden NFL 10 (PS2, EA) – 160,000
7. Dissidia: Final Fantasy (PSP, Square Enix) – 130,000
8. Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 128,000
9. Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 120,000
10. Fossil Fighters (DS, Nintendo) – 92,000

Prediction time. I think I’ve made my prediction pretty clear throughout this article, with the PS3 hardware numbers receiving a noticeable boost. It could even be enough to unseat the Wii from the number two spot, although I think it unlikely (but not impossible) that it will outsell the DS. The Xbox 360 price cut should have some effect, and even it might outsell the Wii, however unlikely this scenario seemed just a few months ago. I haven’t really said much, have I? So for a concrete prediction, I would say the PS3 to outsell the Xbox 360 and the Wii, and the number three being contested between the Xbox 360 and the Wii (too close to call, at this point). The PSP Go is coming in October, so we won’t see the numbers until November. Halo 3: ODST should top the charts next month, followed by Wii Sports Resort. The Beatles game should sell well too, although the Wii SKU may outsell the PS3/Xbox 360 ones.  At least one SKU of Batman: AA should still chart, although whether it’s the Xbox 360 or the PS3 version is too close to call at the moment as well (Xbox 360 users will be fully occupied by Halo 3: ODST to think about buying other games, I feel).

See you next month.

Some site related bit and pieces before we get to the WNR proper. In cooperation with Womble, I’ve launched a new Womble software sub-forum, in an effort to offer more support for their software. To go along with the new forum, I’ve also written a new guide on how to use Womble MPEG Video Wizard to make basic MPEG video edits. Having using MVW for a while, it’s a very handy piece of software and unlike many other pieces of software I’ve tried, it’s actually pretty quick, no bloat, and very stable.

The July 2009 US video games sales NPD analysis has been posted as well. And in case you’re wondering why being sick allowed me to write a guide *and* a blog post all in one week (I know, this sounds like way too much work compared to what I normally produce in a week), I only became violently ill several hours after posting the analysis. And no, the poor video game sales figures wasn’t the reason why I became sick. Anyway, onto the WNR.

Copyright news first. The New Zealand wing of the MPAA has urged the government to side step due process and hand down Internet bans as quickly as they can print out the banning order pre-made using MS Word templates or something even faster. Just another day in our bizzaro world where expediency in protecting billion dollar companies comes before justice and liberty. But then again justice and liberty don’t make monetary contributions to politicians.

The Pirate Party UK is launched, just as the UK government plans to crackdown on piracy

Not too far away here in Australia, the government, possibly also acting under orders, I mean suggestions, from the music and movie lobby is trying to introduce a bill that will allow ISPs to spy on customers for copyright holders. The government says that’s not what the bill is intended for (it’s for terrorism, just like every law made since 2001), but that makes things even worse because that’s the government basically saying they’re coming up with a law in which they don’t know the full consequences of (or just don’t care). The bill, if passed in December, will make the US DMCA and the French three-strikes system seem restrained, almost anti-copyright, by comparison. The UK government is also planning on it’s own piracy crackdown, to label up to 7 million of it’s own citizens are criminals because they’ve downloaded some pirated stuff (or at least the copyright owners say so, but an IP address is hardly unique nor tamper proof). But at least the UK is getting it’s own Pirate Party, which if the government crackdown continues, could gain popularity very quickly.

