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We are reshifting our focus back to GLS Stocks. Part of the goal of the simExchange is to provide useful data for the industry. What we have learned is that prediction data is really only useful to developers before the game comes out. Currently, our trading is focused to near release and after the game comes out. From now on, we will only be listing games that are coming out at least 4 months away. We will be more aggressive to delist games so that traders don't focus capital on predicting games that have already been out for a long time.

Most GLS Stocks will also have an accompanying Metacritic Future.

The following are upcoming GLS Stock IPOs. Remember, each stock enters a 48-hour IPO Phase 1 in which there is no market maker providing prices. 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.

If you want a game listed for trading, be sure to bid for it in the Unlisted Games section.

• GLS Stock IPOs

  IPO Phase 1	IPO Phase 2	Title	Platform	Company	Submitter
  4/5	4/7	Ninja Gaiden 2	Xbox 360	MSFT	Makidian
  4/6	4/8	Rock Band Wii	Wii	ERTS	Bungalow_Bob
  4/7	4/9	Civilization Revolutions	PS3	TTWO	kspraydad
  4/7	4/9	Civilization Revolutions	Xbox 360	TTWO	Butterball
  4/8	4/10	Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Sealed Hole (DS)	DS	Square Enix	sayheykid999
  4/9	4/11	Lego Indiana Jones	Xbox 360	Lucas Arts	Jess__
  4/9	4/11	Lego Indiana Jones	Wii	Lucas Arts	Laoldar
  4/9	4/11	Lego Indiana Jones	PS3	Lucas Arts	TouchH2
  4/10	4/12	Soul Calibur Legends	Wii	Namco Bandai	Lapperscrapper
  4/10	4/12	Soul Calibur IV	PS3	Namco Bandai	sagexsdx
  4/11	4/13	Madden NFL 09	Xbox 360	ERTS	Just_Ben
  4/11	4/13	Madden NFL 09	PS3	ERTS	Just_Ben
  4/11	4/13	Madden NFL 09	Wii	ERTS	Just_Ben
  4/12	4/14	EndWar	PS3	Ubisoft	Joe80
  4/13	4/15	Tiberium	Xbox 360	ERTS	feelmyring
  4/14	4/16	God of War III	PS3	SNE	Omega

Congratulations to felipedmoreira for placing first in the month of March 2008 with a 189.69% return. In second place was Rol83 with a close 183.15% return, followed by tyrile with a 170.99% return. grimlock49 was number four with a 99.23% return and gray_160 closed out the top five again with a 88.09% gain.

Check out the complete March rankings.

On the Community League competitions, NeoGAF lead the crowd again with a 13.54% gain, followed by Cheap Ass Gamer with a 12.05% return, and then Evil Avatar with a 10.64% return. In terms of net worth, Cheap Ass Gamer accrued the most by a wide margin, with 434 million DKP, followed by NeoGAF with 353 million DKP and Evil Avatar with 145 million DKP.

Video game hardware sales in February were largely in line with the market's expectations. Total hardware units came in at 1.799 million units, 12.29% above the market's expected 1.602 million units. The slight surprise in total hardware sales were largely due to surprising strong sales of the Nintendo DS at 587,600 units sold compared to the expected 427,300 units.

For the second time in the United States, the PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 with 280,800 units and 254,600 units respectively. The PS3 was expected to sell 269,900, outperforming expectations by just 4.11% while the Xbox 360 was expected to sell 249,200 units, underperforming expectations by only 2.33%.

The Nintendo Wii sold 432,000 units, 7.81% ahead of the expected 400,700 units. Sony PSP sales came in at 243,100 units, just 4.71% below the expected 255,000 units.

Growth in video game sales were well ahead of expectations for February. Total video game software sales grew 47% from $453.7 million in February 2007 to $668.7 million. The simExchange prediction market expected $592 million.

The month's big winner was once again Activision's Call of Duty 4. The Xbox 360 SKU sold another 296,200 units.

