Game Consoles Sell Over 3.2 Million Units in November

Ground Glass writes "While there wasn't any question that November was going to be a huge month for gaming (what with those two consoles coming out and all), it's still impressive to see the numbers. In short, Nintendo's DS was the big winner with over 600,000 units sold, though the Wii and Xbox 360 also each broke half a million. The PS3 probably came in at around 200K all told for the month. Convert those numbers into dollars and you're looking at one very fat and happy industry." From the Next Generation article: "In its monthly report analyst Arcadia Investment says console sales in November topped 3.2 million units. Arcadia says hardware sales increased by at least 50% year on year, with software up about 20%. Retail dollars increased by about 25-30% to about $1.6 billion, compared to $1.3 billion in November 2005. "

Comments

DS + Wii vs. PSP + PS3

[seebs]

Remember when Nintendo had a game machine that was low-powered, but had an innovative control scheme many initially derided as gimmicky, and it was in direct competition with a higher-powered, much more expensive, Sony product which could play movies in a new and effectively proprietary format?

Apparently, it wasn't a bad plan.

Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[paladinwannabe2]

(Numbers are approximate, they didn't have exact numbers in the article)
DS (600K+) > XBox360 (500K++) > PS2 (500K+) > Wii (500K) > PSP (350K) > PS3 (~200K)


It looks like the PS2 and the Xbox 360 are both outselling the new consoles- which is surprising to me. Still, it seems Nintendo is the big winner, since they are selling an average of two games per Wii on top of actually selling a console for a profit. Microsoft seems to be doing a lot better with their 360 sales than I expected they would- I guess people decided getting a Wii or PS3 wasn't worth the effort when there was an good console readily available.

Re:Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[AuMatar]

The Wii and PS3 are hampered by availability. Although if I were Sony, the high volume of PS2 would scare me- all the PS3 brings to the table is more power. If people are still buying the PS2, then power won't be enough. It puts the Wii in a real spot to win this round, as they aren't counting on the processing power to win.

Re:Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[DrXym]

If I were Sony I wouldn't be worred about PS2 sales. Every sale means profit and more potential converts to the PS3. Maybe not today but in a few years from now. Perhaps they even see the PS2 as a good way to stay in a holding pattern until the price of the PS3 becomes more reasonable.

Re:Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[AuMatar]

With consoles, you don't have time. If people don't buy your console now, then developers won't target it (they'll target the Wii, 360, or PS2). If devs don't target it, it won't sell in the future either. Getting a large install base early is an absolute necessity, or you won't have one late.

Re:Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[be-fan]

Why should the high volumes of the PS2 scare Sony? It's exactly what happened with the PS1 when the PS2 came out. Sony overlaps their consoles in order to compensate for the fact that they initially take a loss on new ones. The PS2 has a good year in it making Sony money while the PS3 ramps up, while the GC and Xbox are quite dead by now (with TP being the GC's last hurrah).

And you say "processing power" as if it doesn't matter. The SNES was just an NES with more processing power. The PS2 was just a PS1 with more processing power, etc. The new consoles have a *lot* more processing power than the previous gen. Clever developers will use this for more immersive environments, more realistic AI, etc. For example, the 360 and PS3 are really the first consoles that have the horsepower to do realistic physics, allowing for more complex gameplay. They're also the first ones to have the horsepower to do truely interactive environments (destructible geometry, etc). As game developers get more comfortable with these new architectures, you're going to see games that you just couldn't do on previous consoles, graphics aside.

Re:Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[be-fan]

Bullshit. Dvorak was spouting off in the mid 1990s about how nobody would ever need anything more than a 200 MHz Pentium. It wasn't true then, it's not true now.

The NES to SNES upgrade was actually relatively minor. You got more colors and bigger sprites, but the CPU was still weak, so the games were the same, but prettier. The SNES -> N64 transition was huge. It was the first console that could do 3D properly. Mario 64 changed platformers completely, and would not have been possible on any previous console. FPS as a genre wasn't really feasible until then either. The PS2 was the first console that had the horsepower to have complex environments, because the N64 and PS could not push enough polygons to do more than very simplistic environments.

This generation is potentially as interesting as the N64 one. The new consoles have an order of magnitude more power than the previous gen, and more importantly, they have a lot of power that's independent of the graphics pipeline. Wheras the main CPU in the PS2 spends much of its time crunching geometry to feed the rasterizer, the geometry processor in the RSX frees the Cell in the PS3 from much of that. Wheras previous consoles had to squeeze in AI and physics into a small slice of time between handling graphics code, the current batch can spend a lot of main CPU time on those things.

Gears of War is really a prime example. Even if you toned down the graphics, such a game could not be done on previous-gen systems. They don't have the horsepower to do either the physics, nor the level complexity (battlefields strewn with junk that serves as cover).

Re:Ranked in terms of consoles sold last month:

[jackbird]

The PS2 was the first console that had the horsepower to have complex environments, because the N64 and PS could not push enough polygons to do more than very simplistic environments.

*cough*Dreamcast*cough*

Units sold doesn't necessarily mean profit

[Straif]

Of the big 3, generally only Nintendo actually makes a profit off their gaming systems in the first year of release.

By some estimates Sony is subsidizing the PS3 to the tune of $300/unit while Microsoft is probably just about breaking even on systems. The big money for Microsoft and Sony comes from game sales, and the only solid numbers I've seen in that category were for Zelda units for the Wii (400k+).

