PS3 sales hit 1m in Japan

PlayStation 3 sales hit the one million mark in Japan, six months after Nintendo's popular Wii did the same. The much cheaper Wii sells more than four times faster than Sony's PS3, reports GamePro.com.

"According to game magazine publisher Enterbrain, Sony has sold 1.01 million units of the PS3 as of 15 July, while Wii sales totalled 2.9 million units as of 8 July and sales of Microsoft's Xbox 360 have came to 420 705 units," reports Reuters.

Sony launched the PS3 in Japan on 11 November, while the Wii debuted on 2 December. Microsoft's Xbox 360 has been on sale in the country since December 2005.

It is still too early to claim Google has peaked, but the number one search engine lost market share in June, while Microsoft gained, says China View.

"Google has a tendency to see share declines during the summer, driven in part by vacations, fewer work days, and reliance on academia from its core user base," said comScore spokesperson Andrew Lipsman, via e-mail. He noted that Google and Yahoo both saw increases in query volume in June and that Google's "share decline is really a function of the disproportionate increase at Microsoft this month".

The overall volume of US search queries reached eight billion in June, up 6% from May and 26% from June 2006, according to statistics released today by Internet metrics company comScore.

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation, which administers the open source Firefox Web browser, has patched a critical hole that could enable Microsoft's Internet Explorer to infect users' computers with malware by launching a Firefox session from a malicious Web site.

However, Microsoft has yet to issue a fix for the bug, which still exposes IE users to malware if they visit a bad Web site, says ITWire.

According to Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2007-23, "the vulnerability is exposed when a user browses to a malicious Web page in Internet Explorer and clicks on a specially crafted link".

GamerMetrics, which tracks online browsing habits for more than 30 million gamers, has compiled the most anticipated games for the second half of 2007, according to online page visits.

Topping the list of prospective best sellers is Halo 3, followed by Madden NFL 08 and Grand Theft Auto IV, says PC World.

Other games such as Guitar Hero III, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Half-Life 2: The Orange Box are also expected to sell well.