Archive for October 20th, 2008

Game Consoles – September 2008 NPD Sales Figure Analysis

Monday, October 20th, 2008

The September 2008 NPD sales figures are out, and there are some surprises. The holiday season is just starting, and the figures show a slight lift in sales compared to the last month. We are near the few months of the year when most consoles and games are sold, and we shall see who has positioned themselves best for this upcoming holiday season. 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 September are below, ranked in order of number of sales:

  • Wii: 687,000 (Total: 12.5 million)  
  • DS: 537,000 (Total: 22.5 million)  
  • Xbox 360: 347,000 (Total: 11.2 million)
  • PSP: 238,000 (Total: 12.7 million)
  • PS3: 232,000 (Total: 5.5 million)
  • PS2: 173,000 (Total: 42.8 million)
    • NPD September 2008 Game Console US Sales Figures

    NPD September 2008 Game Console US Sales Figures

    NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of September 2008)

    NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of September 2008)

     My prediction last month was:

    … the (Xbox 360) price cuts already done with, the momentum could swing back to the PS3 again. The Wii will sell well, and probably recover a bit just in time for the holiday season.

    I was right about the Wii, but I was wrong about the Xbox 360. As this month’s figures show, the price cuts had a huge effect on Xbox 360 sales. The surge it produced was enough to propel the Xbox 360 to the third most popular video game hardware, out-selling the PSP and the PS3.

    The Xbox 360 also out-sold the PS3 last month, but it was by a much smaller margin. I’m not sure price cuts are a long term solution, but for this holiday season at least, the Xbox 360 is positioned very well to compete with the PS3 and possibly even the Wii. Sony has already come out and said that they won’t cut PS3 prices this year, so I think Microsoft will emerge as the overall winner for 2008 in the war against the PS3. Microsoft is probably trying to achieve some sort of critical mass for the uptake of the Xbox 360, because if enough of your friends have Xbox 360’s, then you would want one too, wouldn’t you? The superior multiplayer system of the 360, despite not being free, will further drive this sort of “peer pressure”. If you want to a curr-gen console somewhat comparable to the PS3, good multiplayer support, a huge range of games at cheap prices (I saw older Xbox 360 hits like Dead Rising, Crackdown on sale for $10 this week … amazing value for hours and hours of fun), then the Xbox 360 is your only choice. The Wii is another, but only if you don’t care that your games look a bit crap on your 50″ HDTV. The Japanese sales figures which have shown the Xbox 360 out-selling the PS3 on its own turf is just the cherry on top, really.

    Sony on the other hand are probably not worried about PS3 sales being slightly flatter this year, or even the next. Remember, they’ve said they have a 10 year strategy for the PS3 and this is only the second year. They believe they can achieve something similar to the PS2, where even now, it is still selling in good quantities and there are now more than 42 million PS2s in the US alone. Of course, the PS3 is a completely different beast to the PS2, and if you want to compare apples to apples, then the Xbox 360 is positioned similarly to the PS2 and the PS3 is similar to the original Xbox – cheap, less powerful hardware with more games versus more expensive, more powerful hardware with less games. Will we ever see the mass upgrade of PS2s to PS3s? I think many of these people have already “upgraded” to the Xbox 360 as they were waiting for the PS3 to come down in price (or improve in title availability). Will they buy a PS3 as well? Maybe, or maybe they will buy a Wii instead. While I think Sony’s strategy is still safe for the time being, you cannot market the PS3 as a premium piece of equipment because people don’t really care about that, people just want good games at cheap prices. If anything, the Wii has been marketed is the exact opposite of the PS3, cheap hardware, but fun. When I think the PS3, I think superior Blu-ray player and multimedia hub, not a console you associate with “fun” (even the sleek black design doesn’t say “fun” to me, it reminds me of the monolith in 2001 to be honest). And with the economy the way it is, people are looking at saving money, not spending more even if it is a superior piece of kit.

