As NPD no longer releases full hardware sales figures, this feature is reliant on the game companies, namely Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, to release their set of figures and based on “statement math” (that is, arithmetically calculate missing figures based on statements made). For December 2011, these are the statements made by the gaming companies:

• Nintendo did not reveal any figures for December 2011
• Microsoft revealed “more than” 1.7 million Xbox 360 hardware units sold, with 46% of the home based console market share (source)
• Sony did not reveal any figures for December 2011

With only the above information, it becomes impossible to work out the estimated numbers for both the Wii and the PS3. Luckily, analyst Michael Pachter again came to the rescue, via Twitter, stating the Wii sales were in fact 55% down from the same month a year ago. With this piece of crucial information, we are then able to deduce the Wii numbers, and from this and the 46% market share figure quoted by Microsoft, we are then able to estimate the PS3 numbers too.

And so the figures for US sales in December 2011 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (December 2010 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Xbox 360: 1,700,000 (Total: 30.9 million; December 2010: 1,860,000 – down 8.6%)
• Wii: 1,060,000 (Total: 37.7 million; December 2010: 2,360,000 – down 55%)
• PS3: 936,000 (Total: 18.9 million; December 2010: 1,210,000 – down 22.6%)

NPD December 2011 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of December 2011)

My prediction from last month was:

Same hardware ordering, and a software chart that looks very similar to this month’s, so there’s nothing much to add to that really.

While the software chart has a lot of titles that were there in November, the hardware ordering actually changed, with the PS3 dropping back down to third place, after finishing above the Wii last month.

Overall, looking at the figures above, and the “sea of red”, December 2011 has been nothing short of a disastrous month for video game sales, especially compared to last December. As mentioned earlier, a huge percentage of sales occur in December, but this last particular December did not even out do the previous month, when historically, this has almost always been the case. In fact, for hardware sales, the raw numbers were at its lowest since 2005.

Microsoft was probably the “winner”, if you can call it that (more like the smallest loser), with only an 8.6% drop in console sales, and level in sales with November. The NPD pointed to the strength of the Xbox 360 throughout the year, saying that the Xbox 360 platform accounted for nearly 40% of annual physical retail sales, across all categories. Still, if you count November and December together as one period, then 2011 has been good to the Xbox 360, with 3.4 million consoles sold, compared to 3.23 million a year ago. Microsoft probably had hoped the Kinect Star Wars game and console bundle would have made it in time, helping to push the console, and Kinect, to the next level, but the delay to the game means that there were no real A-list Kinect titles for this holiday period (unless you count Kinect Sports 2, and Dance Central 2, as A-list titles).

Despite finishing as the third most popular console, the PS3 was probably in second place overall, when you look at the year-to-year decrease figure, as well as performances across both November and December. Nearly 1.84 million PS3 consoles were sold during November and December, compared to 1.74 million consoles in 2011. So the good news is that, things are not that bad, while the bad news is that, the Xbox 360 appears to be pulling further ahead in the United States, where during the same period, it had almost twice as many sales (and more console sales during the holiday period, means more game sales for the rest of next year, and also means a strengthening multiplayer community, the growth of which relies on people using the same console as their friends).

So the real loser is, once again, Nintendo. The Wii, previously the unstoppable juggernaut during December sales, is no more, and is relegated to a distant second place behind the Xbox 360. For November and December, 1.92 million Wiis were sold, compared to 3.63 million in 2010 – in fact, more Wiis were sold in December of 2010 alone, than November an December of 2011 combined! A 55% year-on-year drop shows that the Wii is no longer the “must-have” video game gift, with some of the sales going to the Xbox 360 (not many, looking at the figures above), and possibly lots of sales going to things like tablets and smartphones, the new home of casual gaming.

And that’s probably the best way to look at things for the video game industry as a whole, for the most recent holiday period. The industry has benefited from the Wii becoming a must-have gift item for the last several holiday periods. Kinect has contributed to the same phenomenon, but it just hasn’t been the same. And with so many other gadgets to distract the holiday shopper, and also the economy, the decline can almost been seen as a return to normal, after a couple of years of extraordinary performance led by the Wii. Maybe the Wii U will bring back the same thing next year, but expectations must be readjusted.

As for software sales, it was also down compared to December 2010. MW3 led the chart again, with Skyrim dropping to third after the resurgence of Just Dance 3. Interestingly, looking at total sales for 2011, the ordering of the top 3 was exactly the same as the December top 3, showing that Call of Duty, and perhaps surprisingly, Just Dance, were the top 2 franchises for 2011. Mario Kart 7 on the 3DS was the only new entry into the top 10 in December. Here’s the full software sales chart for December (new releases for December 2011 in bold):

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Activision, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC)
2. Just Dance 3 (Ubisoft, Wii, Xbox 360)
3. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
4. Mario Kart 7 (Nintendo, 3DS)
5. Battlefield 3 (EA, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
6. Madden NFL 12 (EA, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP)
7. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (Ubisoft, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
8. NBA 2K12 (Take-Two Interactive, Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PSP, Wii, PC)
9. Super Mario 3D Land (Nintendo, 3DS)
10. Batman: Arkham City (Warner Bros, Xbox 360, PS3)

Predicting January is always difficult, as the post holiday lull will be here, and there would usually be stock issues (although with the low sales this year, maybe this won’t be an issue). I suspect, other than huge drops in console sales figures for all consoles, the PS3 will probably regain 2nd place, with the Xbox 360 still the top selling console. A subdued month as well for software sale.

See you next month.

As NPD no longer releases full hardware sales figures, this feature is reliant on the game companies, namely Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, to release their set of figures and based on “statement math” (that is, arithmetically calculate missing figures based on statements made). For November 2011, these are the statements made by the gaming companies:

• Nintendo reveals the Wii sold 860,000 units, with “more than 795,000″ 3DS consoles, and “more than 350,000″ units of DS (via PR email)
• Microsoft revealed 1.7 million Xbox 360 hardware units sold, with 49% of the home based console market share (source)
• Sony said that the PS3 hardware saw a “70% increase” in sales (via Patrick Seybold, Sr. Direcrtor of Corporate Communications at SCEA)

Luckily, all the statement maths added up this month, since from Microsoft and Nintendo’s statements, we can deduce the PS3 numbers to be around 900,000, and that falls into line with Sony’s “70% increase” statement (increase compared to the same time last year).

And so the figures for US sales in November 2011 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (November 2010 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Xbox 360: 1,700,000 (Total: 30.9 million; November 2010: 1,370,000 – up 24%)
• PS3: 900,000 (Total: 18.9 million; November 2010: 530,000 – up 70%)
• Wii: 860,000 (Total: 37.7 million; November 2010: 1,270,000 – down 32%)

NPD November 2011 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of November 2011)

My prediction from last month was:

It’s the holiday period proper, sales will be way up, and Modern Warfare 3 will help in this regard as it breaks all records. The Xbox 360, the preferred platform of MW3 and also with a new Halo game being released, will be the clear winner yet again, but it will be interesting to see if the Wii can have one last good holiday period, and there’s a new Zelda game too, so that always helps. The PS3 does have Uncharted 3 though. If I have to guess, I would say the PS3 will beat the Wii. The top games will be the ones I’ve already mentioned, plus Skyrim.

I think the above paragraph actually sums up November quite well.

The Xbox 360 was easily the clear winner, but the margin of victory was larger than most has expected. Most expected the Xbox 360 to be the best selling console, but with only moderate growth compared to the same month last year, the first holiday period for Kinect and the new “slim” Xbox 360. But Microsoft surprised everyone with a series of key price cuts, bundles, and sales, and just like how the Wii’s second holiday period was even better than the first thanks to its status as a “must-have” family gift, perhaps the Kinect is doing the same for Microsoft this time round. In any case, a 24% increase in sales compared to last November is nothing to be scoffed at, especially when last November was an amazing 67% up compared to the previous November. Here in Australia, Microsoft has also been super aggressive in discounting the Xbox 360, to prices that are practically half that of just a few months ago, and the Kinect bundle also seeing huge discounts at selected retailers. If this is the same strategy employed in other countries as well, then the Xbox 360 should have a great holiday period, and not just in the US (perhaps this is Microsoft’s response to PS3 sales that have nearly or already caught up to the 360 global sales numbers).

