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Games Industry Sees 12 Billion in Sales For 2006
Gamespot is reporting that, with the NPD numbers in, we can finally put the debate about last year's winners and losers to rest. Overall, the industry was the winner, with a record-breaking $12.5 Billion in sales last year. December accounted for almost $4 Billion all by itself. In software, the usual suspects prevailed. Madden topped the chart with 2.8 Million in sales for the PS2 version of Madden 07. Right behind was New Super Mario Bros. on the DS, with some 2 Million in sales of its own. On the console side of things ... well, as Kotaku points out 'everyone is a winner' this year. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have all put out press releases declaring themselves the winner of the Holiday console wars. The sad reality, though, is there can be only one. According to the NPD numbers, between the launch of the new consoles and the end of the year, some 1.1 Million Nintendo Wiis were sold with 687,300 PS3s following closely behind. Microsoft trails with its numbers from 2005; it sold 607,000 consoles in its launch year. Don't feel too bad for Microsoft, though. They sold 1.1 Million 360s in December. The article points out this means Microsoft met its '10 Million in sales' goal for the end of 2006.
Well that's just the thing, Sony DIDN'T sell all their PS3s. It's quite trivial to get on in the US now.
Raw #s:
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http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1376
Bottom line is that Gears of War was the best selling game of December, at 815,000 copies. It was #3 for the year with 1.8 million sales (following Madden 07 for the PS2 @ 2.8 million and New Super Mario Bros for the DS at 2 million).
It was #5 for all titles in December (the "All Titles" category lumps all versions of a single game together.. for instance, Madden 07 sales include sales on the PS2, PS3, 360, XBox, etc).