January 12th, 2009

The Nintendo Christmas

Nintendo's Christmas sales accounted for over half of the total game sales in the US during last month, can you believe that? Anyway, this is only about the software sales, since Wii sales simply blew up the roof. How's that possible, in these rough times? Well, my friends, this crisis is very good for a noble purpose - natural selection!

According to Jesse Divnich from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, the Wii sold no less than 3.2 million units during December 2008, making this the highest number ever recorded by a single console platform!

"Without these sales, the industry would have likely felt the full wrath of the recession - much like other industries closely linked to gaming. We believe the simple to use design, cheaper and wider variety of software titles, and the already 'hot effect' in place on both systems, all played a role in driving both the Wii and the DS to the top of their segments. Simply put, Nintendo saved Christmas," said Divnich.

Other interesting facts noticed by the analyst include the welcomed price drop of second hand Wii from USD 470 to USD 350, with the top top ten software sales estimations for December 2008 being these:

- Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) – 1.3 million units
- Call of Duty: World at War (Xbox 360) – 1.2 million units
- Mario Kart w/ wheel (Wii) – 1.2 million units
- Wii Fit w/ board (Wii) – 1 million units
- Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360) – 800,000 units
- Call of Duty: World at War (PS3) – 650,000 units
- Madden NFL 09 (360) – 500,000 units
- Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360) – 500,000 units
- Prince of Persia (Xbox 360) – 475,000 units
- Wii Music (Wii) – 425,000 units

At last, we have hardware sales estimations going as high as 3.2 million sales, 137 percent higher than the restricted inventory last year, and followed by Xbox 360, with 1.5 million units(19 percent up), while the PlayStation 3 only sold 700,000 units, going down about 12 percent. The PSP managed to beat the PS3, with almost 900,000 units sold, and to get back once more to the software market, EEDAR estimates a total amount of sales going as high as 2.7 billion bucks, and almost 150 games that managed to sell over 100,000 units!