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Just in time to render the new Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition outdated, the Guinness people have announced that Grand Theft Auto IV has practically destroyed currently held records for fastest-selling game and most-profitable entertainment product.

In the first 24 hours, GTA IV sold 3.6 million copies and earned $310 million dollars.

Prior to GTA IV's record-setting releases, the record-holder for the most-selling game was Halo 3 with $170 million in 24 hours. Compare that to the record-holding movie and book with Spider-Man 3 making $60 million and the latest Harry Potter book making $220 million in 24 hours.

Consider how ubiquitous Halo 3's advertising was compared the the relatively tame promotion for GTA IV. Halo 3 had its own soda and viral videos and ARGs and commercial coverage on practically every network. Then there's GTA IV, with just a few simple commercials and lots of talking heads on the news hallooing about dead hookers and it nearly doubles Halo 3's first-day earnings.

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The current top of the line PS3, the 80GB model, has been disappearing from stores and rumors have been flying, FLYING that a 120GB model is on its way.

Sony denies it.

GameStop confirms it.

The real mystery here, though, is whether anybody should care. With Metal Gear Solid 4 on its way and Blu-Ray becoming the de facto winner in the HD format war, there are finally a few reasons to purchase a PlayStation 3. Should Sony be making a more expensive version now?

Unless the 120GB model, alleged to also come with DualShock 3 at last, alleged not to exist, alleged to exist, alleged to not have a reflection in mirrors, is the same price or cheaper than the 80GB model, what's the point?

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In more "I sold more units than you" news, Sony has confirmed that it has sold 1.2 million PlayStation 3 consoles in North America alone during the holidays; the company is quick to remind us that every PlayStation 3 sold also equates to a purchased Blu-ray player that helps consolidate Sony's base in the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD format war.

Summarizes Jack Tretton, president and chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, "The PlayStation brand ended the year in a very strong position and clearly indicates more positive momentum going into 2008. The strong PS3 sales also further establish Blu-ray's dominant position as the high-definition medium of choice for games and movies."

Talking numbers, the PlayStation Portable has reached the 1.4 million mark in North America (receiving a nice sales boost over the holidays, no doubt) while the PlayStation 2 clocked in at 1.3 million units; all totaled, that's 3.9 million Sony machines discovered under trees this Christmas.

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I think Amazon is on a roll here this holiday season by price dropping a bunch of their items. Could I say, "hot" items. Last week, the online company dropped Call of Duty 4 to $40 while the MSRP was still standing at $59.99. Now, this week Time Crisis 4 with the Guncon 3 Controller has been dropped to a whopping $49.99 which also has free shipping for the PlayStation 3. The title released on November 20 and carried an MSRP of $89.99.

The numbers haven't been released yet out of Namco whether or not Time Crisis 4 is selling, but I would totally pick this up being so low. Last minute holiday shoppers? I do believe you are one of them!

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The New York Times has caught on to the fact that the Wii has been out for a year now and they're still impossible to get without waiting in a line or bruising your scruples on eBay.

From the article:

The unsated demand is costing Nintendo more than face. Estimates from industry analysts and retailers indicate that the company, which is based in Kyoto, Japan, is giving up $1 billion or more in sales in the ever-important holiday retail season, not including sales of games for those unbuilt consoles.

“It’s staggering,” said James Lin, senior analyst at the MDB Capital Group in Santa Monica, Calif., who estimates that Nintendo is leaving $1.3 billion on the table. “They could easily sell double what they’re selling.”

Well gee, maybe they should make some more....

Howard Stringer, head of Sony worldwide and never missing an opportunity to seem like a jackass, says, "I’m happy that the Wii seems to be running out of hardware" and again points out that the PlayStation 3 has finally started to outsell the Wii.

Now that there are no Wiis.

That's a cool thing to be proud of. The alternative is impossible to get, so your product is outselling it. Awesome. Kudos. Ten points to you.

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Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the year's best games (earning a total of 10 stars on our 5-star scale). Amazon has the game on sale for $40 versus the usual $60 price tag. This applies to the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. I don't know why I should need to say anything else.

If you haven't picked the game up yet, perhaps this sale should be motivation. Hey, there's still time for shipping before Christma...Holiday!

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You people sure love you your Mass Effect. Although analysts predicted the game's November sales to be in the 300,000-range, Microsoft has confirmed that the BioWare action/RPG/time-suck game has sold over a million (with an 'm') copies worldwide in just over three weeks.

For a game that isn't Halo, that's huge.

The blue alien doin'-it scene probably spurred the massive sales figures.

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 According to an analyst quoted in the linked Ars Technica article, as of October of this year, more video games had been sold than in all of 2006. Considering that November and December are the biggest game-buying months of the year, this is huge news.

DVDs, on the other hand, are starting to slow in sales. Chalk it up to market confusion over High Def formats, or the fact that movies lately have been pretty bad, but DVDs have always been the great redeemer for movies that do poorly in theaters ("Eh, I'll wait for the DVD") so I imagine studio execs are pretty worried, in addition to the worrying they're doing over the fact that they have no writers.

For instance, Halo 3 sold more copies than Shrek 3, even though Halo 3 costs at least 3 times as much at $60. That could, of course, have something to do with the multi-million dollar ad campaign behind Halo 3 that spanned nearly all forms of media versus the fact that I didn't even know Shrek 3 was out on DVD yet (nor did I altogether care).

The story isn't lagging DVD sales, though, it's the increased game sales. Market saturation has at least seeped beneath the layer of hardcore gamers and meathead Madden fans. The Xbox's allure and the Wii and DS's casual gaming push may be the cause. Or it could be Peggle. Everybody's playing Peggle.

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Not to be outdone, Nintendo has claimed that it has sold more Nintendo products in the first week of the 2007 holiday shopping season (Sunday, Nov. 18, through Saturday, Nov. 24) "than at any other time in [our] history." Here's the shopping list for North America:

• 653,000 Nintendo DS units (up from 600,000 Game Boy Advance units in 2005)
• 350,000 Wii units (this number would have been higher if certain people could have found the damn thing for less than $500)

Now a word from Nintendo:

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In more 'I could have figured that out on my own' news, reports are coming in that sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 have "more than tripled" last week due to price cuts and the console's availability for the weekend after Thanksgiving.

While actual figures are lacking, retailers are claiming a 245% increase in PS3 units sold for November 18-24. Overall, the PS3's sales figures have "quadrupled" since the price cut and the introduction of the 40GB model. The fact that big games are finally seeing release on the console might also be boosting sales a bit.

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