The PS3 also had a great November, although nowhere near as good as the Xbox 360, with the 360 almost selling twice as many units. The 70% increase compared to last November looks spectacular, but one has to take into account that last November, the PS3 sold fewer units than in 2009 (25% down actually). Compared to 2009, PS3 sales are up around 26%, so at the very least, last year’s trend has been reversed with the key price cut that came in the middle of the year. Sony also promoted the fact that PS3 software sales are up 30%, and that, more so than hardware numbers, is what Sony really likes to see (although hardware numbers obviously do help to raise the software numbers, and that’s more of a case now than the first few years of the PS3, when many used it as a cheap way to get a Blu-ray player).

It looks like 2010 was the last great holiday period for the Wii. While sales are not bad this year, they’re nowhere near the million+ figures from yesteryear. And this will be the last holiday period for the Wii as Nintendo’s lead console anyway, with the Wii U set to play a key role this time next year. Still, to label the Wii as a “loser” or “dead” is doing the console a disservice, since it still nearly outsell the PS3, and nobody it calling it a “dead” console.

On to software. As expected, MW3 completely dominated the sales charts, with incredibly, 9 million units of the game selling on all platforms, with over a billion dollars in sales. Battlefield 3 fell to 3rd place as a result, but it’s still the best selling Battlefield game in the series. Skyrim, the game many are already calling game of the year, managed to get second place and that’s probably quite impressive for a game in this genre, and certainly in the Elder Scrolls series, where it’s only taken a month for the latest installment to sell without half a million of the last installment’s lifetime sales number. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Saints Row: The Third contributed to the strong software line-up for November, making it the best November on record, despite recent trend suggesting that wouldn’t have been the case. For platform exclusives, Uncharted 3 did extremely well to get up to 7th place with 700,000 units sold, ahead of the new Zelda game at 600,000. Super Mario Land 3D and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary didn’t make the combined platforms top 10, but would have easily made the top 10 separated by SKU. Here’s the full software sales chart for November (new releases for November 2011 in bold):

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Activision, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC)
2. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
3. Battlefield 3 (EA, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
4. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (Ubisoft, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
5. Just Dance 3 (Ubisoft, Wii, Xbox 360)
6. Madden NFL 12 (EA, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP)
7. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (Sony, PS3)
8. Saints Row: The Third (THQ, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
9. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Nintendo, Wii)
10. Batman: Arkham City (Warner Bros, Xbox 360, PS3)

My prediction for December? Same hardware ordering, and a software chart that looks very similar to this month’s, so there’s nothing much to add to that really.

Except for the obligatory, “see you next month”!

As NPD no longer releases full hardware sales figures, this feature is reliant on the game companies, namely Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, to release their set of figures and based on “statement math” (that is, arithmetically calculate missing figures based on statements made). For October 2011, these are the statements made by the gaming companies:

• Nintendo reveals the Wii sold nearly 250,000 units, more than 250,000 3DS consoles, and nearly 180,000 DS (via PR email)
• Microsoft revealed 393,000 Xbox 360 hardware units sold, with 44% of the home based console market share (source)
• Sony did not reveal any hardware figures

With only a rough estimate for the Wii numbers, it’s hard to come up with an exact figure for the PS3, but assuming Nintendo’s “nearly 250,000″ is much closer than 250,000 than 240,000, then combined with the Microsoft released data (if 393,000 is 44%, then 100% is  893,182, and taking out the Wii and 360 numbers from this), we get roughly 250,000 units for PS3 sales.

And so the figures for US sales in October 2011 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (October 2010 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Xbox 360: 393,000 (Total: 29.2 million; October 2010: 325,000 – up 21%)
• PS3: 250,000 (Total: 18 million; October 2010: 250,000 – no change)
• Wii: 250,000 (Total: 36.8 million; October 2010: 232,000 – up 8%)

NPD October 2011 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of October 2011)

My prediction from last month was:

I think the hardware situation will remain largely the same. Games wise, Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3 go head to head, with Forza 4 on the Xbox 360 possible making the top 10 as well as a platform exclusive.

Fairly close to the reality, I suppose, although the strength in which Battlefield 3 sold probably surprised everyone, despite the hype suggesting it was always going to do well. And the only other “surprise” is the PS3 numbers, and how close it came to actually selling fewer units than the Wii (and it may have done so too, since our “statement maths” above isn’t too accurate based on roundings and precision errors).

Starting with the healthiest number, the Xbox 360 had another amazing month, as not only did it managed to easily beat the other two consoles, it also managed year-on-year growth compared to October 2010 – no mean feat considering we had the “Slim”, price cut and Kinect to give sales a bump, and nothing like that this year. But 21% growth is nothing to be scoffed at, and it’s clear that, at least in the US, the Xbox 360 is the dominant console of this generation, despite Wii still having quite a large lead at the moment (but if you look at the number of active players, the number of hit games, the online multiplayer scene, the multimedia hub features – the Wii is not in the same league as the Xbox 360). Global Xbox 360 sales, while still leading the PS3 probably at this point, may give up its lead sometime soon, but if you have to pick a clear winner for this generation, then based on the growth of the platform and the long term effects on the next generation and beyond, the Xbox 360 is a clear winner.

The PS3 is by no means a loser, and if Sony keep to their word of a 10-year product life for the console (and Microsoft follow Nintendo’s lead and release a new console before then), then the PS3 might still end up being the best selling console of this generation, at least in global sales. But compared to the last generation, in which the PS2 outsold the Xbox by more than a 6-to-1 margin (and outsold Nintendo’s GameCube by even more), then you can’t but feel that while PS3 may eventually “win”, the victory is somewhat hollow when you consider the decline from the totally dominating position the PlayStation platform was in the last gen. Of course, this kind of dominance would never really be long lasting (just ask Sega, or Nintendo before the Wii), but the company’s lack of focus on online gaming, too much focus on Blu-ray and the subsequent delay to the release of the console, the relative developer unfriendly platform (which was always going to be to Microsoft, a software company’s, advantage), the lack of attention to family/social gaming (the Wii sucks, but here’s Move, our version of it), and various setbacks including the recent PSN hack, were all mistakes that could have been prevented or at least mitigated. So coming into the holiday period, with sales flat compared to the same month last year, and battling the Wii to be a distant second place, it’s not where Sony wanted to be (they had hoped most PS2 owners would have upgraded to a PS3 by now, but instead, the Xbox 360 and the Wii stepped in to fill the “hardcore” and “family fun” void).

The Wii, for what it was, and what it has achieved, is also a huge success. Sure, most Wii consoles are now gathering dust somewhere (guilty as charged), but for a slightly enhanced version of the GameCube with a new innovative control system, it has done amazingly well. But much of it has been at the expense of losing all hardcore gamers to the other platforms, a situation Nintendo wants to address with the graphically powerful Wii U (because hardcore gamers keep playing, and keep buying games, not so much casual gamers who get distracted easily as soon as a new tablet or smartphone hits the market). If the Wii was about getting Nintendo back in the game, and a game where they were close to “going the way of Sega” in the last gen (the Xbox sold more units than the GameCube, despite it being a clunky first effort by a company that has never done console gaming, compared to the pro that is Nintendo).

Don’t know why this analysis has turned into a “look back at” type of deal, considering this generation still has a long way to go, but it just felt appropriate for some reason, as this may be the last holiday period where these 3 consoles compete in.

Let’s move on to game sales. Battlefield 3 broke all records (before MW3 will do the same this/next month), which is no surprise. BF3 fever affected me personally as well, having played and be completely pwned in the beta, I was out for more punishment and so bought a copy of the PC version. In fact, I was so caught up in the fever, I actually bought two copies (long story)! With 10 million copies shipped (as in to retailer, with 5 million of these actually “sold”), it’s a success. Batman: Arkham City, in any other month, would have been the clear winner, oh well. Again highlighting the dominance of the Xbox 360 in the US, two platform exclusive titles, the newly released Forza 4 and last month’s Gears of War 3, were in the top 10, a difficult proposition for single platform releases, as they were up against all platforms combined sales figures for the multi-platform games. Also interesting is that Just Dance 3 managed a top 10 entry, despite not being available on the PS3 until December. Ubisoft hasn’t said why the PS3 version is delayed, but I’m sure Microsoft will notch it up as a victory for Kinect over the Move. Here’s the full software sales chart for October (new releases for October 2011 in bold):

1. Battlefield 3 (EA, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
2. Batman: Arkham City (Warner Bros, Xbox 360, PS3)
3. NBA 2K12 (Take-Two Interactive, Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PSP, Wii, PC)
4. Rage (Bethesda, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
5. Just Dance 3 (Ubisoft, Wii, Xbox 360)
6. Dark Souls (Namco, PS3, Xbox 360)
7. Madden NFL 12 (EA, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP)
8. Forza Motorsport 4 (Microsoft, Xbox 360)
9. Gears of War 3 (Microsoft, Xbox 360)
10. FIFA 12 (EA, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, 3DS)

Time to make my usual prediction. It’s the holiday period proper, sales will be way up, and Modern Warfare 3 will help in this regard as it breaks all records. The Xbox 360, the preferred platform of MW3 and also with a new Halo game being released, will be the clear winner yet again, but it will be interesting to see if the Wii can have one last good holiday period, and there’s a new Zelda game too, so that always helps. The PS3 does have Uncharted 3 though. If I have to guess, I would say the PS3 will beat the Wii. The top games will be the ones I’ve already mentioned, plus Skyrim.

