It's that time of year again. Time to take a data dive into the heart of eBay U.S. to gauge how well the video game grey market fared during the holiday season. Rather than charting the sales numbers of a specific console, as I've done for the past three years with the Nintendo Wii, this year I'm presenting a broader overview of the eBay grey market, charting the sales for all major gaming platforms during the 30-day period beginning November 26th and ending on Christmas Day. I've compiled data on console sales, game listings, and some of the top-items passing through the popular auction website. If you want to know which platforms thrived, which handheld completely tanked, and the most successful video game-related item on eBay, then read on.

Console Sales

The table below presents a general overview of the sales performance of the major consoles and handheld systems during the month leading up to Christmas. I've listed the total sales in U.S. dollars, the number of items sold, the average selling price, and the sell-through percentage, which indicates the success of auctions posted for each specific product. Check out the table, and then we'll break things out by console.

PlayStation 3

The PlayStation 3 in all its varied incarnations sold the fewest number of consoles out of the big three this year, but that shouldn't be taken as a measure of the system's success. Indeed, if you look at the sell-through percentage, the PS3 comes out on top. That means there were less people selling, but plenty willing to buy. Since the launch of the PlayStation Slim earlier this year, Sony has maintained a steady supply of the consoles to retail outlets, and the abundance of available consoles equates less people looking for them on eBay.

From a seller's point of view, that high sell-through figure means the PlayStation 3 comes out on top in terms of sales potential.

The highest price PlayStation 3 auctions mainly consisted of limited edition consoles, including the Final Fantasy XIII bundle recently released in Japan.

Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 brought in the most money of any console this holiday season, mainly due to its average price being slightly higher than the Nintendo Wii, which pushed more units overall. The Microsoft console's sell-through numbers were only slightly lower than the PlayStation 3. Between that figure and the larger number of consoles put up for sales, it seems like putting a new 360 up for sales is seen as a relatively safe bet among sellers.

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle made up a large portion of the Xbox 360 sales during the period, with 322 of the consoles representing $126,924 worth of sales. The Infinity Ward-flavored bundle went for as high as $900.

Wii

eBay sellers continue the love affair with the Wii that started with the console's 2006 holiday debut. The Wii was the top seller of the big three in terms of units sold, but the slightly lower sell-through rate indicates that there might have been a few too many up for sale.

Also note that the average price for the Wii was $190, which is below the suggested retail price. Either sellers were taking advantage of discounts and sales, or they weren't making very much in the way of profits.

DS

The Nintendo DS managed to outsell the newer, more advanced DSi this holiday season, pushing more than 2,000 units beyond what Nintendo's latest North American handheld sold. A failure for the DSi? Not exactly. Take a look at the sell-through percentage and you'll see that the DSi has the largest number of any game console. eBayers wanted to buy them, but the sellers just weren't selling.

PSP

The PSP sold strong on eBay this holiday, with the PSP-1000, 2000, and 3000 generating more money than any other handheld, though the DS trumped them with sheer numbers.

The top selling PSP was a used red God of War limited edition PSP, which went for $1,009.

Unfortunately, the PSPgo didn't fare nearly as well as its older brother. In fact, Sony's UMD-less alternative to the regular PSP performed abysmally, pushing only 250 units. It's not a factor of demand behind too high for supply either - the sell-through rate of 76.47% indicates that people simply weren't buying it.

To help paint a more complete picture, let's compare units sold versus monetary sales. If you look very closely, you'll notice that both graphs do indeed contain the PSPgo. You might need to zoom in.

Games With Legs

Now let's take a look at the games that traded this holiday season. This time around I took the top ten titles sorted by number of auctions, to see which ones were moving the most.

Certainly not a surprising list. Modern Warfare 2 seems to be showing up at the top of any list as far as sales are concerned these days, and Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort are two of the titles meant to showcase what the Wii can do, so those both sold in droves. World at War traded heavily, perhaps due to people swapping out the old for the new, and the Pure / Lego Batman combo disc packed inside select Xbox 360 consoles over the holiday season scores a tidy profit for those who received it for free.

And Uncharted 2 making the list makes sense, but what about the extremely more expensive edition?

