Gamasutra has published its monthly article on NPD sales data forecasts, which includes data forecasted by the players of the simExchange prediction market. The article discusses forecasts by Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter and the forecasts you helped predict.

We will be rolling out an updated trading engine tonight. Loading the order book should now be more responsive and trades should fill faster if there are matches. The share limit has been changed from 25,000 shares to 250,000 DKP transaction size. This should prevent large transaction errors that had occurred in high priced stocks recently. Additionally, the automated market maker will withdraw from trading if a stock moves more than 10% in one day. This will allow players to more quickly move a stock price to true value.

Project H.A.M.M.E.R. (Wii) was suspended from trading last week after heavy trading volume due to cancellation vs delay specualtion. The heavy trading volume had uncovered a bug in which transactions would be duplicated. This bug should now be fixed in a a new version of the trading engine that will roll out tonight.

Project H.A.M.M.E.R. (Wii) is scheduled to resume trading at 12:00 PM (PDT)/ 3:00 (EDT) on Tuesday July 17, 2007. The automated market maker will not trade and so all orders will be between human traders to efficiently discover the market value of the stock.

We just received word that the NPD Group is delaying its release of June '07 video game sales data until Monday, July 23. This will result in a delay to the settlement of June futures contracts.

For now, June futures contracts are still scheduled to freeze at 11:30 PM PDT on Wednesday July 18.

June futures contracts will be frozen on Wednesday and expire on Thursday. It is now time to list games for the July futures contracts as well as August futures contracts as trading is more valuable when we start forecasting earlier. We are limited to 10 games each month and so we should list the 10 games that the community is most interested in trading. These games will likely be released in the month of the futures contract, though sometimes it is worthwile to list a game for a second month of sales.

For these IPOs, we will look to games that have already been listed as stocks and the highest bidded user submitted games that coming out in the months of July and August. For this reason, it is important that the Wiki Dates be as accurate as possible as we may skip a game you want to trade if we do not see it as coming out in July or August.

You can also highlight particular titles (platforms) you think should be listed by commenting on this blog post.

This blog post solicits your opinion on the Watch List feature. Do you use it? Or do you just use the Portfolio page? Should we keep the feature around? Or should we ditch it and have the Watch List comments and news aggregators use the Portfolio instead?

After considering the deep community discussion on delistings, we have moved ahead and delisted the previously announced 40 games. We believe this is the right move as we shift our focus to shorter-term contracts that settle.

As expected, the stocks that were delisted were held by very few players. Those players who held positions were paid the last traded price of the shares, which was often established over a month ago.

We understand the concern that many players have pointed out that there may still be news that may move these games in the future. However, we would like players to focus trading resources to predicting game sales that are still relevant, rather than speculating on games that may have press releases many months following release when few other traders are watching the game.

Thank you again for your patience in this matter.

The simExchange was featured on the front page of the Arizona Republic business section today. You can check out the online version of the story on AZCentral, which is titled "Entrepreneur taps into video-game prediction market."

A new setting has been added to the Account Settings page. Up to this point, the simExchange has only sent emails to follow up on bugs discovered from your specific activity on the site. The simExchange will now be sending out emails requesting feedback on certain features on the simExchange based on how you use the site.

We still will not share or sell your contact info to any third parties and you will not receive any spam mail. If you would prefer not to receive emails from us that are requesting your feedback, you can choose a new setting to opt out of any email contact.

If you would like to receive our emails at a different email address, you can also make that change from the Account Settings page.

The reusable referral link for each page that supports the feature is now featured at the top of the page for easy access. For those who are not familiar with the reusable referral link, please check out the previous post Reusable referal link. Any page that features the link in a blue box supports referrals. The only page that supports referrals but does not have a referral link on the page is the homepage for new users.