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Though Halo 3 held the all-time entertainment industry record for single-day sales for eight months, it could be a long time before anyone bests the record-shattering sales achieved by GTA IV.

In large part, Pachter said, that’s because the GTA franchise has the significant advantage of being perhaps the world’s most popular video game title that is available on multiple video game platforms. Indeed, many analysts have said that the game is not only selling well on its own, but is also driving sales of the consoles it can be played on, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3.

And beyond the cross-platform versus single-platform issue, there’s also the small matter of the miniscule selection of full-fledged AAA games that simply attract huge audiences.

“If you measure in terms of one-day sales,” said Michael Pachter, a video game analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, “there’s likely nothing (that can break the record) until the next GTA.”

And given how quickly Bungie Studios’ Halo 3 was reduced to second place, it stands to reason that even the monstrous pile of cash GTA IV has earned so far–it has already sold more than 6 million copies, Take-Two said–could be in danger from some game already in the pipeline.

“Part of this is also where we are in the hardware cycle,” Pidgeon said, explaining that GTA IV was published when the Xbox 360 and
PlayStation 3 have only been out for a couple of years. Over time, as millions more gamers bring those consoles home, “it’ll be easier for some blockbuster title to sell big.”

“Guitar Hero and Rock Band (are) franchises where, when you add the numbers up, they’re just spectacular,” said Pidgeon. “You see them played in bars, and (they present) a really interesting growth opportunity. There’s a lot of room for exciting growth in that sort of product. That’s the sort of thing you don’t see with GTA.

And since we’re talking the entire entertainment industry, there’s also the small matter of the forthcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from Paramount and LucasFilm.

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“The special thing about GTA is that it’s a cross-platform title and can leverage the install bases of both” consoles, said IDC games analyst Billy Pidgeon. “The fact that you could only play Halo on the Xbox 360 made a difference.”

‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ broke the all-time records for single-day and one-week entertainment industry sales. It looks like it could be tough for any forthcoming game to knock GTA IV off the top of the hill.

Another set of titles that could contend for the all-time sales records, though probably not the short-term records, are the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, since they will likely have an endless supply of expansions and accessories. And they have long-term potential that even GTA probably can’t match.

But Spore presents a couple of problems, at least in terms of whether or not it could be an all-time best-selling game. First, it is a PC–and
Mac–title, not a console game. And secondly, according to Pidgeon, it doesn’t seem an obvious choice for endless expansions like The Sims franchise is.

But according to several industry experts contacted for this story, none of those titles seems likely to score the kind of cash in a single day or single week that GTA IV did. So while one of those games, or possibly another one not listed might some day best GTA IV in total sales, it seems that its short-term sales records are safe for the foreseeable future.

That said, there’s no reason to think that GTA IV will set or hold any kind of long-term sales numbers. While it’s certain to make gigantic amounts of money and sell many, many millions of copies, it’s not necessarily the kind of game that will sustain its sales over the long haul. Rather, it’s the kind of game the attracts hard-core gamers, most of whom want to get it right away.

Among the games that are set to be released in the next few months that seem like potential contenders: Electronic Arts’ Spore, Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft II, Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, EA’s 2009 version of Madden football, LucasArts’ Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Activision’s next Guitar Hero offering, Harmonix’s next Rock Band version and Nintendo’s Wii Fit.

“Personally, I think Spore is going to be a huge influence on the games industry,” Pidgeon said. “And I think it’s going to do well. I don’t know if it’s going to be another Sims, but I think it will be broadly popular.”

“Halo and GTA are fairly unique properties in the interactive entertainment world,” said Colin Sebastian, a senior analyst for Lazard Capital Markets, “so it’s difficult to say if anything in the next couple of years will reach these (early sales) levels.”

By comparison, Halo 3 is only available for the
Xbox 360.

And while none of the analysts interviewed for this article could see any already announced game topping GTA IV’s short-term records, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

(Credit:
Rockstar Games)

In fact, the timing of the GTA IV launch itself could eventually be why it gets surpassed.

Spore (video game)
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (video game)
StarCraft II (video game)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (movie)
Something else
Nothing will break that record.

