NPD: January video game sales jump 13 percent

Japan's Nintendo Co. drove the U.S. video game market in January, with industry sales of gaming systems, software and accessories growing 13 percent to $1.33 billion.

According to market researcher NPD Group, Americans bought $445.4 million worth of video game hardware during the month, a 17 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.

The Nintendo Wii was by far the month's best-selling system, with 679,200 units sold, followed by the handheld DS, also by Nintendo, with 510,800.

Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo of America, said this is the 16th consecutive month the Wii has been the best-selling console in the U.S.

Fils-Aime said he expects the game industry to grow this year, but added this won't be "even across the board."

"Nintendo platforms will have accounted for a large majority of the year-over-year growth," he said in an interview.

The $250 console, launched in 2006, transformed the video game landscape by getting millions people who were not experienced gamers to pick up a controller.

The Xbox 360 from Microsoft Corp. sold 309,000 units during the month. The priciest of the three consoles, the PlayStation 3 from Sony Corp., sold 203,200 units.

January software sales climbed 10 percent to $676.6 million. This was above the 5 percent increase that Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian had forecast. He noted that retailer GameStop Corp. recently reported "healthy" sales of gift cards over the holidays, and many of these were likely redeemed in January.

Games from Nintendo grabbed the top three spots for the month. "Wii Fit," perhaps boosted by New Year's resolutions to exercise, was the month's top-selling game with 777,000 units sold. "Left 4 Dead" from Electronic Arts Inc. and "Call of Duty: World at War" from Activision Blizzard Inc., both for the Xbox 360, were also among the top five.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier said the broadening of the game audience "will help buoy the industry through these tough economic times, provided they have enough compelling content to keep them interested."

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Wii Boxing Gloves: Score Virtual Points for Real Violence

Wii Boxing just got a whole lot more realistic. While these Everlast branded gloves are little more than a regular pair of boxing gloves, with the addition of pockets into which you can slide a couple of Wiimotes, they change the game, especially if you go up against a "friend" in two-player mode. Instead of just waving around a couple of plastic sticks, you can now pummel and beat your opponent in meatspace as well as gamespace.

This reminds me of the boxing games I used to play with my brother, back before these new-fangled games consoles existed. We had one pair of gloves. Because they were owned by my brother, he always took the right-hand glove. This left me with a glove on my left hand, but because we are both righties, this meant any blow he landed was softened by his foamy gauntlet, whereas any whack that I managed to connect to his head was made with the full force of my meat and bone fist. He never seemed to learn.

Enough of such pleasant reminiscences. If you want the excuse to pummel your pals in the name of fun, the 3.8 oz synthetic-leather gloves are available now for $30 a pair.

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PSP: Sony's Candy Colored Consoles

These new "carnival colored" PSPs from Sony should come in a selection box -- they look good enough to eat. The rainbow-hued consoles will go on sale in Japan on March 19th for ¥19,800 ($223). Also available will be a kit, featuring a 4GB MemoryStick, a "private porch" (pouch) and a handosutorappu, which we believe to be a hand strap. The kit will go for ¥24,800 ($279).

To celebrate this Japan-only release, let's have some further fun with Google Translate. The PSP-3000 is, apparently, designed "To further reduce image quality". Other essentials include " the guns and diamonds (tentative)" and "the distance investigation - to the truth 23 days". We know that that laughing at machine translations is a low form of humor, but these are great. In fact, we're happy to help "spread more and more the world of entertainment".

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Video-Card Maker Gets Into PC Gaming, Brings Along Concierge

Launching a high-end gaming PC system in the middle of the worst economic period in the last 25 years doesn't seem like a smart move. But the people in charge of video card-maker BFG Technologies are trying to beat the odds by offering an interesting value incentive we hadn't heard of before.

They're offering a personal concierge service for the system. Massage anyone?

It's true (but not the massage). BFG's new Phobos system is set up at your house by an expert technician, and he or she can transfer files, clean out your old rig, and probably even fluff the pillows. The system comes with a full warranty for a year and the concierge visits the baby twice during that time. It also has 24/7 tech support.

As for system itself, it is nice and large but not anything that would blow your mind. It's packed with a 3.2GHz Core i7 965 Extreme Edition processors (X58 chipset), double NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 GPUs, and two slot-loading optical drives, including a Blu-ray. It also has a built-in iPod dock (that's new), firewire and eSATA (duh), four Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB hard drives and CoolIt's Domino system liquid cooling.

As for the gaming intimidation factor, the separate power source LCD panel is probably the one thing about the chassis that's most notable. It runs on Linux and displays all of the relevant system benchmarks.

The Phobos system is available starting on the 19th of this month, at $3000 all the way to the Elite $8000. There's no word on whether the concierge will leave a mint on top of the case.

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