Video game hardware sales in December 2008 were inline with the market expectations. Total hardware units (excluding PS2) sold were 8,376,000 compared to the market's expectation for 8,812,000 units sold.

Nintendo Wii was the only console to sell below the market expcations, selling 2,150,000 units compared to an expected 3,030,000 units.

The Xbox 360 sold double that of the PS3 with 1,440,000 units sold against the PS3's 726,000 units. Both platforms were in line with the markets expectations.

The Nintendo DS sold 3,040,800 units compared to the expected 2,670,000 units. The Sony PSP sold 1,020,000 units, compared to the expected 935,900 units.

Growth in video game sales were ahead of expectations for December. Total video game software sales grew 15% from $2.39 billion in December 2007 to $2.75 billion. Traders on the simExchange prediction market expected $2.5 billion.

Most hardware and software sales were within 10% of the simExchange prediction market's expectations. The market also tracked the sales of Prince of Persia (Xbox 360), which did not make the top 10.

The following tables compare market expectations on the simExchange and actual results as reported by the NPD Group.

• US Hardware in December 2008

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo DS	3,040,000	2,670,000	+13.86%
  Nintendo Wii	2,150,000	3,030,000	-29.04%
  Xbox 360	1,440,000	1,420,000	+1.41%
  PlayStation Portable	1,020,000	935,000	+9.09%
  PLAYSTATION 3	726,000	757,000	-4.10%
  PlayStation 2	410,000	--	--
  Total Hardware Units	8,376,000	8,812,000	-4.95%

• US Software in December 2008

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	Wii Play (Wii)	1,460,000	1,350,000	+8.11%
  2	Call of Duty: World At War (Xbox 360)	1,330,000	799,000	+4.15%
  3	Wii Fit (Wii)	999,000	--	--
  4	Mario Kart (Wii)	979,000	--	--
  5	Guitar Hero World Tour (Wii)	850,000	716,000	+18.73%
  6	Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360)	745,000	799,000	-6.79%
  7	Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360)	629,000	--	--
  8	Mario Kart DS (DS)	540,000	--	--
  9	Call of Duty: World At War (PS3)	533,000	--	--
  10	Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii)	497,000	--	--
  	Total Software Sales	$2,750.0M	$2,492.5M	+10.33%
  	Total Tracked Software Units	4,385,000	4,142,700	+5.85%

How exactly does this work?

Gamers and developers sign up on the simExchange for a free trading account. Using virtual currency called DKP, players buy virtual futures contracts that are under-predicting sales and short sell futures that are over-predicting sales. This concept is widely known as "the Wisdom of the Crowd" and this system is known as a "prediction market."

About the predictions

Predictions on the simExchange should become more accurate over time as (1) the diversity of the pool of traders increases and as (2) more accurate players are rewarded with more virtual currency for their accuracy (thereby enabling them to form more predictions) and less accurate players lose virtual currency (thereby discounting their ability to form more predictions).

Metacritic Futures for some highly anticipated games will kickstart IPOs for the New Year. The IPOs will be the first test of the new IPO process.

You will be able to buy or short sell the Futures at a fixed price for 48 hours. This allows all players equal access to the future's IPO regardless of the time they log on. After 48 hours, the futures will trade as normal. All players, regardless of Basic or Advanced trading mode, will be able to participate in the IPO. All players are limited to 250,000 DKP positions in the IPO phase. We will review the IPOs on a day-by-day basis and may tweak the process as necessary.

• Metacritic Futures

  IPO Start Day	Title	Platform	Company	Release Date
  1/19	Halo Wars	Xbox 360	MSFT	3/3
  1/20	Alan Wake	Xbox 360	MSFT	TBA
  1/21	Resident Evil 5	PS3	Capcom	3/13
  1/22	Killzone 2	PS3	Sony	2/27
  1/23	Rogue Warrior	Xbox 360	Bethesda	TBA

Congratulations to OuterHaven for placing first in the month of December 2008 with a 40.90% return. This is the third month in a row OuterHaven has topped the monthly charts!

• December 2008 Top 5 Traders

  Rank	Name	% Change
  1	OuterHaven	+40.90%
  2	Simple	+39.63%
  3	dryden	+30.39%
  4	tylersarber96	+30.15%
  5	winopat	+28.37%

Check out the complete December rankings.

• December 2008 Community Rankings

  Rank	Community Name	% Change
  1	NeoGAF	+3.98%
  2	Cheap Ass Gamer	+0.38%
  3	Evil Avatar	-2.00%

We've slightly redesigned the basic trading mode to be more intuitive for players new to trading. Placing a trade should not be difficult to do, so we want to make this as understandable as possible.

The Order Book displays the number of shares you can buy or sell at a certain price. In the basic trading mode, you will only see the best offers to buy or sell. You do not have to buy the whole lot that is being offered. Rather, you can buy UP TO the number of shares offered at that price. Additionally, these are the number of shares that are being offered, and not the number of shares you can afford.

You can also enter a number larger than what is being offered. The remainder of your order will be filled at the best available prices (which are not currently displayed).

To place a trade, enter the number of shares you want to trade in the form. Then click either the Buy or Sell button to place your trade.

Remember, you can sell shares even if you do not currently own any shares. This is called Short Selling. The reason to short sell is if you believe the current price is too high. To close your short sell position, simply buy back the shares later. Sell high, Buy low.

We have revamped the IPO process for GLS stocks and Futures. The reason we have done this is because the two-phase IPO process was not performing as we had hoped. The original purpose of the two-phase IPO process was to use the market to better determine a fixed-IPO price in which every trader has a chance to trade.

The new IPO process only involves one phase. In this IPO phase, the prices are fixed for 48 hours so that every trader has a chance to buy or short sell at the same price when the game is listed.