Forty-five of the ultra-rare Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Fortune Hunter Edition made it onto eBay during the 30 days leading up to Christmas, but it seems some sellers set their hopes too high. Of the 45, only 24 sold, giving the package a 53.33% sell-through rate. The average price for the package was $891.52, with one going for as high as $1,136. Didn't get one? Maybe you should have made it to Kotaku's Child's Play fundraiser this year.

What People Look For In An Online Video Game Auction

Selling on eBay isn't just a matter of having a strong product, but being aware of what your prospective buyers are searching for and using search terms accordingly. Let's see if this list of the top 10 search terms used in both the games and system category can help.

The console search terms are pretty much common sense. Let's face it - if you're selling an Xbox 360 and you forget to include Xbox 360 in the title, there's something wrong with you. As far as game search terms go, folks initially seem to be going for specific games, but then desperation sets in. You have to be pretty desperate in order to type "Wii games" into an eBay search page.

Wii Remotes Are The New Hotcakes

Finally we come to the hottest selling video game item of the holiday season. With 8,359 items sold between November 26th and December 25th, the Nintendo Wii remote is the hottest selling gaming item this holiday season, generating more than $202,000 for sellers over the course of one month. The remote, bundled with a nunchuck, a skin, and a wrist-strap is sold as a "Nintendo Wii Remote+Nunchuck Game Controller+Skin 4 SET," though counting the wrist strap as an actual item is a bit shaky. Still, with The New Super Mario Bros. Wii making four-player gaming fun on the Wii, its no wonder the controllers are flying off the shelves, onto resellers' shelves, and then back off of the shelves again.

Another Year Goes By

And there you have the 2009 holiday season, summed up in 30 days of eBay data. A look into what happens to games and consoles once they pass from retail into the hands of the wheelers and dealers that populate the world's largest online marketplace. Bids were sniped, Buy It Now items were pounced, and in the end, everybody got feedback. A++++! Would research again!

Methodology
Statistics in the 2009 Grey Market Report were gathered using eBay market research tool Terapeak. Data was drawn for a 30 day period starting on November 26th and ending on December 25th. Console statistics were pulled directly from the Video Games / Systems subcategory to allow for mis-filed system listings, while game data was puled directly from the Video Game / Games subcategory. Console searches were limited to items in New condition, with a range of $100 to $1,000 used to ferret out accessories. Certain terms were omitted from the search in order to allow for a more accurate reporting of console pricing, including "games," "extras", "accessories," "lot," and others on a case-by-case basis - for instance, "Wii Fit" was omitted from search terms for the Wii in order to make sure systems bundled with Wii Fit did not influence the pricing data.

Gamasutra acquired data on the top 13 Xbox Live Games for 2008 from Microsoft Game Studios user research expert Bruce Phillips, which he gathered to explore the problem of why people stop playing games. The data was culled from a selection of 14,000 Xbox Live players, and the list of games are generally those that attract the more hardcore crowd. If that is the case, then why are more than 50% of them stopping playing before earning all of their Gamerscore points?

As far as MGS is concerned, this is a serious issue. Players are quitting the game without striving to explore everything. Another chart in the article tracks games that dole out achievements for simply finishing the single-player game, and the numbers are much higher for most titles, but again that speaks volumes. Players are playing through a game without exploring, or attempting to achieve more. It could be an issue of frustration, boredom, distraction, or just plain laziness.

You can read more on the data by following the link below. What I want to know is, how many of you actually go out of your way to score achievement points?

Xbox Live Gamerscore, Completion Stats Show Major Trends [Gamasutra]

The authors of the study found that there were 74 cases of car-surfing between 1999 and 20008 in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Texas. They also found more than 350 videos showing children car surfing on YouTube between 2006 and 2008.

The group says that while car surfing started out as a byproduct of the hyphy movement, it "has since swept the US, propelled by depictions in movies, video games, and in song lyrics detailing every step of the activity."

The big three to blame, according to the group, is Jackass, YouTube and Grand Theft Auto.

According to the study, and this handy-dandy graph, spikes in the number of car-surfing related injuries have spiked around the time of Grand Theft Auto games hitting. Though by around, I mean within a year or so.

When Jackass no longer airs and no new GTA's release, those injuries drop.

"During the years in which no new edition of Grand Theft Auto was released and Jackass was not aired, there was a coincident drop in car-surfing fatalities."

Seems like a weak link at best. Me? I blame Teen Wolf.