See you next month.

Let’s start with the copyright news, we start with the music industry lobby’s full attack on opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

The controversial SOPA, if passed, will give the music industry, amongst others, to avoid pesky things such as actual evidence when it comes to forcing the likes of PayPal or Mastercard from cutting off service to websites that the industry sees as a threat, as long as they can come up with some sort of explanation that the site is primarily involved in piracy. In fact, they don’t even have to do that. As long as the website is merely suspected of potentially wanting to hide their infringement activities, then SOPA will allow the rightsholders to intervene, even if at that point, it’s not even clear, let alone established by a court of law, that any infringement has even occurred. So potentially, all the industry have to say is that “I don’t like the look of that website”, and they can deal a potential death blow to that website. So no wonder opposition is coming in from all directions.

Remember how PayPal and others screwed Wikileaks? The RIAA wants the same, but for every website, not just Wikileaks.

But RIAA says that all of this nothing more by hyperbole, and that the music industry needs these changes to survive. Survive from mass piracy, or survive the move from CD albums sales towards digital tracks, they don’t say of course, but SOPA could very well be used to destroy innovation by an industry that’s obviously not looking towards the future. Imagine a new start-up that offers a brand new service that hurts the existing business model of the music industry, the RIAA can use SOPA to fire off an infringement notice to say the financial providers of the start-up website. Trying to avoid trouble, the financial providers cease support for the website, and the website dies a quick death. Sure, the owners of the website can sue the financial providers, but that would require money, which at that point, the start-up probably doesn’t have much of. This may very be an extreme, but no law should give so much power to one side, against the other, and to replace civil court matters with agreements and dealings behind closed doors by private corporations. And with the economy the way it is, the country can ill afford to allow old business interests to kill off new innovations, that are really at the forefront of job creation.

And the RIAA have been busy not only defending “their” SOPA bill, but also attacking the old DMCA, which if you can remember, was their work as well. Apparently, the “safe harbor” provision that was added to protect online businesses is working too well and actually offering protection to online businesses, which the RIAA says was not the intention behind the provision at all. They blame it all on judicial branch of the government, the branch that’s the hardest to corrupt via lobbyist money, for interpreting “safe habor” wrongly. In particular, they want ISPs and websites to be the judge, jury and executioner and to take proactive action against infringing content, what they call “red flags”, which is a very vague notion of “you’ll know (it’s piracy) when you see it”. Except these types of actions will open up ISPs and web businesses to potential lawsuits for removing the wrong content, and it’s difficult to judge what is right and what is wrong when you don’t even know what content belongs to whom, without the rights holders getting involved. The RIAA says this shouldn’t be a problem, and it isn’t, for them! It seems web piracy is the gravest problem facing the music industry, and at the same time, it’s a problem that the industry shouldn’t have to do anything about – because the government, tax payers, web businesses should be doing all the work, taking all the risks, while the rights holders  receives all the theoretical and perceived benefits.

Google says a lot of DMCA complaints are invalid, and most are being used to attack competitors

But then maybe it’s a good thing, because whenever the rights holders are given carte blanche rights to remove infringing content on the Internet, they tend to abuse those rights. Google revealed a few years ago that a third of all DMCA complains filed with the company were invalid, and the latest example is Warner Bros. abusing Hotfile’s infringing file removal tool. Despite being sued for promoting piracy, Hotfile actually had one of the stronger anti-piracy tools for rights holders, allowing them to basically delete any hosted files they want without any real limitations. Unfortunately, WB, when given access to the tool, abused it by deleting content that didn’t belong to them and even open source software, and this is not just Hotfile’s allegation – WB this week admitted to pretty much all of it as part of legal proceedings between the company. Once again highlighting why automated, technical solutions to piracy filtering doesn’t work, WB admitted that their piracy filters removed content that only shared a partial name to the content they were trying to remove. And doing a simple file name check implies WB definitely didn’t download the files and check whether it actually contained infringing content or not. WB also admitted to deleting a popular, open source downloading tool that they obviously had no rights to, and they justified it because the tool helped to speed up downloads, and of course, all downloads equals piracy in the eyes of Warner. And WB admitted to all of this “collateral damage”, and it seems they’re not too fussed about it either, as they’re still asking the judge to throw out Hotfile’s lawsuit against the studio for the allegation that the studio abused the DMCA, which Warner appears to have just confirmed.

Over to Europe and two ISP, and The Pirate Bay, related cases that could have implications everywhere else. With UK courts giving the okay for ISPs to start blocking websites for anti-piracy reasons, the BPI, UK’s branch of the RIAA, wasted no time in asking the same ISP, BT, to start blocking The Pirate Bay. Calling The Pirate Bay a “huge scam” (I would argue against that, since a website that has the word “pirate” in its title and domain name is not trying to fool anyone as to what the website is about), the BPI fearmongering engine went into overdrive. If you visit The Pirate Bay, apparently, your computer will get infected with viruses, trojans and herpes, your identity will be stolen, and you may even see “inappropriate content”. The BPI wasn’t clear what “inappropriate” meant, but since BPI specifically asked BT to use their child porn filter to filter out The Pirate Bay, the implicit suggestion is probably pretty clear. And of course, given the economy today, the talking point of “they toor ur jobs” was bought up, against suggesting that piracy destroys jobs, while creating none (and yet, the industry says ISPs, web businesses and individuals are making too much money off piracy).

The other story was in Dutch-land, where BREIN is at it again, this time asking two ISPs to also block The Pirate Bay. But the ISP, having already won a preliminary court case against this very matter, say that the proposed blocking method, by IP address and DNS, won’t work and may actually kill their network.

How DNS Works

But before we get into the details, a little background info may be needed here. The way the web works, each server has one or more IP addresses assigned to it, and the server software can present the right website for you based on the IP address (sometimes, a single IP address can host several websites, and the server software can tell which site to serve up via the domain name you used to get to the IP address). Domain names are matched to IP addresses via Domain Name System  (DNS), which is basically thousands upon thousands of servers world wide that stores a constantly updated database of domain name to IP address translations (as well as mail server information, and all sorts of stuff). When the website owner starts a new website or changes the IP addresses, he/she changes his primary DNS server’s information, and that change is propagated to every other server on the Internet to ensure all data is synced. If data is not synced, and this does happen, then you may see different websites depending on which DNS server you connected to.

So back to the BREIN case. They want both an IP address/range ban, and also a DNS filter put into place so that if subscribers of these ISPs type in The Pirate Bay domain name, the DNS server would not return the right results. The first one is problematic because, to avoid filters, TPB could change IP addresses every couple of days, and this means the ISPs have to constantly track the IP addresses. And because IP addresses can be recycled/re-assigned, they may end up blocking the wrong website if they’re not quick enough with their detection, thus opening themselves up to lawsuits. The DNS filter method, which is also the one being proposed in the US by Protect IP and one that has come under much attack by anyone who knows how the Internet works, breaks the Domain Name System by destroying the sync between DNS servers, and slow down or stop the propagation of DNS changes, which will cripple the entire Internet. Net neutrality, which the FCC fought for and lost, would become law under PROTECT IP, as each ISP will now be able to tell you which websites you can and cannot visit, and may even redirect one domain name to another website (for example, thepiratebay.org ends up going to mpaa.org). But for the two Dutch ISPs, Ziggo and Xs4all, the immediate problem with both IP and DNS filtering is the effect on their own networks, with the constant changes requiring network reboots that can bring down the entire network. But BREIN doesn’t really care, and I’m just going to copy/paste what I wrote earlier, “because the government, tax payers, web businesses should be doing all the work, taking all the risks, while the rights holders receives all the theoretical and perceived benefits.”

