Holiday Game Sales Semi-Merry After All?

Thanks to CNN for its report discussing specific sales numbers for November's top videogames. The report, shortly following previous analyst worries, mentions that "game software sales climbed 7 percent, as compared to November 2002", fairly reasonable, but still short of (possibly excessive?) analyst estimates. GameSpot has further commentary, mentioning the big winners ("Strong sales of True Crime: The Streets of L.A. (630,000 copies) and Tony Hawk's Underground (554,000) let Activision skate its way to a 46 increase in sales over November 2002"), and the not so fortunate ("November's big loser was Take Two Interactive, whose sales plummeted 47 percent. Hopes that Manhunt would help fill in for the absence of a [new] Grand Theft Auto game proved woefully unfounded, as the controversial game only shipped 75,000 units, a fraction of the 502,000 GTA Double Packs sold.")

Comments

Re:Interesting they left out Nintendo

[MMaestro]

I don't think the public, in general, likes Nintendo. Its a very old company, which markets few games in comparison to the PS2 and lacks the monetary warchest that Microsoft's Xbox has. True, any hardcore gamer will tell you Nintendo is the elite veteran of the gaming wars, but any non-serious gamer (read : a lot) will think that Nintendo is fading and should just die out like Sega.

Think about it from the investor's point of view. The PS2 has an insane amount of games and plenty of third party developer support. The Xbox has the Microsoft name behind and the (pretty much) proven Xbox Live. While the Gamecube has no (serious) online support, relatively few top of the line games (quality over quantity I guess), and a horrible stereotype with people thinking of Nintendo systems for 'kiddie gamers.' If I wasn't a gamer and had personal insight in the gaming market, sad to say I'd have to invest in either the Xbox or the PS2.