Neurological injuries from car surfing [The Journal of Neurosurgery, thanks Jeremy]

Tweet My Gaming is a site that provides a constant feed of video game tweets from everyone who tweets them. It tags video game names and then captures any Twitter activity containing those names, with updates appearing on the front page in real time. It's fascinating to watch it in motion, but that's only a small part of the site's functionality.

Tweet My Gaming not only feeds the tweets, it also tracks them and ranks games based on their Twitter popularity, giving us insight not only into the games themselves, but a good idea about what kinds of gamers use Twitter. For instance, The Sims 3 is currently on top of the list, with 54,069 tweets, compared to the next highest, World of Warcraft with 10,000. This leads me to speculate that the more casual player is more apt to talk about gaming on Twitter than the hardcore player, a fact mostly backed up by the next games on the list - The Beatles: Rock Band, Left 4 Dead 2 (the anomaly), and Wii Fit.

You can search for games by name, which gives you the number of tweets since the site launched on June 1st, as well as the number of players on sister site GamerDNA who list the game in their profiles.

In order to have your tweets counted, all you have to do is mention the name of a game. No tags; no special characters; just the game's name. I tweeted about The Sims 3, and within a minute I saw my tweet sliding down the front page of the website. Just be warned that watching the scroll is completely addictive.

The team behind the website actually sat down with me at E3 for a moment to show me the website, and by sitting down with me I mean sitting down in the hallway outside the press room. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to spare, so this is the first time I've actually gotten to sit down and explore the site a bit.

It really is a fascinating use of Twitter, and another fine example of alternative gaming statistics gathering from the folks who brought us GamerDNA. Go look for yourself!

$1 billion is a very large number. It's certainly large enough to put Rock Band at the top of the NPD's games by revenue list for 2008. Along with the announcement of this monetary milestone comes a heaping helping of stats, as PR people feel bad if their press releases don't reach a certain length. Did you know that there are 614 songs available for Rock Band right now, representing 269 different artists? How about the fact that more than 40 million songs have been purchased since the original game launched in November of 2007? Very impressive statistics. It almost makes me feel bad over the fact that they failed to pick up Stan Bush's "The Touch" and are now doomed to fail.

Check out the full list of statistics and awards Rock Band has accrued over the past year and a half below. It's something to remember them by.

Key Stats for the Rock Band Franchise

Sales
• Rock Band® franchise has officially surpassed $1 billion dollars in North American retail sales in 15 months, according to the NPD Group
• Rock Band was the #1 title of 2008 by revenue across all game genres (NPD)

Music / Downloadable Content
• 614 songs offered via the Rock Band platform, both on-disc and in-game music store, as of March 24, 2009
• 269 different artists / bands offered via Rock Band franchise as of March 24, 2009
• Over 40 million paid songs have been sold via download since Rock Band launched on November 20, 2007
• 11 albums released to date via the Rock Band platform including AC/DC Live, The Cars, Judas Priest, Pixies, Mötley Crüe, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Megadeth, Rush, No Doubt and Stevie Ray Vaughan, as well as special compilations from The Who, Nirvana, The Grateful Dead, Boston and more

Critical Acclaim
• Average Metacritic score of 92 [2] for both Rock Band and Rock Band 2
• Rock Band and Rock Band 2 have garnered more than 50 industry awards including:
• IGN's "Best Music/Rhythm Game of 2008"
• Gamespot.com's Editor's Choice Winner for "Best Rhythm / Music Game of 2008"
• Spike TV's 2008 Video Game Award Winner for "Best Music Game" and "Best Soundtrack in a Game"
• Gametrailers.com "Best Music and Rhythm Game 2008"
• PlayStation: The Official Magazine's "Best Rhythm Game of 2008"
• Yahoo's "Best Party Game of the Year – 2008" and named one of Yahoo's "Best Tech Products of 2008"
• G4 TV's X-Play "Best Music Game of 2008"
• Named as one of Entertainment Weekly's "Entertainers of the Year 2008"
• Called "Best party game of the year" by the Associated Press
• Named as one of USA Today's "Top Video Games of 2008"
• Cited as one of MSNBC.com's Top Video Games of 2008 and one of the Best Xbox 360 Games of 2008
• Heralded as "hands down the best party game ever" by Time magazine and named as one of Time's Top Video Games of 2008

