HomeGame Consoles – May 2008 NPD Sales Figure Analysis
May 2008’s NPD figures are out. While not entirely surprising, but it is still somewhat of a shock that GTA IV had absolutely no effect on console sales, and April wasn’t just a statistical anomaly. The Wii is on a wiinner and it’s outselling both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 left and right. The PS3, at least, can claim to have beaten the 360, but as you will read on, the signs are not all that great for both of these console heavy hitters, not when the featherweight is running away with it like that. My prediction from last month was not correct at all, as there wasn’t a bump in hardware sales due to GTA IV. The while I was right in that the 360’s lead would narrow, it has narrowed so much that it’s now a negative. But I least I got the bit about GTA IV selling well and the 360 version selling better right, although any idiot with a keyboard could have come up with that. You can read last month’s analysis here. The figures are from NPD, a marketing research firm that releases games console sale data every month.
The figures for US sales in May are below, ranked in order of number of sales:
As mentioned above, GTA IV had almost no effect on console sales. This is a bit odd, but if you think about it, perhaps makes sense. GTA IV is the game that everybody knew was coming, and it is very likely the people who wanted the game will have purchased consoles ahead of time. If GTA IV had been the first good game on either consoles, then perhaps this would lead to bigger hardware sales as people who waited now finally have a reason to go for it. But that’s not the case, since both the 360 and to a lesser degree, the PS3, already have a pretty good range of games to attract even sandbox style game fans like myself (Crackdown, Saints Row are two examples for the 360).
Sony will be the happier of the two companies. The PS3 outselling the 360 might be a fixture for the future, but I can’t help but feel that, at least when compared to the Wii, both consoles are plateauing or decline, with the 360 declining a bit faster than the PS3. The PS3 is also more than just a games console, it is (in my opinion anyway) the best Blu-ray player on the market for now, so even if it isn’t selling as a games console, it will sell as a Blu-ray player. I have a PS3 and I don’t play games on it, but it is probably the most used piece of equipment in my home theatre at the moment.
Both consoles will have to do several things before it can fully take on the Wii. Microsoft may look towards having a Wii style controller, which when added to its very good Xbox Live Arcade system, might mean cheap Wii style games in HD – quite attractive for those that like the Wii’s control system, but not the (sub) SD graphics. Making the “box” more attractive, at least more reliable and less noisy, should also be on the list of “todos” at Microsoft HQ. The PS3 will simply have to drop in price to make it competitive, plus time will give it a better games lineup as compared to the 360. So it’s not over for either consoles, but their current way of thinking does seem a bit outdated compared to what’s happening around them.
I won’t say too much about Nintendo and the Wii , except to say that they’ve been extremely clever in marketing games to non gamers. What was once considered a suicide mission by many in the industry now look like a stroke of genius (as often the case). Even the DS is marketed differently than say the PSP, which is still aimed at the traditional male demographic. When girls barely in primary school are playing DS, you know you’re onto something.
Let’s have a look at the software figures now. Again it highlights the problem for both Microsoft and Sony. While both had a top 10 title, with Microsoft occupying the top position, it is still a disappointing month for both console giants as Nintendo almost dominated every other position. The only good news for Microsoft this month was that GTA IV on the 360 outsold the PS3 again, this time by an even bigger margin to take it into an almost exactly 2:1 lead (66.3% versus 33.7%). The PS3 only had one game in the top 10 at 4th, which was GTA IV.
- Grand Theft Auto IV (Xbox 360, Rockstar) – 871,000
- Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 784,700
- Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 687,700
- Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3, Rockstar) – 442,900
- Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii, Nintendo) – 294,600
- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii, Nintendo) – 171,100
- Iron Man (PS2, Sega) – 130,600
- Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii, Activision) – 116,800
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness (DS, Nintendo) – 107,000
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time (DS, Nintendo) – 102,000
So while Nintendo has dominated hardware sales for a long time now, that hardware dominance is finally translating into software sales. The Wii, out of the top 10 titles, held 55.4% of the market, with the Xbox 360 down to 23.5% and the PS3 at 12%. The only slight problem for Nintendo, and I mentioned it last month too, is that all of it’s top games are first party games, games that are made by Nintendo. It seems other software publishers either don’t want to, or don’t know how to yet make good games for the console, which is a tricky proposition compared to your standard video game (and standard control system). But as long as Nintendo can come out with innovations such as Wii Fit every year or so, the Wii looks set to dominate for a long time.
So onto June next. I don’t think I will make a prediction, but things will probably look similar to this month. Maybe the 360/PS3 positions will be reversed, or the lead narrowed/deepened depending on what games are coming out, but it won’t really make much of a difference to the Wii’s lead anyway. And with GTA IV sales dropping back, total software sales will be down, and it will be interesting to see if Mario Kart and/or Wii Fit can even claim top spot for next month. Until then, have a good one!