Onto this week’s court actions. And there’s been lots happening, all bad news of course. Real Networks, defending it’s RealDVD software which adds more DRM to existing DVDs (but you do get to play it back on your computer without the disc), has suffered the first setback as the judge extended or continued the injuction currently placed on sale of the software. It just means that a full jury verdict will have to be handed down before the future of RealDVD is settled, and that the judge saw that the MPAA had enough evidence to proceed to trial. In the same week,  there was another victory in court again innovation to protect the hardly working DVD DRM, known as CSS. The company at the center of the trial, Kaleidescape, originally won a trial that declared it’s hard-disk based DVD playback system completely legal (the system also plays DVDs without the original disc, and also adds more DRM to prevent unauthorised copying), has now lost an appeal that the DVD CCA bought forth against the original verdict. So that’s basically two products, one software and one hardware, neither of which defeats or circumvents the DVD CSS system, and I would be willing to bet that no one in their right mind has ever used to illegally copy DVDs (because RealDVD is not what people use to rip DVDs on computers, and people who can afford the multi-thousand dollar Kaleidescape system usually buy their movies) – but both may be deemed illegal just because the copyright holders don’t like innovation (or may even be coming up with their own products like managed copy, and these competitors are standing in their way).

And of course, piracy goes on, gains more popularity, while the lawyers, like the ones suing 10,000 South Koreans for sharing pirated porn, get richer. The US DOJ has also made a statement on the obscene $1.92 million damages handed down against a single mother Jammie Thomas-Rasset, saying that in their opinion, it’s perfectly constitutional. This is the same DOJ whose associate deputy attorney general was one of the lawyers representing the RIAA in Thomas-Rasset case, and loaded with many other ex-RIAA lawyers. You would at least understand the music and movie industry’s actions if they were working, but they are not, and may in fact be encouraging more people to pirates music and movies. I’ve always said the best way to combat piracy is to provide legitimate alternatives, and a recent study of UK youngsters seem to back up this opinion. The survey found that people want to pay for music, but only if it doesn’t have DRM, and is based on a subscription based “all you can eat” model, with a monthly fee and unlimited downloads (or some reasonable limits). 85% of those surveyed were willing to pay for this service, and 40% said that they would stop pirating altogether if such a service existed. And yet all we see are more lawsuits aimed at the very same people who are willing to pay, all because copyright holders are afraid of change.

In HD news, Toshiba has finally confirmed what has been rumoured for a while, that they will get into the Blu-ray business. It was also unlikely that Toshiba would not produce a Blu-ray player when their target is to gain a foothold in the home electronics market, as well as their active participation in the laptop arena. However, they also (perhaps bitterly) referred to Blu-ray as only a small part of their HD strategy, one that also covers SD (flash memory) distribution and downloads. Toshiba’s first Blu-ray players might be here this year (probably next year though), and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it have both SD playback and streaming capabilities (as well as outstanding DVD upscaling thanks to the Cell powered machines).

Not much happening in gaming, except that Sony will probably officially announce a price cut and the new PS3 Slim anytime now. Or not. But if this turns out to be a hoax, then it’s one of the best staged ones I can remember, so I’m putting my money on the rumours being real.

The PS3 Slim could be confirmed by Sony by the time you read this

If you’ve read my July 2009 NPD analysis, you’ll know how badly Sony is struggling at the moment, with the PS3 barely outselling the PS2, which itself has dropped massively in sales over the last year. While the Wii hasn’t done much better in July either, the Xbox 360 continued strong sales (or rather, not-as-weak-as-the-others sales). So a price cut, and a new SKU, may be exactly what Sony needs and while I don’t really think a new SKU is necessary considering how much more “cooler” the PS3 already is compared to the Xbox 360, the price cut if key here (and if the slim model was the only reason the price cut was possible, then you do wonder why there isn’t a Xbox 360 Slim, as Microsoft needs a cooler console, in more than one sense of the word, than Sony).

The fall in Wii sales may suggest either saturation has been reached, or that a price cut may also be needed for it to remain competitive (it is still the only console to not have had a price cut or more added features since launch).

That’s it for this week. Back to bed rest for me until I recover from this nasty infection. See you next week.

The figures for US sales in July 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (July 2008 figures also shown, including percentage change):

NPD July 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of July 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

I’m going to bet on a slight increase in Wii sales, but not enough to bring it back to the same levels from earlier this year. The software charts should see domination from the Wii MotionPlus enabled titles, notably Wii Sports Resort. NCAA Football should do well too, so it would be between these two titles that the number one spot is jostled for. Otherwise, business as usual, with an overall uplift as we get closer to the holiday period.

