Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Morgan, is putting his cart before the horse by speculating on what the NPD report for April (which is expected for release on the 15th) will state.

He casually says that Pokemon will sell well, GTAIV will sell many copies and push more people to buy new game systems, Mario Kart Wii will drive more sales for Nintendo, as will the continually high selling copies of Guitar Hero III and Rock Band.

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Sources close to Take Two as well as several industry analysts expect Grand Theft Auto IV to make $400 million in its first week, selling 6 million copies when it releases April 29, according to Variety.

If these predictions are correct it will be the biggest one week video game launch ever, surpassing Halo 3’s $300 million in the first week. GTA IV might even beat movie records, with the the highest being $404 million worldwide, made by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End in the first six days. If GTA IV’s launch does end up being the biggest entertainment launch of all time, at least we’ll know that gamers have better taste than movie goers when it comes to breaking records.

However, Halo 3 was an Xbox 360 exclusive, while GTA IV is on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, so it does have a significantly larger base of customers to draw money from. Still, $400 million is an impressive figure, and and at $60 a piece it works out to be over 6.67 million copies (even higher than the previously mentioned prediction). By my informal estimates, that works out to be amassiveshitload of virtual hookers killed per day and an even higher number of virtual cars stolen. While I don’t have industry analysts or important anonymous sources to back this up, I’m going to go ahead and say that GTA IV will break all records for crimes committed in-game in a week, and probably the record for amount of cumulative enjoyment from one game crammed into a single week too.

A study by Nottingham Trent University revealed that over half of the males who play MMOs play as female characters, and nearly three-quarters of females play as male characters. 70% of the females polled said they played as males, because they didn’t want guys to know that they had breasts and vaginas and because they seemed to get treated better. Chief researcher Zaheer Hussain explains:

It seems that women gender swap for a variety of reasons, such as to avoid unsolicited male approaches on their female characters, or because they felt male characters were treated better by other males during the course of the game

By that logic, it seems male MMO players enjoy “male approaches on their female characters” and like to be treated bad, because 54% play as females. That, and looking at a hot pixelated night elf follow your commands for 8 hours straight is a lot easier on the eyes than watching a virtual man do the same.

There are some things that we really don’t need science to tell us. One of them is that men like video games more then women. I know, I know, there are plenty of girl gamers out there who love gaming of all sorts but let’s face it, it’s a male-dominated scene. Before all two of you female gamers who read this site get up in arms, be forewarned, science has my back.

A new study shows that men’s brains react in much different ways then women’s do when they’re gaming. The study, lead by Fumiko Hoeft of the Stanford University School of Medicine, shows that when men play games, a part of the brain involved in feelings of reward and addiction becomes much more activated than it does in women. I could have told them this 15 years ago when I sat in front of a TV playing games with my friend, who happened to be a girl, as she got more and more bored. Still putting the words “study” and “Stanford” behind my claim certainly validates it.

To accomplish these perfectly obvious findings the doctors hooked up an equal number of men and women to an M.R.I. and had them play a game. The study found that in the men, there was much more activity in the mesocorticolimbic system, which is a big-word way of saying men like to accomplish menial tasks and garner awards for them. The game they played was a simple game in which they were told only to click the images of balls they saw, with no mention of a goal. Both sides played the game well but the men were more interested in completing the game and subsequently did better.

[Via New York Times]

On the heels of the announcement that the WGA (president Patric Verrone, pictured above) will be recognizing video game writers for the first time at their annual awards show, let me bestow you with some interesting tidbits that’re comin’ at’cha courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter.

• 27% of Americans are spending less time watching network TV
• 12% are watching less cable
• 94% are aware of the strike
• 33% have changed their media consumption habits because of it
• 26% are now spending more time playing video games

Given the fact that the gaming industry has just enjoyed, financially, its Best Year Ever (cue cheesy VH1 intro sequence), and considering the abundance of stellar titles that have recently come out (and are on the horizon), one hopes that this legion of freshly re-dedicated blistered-thumbs remains on our side… the dark side, that is. I mean, come on - TV is what iPhones are for, now. Why waste your plasma’s precious time, when you could be racking up even-more-precious Xbox Live achievements?

On a slightly unrelated note, you know that the 94% awareness statistic listed above is valid, when people like my grandma (who’s never even seen the internet in her entire life) are calling me up (on her WWII Era rotary phone), and trying to talk about click-through download residuals. Even more frightening is when people like her, and her purple-haired fellow octogenarian friends absolutely school my ass in a game of Wii bowling.

According to a new poll released by New York-based PR firm, Hill & Knowlton, and conducted by Opinion Research, 60% of consumers polled agreed that the government should regulate the sale of games deemed mature or violent. This news isn’t that surprising; in taking a random poll of 1,150 Americans, as Opinion Research did, you are bound to get an overwhelming majority of people who don’t understand gaming or gaming culture. A bit more disturbing is that 50% of those people said they would be fine with the government outright controlling the mature content that goes into videogames. This seems to be a bit of a slap to the face of free speech, but there are a large amount of people out there jumping on the anti-gaming band wagon.

What is surprising about the poll, conducted between Sept. 17-19, is how current gamers responded. With 44% voting “Yes” to government regulation of mature content in games and 55% voting that the government should regulate the sale of mature games, it seems that a surprising amount of gamers don’t value their favorite medium’s freedom of speech. One wonders if the gamers polled fully understood what government regulation in gaming means, not only for games, but for first amendment rights in general. Hit the jump for some words from the people at Hill & Knowlton, a few graphs of the poll’s results and some other thoughts.

