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Piracy in these countries is largely the result of a lack of political will to confront the problem.
mdash; Joe Biden
US Senator, D-Delaware

[Source: , April 6, 2006]

Redmond, Wash.

- Microsoft has sold a total of six million Xbox 360 video game consoles since the product s release nearly a year ago, according to first quarter results. The company expects to have shipped 10 million units worldwide by the end of 2006. Microsoft also narrowed losses at the division which includes its Xbox business, from $173 million in the first quarter of 2005 to $96 million in the same period this year.

New York - One in ten online consumers now watches TV shows online, according to the latest Consumer Internet Barometer, a report created by The Conference Board and TNS. Personal convenience and avoiding commercials were the top reasons cited for online TV viewing, though 75% of those surveyed reported no change in traditional TV viewing habits.

Los Gatos, Calif. - Online DVD rental service Netflix announced on Wednesday that sometime next month it expects to deliver its one-billionth movie in the mail to one of its 5.

7 million subscribers. The company plans to launch a new ad campaign, with the tagline -- Nearly one billion movies delivered so far. Zero late fees.

-- on the major broadcast networks.

Seattle - Casual games developer and publisher Big Fish Games said on Tuesday that more than 125,000 members have signed up for a personal games page since the company launched its My Big Fish Games game-based social network in September.

The pages allow games to write reviews, share games with friends and earn cash rewards.

London - Europeans are more likely than Americans to use their mobile phones to access the Internet, as 29% of European Internet users regularly log on via their phones, compared with 19% of U.

S. users, according to a report from comScore. Germany and Italy boast the highest mobile Web penetration in Europe (34% each), followed by France (28%), Spain (26%) and the U.

K. (24%). Nokia is the most popular handset amongst European mobile Internet users, capturing 50% market share in Italy and 22% in France, compared with 17% of the market in the U.

S., where Motorola leads with 26%.

San Francisco - The San Francisco Bay area remained the dominant market for venture capital investing during the third quarter, according to new figures released by Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst Young. The area saw 207 VC deals worth a total of $2.45 billion during the period, a decline in the number of deals from a year ago but an 8% increase in capital.

Cupertino, Calif. - Buoyed by strong sales of its iPod digital music players and Macintosh computer, Apple on Wednesday posted better-than-expected quarterly results, including a 27% jump in net income.

The company said that it sold 8.7 million iPods during the quarter, up 35% from a year ago, and had its best quarter ever in terms of Mac sales, with 1.6 million.

New York - The Digital Data Exchange (DDEX), a consortium of record labels, music rights societies and digital service providers working to develop data exchange standards for the sale of digital music, has announced the establishment of its first four standards on information sharing and transaction processing for digital music.
New York - Nielsen Media Research announced on Wednesday plans to launch a new video game rating service, which will seek to establish new metrics for the buying and selling of in-game and other video game-related advertising. GamePlay Metrics, from the company s new wireless and interactive services division, will harvest data from Nielsen s existing measurement system on the most popular titles among gamers, and combine it with other demographic information and data such as which TV shows they watch. A reliable and accurate standard of measurement for video gaming will drive advertising investment in this medium and help convert video game advertising from a discretionary advertising experiment to a must-have option, said Jeff Herrmann, vice president of Nielsen wireless and interactive services.

Nielsen s GamePlay Metrics Service is slated to begin providing weekly video game ratings data in mid-2007.

According to new data from market research firm, the NPD Group, September s video game sales jumped an impressive 38%, as compared with the same period one year ago.

The industry is up 11% as compared to 2005 with no indication of sales slowing down, according to video game analyst Anita Frazier, who stated that a record year for the industry is a given. Total video game sales were $777 million for the month, up from $563 million in September of last year. Hardware sales rose 71% to $244 million from last year s $143 million.

Software sales climbed 29% to $446 million from $347 million in the year-ago period, and sales of accessories jumped 21% to $88 million from $73 million.

Washington - Two national telecommunications industry organizations -- the Fiber-to-the-Home Council and the Telecommunications Industry Association -- announced that the number of homes and businesses in the United States directly connected by fiber optic connections now exceeds one million.

Fiber optic connections are much faster than standard Internet broadband connections. The organizations said the growth rate in new subscribers has increased by 50% in the last six months. Surveys of early fiber-to-the-home users show that they are highly satisfied with the service attributes such as increased Internet speed, on-demand video and HDTV, as well as online gaming, said Michael Render of RVA Market Research.

However, there is also increased interest in applications that affect health and education as information becomes available about services and distance learning available through the Internet.

Los Angeles - Catalog-based ringtones are now the fastest growing segment of the market, Billboard reported.

Universal Music Group said that catalog ringtone sales are up 80% from last year and now account for 10% of the company s ringtone sales. Meanwhile, new deals to offer ringtones from Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Costello and Guns N Roses may spur ringtone holdouts like Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley and the Beatles, whose labels are in ongoing discussions because contracts don t include ringtone rights. It s stuff like the Jimi Hendrix deal that will hopefully open the eyes of the holdouts, David Dorn, senior vice president of new-media strategy for Warner Music Group s Rhino Entertainment, told Billboard.

Sometimes they just wait to see what other artists do and then they go, Why aren t we doing this?

Los Angeles - Over 418 million tracks have been purchased from digital music retailers so far this year, a rise of 72% over the same period last year and a factor that helped buoy the overall industry, which saw physical album sales drop 8.

3% in the same period, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. When digital album sales for the year so far (22.6 million, up 115% from last year) are combined with digital singles and physical sales, the overall music industry has sold 434.

9 million albums so far this year, down from 439.2 million during the same period last year. The market share breakdown by label has not changed over the past year, with Universal still the largest company with 33.

8%, followed by Sony BMG (26.9%), Warner (26.9%), independents (12.

7%) and EMI (10%).

San Francisco - Dispelling the notion that the world s most popular online social network is exclusively a teen hang-out, more than half of visitors to MySpace in August were 35 or older, CNET News.

com reported, citing comScore Media Metrix data. That figure has risen from 39.5% a year ago, while the percentage of MySpace visitors between 12-17 dropped from 25% last year, to 12% in August 2006.

MySpace visitors in the 18-24 demographic remained relatively steady, at around 20%. Overall, MySpace s unique visitor count had doubled since August of last year, to 55.8 million.