Game publishers, especially PC game publishers, like to complain a lot about piracy, but it always seemed odd to me that they never actually listen to the people that may know a thing or two about what makes consumers buy games – the retailers! Steam, in particularly, has been talking a lot about DRM and pricing (maybe less talk, and more action on security would have helped … I kid). And this week, it’s Good Old Game’s turn to diss DRM. Nothing we haven’t heard already though, DRM only affects legitimate paying customers, it doesn’t stop piracy … all the usual things you’ve read on here. But it seems publishers have it in their head that they need to make it as hard as possible for the pirates by using DRM, which kind of makes sense, but “hard” is a relative thing and it’s mostly quite easy for the piracy groups to crack DRM. The other ways is to tie in non-intrusive DRM with value-added services, such as in-game browsing, chatting, cloud saves, and achievements, which is what Steam has done with success. A lot of success it seems, as GOG also revealed that even for games published by their own company, Steam sells many more copies than on the official GOG service, 5 times as many and 20 times more than all the other digital distributors combined. But even with their power, publishers still hold a lot of power over Steam, particularly in terms of pricing (and regional pricing), so the next time you complain about something being too expensive on Steam or the overseas version of the store carrying cheaper prices, the publishers are to blame, not Steam, which has time and time again presented evidence that cheap games => more revenue.

Skipping HD/3D, and moving quickly onto gaming, mainly because the next story is also about Steam, and it’s not a good one for the company. Steam was hacked over the last week, at first it was only the forum, but it seems the hackers have got into the main Steam database as well and accessed, possibly not downloaded, the database including user details, hashed/salted passwords and even encrypted credit card numbers.

Obviously, getting hacked isn’t good, but with Steam relying on a third party forum software (vBulletin), it was always going to be a risk. But the emerging details seems to show that the database was at least somewhat secured, with both hashed/salted passwords and encrypted credit card numbers. The former simply means that the password, unlike with the PSN database, was not stored as plain text and stored as a hash, a supposedly unique representation of the password, but unlike encryption, it’s one way and (theoretically) cannot be reversed. A salt was also used to make the hashing much harder to reverse back to plain text, if at all possible. And the CC number encryption, assuming it was strong enough, should prevent hackers getting any meaningful data, which is probably why they didn’t bother to download the database.

The much-maligned Steam Guard may have limited the damage hackers could have done to Steam

And if you use Steam’s Steam Guard service (I know, the one everyone hates), your account should be even more secure as the hackers would need access to your email account to access your Steam account. Not that it isn’t possible, because if you used the same password for both Steam and your Steam associated email account, then that’s how a hacker might get in, in the small chance that they could reverse the password hash (quite easy if you’re using a dictionary word, I’m told). So if you value your Steam account, and we currently have a poll asking you how many games you have on Steam, then it might be wise to change your password, remove any stored credit card numbers on the Steam system (just enter it every time instead of saving it, if you’re like me and likes to shop online, you’ve got it memorized anyway), and maybe have a bit more respect for Steam Guard. Just a bit more, mind.

And, we’re already over the word limit, but I would just like to offer a preview of the October US video game sales analysis. The Xbox 360 won again, Wii sold nearly 150,000 units less than the 360, and Sony refused to divulge any data again, but from statement maths, the PS3 either just narrowly beat the Wii, or was actually slightly behind, not great going into the holiday period. Battlefield 3 killed everything other game like a level 43 camper against a team of rushing noobs, with a record 10 million copies shipped on all formats (but Modern Warfare 3 might have something about this next month). The full analysis will be upped in the next day or so.

Alright, that’s enough words from me. See you next week.

We start with copyright news as we usually do, and we start with a quite unusual story, one that I still don’t really know what to make of.

PC gaming piracy is a big problem, I think everyone can at least acknowledge this fact (whether ever more intrusive DRM is the solution to the problem, I think, is where the debate is at the moment), but if the goal of anti-piracy is to increase revenue, and intrusive DRM doesn’t seem to be producing, why not try something else?

A sample result from the Vigilant Defender questionnaire, which shows that DRM not only does not really help encourage pirates to buy games, it may even drive them to pirate in the first place

Except, I probably wouldn’t try what startup anti-piracy firm, Vigilant Defender, has tried – to actually help the spread of pirated content. Yes, you heard right, the first step in Vigilant Defender’s experiment is to actually help seed a leaked beta version of the hit game, Deus Ex Human Revolution. The second step is slightly tricky, as the version of the beta they seeded was slightly modified to drop out of the game after the first few levels, and direct users to an online questionnaire, in which they were asked questions about why they decided to pirate the game. While data collection is essential to solving the piracy problem, especially given the industry’s often biased “research” on the matter, the key question asked of gamers was “what would you be willing to pay for this game”. Not only will the answer to this particular question prove useful in finding out just why people pirate, and what price point can influence the same people to go legit, Vigilant took this one step further and proceeded to offer downloaders the opportunity to buy the full game at a price determined by average answer to this particular question. And amazingly, 8% of all those who downloaded the modified leaked beta actually went on to buy the game, at the user voted average price of $24.99 (half of the retail price) and that’s actually quite a high rate of return for games, especially when the target demographic is often described by the industry as “criminals” and “freeloaders”.

In my opinion, what Vigilant Defender tried to do was very clever, even if they went about it perhaps in too much of a roundabout way. What they’re actually advocating is a system where users vote for the price they want to play, and where pirated versions of games actually become demos of sorts. The gaming industry may not want to believe it, but a lot of gamers do use pirated games as an extended demo, and many, I’m not saying all (or even anything close to a majority), to end up buying the full version if they like the game. Game publishers, on the other than, would rather prefer people buy games they don’t like by making sure they can’t test it fully before they buy it, and perhaps that’s how it used to work before Internet piracy became ubiquitous, this kind of business model no longer works. But on the other hand, by offering downloaders cheaper version of games, it’s perhaps encouraging downloads, and this kind of distribution model would be a hard sell for game publishers. But there’s definitely something here, and perhaps a little bit of tweaking could bring us a new distribution model that takes advantage of P2P networks such as BitTorrent to not only distribute the games, but to promote them. Imagine if games came with a thin layer of unobtrusive DRM that simply nagged users to buy the game from time to time, a DRM so not annoying that release groups don’t even bother to have it (so it remains in the pirated versions floating around the net). Users would then be given an offer to “upgrade” their pirated version to the full legit version for a discounted price, but the caveat is that their save games/profiles would no longer be compatible with the full version unless they pay the full price, or some kind of incentive that still makes buying games at full price an attractive proposition. And if you want pirates to help you sell games, then let them join some kind of commission based affiliate program, where for each downloader that “upgrades”, the seeder would get a small commission for their “help”.

The even easier alternative is to lower game prices and improve services for legitimate customers, so that piracy becomes more trouble than its worth.

For Vigilant Defender though, they have a slight problem on their hands at the moment since this Deux Ex experiment was not actually approved by the publishers of the game, Square Enix, which could land the anti-piracy company in a bit of bother with anti-piracy laws.

Bad news for Australians lately on the copyright front. Only a couple of weeks ago, we got our first taste of mass copyright lawsuits, and this week, our government signalled changes to our existing copyright law which would make it even easier for mass copyright lawsuits to happen. Namely, the Attorney-General wants to make it easier for rights holders (or agents of them) to match IP addresses to real identifies, by “streamlining” the legal process. In other words, due process has to go out the window to make Hollywood and the RIAA happy. Even the idea of a ‘graduated response’ system was mentioned, at a conference sponsored by the copyright lobby, of course. Still, there were some other proposed changes that were positive, such as extending “safe harbour” to protect more types of Internet businesses, rather than just ISPs – search engines like Google and Bing will benefit the most with this proposed change. But as long as politicians still continue to believe that a single IP address is evidence enough of a “crime”, and that the “crime” itself is costing the creative industries insane amounts of money and jobs, then politicians will always be on the side of the copyright lobby, made more likely by the uneven spreading around of lobbying cash from both sides of the issue.

In HD/3D news, this week could prove an important one for advocates of managed copy, who want legal alternatives to “ripping”. UltraViolet has been talked about quite a lot, and this week, we finally get our first taste of this “in the cloud” based managed copy system. Unfortunately, the taste is not quite palatable.

UltraViolet from Warner Bros. is being distributed via Flixster, and it isn't a very convenient user experience

Warner Bros. released Horrible Bosses and Green Lantern with UltraViolet digital copy included, but the way Warner has decided to deploy UltraViolet is the biggest problem at the moment. The current WB process requires users to enter in a 12-digit redemption code online, which in itself is annoying, and then users will have to sign up to Flixster, and then install the Flixster app on the device they wish to view the UltraViolet copy. And it’s all wrapped up in various layers of DRM, as you would expect.