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Over at Games Radar they have a huge list of gaming firsts, from the first game to get an AO rating to the first real boss. Everything in gaming had to begin somewhere, and they sure found a lot - they list a total of 84 gaming firsts. It’s really interesting to take a look back at the roots of so many aspects of gaming (and even some more recent firsts), and to see how much has changed over the years.

I’ve selected some of my favorites after the jump, but there are a lot of other fascinating firsts in the full list.

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Looks like Super Mario Galaxy is the highest rated game ever. Well, at least on Game Rankings. The game beat The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time by .2 points, with the rating of an amazing 97.8%, based on 30 reviews. While The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was based off of 31 reviews, I doubt it even matters seeing on how the media is treating this amazing gem. The media, minus lawl, of course.

I can’t believe it, but Halo 3 sales were actually beaten this week. Half-Life 2: The Orange Box sold 348,049 copies on its first week, while Halo 3 sold 285,860 units this week. Seems like Microsoft’s most anticipated title for the Xbox 360 could be dying down…this week at least. I’m sure Halo 3 will top the charts next week, while Orange Box will bump down to second place.

In somewhat related news, Orange Box seems to be doing pretty poor on Xbox Live. According to Major Nelson, Orange Box is the 9th top played online title of the week, while Halo 3 is still number 1.

The NPD sales numbers for September are in, and thanks to Halo 3 the Xbox 360 is on top. However, while the Xbox 360 may have sold the most, the Wii isn’t far behind, and still managed to break 500,000 units. Trailing very close behind that is the Nintendo DS, followed by Sony’s systems. First the PSP, which is pretty far behind the DS, then the PS2, and finally the PS3 at the end. Here are all the number filled details:

1. Xbox 360 - 527.8K
2. Wii - 501K
3. Nintendo DS - 495.8K
4. PlayStation Portable - 284.5K
5. PlayStation 2 - 215K
6. PlayStation 3 - 119.4K

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The software sales for last week are in - and Halo 3 has come out on top. While the Xbox 360 usually sells horribly in Japan (and obviously the games for it too) and western games don’t do great either, Halo 3, which has both of those going against it, has managed to sell the most from September 24th to September 30th (the game was released on September 27th). While it may only be 59,000, it’s surprising nonetheless. Here is the full list, so you can see what games Halo beat out for the top spot:

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“We’re more popular than Jesus.”

— Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, 2007

It’s Official: Halo 3 is the biggest entertainment launch in history. It made $170 million in the United States in the first 24 hours alone, beating everything from movies like Spiderman 3 to books like Harry Potter. While that is the biggest record Halo 3 has broken, it’s not the only one - September 25th was the most active Xbox LIVE day in history, with over a million people online within the first 20 hours. It was also the fastest pre-selling game ever, with 1.7 million preorders.

And this is only the beginning, as GameStop’s Senior Vice President of Merchandising Bob McKenzie expects “it to be the biggest video game title generator in GameStop’s history,” and Jill Hamburger, vice president of movies and games at Best Buy, says it “is on track to become the number one gaming title of all time.”

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The Xbox 360 has a two year anniversary coming up on November 22. In honor of this upcoming, epic event, Microsoft has released a list of market statistics on the console. The “Big M” provides figures on the sales of both the 360 and its games as well as details demonstrating the success of Xbox Live and Xbox Live Arcade.

Microsoft reports that the company has sold more than 11.6 million Xbox 360 consoles worldwide in 37 countries where it is currently available. Of these countries, 25 have access to Xbox Live. In addition, U.S. NPD (an independent provider of consumer and retail market research information for the gaming industry) says gamers have bought more Xbox 360 software (24.3 million units) than the PS3 and Wii put together (19.8 million games combined). The Xbox 360 has over 250 games currently available, which includes 86 Live Arcade games. The 360 holds the largest games ‘attach rate’ with 6.3 games sold per console owner.

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Despite the fact that it’s been out for over a week and has been getting outstanding reviews (currently the 6th best rated game ever, and the 1st best rated game for Xbox 360), BioShock failed to beat Gears of War, which has been out almost 10 months. It shows that incredible critical acclaim and praise does not necessarily lead to it being played the most - although in this case it’s only one step away. I wonder how it would have fared had it included a multiplayer feature, as I’m sure that is why Gears maintains its high status even this long after its release. After Gears and BioShock, the list is identical in order to last week (until the last two), with everything pushed down one spot by the new Medal of Honor Airborne demo (with takes the Blazing Angels 2 demo out of the top ten). I found it odd that the Call of Duty 4 beta is not anywhere on the list, and while it crashed servers and was made available to everyone it still isn’t getting played that much. Hit the jump for the full Xbox Live lists for Xbox 360, original Xbox, and Xbox Live Arcade, with last week’s rankings in parentheses.

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Major Nelson has posted the top played games on Xbox Live over the past week, based on “global unique users connected to Xbox Live,” along with the top Xbox Live Arcade games based on how many were purchased in the past week. Despite the fact that (at least for most) BioShock hasn’t even been out for a full week, it surpassed all but Gears of War as the top played game. Gears of War has been on top every single week since around the time it was released - could BioShock be the one to take it down? With it available everywhere and a full week for people to play it, there’s a good chance it will come out on top next week.

There are also a lot of demos being played. The skate. Demo is top among them, and then the Blazing Angels 2 Multiplayer demo 4 spaces down. The BioShock demo even manages to make it at number 10, even though the full game is already out. Hit the jump for the full Xbox Live lists for Xbox 360, original Xbox, and Xbox Live Arcade.
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