Rock Band Franchise Innovations
• First full band music video game to hit consoles
• First music video game to offer export of content library from disc and cross compatibility of downloadable content (DLC) in sequel games.
• First music video game to offer weekly downloadable content (averaging more than 3 songs per week since its launch on November 20, 2007)
• Lead the way for full compatibility and interoperability between competing peripherals
• First music video game to allow for export of avatars and other game data to create real life merchandise
• First music video game to offer full albums as downloadable content: Judas Priest's "Screaming for Vengeance," released in June 2008
• First music game to offer a new song day-and-date with its release to radio, with Mötley Crüe's "Saints of Los Angeles"

What sort of statistics, you ask? How about numbers regarding the game's 2,000 page script, developed over a period of 15 months and based on 6,000 pages of notes and reference. It contains more than 40,000 words of non-linear dialog, compromising 60 15 to 20 minute long scenes. A very impressive undertaking.

Equally as impressive is the amount of work that went into motion capture, which took place on-site at the Quantic Dream offices in Paris. More than 70 actors and stuntmen participated in recording 30,000 unique animations for the title, requiring 170 days of shooting spread across 9 months.

After seeing these statistics, all I can do is hope the game winds up a massive success, because anything less than that wouldn't have been worth all of this trouble. As long as the action is more accessible than Omikron and the story less twisted than Indigo Prophecy they should do just fine.

Heavy Rain's vital statistics [Eurogamer]

72% of Americans play some sort of video games (that's up from 64% last year). Of that 72%, only 42% play games online (that's up from 40% last year). And of that 42% of online players, 90% play online with their PC. Also of note, 50% of online console gaming was on the Xbox 360. And only 2-3% of NPD's respondents reported owning more than one console. How's that for some late afternoon watercooler fodder?

NPD: 72% Of U.S. Plays Games, Only 2-3% Own Multiple Consoles [Gamasutra][image]

Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE Momentum Facts 'n Stats

Leadership: Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE are leading the charge into the future of gaming and entertainment, bringing the best games, an active community and a growing catalogue of high definition entertainment to all members of the household.

* More than 11.6 million Xbox 360 consoles have sold across the 37 countries where it is currently available. Xbox LIVE is currently available in 25 countries across the globe.

· According to U.S. NPD data, gamers have bought more software for the Xbox 360 (24.3 million units), than software for PS3 and Wii combined (19.8 million units).

* Faster than expected, Xbox LIVE has eclipsed the 7 million member milestone and is on track to reach 10 million members by the end of June 2008. In fact, in the last year we've added a new Xbox LIVE member every 8 seconds.

Gaming: With the greatest lineup in the history of video games, Xbox 360 is hands down the best gaming console on the market.

* There are more than 250 games available today on Xbox 360, including 86 Xbox LIVE Arcade games.

* Xbox 360 is the next-gen console with the largest games attach rate at an astounding 6.3 games sold per Xbox 360 owner.

* Xbox LIVE members have spent more than 3.2 billion hours playing games on Xbox LIVE with their friends around the world. That is equal to 137 million days or more than 376,000 years of gaming.

* To date, Xbox 360 owners have unlocked more than 600 million Achievements. All of those unlocked Achievements have created a total combined Gamerscore of more than 14 billion.

* There have been 2.5 billion game sessions hosted since the launch of Xbox 360, with more than 5.6 million hosted each day so far in 2007.

* Xbox LIVE Arcade has been a huge hit on Xbox 360, with nearly 70% of all connected consoles downloading and playing Xbox LIVE Arcade titles.

* Xbox LIVE Marketplace currently offers nearly 200 free trials and demos, giving owners more free playable content than any other console.

Entertainment: Xbox 360 is the center of digital entertainment in the living room, offering the best in high definition games, movies and television along with access to all your friends, digital music and pictures.

* Xbox 360 continues to lead with the largest library of on-demand high-definition movies and television in the U.S. on-demand market. Twenty-nine movie studios and TV networks continue to provide a growing catalogue of premium high- and standard-definition entertainment content that to date totals 2,800 hours.

* Xbox LIVE Marketplace is now the leading provider of on-demand high-definition content in the U.S., providing more than twice the number of hours as leading cable operators.

* Xbox LIVE Marketplace is home to a growing catalogue of more than 9,000 pieces of individual gaming and entertainment content, downloadable at the click of a button.

