Who says that Monday Morning Quarterback has to be tied to the NPD sales reports? Not us, not when there's news breaking of this magnitude. Yes, we know we haven't done an MMQB for the October sales numbers; our Thanksgiving travel schedule got in the way, so we're planning to fold it into the November sales analysis. But enough about us. When news came across the transom earlier today that Vivendi Games and Activision had announced their plans to merge, we quickly contacted our regular QB, Game Head host, Geoff Keighley, to pit his BlackBerry-fueled insights against our Palm-enabled observations. Not only did he agree to do so on the holiest day of football lovers around the world, after winning the coin toss, he volunteered to go on offense first. Some excerpts:

Geoff Keighley: It’s pretty monumental that the new company will be Activision Blizzard, not Activision Sierra. But here’s my open question to Mike Morhaime and the guys at Blizzard: Are you really going to put your name on the box for a game like Scarface II? Or even a derivative third-person action game like Wet? Blizzard has been so protective of its brand for years that I find it hard to believe their name/logo will go on all the game boxes. Or will Blizzard now have a say in the games the joint company publishes? If so, the quality standards are going to have to go way up. In fact I am beginning to wonder just how many Vivendi games are really going to make it through the star chamber at the combined company. Stay tuned.

N'Gai Croal: What this merger really says to me is that EA brought back CEO John Riccitiello later than it should have. Why? Because sometimes it's the deals you don't make that cause your downfall, and nowhere is that more true than in the videogame industry....When Vivendi was looking to sell its videogame unit back in 2003, the major publishers like EA all kicked the tires, but none of them wanted to pull the trigger on the reported $1 billion asking price when the only asset of any perceived value was a pre-World of Warcraft Blizzard. That's somewhat understandable, but how did EA let Red Octane and Harmonix slip through its fingers, long after it was clear that Guitar Hero was a phenomenon and with a former record label exec in worldwide music boss Steve Schnur in EA's own executive suite? I have to imagine that if Riccitiello had returned to EA sooner, there's no way that someone like him, who's been so aggressive on acquisitions, would have let both companies escape his grasp. Put all of this together, and it starts to look like a series of unfortunate events that has resulted in the creation of what could be EA's most formidable competitor yet.

To read our discussion in its entirety, click on the link below.

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November
The Level Up treason and plot
I know of no reason
Why Level Up treason
Should ever be forgot

Like Pheidippides at Marathon and Paul Revere at Lexington, the Level Up staff last week breathlessly revealed to the world the shocking news that beginning in November, the NPD group would halt its yearlong practice of releasing monthly hardware sales figures for the consoles and handhelds manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. Here at Monday Morning Quarterback HQ, we immediately went underground, making covert arrangements for alternate types of data that would help our rogue band of color commentators continue to shed light on the business of videogames. Meanwhile, as we correctly predicted, the intertubes quickly became clogged with the bitter tears of our fellow armchair analysts and partisan fanboys alike; ditto for the voice mailboxes at NPD group as furious forum dwellers stormed the ramparts took to their phones to rage against the machine. For with no justice, how can there be peace?

Having sown the wind, NPD representatives were nevertheless by their own admission wholly unprepared to reap the whirlwind. Even their reminder that the provision of hardware numbers to the general public was always intended to be temporary failed to quell the inflamed passions of the nascent fanboy revolution. To avoid going the way of the Tsars, the Shah or the Matrix, the NPD Group submitted to the will of the people and acknowledged the error of its ways. An NPD official confirmed to us in an email that because of the tremendous response from press and gamers, NPD had secured the unanimous consent of the three console manufacturers to continue giving media monthly hardware sales figures.

Even as the fan base continues to grow for Monday Morning Quarterback, our monthly assessment of the videogame biz with Geoff Keighley, the Level Up staff can't afford to become complacent. Because on any given Sunday, one of those young, hungry QBs angling to take our spot could finally succeed. So when we heard complaints from some of our most trusted industry sources that each lengthy installment of MMQB, though highly informative, was simply too much for them to consume in a single morning cappuccino sitting, we took it as a glaring weakness in our game that had to be shored up. After consulting with our coaches, we've added a new weapon to our arsenal: the Highlight Reel, a condensed "SportsCenter"-like list of the Top Ten excerpts, taken both from MMQB and from things said or written in response to our monthly email banter. And to give the whole affair more of a multimedia feel, we're including a suggested playlist of songs, with each track carefully selected for its thematic or titular relevance to a particular excerpt. Enjoy.