The sea of red you see above should give you clue as to how wrong I was. The only thing I got right was that Wii Sports Resort and NCAA Football would dominate, but there was no uplift for the Wii, and there was no general uplift either. To be fair, I came up with the above prediction based on the misreading of some stats, because July normally is worse than June, and traditionally, August is going to be even worse. It won’t be until September that we will see positive movement, and this is in a normal year where the economy isn’t a huge issue.

The biggest loser for July was the Wii. Recording a massive 55% drop in sales compared to the same month last year, and now only selling 50,000 more than the Xbox 360, perhaps it’s time Nintendo had a serious look at the pricing policy, because out of all the consoles, the Wii is still the one that has not had either a serious drop in price or an upgrade in terms of features of functionality.

The second biggest loser is the PS3. Now you should have heard by now all the PS3 Slim related rumours, and not only are Sony going to bring out a sexier console, they’re also going to drop prices (possibly by $100 and 100 Euros in the US/Europe). And if this is true (and I’m not going to fall for it until I read the PR release on Sony.com), then it couldn’t have come at a better time. Or rather, at a much more needed time. The PS3 is dying right now without a price cut, and even if they don’t bring out the Slim and simply bring out a cheaper SKU, then that will do wonders for it. Otherwise, it’s barely outselling the PS2, which I assume with Sony’s price cut and Slim announcement will mean it becomes an end-of-line product. And the new PSP is also coming at the right time, because it is also dying.

The DS and the Xbox 360 are the smallest losers, but still losers, for July. The DSi effect it wearing off and it won’t be too long before the DS is also seeing large drops in sales compared to the previous year. The only console to have held on so far this year has been the Xbox 360, and it was only a loser technically this month, a tiny 1% drop compared to July 2008. The price is right, with the Xbox 360 it seems, but with the cheaper PS3 possibly coming in September, Microsoft will have to think up something new to entice users, because there’s only so much it can do in terms of price cuts before they’ll be giving away the console for free. I believe their current plans are to phase out the Arcade model and replace it with the current Pro, making the Elite (120 GB Black version) the mainstream version, with a new Elite coming stuffed with more goodies (and eventually Natal). Will this work? Probably not as effective as Microsoft needs, because Sony has been adding features to the PS3 without much of an effect on sales. If anything, Microsoft needs a Xbox 360 Slim, because the PS3 needs a slim, quieter version much less so than the Xbox 360, notorious for it’s various hardware problems. Making a smaller, cooler (both in the temperature sense and The Fonz sense) and more reliable Xbox 360 will do wonders for the console, and it might actually be cheaper for Microsoft as they can move the CPU/GPU process to a more common one in-line with today’s technology. Then they can bring out Natal and get some of the Wii’s “wow” factor.

On to software. As expected, Wii Sports Resort was the month’s top selling title. Having played it for the last week, I like it more and more. Not so much the improved accuracy of the Wii-mote thanks to the Wii MotionPlus, but just the new collection of games that makes things a bit fresh as the original Wii Sports is getting a bit stale to be honest. NCAA Football again dominated, just like the same time last year, although both PS3 and Xbox 360 versions sold less than the same time last year, which is a worry considering 8 million more systems were sold between the 12 months. The economy is hitting hard on software, just as hard as it has been on hardware. There are a couple of DS games, plus Wii Fit and Mario Kart still in there (although Wii Play has disappeared for now). So on software terms, it was still a good month for Nintendo as they had 46.1% of the top 10 for the Wii alone (and another 17.5% for the DS). Microsoft was second with 24.6%, and PS3 had the single lone title in the top 10 with 11.8%.

Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Wii Sports Resort (Wii, Nintendo) – 508,200
2. NCAA Football 10 (Xbox 360, EA) – 376,500
3. NCAA Football 10 (PS3, EA) – 237,400
4. Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 164,300
5. Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 156,600
6. Mario Kart (DS, Nintendo) – 132,200
7. Pokemon Platinum (DS, Nintendo) – 116,400
8. Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360, EA) – 116,400
9. New Super Mario Bros. (DS, Nintendo) – 101,800
10. EA Sports Active (Wii, EA) – 96,800

So prediction time. By this time next month, we should have a good idea whether the PS3 Slim is fact or fiction (if I had to put money on it, I would say ‘fact’), as well as what price cuts there might be. The PS3 Slim, according to rumours, won’t be here until September anyway, so it won’t be before October (when I post the September NPD analysis) before we can see what effects it may have on sales. In the short term though, this could spell a sales drought for the PS3, unless Sony does some pre-emptive price drop for the older SKUs to get rid of stock. August is traditionally also a slow month, so I expect sales to drop further, or at best, stay the same with July levels. The same ordering as this month, most likely. Madden NFL 10 should dominate, along with Wii Sports Resort, and there might be a late month surge in Batman: Arkham Asylum sales.

See you next month.

The figures for US sales in June 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (June 2008 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• DS: 766,500 (Total: 32.1 million; June 2008: 783,000 –down 2%)
• Wii: 361,700 (Total: 20.6 million; June 2008: 666,700 – down 57%)
• Xbox 360: 240,600 (Total: 15.5 million; June 2008: 219,800 – up 9%)
• PS3: 164,700 (Total: 7.9 million; June 2008: 405,500 - down 59%)
• PSP: 163,500 (Total: 15.3 million; June 2008: 337,400 – down 52%)
• PS2: 152,700 (Total: 44.2 million; June 2008: 188,800 – down 19%)

NPD June 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of June 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

So the prediction is the same as this month, with the PS3 numbers slightly higher still but maybe not high enough to beat the Xbox 360. I can see Prototype (the Xbox 360 version) being the top seller for the month, and it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against inFAMOUS which has received better review ratings (although the “100″ ratings given out by a few places are a bit over the top).

The PS3 numbers were higher, yes, but it wasn’t nearly enough to beat the Xbox 360. Prototype (as you will see below) was this month’s top seller, and it stacked up pretty well against inFAMOUS, which slipped all the way back to tenth. Had the game’s release been bought forward a few week, or pushed back to be released in June, then inFAMOUS may have even made a couple of spots higher in May, or even 2nd spot in June. Sony made the same mistake with Killzone 2. And yes, the “10″ ratings is still over the top for what is a very good game, but not “perfect”.

While we’re talking about Sony, let’s look at their figures. Again, and continuing the trend since November of last year (that’s 8 months in a row, for those that are counting), all three PlayStation platforms undersold the same month a year ago. The economy (combined with Sony’s phobia of a price drop) has a lot to do with it, but that’s mainly the PS3 – Nintendo and Microsoft have been able to get year-on-year increases from time to time. The PSP Go won’t be released until October, which may be the first chance that Sony will get to break this trend of year-on-year shrinkage. But the PS2 has definitely had its time and official retirement can’t come sooner. Maybe when it is officially gone, Sony can concentrate fully on the PS3 and we’ll finally see a price cut. The PS3 Slim? I’ll believe it when I see it for pre-order on Amazon.

Nintendo’s DS (or DSi, to be more precise), it selling well, which bodes well for Sony’s PSP Go when it finally gets released in October – and the DSi isn’t even a brand new system, just an update. The Wii, however, is struggling a bit. By struggling, it still managed to easily beat the Xbox 360 and the PS3, but next month’s Wii MotionPlus plus the MotionPlus enable games such as Wii Sports Resort and EA Tennis, should maybe give the Wii a slight bounce. But a bounce might not occur at all, as the Wii’s extraordinary sales record may be to blame – has everyone who wants a Wii got one already? The saturation point may have been reached.

