NPD has released the year-end sales numbers for non-PC video games in 2007 showing record figures for the industry. The year 2007 brought an impressive 43 percent increase in sales compared to 2006 with a total of $17.94 billion.

Game Consoles
The highlights of the year come as no surprise if you’ve been reading our coverage of game console sales with the Nintendo Wii topping the list of most console units sold at 6.29 million. The Wii spent the year at a lower price-point than rival consoles and caught the attention of a wide range of gamers. Behind the Wii in console sales was the Xbox 360 with 4.62 million units sold in 2007, which was helped out a little bit by the wildly popular Halo 3. Next in line was not Sony’s new Playstation 3 but it’s older brother, the Playstation 2. Sony moved 3.97 million PS2 units in 2007 and 2.56 million PS3s.

The Rock Band Stage Kit will add more authenticity to your dreams of becoming a real life rock star. The peripheral kit was spotted on GameStop’s website, retailing for $99.99. Not many other details are known, but it will include an interactive light and smoke show.

If rocking on a fake plastic guitar still manages to satisfy your rock and roll dreams, just imagine how fancy smoke and lights will raise you to the next level of your somewhat less then Rock-God performances.

For those who have problems tuning their musical instruments, your troubles are a thing of the past. Now you can easily tune your instrument to the correct note with the eNote Digital Tuner from ELECA. just attach this little device to your guitar or other instrument and the display will show up green once the note is correct.

This little device will tune guitars, violins, banjos, dulcimers and other stringed instruments. You simply need to know what note corresponds to each string. Then no matter which key the instrument uses, the tuner will help you find the note for the string.

Allegro Rainbow’s Guitar video game has been rocking CES this week. Music Wizard Group’s Guitar Wizard video game is a step forward after their successful Piano Wizard title, but Guitar Wizard is not just another version of Guitar Hero. It’s actually an educational video game that’s designed to help kids of all ages to read and play music.

Guitar Wizard will be available on both PC and MAC platforms, and will come with an actual honest to God guitar from US Music Corp. and an Interface by SoundTech. Plus, the software is compatible with just about any MIDI guitar.

One look at eBay and you can see that “Guitar Hero III” or “Rock Band” are being sold for big bucks. These two rhythm simulators are among this year’s hottest holiday presents and are sold out at the retail level leaving the online auction house as the only alternative for snagging yourself a set. However one Australian youth’s dreams of a music-making Christmas have been shattered by his father as a consequence of being caught red handed smoking pot in the family’s backyard.

The trouble started when the father, whose identity is being withheld but makes his living as a school teacher, came home and caught his son in the company with some friends toking up. As a lesson the anti-dope Dad decided to place his son’s Christmas gift, the guitar/game combo of “Guitar Hero III”, on the eBay auction site and up for sale.

The marketing research firm NPD has turned in their analysis of what the top video game titles and consoles were last month and the news is very good for the industry as a whole. Leading the top in sales of new software was Activision’s “Call of Duty 4″ for the Microsoft Xbox 360 which sold an impressive 1.57 million copies. Nintendo’s “Super Mario Galaxy” came in second place and if you combine the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sales for “Assassin’s Creed” it would actually take the silver medal. Not coincidentally Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed” has emerged as the best-selling new IP for games in recent years.

Nintendo’s handheld DS gaming device sold an amazing 1.53 million units in November which was enough to give it the top of the chart for hardware sales. In second place was Nintendo’s Wii gaming console with 981,000 Wiis sold followed by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in third spot with 770,000 units finding homes. Sony moved 577,000 PlayStation Portable to give it fourth place and the price drop in the PS3 convinced 466,000 consumers to go out and buy one of the consoles last month.

This is the perfect Christmas gift for any young padawan. Remember that scene from Episode IV: A New Hope, where Luke is training in the Millenium Falcon with the hovering droid? The Interactive Star Wars Game will let you relive it, and the bonus here is that it won’t zap you when you fail to intercept the laser bolts with your lightsaber.

Now there are officially no scenes left in the Star Wars movies that have not been converted to a toy. Just plug the training “droid” into your TV via an included RCA cable, and it will detect just about every movement of your lightsaber wirelessly. Your onscreen avatar can be Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, or Yoda. Consider it Guitar Hero for Jedis. Just do yourself a favor, and remove all breakable objects from the play area, as you are wielding a 15″ lightsaber.

Time magazine has released its list of the top ten videogames of the year. Can you take a guess at what made their number one spot? If you guessed “Halo 3″ you don’t win a prize. “Like a pebble that has been rounded over the centuries by the gentle splashing of the ocean waves, ‘Halo 3′ has become the perfect hardcore first-person combat simulator,” said Time in their idol worship of the Xbox 360 killer app. “By dint of painstaking labor on the part of its developer, Bungie, it has been refined over three installments to the point where it delivers only pure, unadulterated gaming bliss.” Who knew that the editors at Time were down with playing some Master Chief deathmatches?

