Reports have come in that the PC version of Funcom's Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (the Xbox 360 version is still in the works) has dethroned Grand Theft Auto 4 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3) from the sales list in both Germany and Sweden. However, both games were not able to stand up to the might of Wii Play in Spain. Care to find out more? Check out the full article.

The Wii goes to the Oscars! Jon Stewart, who is fond of inserting pop culture references in The Daily Show, recently hosted the 2008 Academy Awards. After one of the commercial breaks, the show continued with Stewart playing Wii Sports on the Oscar's big screen. If anyone needed a sign to see how popular the Wii has gotten, this would probably be it. Check out the video in the full article.

Eager to find out which console or title sold the most this holiday season? How about for the entire year of 2007? Wonder no more as we give you the latest batch of stats from NPD that's not only plump, but healthier than the average sales charts. Check out the numbers and why you should care about them in the full article.

simExchange's Jesse Divnich has something interesting to tell: as it turns out, Nintendo's Wii Play may turn out to be the Number One game throughout the console's lifetime. Forget Super Mario Galaxy or even Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Wii Play is going to be THE game. Details in the full article.

Media Create's software sales numbers for the year ending December 2, 2007 show how third party publishers for the Nintendo Wii barely come close to the success of Nintendo titles. Even Square Enix, Capcom, and Konami Digital couldn't touch Ninty's sales.

Find out why at the full article.

Looks like Michael Pachter was right as August's results for console sales report that the Xbox 360 has surged, selling almost 100,000 more units than it did last July, over than what Pachter predicted. The NPD group also reports that the Wii still dominates the charts, and the Nintendo DS is still the more popular handheld.

All in all, the industry is bulking up. Last July console and software sales reached US$ 925.5 million, and this month it rose to US$ 933 million. A bit more and it truly will be a billion dollar industry. It's up 43% from August last year, when the industry was already strong at US$ 669 billion.

PS3 and PSP sales declined this month. PS3 sales slipped about 29,000 units in sales from last month. The PSP slipped more than 50,000 units in sales, but this is most likely in anticipation for the PSP Slim. The Wii and DS also declined a bit this month even though they're still on top.

NPD Analyst Anita Frazier describes Sony's current situation as "concerning, and the window for [Sony] turning the story around is certainly getting narrower." Here's a complete list of hardware sales this month:

• Nintendo Wii - 403,600 (4.0 million)
• Nintendo DS - 383,300 (12.7 million)
• Xbox 360 - 276,700 (6.3 million)
• PlayStation 2 - 202,000 (39.1 million)
• PlayStation Portable - 151,200 (8.3 million)
• PlayStation 3 - 130,600 (1.75 million)

Software sales are up 21% from last year, raising the bar to US$ 2.8 billion. Madden 08 ruled last August as the most popular game on both the Xbox 360 and the PS2, while the PS3 version is on fourth place. Bioshock sits comfortably on third place while Wii Play is on fifth. No DS games on Top 10 for August though.

Looks like July saw a lot of excitement for the video game industry. According to the latest reports from the NPD Group, not only did the Wii sell more than the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 did combined, but total industry sales also shot up a whopping 37% to US$ 925.5 million.

 

Nintendo is far ahead of the group with the Wii and the DS for July. The Wii sold 425,000 consoles for July. Sony's PlayStation 3 also did pretty well, selling 159,000 units, almost catching up to the Xbox 360 which sold 170,000 units. The PlayStation 2 is still going strong, selling 222,000 units. The Nintendo DS sold 405,000 units, twice as much as the PSP which sold 214,000 units. Console sales accounted for US$ 286 million for the video game industry's revenues.

July also saw the rise of NCAA Football 08, the top selling game for that month totalling 789k units sold. The 360 version is the top selling game across all consoles, followed by Guitar Hero Encore Rocks the 80s. In third is Wii Play. All in all, game sales gave the industry US$ 313.2 million in revenues.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier has some interesting insights on the sales results for July. She explains that price cuts certainly played a major part, but it wasn't the only factor. "By far the most significant purchase motivator is the availability of desired content and that will play into hardware sales more than anything else," she said.