The IPO cap has been adjusted to 250,000 DKP from 200,000 DKP. Both traders using the Basic Trading Mode and Advanced Trading Mode can participate in the new IPO process.

After 48 hours, the starting bid and asks by the market maker will be set based on the supply and demand during the IPO process. We will be testing this process with new IPOs next week. Please report any bugs you encounter using this new system. Certain changes have also been made to the trading system so please report any bugs you may encounter.

To make discussions easier to follow, we have made a change to the forum system.

Clicking on a game title on the thread view page will now only bring up those comments directly related to the game, and not those comments posted for articles on the game. This should make the game thread easier to follow.

The same change has been made to company links on the thread view page. Clicking on the company name will take you to the main thread of comments on the company or company's stock, rather than including comments for articles on the company.

Clicking on the "Industry News" headings will now take you to the Industry News page rather than a page aggregating comments related to Industry News articles.

Choosing a company's channel in the Community section sidebar will now take you to the company's discussion thread, rather than the company page itself. Choosing a company's channel in the Game News section sidebar will now take you to a page showing the company's articles, rather than the company page itself.

We are working on a new feature to allow users to create their own threads to better organize specific topics. Stay tuned.

The following stocks are candidates for delisting. These stocks were chosen for delisting due to inactivity in the stock and/or lack of discussion for an extended period of time. Delisting stocks is necessary to unlock DKP for trading and concentrate DKP in the stocks people are trading.

All shares will cash out at the last traded price. This price is determined as the fair value as the market has not viewed the price as undervalued or overvalued for some time. These stocks will no longer appear when browsing the genres and platforms pages. You will still be able to view the stocks' pages by searching for the games.

If you feel any of the following should not be delisted due to an upcoming event (such as the game has not yet been released in all regions), please make a case and post in this forum by 11AM on Tuesday, January 13. A stock price that you are not happy with is not grounds for continued listing.

GLS Stocks pending delisting:
Alone in the Dark (Xbox 360)
Army of Two (Xbox 360)
Burnout Paradise (PS3)
Burnout Paradise (Xbox 360)
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3)
Dark Sector (Xbox 360)
Dark Sector (PS3)
Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)
Devil May Cry 4 (Xbox 360)
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (DS)
Frontlines: Fuel of War (Xbox 360)
Geometry Wars: Galaxies (Wii)
Golden Axe: Beast Rider (Xbox 360)
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii)
Haze (PS3)
Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds (PS3)
Kane and Lynch: Dead Men (Xbox 360)
Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom (Xbox 360)
Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360)
Mario Party 8 (Wii)
Mario Party DS (DS)
Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
Need For Speed ProStreet (Xbox 360)
Need For Speed ProStreet (PS3)
Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword (DS)
Okami (Wii)
Pirates of the Burning Sea (PC)
Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (Wii)
Supreme Commander (Xbox 360)
The Club (Xbox 360)
The Club (PS3)
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS)
The World Ends With You (DS)
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty (Xbox 360)
Unreal Tournament 3 (PS3)
Unreal Tournament 3 (Xbox 360)

January Monthly Sales Futures for software are making their debut this week. Remember, there are new rules regarding Monthly Software Futures. If a game does not finish in NPD Group's Top 10, the game will cash out at the sales of the #10 title.

Monthly Sales Futures will debut in two-phase IPOs. IPO Phase 1 is a 48 hour period of trading without automated market making to determine the IPO Phase 2 price. Advanced trading mode is required to place orders in IPO Phase 1. After IPO Phase 1, the futures contracts will enter IPO Phase 2 in which the bid and ask prices will be fixed all day.

• January Monthly Sales Futures

  IPO Phase 1	IPO Phase 2	Title	Platform	Company
  12/22	12/24	Wii Play	Wii	Nintendo
  12/23	12/25	Wii Fit	Wii	Nintendo
  12/24	12/26	Call of Duty: World at War	Xbox 360	EA
  12/25	12/27	Guitar Hero: World Tour	Wii	ATVI
  12/26	12/28	Gears of War 2	Xbox 360	MSFT

Monthly console futures for the months of January 2009 and February 2009 will IPO this week. Home consoles will debut together, with January home consoles beginning IPO Phase 1 on December 15 and February home consoles beginning IPO Phase 1 on December 17. Portables will begin on December 16 for January and December 18 for February. Total Software Sales for those months will begin IPO Phase 1 with the portables for their respective month.

• US Hardware in November 2008

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo Wii	2,040,000	1,560,100	+30.76%
  Nintendo DS	1,570,000	1,539,700	+1.97%
  Xbox 360	836,000	859,200	-2.70%
  PlayStation Portable	421,000	519,100	-18.90%
  PLAYSTATION 3	378,000	399,400	-5.36%
  Total Hardware Units	5,255,000	4,877,500	+7.74%

• US Software in November 2008

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	Gears of War 2(Xbox 360)	1,560,000	1,980,600	-21.24%
  2	Call of Duty: World At War (Xbox 360)	1,410,000	1,546,600	-8.83%
  3	Wii Play (Wii)	796,000	589,300	+35.08%
  4	Wii Fit (Wii)	697,000	--	--
  5	Mario Kart (Wii)	637,000	--	--
  6	Call of Duty: World At War (PS3)	597,000	662,100	-9.83%
  7	Guitar Hero World Tour (Wii)	475,000	--	--
  8	Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360)	410,00	--	--
  9	Resistance 2 (PS3)	385,000	419,400	-8.2%
  10	Wii Music (Wii)	297,000	--	--
  	Total Tracked Software Units	4,748,000	5,198,000	-8.66%
  	Total Software Sales	$696.79M	$694.90M	+0.27%