On Wednesday, Take-Two Interactive, which owns GTA IV developer Rockstar Games, announced that the new game had raked in all-time records of $310 million on its launch day of April 29 and $500 million during its first week. The single-day figure shattered the previous record, set last September by Halo 3, of $170 million.

News.com Poll Great expectations
What has the best chance of breaking Grand Theft Auto IV’s entertainment industry record for first-day sales?

Some people are expecting Spore, the next game from The Sims creator Will Wright, to be a big winner for EA, particularly because The Sims became the best-selling PC game of all time and recently passed 100 million total units sold, counting all its expansions and sequels.

“If you measure in terms of lifetime sales, I think Wii Fit,” Nintendo’s forthcoming exercise game, could break sales records, said Pachter. “I think it’s going to attach about a one-third rate to all Wiis, and globally, that means (since there have been 20 million Wiis sold), it’ll pass GTA IV by the end of next year.”

For both companies, it’s probably a response to the fact that these Silicon Valley high-flyers are still independently run, with neither willing to cave to a buyout but with the likelihood of an IPO still less than concrete. According to VentureBeat, banks aren’t willing to take the companies public unless they pull in higher profits.

On Monday we heard that Facebook was allowing current employees to sell a delineated portion of their common stock, something that the company confirmed on Tuesday.

LinkedIn declined comment on the report.

Facebook more or less acknowledged in its confirmation statement Tuesday that the plan is a way for employees to “sit tight” while the company works on the “growth over profits” mantra that COO Sheryl Sandberg encapsulated in a talk at the F8 Conference last month. “To provide employees with a financial cushion while we continue to build the company, Facebook has designed a one-time program to enable employees to realize some liquidity,” the statement read.

Now, VentureBeat’s Eric Eldon, who also originally reported the Facebook tidbit, says that LinkedIn employees are going to have the option of doing the same. The business social network, Eldon wrote, is allowing current employees to sell 20 percent of their equity in the company at a $500 million valuation. That’s quite a bit lower than the billion-dollar valuation reportedly bestowed upon the company after its recent $53 million Series D funding round.

The “Nehalem” Core i7 will use DDR3 memory and QuickPath interconnect technology, both expected to improve performance. The i7 is slated to ship in the fourth quarter.

Intel's Tukwila chip (a.k.a Itanium) is overlooked these days because lower-end server chips are adequate for many corporate customers

(Credit:
Intel)

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Brooke Crothers)

The Xeon 7400, previously codenamed Dunnington, will be the last of the “Penryn” class of processors that Intel will ship, Gelsinger said at IDF. Sun Microsystems, HP, and Dell are slated to ship servers with this chip.

(Credit:
Brooke Crothers)

Intel Chairman Barrett brought out Carnegie Mellon University’s Johnny Chung Lee, who demonstrated how cheap, off-the-shelf technology–in this case a makeshift whiteboard–can go a long way. “To be interesting today, technology has to be the fastest, the best, the brightest, the lightest, but here you can see if you sacrifice a little bit of capability and performance for dramatic savings in cost, you can have a pretty dramatic impact,” Chung said.

Intel UrbanMax concept design has a 10-inch screen and uses special low-power Centrino 2 processors

Intel's David Perlmutter (blue shirt) holds a quad-core HP laptop as he listens to Keith LeFebvre, vice president and general manager for business notebooks, HP PSG Americas

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Brooke Crothers)

The Fujitsu U2020 uses a 5.6-inch screen and packs 60 GB storage and 1GB of memory. It comes with
Windows Vista.

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Brooke Crothers)

Intel introduced the Media Processor CE 3100 for consumer electronic devices

Intel also officially rolled out its first mobile quad-core processor, the QX9300 (2.53GHz). Hewlett-Packard’s EliteBook 8730w can be configured with the new processor.

The smartphone-targeted Moorestown processor–due in 2009-2010–is centered on a highly integrated part called Lincroft, which Intel said has now reached the “first silicon” stage. Langwell is a supporting chip that will handle I/O, or input-output.

