The next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary probably won’t be appearing in print and Sony top hardware sales… in Japan. My thoughts on some news this (very early) bank holiday Monday.

It is early because my five month old baby, Tristan, decided that 6AM would be a good time to start the day, having previously decided that 2:30AM and 4AM might also be suitable times. Of course, within minutes of taking the little shouter downstairs, he fell asleep. I’m the kind of person that can struggle to get back to sleep once I’ve properly woken up, so rather than try going back to bed and risk waking Tristan up, I thought I’d write a ToN (Thoughts on News… I’m trying it out).

The publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary have stated that the third edition of the ‘definitive record of the English language’ is unlikely to be released in print format. This story is still quite fresh as I’m writing this, so I don’t know if there are any unhappy bookworms out there who think that this move is some kind of sacrilege, but there shouldn’t be.

I’ve said in the past that I think media will be going the way of the mp3 before too long (big stretch, I know) and that, while games, movies, books, etc will be predominately a digital product, the physical media – Blu-ray’s, game discs, vinyl, hardback books – will become a kind of collectors item that only people who really want that special edition will buy. This fits in keeping with that; the dictionary is not a work of fiction, no classic story from a long dead author (or in the case of the Bible, many long dead authors) it is a tool, and having a dictionary in physical book form is just inefficient. You can’t search a book (quickly) and as writers who use pen and paper (or typewriters) are all but gone from the world, when will someone in need of a dictionary be far from a computer of some kind.

In other news of interest to me, Punchjump posted a summary of last weeks sales info in the games world. PS3 tops the game hardware sales… in Japan (shocking!), closely followed by the PSP. Pre-orders for Xbox’s Kinect are doing well, as well as pre-orders for the Halo: Reach Special Edition Bundle and Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Is it just me or are more and more games being released with a colon in the title? I’m not just talking about the latest Tiger Woods game! Eh? Am I right?

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