Sales of Devil May Cry 4 (Xbox 360) and Devil May Cry 4 (PS3) underperformed expectations, with just 295,200 units and 233,500 units sold respectively. The simExchange prediction market had expected 438,400 units for the Xbox 360 SKU and 272,600 units for the PS3 SKU.

New titles Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360), Turok (Xbox 360), Frontlines: Fuel of War (Xbox 360), Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village (DS) all sold in line with the prediction market's expectations.

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

• US Hardware in February 2008

  Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  Nintendo DS	587,600	427,300	+37.75%
  Nintendo Wii	432,000	400,700	+7.81%
  PlayStation 2	351,800	--	--
  PLAYSTATION 3	280,800	269,900	+4.04%
  Xbox 360	254,600	249,200	+2.17%
  PlayStation Portable	243,100	255,000	-4.67%
  Total Hardware Units	1,799,000	1,602,100	+12.29%

• US Software in February 2008

  Rank	Title	Actual units	Expected units	% From Expected
  1	Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360)	296,200	--	--
  2	Devil May Cry 4 (Xbox 360)	295,200	438,400	-32.66%
  3	Wii Play (Wii)	289,700	--	--
  4	Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)	233,500	272,600	-14.34%
  5	Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii)	222,900	--	--
  6	Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS)	205,600	--	--
  7	Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360)	203,600	179,400	+13.49%
  8	Turok (Xbox 360)	197,700	171,400	+15.34%
  9	Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS2)	183,800	--	--
  10	Rock Band (Xbox 360)	161,800	--	--
  NR	Frontlines: Fuel of War (Xbox 360)	99,900	87,400	+14.30%
  NR	Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village (DS)	91,000	107,000	-14.95%
  NR	Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (DS)	50,300	60,900	-17.41%
  NR	No More Heroes (Wii)	37,000	63,800	-42.01%
  NR	Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors (Wii)	15,000	67,200	-77.68%
  NR	WipEout Pulse (PSP)	10,000	30,700	-67.43%
  	Total Tracked Software Units	1,233,200	1,478,800	-16.61%
  	Total Software Sales	$668.7 million	$592.9 million	+12.96%

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).

Due to the earlier than expected release of Mario Kart (Wii), an April Future for the game is replacing the April NPD Future for "Battle of the Bands (Wii). The new future will IPO on Saturday March 15.

Please understand I am not saying futures are a bad investment at all. I also have money in the futures. I am not attacking the players who choose to stick to them, I can understand why. Futures cash out. Right or wrong on a predetermined date you will likely get at least part of your investment back no matter how large a position you take. It's not as easy to get trapped and even if you make a big mistake you know you will eventually have a way out on expiration day. Futures can be one-decision investments, you only have to decide to buy or sell once, and you never really have to think about it again if you don't want to.

This was a game that I played a lot too and one that I largely had for myself for a time until you also started investing heavily in futures. These past couple of months I should have pushed harder into the futures but I was used to being able to let the futures run for a while and get better prices. I guess I got complacent resting on my laurels. I should have realized more quickly that the market was changing again. More and more cash was going into the futures market and I didn't react fast enough. Just_Ben, you've done such a good job touting your success that I believe many other players are also making a similar move into the futures market. I knew I never should have been nice on that whole Manhunt thing, I let loose a monster =).

My word of caution is just a commentary on how the market can change quickly. Fantastic returns on investment will diminish over time as more and more people try to play the same game. There was also a time when I used to have the GLS short market largely to myself and I made large outsized gains there for a while because everyone was still concentrating on the long side. I made good money fast by shorting the right stocks and I quickly used the extra cash gained from a successful short by leveraging it into even more short positions, each time pushing the limits of margin.

However, others soon started to notice what was happening. People began to realize that there was a lot of money to be made by going short and a lot of people started to play the same game. Over time the GLS short market began to get crowded and money wasn't as easy to make anymore. A couple other things like an improved IPO process and a much smaller bid/ask allotment also began to make shorting GLS stocks less profitable and more difficult.

