Bob Caswell

The research company NPD Group released data for U.S. sales of gaming consoles: 335,000 Wiis, 228,000 Xbox 360s, and 127,000 PlayStation 3s. The Wii continues to outsell all other consoles in the short term but has a ways to go to catch up to Microsoft in terms of total sales. Latest cumulative figures for U.S. sales for the big three: 5.1 million Xbox 360s, 1.9 million Nintendo Wiis, and 1.1 million PlayStation 3s.

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Let’s face it; we all reuse the same password for login accounts all over the Internet. At best, some of us create a few passwords through which we rotate. So why is it that some companies still insist on sending me my password via email right after I create my online account? The reason I have a password in the first place is so that it doesn’t flow back and forth openly in cyberspace only to reside peacefully on multiple mail servers.

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As of yesterday, Microsoft and Lenovo Group have an agreement that Lenovo computers will come pre-loaded with a toolbar powered by Microsoft’s Windows Live. Lenovo is the world’s third largest PC maker and is the first computer manufacturer to formalize an arrangement with Windows Live. Windows Live is also third in its sphere, ranked behind Google and Yahoo in terms of market share.

Which company did Lenovo use prior to Microsoft for default search and toolbar installation? Google.

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A top engineering school in India, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai, has pulled the plug on Internet usage between 11 p.m. and 12:30 p.m. at its 13 hostels, claiming that “addiction to surfing, gaming and blogging was affecting students’ performance, making them reclusive and even suicidal.”

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is set to become the first U.S. university to make all of its courses free on the Internet (in this case, around 1,800 courses). The head of online curriculum, Anne Margulies, says the following, “We started this project because MIT believes that one of the best ways to advance education around the world is through the Internet.”

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CompUSA recently announced that it will be closing more than half of its 225 stores (see the list of closings here). The computer store chain is giving the following reason, “Based on changing conditions in the consumer retail electronics markets, the company identified the need to close and sell stores with low performance or nonstrategic, old store layouts and locations faced with market saturation.”

Translation: CompUSA hasn’t been competitive for some time, and the problem has caught up with the retailer. There are only so many computer beginners willing to pay $20 for a printer cable available for less than half that price at many locations both on and offline.

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According to Juniper Research, the cellphone gaming market will increase from about $3 billion today to over $17 billion by 2011. Just this year alone, more than one billion cellphones are expected to sell. While traditional gamers are mostly kids or men in their 20s (though women gamers and older gamers are on the rise), cellphone games have a high likelihood of being played by anyone who has a cellphone. The kid or twenty-something stereotype need not apply.

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Electronic Arts has a new page on its site specifically designed for buying music that has been featured in its games. The music is being sold through iTunes but is more easily found on EA’s site (called EA Trax), which just links you to iTunes when you’re ready to make a purchase. The EA site also offers much of the same music available as ringtones for your cellphone. The buzz surrounding this move is that video games are playing a much larger role in promoting new music, as the game industry is booming while the music industry is stalling.

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