spectrum48k

US figures from NPD for month of November

Nintendo Wii: 2,000,000
Nintendo DS: 1,560,000
XBOX360: 830,000
Playstation3: 378,071

consumer spend on gaming hardware/software during November:
$2.91 billion USD

HankScorpio

Is the new DS on sale in the US yet?

boxst

I'm absolutely astounded the Wii keeps selling as well as it does.

Steve

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Still does . . .

spectrum48k

So was the games industry - the vast majority were caught out big style by it's popularity. EA just thinks everyone wants a new FIFA, NFS, NBA, or whatever - every year.

EA have had some dismal sales figures recently - thank god.

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

amazing from the Wii considering there's not one game on it that appeals to me.

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

i wondered about that as well, but the following article explained it nicely:



November sales of Wii, the games console produced by Nintendo, more than doubled in the United States from the same period last year to a record-breaking two million units.

The figure was a record for any console in any month excluding last December, and eclipsed rival machines, according to NDP Group, the market researcher. Microsoft sold 836,000 units of its Xbox 360, up 8.6per cent on November last year. Sony's PlayStation 3 sales totalled 378,000, down nearly a fifth. The figures will silence critics who dismissed the cheap and cheerful Wii, which costs much less than PlayStation 3, as a novelty with limited appeal.

Rather, the Wii's developers, who broke new ground by building “a video games console for people who don't like video games” — women and older audiences — appear to have hit on a hardy winning formula. The console's relatively low price, in particular, looks well suited to an economic downturn, analysts say.

The sales pitch of Nintendo, the Japanese video game company, now appears to be hitting a familiar note: the company is giving warning that it cannot guarantee adequate supplies of the Wii to meet demand, a message it also gave out last year.

Reggie Fils-Aime, the head of Nintendo's operations in America, said: “It's clear that the consumer demand is exceptionally strong. With all our activity and effort, we can't commit that the product will be available up until Christmas Day. We're in uncharted territories when it comes to demand.”
Other video games companies approach the key Christmas period in less festive moods. Electronic Arts, the largest games publisher, gave warning this week that it would miss earnings targets because of weak sales. THQ, the company behind the Wall-E games based on the animated Pixar character, said it would close five of its studios, eliminating 250 jobs.

Nintendo is also leading in sales of hand-held game players. Consumers bought 1.57 million DS machines, compared with 421,000 units of Sony's PSP, NPD said. The PSP sales are down 26 per cent from last year.

According to NPD, the video games industry in America achieved $2.9 billion in sales last month, up 10 per cent from a year earlier.

phil_wrx

iTrader: (2)

do u think the ps3 sales are suffering with the fact u can pick up a blu ray for £150 now ?

i mean a lot of people got a ps3 for the blu ray

spectrum48k

That certainly hasn't helped for sure.

That and the price reduction on Xbox360's - a console that people are realising is the PS3's equal when it comes to games. Hat's off to Microsoft for doing a great job (apart from the RROD!)

kbsub

Seem to remember this very forum calling the Wii a gimmick

spectrum48k

Yes, there's a few people slag it off on here, but the cognoscenti know the score.

It's targeted at a completely different demographic than most of the users on here. It's opened up markets that most publishers had no idea existed and for that, it's fantastic. It's not the fastest thing on earth, but ask yourself, when was the last time you 10 year old kid or grandma asked how many giga flops or what polygon throughput it has ?

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

This must be the best time of year for Wii sales, everyone wants one to play on with friends and family over xmas, then like most Wii owners, it'll hardly get used again till next year.
I've only bought Mario Kart for mine this year. Oh and Wii Fit but that's a present for the wife (who will no doubt get bored of it after a couple of goes )

mart360

Funny how games studios are closing based on poor sales...

It wouldnt be anything to do with turning out rehashed crap every year

THQ used to produce some gems back in its heyday, unfortunatly the

games industry at the mo seems to think everything has to be a huge

budget, graphic fest. All eye candy does not a game make!!

Which is exactly what the wii capitalises on, simple graphics but good

game play!!!


Mart

Allan

iTrader: (1)

Well my wife has been totally hooked on Wii fit for the last couple of months, I must admit it does look pretty good. It's very addictive, especially with several Mii's all trying to get the top scores.

RB5-Black

look for the attach ratio on each console. The Wii is selling by the bucket load but has the lowest software to hardware ratio of any console for this or the last generation.

So it's not getting played as much as the others ?

Ant

Ps3 has been let down big time by there lack or games, I can't see gt5 coming cos it keep getting delayed

ChrisB

Our Wii Fit has been getting hammered of late, if only for me to have a damn good laugh at my girlfriend trying to hulu-hoop

P1Fanatic

As I said on the last post of consoles sales it doesnt mean much without attach rate and profit per unit and from software sales.

Sony could well be selling less but at twice the price the profit could be pretty similar.

That said I cant imagine there is much cost in making the Wii - its a dvd drive with a gfx card lol. Must admit I have not used mine in a while as been busy with the PS3. Mario got boring quickly tbh.

I just finished GT5 getting gold in all events. Tried a few times online but its rather buggy and not very consistent when dishing out penalties which spoils it somewhat. However the driving / handling is very very good.

