I don't know if you were one of those who had a direct contribution - as buyers, of course - to the Black Friday sales, but that doesn't really matter. Somebody was really into shopping last Friday, and - if I had to speak for myself - I skipped this day, preparing myself(and my budget) for the holiday season. Of course, talking about the Black Friday sales all over would be almost impossible, so let's focus on Take-Two, shall we?

Speaking at the Reuters Media Summit in New York, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. Chief Executive Strauss Zelnick said this year's Black Friday "was better than expectations, but it's pretty hard these days -- being slightly down is the new up." Obviously, last Friday's sales can't predict a healthy holiday season, but that's what remains to be seen.<-125x125 Button - right->

According to Zelnick, strong titles will continue to sell well - and that's perfectly natural, if you ask me - but "everyone's at best cautiously optimistic. You're unlikely to be celebrating, but you'll be OK. In terms of how our titles are performing, I feel that it's within that range."

Regarding Take-Two's financial position, despite the fact no GTA 4 sales numbers were made public, Zelnick said "We are well financed and well structured (and) we own our intellectual property. I feel really good about how we are positioned to be an independent company."

Just my five cents - a healthy gaming market means one able to engulf properly strong titles, and not one that allows crappy titles to exist simply because they are backed by a big player in the industry. I won't give any names now, but I'll be back with a review in a few days, and you'll find out once again why not to buy a title that we were all waiting for...

In most parts of the world, the gaming industry seems to have problems. It's not about losing focus and not being able to deliver games with a story to match the graphics, and it's not about the economic problems, either. I think there's a lot of trouble with governments trying to label games as evil, take various games out of the market, and so on, but - guess what? South Korea will become a new heaven for the gaming industry!

Just think about this, and we have a story already - according to Kotaku, "The South Korean government says they will invest 350 billion won in the computer game industry by 2012." <-125x125 Button - right->The reason for such a juicy money input? Just because things are working properly, that's why!

Same source says that the South Korean Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Yu In-chon talked on Wednesday about plans to take the gaming industry to a whole new level, since it already hit a billion-dollar export goal this year! Now, that's what we can call "serious gaming," don't you agree?

Call it a crisis or not, but it seems that, with proper management, the world won't go down. We're only going through major changes, and best thing to do is try to understand what's happening around us because, in a way or another, the gaming industry will pull it off, it only remains to be seen where will go all the money generated by it...

Another month has gone, so the time has come for a new video game statistics round! This time, we'll leave the DS vs GameBoy fight aside, since we'll only check a small slice of the European games statistics. To be more accurate, it's about the Xbox 360 sale becoming as ubiquitous as rain...

...and since we're talking about European sales, it all makes sense - after all, the rainy UK is one of the strongest markets for the Xbox 360 in Europe, but it is also interesting to mention that, while the Xbox 360 managed to outsold PlayStation 3 on the whole continent, significant market gains were noticed in France, <-125x125 Button - right->Spain and Italy.

The little big story of European Xbox 360 sale stats goes like this - according to Chris Lewis, regional VP of Xbox in Europe, "November was a very significant milestone for Xbox – we sold the most consoles ever in our history in Europe, and are outselling PlayStation 3 week-on-week across Europe."

Obviously, price cuts helped a lot, and this is no secret. "Since the reduction in the Xbox 360 ERP in September, bringing the entry-level price point for Xbox 360 down to GBP 129.99, consumers have responded enthusiastically to the Xbox 360 offering. Our strong partnerships with retail and with publishers have played a big role in this success – we are working closely with retail to ensure a steady supply of consoles throughout the Christmas season, and third-party games have been selling well on the Xbox 360 platform and providing great choice for consumers," concluded Lewis.