Now everything has turned around completely. Another big reason why shorting GLS stock is more difficult is because anytime a stock falls to a 'fair value' there are now a lot of people buying trying to cover their short positions. Everyone wants their money back or needs it because of margin and now it takes longer and longer for prices to fall. Eventually many people just get so frustrated and they just want out so they also cover even though they may believe a stock is still overvalued which further pushes up the price exacerbating the situation.

It's similar the old prisoner's dilemma game, if all the shorts could just somehow cooperate and not cover it would be a lot better for everyone. The stock would fall farther or would be delisted faster due to inactivity. However each individual is only looking out for their own self interest and cannot trust so many other individuals to also not cover. Rationally, covering their short position appears to be best option to most individuals even at inflated prices. Nobody wants to be the last person holding the bag.

This type of situation is somewhat less likely to happen in the futures market because they cash out regularly, which is why a lot of money is moving over there. However, a different situation may occur where prices in the futures market will rise or fall extremely quickly to a perceived fair value, and your return on investment may get very very slim. Each futures contract then becomes a lot more gamble than investment. This seems to have already happened to a a lot of futures since they are now far more difficult to play than in the past and the prices appear reach a fair price much faster.

Due to the delay of Okami (Wii), the March NPD Future has been canceled and rolled back. We will instead IPO a March NPD Future for Army of Two (PS3) tomorrow to provide a comparison with the Xbox 360 version of the game.

Congratulations to llonesmiz for placing first in the month of February 2008 with a monster 340.63% return. In second place was Refreshment with a 221.72% return, followed by deftangel with a close 218.54% return. Itachiltachi was number four again with a 185.78% return and gray_160 closed out the top five with a 164.34% gain.

Check out the complete February rankings.

On the Community League competitions, NeoGAF lead the crowd again with a 14.27% gain, followed by Cheap Ass Gamer with a 12.16% return, and then Evil Avatar with a 8.27% return. In terms of net worth, Cheap Ass Gamer accrued the most by a wide margin, with 376 million DKP, followed by NeoGAF with 290 million DKP and Evil Avatar with 129 million DKP. This is the first month the community leagues were accounted with the new rules.

We will be launching IPOs for April 2008 NPD Futures on Wednesday.

NPD Futures 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.

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (DS) was submitted by ddiinn. Battle of the Bands (Wii) was submitted by Dizinger and gray_160.

• April NPD Futures

  IPO Phase 1	IPO Phase 2	Title	Platform	Company	Release Date
  3/5	3/7	Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Vegas 2	Xbox 360	UBI	3/11
  3/6	3/8	Super Smash Bros Brawl	Wii	NTDOY	3/9
  3/7	3/9	Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword	DS	Tecmo	3/25
  3/8	3/10	God of War: Chains of Olympus	PSP	SNE	3/4
  3/9	3/11	The World Ends With You	DS	Square Enix	4/22
  3/10	3/12	Supreme Commander	Xbox 360	Aspyr	4/8
  3/11	3/13	Gran Turismo Prologue	PS3	SNE	4/17
  3/12	3/14	Battle of the Bands	Wii	THQ	4/21
  3/13	3/15	Grand Theft Auto 4	Xbox 360	TTWO	4/29
  3/14	3/16	Grand Theft Auto 4	PS3	TTWO	4/29

The simExchange is continuing its consolidation of stocks listed for trading. 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.

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, please make a case and post in this forum by 11PM on Saturday March 1:

Madden NFL 08 (Wii)
Mercury Meltdown Revolution (Wii)
Skate (PS3)
Skate (Xbox 360)
Stranglehold (Xbox 360)
Stranglehold (PS3)
Super Paper Mario (Wii)
TimeShift (PS3)
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2008 (Wii)
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2008 (PS3)
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2008 (Xbox 360)
Virtua Fighter 5 (Xbox 360)