    Speaking of the Wii, it continues to do well, and I don’t think this holiday period will be any different when it comes to demand (so get your orders in now while you still can, and don’t get left out like the last two holiday periods). The real success story of this year (and the last) has to be the Wii, because without a huge array of hit games, and without constant price drops, it has managed to remain top of the sales charts by a considerable margin. The ‘funness’ I alluded to earlier, and the fact that it isn’t expensive to start with is what I think has made it a success, and if anything, the downturn in economic conditions might help it sell more at the expense of more expensive consoles (mainly the PS3, as the Xbox 360 has become even cheaper).

    Moving on to software sales, the Xbox 360’s lead over the PS3 means it continues to do well whenever a big multi-platform game is released, and this month, it’s Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. The Wii continues to do well of course, but even though it has more hardware in people’s homes than the Xbox 360, serious gamers (those that spend serious bucks) are still the ones with Xbox 360’s it seems. The PS3 had the poorest result of the year I think, with only a single title in the top 10, and that was Star Wars. Overall, 45.1% of the top 10 sales belonged to the Xbox 360, the Wii was close behind on 40.3%, the PS3 far behind with only 9.8% and a single PS2 title rounding off the month. Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

    1. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Xbox 360, LucasArts) – 610,000
    2. Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 518,000   
    3. Rock Band 2 (Xbox 360, MTV/EA) – 363,000
    4. Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 353,000
    5. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS3, LucasArts) – 325,000
    6. Mercenaries 2 (Xbox 360, EA) – 297,000
    7. Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii, Nintendo) – 243,000
    8. Madden NFL 09 (Xbox 360, EA) – 224,000
    9. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS2, LucasArts) – 223,000
    10. Madden NFL 09 (PS2, EA) – 158,000

    The next month should see an increase in sales all around, but I suspect it will be the same as this months in terms of the ranking, the Wii ahead by quite a bit, the Xbox 360 following with the PS3 third (in between are the portables, while the PS2 is sixth). Common sense really. See you next month.

    Posted in Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 3 Comments »

    My PS3 just broke – Redux Part 3

    Monday, October 20th, 2008

    As expected, my refurbished PS3 arrived this afternoon. The turnaround was a bit slower this time, two days shy of 2 weeks, but I’m not complaining.

    Opening up the package, the first thing I noticed that it wasn’t packed very tightly, as the PS3 could move around inside the box slightly. Not a good sign. The second thing I noticed was that the PS3 case wasn’t snapped in properly at one end (front, right hand side was popped up). This is easily fixed of course, just apply pressure to pop it back in, but again it’s not a good sign.

    Starting the PS3, doing all the usual set up stuff, the freezing problem (right after the Sony Computer Entertainment fanfare music plays) is still present – it must be something to do with certain settings or something, but I did a quick system restore (not the full one), and it seems to have fixed the problem. The PS3 came with firmware version 2.42, so I’m a little bit afraid. I’m also afraid to update to 2.50, due to the various problems that have been reported so far. I think I shall skip using the PS3 much until 2.51 comes out and people have volunteered to be guinea pigs for it.

    I did notice that, unlike my last refurbished PS3, the fan noise is more smooth. The last one had a creaky fan which I did not talk about, it sounded like it needed some oiling. The problem with refurbished PS3s is that you don’t know how it has been used by the previous owner, and while the faulty parts were replaced, the parts that aren’t faulty (but have been used near to death) are still in there. I much prefer Microsoft’s repair policy, where they try to repair your own console before giving you a refurbished one.

    So wait I shall for 2.51, which means there will be at least one more post in this series of blog posts. Hopefully, that one will be the last one, because my warranty runs out next month and even if it didn’t, I don’t know if I want to go through everything again.

    Update: Bad news. The wireless remote/controller drop-out problem has happened again, and what’s worse, plugging in the controller doesn’t work anymore. I had to do a soft reset, but the PS3 refused to reboot (the green light keeps on blinking), and so a hard reset was the only other choice. Not surprisingly, everything worked again after the restart. I’m now updating the firmware to 2.50, since I have nothing to lose anymore (and Sony tech support will probably ask me to do it anyway). I think I might have to send in my PS3 again. Damn.

    Posted in General | 2 Comments »