DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

We are again able to bring you another edition of the NPD sales analysis this month, after rummaging through the garbage of those that have actual access to NDP stats (and also doing a bit of search online). The holidays are here and the sales numbers are huge, but anyone can win this holiday, as Nintendo’s dominance falters, and the Move and Kinect makes their, umm, moves into the market. All the figures are collected and calculated by NPD.

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

• Xbox 360: 1,370,000 (Total: 23.5 million; November 2009: 819,500 – up 67%)
• Wii: 1,270,000  (Total: 31.8 million; November 2009: 1,260,000 – up 1%)
• PS3: 530,000 (Total: 14.2 million; November 2009: 710,400 – down 25%)

NPD November 2010 Game Console US Sales Figures

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

My prediction from last month was:

Prediction? The Xbox 360 to still be the winner thanks to Kinect, with a slight comeback for the Wii, and may even be enough to knock the PS3 off second place and challenge the Xbox 360. Call of Duty: Black Ops will dominate the software charts, again favouring the Xbox 360, with Sony’s long (and I mean long) awaited GT5 doing well too. Other notable releases in a busy month include Donkey Kong Country Returns, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

First sentence … mostly correct. The Wii did make a comeback, although it was a bit more than just “slight”, and it did challenge the Xbox 360 and overtake the PS3 as the second most popular home based console. Black Ops did dominate the software charts, and again, it helped the Xbox 360 more as more copies were sold on it. GT5 did rank in the top 10, which is getting harder to do based on the new NPD rankings that take rank each title based on *total* sales on all platforms (so single platform exclusives are at a disadvantage), but other platform exclusives apparently did better (more on that later). And all the other titles I mentioned in last month’s prediction were all involved in the top 10.

So, the big news is that the Xbox 360 managed to hold off the Wii’s casual gaming based resurgence for this holiday period. The Wii has always been a strong holiday seller due to the fact that it’s a popular gift item for the holidays, for the casual gaming market. But the Xbox 360 replaced the Wii this year as the most popular home based console. While the lead over the Wii wasn’t too significant, only 100,000 units, by comparison, the Wii sold 400,000 more units  than the Xbox 360 the same period last year so this is a turnaround that Microsoft were hoping for. Pricing wise, the Wii is still cheaper, and the PS3 isn’t too much more expensive considering it also doubles as a Blu-ray player. And software wise, while Black Ops did help the Xbox 360 more so than other consoles, the Modern Warfare 2 did the same and more for the console last year at this time, so that’s probably not where the bump came from. So this leaves the  Kinect factor, and with 2.5 million Kinect units sold in the first 25 days of release (basically from release to the end of November), it’s easy to see where the hardware sales bump came from. Microsoft’s timing has been impeccable this year, a point I’ve mentioned before. But timing Kinect’s release with the start of the holiday shopping period was an extremely good move, ensuring Kinect is fresh on people’s minds as they do their holiday shopping (and the store demos everywhere, and the huge marketing budget, will have also helped shoppers make up their mind). It’s a perfect storm of a new form factor, the number one selling game, plus a new motion controller that has had a faster take up rate than the iPad (and the best selling accessory for the entire year, despite only being out for 25 days), and all three factors resulted in the strong sales numbers for November.

And it’s good to see that Kinect, and the Xbox 360, is carving out their own market, instead of just stealing the Wii’s, because Wii sales are actually up compared to last year.

What isn’t up though is PS3 sales, and just looking at the numbers, one might conclude that the Xbox 360 has actually stolen market share from Sony’s flagship console. Not quite though. PS3 sales are down compared to November 2009, that is true, but this time last year, the PS3 was still enjoying the sales bump from the release of the Slim console (and the price cut), in the same way that the Xbox 360 is also still enjoying its sales bump from its release of the “Slim” version of the console (so don’t be surprised to see November 2011 Xbox 360 sales down compared to November 2010, although that could still be avoided if Kinect is a hit). But it’s clear that the PlayStation Move hasn’t had the same impact on the PS3 as Kinect has had on the Xbox 360, and it seems to have had no effect on Wii sales either. And with ever dropping prices on Blu-ray players, the PS3’s inclusion of Blu-ray playback is less of a drawcard than ever before.

So Nintendo will have been buoyed by the fact that Wii sales were up compared to a year ago, albeit by the smallest of margins. Still, they did get beat by the more expensive Xbox 360, and with Kinect being the biggest threat to the Wii’s control of the motion gaming market, this does not bode well for Nintendo. But with every analyst and their dog believing that the Wii 2 is just around the corner, Nintendo will have an opportunity to stop Kinect before it even gets started, but this assumes the Wii 2 will deliver something for all Wii owners to want to upgrade, and that it delivers something fresh and exciting compared to Kinect.

For software sales, another holiday season and another Call of Duty game being top of the list. 8.4 millions copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops were sold on all platforms, which is simply amazing. It is the best launch month for any title in history, and a large percentage of sales must have gone to the Xbox 360 (possibly more than the 4.2 million copies Modern Warfare 2 shipped on the console, last November). Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is another title that would have done better on the Xbox 360 too. For exclusives, Wii and Ubisoft’s Just Dance 2 was the pick of the bunch, managing to beat Fable III in 5th, Donkey Kong Country Returns Wii in 6th and GT5 in 8th. Wii Fit Plus also managed to get into the top 10. The figures for GT5 appears to be quite disappointing for such an eagerly awaited release (with emphasis on the ‘wait’ part of ‘awaited’), but  it was only released at the end of November, with not even a week of sales. Here’s the full chart:

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, DS) – 8,400,000
2. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft, Xbox 360, PS3)
3. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft, Wii)
4. Madden NFL 11 (Electronic Arts, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP)
5. Fable III (Microsoft, Xbox 360)
6. Donkey Kong Country Returns (Nintendo, Wii)
7. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (Electronic Arts, PS3, 360, Wii, PC)
8. Gran Turismo 5 (Sony, PS3)
9. NBA 2K11 (Take-Two Interactive, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP,PC)
10. Wii Fit Plus (Nintendo, Wii)

Time to make a prediction for December. I’m going to go with the same hardware ordering as this month, although the shortage of Xbox 360 and Kinect stock could affect sales somewhat, with the more plentiful Wii taking advantage. Software wise, a lot of the same titles from the above list will be there, and it will be joined by Epic Mickey, possibly a Kinect title or two (Kinect Sport being the most likely candidate). GT5 will have risen in the rankings too thanks to it having a bit more time to sell more copies.

See you next month.