Of the titles that made Time’s best of 2007 list six are exclusive to one videogame system, of which three are for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and one each for Sony’s PlayStation 2, Nintendo’s DS and Wii console systems. Why didn’t at least one PlayStation 3 exclusive title make it on Time’s list? And no “Guitar Hero III” (or is that game now redundant that “Rock Band” is out and lets you play drums as well as guitar?)

You’ve heard of card sharks and loan sharks.(Hopefully you don’t know the latter very well.) How about a Guitar Shark? The Jay Turser Shark Guitar is a fairly unique hand painted shark shaped guitar that would make any amateur want to play. It would even be perfect and maybe way over the top to have a shark guitar if you play your gigs on a beach.

It’s designed for young players of course and includes a strap and gig bag. This shark measures 37-3/4″ in length. A unique instrument like this is a great way to start that future rocker’s career. Years down the road, you’ll be wondering why his songs all seem to all involve fish. The amp is powered by a 9V battery so the guitar can be played anywhere.

Two of the world’s biggest manufacturers and distributors of video games are merging in a deal that will make the new company larger than Electronic Arts, the current largest gaming company in the world. French software titan Vivendi SA will combine with Activision Inc., the Sunnyvale, CA. company to create Activision Blizzard. (The Blizzard part of the new film’s name comes from Vivendi’s ownership of Blizzard Entertainment, the company that makes the world’s number one massive multiplayer online game “World of Warcraft”.)

Vivendi’s stock will be converted into Activision common stock which will give the former a 52 percent share in the new company. Activision Blizzard will be worth $18.9 billion in assets and give it claim as the largest gaming company in the world. What this means for gamers is that popular titles like the “Call of Duty”, “Guitar Hero” and “Warcraft” series will now be released by a single entity. How the rest of the gaming industry will react to news of this super-merger will be spelled out in the coming months.

These Coffin It Up coffin speakers would have been great for Halloween. Maybe you’re feeling Goth or just a tad emo, in which case they are perfect for year round use. Each coffin is made with melamine and houses 2 sets of speakers: 5″ 2 way and 6″ x 9″ three way speakers. Vibration dampening material inside helps create crystal clear sound that that will travel through your entire Addams Family mansion.

Each coffin speaker is 25.5″ long X 13″ wide X 8″ deep and comes complete with hand grips on the side for your poll-bearers to “carry that weight”. I suppose the only way these would be better for your music crypt, would be if a skeleton actually popped out with a guitar.

Harmonix and Viacom’s “Rock Band” has made an impression at stores and stood guitar fret-to-fret with Activision’s rival franchise and latest entry “Guitar Hero III”. However we don’t know exactly how well the rhythm game is doing in sales. The only thing we have to go on are the enthusiastic reports on gaming message boards and what a representative of MTV Networks, owners of the game, said that the game has been “flying off the shelves” during the first week of sales.

“Downloads are going great, rockband.com is going great with people logging on and downloading stuff from there,” said Mika Salmi, a rep for MTV’s digital division. “It’s got a lot of legs, we’re in it for the long term.”

The Romantics band filed a law suit against Activision, makers of the Guitar Hero game, on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court of Detroit ‘Rock City’ for a sound-alike recording of What I Like About You, originally recorded by the Romantics. The song in question was released in July as part of about 30 songs in total in the Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s game for the Sony Playstation. The Guitar Hero game involves players singing and trying to play a guitar along with the music in the game, and the Romantics are seeking an injunction that would take the game off of store shelves.

The issue that the band has with Activisions use of the song is not a copyright complaint as one might think. Activision did get permission in advance to record a cover version of the song What I Like About You, but the band is issuing the suit on the grounds that the song sounds just a little too much like the original band and infringes the band’s right to its own image and likeness.

Music and robotics have had a strange relationship. I have seen bands with robot singers, robots playing instruments and more. Now Gibson is taking robotics and applying them to the guitar. Thanks to integrated electronics and motorized mechanics, this instrument can automatically tune itself in various configurations.

This is big news for performers. With something like this they only need to carry one guitar with them instead of several differently-tuned instruments. They plan a limited first run, only available in select stores.

If you could get your hands on this sweet guitar, you could really jam out a great version of “Pac-Man Fever”. It was designed by Specimen Custom Guitars and it not only looks retro-cool, but it also has some cool features. Like the blinking headstock and a variable-speed knob located on the eyeball that can synchronize the blinker to the beat.

Sadly you or I will never EVER get to touch it as it is one of a kind, but it does make our inner geeks very happy in a dot-munching sort of way. Come to think of it, it looks more like a Pac-Banjo then a guitar, but I still want it.