Wii, DS Dominate February Hardware Sales

Gamasutra has the NPD numbers for last month, which shows a continuation of Nintendo's sales dominance. Overall the new consoles have again meant that industry sales were up, some 28% over last year's same-month figures. Hardware sales were up some 98%, with much of that performance attributable to the DS and Wii. Here's the breakdown: "Turning to hardware, the DS headed overall hardware sell-through with an impressive 485,000 units, followed by Nintendo's Wii, which sold 335,000 units despite continued issues with shortages. The Xbox 360 sold through a reasonable, if not spectacular 228,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units, despite no apparent shortages. Elsewhere, the PlayStation 2 moved a still impressive 295,000 at its relatively cheap current price, and the PlayStation Portable sold 176,000, markedly behind the DS. Finally, the various varieties of the Game Boy Advance sold a not unreasonable 136,000 units."

Comments

not completely surprised ...

[Frag-A-Muffin]

... although all i have is anecdotal evidence.

Every time I take my Wii to a friend's house, not only do they love it, but their (female!) spouse love it! It goes beyond that too. Often times, the parents will join in, and they love it too!

The only people I know that don't really like it are the uber-hardcore gamers. I know plenty of "hardcore" gamers that love it fine, but complement it with a dose of the 360/PS3.

So let's think about their target market now. The uber-hardcore don't like it. Fine. But the hardcore like it and ... <drumroll> ... the rest of the world loves it :) That's a big market. Much bigger than the old target market. When sales data like this comes out, it just reinforces the notion that Nintendo got something right this round.

Congrats Nintendo!

Re:not completely surprised ...

[Konowl]

I took it to my parents house, where my 78 year old GRANDMOTHER was playing Wii Tennis.

My grandmother walked into the living room, saw us playing tennis and started laughing - I told her to grab the controller. She said "I can never play videogames". "Grandma, it's easy" I said.

She proceeded to play... to even jump to make smash shots. Most comical.

Also, my mom phones me once every couple of weeks to bring over the Wii.

It may not be the most powerful system, but it's definately opening Nintendo up to new demographics.

Re:not completely surprised ...

[7Prime]

It's not so much a question of magnitude of "hardcore-ness", as much as the interpretation of the word "hardcore". There are two distinctly different popular definitions surrounding the word hardcore, and they seem to be getting confused here.

1. Referring to anything that attempts to portray a high volume of extroverted masculinity (machismo) via adrenaline-producing properties: "hardcore porn", "hardcore violence", "hardcore action", "hardcore sports", "hardcore music".

2. Referring to a high level of dedication to a particular genre of arts/entertainment, including a regularly consistent level of participation. This is also usually combined with an interest in following the history and current events related to the genre. Also demanding of a high level of complexity or difficulty. Fandom. Someone who is considered a connoisseur of a particular field.

In games, which are traditionally considered a masculine and youthful affair, the general assumption is that the more dedicated the gamer, the more drawn one is to the overtly masculine side of gaming. This is a fairly flawed way of thinking. It's as if the general assumption was that film connoisseurs tend to be drawn toward violent action films, when, in actuality, they tend to be contradictory to the tastes of many film enthusiasts. Many who are drawn to the adrenaline-producing and machismo side of gaming are not so much interested in gaming itself, rather than using it as a medium in which to prove their masculinity to themselves and to others. An example is the hordes of young teenage males who bought GTA games for the soul purpose of running over pedestrians, and playing out their violent fantasies. In this sense, most who are inspired by the purely primal side of gaming are less likely to be game enthusiasts.

The question is, when we say "hardcore", which definition do we mean? In some ways, people fitting both definitions are admired within the gaming community.

This is where the marketing of the Wii becomes a bit complicated. The Wii actively attempts to distance itself from those fitting the first definition; Miyamoto and others within the company have actively expressed concern at the level of violence and machismo within the gaming community. Unfortunately, since Nintendo's current goal is to expand their audience, they have little interest in satisfying or embracing people fitting the second definition of hardcore. Their saving grace is that Nintendo has a longer historical presence; this combined with their "back to basics" corporate philosophy tends to resonate with the nostalgic side of many people fitting the second definition. In a sense, Nintendo's strategy is to say, "You don't have to be a gamer to play games", with little outward effort to "convert" people into the world of gaming.

Sony and Microsoft are also attempting to expand their audience, as any company wishes to do. Their strategy, on the other hand, is to appeal to non-gamers fitting the first definition. But as with Nintendo, they make no attempts to actively embrace those fitting the second definition. This is only logical, because those who are already gamers are already more likely to buy into their system. Additionally, Sony and Microsoft exhibit an outward philosophy of "forget the past, look to the future" (even if they do provide peripheral access to legacy games), which is beginning to alienate gamers fitting the second definition. Their strategy is to excite people with enough flare and primal stimuli, as to fully convert them into active gamers.

