Despite a 7.6% decline versus last November, the industry still saw its second best November month ever, only second to November 2008, and boasting a 7% increase over 2007.

After playing second fiddle to Sony’s PlayStation 3 over the past couple months, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 rebounded nicely for November, despite many analysts predicting otherwise. Microsoft’s console moved over 100K more units on the month than PlayStation 3. “We had an amazing month. It was our biggest November ever for our business,” said Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg. “Not only did we outsell the PS3, but we actually drove more revenue at retail than our competitors.” As expected, though, Nintendo’s hardware outsold everyone, with combined Wii and DS sales reaching close to three million units.

Here’s the hardware breakdown for the month:

Wii – 1.26M
Xbox 360 – 819.5K
PlayStation 3 – 710.4K
PlayStation 2 – 203.1K
Nintendo DS – 1.70M
PSP – 293.9K

NPD Analyst Anita Frazier is expecting the positive momentum to continue into December.

“Based on seasonality the industry looks like it will reach $20B for the year, which means December would have to be up over last year by 11%. Impossible? I don’t think so. More positive economic news combined with ‘frugal fatigue’ could positively impact industry sales during these last weeks of the holiday season. Breaking even seems more out of reach. In order to break even to last year, December sales would have to be up 36% over December 2008.”

Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 lead all software sales by a large margin, with sales totaling over 6 million units.

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has achieved the top spot for first-month sales of any game at the title level,” said Frazier. “Halo 3 previously held the spot when it sold 3.3 million units in September ‘07 in 12 days at retail. MW2 bested Halo 3’s daily sales rate by 16% in its 19 days at retail in November.”

Here’s the top 10 software sales breakdown for the month, by units sold:

1.Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: 4.20M – Xbox 360
2.Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: 1.87M – PlayStation 3
3.New Super Mario Bros. Wii: 1.39M – Wii
4.Assassin’s Creed II: 794.7K – 360
5.Left 4 Dead 2: 744.0K – 360
6.Wii Sports Resort: 720.2K – Wii
7.Wii Fit Plus: 679.0K – Wii
8.Assassin’s Creed II: 448.4K – PS3
9.Dragon Age: Origins: 362.1K – 360
10. Mario Kart w/ Wheel: 315.0K – Wii

“While this year’s top-selling item bested last year’s by 283%, it couldn’t make up for softness elsewhere. The top 50 games this year sold 5% less units than did the top 50 last year,” Frazier added.

What do you get when you combine Dell’s recently acquired Alienware and Google’s android operating system ? Mobile phones that look more futuristic than the movie 2012 !

Alienware cellphone

Well that’s what the new Alienware mobile phone intends to prove with their new phones, which are due to roll out early next summer. This is a big step for Alienware, a company very popular among computer enthusiasts and gamers for their high performance and sleek, killer-look computers.

Some of the features include

Classic Alienware eye catching design

Large screen with high resolution

Superb video gaming capability

Fantastic Audio

Built on the Google Android platform

• Classic Alienware eye catching design
• Large screen with high resolution
• Superb video gaming capability
• Fantastic Audio
• Built on the Google Android platform

Finally something that can give the iphone a run for its money !

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 might have been designed by a capable team of Infinity Ward developers, but the company had some help: Twitter followers. Infinity Ward Community Manager Robert Bowling told Develop Online in a recent interview that during the development of the highly-anticipated release, the developer called on Twitter users for help.

“During development, if we are sitting in a design meeting and we are arguing about something, no matter what it is, I can just turn to what is now 60,000 people and post the same question,” Bowling told game developer news site Develop Online. “‘Do we think players will like this?’ well why don’t we ask 60,000 of them and get a good representation of what we think they may like?” But it was the next statement that might cause gamers participating in social networking to rejoice. Bowling told site that Twitter was “fantastic throughout development” and he “would recommend many, many more people adapted that into their design schedule.” Bowling also said that Infinity Ward didn’t ignore any responses to its design questions. He said that developers “listened to all” of the suggestions, but filtered out those that didn’t match the company’s “design philosophy.” Suggestions that asked for more gore, for example, ran against the company’s design philosophy, Bowling said.

Regardless of whether or not Infinity Ward incorporated every idea into Modern Warfare 2, Bowling told the publication that now more than ever, gamers are getting closer to the development process. “The average gamer is so much closer to the people who make the games than they ever were before,” he told the publication. “And as a result of that they are so much more developer-aware. No longer is it an Activision game, but an Infinity Ward game, or a Treyarch game or a Bungie game. And gamers know where to go to offer their feedback.” Oh, how things have changed. When I was younger, I sent several snail-mail letters to developers asking for design tweaks in some of my favorite franchises. I never heard back. And it seemed that my plea had fallen on deaf ears.

Today, things are different. The developers of one of the most highly anticipated games to be released in 2009 were listening to gamer suggestions on a social network? Amazing. Let’s hope for more of it.

We had learnt about a new addition to Microsoft Xbox ecosystem – An integration of Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm on Xbox’s gaming platform. It looks to me like a desperate attempt by Microsoft to expand its boundaries beyond the gaming world.

Facebook integration with Xbox was a smart move by the Microsoft techies. This integration may even improve the user interface for photo albums on Facebook. If you are a Facebook user and if you have used some of their third party applications, you might have seen an option where some of these applications offer an option where take a screenshot. The same feature might be available with the Xbox version as well. The Xbox version gives you an option to automatically take pictures and videos of games while you are playing. There is also an option where you can see if your friends have an Xbox live account. This can be a very handy feature because most of us are connected with people with whom we might not be in touch with. With this feature, you will know if these friends have an Xbox account and if they do, you can connect with them. I have also heard of a feature which will automatically update your status on Facebook. For example – you are playing Halo. In this case, Facebook will automatically update your status to “XYZ is playing Halo”. This feature was available on a prototype however, I cannot confirm if this will be available on the release version.

The Twitter’s baptism into Xbox is more to do with updating the people you are following and for related searches. The options with Twitter remains limited and I will leave it to your imagination to figure out the options they can possibly implement. Last.fm integration helps you listen your favorite tracks, stations, view song details and artist details along with all the other features Last.fm offers. The option that was scratched out was the option to play Last.fm in the background. I am not sure as to what prompted them to do something like this. Again, this option was seen and pointed out on a beta version. I am not sure if a correction will be made on the release version. Well, we will have to wait and see and as far as I know, the wait is only for a couple of months. Please let me know your thoughts on this new
dimensional alignment of Gaming world with Social Networking.