14 DAY TRIAL // February 2010 is a mixed month when it comes to the sales numbers put out by the NPD Group for the United States market. There is an increase across the board in terms of actual sales of gaming consoles, with the exception of the Nintendo Wii, but the price cuts made in 2009 mean that actual revenue has actually dropped a significant 20%, from 534.2 million to 426.4 million dollars.
Overall sales went down 15%, from 1.48 to 1.26 billion. Still, the strong performance of the Xbox 360 and PS3 managed to make the month better than analysts expected, with some of them predicting an overall fall in the industry of 19%.
The Nintendo DS was the best selling gaming device, the handheld managing to sell 613,200 units in one month, which is an increase over the same period of last year. Surprisingly, the Xbox 360 home console from Microsoft managed to take over the second place in the sales chart, with 422,000 units sold, also an increase over February 2009. The Nintendo Wii is sitting in third place, with sales coming in at 397,300 units, a drop of close to 50% when compared to last year.
The PlayStation 3 from Sony moved a little over 360,000 units in the 28 days of February, a rise of about 25%. The PlayStation Portable continues its bad phase with 144,300 units sold and the PlayStation 2 continues to move more than 100,000 units ten years after its original launch date.
Anita Frazier, the NPD Group analyst, says that “Xbox 360 nabbed the top spot among the three console systems for the first time since September 2007 when Halo 3 was released. PS3 enjoyed a 30% increase over last year, even while retail supply is reported to remain constrained.”
The low numbers posted by the Wii are attributed to the limited supply available, which might be a direct consequence of Nintendo's decision last fall to limit its orders of parts from the companies its collaborates with.