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January Game Sales Explode, Wii Dominates

Posted by Zonk on from the wii're-in-the-money dept.

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.

3 of 478 comments (clear)

  1. figures... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    wiii!

  2. Re:"Post Holiday Slump" by Quila · · Score: -1, Redundant

    However, it's interesting to see that Nintendo seems to be making more units than PS3, or PS3 isn't selling all of their units they make.

    The local Target sells out of Wiis within an hour or so of them hitting the shelves; however, you can always find some PS3s on the shelf.
  3. Numbers Not Really Surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    First off, Microsoft and the Xbox brand continue to flounder. Sales so far are somewhat worse than the first Xbox. Not really surprising - red lights of death/insane failure rate even over year into the console's life, backward compatibility disaster, weak graphics - unless you are still into that tired old bright lights on shiny metal effect. Lots of hyped games that turned out meh. And the company continues to bleed insane amounts of cash just trying to maintain their old Xbox installed base. I think the question for Microsoft is what the hell are you thinking you are accomplishing in the console market. No matter how much cash you have throwing billions away to maintain an Xbox sized niche in the US, forget Asia and European, console market can't possibly be worth the effort. At what point do you throw in the towel and just go concentrate on Vista exclusive games.

    Nintendo has to be pleased, but they better have a new console in the pipeline very soon. There are an increasingly large number of Nintendo fans saying the hype has worn off and they have nothing they want to buy coming out for the Wii for months.

    Sony is clearly showing why they are the platform of choice for third party developers. 299k consoles in January of 2007 for a console that was released in 2000 is absolutely insane. And Sony has yet to drop the price to 99 dollars. The PS2 has a pretty good chance of reaching 120 million installed base. Along with 244k units for the PS3 which is 100 dollars more than the 360, Sony has got to be very pleased.

    So in summary:

    Nintendo - short term good, long term a huge question
    Sony - short term good, long term very good
    Microsoft - what are you still doing in the console market again?