Simon

Iain Young

As long as you don't compare it to a real car of course

P1Fanatic

I often drive my car with a PS3 gamepad instead of the steering wheel Im sure thats what clarkson asked for with the Nissan GTR

Simon

spectrum48k

Don't think there's much profit on each unit...

When the Xbox 360 went on sale last year, BusinessWeek commissioned tech researcher iSuppli to take apart the console and estimate how much it cost to manufacture. The firm concluded that, including all pack-in accessories (hard drive, controller, cables, and so on), each premium 360 set Microsoft back some $126. Before labor, just the parts it took to make the console cost $470--$71 more than the full-fledged system's $399 price tag.

This week, iSuppli conducted a similar cost-analysis study of the PlayStation 3--with even more shocking results. According to the study, the hardware for the 20-gigabyte PS3 costs $805.85 alone--$306.85 more than the stated list price of $499. The 60GB model hardware costs $840.35, $241.35 more than the $599 sticker price Sony announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo earlier this year. (Note: Sony did not announce price points of $499.99 and $599.99 at E3, although some retailers list the consoles' prices as such.)

And as for attach rate, PS3 lags behind the others...

There's still daylight between attach rates for market leader Xbox 360, and those on PlayStation 3 and Wii. But the margin is narrowing.

That's according to fresh figures calculated by the studious Gamasutra, which used recent Nintendo presentation figures and a mixture of known numbers and NPD data to arrive at a conclusion. The boffins.

As of September 2008, the site claims that there are:

8.1 games sold for every Xbox 360
5.5 games sold for every Wii
5.3 games sold for every PS3.

P1Fanatic

Ive no doubt that Xbox is the better seller by virtue of what I see on here and my own circle of friends where the 360 is more prevalent, although that seems to be closing up but Xbox's main advantage was getting out a lot earlier and providing the same gfx as the later PS3.

At the end of the day all of these figures are from 3rd parties interpretations of stats released to the public. Only the manufacturers themselves know the real deal.

All I know is that gaming has never had it so good with the current competition and diversity of games. Seems like massive titles are coming out left right and centre. That coupled with the ability to buy games online at what I call proper prices (compared to high street £40-50 prices) its win win

Simon

spectrum48k

Completely agree - I've got a ton of games waiting for me on Christmas Day! I'm cooking for 8, so I'll be knackered by the time everyone shoves off and leaves me to play!

Fable II
Little Big Planet
Far Cry II
Dead Space

Happy Christmas everyone!

Geezer

Lack of games? Most games are available for all platforms.......

If you are talking about exclusives, then that is purely subjective.

However, I think the main reason the PS3 has dropped is purely price. Whether you think it is better or not wouldn't really matter, people (rightly or wrongly) are unwilling to shell out this year, for all sorts of things, and the cheaper 360 is much more attractive.

When things were good, the Blu Ray player made it look value for money, but if you are struggling to (albeit in your head, but that's another story) pay for Christmas, then it's a no brainer.

With the recession set to last well into next year, I don't really see Sony recovering from this, which is bad news for gamers. No one wants to see MS monopolise the market and stifle the competition.

Geezer

Iain Young

With new games that is relatively true, however the 360 has a much larger catalogue of cheap older games.

Why? 360 seems to be getting more exclusives at the moment. That of course may change.

Like Sony monopolised the last generation (with the PS2) you mean? They won't. Nintendo are still selling way more consoles than either Sony or MS.

P1Fanatic

Sonys problem is they have only sold one version. Ok now you have the 160gb model but the 360 has multiple price points which covers a multitude of budgets. If they had evidence of better graphics then they might have a sales differentiatior. At it stands its just the blu-ray drive which was a seller for me but not so high on everybodys list.

Simon

P1Fanatic

What are the current Xbox Exclusives btw (other that GoW2)? Genuine question.

The PS3 exclusive I look forward to after playing the Beta is Killzone 2

Simon

Iain Young

Off the top of my head (ignoring the arcade games you can download)...

Gears of War 2
The Viva Piniata Games
Banjo Kazooie
Too Human
Fable 2
Left 4 dead
Ninja Gaiden II

Coming soon...

Exclusive content fot GTA IV
Splinter Cell Conviction
Alan Wake
Age of Conan
Halo Wars

I've not included the older games, and I'm sure there are a load I've forgotten

Don't fancy that one myself, but I am looking forward to God of War 3

spectrum48k

recent report from business week talking about how Sony have lowered production costs on PS3:


BusinessWeek reports that the PS3 – which cost Sony a whopping $840 to produce in 2006 – has, through a reduction in parts and cost thereof, reached a price of $445 assembled. Sony was losing more than $200 per system sold back in the fall of '06 ... and it has now gotten that figure down to about $45. This was achievable by scaling back its inner-workings from 4,048 parts then to 2,820 today (losing backwards compatibility with PS2 games along the way). Also, the system's Cell processor, which cost Sony $89 at launch, is $46 now.

Jamz3k

I have heard this mentioned before, but does this effect the quality of newer machines compared to the original PS3?