The irony is that while active gamers may purchase more, but they also demand more from their games, driving up production cost of hardware and software. With Nintendo's strategy, passive gamers are more likely to respond to the simplicity and form of lower-budget work.

Myself? I'm fully in agreement with Nintendo's strategy, as I believe that it's high time that designers step back and re-assess their concepts of form and function. While this strategy might result in simpler games, at least in the short term, it also has the potential of increasing the quality and sophistication of games to come.

Re:Nintendo must be kicking themselves

[voice_of_all_reason]

Nintendo should have charged nothing extra and threw in 5-10 of the hard drive emulation games (nes and SNES). It wouldn't "cost" them much in lost sales, cost almost nothing in implementation, but come off to the market as "10 free games omg hax!!111"

Ratios

[Applekid]

"The Xbox 360 sold through a reasonable, if not spectacular 228,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units, "

They're really not talking up this point. That's 360 outselling PS3 by almost 2:1. Even with it including a BluRay player and SIXAXIS. 228,000 isn't "spectacular", but considering Christmas was only two months earlier, I certainly agree it's reasonable.

Anyone still have the old Dreamcast sales figures? I'd like to see how current events mirror those.

Its all about Blu-Ray

[runenfool]

If you think of Sony as just a console maker, then the PS3 isn't doing all that well, but if you think of it as a device to push Blu-Ray its doing great. I don't think Sony is as dumb as everyone else thinks they are. They just sold another 100k plus Blu-Ray players. In the end they will drop the PS3 price to something sort of reasonable and sell plenty of them. They can make it through the first year or so by reputation alone pushing game developers to create for the platform.

Of course if they do too poorly in sales then eventually the games will dry up and they will have won the next gen format war at the cost of their gaming platform. I wonder how much they care?

Can Nintendo satisfy the core gamer?

[spirit of reason]

And will it have to do so... by itself?

So I was feeling really happy that Nintendo was doing well, given their maxim (all about gameplay and fun, not graphics). But has anyone else been a little disappointed with the lineup of games? I'm excluding a few Nintendo titles here, but it feels like the vast majority of the games have been less-than-stellar ports or mini-game compilations. While mini-games can be really fun, I also want a rich experience from more complex games.

In Perrin Kaplan's recent GameDaily interview, she was asked about Nintendo's anemic Q1 lineup, a question which she simply responded that the 27 products they have going from January to June are awesome. She insists that Nintendo is competing for a different market, and I'm starting to believe her.

Something else that bugs me... the Wiimote isn't quite what is was hyped up to be. There is a little lag (at least in Wii Sports and Wii Play) between my movements and the response on screen; it's very small, but it felt a little annoying when the tennis racket only began swinging a little after I began. Also, it would be nice if the Wiimote actually pointed on screen where you pointed -- this would require some level of calibration, I suppose, since television sizes vary. I imagine this is even more difficult to deal with since the Wiimote only has two reference points for its calculations -- not the three that are necessary to yield the three coordinates in space. But this is why they market they Wiimote as detecting motion in 3D space, rather than position. It then probably gets the relative position by integration. I wonder if the lag would be reduced further by having a third point and eliminating the integration calculation (though I guess games would still be interested in your projected position anyway, so perhaps it wouldn't actually eliminate it).

Anyway, kudos to Nintendo for the sales, but I hope there is more in store for the core gamer soon.

Re:Can Nintendo satisfy the core gamer?

[Edward Kmett]

If you want to calibrate to a large TV just build a simple rig with a couple of IR LEDs and a battery. You can then set the LEDs as far apart as you want to scale up the 'virtual' screen size.

Re:Dreamcast...doesn't compare

[lucabrasi999]

Perfect working pirated game. Due to this, game sales plummeted since people were simply renting the game and burning their own copy

Nice theory, not necessarily a complete picture. The Dreamcast died because: 1) Sega never really got over the way they clumsily 'killed' the Saturn. 2) EA announced that they were not creating games for the Dreamcast and instead through all of their development effort behind PS2. As such, the PS2 had a larger variety of games available. 3) Sony announced that PS2 would be backwards-compatible with PS One games and that took some of the momentum away from Sega. Why purchase a new Sega when you could wait for the PS2 and play all your old video games on a new system?

Depends on the year...

[WoTG]

I realized I was looking at the 2004 values, just after posting. :(

(I'm not used to seeing year over year comparisons in an IR release in that order... probably different in Japan... but that's another matter)

2006 is a bit of an aberration for the gaming group. They're spending a LOT on PS3 development by that time. But in 2004 and 2005, PS profits are very large relative to movies and electronics.

No PS3 shortages - anecdotal proof

[freeweed]

Every story in the past few months has people saying "why is everyone claiming there are PS3s sitting around? I didn't see any at the one store I checked!".

I've posted this before, and I'll post it again.

Middle of the week, towards closing time. Busy local Costco. Those babies sat for weeks...