And as WB owns Flixster, and to add to the problem, when other studios release their version of UltraViolet, they will use their own distribution network. So right now, if you asked me on which devices an UltraViolet digital copy works on, I can’t tell you, because it will depend on each studio, and this is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. For UltraViolet to be viable, I think it really has to either tie in with iTunes, NetFlix, Amazon or one of the existing players in video distribution, or all the studios have to come together and come up with a single distribution method, with all of the major devices supported (the iDevices, Android system, game consoles and Blu-ray players, at least). And then, streamline the process so it’s as simple as scanning a QR code, or just a matter of inserting the UltraViolet Blu-ray or DVD into a UV compatible player – none of this 12 digit code nonsense, or having to figure out each studio’s UltraViolet system and having to have an account for each.

A two parter Sony related story, the first part goes here in the HD section I suppose. Sony has had to issue a massive recall/repair for 1.6 million LCD TVs they produced since 2008, apparently due to a fire risk in a faulty component. It’s not exactly what the company needs at the moment, but the “good” news so far is that there haven’t been any reports of actual injuries, and that the damage so far has been restricted to the TV set itself.

Less costly for Sony, financial wise, but perhaps more costly in terms of image is the news that a further 93,000 Sony online network accounts have been “hacked”, in the latest security breach.

Fortunately for Sony, the breach which led to hackers gaining access to 93,000 accounts on the Sony Entertainment Network (SEN), PlayStation Network (PSN) and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) networks appears to have originated elsewhere. According to Sony, hackers managed to source the email/password combinations for an unspecified (non Sony) online service, and proceeded to use the same login combination to try their luck on the PSN, and managed to get access to the 93,000 accounts. Sony have disabled 33,000 SOE accounts, while have forced password changes for the rest. Sony says that credit card info was not accessed during this attack, but personal information may have been.

While Sony is right that the data breach occurred elsewhere, the security issue here still lies with Sony, because allowing hackers to launch this type of massive attack can easily be prevented. Simply limiting failed login attempts from any individual IP address or range, which is standard practice, could have prevented the 93,000 accounts from being accessed. And some kind of “CAPTCHA” system, or human verification, would have prevented the hacker’s bot based login attempts. Both of these are common techniques used to prevent dictionary based attacks. And once again, it took Sony days to spot the unusual activity on their networks, when it really should be a matter of hours if not minutes.

Life to date Xbox 360 sales in the US (in green) is catching up to Wii sales (in blue), but the PS3 (red) languishes in third place

But while Sony’s security problems have been highlighted recently, it doesn’t seem to have seriously affected the fortunes of the PS3, as price, as always, seems to be the main driving factor behind sales. So Sony’s $50 price cut to the PS3 in the middle of August has seen PS3 sales rise, although as the September 2011 NPD US video games sales analysis shows, the rise was not big enough to really endanger the Xbox 360’s position as the best selling console in the US. The gap has closed, however, between the PS3 and the Xbox 360, while the gap between the Wii and every other console seems to be widening. If the gap remains as big as it was during September, the Xbox 360 is set to overtake the Wii as the best selling home based console of this generation (in the US) within 39 month – but it will be well after the Wii U is introduced, so that’s what Nintendo are holding on to at the moment.

Alright, that’s enough for this week I think. Hopefully more of a newsworthy week this next one, and I have a feeling it will. Have a good one.

As NPD no longer releases full hardware sales figures, this feature is reliant on the game companies, namely Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, to release their set of figures and based on “statement math” (that is, arithmetically calculate missing figures based on statements made). For September 2011, these are the statements made by the gaming companies:

• Nintendo reveals the Wii sold 240,000 units, with 260,000 3DS consoles, and 145,000 DS (via PR email)
• Microsoft revealed 438,000 Xbox 360 hardware units sold, with 42% of the home based console market share (source)
• Sony did not reveal exact figures, but said that the PS3 hardware sale increase 20% year-on-year (Sony statement, via Senior Director of Corporate Communications at SCEA, Patrick Seybold)

Unfortunately for this month, Microsoft and Sony’s statements do conflict with each other a bit. Using Microsoft’s statement, PS3 sales can be deduced to be 364,857 units, but according to Sony’s own statement, the figure is more like 374,400 (20% more than September 2010’s 312,000). Obviously, there are rounding errors from all the company’s statements, so giving Sony the benefit of the doubt, we’ll presume the PS3 sales figure for September 2011 is the higher 374,400.

And so the figures for US sales in September 2011 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (September 2010 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Xbox 360: 438,000 (Total: 28.8 million; September 2010: 483,989 – down 9.5%)
• PS3: 374,400 (Total: 17.7 million; September 2010: 312,000 – up 20%)
• Wii: 240,000 (Total: 36.6 million; September 2010: 254,000 – down 5.5%)

NPD September 2011 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of September 2011)

My prediction from last month was:

I think the Xbox 360 will still come out as the top selling console for September 2011, mainly due to ‘Gear of War 3′, but the PS3 will definitely come closer than it did this month, and with ‘Resistance 3′, it too might benefit from a platform exclusive. The Wii will be third. Games wise, ‘Gear of War 3′ looks set to be a top seller, despite being a platform exclusive release. ‘Resistance 3′, on the other hand, doesn’t look to have the same effect, although it will still sell well. Combined platforms sales may even push ‘Dead Island’ to the top of the charts.

I got the hardware ordering spot on, although it really wasn’t that hard to predict what was going to happen. The PS3 did get closer to the Xbox 360 sales, but it’s clear now that the 360 is now the dominant console in the US, and not even a PS3 price cut can affect its status it seems (unless that price cut was a more substantial $100, for example). For the game predictions, Madden was actually the top selling title, followed by Gears of War 3. And ‘Dead Island’ did manage to put its way high up in the charts, in 3rd place. Resistance 3, on the other hand, only finished 7th, not the worst result, but the average critical response to the game may have had some effect.

So the Xbox 360 continues its winning streak, by not only becoming the dominant home based console, but it’s also the best selling console for September, period. Looking at the life to date sales numbers, the Xbox 360 continues to pull ahead of the PS3, and continues to get closer to the Wii, to the point where the difference between the Wii and 360 numbers is actually less now than the difference between the 360 and PS3 numbers. Because of the Xbox 360’s dominance with multi-platform releases in North America, namely that if the same game is on multiple platforms, the Xbox 360 version is usually the most popular, the hit releases planned for the next few month starting with Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3 next month, and MW3 and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in November, will all benefit the Xbox 360 more. The it appears that the 360’s exclusives, such as Halo and Gears of War, appear to be far more popular than the PS3’s line up, including ‘Resistance’ this month.

But you cannot say the PS3 performed badly for September – after all, it was the only console to see year-on-year growth, but just like how the other consoles found it difficult to compete with the PS2 in the last generation, the PS3 is having a hard time trying to catch up to the Xbox 360 (and Wii, for the early parts anyway) in this generation (although the gap between the consoles is much less pronounced than the last generation). Taking off my fanboy hat for a moment, the truth is that both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are excellent game consoles with excellent game line ups and fantastic multimedia capabilities. Each console has their own pros and cons, and thanks to the Xbox 360’s head-start, the Wii’s (then) innovative control system, and the PS3’s Blu-ray drive, we now have a much more balanced set of competitors, and that can only be good for gamers, who should consider themselves lucky to be able to enjoy so many great games in the last few years.

The Wii, right now, is the only loser, but it’s not something Nintendo are unaware of, and the Wii-U will set to address many of the shortcomings of the Wii console, but also maintain Nintendo’s reputation for producing fun, family based games.

For game sales, Madden’s delay from August to September allowed it to rule the roost for the month, but Gears of War 3 would be considered the best selling Xbox 360 game for the month, the Madden ranking includes all platform sales. Dead Island was the only original franchise in the top 10, and it did well to come in 3rd, but it also shows that, unlike movies, gaming sequels are actually welcomed by gamers, and usually are huge improvements on the original, not just an opportunity to cash-in (take note Hollywood). FIFA’s high ranking highlights the growing popularity of “soccer” games, beating NHL 11, something it didn’t do last year this time. And a 10th place for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a good result for the franchise. Electronic Arts are the real winners, with 3 of the top 10 titles belonging to them, and the all important first place too. Here’s the full software sales chart for September:

1. Madden NFL 12 (EA, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP)
2. Gears of War 3 (Microsoft, Xbox 360)
3. Dead Island (Deep Silver, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
4. FIFA 12 (EA, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, 3DS)
5. NHL 12 (EA, Xbox 360, PS3)
6. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Square Enix, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
7. Resistance 3 (Sony, PS3)
8. Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (LucasArts, Wii, NDS, Xbox 360, 3DS, PS3, PSP, PC)
9. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, NDS,PC)
10. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (THQ, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Time to make my usual prediction. I think the hardware situation will remain largely the same. Games wise, Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3 go head to head, with Forza 4 on the Xbox 360 possible making the top 10 as well as a platform exclusive.