June 15th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
[…] DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest Just what the world needs, another blog « Game Consoles – May 2008 NPD Sales Figure Analysis […]
July 5th, 2008 at 8:28 am
“I won’t say too much about Nintendo and the Wii , except to say that they’ve been extremely clever in marketing games to non gamers. What was once considered a suicide mission by many in the industry now look like a stroke of genius (as often the case). Even the DS is marketed differently than say the PSP, which is still aimed at the traditional male demographic. When girls barely in primary school are playing DS, you know you’re onto something.”
What the hell is the “traditional” demographic? You mean _Sony’s_ traditional target demographic? Are you too young to remember who exactly was playing video games 15+ years ago? Nintendo’s target for game boys hasn’t budged an INCH since the original. For their normal console platform, it really only changed just slightly, but it’s far more popular this time around. Nintendo’s moves were not “suicidal”, it was INCREDIBLY predictable, if you’ve owned the console line up between NES, SNES, N64, GC, you’d understand how naturally the WII fits in. Nothing special, however, Nintendo’s success this time around was very unexpected. They deserved it.
July 5th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
What I meant by traditional demographics is the type of video gamers that we normally think of – ie. men, usually younger generation and people who generally like technology. What the Wii has done is to get the rest of the demographic, the elderly, the moms and dads that have never played video games before. The NDS to a lesser extent has now targetted girls – my niece has one and so does her female friends … and she’s only 7. Just look at the games line-up on the DS, and you will see a lot of the games targetted at girls.
The Sony approach, as you mentioned, is the “traditional” approach. PS3s, PSPs … all aimed at a specific target audience. Microsoft’s 360 is also aimed at the same people.
Nintendo decided to do something different, and they succeeded. Of course, it could have gone either way … what if the elderly didn’t want to play Wii, or Wii Sports wasn’t included in the bundle (or not produced at all)? Remember that there were horrible reviews of the “Revolution” console before it was renamed the Wii, and even then, people made fun of the name. But until people actually played it and used the Wii-mote, nobody thought the Wii was going to be a success. The GameCube wasn’t a success either, and many thought at that time the “Revolution” was going to be the last console Nintendo ever makes (to go the way of the dodos, just like Sega), especially after leaked news about how “last-gen” the hardware was going to be.
Nobody is saying Nintendo doesn’t deserve it, just like nobody is saying Apple doesn’t deserve its success with the Mac, iPod and iPhone. But both companies decided to do things different, took a great risk in doing so and it paid off, but it could have easily gone the other way too. Kudos to them for pulling it off, and good news for the rest of us that they did!
July 19th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
[…] software line-up Sony had in June (MGS4). Read on to find out. You can read last month’s analysis here. The figures are from NPD, a marketing research firm that releases games console sale data every […]
July 31st, 2008 at 1:34 am
I currentley own an xbox 360, a nintendo ds (old, and light) and a psp. I would get a ps3, but currentley at 299$ with good games ranging from 60$-30$, thats mearley an ownership existing in the distant future. some may argue that the 360 is the same price, but in all fairness, the 360 has been out over a year longer (with a price of 299), meaning that it has a few more good games, ok games and (dare i say it) crap games. The reason why i say this is because since the 360 has more games, it has had more attempts to get it right and darn near prefect it, but since the ps3 came out close to a year later, they were some epics turned disastarous (lair), a few excelents plagued by stinging problems (Heavenly Sword- way 2 short), and many rushed games that turned into shovel ware (gundam). now don’t get me wrong, the ps3 has finally begun to hit itz stride, but i (as well as many other games on the outside looking in) wonder if it may be a little to late.
I can remember back when the ps2 was the king, the purple lunch box was a failure, and the bigole fat box only had halo 2 keepin it alive. everyone was siked about the announcement of the ps3, and frowned uppon the unvailing of the 360, and laughed the mystery of the revolution now known as the wii. Speculators were confidentley spreading the idea that nintendo was on itz last thread, and that microsoft would crumble under the power of the ps3… Itz funny how things turned out aint it? X}
In all seriousness, the wii should not even be able to outgun systems that are (tecinicley speaking) far superior to it. The fact that sony is making games for the ps2 (which is only selling at this point because its price is almost under a hundred dollars), and the price for the ps3 is still sturbornley high is signifying that sony is loosing money over the system, and they are initilizing plan c. on another note, the fact that microsoft’s 360 is not dominating the gaming market yet signifies that the 360 itself has become ignorant to change (this is not including the not-yet-released new xbox exprience which looks nice).
Everyone says that nintend got lucky, or that they were ‘geniuses’ for doing something diffrent, but it’s not luck, or genius,, it’z plain ol’ common sence. If I have 10 hardcore gamers (no disrespect) and 30 pplz who have never played videogames, then would it be logical to stay hardcore and pray that more pplz play videogames, or would it make since to lean more towardz the pplz who have never played games with games that are extreemley eazy to play and addictive? I’ll tell ya what makes since to me: at the end of the year, staying hardcore gets me a total of 15 gamers (lost 0 hardcore, gained 5 non gamers), while leaning more towardz the pplz who have never played videogames gets me 20 gamers (lost 5 hardcore, gained 15 non gamers)… how it wouldn’t make since, I don’t know, but that logic speaks for itself O_o…
June 13th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
[…] figures for US sales in May 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (May 2008 figures also shown, including percentage […]