* There have been 290 million downloads of gaming and entertainment content from Xbox LIVE Marketplace

Social Networking: Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE offer the largest, most active online community of friends, family and rivals worldwide.

* Xbox LIVE is the largest social network in the living room with 2.6 million IM, text and voice messages sent over the service every day.

* Since Xbox LIVE launched, 3.1 billion games sessions have been hosted on the service.

* The average Xbox LIVE Gold subscriber has 23 friends on their Xbox LIVE friends list.

* More than 1.2 billion cross-game invites have been sent since the launch of Xbox 360.

Xbox LIVE Top 10: Check out the list of the top 10 games played over Xbox LIVE, as well as the top 10 worldwide downloads for Xbox LIVE Arcade and Xbox LIVE Marketplace Demos since Xbox 360 launched in November, 2006.

The top 10 games played over Xbox LIVE worldwide:

1. Halo 2
2. Gears of War
3. Hexic HD
4. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas
5. Call of Duty 3
6. Call of Duty 2
7. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 3
8. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
9. Crackdown
10. PGR3

The top 10 Xbox LIVE Arcade downloads worldwide:

11. Aegis Wing
12. Uno
13. Texas Hold 'em
14. Geometry Wars Retro Evolved
15. Bankshot Billiards 2
16. Street Fighter 'II Hyper Fighting
17. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 Classic Arcade
18. Worms
19. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
20. Contra

The top 10 Xbox LIVE Marketplace Demos downloads worldwide:

1. Crackdown
2. Lost Planet E3 2006
3. Dead Rising
4. BioShock
5. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas
6. Forza Motorsport 2
7. Sonic the Hedgehog
8. Saints Row
9. Superman Returns
10. Colin McRae: DIRT

The participation in the Halo 3 beta was staggering. Witnessing such a great reaction to a small portion of the game has been inspiring. It's a testament to the fervor and anticipation that surrounds Halo 3. We're confident that on Sept. 25 Halo 3 will drive an unprecedented wave of new gamers to the Xbox 360 platform and Xbox Live.

12 million hours of gameplay sounds to me like some of you didn't even get up off the couch to go potty. I know videogames are important, but so are healthy digestive systems. APBYP: Always Potty Before You Play. Kim Phu

Kim: Halo 3 to be System Seller, Beta Facts

'What is the real failure rate of the Xbox 360?', we asked Game, one of the largest console retailers in the UK. 'That's not information we're able to give out. It's commercially sensitive,' it said...Last month, its vice-president of entertainment, Peter Moore, refused to answer the question, telling the Mercury News: "I can't comment on failure rates." According to Moore, if someone has a faulty console they should worry about the customer service.

Uh, OK. So far, there have been many documented reasons why an individual's Xbox 360 would die. Shouldn't that concern Microsoft more than how many indivuals have been affected? Kim Phu

What is the Real Failure Rate of the Xbox 360? [Guardian Unlimited]

The rise and fall of the PlayStation 3 on eBay is one of the most talked about gaming stories of the year. In order to paint a broader picture, I've tracked pricing trends from preorders to Christmas Eve and surveyed retailers to determine just how hard the PS3 grey market has crashed.

In the days leading up to the PlayStation 3 launch in mid-November, people all over the country lined up with dollar signs in their eyes, hoping to cash in on what was sure to be the most sought after gift this holiday season. I talked to many people planning on financing college, cars, vacations, and countless other dream items with the fruits of their labor. A week later those hopes and dreams were crushed, as reports of plummeting eBay prices poured in. Just how fast did the PS3 grey market crash? Take a look for yourself, and feel free to click the graph for a larger version.

Within two days of the system's launch the going price dropped by over $1000. eBay prospectors across the country were stunned at the rapid depreciation of their investment. While they were still looking at $600 profit on average, it was a far cry from the windfall everyone had been expecting.

The smart thing to do in that situation would be to wait, right? Several enterprising folks I talked to during the launch festivities predicted a glut early on, and planned on holding their systems until Christmas, when demand would be at its highest. As the graph indicates, that wasn't the wisest move. Four days before Christmas PS3 auctions hit the lowest point ever, bottoming out at just $724. Figuring in sales tax, that's less than $100 profit on a 60GB system.

Clearly the way to go for the PS3 prospector was preorders. On November 16th, as the reality of the system shortages began to sink in, buyers spent an average of $2,367 to secure themselves on of the 600 or so preorders sold that day, and from the point eBay started allowing receipt-verified presales prices maintained a steady average of around $1500.

