DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

The February 2009 NPD figures are in. Typically a slow month, February 2009 will prove to be an important one particularly for Sony as it hopes that end a quarter long streak that has seen all of its consoles fall in sales compared to the same time last year, in a time when all other console sales were up. With Killzone 2 being introduced late in February, it may just give Sony what it needs, or will it be a case of too little and too late (certainly, very late in the month). 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 February 2009 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (February 2008  figures also shown, including percentage change):

NPD February 2009 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of February 2009)

My prediction from last month was:

So my prediction would be a slight increase in PS3 sales, with lesser increases for the Wii and Xbox 360, but with the ordering of consoles remaining largely unchanged. It’s unlikely that the PS3 will outsell the same time last year, but it may have better luck in March when Killzone 2 may help in terms of hardware numbers (it’s late release in February won’t affect that month’s figures).  

I think I was largely right. In fact, I think I was spot on with pretty much everything. PS3 sales did increase, and it did increase more so than the Wii and Xbox 360, but not enough to change the ordering. And I was almost wrong on the “PS3 won’t outsell same time last year” statement, but almost wrong still means I was right. As you will see from the software figures, Killzone 2 did “kill”, but it wasn’t enough to give the hardware numbers a boost.

And while Sony were so close to breaking their bad luck streak in terms of hardware underselling compared to last year, all three PlayStation consoles again recorded sales drops compared to the same time last year. Both Nintendo and Microsoft again also managed to outsell the same period last year, with the Xbox 360 recording a huge jump and its best “non-holiday” sales since the release of Halo 3 (despite having no A-list exclusives this month). The PS3 was so close to outselling February 2008, and I think had Killzone 2 been released a week earlier in February (it was released on February 27), then the PS3 would have done it. But as they say, timing is everything and with Killzone 2 straddling between two months, it might just distribute sales enough where neither February nor March will mean good enough numbers for the PS3 for it to outsell 2008.

The PS2 is clearly on its last legs, and the PSP’s momentum has stalled, so Sony has to put everything into the PS3 now as it no longer has any other options. And the decisi0n to release Killzone 2 so close to the end of the reporting period may have hurt the chance of adding a number 1 title to the PS3’s list of achievements (or is that Trophies?), even if it meant taking a hit in Febuary. And Killzone 2 further highlights why high hardware prices are a bad idea, because can you imagine this title not being number 1 if it had been released on the Xbox 360 or the Wii? Sony’s insistence on high hardware prices has meant that they have missed out on a lot of revenue from their high profile release (such as Killzone 2, and LittleBigPlanet, as well as multi-platform releases such as GTA IV) – I don’t have access to Sony’s accounts, but can the extra loss in hardware revenue from faster price drops be offset by the extra gains in software revenue (thanks to the superior number of hardware in people’s homes)? And would this have meant that the total loss in revenue would have been  manageable enough and much more sensible from a mid term perspective? But only Sony knows what they can and cannot afford to do.

The sales surge for the Xbox 360 is hard to explain. There were no price drops, no hit releases (exclusive or otherwise, Street Fighter IV included), and nothing that would suggest an increase was on the cards. Perhaps its status as the cheapest console on the market is finally providing dividends as the economic situation worsens. The Wii and the Nintendo brand contines its march towards total domination of this game console generation. 

Let’s get to the software charts. This is at least one area that will give Sony a much needed boost, because the PS3 top 10 sales finally managed to beat the Xbox 360 sales. Neither got near the Nintendo numbers, of course, but it just shows what a critics favourite like Killzone 2 can do for software sales. Another bit of good news is that despite 2:1 hardware advantage for the Xbox 360, the multi-platform Street Fighter IV managed to sell practically even for both the 360 and PS3. This either means that PS3 owners loved SFIV more than Xbox 360 owners, or that at least on the software front, Microsoft is about to lose its status as the console with the best software sales ratio. Killzone 2, as mentioned earlier, did quite well but not enough to seriously challenge Wii Fit/Play, nor SFIV. So good news for Sony as they 23.6% of the market, which beat Microsoft’s 20.7%. All the Nintendo “must-have” releases are still on the list, for both the Wii and DS, so they took nearly 56% of the top 10. Here’s the complete list of the top 10 software sales:

1. Wii Fit w/Board (Wii, Nintendo) – 644,000   
2. Street Fighter IV (Xbox 360, Capcom) – 446,000
   
3. Street Fighter IV (PS3, Capcom) – 403,000
4. Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii, Nintendo) – 386,000
5. Killzone 2 (PS3, Sony) – 323,000
6. Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii, Nintendo) – 263,000
7. Call of Duty: World at War (Xbox 360, Activision Blizzard) – 193,000
8. Mario Kart (DS, Nintendo) – 145,000
9. New Super Mario Bros. (DS, Nintendo) – 144,000 
10. Guitar Hero: World Tour (Wii, Activision Blizzard) – 136,000

Next month should be a big one for software sales, as Resident Evil 5, Halo Wars, and GTA: Chinatown Wars all make their way onto their respective consoles. There is also the left over sales from Killzone 2, and any hardware effects that may show up. My prediction for March 2009 would be that PS3 sales finally beat the 2008 equivalent, thanks largely to Killzone 2 and RE5 (March 2008 was also a very slow month). The ordering of the hardware sales would still remain the same though, as RE5 is no longer platform exclusive for the first time. It will be interesting on the software front, because you would imagine RE5 selling better on the 360, although perhaps only by the same margin as SFIV, and Killzone 2 should do better than the averagely rated (relatively speaking) Halo Wars. 

See you next month.