So on the money side Nintendo has made a hefty profit from their 1.1 million+ units sold, Microsoft, having learned their lesson the the original XBox is probably doing ok especially with their major head start in game sales, while Sony needs to get more of their systems into peoples homes to try and generate more disc sales. Sony's saving grace may be that they'll also get money from the boost in blu-ray movie sales.

could have been more

[netsfr]

Could have been 3.2M + 1, but there are no Wii's to be found here, the store had 20 units the first day, and sold out since.

Sony keeps heavy advertising about the PS3, but what good does it do if they get me interested in it, all to have me go down to the store to look at an empty shelf... It's having the opposite effect, more of a turn off than getting me to want one at this point.

Re:could have been more

[HappySqurriel]

A long time ago (probably a few years ago anyways) I was talking to someone in marketing about how most car comercials were awful and didn't make me want to spend $25,000+ and her reply was "Most comercials are not about attracting customers but are actually about making existing customers secure in their decision"

The fact is that there are so many PS3 comercials because Sony wants to make the fanboys think that the $600 they spent makes them own a cool product.

Re:Where are the rest of the Wiis?

[HappySqurriel]

I don't think Nintendo ever claimed that there was going to be 1,000,000 systems on launch day; I think there were a lot of rumors and speculation that if Nintendo was trying for 2,000,000 by January 1st that 1,000,000 of those would apear on the first day.

From what I understand Nintendo Shipped about 400,000 to 500,000 on day one with 200,000 to 250,000 every week following that; I have also heard that NPD's sales numbers for november end on November 26th so it is possible that they're missing 4 days of sales (and potentially 1 shipment), I don't know if this is true. All I know is that I have a friend who has been keeping touch with several retailers and is going back to stores several times a week (after they are supposed to get a shipment) but being that he can't get there when the store opens he has yet to be able to get a Wii. It seems that Nintendo is supplying a lot of units but can not match demand.

Well, at least Nintendo is happy ...

[Frag-A-Muffin]

"Convert those numbers into dollars and you're looking at one very fat and happy industry."

The only people we know for sure that's happy about all those consoles being moved is Nintendo.

*(1) Although, if you take console sales as an indirect indicator of software sales, then yes, the other guys would be happy too. More on this later

What we do know is this:

* Nintendo makes money on the Wii, right out of the gate.
* Nintendo makes money on each DS Lite sold.
* Sony's PS3 is losing $200-$300US (we don't exactly how much they're losing, but most analysts say about that range)
* Sony's PS2 hardware is profitable now.
* Microsoft was losing money on the Xbox360 at launch, but they've been working hard to reduce the cost to produce the 360, so it may be breaking even at this point. Only Microsoft knows.

So, Nintendo is certainly happy, Sony is happy PS2 still rakes it in but doesn't make up for PS3's enourmous costs, and Microsoft is happy to just be in the fight :)

*(1) Consoles moved means more software sales, which is where Microsoft and Sony plan to make their money back. (Nintendo makes money from selling ANYTHING with Nintendo on it, so we know they'll make money on software. They arguably make the most on software than any other single console game producer) Seems the internet believes Microsoft is enjoying a good software sales rate for their xbox360, they won't say of course. Meanwhile, Sony is just mum. Why? well, doesn't seem the attach rate for the PS3 is doing so hot in the US or Japan. So Sony's still far away from making money on their new system.

My point? The industry may or may not be happy, we don't know for sure, but we do know, Nintendo is happy with these numbers :)

PS WTF's with the 0.98 attach rate for PS3 in Japan?! That's amazing to me. I know lots of people are flipping these on ebay, but even in the land of the rising sun, people aren't buying it to play games. That's bad news. Japan's a huge Sony supporter. If they lose Japan, they're in trouble.

Uh... convert to dollars?

[2nd Post!]

If you convert to dollars that is $2m for Nintendo, $40m loss for Sony, and $5m loss for Microsoft.

Console sales stats

[John Vai]

Perhaps you'll want to visit the site http://nexgenwars.com/ to get a daily update on console sales.

Re:MS rumored to be making $75 per console sold

[aricept]

Not to say that the numbers are not incorrect, but the number listed for "Motherboard" on the side by side comparison includes everything ON the MB - CPU, GPU, memory; you can tally the numbers from the first list of individual parts.

Channel Stuffing

[Boogaroo]

So it looks like Microsoft is trying to flood the retail stores in an attempt to be able to claim some shipped console number near 10 million. Can't be a smart move since there are going to be piles of 360s sitting around for the next few months and they are going to have to undership next quarter and any little benefit they get from claiming higher shipment numbers now will be offset with the reciprocal low shipment news next quarter.

There's a dirty little trick there that Sony's used before. What you do is recall the overshipment, and then re-ship to places that need it. You get to count those consoles as shipped twice. Nice isn't it?

You're wrong

[LKM]

Yes, cross-platform games often look worse on the Cube than on the Xbox. That's due to bad ports, not due to the Cube - your PS2 comparison should have told you that. Look at games made specifically for the Cube. Compare the best-looking Cube games to the best-looking Xbox games, and then tell me the Xbox is significantly faster than the Cube. The Cube has games like Resident Evil 4 or Metroid Prime. The Xbox has some nice looking games, too, but nothing that really outshines the Cube's offerings.

Wii profitable? Yes.

[LKM]

Uhm, the development costs are already accounted for. Nintendo paid them. It was in their past reports. The Wii isn't yet profitable as a project, but it is profitable in that it helps Nintendo make a profit at the end of the next quarter. Every Wii sold makes Nintendo money. Every PS3 sold makes Sony lose money.