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NPDs Look Back on December, 2007
Joystiq has the NPD numbers for the entire year of 2007 and (of course) December. Last year was a banner year for games, with the industry as a whole coming close to cracking $18 billion in sales. The big winner was the Wii, of course, with some 6 million units sold over the course of the year. The 360 sold about four and a half million, and the PS3 sold about two and a half. The big software seller was (un-shockingly) Halo 3, at 4.82 million sold, with Wii Play close behind at 4.12m. Here are the software numbers for December: "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) -- 1.47m, Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) -- 1.40m, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS2) -- 1.25m, Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii) -- 1.08m, Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360) -- 894K, Halo 3 (Xbox 360) -- 743K, Brain Age 2 (DS) -- 660K, Madden NFL 08 (PS2) -- 655K, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360) -- 625K, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii) -- 613K"
Is that there's no way to tell how many of them were bought as Blu-Ray players and not as game consoles.
The PS3 is hurting badly right now. Literally the only people I know who own one bought it for Blu-Ray support. There's no knowing how small the market is for PS3 games, but a good portion of PS3 sales will never translate into game sales.
You can tell this by looking at the Amazon.com video game bestsellers list. Yes, the PS3 is on the list, but it's beat by its own Blu-Ray remote and you have to drop to around 50 before an actual PS3 game shows up on the list.
Developers know this. They know the PS3 is dead, that of the sales figures you can only count optimistically on half of them being bought for games. Only a handful of PS3 exclusives remain, the vast majority have Xbox 360 ports in the work.
Perhaps this will clarify... http://www.npd.com/corpServlet?nextpage=profile_s.html/
National Purchase Diary. Most people that pay attention to these numbers don't know / care about that though.
The group tracks product sales and sells this information. Its pretty much recognized as the most respectible source of this type of information, but it isn't completely accurate. Walmart, for example, refuses to take part in NPD data collection.
Hope that helps.