See you next month.

As NPD no longer releases full hardware sales figures, this feature is reliant on the game companies, namely Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, to release their set of figures and based on “statement math” (that is, arithmetically calculate missing figures based on statements made). For August 2011, these are the statements made by the gaming companies:

• Xbox 360 sold 308,000 units, “maintaining the # 1 console spot in the U.S. for 2011″ (source: @majornelson)
• Xbox 360 holds 43% home based console market share (Microsoft statement)
• Wii sells “more than 190,000″ units (Nintendo press release)
• Sony blames “inventory restraint” for sales in the first half of August, but “PS3 hardware sales were very strong the last two weeks of the month following the $50 price cut” (Sony statement)

Knowing both the Xbox 360 and Wii hardware numbers, and also knowing that the Xbox 360 held 43% of the home based console market share, the PS3 hardware sale is calculated to be an estimated 218,000 units.

And so the figures for US sales in August 2011 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (August 2010 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Xbox 360: 308,000 (Total: 28.4 million; August 2010: 356,700 – down 14%)
• PS3: 218,000 (Total: 17.5 million; August 2010: 226,000 – down 4%)
• Wii: 190,000 (Total: 36.3 million; August 2010: 244,300 – down 22%)

NPD August 2011 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of August 2011)

My prediction from last month was:

With the PS3 price drop coming in just a few days ago, this is just the sort of major event that makes predictions extremely difficult. There’s no doubt in my mind that the PS3 won’t come last again (Wii has the third spot amongst the home based consoles locked up), but the main question is can the PS3 outsell the Xbox 360? The price cut being only $50, and with no new console coming with the price cut like two years ago, maybe it will just come short, but it will be a close run race that’s for sure. For games, again, there’s nothing really of note. Usually at this time of the year, Madden NFL dominates, but with the Madden NFL 12 coming at the end of August, it may not have enough time to make such a major impact this time, although it will probably still be the best seller based on pre-orders alone. No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise for the PS3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution seems to be the only two other notable releases in August.

The PS3 didn’t come last, and the Wii did, but this was an easy prediction to make. But it appears I overestimated the effect of the $50 price cut, and with Xbox 360 sales growing compared to July, the race wasn’t a “close run” one at all, with the Xbox 360 still comfortably retaining first place amongst the home based consoles.  For software, Madden NFL 12’s delay meant that it was not even included in August’s stats as it fell outside of the NPD August sales window (August is counted as a 4 week reporting period by the NPD, lasting from the 31st of July to the 27th of August), while of the two notable new releases, Dues Ex: Human Revolution was predictably the top selling title.

Let’s focus first on the PS3 numbers, and just how much of an effect the $50 price cut has had. On the surface, it looks like the effect was minimal, but dig a little deeper, and the sales bump will seem a bit more robust. Since the price cut only occurred half way through August, the first thing we need to do is to establish a marker for pre price cut sales. Generally (and historically) speaking, there is very little difference between July and August sales, but August tends to sell a few more consoles than July. Since nothing dramatic actually occurred for the Xbox 360, and the only effects being negative (due to price drop of PS3, encouraging more gamers to buy the PS3 over the Xbox 360), the rise of 360 units from 35-day reporting period of July to the 28-day reporting period August 0f roughly 11% could indicate “normal” seasonal growth.

Or not. So let’s take half of this number and say that, had the PS3 not had a price cut, it too would have grown 5.5%. This would make PS3 sales roughly 156,000 units for the whole month of August, or 5,571 units per day, had the price drop not occurred. The price cut was announced on the 16th of August, and so leaving the price cut only 12 days to affect the August NPD figures (again due to the premature end of the NPD reporting period at the end of august), with the first 16 days of the month “business as usual”. This means that prior to the price cut, 89,143 PS3 units were sold, leaving 128,587 being sold after the price cut. This means an increase from 5,571 units per day to 10,716 units per day (127,587 divided by the 12 days of the price cut) after the price cut, practically doubling sales as a result. This means that had the PS3 price cut lasted for the whole 28 day reporting period, PS3 sales would be almost exactly 300,000 units, only 8,000 units shy of the Xbox 360. Had I simply assumed that PS3 sales would have stayed completely flat between July and the first 16 days of August, PS3 unit sales may have reached as high as 311,000 units.

September would have told us a lot more about the full effect of the PS3 price cut, but the Xbox 360 exclusive ‘Gears of War 3′ should help Xbox 360 hardware numbers more than any other PS3 release would do for the PS3 hardware numbers. And with similar high profile releases that generally favour the Xbox 360 in the coming month, the bump from the PS3 price cut may just fall short of making the PS3 more popular than the Xbox 360 during this holiday period.

For the Xbox 360, a solid 11% rise from July to August allowed it to sit comfortably as the best selling home based console, but as noted earlier, it could have been different if the PS3 price cut had come earlier. Hardware sales are down some 14% compared to the same month last year, but again, this is mostly due to the “Slim” sales bump back then.

For the Wii though, August was just as bad as July, and it looks like from this point onwards, it will be third place out of three.  The Wii declined the most compared to August 2010 than any of the other consoles, which means that the rumours surrounding the rushing of the Wii U to market, and the “development hell” (source: n4g.com) that ensues, might show Nintendo is more worried about the Wii decline than they’re letting on.

For game sales, August was a disappointing month, due to the lack of new releases, and the delay of Madden NFL 12 to the September reporting period. So Deus Ex: Human Revolution was actually best selling title across all platforms, even though it was only released for 5 days in the August reporting period. The ‘Just Dance’ franchise continues to be the best selling Wii exclusive titles, but in better times, a Nintendo first party title, like Mario Kart (now bundled with consoles) or Wii Play would have been one of the titles. Here’s the full software sales chart for August:

1. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Square Enix, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
2. NCAA Football (Take 2, Xbox 360, PS3)
3. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, NDS,PC)
4. Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd (Disney, NDS, Wii, PS3)
5. Cars 2 (Disney, NDS, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
6. Just Dance Summer Party (Ubisoft, Wii)
7. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft, Wii)
8. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (Disney, Wii, Xbox 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC)
9. The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo, NDS)
10. Zumba Fitness (Majesco, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3)

Time to make a prediction. I think the Xbox 360 will still come out as the top selling console for September 2011, mainly due to ‘Gear of War 3′, but the PS3 will definitely come closer than it did this month, and with ‘Resistance 3′, it too might benefit from a platform exclusive. The Wii will be third. Games wise, ‘Gear of War 3′ looks set to be a top seller, despite being a platform exclusive release. ‘Resistance 3′, on the other hand, doesn’t look to have the same effect, although it will still sell well. Combined platforms sales may even push ‘Dead Island’ to the top of the charts.

See you next month.

The figures for US sales in July 2011 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (July 2010 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Xbox 360: 277,000 (Total: 28.1 million; July 2010: 443,500 – down 38%)
• Wii: 190,500 (non official estimate) (Total: 36.1 million; July 2010: 253,900 – down 25%)
• PS3: 148,000 (non official estimate) (Total: 17.3 million; July 2010: 214,500 – down 31%)

NPD July 2011 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of July 2011)

My prediction from last month was:

I think the Xbox 360 will experience its first year-on-year decline in ages, but still comfortably stay at the top of the home based console hardware sales charts, leaving the Wii and PS3 to fight it out for second and third place, and I think the Wii might be better positioned to win for some reason. It’s NCAA Football season again, so it will be the top seller, but otherwise, not a huge month for games again.

An almost perfect prediction, a rare event indeed. The Xbox 360 did experience its first major year-on-year decline, and it actually was the biggest fall out of the three home based consoles, but despite this, it still managed to comfortably be the best selling home console for July 2011, which is on record as the worst performing month since October 2006. And as I had predicted, the Wii won the fight against the PS3 for second place, but in full honestly, both of these consoles performed horribly, adding to the misery that is July. And new hit games were far a few between in July, and so game sales slumped as well.

