Jul 2010 NPD wrap up

I've been busy all month so I'm a little slow to get to the July results that NPD publicly released, but here it goes anyway:

And the other data released for July (vs. July 2009) includes:

• Total industry sales fell 1% to $846.5 million
• Software sales fell 8% to $403.3 million
• Hardware sales rose 12% to $313.8 million
• July YTD sales fell 8% to $7.51 billion

July 2010 hardware unit sales (compared to June 2010):

• DS sold 398.4k vs. 510.7k
• Wii sold 253.9k vs. 422.5k
• PS3 sold 214.5k vs. 304.8k
• 360 sold 443.5k vs. 451.7k
• PSP sold 84k vs. 121k

Picking up from last month, let's look at an updated chart of 2010 vs. 2009 monthly hardware sales for current console platforms:

It's the same basic story, except that the 360 not only passed the Wii in monthly sales but it also passed the DS. The 360 did pass the Wii back in Feb of this year, but never by this much of a margin. Looking at 2010 sales another way, we see a better picture of the monthly sales this year:

That's all I have for this month on looking at the public NPD data as I am coming down with a nasty sore throat and really need to get some rest...more to come soon.

Double Rainbow, all the way

This past weekend I went up to Lake Arrowhead for the weekend with a bunch of friends just to get away and hang out...see some shooting stars at night, cook some good food...and yes play a lot of video games. Between rounds of Rock Band on one TV, episodes of South Park on another TV, the pool table and the incredibly awesome fooz table, I kept hearing my buddies make laughing references "double rainbow all the way" or something. Or it was "TRIPLE rainbow!" I had no idea what they were talking about until they showed me this video on youtube which they had all discovered well over a month before:

At the time, I laughed so hard I almost had a panic attack. Maybe it was the nice keg of Newcastle Ale we had tapped into, but damn that was hilarious.

This doesn't really have anything to do with video games, but over the course of the weekend while playing Rock Band, fooz, poker or just cooking and hanging out sure enough someone make a joking reference to the video.

I haven't found any references in a game yet, but somehow I'm expecting it to happen over the course of the next year.