The CE 3100 has been developed for Internet-connected consumer electronics (CE) products such as optical media players, connected CE devices, advanced cable set top boxes, and digital TVs. The media processor (previously codenamed “Canmore”) combines features for high-definition video support, home-theater quality audio and advanced 3-D graphics, all based on Intel’s ubiquitous IA x86 architecture. Intel expects to begin shipments of this product next month.

Intel Chairman Craig Barrett delivers the IDF keynote. Barrett criticized America’s K-12 educational system and said great technology still can’t take the place of great teachers.

(Credit:
Brooke Crothers)

Update with Dunnington and Core i7 photos, text.

The latest and greatest silicon and derivative products is what the Intel Developer Forum is all about. Moorestown, Tolapai, and Canmore are just a few of the chips detailed at IDF this week, while UrbanMax, new netbooks, and the first laptops based on the quad-core mobile processor were among showcased products.

It is interesting to note that major PC makers have adopted Intel concept designs in the past. Last year, Intel offered a ultra-thin laptop concept design that was eventually adopted by HP for its Voodoo Envy 133 notebook.

Intel’s Nehalem processor was a focal point of IDF because it’s a new microarchitecture and because it’s coming soon: the fourth quarter. One of Nehalem’s features that Intel detailed was Turbo Mode, which is essentially a switch that turns off unused processor cores and then uses the remaining active cores more efficiently. Intel Senior VP Pat Gelsinger said that NASA is “anticipating delivery of thousands of Nehalems” for climate modeling and space exploration.

The "Dunnington" Xeon 7400 series is a six-core processor that will ship in September

The tiny Fujitsu U2020 has a 5.6-inch screen and uses an Atom processor

The often-ignored Tukwila (Itanium) processor will go quad-core later this year. Intel bills it as the world’s first 2 billion transistor processor. Tukwila is designed to provide highly scalable and reliable performance for mission-critical enterprise server solutions. The chip will put 4 processor cores on the same die (like the “Nehalem” i7 processor) and pack in a whopping 30MB of cache memory.

The Atom processor is being embedded in industrial devices that often require fanless operation.

The Core i7 desktop processor will be the first of the "Nehalem" family of chips to launch

One of the more novel devices demonstrated was the 10-inch Intel UrbanMax a computer that can switch between a laptop and tablet. This by itself isn’t groundbreaking because tablet PCs from Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba already do this. The novelty is the size and design: it is smaller than an ultraportable–like the Toshiba Portege–yet is designed like an oversize mobile Internet device such as Compal JAX 10. When configured as a tablet, the keyboard is hidden but can morph into a laptop by sliding out the keyboard, which tilts the screen.

The headliner of this year's IDF was the Nehalem processor and Intel had a lot to say about a power-saving technology inside Nehalem called Turbo Mode, which is based on Intel’s Power Gates Silicon Technology

Intel's 2009-2010 Moorestown processor consists of two chips called Lincroft and Langwell

This configuration is priced at $429 and will be available in the next few weeks, according to a Lenovo official at IDF.

(Credit:
Brooke Crothers)

Intel UrbanMax in laptop configuration

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Intel)

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Brooke Crothers)

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Brooke Crothers)

(Credit:
Brooke Crothers)

The IdeaPad S series netbook comes with a 10.2-inch XGA screen, an Atom N270 processor (1.60GHz/533MHz front side bus/512KB cache memory), 512MB of memory, a 5400RPM 80GB hard disk drive, Broadcom 11b/g Wi-Fi wireless, and Windows XP Home Edition.

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Brooke Crothers)

Intel Tolapai system-on-a-chip motherboard

Lenovo IdeaPad S series netbook

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Brooke Crothers)

The Aigo is one example of many similar mobile Internet device designs (such as the Compal JAX 10) that have sliding keyboards.

Aigo P8880 also packs an Atom processor

The Intel Tolapai system-on-a-chip (SOC) accelerates encryption and decryption of data and the handling of algorithms needed for firewalling.

Click here for full coverage of the Intel Developer Forum.