To read the Monday Morning Quarterback Highlight Reel for September 2007, click on the link below.

One of the cherished traditions for people in and around the North American videogame industry is the mid-to-late month release of the previous month's sales figures for both hardware and software. Much like Hollywood with the weekend box office or the music industry with SoundScan, this data, compiled by the Port Washington, NY-based NPD Group, is the subject of much scrutiny, speculation and analysis as everyone tries to figure out What It All Means. Having engaged in many phone, email and IM back-and-forths with various people over the NPDs, as they're generally referred to, we've decided to bring some of those often unheard discussions to light with our occasional feature, Monday Morning Quarterback. As usual, our returning opponent is the Game Head (and Kotaku guest editor) himself, Geoff Keighley, pitting his BlackBerry-fueled insights against our Palm-enabled observations. Some excerpts:

N'Gai Croal: My advice, like my betting skills, is generally hit-or-miss, but looking at Metroid Prime 3: Corruption's two-month sales total (385,100) relative to its Metacritic score (90), perhaps my redesigned Wii remote could have propelled it to Wii Play status. In fact, given the Metacritic scores for the first Metroid Prime (97) and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (92), maybe Retro Studios should catch the zeitgeist, pull a Bungie and free itself from Nintendo's clutches "unleash" its creativity as part of a "natural evolution" of its relationship with its Japanese owners. Can you think of another Western first-party studio putting out games as acclaimed as the Metroid Prime series with as little to show for it in sales--or in marketing, for that matter? Even though Metroid Prime 3 got stage time at Nintendo's E3 press conference, I can't help but feel as though Retro has fallen victim to either increasing indifference from Nintendo to hardcore gamers or a ruthless focus by Nintendo's marketing department on first, the platform itself, and second, the games it believes will be guaranteed hits.

Geoff Keighley: In a way, Sony is handing the keys to the kingdom to Microsoft this holiday season. But will Microsoft fully capitalize on the opportunity? I'm not so sure. Why? It might have something to do with a Nielsen study that came out which says only 14 percent of US homes have HD-capable TVs. This is less than half what was estimated by the Consumer Electronics Association in July, and may help explain why the Wii continues to dominate relative to the 360 and PS3. I fully expect the Wii to perform well through the holidays, despite the fact that no third parties are capitalizing on the platform's success. You saw my list of the big November games up top and I didn't mention one title on the Wii. Mario Galaxy should do well, but will it cross the 500,000 unit barrier in November? I don't think that's a foregone conclusion. Metroid Prime 3 has done ok, but it certainly isn't a blockbuster hit and seems to have fallen off the radar map already.

N'Gai Croal: Sony has learned the hard way that it can't afford to launch a) 12 months after Microsoft with b) esoteric hardware, subpar tools and an incomplete online service at c) a $200 premium. Kutaragi's forced departure, the sale of Sony's semiconductor facilities to Toshiba and the fact that Sony Electronics has yet to launch any Cell-based products demonstrate loudly and clearly that the Era of the Visionary Engineer is over at Sony Computer Entertainment is over, and with it, perhaps, Sony Corp's silicon ambitions. I wonder whether Sony will make Cell 2 with IBM and Toshiba, or simply bow out and buy a CPU from Intel or AMD now that it's clear that everyone has jumped on the multicore processor bandwagon. If Sony wants to regain its former dominance, its wisest course of action may be to partially outsource its CPU and GPU design, steal the best software architects it can find, and retrench around its strengths: sales, marketing, industrial design and first-party software.

Click on the link below to read our exchange in its entirety--we've even got some exclusive scoop about NPD itself!

Does reading Level Up sometimes feel like drinking water from a fire hose? Or surfing a tsunami? Does it ever give you the sensation that you've been buried under an avalanche of words, words, words? Yes, we know that the dizzying length of certain Level Up posts can read more like a manifesto or a jeremiad than a blog entry. So for you, we're launching the occasional feature "Things You May Have Missed," which will cull compelling excerpts from our more voluminous posts. Today's entry comes from our September 24th post, titled "Monday Morning Quarterback: An Armchair Analysis of Videogame Sales for August 2007." In it, we (Game Head host Geoff Keighley, Game Informer editor-in-chief Andy McNamara and Level Up blogger N'Gai Croal) discussed which console games might underperform during this year's overstuffed holiday season. Here, we distill that exchange to its essence for a quicker read. And as a bonus, we're including the list of the five games each participant believes are being "sent to die."