Going more into this, Frazier explains how Grand Theft Auto IV plays into sales. GTA IV remains to be one of the most highly anticipated games for the PS3 and 360 and whose release date was unfortunately delayed. Frazier explains:

GTA IV was certainly eagerly awaited by fans, but at the most macro-level for the industry, I don't think its postponement will have that big an impact on total industry dollar sales once everything is tallied for the year. [...] There are other very big games still to come that will really smooth over any hole left from GTA IV moving to 2008. What I really think is that 2008 will benefit from GTA IV because it will be no small task for the industry [in 2008] to measure up to this year's sales.

We guess you are all familiar with software and hardware sales pointing out Nintendo's dominance in Japan as well as some countries in the West with its Wii and DS consoles. This next one still concerns charts actions but is set in a different market: Canada.

Yup, be proud because it looks like Nintendo is indeed taking the whole world by storm and the way things are going, it has no plans of slowing down. Based from the recent data provided to Canadian press members, June belonged to Nintendo as it secured the top three software spots, not to mention 10 titles being included in the top 12.

Mario Party 8 is the most preferred game by our Canadian friends, followed closely by Wii Play. The number three position was occupied by Pokemon Pearl while its twin Pokemon Diamond ended on the fifth spot. On the other hand, the number four position was taken by Xbox 360 racing game Forza Motorsport 2.

The highest entry to the June chart was Capcom's Resident Evil 4 at number seven, which is not actually a surprise given the game's success lately. If you want to go further into the charts, two more Nintendo games made it to the top 20 bringing the total to 12.

The remaining eight spots were shared by Xbox 360 with three titles, four PlayStation 2 games, and just one for the PlayStation 3.

 

The NPD group recently gathered independent sales data for April and are now revealing that the two best selling titles were Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl. Both Nintendo DS games were expected to be big considering the huge pre-orders that both games received, so no surprise there. Still, the magnitude of the success the figures revealed were mind-boggling, even for its creators.

The combined sales of both games surpassed the 1.75 million mark in the 14 days that the report was being compiled. What should interest most though is the fact that Super Paper Mario and Wii Play both hit the third and fourth slot in the chart. Thus securing all four positions for the company. President and COO of Nintendo of America Reggie Fil-Aims couldn't be happier with the results in saying:

Nothing is more valuable in the entertainment world than an evergreen franchise. These new Pokemon titles have cemented their place alongside the most enduring intellectual properties of the book, music and movie industries. And that appeal will expand even further with the introduction of Pokemon Battle Revolution to our Wii home console next month.

Speaking of the Wii, the NPD group has determined that it has outsold every other console by at least double the number of units. The said projected sales reached up to 360,000 Wii units sold despite the shortage. As the current trend, the Nintendo DS is still the most popular system in their review selling over 470,000 units during the time-span. Well, Nintendo's on a roll and it seems that they're not planning on stopping yet.

 

Last March, Capcom's Monster Hunter Freedom 2 sold 348,000 copies according to Enterbrain's Famitsu Marketing Service. The said sales for the month sets the number of copies sold to 1,095,000 thus bumping up Monster Hunter Freedom 2 to platinum status. Hitting platinum is a feat in itself, but what makes it even more amazing is the fact that this is the very first PSP game to gain that distinction in Japan.

It's also interesting to note that the game's sales for the month are responsible for 85% of total sales for game publisher Capcom.

In other news, Wii Play has also surpassed the 1,000,000 mark, making it the second game for the Wii to reach the coveted platinum distinction. The first? Wii Sports. Nintendo got the lion's share of the market in march. The entire Japanese console market received a 61.7% bump but software sales dropped by 29.8%. Still, that didn't stop two games from hitting platinum that month.