January Game Sales Explode, Wii Dominates

njkid1, as he does from time to time, passed us a link to a story on the GameDaily site. Today they're discussing the January NPD numbers for the games industry. In short, they're terrific. Software sales totaled $549 million for the month, up a staggering 53 percent over last year. Hardware sales were brisk as well, with the Wii selling around 436,000 units. Trailing behind were Microsoft and Sony, with 360 hitting 294,000 units sold and the PS3 selling 244,000 units. January had an extra week, which resulted in 'inflated' sales, but even after normalizing the data things were tremendous for the games industry in a month where there's normally a post-holiday slump.

Comments

Hopefully...

[KenshoDude]

With the Wii's success, one could only hope that developers will start paying more attention to gameplay innovation rather than graphical innovation. I think the success of Nintendo's new console underscores a revolution that has been waiting to take place in the gaming industry: an emphasis on playability and fun over impressive visuals. Now, if we could just combine next-gen visuals with next-gen gameplay -- a gamers' nirvana!

The most telling number

[Anonymous Coward]

The most interesting number to me in this report is that the Wii beat out the real 800 pound gorilla, Sony's PS2. While I've been a proponent of not calling off the console race until after the next holiday season, I'm surprised that the Wii is already outselling the PS2. If they keep this up over the next couple of months, I'll be ready to declare the Wii the winner and champion of this round of console sales. Sony has yet to move more PS3s off the shelves than PS2s for a single month. Not even the XBOX 360 has managed to outsell the PS2 on a regular basis despite being out for over a year and having what now amounts to a good catalog of games.

February's numbers should be interesting.

They're dominating even more in Japan

[FleaPlus]

From Kotaku:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/nintendo/hardware-wars-ds -wii-continue-to-print-yen-237481.php

Here are the current hardware sales in the land of the rising sun for the week of February 4th to the 11th.

        * Nintendo DS Lite - 201,177
        * Wii - 78,550
        * PSP - 32,175
        * PLAYSTATION 3 - 23,431
        * PlayStation 2 - 16,033
        * Xbox 360 - 4,811
        * Game Boy Advance SP - 980
        * Game Boy micro - 884

I rather like the comment which noted the following:

Wii Sales > PSP sales + PS3 sales + PS2 sales + 360 sales + GBA sales + Micro sales

DS Sales > Wii Sales + PSP sales + PS3 sales + PS2 sales + 360 sales + GBA sales + Micro sales

Re:A story in itself...

[AKAImBatman]

It's not news because it means demand is high (that's an acceptable excuse the first month and a half). It's news because it means Nintendo has dropped the ball.

When was the last time Nintendo sold 500,000 consoles per month during a non-holiday season in just North America? Dude, that is a LOT of consoles. So many that the Wii has sold almost half as many units as the XBox 360 has sold in its entire lifetime. So many that Nintendo has already sold about 1/4 of the units that the Gamecube sold in its entire lifetime.

Think about that. 1/4 the number of Gamecubes in 1/4 of a year. Wow. I'd hate to be the guy who management is leaning on to improve Nintendo's production capacity.

Not Troubling for Sony

[fistfullast33l]

This is not troubling for Sony - let's check Xbox 360 last year at this time. Gamasutra reports that last January 2006 Xbox 360 sold approximately 250,000 units, about the same as PS3 this year. That's without a competitor with an excellent games library or a competitor which is the newest fad and phenomenon that outsold you 2:1. In fact, this January the Xbox only sold 40,000 more than last January. And that's without the supply issue that last year's sales displayed. So basically, the 360 isn't exactly red hot either. If the 360 was so amazing, it'd be killing the PS3. As it is, it's barely holding on.