How are retail stores being affected?

With the prices dropping so low, many eBay hopefuls have been returning their purchases to the stores they procured them from. Between packing, shipping, and taxes, it's much less of a hassle just to get a refund and forget the whole thing ever happened. I decided to survey several popular retail 'superstores' to get a feel for just how big a trend grey market returns were.

Here's how this worked. I called a random selection of stores across the country from each of the four retailers listed below. I asked to speak to their electronics department first, and then called back to speak with customer service. I made sure to specify intact, boxed returns to avoid clouding data with random defective units. Interestingly enough, not one store I spoke to mentioned any defective returns. If anything the PS3 is a solid machine. Bear in mind that these are not hard numbers. I spoke to whoever was staffing the departments at the time I called, and only counted the answers applying directly to those people. While I'd like to say you could safely double the returned system numbers below, there are far too many factors involved to make it an accurate estimate.

I picked the four below for various reasons. Fry's because of its unique bundling policy, Best Buy because of its huge initial allotments, Target as a major retailer that isn't focused on electronics, and Wal-Mart because I am apparently a glutton for punishment. All four stores had people wait in line for the consoles...one of the reasons you don't see GameStop represented, another reason being that many GameStop systems went to either employees or regulars to the store tipped off by employees. "But GameStop wasn't allowed to sell to employees!" Where do you think I got mine?

Store Findings:

Fry's Electronics
Number Called: 10 - Called double what I had planned for Fry's because the first five all reported having systems in stock.
Average Returns: two per store
Systems Available? Yes

Fry's stands out from the other retailers I've surveyed in that they still insist on selling their PS3 systems in ridiculous bundle packs with eight or so games. Every single store I called reported having plenty of bundles available for purchase. On average each store had received two returns, with the Alpharetta Georgia location, a favorite of mine, reporting four. Systems at Fry's can only be returned with the full bundle intact, and are resold the same way.

Conclusion: Nothing too surprising here. When I was working at GameStop on Christmas Eve I had countless customers tell me that Fry's had PlayStation 3s just sitting there, with no one buying. The only thing harder than trying to turn a profit off of a PS3 on eBay is trying to turn a profit off an $1100 bundle filled with games no one wants to play.

Target
Number Called: five - they're a major retailer, but they weren't exactly a big launch location.
Average Returns: two
Systems Available? No, though two out of five stores did tell me I had "just missed one."
Conclusion: Target doesn't get many systems in, and when they do they generally last a day tops. One electronics rep I spoke to in Colorado told me they had gotten two returns earlier in the week, which didn't last more that 24 hours on the shelf. Low volume, relatively quick turnaround.

Best Buy
Number Called: 15 - Best Buy had the greatest launch allocations, so I gave them a bit more attention while conducting the survey.
Average Returns: Four - One customer service rep said she had seen as many as eight returned, though she worked at a midnight launch store with a much larger console allocation than the rest.
Systems Available? Not a one, at any store. Most likely a corporate sponsored lie, however, as we've been getting several reports on Best Buy holding systems until New Year's Eve.
Conclusion: A much larger allocation equals a slightly higher number of returns. This whole sitting on items for big holiday sales severely screws up survey data. As well as forcing their employees to lie, they also forced me to lie. When I mentioned I was writing a story, I was told they couldn't comment to the press. I had to tell them I was a father looking in to buying one for his son, trying to figure out if the system was reliable. If anyone asks, my son's name is Rufus, and he has a glandular disorder.

Wal-Mart
Number called: Five before I gave up out of sheer frustration
Average Returns: Inconclusive. While I did have one store tell me they'd seen a couple come back, most of them couldn't figure out how to transfer me to customer service.
Systems Available? Possibly. They might not even know what it is.
Conclusion: While I've known some very helpful and intelligent Wal-Mart employees in my time, all of them must have been off over the past two days. I got through to one customer service rep and one electronics department out of five stores, the rest of the time spent either waiting endlessly on hold or being accidentally hung up on.

While return numbers seem to be relatively low, when you figure in the transactions the employees I spoke to weren't privy to, and then multiply the number by even a fraction of the stores these retailers have scattered across the country, and things start adding up. In an ironic twist to the whole story, it seems as though your best bet for securing a PlayStation 3 console, unless you want to shell out $1100 for a bundle at Fry's, is eBay. As of this writing there are over 7,000 up for auction, looking for a good home.