An Atom processor-based fanless tablet PC from Nexcom

An Intel official demonstrating the device said that “UrbanMax is an innovation platform from Intel. This is a product-ready concept.” UrbanMax uses “Montevina” Centrino 2 small form-factor (SSF) silicon. SSF chip packaging is used in the MacBook Air and results in lower voltage and smaller size than typical Intel low-power mobile processors.

(Credit:
Brooke Crothers)

(Credit:
Brooke Crothers)

Intel Capital, the chipmaker’s venture arm, has signed a deal to acquire a $20 million stake in Telligent Systems, which specializes in social-networking software for businesses.

Telligent manufactures a product called Community Server, which provides clients with blog, forum, wiki, and other collaborative and social software; the software is used primarily for customer relations and marketing. Those clients include the Associated Press, MySpace, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Visa, Honda, Dell, and the NFL.

The two companies have not disclosed a valuation for Dallas-based Telligent. Part of the $20 million stake has already been acquired, the companies said Tuesday, with the rest to follow within 12 months.

Intel is an existing client of Telligent.

“This significant investment from Intel Capital will allow us to grow our team, our capabilities, and our reach during a time of market expansion,” Telligent CEO Rob Howard said in a statement. The investment will be directed toward geographic expansion, hiring more sales professionals, and increasing Telligent’s advertising and marketing budget.

Hello, Slashdot.

But at what cost?

Good technology, sure, but Larrabee isn’t built like Intel CPUs and doesn’t work like Intel CPUs. Intel only gets four to six CPU cores on a 45nm chip today. I’d estimate Larrabee’s cores are a third to half the size of a Core 2 Duo core, so a 32-core Larrabee could be 3 to 4 times the size of an Intel quad-core processor (not counting the caches)–call it 400 to 600 mm^2.

Intel used this figure for some comparisons of rendering performance. If Larrabee ran at 1GHz, for example, Intel’s figures show that it would take somewhere from 7 to 25 Larrabee cores to reach that 60Hz frame rate.

So I think a 32-core Larrabee in 45nm could draw 300W or more for real-world workloads, and that’s just the chip–the local memory and any other needed circuitry will draw more power. Since this kind of power consumption is probably impossible to support in a real graphics card, something will have to give. The number of cores or the operating frequency could be lower, the overall efficiency could be lower than implied by the Larrabee disclosures to date, or perhaps the 32-core variant will just have to wait for 32nm process technology–putting it yet another year behind AMD/ATI and Nvidia.

Alas, this isn’t really what I said or meant.

A 32-core Larrabee running at 3GHz would probably make the GTX280 look inexpensive and power-efficient. If the rumors I heard at Siggraph are correct, Larrabee’s made on Intel CPU fabs, one-half to one generation behind the company’s leading processors. That probably means 65nm right now, maybe 45nm by the time Larrabee ships.

Also unlike a CPU, when running hard, most of Larrabee is running at the same time. Intel CPUs rarely experience this condition–they have a lot of execution units and big caches, and no real-world workloads can beat on everything at once. That’s why CPU vendors have to create custom-written thermal-virus programs to test maximum power consumption.

So that means we’re probably looking at needing about eight Larrabee cores to render F.E.A.R. at 60Hz.

(This post isn’t the big Larrabee followup I’ve been planning, which will go into many other details of the chip’s design and operation based on information I’ve gathered at Siggraph 2008 and the Intel Developer Forum. I’m waiting on that until after Hot Chips and NVISION 08 this week, where I’m sure I’ll learn even more about this forthcoming chip.)

F.E.A.R. is a DX9 game, of course, and the GTX280 was not optimized for those older games. On a game like Crysis, I suspect the GTX280 would display relatively much better performance. Nevertheless, a big Larrabee could be pretty fast.

What I actually described as equating to “the performance of a 2006-vintage…graphics chip” was a performance standard defined by Intel itself–running the game F.E.A.R. at 60 fps in 1,600 x 1,200-pixel resolution with four-sample antialiasing.

But discrete Larrabee graphics chips may have more cores. Published estimates suggest 32 cores, and that would be much better than a 2006 GPU. At least on F.E.A.R, a 32-core Larrabee could be faster than Nvidia’s current GTX280.

