Video-game industry sales drop for 10th straight month

Bad news for the Research Triangle's video-game sector - one of the largest gaming hubs in the country: People continue to buy fewer games and related hardware as well as accessories. U.S. retail sales of video game software, hardware and accessories declined 24 percent to $848.3 million in September from a year earlier, researcher NPD Group Inc. reported Thursday.

The falloff marked the 10th-consecutive month of declining sales as the gaming world holds off buying ahead of the release of Nintendo's Wii U console next month. NPD Group reported sales of $1.11 billion a year earlier.

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Sales of video games themselves, excluding PC titles, fell 18 percent to $497.4 million. The September decline was less severe, however, than the 28 percent drop forecast by Cowen & Co. analyst Doug Creutz. The decline was led by shrinking sales of game consoles, which fell 39 percent to $210.9 million, NPD said. Read more >>

More airport detection: Move the wrong muscle and you don't fly

Mike Smith writes:

Nervous flyers, beware: a Department of Homeland Security-funded project is investigating whether Wii Fit Balance Boards might be good ways to detect signs of tension or unease in airport security lines.

The next step in the War on Terrorism?

As somewhere over 20 million Wii Fit owners know, the Balance Board can detect your precise balance point, making it a perfect keep-fit tool -- but the Future Attribute Screening Technology project hopes detecting physiological signs -- including rapid shifts in balance -- will help identify passengers who may have hostile intentions.

"Researchers took a Wii balance board...and altered it to show how someone's weight shifts. Studies are now under way to determine whether there is a level of fidgeting that would suggest the need for secondary screening," CNN said.

The Balance Board is just one of a suite of sensors the Boston-based project is trialing; others include eye trackers and devices that record respiratory and heart rates. Researchers say their goal is to have a system ready for field tests in 2011.