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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."
PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units
the various varieties of the Game Boy Advance sold a not unreasonable 136,000 units.
I've not seen such bravery.
It seems for the most part most retailers are dealing with demand by creating relatively over-priced "bundles", of the "$600 buys you a console and two games!" variety.
Perhaps it's Nintendo that should have charged $5-600 for their console, and Sony who should have tried to sell their's for $250...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
... although all i have is anecdotal evidence.
... <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.
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
Congrats Nintendo!
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
I can already envision Mario banging his shoe on the podium at the next E3.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
"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.
More Twoson than Cupertino
I think you're confused. Touch ME was an Atari Game way back in the '70s. Touch Wii is the update for the Nintendo Wii. Though I could see how that could be confusing.
Why do you wish to inflict pain on Anonymous Coward? Big meany.
The price is right, the new screen is excellent, good selection of games, and the form factor is perfect.
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7480
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7499
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7518
http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=7553
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
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?
Even if they never get at much marketshare as Sony/Microsoft, they are certainly making the most profits. Who cares if your revenue is (relatively) low when your profits are so much higher?
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
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.
But Sony told me that being outsold at a ratio of 2:1 for a month meant the losing platform was dead and buried!
Or does that only apply to the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD fight?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
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?
I can already envision Mario banging his shoe on the podium at the next E3.
"Wii will bury you!"
Sorry.
I will admit I'm not in the market per se, but I like to browse through the electronics section of stores Just In Case, and since the Wii's release, I've added checking to see if they have a Wii to the sweep for bargain games.
I have still never seen a Wii. From Best Buy to Wal-Mart, its local competition, K-Mart, and several other places I've been to in passing, I have never yet seen a Wii.
Everybody has PS3s now.
Anecdotal evidence? Sure, but wow, and this is across many stores in many samples.
I could probably get one if I were trying, but you still have to be trying.
Nexgenwars and VGCharts have the Wii's penetration at around 50% of the XBox 360's, in four months. At any time supply could finally catch up to demand, but until then, the limiting factor on the Wii's sales has been manufacturing rate for four months now.
You might want to re-check your facts, as the document you linked to shows the opposite of what you are claiming. Sony's gaming divisions were the least profitable (of the sectors where they were profitable). The general electronics divisions obviously took a huge hit, but even if you take their banking and insurance products out of the equation, Sony Pictures and Sony Music have a higher income and higher margin. The gaming divisions had higher sales, true, but revenue is not the same as profit.
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.
When it finally looked like the Wii was going to smash through the video game market, developers were caught with their pants down being raped by PS3 development costs, blind-sided by Xbox Live Arcade's runaway success and the Wii's "we're Nintendo, we will ALWAYS have a profit" guarantee. What you see is simply the net result of such behavior.
No, that is not going to happen. Game studios and publishers make money on game sales not console sales. Console companies get most of their money on game sales too. Slashdot continues to be fascinated by hardware sales numbers, but these are misleading. If you look at game sales, then for February the PS2 was the leader, followed by 360 in second and Wii in third. The 360 is still the clear winner for next-gen consoles in game sales and console sales.
If you look at the bigger picture the Wii is just not much more appealing than the 360 or PS3. What are the games for the Wii that are expected to sell >1 million copies? Zelda, Wario Ware, Super Smash Brothers, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime, Super Paper Mario, and Mario Party 8. What do all of those games have in common? They are all published by Nintendo, and most are developed by Nintendo too. Half of the top 10 selling games on Wii or from Nintedo right now(this will go up when more of the games I mentioned come out); 8 on gamecube were from Nintendo. Compare with Sony having 0 in the top 10 for PS2, 2 on PS3, and MS having 1 in the top 10 on the 360, and 3 in the top 10 an xbox. Game studios and publishers are well aware this trend.
Whether or not Wii titles that are not from Nintendo will sell well compared to other consoles is still an open question. Current numbers don't look promising. Call of duty 3 has sold 1 million on 360, 600 thousand on PS2, 250 thousand on Wii, and 200 thousand on PS3. Madden 07 has sold 3.2 million on PS2, 1.2 million on 360, 350 thousand on PS3, and 300 thousand on Wii. There are twice as many Wiis as PS3s but that doesn't mean your game is going to sell twice as well on the Wii than it would on PS3. So I wouldn't worry too much about game publishers and studios ignoring all other consoles and focusing solely on Wii. They would be foolish if they did.
That post was the best Anonymous Coward post I have ever seen on Slashdot. I quoted the whole thing so that people would have a better chance of seeing it.
That being the case, I think that it is still pretty early to tell whether or not the Wii will sell third party software. People that currently have Wiis are purchasing them to play Nintendo's games, no one would argue with that. Heck, where I live the only way to even purchase a Wii is to buy it bundled with several games. It is possible that Wii owners will buy game titles like Madden 07 and Call of Duty 3 when they work through the games that came with the system.
On the other hand, if the Wii continues to dramatically outsell the other consoles then eventually the third party developers will come to the conclusion that Nintendo really has found a way to tap into a much bigger market than the "traditional gamer." If Nintendo ends up with the biggest share of the game console market then third party developers will have little choice but to learn how to sell to that market. If that means that they have to adapt to a new strategy that doesn't involve slapping a new number on the end of the same tired game, then that's what they'll have to do.
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...
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.