While the location will be announced very soon, the dates for next years MGC show are out. The show will run the week before Easter, which is March 27th and the 28th! The show will be growing in size by around 20%, and as mentioned in prior posts, will be moving to a different location closer to Milwaukee.
That is all I’m saying for now. Stay tuned for more info, probably early next month.
As with last month, video game sales are down overall, but have picked up in two areas. The two areas that did better in April than March were the Nintendo DS (and DSi) and the PS2. The DS did much better than last month (with strong interest in the DSi), while the PS2 did slightly better.
The majority of the DS hardware sale increase is due to the DSi, which is selling very well. The PS2 most likely has moved up the charts since it had its price moved down to $99. If the DSi can sustain this sales jump remains to be seen.
Once again, sorry for being a tad late in posting the April NPD information. Hope this doesn’t become a habit.
Video game hardware sales for April as mentioned above are down, except for two systems. Could be partly due to the economy, and just partly due to the time of year. I would expect sales to pickup later in the year again.
Software sales were down too for April, 2009. I think a lot of this has to do with there being no really big game releases for April, at least nothing that I would consider stellar. Again, this will change as we start getting closer to the holiday season.
NPD figures for April 2009 are:
Hardware:
Software (top games for April 2009):
The Wii and DS did very well considering sales being down, both taking over half of the top ten games. The Godfather did okay, for both the 360 and PS3 (the only PS3 game in the top ten). The 360 filled the rest of the chart with Resident evil 5 and GH Aerosmith.
Personally, I am still surprised that Wii Fit is doing so well. I have to admit I have it myself, but I don’t totally see the mass appeal of the fitness game. Pokemon, that always sells well, period. The rest, I don’t have any of them, so I can’t say much (even though I have the Wii version of GH Aerosmith – which was good, but not great).
Well, school is not out forever, but at least for the time being. I had my last college final test a little earlier today (PC Hardware class), and Aced it, of course! 
Trying my best to stay as close to a 4.0 average (I’m at a 3.9x at this point -will know the official number in a few weeks).
It is nice to get off school for the Summer, as I got lots of little (and a few big) projects I want to try to get done with my house. I was going to take one class for Summer, but decided the house was more important now. It would be nice to get more credits done, but the house needs work done that I’ve been putting off for too long.
Of course, I’ll miss some of the folks from school, like a few classmates and my last two teachers. The teachers I had for the Spring semester were great, and both had a great outstanding of humor. Both are mothers, and stories about there kids were fun (and sometimes rather cute). Met a few new people too, like Ben, a rather well versed Linux guy (who got me really interested in Linux now). I’ll miss Stefanie from my Hardware class too. Wonderful young woman, who will hopefully graduate next Spring and get a much better job than she has now (not that her job isn’t bad, but she deserves much better)! Of course, I plan on keeping in touch with these folks, if I can bloody help it. You can never have enough contacts, friends, and the like.
I’ll be relaxing for a few days now, watching a some movies and catching up on my slowly growing CD collection (new Pet Shop Boys release, plus the Indigo Girls, and many others).
later…
Yeah, it is May now, but I finally got around to posting a few more pictures from the MGC ’09 show. These are from my helper Erica, and are in the 2009 photo gallery, listed under MGC II photos.
Enjoy!