The Grand Conclusion, with a Personal Note
To be completely honest, when I first secured my PS3 preorder with GameStop the first thought in my head was the massive amount of money I could make from selling it. That's how I got approval from my girlfriend to put down the $100. The TMX Elmo had just been released and was selling for ten times retail price. I figured I could triple my money, pick myself up a nice flat panel HDTV...hell, I might even have enough left over for another PS3 once the dust cleared.

What changed? Well the more I thought about the PS3, the more articles I read, and the more videos I watched, until the gamer in me basically slapped the profiteer silly. The PlayStation 3 has real potential. Lair. Motorstorm. Resistance. Soon dreams of a giant TV faded away, replaced by the gnawing anticipation I'm prone to get whenever something big is going to happen in the gaming industry. That, and I got this gig at Kotaku. If you guys ever got wind of me eBaying a PS3 I'd never hear the end of it.

As it turns out my gamer instincts and the threat of hordes of angry readers steered me clear of potential disaster. Aside from a couple brief spikes, there is no way I'd have been able to pull off the television, and I know damn well I would have waited for Christmas like so many others did, only to lose even more.

The moral of this story? There's no such creature as a sure thing. The majority of eBay prospectors walked away from this experience with that lesson burned into the back of their brains. My suggestion for the future? If you want to gamble, go to Vegas. If you want to invest, try mutual funds. Leave the video game system buying to the gamers. We'll all be happier for it.

How I collected the graph data:
To track eBay sales I used a website called Terapeak, which is of of the most trusted eBay market research tools available. I looked at data for the US eBay site each day utilizing the keyword "PlayStation 3" in the Video Games/Systems category. I set the price range for $200 through $10,000 to weed out any artificially inflated auctions as well as any bogus "PS3 Buying Guide" type offerings. Keep in mind that the statistics provided are for both the 60GB and 20GB models combined. Many sellers neglected to specify which version they were auctioning, so weeding out one from the other was nigh impossible. Counterbalancing that slightly are auctions including games and extra controllers, which are also figured into the statistics.

While certainly not a completely infallible system, I believe it led to a more accurate overview of the eBay PlayStation 3 market than simply searching for PlayStation 3 and leaving it at that.

Using the same guidelines outlined above, I poked about for a few more interesting tidbits regarding system demand. For instance, auctions ending on or before November 16th, meaning preorders, had a 96.5% success rate. In the period after the system was released the figure dropped to 73%. Hazarding a guess I would say those figures are due largely in part to unrealistic reserve price auctions.

Valve has published the first set of results from their data set for you, the lowly player, to hover over and study. Sadly, we may never know during which level thousands upon thousands of lonely first person shooter aficionados fall totally and completely in love with the dreamy Alyx. Michael McWhertor

Half-Life 2 Episode 1 Stats

The incredibly useful World of Warcraft site MapWoW.com reports that the University of Washington tops its list of college-affiliated site visitors. The post speculates that Seattle's colossal nerd population (as in: there are great numbers of them, and many of them are huge) makes this a not-unexpected result.

Several other tech-heavy schools make the list including RIT, Purdue, Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech. A few big name schools win out on sheer number of students, such as University of Michigan, The Ohio State University, and The University of Texas. The state of California has the most universities in the top 25.

There is a complete ordered list of 1109 universities available on the site, and a top 25 in the post itself.

MapWoW uses the Google API in conjunction with realtime game statistics to document resource distribution across the in-game continents.

Next time you need to know where to steer your botfly-infested kodo steed to farm the most Kingsblood in the shortest amount of time, and don't feel like being screamed at or ignored in the General channel, plug your variables into MapWoW and go about your business. Eliza Gauger

University of Washington plays the most Warcraft [MapWow.com]

Most parents think their kids play way too many video games, according to a survey commissioned by VTech Electronics. In other shocking news, parents say kids have no respect, listen to crap music and follow way, way too close when driving.

I think people need to just start sending me money whenever they want arbitrary and useless statistics about gaming: Seven out of 10 children have lost an eye playing video games, mothers worry more will put an eye out. *

Survey Shows Parental Attitudes to Video Games [Gamasutra]

*Margin of Error: +/- 70 percent.