DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Now that the December 2008 NPD figures have been made available, and I have posted the analysis, I have now covered a complete year in terms of NPD figures and so it’s fitting to now take a look at 2008 through the NPD figures, but mainly concentrating on the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.

The total hardware sales figures for 2008 are as follows:

• Wii: 10,171,000
• DS: 9,951,000
• Xbox 360: 4,735,000
• PSP: 3,829,500
• PS3: 3,544,100
• PS2: 2,502,700

This is a breakdown of these numbers, for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii:

NPD 2008: Console hardware sales breakdown

As you can see, the Wii totally dominated, with the Xbox 360 having a slight lead over the PS3 thanks to the PS3’s stronger numbers at the beginning of the year and the Xbox 360’s stronger numbers towards to the end. To further illustrate this point, let’s have a look at the graphs for the Xbox 360/PS3, broken down for the first half of the year and then the second:

NPD 2008: Hardware Sales, 1st half of year

NPD 2008: Hardware Sales, 2nd half of year

Quite a turnaround for the Xbox 360 and the PS3. PS3’s slight lead in the first half of 2008 turned into a big deficit in the second. 

Now let’s look at game sales. Looking only at the monthly number one titles, here there are:

NPD 2008: Monthly Number One's

NPD 2008: Monthly Number One's

The ‘sea of green’ will make Microsoft very happy indeed, although the Wii did very respectably with only two entries out of 12. Sony will be disappointed that Little Big Planet and Resistance did not take the number one spot. And with their only number one title occurring in the first half of the year, it further underlines the loss of momentum in the second half.

But only looking at the number one titles don’t really tell us all that much. By extending it to the top 10, we then have the following breakdown in terms of the number of titles sold for each format:

• Wii: 22,077,100 (46.61%)
• Xbox 360: 18,924,600 (39.95%)
• PS3: 6,367,200 (13.44%)

NPD 2008: Monthly Top 10

Nintendo’s domination is now showing up, because Wii Play, Wii Fit and Mario Kart always makes the top 10. The Xbox 360 is still holding on admirably, and the PS3 is doing better because it is now managing to get one or two titles in the top 10 (but as mentioned before, only once at the number one spot). 

But even just looking at the top 10 doesn’t give us a whole picture of the actual top 10 for the year (just the ones that made it to the top 10 for each month, so a game that’s number 11 for all 12 months might actually turn out to be the number one selling game of the year). Luckily, NPD provided the 2008 yearly top 10, and here they are:

NPD 2008: Yearly Top 10

NPD 2008: Yearly Top 10

The Wii domination is now fully showing, with the top 4 titles all Wii ones, but unfortunately for third party publishers, they’re all Nintendo titles. The second half of the table is dominated by the Xbox 360, but this time it’s better news for publishers as there’s only one Microsoft title (and that was actually Epic Games’). The poor showing for the PS3 continues, with only a single title in the top 10, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV (previously a PlayStation timed exclusive), a multi-platform release that was outsold by the Xbox 360 version by nearly a 1.7 to 1 margin.

So that’s 2008 in charts and graphs. Nintendo for the Gold, Xbox 360 for the Silver and the PS3 for the Bronze.

The December 2008 NPD figures are in, and this month represents the peak in terms of sales before a huge drop off that will occur in January. It’s still the same picture as December, with everything up by compared to November. 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 December are below, ranked in order of number of sales (December 2007 figures also shown, including percentage change):

NPD December 2008 Game Console US Sales Figures

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

My prediction last month was:

Steady as she goes, is my prediction for next month. I can’t see PlayStation Home, a beta at that, helping to sell too many PS3s, and with no price drops in view, I can’t see the current situation change much.

And that’s largely the case. The only “surprise” is that the DS managed to outsell the Wii, which isn’t all that surprising because that’s what happened at the same time last year as well. Once again, we see the PlayStation console numbers in red because sales dropped compared to the same time last year – that’s now happened in both November and December so it’s definitely a trend, rather than an outlier. The good news for Sony is that the percentage difference between last year and now aren’t as bad as last month, with both the PSP and PS3’s percentage drops in single digits. The PS2 continues its slide into oblivion though, selling at only 37% of last year’s numbers (which admittedly, were still quite strong).

More than 5 million units of Wii and DS were sold in December, which is simply amazing. Last year’s numbers were amazing enough too, at nearly 4 million combined, but the 3rd Christmas after the Wii’s release, it is selling even stronger. The greater sales numbers could be a sign that Wii manufacturing has finally caught up to demand, because availability over the previous two holiday periods was a major issue.

The Xbox 360 did well, and managed to outsell last year’s respectable numbers. It just missed out on outselling the PS3 by a 2 to 1 margin, by 12,000 units, but if you had told Microsoft earlier in the year that they would be selling neck and neck with the PS3, let alone nearly doubling it in sales, they would have taken it. Not quite pulling a rabbit out of the hat, because price drops are easy but you can only do it so many times, but the change of direction early on in the year to try and emulate the Wii’s success seems to have paid off.  

The less said about the PlayStation brand the better for this month. Sony will hope that future price cuts and their 10 year plan will start to bear fruit this year, and I think it will (the price cuts especially). 

Otherwise there’s nothing else to be said that I didn’t already say last month, so let’s get to the software figures. Wii Play has been selling amazingly ever since it debuted, and this month is no exception, except it’s now the number 1 selling software of the month. To be fair, Wii Play is at an advantage compared to all other titles, because it really is a must-have for the Wii, and not even because of the actual software either. The Wii is a multi player console, and so almost everyone need to buy another Wii Remote and Wii Play is the perfect way to do it. Other than this, Call of Duty: World at War continues to sell strong, just like this time last year when CoD4 was the top selling title. And pretty much all of last month’s top 10’s returned, except for Resistance 2 and Wii Music. Both titles are replaced by the “oldie” Mario Kart DS, which is a bit of a surprise. The new Wii Animal Crossing title also did well. The Wii won comfortably this month by taking 55.9% of all sales in the top 10, compared to the Xbox 360’s 31.6%, and only 6.2% for the PS3. Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii, Nintendo) – 1,460,000
2. Call of Duty: World at War (Xbox 360, Activision Blizzard) – 1,330,000
3. Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 999,000   
4. Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 979,000
5. Guitar Hero: World Tour (Wii, Activision Blizzard) – 850,000
6. Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360, Microsoft) – 745,000
7. Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360, Electronic Arts) – 629,000
8. Mario Kart (DS, Nintendo) – 540,000
9. Call of Duty: World at War (PS3, Activision Blizzrd) – 533,000
10. Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii, Nintendo) – 497,000

Next month will see a huge drop in terms of sales, which is part of the usual cycle. Stock availability could affect sales, and usually the better selling consoles will do worse in January compared to the lower selling ones that still have plenty of stock left. So if Wii, DS and Xbox 360 sales struggle, while PS3 sales improve in comparison despite no popular new games or price cuts, then this is one possible explanation. 

Another blog post will be up soon which looks at the 2008  in review.

See you next month.