So the only people happy this month are Microsoft, with the Xbox 360 recording yet another year-on-year growth, and no price cut this month either.  9% growth isn’t something to be sneezed at, not for this year, and it shows that Microsoft has been shrewd in its price cutting strategy, as well as the wooing of game developers that has been a core strategy since inception. Just count the number of PlayStation exclusives that are no longer, and then count the reverse, and you can see why the Xbox 360 is winning against the PS3 (for now, at least). To read an interview in which Microsoft’s joy is revealed, click here. And with Natal coming next year, the momentum is there for the Xbox 360. The only thing it has to fear, and no it’s not fear itself, but rather a largish PS3 price cut. But Sony are doing all they can to help Microsoft on this front, so who says that friendly competition no longer exists in today’s world. Make that really really friendly competition.

Onto software. More good news for Microsoft, relatively good news (and some bad ones) for Nintendo, and the same story for the PS3. As predicted my yours truly, Prototype for the Xbox 360 was this month’s number one title. Last month’s number one, UFC 2009: Undisputed for the Xbox 360, managed to hold on to the number two spot. And yet, there were still room for two more Xbox 360 titles, Fight Night Round 4 and Red Faction: Guerrilla. For the Wii, the EA Sports Active Bundle continues to sell well, just slightly above the Wii MotionPlus enabled Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (a good preview for what will happen next month, when the Wii Sports Resort gets released bundled with the MotionPlus, and this could spur on sales for Tiger Woods 10 and EA’s Grand Slam Tennis). Wii Fit and Mario Kart round out the Wii top 10’s, but what’s missing is what is interesting: no Wii Play for the first time since, forever (well February 2007 anyway). Maybe time for a new Wii Play bundle that includes the MotionPlus?

And so onto the PS3. Well, Prototype, June’s top hit, was not a hit on the PS3 and I think we all know why: inFAMOUS. Activision will not be happy, but it was just too much asking gamers to buy both the exclusive (and better rated) inFAMOUS and Prototype being so close to each other’s release dates. No wonder Activision threatened to pull support for the PS3 just last month. Prototype was 13th on the top 20 list, 3 places behind inFAMOUS. inFamous should have done much better than it did, for a critically acclaimed exclusive, but just how many PS3 owners are hard core gamers is not an easy question to answer. Certainly less so than the ratio of hardcore versus casual gamers for the PS2 (and the Xbox 360. But that’s partly because the PS3 can do so much, if you want to provide a bit of damning by faint praise. The PS3’s only other top 10 entry was Fight Night Round 4, which gave it at least some good news because it sold very close to the Xbox 360 version, despite the 360’s 2:1 hardware ratio over the PS3. So maybe that hardcore gamer ratio isn’t so bad after all. Overall, the Xbox 360 had 45.9% of the top 10, the Wii had 38.9% and the PS3 had 15.2%. Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Prototype (Xbox 360, Activision) – 419,900
2. UFC 2009 Undisputed (Xbox 360, THQ) – 338,300
3. EA Sports Active (Wii, EA) – 289,100
4. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Wii, EA) – 272,400
5. Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 271,600
6. Fight Night Round 4 (Xbox 360, EA) – 260,800
7. Fight Night Round 4 (PS3, EA) – 210,300
8. Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 202,100
9. Red Faction: Guerrilla (Xbox 360, EA) – 199,400
10. inFAMOUS (PS3, Sony) – 192,700

So what will July bring? More of the same, or will be see a Wii bounce? I’m going to bet on a slight increase in Wii sales, but not enough to bring it back to the same levels from earlier this year. The software charts should see domination from the Wii MotionPlus enabled titles, notably Wii Sports Resort. NCAA Football should do well too, so it would be between these two titles that the number one spot is jostled for. Otherwise, business as usual, with an overall uplift as we get closer to the holiday period.

See you next month.