As expected, the Xbox 360 saw its first major year-on-year decline since 2009 (I think). It is expected because this time last year, the new Xbox 360 “Slim” had just been released, and the sales surge from this event actually managed to give the console a 119% lift in sales compared to July 2009. So obviously, with no new consoles in July 2011, year-on-year sales dropped as a result, and I suspect this will continue for a few more month. The Xbox 360 was still the best selling home based console, with a massive 45% of the home based console market share for July – that it sold almost twice as many units as the PS3 is testament to its growing dominance.

Despite a price drop, the Wii languished in a distant second place, dropping 25% in sales from the same month last year (which was even compared to July 2009). There’s not much positive things one can say about the Wii, and coupled with alarmingly decreasing DS/3DS sales (prompting Nintendo to drop prices on the 3Ds only a couple of month after release), Nintendo will hope there are no delays to the release plans of the Wii U.

As for the PS3, this appears to be the worst month since July 2009, with a 30% sales drop compared to last year. And unlike the Xbox 360, the PS3 really has no excuses. There’s still growth between 2009 and 2011 (of around 20.5%, compared to the Xbox 360’s 36.5%), but this is comparing the pre-Slim and pre-price cut PS3, with the current one. Which is probably why Sony has just announced a price cut for the PS3, which should allow sales to surge a bit.

So overall a pretty bad month for video games, but with the economy the way it is and with most of the consoles many years into its release cycle, it’s probably not unexpected. For games, it’s been a quiet month as well, with NCAA Football dominating as it usually does at this time of the year. Just Dance 2 for the Wii continues to show off its staying power in the top 10, this time coming 5th. Here’s the full software sales chart for July:

1. NCAA Football (Take 2, Xbox 360, PS3)
2. Cars 2 (Disney, NDS, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
3. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, NDS,PC)
4. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (Disney, Wii, Xbox 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC)
5. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft, Wii)
6. Major League Baseball 2K11 (Take 2, Xbox 360, Wii, NDS, PS3, PS2, PSP, PC)
7. Zumba Fitness (Majesco, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3)
8. Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3)
9. New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, NDS)
10. Mortal Kombat (Warner Bros., Xbox 360, PS3)

Prediction time. With the PS3 price drop coming in just a few days ago, this is just the sort of major event that makes predictions extremely difficult. There’s no doubt in my mind that the PS3 won’t come last again (Wii has the third spot amongst the home based consoles locked up), but the main question is can the PS3 outsell the Xbox 360? The price cut being only $50, and with no new console coming with the price cut like two years ago, maybe it will just come short, but it will be a close run race that’s for sure. For games, again, there’s nothing really of note. Usually at this time of the year, Madden NFL dominates, but with the Madden NFL 12 coming at the end of August, it may not have enough time to make such a major impact this time, although it will probably still be the best seller based on pre-orders alone. No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise for the PS3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution seems to be the only two other notable releases in August.

See you next month.

Starting as usual with the copyright news, we start with the MPAA’s win against Zediva, as the judge in the case handed down a preliminary injunction against the “innovative” video rental service.

Zediva is a great deal for consumers, but it can only do it by using loop holes that Hollywood is trying to close

A little background info. Zediva’s service works by allowing you to rent physical discs, but instead of sending the disc to you like what Netflix would do, they do what Netflix’s other service does, by offering you a streaming version of the same movie. Zediva then reserves the disc you “rented”, and removes it from circulation. Or basically as Zediva puts it, you rent the disc, and they play it for you over the Internet (imagine a DVD player with a really really long cable). Why did Zediva do this? They did this – and this is where I think Zediva’s downfall will be – to avoid having to pay licensing fees for streaming content.

You see, the problem is that Zediva’s motivations, it seems to me, are born out of trying to avoid paying these licensing fees and release restrictions, and make more money than they would otherwise. If this is Zediva’s real motivation, then good luck to them, but I don’t think they have a snowball’s chance in hell with their case. And in the judge’s summary of the ruling, it’s made quite clear that the judge sees real problems with Zediva’s argument, and that if Zediva was allowed to continue operating, it could harm the existing video-on-demand industry, Netflix included.

Now, it could be debated that what Zediva is doing actually does not hurt Hollywood if you compare it to traditional disc rental, but that it does hurt Hollywood studios when compared to what they can make from streaming deals, and even Zediva won’t deny this, as after all, their business model is to save on licencing costs. This then leads to the debate as to why streaming should cost more than traditional rentals, why Hollywood should choose to not only “tax” new innovative distribution methods, but to place artificial limits (like a 30-day embargo to help increase disc rental income), when these help to fight piracy. But that’s their business decision, and they may be right or wrong, but that’s not for Zediva to decide. So people get pissed off with Redbox waiting times for new releases, or the somewhat hysterical reaction to the Netflix price increases (best encapsulated in this video), and it might hurt Hollywood more to be too greedy when it comes to streaming licensing fees and release schedules, if people do decide to “screw it” and use BitTorrent.

Pron magazine/website Perfect 10 is making legal headlines again this week, twice actually, as they launch yet another lawsuit against yet another online company, this time Megaupload. As you may or may not know, Perfect 10 has in the past sued Microsoft, Google, Amazon, the middle of these three recorded a win against Perfect 10 this week in which the Ninth Circuit court rejected Perfect 10’s appeal over an earlier decision favouring the search giant. But while courts are reluctant to rule about top tech companies that have been Perfect 10’s target before, they may be more favourable to ruling in Perfect 10’s favour against Megaupload, especially since the MPAA’s case against similar file hosting provider, Hotfile, seems to be going okay. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be Perfect 10’s first victory, but it all depends on how frequently their content has been uploaded by users of Megaupload, and if it’s not frequent at all, why Perfect 10 didn’t file DMCA notices to get those content removed, instead of launching a lawsuit (“to make more money” is not an excuse the court would accept, I think).

Diablo III will use 'always-on' DRM, but not for anti-piracy, says Blizzard

Good will amongst gamers is something every game developer needs, and up until this week, Blizzard, the makers of the addictive World of Warcraft and Starcraft series,  probably thought that the had enough good will stored in the bank to pull a nasty surprise. But, as Blizzard will admit, they might have miscalculated. What happened was that Blizzard announced the next episode in another one of their addictive franchises, Diablo III, would have “always-on” DRM, meaning gamers won’t be able to play the game offline, even for a couple of seconds. So Blizzard decided to do a Ubi, and as I talked about last week, nobody likes Ubi DRM. The funny thing was that Blizzard probably never intended to do this as a form of anti-piracy, but only as an anti-cheating feature. This may very well be true, but Blizzard could have avoided this whole controversy (and still used “always-on” DRM) by including an offline mode, much like how Test Drive Unlimited 2 does it (offline and online progress are recoded separately). The statements made by Blizzard immediately after the backlash began didn’t help either – executive vice president of game design Rob Pardo’s statement about there being other games to play when people are offline, for example on long plane trips, was the most ill-conceived of them all (yes, “other games” that people will buy instead of your games).

So it’s a lesson for Blizzard and any other company that chooses to use draconian DRM, for whatever reason – beware of the backlash, which might ultimately hurt revenue more than a couple of extra pirated copies would have (or the cost of adding an offline play mode).

In Blu-ray/3D news, exciting news, sort of, although it’s technically neither HD nor 3D (not yet anyway).

I’ve been talking up UltraViolet for a while now, and it’s not like me really to voice my support for anything Hollywood comes up with, especially if it’s wrapped up in all sorts of DRM, which UltraViolet will no doubt be. But for me, UV is a huge shift in the way we “buy” movies, and it comes just at the right time when cloud storage is all the rage.

UV, simply puts, turns buying a movie into really buying a movie. The idea is that, instead of buying a movie on each platform, on disc, then on iTunes,  then another version for your Android device … instead of doing this, you buy the license to watch the movie, and then you get access to all the versions via the cloud, for all of your popular devices. It’s like Digital Copy, except it’s all done in the cloud. So when you buy a Blu-ray movie at Walmart, you can instantly get the movie to play on your Android phone, as long as you have a good Internet connection. And at home, instead of finding and popping the disc in or pre-ripping it to your media player, you can just fire up your TV’s UV app, and watch all your purchased movies from the cloud.

Flixster is already available on a variety of mobile devices, and so, it's the natural fit for delivering and managing UltraViolet

The big news this week in regards to UV is the first announcement of UV compatible movies, as Warner Bros. announced both Bad Bosses and Green Lantern will feature UV support. I’m not surprised at all WB is one of the first companies to announced UV support, as they’ve always been quite open to new formats, having supported VCD in Asia, and HD DVD before they decided not to. And WB’s recent acquisition of Flixster is starting to make sense as well, as it seems Flixster is the app that WB plans to use to allow users to manage and watch UV content. As Flixster is already available on a wide variety of mobile devices, it’s an easy decision for WB to use it for UV.

