14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the world wide economic downturn, the videogames industry is continuing to grow as the NPD Group data for December shows that 5 billion worth of hardware and software was sold during the month, which is apparently more than the sales for the whole year of 1997. Still, the recession shows that December 2008 grew by only 9% over December 2007, while the overall year on year growth increased by 19%.
The numbers are telling. The Nintendo DS, the DS Lite variety, as the DSi will only arrive sometime in 2009, managed to overtake the Wii as the best sold console, reaching 3.04 million moved in one month. The Nintendo Wii home console sold just 2.15 million units, even as some analysts expected it to go over 3 million in one month. The Xbox 360 was a rather distant third place, managing to sell 1.44 million units, a far better result than the 728.000, which the PlayStation 3 sold in the same period. The main Sony console was bested by the PlayStation Portable handheld, with 1.02 million units, while the aging PlayStation 2 was still interesting enough for 410,000 buyers.
What does this mean? For one, it means that you'll see a lot of headlines saying “Nintendo Sells 5 Million Consoles,” which is basically true even if it induces the idea that the console sold is the Wii. It also means that the Xbox 360, after the price cut and the launch of the New Xbox Experience, manages to consistently outsell the PlayStation 3 in North America. A price cut and a solid launch season will probably be required to take the Sony made console closer in sales to the Microsoft made one.
Game analyst Anita Frazier commented that “38 months into this generation of hardware, the three new systems have sold a combined 38.2 million units, whereas at the same point last generation, in December 2003, the three systems had sold 36.9 million units.”