September’s retail sales numbers for the video 
game industry might have stunk up the joint something terrible, but there’s one bright spot to be found.
The NPD Group, for the first time, has released a new spending report that incorporates not only retail sales, but used games, game rentals, subscriptions, digital full game downloads, social network games, downloadable content, and mobile game apps.
[How might the latest industry decline in September’s NPD U.S. 
game retail results affect video game stocks? Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris, a financial journalism veteran, examines the plight of the major public-traded game firms in the wake of the disappointing U.S. retail numbers.]
I’m not a stock market analyst. And I’m not a psychic. So seeing as I’m writing this before the market opens on Friday, I’m obviously venturing out on a limb when I presume that video game stocks are getting hit.
It’s not a bad guess, though. Thursday’s NPD numbers were down yet again – and investors who were hoping for a little good news in what has been a gloomy year are likely to lash out. It’s not hard to see why.
The NPD Group, which is the chief reporting 
agency for video game sales, is making some changes in the way it releases data – changes that will obscure insight into how the industry at large is faring.
Starting this week with the September sales numbers, the organization says it will no longer release any hardware sales information and will cease offering specific sales data for the industry’s top selling titles.
Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog
Given the economy, it’s no secret that this
holiday season is likely going to be a cautious one – but a new survey by the NPD Group shows that entertainment companies might have a rough go of things at retail stores.
NPD has released its annual holiday retail outlook– and while most shoppers say they plan to spend about the same as last year, the general lack of “must-have” products has people less enthusiastic about movies, video games and electronics than they were last year.
Christopher Nolan might have 
the Midas touch when it comes to making movies, but he hasn’t had a lot of luck in the videogame arena. But that’s not dissuading the writer / director / producer, who plans to bring his hit film “Inception” to a console near you.
“We are looking at developing a videogame based on the world of the film, which has all kinds of ideas that you can’t fit into a feature film,” Nolan told reporters at a press conference in Rome, according to a report in Variety. “That’s something we’ve been talking about and are looking at doing long term, in a couple of years.”
[Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris examines the “shaky steps” of the game industry to ensure long-term access and viability for older games, amid controversy over a GOG.com shift.]
Game industry enthusiasts take an odd joy in pointing out that retail sales for this industry now regularly beat the annual Hollywood box office receipts. It’s a fun headline that makes it look like games are winning the culture war – assuming you resist that urge to scratch the surface.
The reality, of course, is that Hollywood smokes games when you compare apples to apples. Movies don’t disappear once their theatrical run ends. There are pay-per-view revenues, DVD and Blu-ray sales (both the original release and the inevitable director’s cut), initial network rights, syndicated network rights and more. Games? Well, they tend to disappear after a brief stay on retail shelves.
A slew of entertainment industry orgs have joined together 
to file a brief with the Supreme Court in support of the vidgame biz’s efforts to overturn California’s ban on the sale or rental of violent vidgames to minors.
The biz’s concern is that the law restricting the sale of vidgames because of their content could have far-reaching First Amendment implications. The issue at stake in the challenge to the law isn’t whether publishers can make violent games, but whether states can impose sales restrictions on those titles — effectively declaring them to be on the same level as pornography and therefore able to legally limit their sale to adults.
When a 2009 holiday price war erupted between
two of the largest online retailers, GameStop found itself caught in the middle.
Amazon and Wal-Mart kicked off last December by slashing prices on 25 of the year’s most popular video games—with the average discount ranging from 15 percent to 20 percent. That caught GameStop by surprise—and ultimately contributed to the company reporting flat earnings for the nine-week period.
While ads in video games may not be popular, they are effective.
A new study by Nielsen finds that targeted advertising can result in a substantial increase in sales – and that could spur companies who have been sitting on the fence to jump into the gaming world.
The study looked at in-game Gatorade ads in six EA Sports titles, including the last two installments of the company’s “NHL” franchise and the 2007, 2008 and 2009 versions of “NBA Live”. People who played those games increased their household dollars spent on the sports drink by 24 percent.
As if the television industry didn’t have enough 
to worry about with video games stealing eyeballs away from its programming, now it might have to worry about advertisers jumping ship as well.
A new study from Nielsen of six EA Sports titles found that in-game ads for Gatorade boosted household dollars spent on the sports drink by 24 percent.
Chris Morris: Journalist 