DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

I broke the bad news in the last Weekly News Roundup, that NPD will no longer be releasing unit sales figures publicly, which makes writing this analysis feature ever more difficult. But thanks to leaks, I am still able to present some kind of analysis this week, although with many figures missing. Still, it should be enough to paint a broad picture of the video gaming industry in the US for September 2010. All the figures are collected and calculated by NPD, but the posted figures are leaked by manufacturers and other analysts (the PS3 and Wii figures were released by Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter). PSP and DS figures were unavailable for this month.

The figures for US sales in September 2010 are below, ranked in order of number of sales (September 2009 figures also shown, including percentage change):

• Xbox 360: 483,989 (Total: 21.8 million; September 2009: 352,600 – up 37%)
• PS3: 312,000 (Total: 13.5 million; September 2009: 491,800 – down 37%)
• Wii: 254,000  (Total: 30.3 million; September 2009: 462,800 – down 45%)

NPD September 2010 Game Console US Sales Figures

NPD Game Console Total US Sales Figures (as of September 2010)

My prediction from last month was:

September = Halo Reach. That’s what next month will be all about. The fact is that, as I type, the top four items in Amazon’s Video Games section are all Halo Reach related (standard, limited, legendary editions, plus the 360 Halo Reach console bundle), just shows how dominant it will be in September’s figures. So expect the Xbox 360 to remain on the top of the console pile hardware wise too, and possibly the best month since, well, the last Halo release. Halo Reach will overshadow Sony’s launch of the Move unfortunately, although it’s doing well to just hang in around 10th, or just outside of it. The Sports Champions bundle should be counted in the software charts (in the same way Wii Fit Plus is in there), so it should be in the top 10 (especially when the top 3 will be condensed into a single entry for Halo Reach). It will be a very interesting month, I feel.

Heh, it really was an interesting month, although I definitely didn’t predict that NPD would stop releasing unit sales figures (although they had threatened to do so on many occasions before). But September was all about Halo Reach, that’s for certain, and thanks to it, Xbox 360 sales were up compared to the same time last year, the only console to record year-on-year growth. Not quite recording breaking sales figures for the Xbox 360, but it was the best month in 2010. And yes, it did overshadow Sony’s PlayStation Move, although it did well enough to help accessories sales to grow, despite Sports Champions either not in the top 10 or not counted as software.

To expand on the Xbox 360 figures, it had year-on-year growth of 37%. The timing of the Slim version of the console, and the console’s exclusive big hitter of the year, Halo Reach, couldn’t have been planned any better. And with Kinect going on sale soon, the next few months could all be about the Xbox 360, unless Sony or Nintendo pulls one out of the hat (ie. price cuts). It’s worth noting that the 37% year-on-year growth is on top of a 2% year-on-year growth experienced for the same month last year, so consistent growth is why the Xbox 360 is now looking pretty healthy indeed.

Many might be shocked to see the huge drop in sales for the PS3, but there is no concern. September 2009 was the first full month that included PS3 Slim and the price cut into the figures, and so comparing a year old SKU to a brand new and (at that time) recently discounted SKU, is not really fair (just like this time next year, the Xbox 360 year-on-year figures would probably show a decline, unless Kinect really takes off, and I mean to like earlier Wii levels).  And this is why I’ve always mentioned a caveat when talking about the huge year-on-year growth figures experienced in the last year, since we were not comparing apples to apples, but rather cheap slims to expensive fats, and that if you look at sales figures from two years ago, sales figures aren’t up by a huge percent normally. Which is why, despite the year-on-year sales drop, the PS3 actually had a good month and was up 34% compared to two years ago (very much comparable to the Xbox 360’s 39%, when comparing the same period). And this is why it took second place, ahead of the Wii. Without detailed stats, I can’t tell much well the Move bundle performed, but the accessories sector grew by 13%, the only sector to grow (both console hardware and software sales were down, 19 and 8 percent respectively), and I would suspect a large part of it is due to the Move. And some of the 34% growth compared to 2008 is probably down to Move, since for last month, the same comparison (August 2010 to August 2008) only yielded a 22% sales growth.

So the news just gets worse for the Nintendo Wii. Down 45% from last year, which at that time was down 33% from 2008 (so from 2010 to 2008, that’s a decline of 64%!). But the Wii still has a 8.5 million hardware lead over the Xbox 360, and so even at the current rate of decline, it will take some effort for the Xbox 360 to take the lead, but not an impossible task if Kinect manages to win over the casual gaming crowd. This, I believe, is the first time both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 has outsold the Wii, and it’s definitely not a good sign, especially this is the first month in which a competitor’s motion gaming system hit the market. The Wii 2 can’t arrive soon enough for Nintendo.

Onto software sales. Without unit sale stats, I can only give you the top 10 ranking, and this ranking is for title based, and does not separate them into individual SKUs or platforms, making the rankings much less useful as a tool to compare the different platforms, less they be platform exclusives. But I do have the sales figure for Halo Reach. The last Halo instalment sold 3.3 million copies, only the third game to do so (the other two were Modern Warfare 2, and Halo 3), and this figure didn’t even include the games that were bundled with special editions of the Xbox 360 console. So despite having more platform exclusives, the PS3 did not completely overwhelm the Xbox 360 in terms of software sales this year, thanks to Xbox 360 exclusives such as Halo series, and well selling multi-platformers like MW2. Here’s the new chart:

1. Halo: Reach (Microsoft, Xbox 360) – 3,300,000
2. Madden NFL 11 (Electronic Arts, Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, Wii, PSP)
3. Dead Rising 2 (Capcom, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
4. NHL 11 (Electronic Arts, Xbox 360, PS3)
5. FIFA Soccer 11 (Electronic Arts, Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PSP, NDS)
6. Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (Square Enix, PSP)
7. Mafia II (Take-Two, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
8. Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (Activision Blizzard, PS3, Xbox 360, NDS, Wii)
9. Metroid: Other M (Nintendo, Wii)
10. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision Blizzard, Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

I loathe to make a prediction, because there might not even be figures next month to check whether I was right or not, but if there are figures, then I expect the Xbox 360 to still hold a sales lead over the PS3, which will outsell the Wii again. The new Fallout game, Fallout New Vegas, should do very well, with more copies being sold for the Xbox 360 (not that we have any way of telling). Fable III, the Xbox 360 exclusive, should also do well and again help the Xbox 360 console sales just like this month’s exclusive. And just checking Amazon right now, the Kinect bundle is in the top 10, which bodes well for the kit when it is released in November.

See you next month (maybe).