To read our summary, click on the link below.

One of the cherished traditions for people in and around the North American videogame industry is the mid-to-late month release of the previous month's sales figures for both hardware and software. Much like Hollywood with the weekend box office or the music industry with SoundScan, this data, compiled by the Port Washington, NY-based NPD Group, is the subject of much scrutiny, speculation and analysis as everyone tries to figure out What It All Means.Having engaged in many phone, email and IM back-and-forths with various people over the NPDs, as they're generally referred to, we decided to bring some of those often unheard discussions to light with our occasional feature, Monday Morning Quarterback. Our returning opponent is the prolific journalist and TV host Geoff Keighley, pitting his BlackBerry-fueled insights against our Palm-enabled observations. But this month, we not only have a special guest who joins us as a color comentator--who could it be?--we're also introducing a new concept, sparked by an offhand comment of Keighley's: the Dead Pool. Some excerpts:

Special Guest: Xbox 360 should be killing out there, but it isn't. Nintendo is making money for Nintendo like always, and Sony is still figuring out how to start the engine. Thankfully, this holiday season is going to bring lots of fantastic games to the market, but unless Sony does something quick, Microsoft and Nintendo will reap all the rewards. Which puts Sony in a bit of a pickle, because its games already feel slightly rushed to market (see: Lair and Heavenly Sword), and it has put itself in a position to hurry titles out this holiday season to try and stay competitive (which is never the right answer in my book; make the game great, then figure out which quarter it goes in, not the other way around).

Geoff Keighley: Actually we should talk about that phrase for a second--"sent to die." I read it on a forum a few months ago when gamers were discussing which games won't be getting a fair shake because of the overcrowded market. Let me ask you: which games do you think we might need to add to our death pool for the holidays? I'm particularly worried about EA's Army of Two and Midway's BlackSite: Area 51--two games that should be fun to play, but may get lost.  And what about Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed? Is it really going to post huge sales numbers? Given the awards and number of times the trailers have been downloaded there's huge interest in the game. But will that translate into a BioShock-sized month one for the game in November? Or will Assassin's suffer the same fate as many other Ubi games that are critical grand slams but only end up delivering solid doubles in terms of sales. I thought this would be a huge year for Ubisoft, but with Splinter Cell slipping to 2008 (and the quality of Haze an open question mark), a lot is resting on Assassin's.

N'Gai Croal: You're playing it safe with such obvious choices. I'm going to go out on a limb and nominate the console versions of Half-Life 2: The Orange Box. You might think I'm crazy, but hear me out. HL2:TOB might be the most value ever packed into a single case: Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. I bet if Valve could have figured out a way to toss in a gravity gun and a crowbar, they'd have done so. But by throwing so much into the package, HL2:TOB comes across as completely unfocused, especially compared to its chief competitors like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, so positioning this product becomes a major challenge. Especially for a franchise that's still primarily identified as a PC game. I find myself wondering if Valve might have been better off removing Team Fortress 2 from the Orange Box and releasing it in January or February as a separate game, with a short "Dirty Dozen"-style campaign mode that would leverage the phenomenal character work that they've been doing in their Pixar-esque promotional trailers.

Click on the link below to uncover the identity of our first guest QB, and to read our exchange in its entirety.

One of the cherished traditions for people in and around the North American videogame industry is the mid-to-late month release of the previous month's sales figures for both hardware and software. Much like Hollywood with the weekend box office or the music industry with SoundScan, this data, compiled by the Port Washington, NY-based NPD Group, is the subject of much scrutiny, speculation and analysis as everyone tries to figure out What It All Means.Having engaged in many phone, email and IM back-and-forths with various people over the NPDs, as they're generally referred to, we decided to bring some of those often unheard discussions to light with our occasional feature, Monday Morning Quarterback. Our returning opponent is the prolific journalist and TV host Geoff Keighley, pitting his BlackBerry-fueled insights against our Palm-enabled observations. Some excerpts:

N'Gai Croal: What's interesting is that a lot of our cohorts in the gaming press--an admittedly unrepresentative sample--aren't playing their Wiis much. Unless they have friends come to visit, they're pretty much forsaking their Wiis for Xbox 360, DS and some Playstation Network from time to time. Wii fans regularly complain that enthusiast outlets--most notably, the gang over at Ziff-Davis' 1UP Yours podcast--are paying insufficient attention to their console of choice, and in fact spend too much time mocking the Wii for what it's not (its lack of HD graphics; the fact that it's become a dumping ground for mini-games; the trend towards porting PSP games to Wii) rather than applauding what it is: a refreshing change from the way games used to be, which is attracting new people to this hobby. But with Guitar Hero III, Rock Band and SingStar PS3 coming this holiday--and, as you point out, a bizarre lack of new games to capitalize on the Wii Sports phenomenon (sorry, EA, but jamming those controls into your pro sports titles doesn't really count)--I wonder how many of us in the media will be playing Wii Sports and Wii Play when friends come to visit.

Geoff Keighley: Until third parties figure out a better Wii strategy, they will be caught in a precarious position. Let's use EA's NCAA football game, the #1 title of the month, as an example. This year the 360 version sold almost 400,000 units, up from 333,000 units last year. That's respectable growth. But the PS2 version dropped from 490,000 units last year to 236,000 this year. Without a Wii version, the PS3 sales of 156,000 (which obviously didn't exist last July) don't make up the difference. EA may have overcharged for the PS2 SKU this year ($49 when it should have been $39), but could there be a bigger issue at hand? Are PS2 gamers moving to the Wii? Or worse, are the PS2 gamers leaving the market as active consumers? They aren't buying PS2 games anymore and they aren't upgrading to new boxes either. If that is indeed the case, the Wii becomes even more vital as a lifeline for third parties. As of now, no one has cracked the code on what makes a hit Wii game.

Click on the link below to read our exchange in its entirety. 

One of the cherished traditions for people in and around the North American videogame industry is the mid-to-late month release of the previous month's sales figures for both hardware and software. Much like Hollywood with the weekend box office or the music industry with SoundScan, this data, compiled by the Port Washington, NY-based NPD Group, is the subject of much scrutiny, speculation and analysis as everyone tries to figure out What It All Means.

Having engaged in many phone, email and IM back-and-forths with various people over the NPDs, as they're generally referred to, we've decided to bring some of those often unheard discussions to light with our newest occasional feature, Monday Morning Quarterback. Our first participant, and hopefully a regular, if his schedule permits, is the Game Head himself, Geoff Keighley. We profiled the prolific Keighley last year, and we're glad to have him aboard to kick things off, pitting his BlackBerry-fueled insights against our Palm-enabled observations. Some excerpts:

N'Gai Croal: If, having suffered a $2 billion loss during its last fiscal year, Sony is not willing to lop at least $100 off the price of the PS3--and you're correct that a price drop alone is unlikely to move the needle enough--that leaves the company's first party operation and a handful of remaining third party exclusives to shoulder the burden. But great games take time to make, and it's unlikely that such lookers as White Knight Story, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Final Fantasy XIII will be ready by the end of 2007. (SOCOM: Confrontation will get some PS2 dead-enders to upgrade, but the PS3's $599 price tag will remain an inhibitor.) And without potential killer apps on that scale, Sony will more or less be forced to cede 2007 to the Xbox 360 until both a price cut and better software manifest themselves.

Geoff Keighley: To keep with the football analogies, I wonder how Sony can even hope to score a first down with the PS3 in the next few months. After I sent you my last e-mail, SCEA [Sony Computer Entertainment America] released a statement that blamed poor PS3 sales in April on a lack of compelling software. No argument here. I was, however, puzzled by Sony's claim (hope?) that sales will soon pick up because 15 exclusive first party titles are due out over the next year. Lair is coming in July, but beyond that I don't expect any major first party titles until September. And when it comes to third party releases, there's not much due this summer. If MotorStorm couldn't move hardware, I have little hope that Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden Sigma will jumpstart sales. Could we see the PS3 sales numbers continue to creep down over the summer? I wouldn't be surprised. Let's hope Sony delivers a blowout E3 with playable Metal Gear Solid 4, an impressive Killzone demo, and lots more of LittleBigPlanet. After playing LittleBig at Gamer's Day I am now more convinced than ever that it may be Sony's secret weapon this holiday season.

Sit back, strap in, and get ready for a wild ride.