Larrabee will probably run much faster than that, at least on desktop variants. Let’s consider the most commonly mentioned clock-frequency target in public reports: 3GHz. Also, let’s assume that Larrabee performance scales linearly with frequency and core count.

In a story on PC Pro, Nvidia architect John Montrym (whose name was incorrectly spelled “Mottram”) quoted my recent blog post on Larrabee as concluding that “the ‘large’ Larrabee in 2010 will have roughly the same performance as a 2006 GPU from Nvidia or ATI.”

THAT would be performance comparable to a 2006 GPU, and there will probably be Larrabee variants–especially for CPU or chipset integration–with that level of performance.

Larrabee, on the other hand, gets most of its performance from the wide vector units, and these are relatively easy to keep busy.

Bottom line, I feel like we need to wait for Intel to give us better performance estimates before we start making specific comparisons with competing GPUs, but I don’t expect Larrabee will be fully competitive on power or performance for the price.

The vulnerability is considered critical for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and moderate for
Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, Microsoft said.

Microsoft also plans to host a Webcast at 11 a.m. PST as part of Patch Tuesday, which comes the second Tuesday of every month. There will be just one security update.

Updated January 9 to clarify that vulnerability is critical for some of the software and moderate for other Windows versions.

Microsoft will issue a patch on Tuesday for Windows vulnerability that could allow a hacker to gain control of a computer remotely, the company said in an alert on Thursday.

The software maker will also release nonsecurity updates on Windows Update and Windows Server Update Services, as well as an updated version of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET)

Gyminee boasts extra features like a forum so you can discuss health considerations, and you can make friends with others and track their progress. If you want, you can also set challenges and see how close you are to achieving those goals. Gyminee offers good features and it’s worth using even though it doesn’t have enough dietary information.

WorkoutBOX
WorkoutBOX is an informational community where users can share their favorite workout programs and educate others in the process.

One of my favorite features from WorkoutBOX is how it groups different kinds of exercises. For example, the site features a page that gives users workout programs to try at home, without exercise equipment. The site’s 20-minute outdoor workout includes instructions on squats, dips, push-ups, and more to give you a full workout in that time. I tried it and was impressed by the program–it’s a quick, yet difficult workout that worked every part of my body. It was great.

Livestrong
Livestrong, which was co-founded by famed bicyclist Lance Armstrong, is much simpler to use than HealtheHuman or Gyminee. In fact, it’s one of the easiest services to use in this roundup.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET)

Spring is almost here, and soon we’ll be showing the world much more than just our heads and hands. That means it’s time to get up off the couch and start doing whatever we can to get our bods ready for summer. Need advice on that? These sites can help.

Once you sign up for HealtheHuman, you’ll be asked to create a personal profile detailing your gender, age, height, weight, and much more. From there, you can set goals, track your workouts, examine how nutritious your meals are, and create a balanced, healthy lifestyle with the site’s outstanding resources.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET)

I was just as impressed with Livestrong’s dietary section. The site provides information on what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat. It also includes recipe suggestions to ensure you’re eating something each day that’s both tasty and healthy. I’ll admit that I’d rather have a bowl of ice cream than dried peanuts and lima beans, but if I really want to lose weight, I guess I’ll have to follow the rules. Livestrong makes it a bit easier though, thanks to better recipes and tastier options.

MyTrainer
If you’re looking for help with a workout routine or you simply want to find some exercises that will help you strengthen your muscles, MyTrainer provides videos by other users showing how it’s done.

HealtheHuman
HealtheHuman won’t track your workouts the way Gyminee does, and it won’t even try to calculate your body mass index or other important health indexes. What it does do really well is give you all the information you need to be a healthier human.

I won't input my health records in HealtheHuman.

Livestrong won’t track your progress, but it doesn’t require registration. The site is designed specifically for knowledge-seekers who want information on exercises and diets. And it provides that service better than any other site in this roundup.

Workouts are great on WorkoutBOX

What I really liked about Livestrong was that it went beyond just exercise and diet. The site also features suggestions on creating a more balanced life and dealing with stress.