What was more interesting was that WB also announced that it would even be possible for users to bring in their old DVDs to retailers, and have them “enable” access to the UV version of the movie. I don’t know how this will work, or whether there might be a way to do it without having to go to the store, but it does sound interesting. And as mentioned earlier, I really hope TV and console manufacturers embrace UV as well, as this would allow me to digitally stream my movie collection without ripping (also need studios and ISPs to work out some kind of deal to offer free bandwidth for watching UV movies).

In related news, Time Warner owned HBO plans to make available console versions of the HBO Go app, which is great news for those that are actually in the regions that can access HBO Go, which sadly does not seem to include Australia (we miss out on Hulu as well … boo!). The announcement also mentioned other “connected devices”, which sounds a bit vague, but hopefully will include things like Blu-ray players and TVs, for easy peasy catch-up viewing.

And finally in gaming, Sony has, as expected really, announced a strong degree of integration between their upcoming portable console, the PlayStation Vita, and the PS3.

This will include the ability to use the Vita as a controller for the PS3 (so allowing the touch surface, gyroscope, microphone, camera … all to be used to control PS3 games), plus the PS3 can also send graphics data to the Vita to display. Sounds familiar? It should, because this is exactly how the Wii U controller would work.

PS Vita will offer Wii U like features, much earlier than Nintendo's console

With the Vita coming to the US probably early next year, and the Wii U much later than that, it’s a shot across the bow for Nintendo, if not directly at them. The only issue is the price. At the expected price of $249, and add the $299 cost of the PS3, yes, you might have a system that rivals some of the innovative parts of the Wii U, but might be more expensive, and not have as good  graphics as the Wii U (which must surely be an ironic situation for both Sony and Nintendo). But then again, the Vita can be used as a standalone gaming console far far away from the Wii U (the Wii U controller also allows independent play, but only within close proximity to the main Wii U console). So a Vita + PS3 combination could in fact replace the Wii U + DS combination, and if that’s true (and if graphics quality is discounted as a factor), then Sony becomes the better value proposition. And a PS3 price drop, or a PS3 + Vita bundle, may help.  Of course, Nintendo knows how to make fun games, and Sony struggles at times, and this could be the deciding factor.

For the Xbox 360, they’re going in a totally different direction, which could work for and against them. But Microsoft has demonstrated Windows Phone integration with Kinect and the Xbox 360, so they’re planning something similar too – and it will be even better value for those already with Windows Phones.

So we come to the end of another WNR. Hope you enjoyed this issue, and see you next week.

The figures for US sales in June 2011 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (June 2010 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Xbox 360: 507,000 (Total: 27.8 million; June 2010: 451,700 – up 12%)
• PS3: 276,000 (estimated) (Total: 17.1 million; June 2010: 304,800 – down 9%)
• Wii: 273,000  (Total: 35.9 million; June 2010: 422,500 – down 35%)

NPD June 2011 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of June 2011)

My prediction from last month was:

No big changes, so the same hardware ordering as this month. The new top selling games will be Infamous 2 and Duke Nukem Forever (on a side note, ‘Forever’ really is such an apt name for the game considering the development time), but the overall top sellers will be some of the same titles as in May.

If my estimation of PS3 hardware sales is correct, then I was wrong about the ordering of hardware sales, although it was a close run affair between the PS3 and the Wii. Software wise, both Duke Nukem Forever and Infamous 3 made their marks on the top 10, but more on that later.

Starting with the PS3 hardware estimation, I think it’s best I go over the estimation process, which ironically, were mostly based on statements made by Microsoft, since Sony made no mention of their hardware results this month. It all comes from the slightly vague Microsoft statement about having a “48% share of the overall current-generation console market share”. It’s vague because when Microsoft talks about “current-generation”, it’s unclear if they’re referring to all consoles, or just the home based consoles, but it should be the latter, since the former won’t make sense. And Microsoft should also be talking about June only, since for life-time wise, and even 2011-wise, the “48%” market share just doesn’t add up. And armed with the “knowledge”, and knowing both the Xbox 360 and Wii’s hardware stats, it’s then quite easy to estimate the PS3’s hardware sales number for June, which comes to around 276,000. And Microsoft’s other statement about nearly selling twice as many units as their nearest competitor seems to support this number, since any higher, and Microsoft wouldn’t have been able to make the claim without stretching the meaning of the term “nearly”.

At first glance, this seems to be a good result for Sony. PS3 hardware sales are up more than 100,000 units compared to the previous month, and it did beat the Wii, if the numbers are correct. So why didn’t Sony (loudly) pronounce these set of good results, and instead, went all quiet in their press release in regards to the hardware numbers? I can only guess is that there was no year-on-year growth for the PS3 in June, as June 2010 recorded higher sales for the console. If my estimation is correct, this breaks a 4 month trend in which the PS3 has seen year-on-year growth, and perhaps this is what Sony didn’t want to focus on (especially, given the PSN hack, media “hacks” will jump to the conclusion that the breaking of the trend is a direct result of the hacking outage). But more careful analysis shows that June 2010 was a better than usual month for the PS3, which I attributed back then to the clearing up of the PS3 stock shortage problem that hurt sales for the console throughout the first half of 2010 (June 2010 was 85% higher than June 2009). So for the PS3 to not perform as well in June 2011 as in June 2010, is really no big deal, and the decline was mild anyway, nothing like that of say, the Wii.

Which brings us to the Wii. 35% down compared to the same month last year, and nothing really positive can be said of the Wii, other than the fact that, for such a technologically inferior console, it’s done remarkably well and surely has already made Nintendo enough money. And with the Wii U already announced, the Wii’s results will become less and less important for Nintendo as they concentrate on the development of the Wii U.

And last, but certainly not the least, we have the tremendous Xbox 360 numbers. Nearly double that of last month’s results, and the only console yet again to show year-on-year growth. This is made more remarkable by the fact that, this time last year, the new “Slim” model came out, and the sales bump associated with it meant that it was always unlikely that the Xbox 360 would have any sort of year-on-year growth, but here we are. Now, some of this can be attributed to various bundling deals Microsoft had, including the deal where selected PC purchases get a free Xbox 360, and the fact that the “Slim” didn’t go on sale until midway through June 2010. So next month, we could see the first ever year-on-year sales decline for the Xbox 360 in quite  a while (versus last year’s sales bump), although it’s still a shoe-in to win the best selling console of the month award. Regardless, it’s been an impressive year for the Xbox 360, and the “Slim” has been a huge success, since it now makes the Xbox 360 the most balanced console in terms of price, performance (no more RRoD!), and audience (both hardcore and casual/family gamers are well catered for).

Onto software sales, or games. L.A. Noire retains top spot, as the new releases, Duke Nukem Forever and the PS3 exclusive Infamous 2 could not unseat the crime solving game. While Sony was remaining tight lipped about the PS3 hardware numbers, they rightly made a big deal about the performance of Infamous 2, which although third, is still the highest single-platform performer for June. It certainly did better than its predecessor, released in May 2009, and ranked only 5th, even though the chart back then was split based on platform specific releases, not like this month’s chart, which combines all platform sales for the same title as one listing. And releasing an exclusive earlier in the month, as opposed to in the last few days, does help it to climb the ranks. The other notable new entries for this month include the 3DS version of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Disney’s Cars 2. Here’s the full software sales chart for June:

1. L.A Noire (Take 2, Xbox 360, PS3)
2. Duke Nukem Forever (Take 2, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
3. Infamous 2 (Sony, PS3)
4. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean (Disney, Wii, Xbox 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSP, PC)
5. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (Nintendo, 3DS)
6. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, NDS,PC)
7. NBA 2K11 (Take 2, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, PC)
8. Mortal Kombat 2011 (Warner Bros. Interactive, PS3, Xbox 360)
9. Cars 2 (Disney, NDS, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
10. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft, Wii)

Time to make the usual prediction. As mentioned earlier, I think the Xbox 360 will experience its first year-on-year decline in ages, but still comfortably stay at the top of the home based console hardware sales charts, leaving the Wii and PS3 to fight it out for second and third place, and I think the Wii might be better positioned to win for some reason. It’s NCAA Football season again, so it will be the top seller, but otherwise, not a huge month for games again.

See you next month.