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data
Does Second Life show any signs of life in Japan? In late March, goo Research online polled 1,091 folks online about their knowledge of Second Life. Keep in mind: This is an internet poll, and it shouldn't be taken for anything other than that!
Finding include that only 1.3 percent of folks polled are currently playing it. That's not very many! 5.6 percent used to play. Hit the jump for the full number crunching.
More »
Activision is having a banner year, and they've got the NPD data to prove it. The company issued a press release this morning to announce that NPD Group data has placed them as the top U.S. console and handheld publisher from January to November of 2007, increasing its market share to a record 16.8% in the eleven month period, up 7.9% from the year before. "We continue to see strong consumer response to our wholly owned and internally developed titles — Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare," said Robert Kotick, Chairman and CEO, Activision, Inc. "We are well positioned to continue our leadership position through the remainder of the year and are on track to delivering another record year of revenue growth and the most profitable year in our history."Now that Activision has a larger market share than EA, how long before we get to start calling them an evil empire? Let me know, okay? I've got some great t-shirt ideas. More »
business
One of my long-standing pet peeves about the videogame industry is that we don't get very good — or fast — sales data. In the movie business the public knows if a movie bombs or succeeds a day or two after it first hits theaters. But videogame hardware and software sales are a black hole until either a game company pre-announces numbers (like Activision did with Guitar Hero III) or more often when the NPD data comes out every month.
Well, the situation is about to get worse, not better. As N'Gai Croal reports in my most recent Monday Morning Quarterbacking exchange with him at Newsweek's Level Up Blog, starting with the October data NPD will no longer release console hardware sales numbers. And to add insult to injury, only the top 5 selling games will be published as opposed to the current top 10. N'Gai points out we will probably (or should I say hopefully?) get the hardware numbers individually from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Still, it baffles me that the public will now be getting less data, not more.
Level Up's Monday Morning Quarterbacking [Newsweek]
Despite his frequent misstatements and apparent ignorance on the subject, despite including gay porn in a legal filing, despite his legal harassment of numerous publications, lawyers, judges and anyone else who seems to disagree with him, Jack Thompson manages to get himself on television again this morning as an "expert."
During his appearance on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, Thompson discussed the evils of churches using Halo 3 to minister to a youth audience. And of course he couldn't help but get some facts wrong.
Hit the jump to watch the video and read the relevant Jack quotes, which I've dissected. It does do my heart good to see that he wasn't nearly as over the top this time around as the last time we watched him. Maybe he decided to be a little more careful now that he knows we're checking out what he's saying instead of just accepting his statements as 100 percent truth. Too bad TV talk shows haven't learned to do the same thing.
12:37 PM on Thu Oct 11 2007
By Brian Crecente
18,491 views,
223 comments
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