The ideal package

While Gyminee does a fine job with workouts and tracking, I was disappointed with its dietary advice. It does provide a detailed analysis of required calorie, fat, and protein intake to get you to your goal weight, but it doesn’t do much more. It doesn’t tell you what to eat and how to do it. It doesn’t tell you when you should be eating. It basically tells you that you need to have a certain number of calories every day and leaves it at that. For a full-featured health improvement site, that’s weak.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET)

Generally, using the community’s wisdom to help you in your workout routine works well. In fact, I found that most of the exercises on WorkoutBOX that came from other users were quite helpful in getting me to work on the parts of my body that I wanted to strengthen.

In a matter of seconds, you’ll be able to join Gyminee and start creating a workout regimen that will help you lose weight, tone your muscles, or gain strength. And you won’t need to do it alone. With the help of Gyminee, you can find exercises and create a regimen from pre-configured workout routines based on your goals. Gyminee does a fine job of helping you do whatever you want.

So which site of the bunch should you be using first? Although no site is perfect, Livestrong is a great site that’s both easy to use and offers dietary and exercise features you’ll probably be happy with. Of the products in this group, it’s the best.

If you don’t want video, you can see photos or listen to audio helping you learn different exercises. There are also some articles written by users, but they are not nearly as helpful as those on HealtheHuman or Livestrong.

Overall, the community at WorkoutBOX is intelligent and knows what they’re doing. There were some folks who seemed like they were trying to make others believe they knew more than they did, but for the most part, you can learn quite a bit by going to the site and listening to what others have to say, and seeing the exercises they perform to improve their health.

HealtheHuman is free if you want to use the features outlined above, but charges if you want unlimited storage of health data.

Gyminee
If you’re looking for a way to track your workouts and get some dietary advice, Gyminee is a great place to start.

MyTrainer has a great selection of videos.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET)

I was suspect of MyTrainer at first. Many of the videos are low-quality, and there is a lot of repetition among them. That wasn’t such a bad thing for more complicated routines, but I don’t need 10 videos showing me how to perform the basic push-up.

One feature that HealtheHuman offers that I didn’t like is its health record tracking tool. You can literally place every single doctor’s visit and health issue into the service and have access to it from anywhere. Some think that’s a great feature and worth using, but I’m not one of them. I don’t feel comfortable providing my entire medical history to a small site such as this. I ignored this feature.

MyTrainer is a useful site if you can’t quite figure out how to perform an exercise by reading about it. But its general lack of good dietary information and the fact that the videos are created by other users who may or may not know what they’re doing means this site should not be your first destination when you want to get back into shape. I think you should consider it a backup when you need to see how to perform an exercise.

Creating a custom workout in Gyminee is simple.

Although I’m not too fond of Livestrong’s design, its dietary and exercise advice is excellent. The site’s Fitness tab includes a ton of exercises that help you work on anything from your shoulders to your calves. The sheer number of exercises puts Livestrong ahead of the competition; there are literally hundreds of different routines for the major muscle groups.

Gyminee’s tracking tools are very good. Once you sign up, you can put your weight, resting heart rate, and measurements into the system to see where you stand today. As long as you keep inputting that information on a regular basis, it will show you a detailed graph providing your progress over the term of your workout. That’s easily my favorite feature because it’s a great motivation tool that helps me see just how far I’ve come since I started exercising.

Once I started digging deeper into MyTrainer, I realized that there’s a lot to like. The site features videos for people based on age, amount of time it takes to finish an exercise, and more. Whether you want something simple or something difficult tailored to who you are individually, the site will have it for you. In fact, I found exercises tailored to my age, body size, and goals in a matter of seconds. It was an outstanding experience.

Mental health is important, too, on Livestrong.

The major issue with WorkoutBOX is it’s not a full-featured health improvement site. You won’t find dietary advice and you won’t have any way to track your progress.

When I first started using HealtheHuman, I was surprised by all the resources it offered. Whether I wanted to lose weight, tone my muscles, or increase strength, the site gave me dietary and exercise instructions to do just that. When I logged my day’s meals and workout routine into the system, the site’s Nutrition Analyzer modified my future eating and workout routine to ensure I stayed on track to reach my goals.