Wedbush Morgan Securities' 2009 industry report includes a list of the top thirty brands of 2008. The report notes that of the companies whose brands appear on the list, Nintendo, EA, and Activision were the only three with more than one brand to generate over $100 million at retail in the US last year.

And boy, did they. The top brand of the year, Guitar Hero -- perhaps you've heard of it -- was responsible for $992 million in US sales in 2008. The next two brands, Mario Bros. and Rock Band, generated $761 million and $662 million, respectively.

One company is notably absent from the top brands list: "Most strikingly," the report reads, "Sony had no top 30 brands for the third year in a row." Microsoft had two brands on the list (Gears of War and Fable) and Nintendo had four (Mario Bros., Wii Fit, Wii Play, and Pokémon).

See the list of brands after the break.

At least 1.8 million copies of Left 4 Dead have been sold at retail since launch (on both 360 & PC) (but we'd love to see the digital download figures instead).

Because hot on the heels of new product or DLC announcements this week, the game has returned to the #1 spot on Steam's charts. It's even experiencing a retail renaissance of sorts, climbing to #4 on NPD's shopfront charts. Were the game available on Direct2Drive, it'd probably be near the top on that, too.

NPD Sales Charts January 25-31 (via Shacknews)

This morning the NPD Group released their July sales preview. While the monthly data that NPD typically sends out is hard numbers, these are all predictions based on their analysis of early sales. Those hard numbers won't be hitting till later this month.

The in-depth packet doesn't give us predictions of the top selling games of the month across the board, it does tell us that the group believes that the Wii will manage to outsell the Playstaiton 3 and Xbox 360 combined in July and than the DS will approach tripling Playstation Portable sales.

Call of Duty 4 for the Xbox 360 narrowly outsells Devil May Cry 4 in February US Sales Charts

The month saw some impressive debuts, including strong sales for Lost Odyssey and Turok. Wii Play and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games continue to be lapped up by the masses, with Guitar Hero III and Rock Band taking the open slots on the top ten. Latest Numbers follow..

Having crossed the $10 billion revenue mark as of the end of October, with its two biggest revenue generating months still to come. October '07 saw the industry pull in $1.1 billion, across hardware and software, ensuring that this year will be its best. Much of that revenue can be chalked up to higher console prices for the Wii and PlayStation 3, plus some very strong selling software.

Sales of Square Enix's title Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII almost broke the half million mark in the game’s first week on release. Helps pump up PSP sales.