Another month goes by and another pile of Nintendo hardware and software is sold in the U.S. Once again the DS(i) and Wii took the top two spots, selling over 922,000 units between them. The Wii has now sold over 20 million units in North America since its release.
The Xbox 360 still maintains its lead over the PS3 in third place and surprisingly the PS2 is still outselling the PSP which may see sales decline even further now the PSP Go has been revealed.
Nintendo DS 633,500
Wii 289,500
Xbox 360 175,000
PlayStation 3 131,000
PlayStation 2 117,000
PSP 100,400
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With the launch of the Nintendo DSi in North America last month, Nintendo managed to shift over 1 million DS consoles on the continent, NPD Group sales data has shown. The new DSi moved about 827,000 units while the DS Lite managed 215,000. That’s a combined 31% of total industry unit sales for the month.
While the DS sold nearly double the total it did in March and over double the sales from the same month last year (414,800), sales of the Wii declined both on a month-to-month and year-on-year basis. Total sales for Wii in North America in April were 340,000.
The declining sales can be partly explained on the Wii by the lack of blockbuster game releases. This time last year Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl had just been released, helping to shift hardware.
Xbox 360 and PS3 were also down year-on-year meaning video game hardware sales for April 2009 totalled $391.63 million, a decline of 8%.
For the entire month’s hardware sales breakdown, follow the link. Read more…
Two of the worlds leading games analysts have been looking deep into their crystal balls again to predict sales of Wii MotionPlus.
Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan, believes “around 20 percent of Wii owners in the US and Europe will have bought Wii Sports Resort, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 or EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis, so that’s around eight million” as those games come bundled with the wiimote peripheral.
“I think another two million will buy MotionPlus with new consoles. I expect MotionPlus to be a sneaky success (like Wii Fit), and ultimately attach to at least one third of the [Wii's] installed base” Pachter concluded.
Jesse Divnich from EEDAR however was a little less optimistic with his future sales predictions. Hit the jump to find out what they were. Read more…
Yesterday Nintendo released their 2009 fiscal year reports and from it come the lifetime sales figures for many of the company’s biggest games released this generation.
The figures after the jump are lifetime total sales for Wii and DS, so come in and have a look! Read more…
It came to light last week by Gamasutra that Nintendo held third party developers to a specific sales criteria for developing WiiWare titles. In other words, the third party developer had to sell a certain amount of games before Nintendo would pay them royalty, if this target was not met then the developer would not get paid a single dime. Now thanks to Kotaku we know what those figures are. Head inside if you want to know. Read more…
While Nintendo’s fortune has been turned around since the Gamecube era with the release of the phenomenal DS and later the Wii consoles, all is not rosy with the ‘hardcore’ gaming crowd.
Ever since Nintendo bought ‘new ways to play’ via the features of the Wii and DS’s new control methods, along came a massively expanded audience that had not necessarily had the term ‘video game’ included as their past-time activities. More so than ever, girls, parents and even grandparents are playing videogames and more specifically Wii and DS thanks to Nintendo’s vision and risk of creating this new hardware.
A new audience requires new software and just as the demographics have changed in gaming, so have the games themselves. Wii Sports, Brain Training, Nintendogs, the ‘Petz’ titles and Deca Sports are a few examples that spring to mind. These titles are not necessarily ‘traditional’ videogames, though they are all multi-million sellers and they are all a result of the expanded audience. Of course the Nintendo faithful are still playing the franchises they know and love – Zelda, Mario, Metroid as well as Wii Sports. So everyone is catered for, everyone is happy right? Worng. It it is the hardcore gamer that are causing the ruckus in the Nintendo arena.
For years now the hardcore gamer has complained of Nintendo’s apparent change in priorities for software development. Many Nintendo fans complain on forums that they have been ‘abandoned’ in favour of casual titles. While this may ring true to a certain extent, you cannot blame Nintendo for following a path that is succeeding. They are a business first and foremost and therefore their first priority is to cater for sharholders, or more simply, make a profit. Profiting they are.
Let’s not forget at this stage that very early in the Wii’s lifecycle we have seen the release of a new Mario game, a new Zelda game, new Metroid, Mario Kart. Even so, many people, myself included were very disappointed with Nintendo’s E3 showing in 2008. Wii Music and a near identical version of Animal Crossing DS for Wii did little to quench peoples hunger for core first party titles. The Internet was once again rife with disappointment from Nintendo loyalists – ‘where are the core games?’ they cried.
The core games were there, not literally, but being worked on in the background. Critical successes namely GTA: Chinatown Wars, Madworld and House of the Dead. Nintendo decided at E3 last year to concentrate on its casual titles. The company know better than their followers their target market and what is keeping those shareholders happy. Hence the ‘casual’ theme at E3 2008. At the same time they know their customers have been loyal and expect much of the company and their first party ‘hardcore’ titles. I am sure Reggie and Co. had many discussions with Rockstar for example to get the GTA franchise on a Nintendo console.
So the hardcore gamer moaned of lacking mature titles, Nintendo listened, reacted and so did third party developers. A stream of hardcore titles entered the market and the hardcore gamer simply did not respond. Madworld, GTA and House of the Dead all sold way below expectations. Nintendo and it’s third party developers put their money where there mouth is, why did the harcore gamer not follow suit?
It is hard to believe that with Nintendo’s impressive hardware and software sales worldwide month after month, that in a certain respect the big N is in a lose – lose situation. The company receives much flack for ignoring the hardcore gamer, yet when they are fed, the gamer choses not to eat. What more can Nintendo and the third party developers do?
I am not a fortune teller but I can imagine what they will do is approach mature Wii and DS content with much caution from hereon in and continue to pump out casual title after casual title. Can you blame them? Should the hardcore gamer continue to have the right to moan about something they desire but don’t support.
No.
With video games becoming a more popular past time year after year, it is not surprising that the top 50 games of this decade have all sold over 5 million copies each. Come in to see which titles and consoles have the best selling games of the 2000′s so far. Read more…
