December Hardware NPDs: DS Pushes Nearly 2.5M, Everyone’s a Winner
Posted by Chris on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 2:57 pm under Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games Industry, Hardware, Microsoft, Microsoft, Nintendo, Nintendo, Nintendo, Portable, Sony, Sony, Sony
If you’re in the videogame console manufacturing business, you had a good holiday – regardless of what company you work for. With five of the six systems breaking a million units sold in the month (sorry, PS3), everyone has something to be happy about.
Let’s take a look at the numbers. (November’s sales in parentheses)
- PlayStation 2 – 1,100,000 (496,000)
- PlayStation 3 – 796,600 (466,000)
- PlayStation Portable – 1,060,000 (567,000)
- Xbox 360 – 1,260,000 (770,000)
- Wii – 1,350,000 (981,000)
- Nintendo DS – 2,470,000 (1,530,000)
Perhaps the fanboys will be able to take solace in seeing that every system saw a major boost over their November totals. No?
Then let’s break the numbers down.
The first thing that really jumps out from these numbers, aside from the DS’ ridiculous 2.47M units sold, is what a large margin the PS2 created over the PS3 in December. In November, the lead was just 30,000 units, yet that number jumped up to over 300,000. While the PS3 certainly had a respectable month, it still trailed the 360 by roughly 460,000 units – making me think that the PS3 needs another price drop before it’s going to be able to surpass the 360.
There’s little to be said about Nintendo, which dominated the month in my estimation, with a total of 3.82M systems sold between the Wii and DS, which is well above and beyond Sony’s three system total of just less than 2.96M.
And of course Microsoft has to be happy after the PS3 trailed the Xbox 360 again and selling only 90,000 units less than the Wii. They clearly should be optimistic for 2008, although my gut tells me that the Wii’s sales were only capped by the number of units that could be produced.
It’ll be fun to see the aftermath in January, and certainly beyond as we see if Microsoft can continue its ascent towards dethroning the Wii, and if another price drop can help propel Sony back into first place.
Stay tuned.
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January 18th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
The fanboys are gonna love the NPDs for the games themselvse. The two I saw, for December and November, between them only had one PS3 game and that was the PS3 version of Assassin's Creed, every other game was Nintendo or 360, with a few PS2 one in for good measure (mostly GH2).
January 18th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I saw these worldwide figures posted earlier which of course tell the whole story.
Worldwide December
Nintendo DS - 6,638,408
Nintendo Wii - 3,569,138
Sony PSP - 2,340,850
Sony PS3 - 2,000,575
Xbox 360 - 1,945,393
Sony PS2 - 1,899,588
January so far.
Nintendo DS - 1,194,285
Nintendo Wii - 785,919
Sony PSP - 603,655
Sony PS3 - 421,129
Sony PS2 - 346,977
Xbox 360 - 339,928
January 18th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Can I ask where you got those numbers, Norbit?
January 18th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I forgot to add my congratulations to Microsoft for finally managing to outsell the 8 year old PS2 over a holiday season at the third attempt.
January 18th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
@ Chris
I saw them on a story about the NPD figures but they were collected from VGChartz
I double checked them to make sure they were right;
Worldwide Chart for Week Ending 08th December 2007
http://vgchartz.com/weekly.php?date=39425&console=&maker=&boxartz=1
Worldwide Chart for Week Ending 15th December 2007
http://vgchartz.com/weekly.php?date=39432&console=&maker=&boxartz=1
Worldwide Chart for Week Ending 22nd December 2007
http://vgchartz.com/weekly.php?date=39439&console=&maker=&boxartz=1
Worldwide Chart for Week Ending 29th December 2007
http://vgchartz.com/weekly.php?date=39446&console=&maker=&boxartz=1
January 18th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I feel like I'm just _asking_ for you to call me out as a Microsoft fanboy, but I implicitly do not trust VGChartz or their figures.
January 18th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
The PS3 can't even outsell the ps2…
January 18th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I never hear any 360 fans complaining about the US charts that are posted on VGChartz such as last weeks one for instance;
http://www.vgchartz.com/aweekly.php
I'm not having a go but it seems that the only people who dont trust VGChartz tend to be American 360 owners and I think the reason for this is because the worldwide charts posted on there tend to fly totally in the face of what they see every day in their home country. The fact is that the DS, Wii, PSP, PS3 & PS2 all sell at least twice as many units outside the US as they do in the States. On the other hand the 360 actually sells fewer units outside the US than Stateside and thats why there is such a huge difference.
VGChartz are usually very accurate and there prediction for December weren't that far off at all.
December
360 VGChartz - 1,184,729
360 NPD - 1,260,000
PS3 VGChartz - 705,498
PS3 NPD - 796,600
I should point out that according to the NPD figures the PS3 was actually 15,831 sales closer to the 360 in the US last month than VGChartz predicted.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Seeing as I'm not exclusively a 360 owner, I don't think that rationale really applies to me. My mistrust stems from many other things I won't go into here.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
[...] post by Chris [...]
January 18th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Norbit, shut up until you get a PS3.
Show me the receipt while you're at it.
January 19th, 2008 at 8:13 am
@ The Man
What has owning a console got to do with market analysis?
January 19th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Your fanboyishness really bugs me, thats what.